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By Root 728 0

military personnel did mistreat prisoners, although Abu Ghraib was an issue of the breakdown of military discipline and command and not an agreed U.S. policy on how to treat detainees. Several moral and ethical questions arise. First, if one were convinced that a detainee had knowledge of a proximate terrorist attack, what limits should be imposed—if any—to obtain the information he or she has? Does the possibility of preventing the attack and saving many lives make a harsher interrogation permissible? Second, how much transparency is desired into how these terrorist suspects are treated? The question raises an ends-and-means issue. Some have argued that there is a vast difference in discussing these first two questions in the abstract and facing the reality of capturing a terrorist who one knows is likely to have been involved in future attacks. Third, what effect does harsh treatment or torture have on the United States and the ethical purposes for which it says it is fighting terrorism?

The development of U.S. policy in this area has been extremely difficult. There has been much debate and legal dispute about the status of captured terrorists and whether they have combatant rights under the Geneva Convention, which would preclude torture and humiliating treatment. By mid-2008, there were several official and conflicting views, including a Supreme Court decision ruling that detainees had Geneva Convention rights and a new executive order that would allow the resumption of detention and interrogation as defined by the DCIA and compliant with the convention. The nature of these aspects of the U.S. campaign against terrorism is likely to remain controversial and subject to both redefinition and litigation as long as the campaign persists.

A related issue is the ultimate fate of the senior terrorists who have been captured by the United States, including some of al Qaeda’s senior planners for the 2001 attacks. Although concern is voiced about releasing them, questions arise about how long they can be held, especially without some sort of judicial proceedings. After a certain point they have no intelligence value as they have either told what they know or their information is dated. These terrorists are currently being treated as enemy combatants and therefore can be held for the duration of the conflict. But in a conflict that may have no definite end, does a time come when they have to be put on trial or released?

A FINAL LOOK AT OPERATIONAL ETHICS. Author James Barry (“Covert Action Can Be Just”) has argued that criteria can be established for making morally guided decisions about intelligence operations. Barry suggests the following.

• Just cause

• Just intention

• Proper authority

• Last resort

• Probability of success

• Proportionality

• Discrimination and control

In the abstract, this is a compelling list of checkpoints for policy makers to consider before launching an operation. But policy makers do not act in the abstract. And once they have decided upon the necessity for an operation, they can find ways to rationalize each of the succeeding steps.

ANALYSIS-RELATED ISSUES

The ethical and moral issues surrounding analysis largely center on the many compromises that analysts must make as they prepare their product and deal with policy makers.

Is INTELLIGENCE TRUTH-TELLING? One of the common descriptions of intelligence is that it is the job of“telling truth to power.” (This sounds fairly noble, although it is important to recall that court jesters once had the same function.) Intelligence, however, is not about truth. (If something is known to be true then we do not need intelligence services to find it out.) Yet the image persists and carries with it some important ethical implications. If truth were the objective of intelligence, does that raise the stakes for analysis? Are analysts working on more than a well-informed and, they hope, successful policy than their policy customers? Moreover, does a goal of truth allow them greater latitude to pursue and defend their views