CIA torture report: what Britain knew

"MI6 and MI5 know of the worth of the programmes we ran. But they can't say anything," says Mike Scheuer. Does that mean that British agencies benefitted from the product of those interrogations?

"All of the European countries did," he says, "but certainly the British did indeed." Scheuer spent over 20 years working in the CIA, where he both headed the Bin Laden Unit and oversaw the Agency’s rendition programme.

He is scathing about the Senate report on the interrogation techniques used by the CIA on detainees. "It may make recruiting people overseas more difficult," says Scheuer. "Now most people who run operations take out personal liability insurance because they know that the President and Congress will throw them under the bus if it becomes politically expedient to do so."

In her introduction to the report, Senator Dianne Feinstein, head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told Congress that: "It is my personal conclusion that under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured."

"I think that's incorrect," says Scheuer. The CIA, he says, is not a "rogue agent", but "the agency of the President," meaning that nothing can be done without his direction and nothing is authorised without first passing through several layers of legal analysis.

"If what was conducted in terms of those interrogations was torture," says Scheuer, "then certainly the law schools in the US that staff the Department of Justice, the National Security Council, the CIA the White House, need a little bit of renovation in terms of what they're teaching. So I find that ridiculous."

Scheuer is a controversial figure, not only for his comments on Israel, but also for a column that appeared to suggest the assassination of President Barack Obama. Scheuer rejects this interpretation of his comments. He started at the CIA as an analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence in 1982, he went on to work on the CIA's covert action programme in support of the Afghan Mujahedeen in its war against the Soviet Union. After a short absence in 2001 he became senior advisor in the agency's Bin Laden unit and also ran the CIA's rendition programme. He resigned in 2004 after disagreements on post-9/11 policy.

His analysis of the role and activities of intelligence agencies is an unusual and at times contradictory one. On the one hand he suggests that: "We are losing this war because we've depended on nonsense things. On complements to military power: drones, Special Forces, renditions, interrogations. That's why this problem is now on four continents—because we have not used military power." But on the other hand, when reflecting on the US's involvement in Iraq, he says, "we should never have went there in the first place." He also refers to "the border areas in Pakistan" saying that "we have done stunning work there, the agency and the drones and the special forces. Terrific."

Despite the contradictions, at the heart of what Scheuer says is an uncomfortable truth for governments and intelligence agencies—asymmetric warfare will inevitably put a greater stress on intelligence agencies, and will draw them into an increasingly ambiguous role, to which they are ill-suited.

As Christopher Andrew wrote in his official history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, intelligence agencies concentrate less on other states, and more on small groups of radicalised men and women. The ability of intelligence agencies to root out radicals has, since 9/11, become a weapon of the battlefield.

"The defence of the country is always centre stage," says Scheuer. "If you don't do it with one tool, you do it with another and as long as you don't use your military and you're uncomfortable killing the enemy in the requisite numbers, then you are going to stick the intelligence agencies with stuff that is beyond their ability to do."

"I wrote a note to the Director of Central Intelligence in 1997 or 1998," he says, "and it's quoted in The 9/11 Report, where I said the Agency's going to be able to hold the ring here for a little while. But within three or four years if we don't destroy al Qaeda soon it's going to be too big for us and we're going to take a major military effort."

"And I think it's long past time, sir, where the intelligence services can hold the ring any more."