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Key Findings Bakir, Vian. 2013. Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror: Agenda-Building Struggles. Farnham: Ashgate. http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781472402554

Summary Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror examines in depth the

agenda-building struggles of the Bush and Blair political administrations (and those of their successors in the US and UK) over their use of torture to gain intelligence for the War on Terror (2001-12). Given that the Bush Administration’s torture-for-intelligence policy initiated soon after 9/11 was kept secret for several years, as remains the level of complicity of the UK (and at least 53 other nation-state’s governments, according to the report Globalizing Torture by the Open Society Justice Initiative (2013)), this book deepens our understanding of processes of Strategic Political Communication (SPC), and exposes dominant political discourses on the torture-for-intelligence policy in the USA and its key ally, the UK. Importantly, it explores key agenda–building drivers that exposed the torture–intelligence nexus, not just in the Third Estate (legislatures) and Fourth Estate (news and current affairs outlets), but also the Fifth Estate (that realm of digital and social media that advances the people’s right and ability to communicate). These discursive modes of resistance to SPC comprise unauthorized insider leaks and official investigations (Third Estate); investigative journalism and real-time reporting stemming from new media technologies (Fourth Estate); and Non-Governmental Organisation activity and sousveillance (this comprising community–based recording from first–person perspectives) (Fifth Estate). I unearth the power-knowledge relationships imbued within the torture-intelligence nexus; and evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various modes of resistance to SPC. This facilitates an assessment of the health of the public sphere across the Third, Fourth and Fifth Estates.

Methodology There is a large body of work on the media’s role in agenda–building processes

dating back to the1960s and continuing to flourish today, examining to what extent, and how, policy–makers, the media and the public influence each other’s agendas. This book is a longitudinal agenda–building study, overlaid with critical approaches concerning power and knowledge. Unlike standard approaches to agenda-building that assume the permanent importance of specific media outlets in agenda–building, or specific measures of public and political opinion and their hypothesized mutual influence, I am more interested in how protagonists act to build agendas based on their own perceptions of what is significant – although the challenge was how to achieve this without insider access. My approach necessitated a reconstruction of the web of influence of key texts publicly cited by key protagonists in the case studies examined while remaining mindful of concurrent policy choices made in the use of torture to extract intelligence, many of these policies remaining secret for years. I call this a protagonist–directed approach to agenda–building.

It generated an ever-expanding mass of key texts - such as news reports, current affairs programmes, legal and policy documents, public inquiries, photographs, memoirs, and NGO reports. I organized these into seven archives which were then cross-referenced, compared and critically analyzed to unearth agenda-building struggles. - Archive One: Once Secret Declassified and Leaked Official Documents - Archive Two: Public Inquiries, Official Investigations and Court Proceedings - Archive Three: NGO Documentation - Archive Four: Memoirs and Accounts of Key Protagonists - Archive Five: Histories Written by Journalists, Lawyers and Sociologists - Archive Six: News and Current Affairs Articles - Archive Seven: Artifacts of Sousveillance

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I chose 4 case studies to examine. They were selected to enable understanding of the operation and relative strength of the various modes of resistance to SPC, and to particularly scrutinize the newest mode of resistance – sousveillance.

The first case study is where sousveillant photographs of - at the very least - cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of the first publicly known detainee in the War on Terror, John Walker Lindh, should have alerted the public to America’s start of its secret policy of torture–for–intelligence in 2001, but failed to do so.

The second case study examines a case where sousveillance was spectacularly successful – the publicisation in 2004 of torture photographs taken by American soldiers of security detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The third case study examines a case of hoax sousveillance published in the UK’s Daily Mirror linked to the treatment and subsequent death in 2003 of Iraqi civilian, Baha Mousa at the hands of British troops in Iraq, raising the question of torture by the British military.

The fourth case study examines agenda–building regarding complicity of British intelligence agencies in the torture–intelligence nexus, through a case where there was no photographic sousveillance – that of Binyam Mohamed.

Key Findings There are lots of specific details about the interplay of SPC and resistance in each of

the case studies, these examined at length across four chapters. More broadly, there are a number of broader-based Key Findings, that:

- Delineate power-knowledge relationships constituting the torture-intelligence nexus; - Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the various modes of resistance to SPC; - Explore the influence on the media of secretive, manipulative intelligence activities; - Re-evaluate agenda-building models; - And discuss the health of the public sphere.

I shall discuss some of these Key Findings under the following headings: Is there a Secret State? Can the Secret State be challenged?  

Is there a Secret State? Yes. SPC used by the American and British Administrations in the War on Terror clearly

ranged from the secretive and silencing to the persuasive. Secretive activity included legal memos on torture, guidelines on interrogations and

intelligence assessments. These positioned those in the know as part of an elite force pushing forward legal and moral boundaries in their fight to prevent terrorism while relegating the wider public to ignorant bystanders.

Activity aimed at generating silences comprised plea bargains that silenced detainees, censoring Guantánamo detainees’ descriptions of their own torture in pre–trial hearings, deals with journalists to censor or withhold information that affected national security, weeding out sousveillance of torture online, suppression of visual sousveillance of torture while courts–martial and criminal investigations proceeded; destruction of videotapes of CIA interrogations; and withholding key information from intelligence oversight committees. These position those in the know as part of an elite force policing the public sphere to keep the wider public and their representatives ignorant of unpalatable but necessary official practices, relegating the likely emotional and/or moral public dissent towards such practices as unaffordable niceties.

Persuasive activity included the propagation and repetition of a few key messages consistently over time, with the aim of misdirecting public attention from the secretive and silence–generating activities.

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- Key Bush Administration messages were that detainees were evil, dangerous terrorists; that the practice of extraordinary rendition was normal and pragmatic; that interrogation techniques, although harsh, were legal (apart from isolated acts of abuse), necessary and successful in preventing future acts of terror; and that Guantánamo was a model prison.

- Key British Administration messages were of ministerial ignorance (until June 2004) of American intelligence agencies’ new interrogation strategies, after which intelligence agencies’ guidelines were tightened; and of no direct involvement of British intelligence agencies in extraordinary rendition.

- Key messages common to both British and American Administrations were that the Abu Ghraib sousveillance and similar visual evidence involving British soldiers were examples of isolated abuse rather than a torture policy from which lessons had been learned regarding Army training and interrogation guidance (new Army guidelines on interrogation were produced under the Bush and Blair Administrations).

- These key messages were periodically bolstered by selective public release of once–secret documents. The consistency of key messages over time, together with the offering up of specific evidence, gives the appearance of official disclosure and truth–telling, positioning the public as a force to which political administrations willingly hold themselves accountable. However, the strategic generation of key messages and selectivity of supporting information presented means that full accountability is avoided, while the public is potentially fooled into thinking that justice has been served, all–the–while being constant targets of manipulation.

Given that secrecy was a key part of SPC regarding the torture-intelligence nexus,

what strategies were used to justify and lend credibility to non-statements (silences), and what strategies were used by those who sought to penetrate the secrecy? These are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 Discursive Strategies in the Torture-Intelligence Nexus

Propagated by US & UK Political Administrations

- Keeping secret the torture-intelligence policy on the grounds that the Geneva Conventions did not apply, & that the ends justified the means. - Making statements about terrorist threat and utility of intelligence from Enhanced Interrogation techniques (EITs) difficult to challenge by: keeping secret the evidence on which detainees were being held, their identity, intelligence reports & threat assessments. - Preventing detainees talking about their torture via the theory that EITs’ effectiveness required detainee isolation; that as an illegal enemy combatant, all words uttered were classified; and that detainees’ privacy could not be invaded. - Casting doubt on key early informants’ torture claims through delegitimizing techniques. - Silencing later insider informants through terminating employment, restricting the public statements of ex-CIA employees still contracted with the agency, & increasing use of the Espionage Act. - Keeping secret evidence of British complicity in the torture-intelligence programme on the grounds of protecting Britain’s intelligence-sharing relationship with America. - Providing a credible alibi to misdirect public attention (normalizing torture & extraordinary rendition via anonymous intelligence sources).

Propagated by Dissenters

- Appeals to universal principles of human rights as embodied in international conventions. - Exposing the torture-intelligence policy through the political administration’s own words and actions. - Challenging claims of EIT’s success with experiential, anonymous and named, insider knowledge. - Giving voice to, and conferring credibility on, past and current detainees’ claims. - Maintaining archives of primary evidence to resist SPC’s continuous reframing of the past.

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Can the Secret State be Challenged? The book shows that there was resistance to SPC including unauthorized leaks,

official investigations, investigative journalism, real–time reporting, NGO claims and sousveillance. These provided evidence and frames to penetrate the secrecy and counter the political administrations’ claims, and positioned the public as interested in the evidence countering SPC, and capable and willing to be engaged in the debate about what is legally and morally acceptable in the fight against terrorism. Some of the key strengths and weaknesses of these modes of resistance are distilled below.

Third Estate – Strengths - Official political investigations and inquiries conducted at the international level

were able to find and collate evidence across multiple countries. Some investigations wield more power than others: eg investigations by European institutions, like the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, as member States of the Council of Europe are legally bound by the European Convention on Human Rights, allowing the inspection and sanction that the USA avoids through its refusal to ratify enforcement mechanisms in international treaties banning torture.

- Whistle-blowing (unauthorized leaks) provides insider evidence that would otherwise remain secret, orienting those interested in resisting SPC, be this journalists, political investigators or NGOs. Since the advent of social media, unauthorized leaking is facilitated as whistle-blowing web-sites have proliferated.

Fourth Estate – Strengths - Investigative journalists can pursue a story over years, allowing the build‐up of 

subject‐specific expertise. Investigative journalism gives leakers a place to leak and allows in‐depth  examination  of  their  claims.  Investigative  journalism  can  now  exploit  the  data‐dumps  of  secret  information  that  websites  like WikiLeaks  (that  has  experimented  with journalistic  collaboration)  enable  –  such  as  the  Cablegate  dump  and  the  Guantánamo Detainee Assessment Briefs, that we now know were leaked by Bradley Manning.

- Real-time reporting - speedy publication can avoid censorship. Fifth Estate – Strengths - NGOs can pursue an issue in-depth and over time. When their Freedom of

Information Act (FOIA) requests were ignored, NGOs litigated to enforce compliance, this often achieved several years later. NGOs can generate primary data, often comprising accounts from detainees, ex-detainees and their families and lawyers. In cultivating in-depth knowledge and generating primary data, NGOs can lobby various parliaments to investigate torture-for-intelligence issues. Such activity also enabled NGOs to bring civil suits on behalf of released detainees to sue their kidnappers and torturers for monetary damages. NGOs adhere to universal moral principles that appeal to broad constituencies allowing a large coalition of NGOs across many countries to coalesce around the torture-intelligence nexus.

- Sousveillance is persistent, especially in the era of social media, and can emerge unpredictably.

Third Estate – Some Problems - Official political investigations and inquiries normally have narrow remits, operate

very slowly, are very expensive, and those conducted at national level are rarely independent of the government and its perceived national political interests (those conducted at international levels - eg EU - are more successful in probing national secrets).

- Whistle-blowing requires a brave individual to make the first move, especially when this involves challenging national self–conceptions (eg America as champion of human rights), or may be perceived as damaging national security interests.

Fourth Estate – Some Problems - Investigative journalists face the problem of denial of access to sensitive source

material while being dependent on official sources for a regular supply of stories. This is a relationship that journalists can only push so far regarding critical stories, if they want to retain

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access to the official sources. Journalism based on anonymous leaks can fall prey to authorized leaking. Indeed, this is one of the ways in which professional communicators seek to influence information environments, while the public remains under the (false) impression that the investigative journalism is independently sourced and verified.

- Real-time reporting, while feared by political administrations for being uncontrollable and unpredictable, was never evidenced as a mode of resistance in the torture-intelligence issue, pointing to its rarity as a mode of challenging official versions.

Fifth Estate – Some Problems - Some NGOS, to maintain their access to, and influence with, policy–makers, are

conditioned to modify their claims and avoid public controversy (eg the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding access to detainees and conditions of their incarceration in the War on Terror). Also, NGOs can be delegitimized by claims that they are not party to all relevant information, or that they are pursuing single–issue, idealistic interests and so ignoring the complexities, practicalities and facts of the risks and benefits in protecting national security.

- Sousveillance relies on serendipitous recordings, and so may not exist; it needs trusted agenda–builders (eg journalists, NGOs) to mobilize it as evidence; and it may be destroyed before ever reaching a wider public.

Policy Implications The problem with any study of agenda-building is that the broader knowledge can

be used for either side – those who believe they should support the secret state to ensure the greater good of national security, and those who believe that such manipulation of knowledge is unwarranted and undesirable. Coming down on the side of freedom of information and speech; the ability and right of citizens to know what their governments’ policies are; and political accountability and transparency, the policy implications are presented here accordingly, to encourage resistance to SPC.

‐ Ensure the continuation of political investigations and inquiries at international levels,  and  the  timely,  free  and  universal  access  to  the  reports.  Threats  to  political investigations include resources (money and time) and ensuring meaningful remits. 

‐  Encourage whistle‐blowing  by  raising  awareness  of  how  to whistle‐blow,  and the social value of doing so; and by offering greater protections to whistle‐blowers. Threats to whistle‐blowing include ignorance, apathy and fear. 

‐ Strengthen investigative journalism by allowing greater access to the full range of  sources  available;  and  ensure  speedy  compliance  with  their  FOIA  requests.  Educate  and support journalists to be more critical of apparent leaks from political administrations that in fact may be secretly authorized leaks made to further the administration’s agenda. Threats to investigative  journalism range  from political  secrecy  institutionalised by  law  (such as  the UK’s  Official  Secrets  Act  1989);  official  stonewalling  (such  as  ignoring,  delaying,  or incompletely addressing FOIA requests); and the commercial and professional pressures on journalists to ensure regular access to official sources of news. 

- Encourage sousveillance so that citizens continue to engage in personal information flows and make their voices heard, for free. Threats to such engagement range from monetizing access to social media and the wider digital media ecology (a barrier to participation), through to scaring citizens from engaging (for instance, by high profile punishment of whistle-blowers like US Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange; or by alerting people that their online activities are being surveilled).

‐ Encourage citizen engagement with NGOs (awareness, donations, membership). Threats  to  such  engagement  range  from  ignorance  (from  deliberate,  to  information overload)  to apathy. Where NGOs have access to specialist knowledge (for instance, gleaned through their primary research and access to those they are trying to help), encourage NGOs to engage with policy‐makers. Threats to such engagement include blocking NGOs’ access to 

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primary  information  (such  as  ignoring,  delaying,  or  incompletely  addressing  their  FOIA requests). 

About the author: Vian Bakir is Senior Lecturer in Journalism at the School of Creative Studies &

Media, Bangor University, Wales, UK. She is co-editor of Communication in the Age of Suspicion: Trust and the Media and

author of Sousveillance, Media and Strategic Political Communication: Iraq, USA, UK. She is on the Steering Committee for the Network of Media and Persuasive

Communication [ https://mpc.bangor.ac.uk/about-us ], and the editorial board for journals Media, War and Conflict [ http://mwc.sagepub.com ] and The Open Political Science Journal [ http://www.benthamscience.com/open/topolisj/ ].

Email: v.bakir@bangor.ac.uk