Riding the Waterboard to Victory or to a Wipeout?

Daniel L. Davis

Security,

GOP front runner Donald Trump did not flinch in his response.

Last Saturday at the Republican Presidential debate in Manchester, New Hampshire, moderator David Muir asked the candidates whether they would, if elected, use the controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding. The use of the technique by the Bush Administration was the center of a national firestorm in 2007 when it was accused of using inhumane and illegal interrogation methods. The answers given by the main contenders should trouble American voters.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump did not flinch in his response. He told the moderator he would not only use it, but “would bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding.” During an interview on Meet the Press the next day he explained why, saying “I would be very much in favor of going beyond waterboarding. And believe me, in terms of getting information, it works.”

Standing with him on the debate platform, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) said he would use it more sparingly, but noted that waterboarding “is vigorous interrogation, but it does not meet the generally recognized definition of torture.”

Are Trump and Cruz correct? Are enhanced interrogation techniques like waterboarding legal, necessary and effective in protecting American citizens from future terror attacks? In three words: “no”, “no” and “no.”

Ali Soufan, former FBI Special Agent and current CEO of the Soufan Group, was the FBI agent who interrogated the first major terrorist figure captured after 9/11, Abu Zubaydah. Soufan flatly disputes the contention the technique is legal. In an email message he sent me on Tuesday, he wrote, “Waterboarding, by every definition—US law, Geneva Convention, the UN Convention against Torture, the Rome Statute of the ICC—is torture.” In terms of necessity and effectiveness, Soufan was even more adamant.