Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror

Agenda-Building Struggles

Vian Bakir

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781409422556
• eBook ISBN: 9781317009788
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror examines the communication battles of the Bush and Blair political administrations (and those of their successors in America and Britain) over their use of torture, first-hand or second-hand, to gain intelligence for the War on Terror. Exploring key agenda-building drivers that exposed the torture-intelligence nexus and presenting detailed case studies of key media events from the UK and USA, this insightful volume exposes dominant political discourses on the torture-for-intelligence policy. Whether in the form of unauthorized leaks, official investigations, investigative journalism, real-time reporting, or Non-Governmental Organisation activity, this timely study evaluates various modes of resistance to governments' attempts at strategic political communication, with particular attention to 'sousveillance': community-based recording from first-person perspectives. A rigorous exposition of the power-knowledge relationships constituting the torture-intelligence nexus, which re-evaluates agenda-building models in the digital age and assesses the strength of the public sphere across the Third, Fourth and Fifth Estates, Torture, Intelligence and Sousveillance in the War on Terror will appeal to scholars across the social sciences with interests in media and communication, sociology and social theory, politics and political communication, international relations, and journalism.

Chapter 1 Studying Torture, Intelligence and Media Manipulation in the War on Terror

DOI: 10.4324/9781315550824-1

Introduction

On 11 September 2001, al-Qaeda conducted a spectacular terrorist attack on American soil – ‘9/11’. Four hijacked airplanes were transformed into Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), simultaneously killing 2,972 people. Two airplanes attacked the headquarters of America’s economy (the World Trade Centre); one attacked the military (the Pentagon); and as we now know (Soufan with Freedman 2012 [2011]: 282), one was aimed at the legislature (the Capitol). In bringing down the Twin Towers in New York – a location replete with hand-held video cameras from freelance camera people and passers-by, with the media alerted following the first crash into the North Tower – the scale and suffering of this terroristic act was globally transmitted.

9/11 instigated the War on Terror (2001–), this defining the Bush presidency (Bush 2010: 151, Rove 2010: 234, 261, 268). Like all wars, propaganda is involved. Media scholars have long-established that, to manage public perceptions, states work hard to present their preferred interpretation of political violence – be this state-sanctioned wars or political violence against the state (Elliott et al. 1983, Taylor 2002) – this confirmed by recently-leaked documents such as the British Army’s Counter Insurgency Operations (Strategic And Operational Guidelines) (UK Army Field Manual 2007). Also long-noted is the political nature of discourse (Fairclough 1994, Foucault 1982, 1979 [1977]) and competing groups’ struggle over definitional power (Chomsky 2002, Schlesinger 1990). For instance, usage (or not) of the term ‘War on Terror’ indicates its shifting centrality to different political administrations, as well as their means of engaging terrorism (Sands 2006 [2005], Yoo 2006: 14). The term ‘terrorism’ itself has multiple definitions across academic disciplines and legislative arenas (Lankford 2010). The least value-laden definition is that terrorism creates fear among wider audiences for a purpose (Smith 2009). Most definitions agree that terrorism is a violent, unlawful communicative tactic directed at civilian audiences to coerce or intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of political, religious or ideological goals (Lankford 2010). The recent rise of Critical Terrorism Studies within the discipline of International Relations acknowledges what critics outside have long-observed (Chomsky 2003, Herman 2001, Klein 2007): that terrorism is not just effected by rogue elements of society but is often state–sponsored, by liberal democracies as well as authoritarian regimes – exemplified by covert means of warfare (Jackson, Murphy and Poynting 2010, Jarvis 2009, Skoll 2008).

Analysing discursive struggle, this book focuses on agenda-building battles over the use of torture to generate intelligence in the War on Terror. Indeed, some have labelled America’s post-9/11 torture-intelligence techniques as state-sponsored terrorism. Notwithstanding the sizeable impact (fear, anger, sadness) on the Muslim community worldwide on learning that many Muslims – innocent as well as guilty – had been profiled, detained without trial, and disappeared in the War on Terror (Khan 2008, Mazigh 2008, Qureshi 2009), given the secrecy regarding torture and extraordinary rendition, it may be more accurate to describe these as state crimes (Thorne and Kouzmin 2010) – that is, actions committed on behalf of, or in the name of, a state that violate international and/or the state’s domestic law (Rothe 2009). Of course, the political administrations involved would reject the label of either state crime or state terror.

While prior to 9/11, torture generally triggered widespread revulsion (Peirce 2010), it is debatable whether this holds today. Revulsion depends on exposing torture to public condemnation through recording and publishing unchallengeable research, and on holding state agents responsible (Peirce 2010). Unsurprisingly, since 9/11 governments around the world have been intensely secretive regarding their involvement in using torture to extract intelligence (McCulloch and Tham 2005, Thorne and Kouzmin 2010). As Council of Europe rapporteur, Dick Marty, states in his report on Abuse of State Secrecy and National Security, in combating terrorism, governments increasingly invoke ‘state secrecy’ or ‘national security’ to ward off parliamentary or judicial scrutiny, leading ‘to a dangerous culture of impunity, which undermines the very foundations of democratic institutions’ (Marty 2011: 1). In the absence of parliamentary or judicial scrutiny of the executive on this issue, can we rely on the media as the Fourth Estate? Empirical research from media agenda-building scholars is pessimistic as most show the executive branch of government dominating the media agenda on issues far less contentious than torture accusations (see Chapter 2). Meanwhile, research has long-shown governments in liberal democracies clamping down on national media outlets that dare to voice accusations of (their own) government-sanctioned torture (Errera 1977). Nonetheless, we have come to learn, over the past decade, of the Bush Administration’s programme of torture and extraordinary rendition in its search for intelligence on al-Qaeda; and we have come to suspect complicity on the part of many democracies, including Britain, although establishing the degree of complicity has proven elusive (United Nations Human Rights Council 2010: 82–5). This book seeks to understand key agenda–building drivers that exposed the torture-intelligence nexus, not just in the Third Estate (the legislatures) and Fourth Estate (news and current affairs outlets) (Carlyle 2007 [1840], Carlyle 1998 [1837] Part VI Section V), but also the Fifth Estate (Al-Rodhan 2007) – that realm of digital and social media that advances the people’s right and ability to communicate, freedom of information, interactivity, multidirectionality and multimodality (Moyo 2011).

There is a long tradition of research into agenda-building, and its less nuanced, but earlier, conceptualization of agenda-setting. The premise of agenda-setting research is that issues emphasized in news coverage subsequently occupy prominent positions on public or policy-makers’ agendas – that the media influence which issues are discussed and prioritized in society (Bennett, Lawrence and Livingston 2007, Cohen 1963, McCombs and Shaw 1972, Rogers and Dearing 1988). However, given that the direction of influence has since been much debated, the premise of agenda-building research is that the media, government and citizens reciprocally influence one another’s agendas (Lang and Lang 1983: 58–9, 1981). In examining how agendas are mutually influenced, this book studies strategic political communication used by American and British political administrations to deflect public attention from the use of torture to extract intelligence; and the role of political, media and lay-public modes of resistance in drawing attention to this issue, thereby attempting to hold power-holders to account. Chapter 2 explains more deeply what strategic political communication comprises, and its relationship to intelligence in the War on Terror. In brief, I define Strategic Political Communication (SPC) as comprising political communication that is manipulative in intent, that utilizes social scientific techniques and heuristic devices to understand human motivation, human behavior and the media environment, to inform effectively what should be communicated – encompassing its detail and overall direction – and what should be withheld, with the aim of taking into account and influencing public opinion, and creating strategic alliances and an enabling environment for government policies – both at home and abroad. Chapter 2 then explores agenda-building in more detail, focussing on how SPC is challenged through a range of discursive activity comprising political, media and lay modes of resistance. Political modes include unauthorized leaks and official investigations. Media modes include investigative journalism, and real-time reporting stemming from new media technologies. Lay public modes include Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) activity and sousveillance – community-based recording from first-person perspectives that may or may not involve a political agenda. To understand the operation and impact of this discursive struggle across four connected case studies (these outlined later in this chapter), in Chapter 3, I provide an overview of the development of the torture-intelligence nexus in a post-9/11 culture that suddenly became highly risk-averse at the level of governmental leadership – in America under Bush’s Republican Administration (January 2001–January 2009), followed by Barack Obama’s Democrat Administration (2009–) and in Britain under Tony Blair’s Labour Administration (1997–2007) followed by Gordon Brown (Labour, July 2007–10) and the David Cameron and Nick Clegg Conservative-Liberal Democrat alliance (May 2010–) – in their obsession with preventing future terrorism from Sunni extremists, al-Qaeda.

Chapters 4–7 examine, critically, key agenda-building battles over torture in America and Britain’s War on Terror from 2001–12. There are two standard approaches in longitudinal agenda-building studies – both of which I have eschewed. The first standard approach, that I shall call the correlative approach, is used by those exploring inter-relationships between media content, public opinion and political activity. The correlative approach selects several influential news outlets, tracks the appearance and/or framing of an issue in these outlets’ news stories over time (the usual technique of measuring news agendas) and correlates this either with public opinion polls (the most common measure of public opinion) or some measur...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Studying Torture, Intelligence and Media Manipulation in the War on Terror
• 2 Strategic Political communication, Intelligence and its discontents: Manipulating and challenging Intelligence
• 3 The rise of the Torture-Intelligence Nexus
• 4 The Sousveillance Failure of John Walker Lindh
• 5 The Surprise of Sousveillance at Abu Ghraib and the Struggle to Contain It
• 6 The Persistence of Sousveillance: Baha Mousa and Torture in the British Military
• 7 The absence of Sousveillance: Binyam Mohamed and British Intelligence agencies’ complicity in Torture
• 8 conclusion
• References
• Index