Stands alone

On torture, Cruz stands alone

Other GOP candidates signal support for waterboarding and other techniques now banned under an anti-torture law. 

By Michael Crowley

Waterboarding may be illegal, but “I would bring it back,” says Donald Trump. Chris Christie says waterboarding isn’t torture and he would use it against terror suspects. Jeb Bush won’t rule it out. As for Marco Rubio, he vows to haul captured terrorists to Guantánamo Bay and “find out everything they know.”

One year after a bracing Senate report on post-9/11 CIA interrogation practices led Congress to ban waterboarding and other forms of torture, the leading Republican presidential candidates are talking like it’s 2002 all over again.

With one exception: Going against the GOP’s rhetorical grain is Trump’s main rival for the party's nomination, Ted Cruz. “Torture is wrong, unambiguously. Period. The end,” the Texas senator said in December 2014. Cruz, whose own father was tortured in Cuba, reaffirmed that position last month, saying that “America does not need torture to protect ourselves.”

But even Cruz’s seemingly definitive rhetoric leaves key questions about his position unanswered.

“He says he opposes torture, but he does not say what constitutes torture,” said Jack Goldsmith, an opponent of waterboarding and other severe interrogation tactics who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the George W. Bush administration.

“None of the candidates come out in favor of ‘torture,’” Goldsmith said. But, he added, after reviewing several campaign statements provided by POLITICO, most “signal that they would ramp up interrogation, possibly to waterboarding.”

President Barack Obama banned torture — including the use of waterboarding, sleep deprivation and sexual humiliation — with an executive order soon after taking office in 2009. A new president could have reversed Obama’s order, but last year Congress enshrined a torture ban into federal law: In June, the Senate voted 78-21 to approve an amendment, sponsored by Sens. John McCain and Dianne Feinstein, that became part of a defense spending bill Obama signed into law.

Cruz and another GOP presidential candidate, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, backed the amendment. Rubio missed the vote but opposed the measure, saying he didn’t want to deny future presidents “important tools for protecting the American people.” He also complained about “telegraphing to the enemy what interrogation techniques we will or won’t use.”

The McCain-Feinstein amendment requires that all interrogation comply with the Army Field Manual, a publicly available document that forbids waterboarding as well as the use of electric shocks, dogs, nudity, hypothermia and mock executions. All were elements of the CIA’s interrogation program in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Now is a time for all presidential candidates to take a hard look at the law of the land,” said Raha Wala, senior counsel for defense and intelligence at Human Rights First. “There’s no question that the legislation passed in 2015 means federal law prohibits waterboarding and other forms of cruel treatment of detainees.” Wala noted that a majority of Senate Republicans voted for the amendment, including the GOP chairmen of the upper chamber’s Armed Services, Foreign Relations, Homeland Security, Intelligence and Judiciary committees.

Torture has not been a significant feature of the Democratic primary campaign. Early in her 2008 White House bid, Hillary Clinton would not rule out torture for terror suspects in extreme circumstances, but she has since strongly supported Obama’s torture ban. So has her Democratic primary rival, Bernie Sanders, who also voted for the McCain-Feinstein amendment last summer.

Intelligence professionals are divided on the efficacy of torture. A 6,000-page report published in December 2014 by the Democratic members and staff of the Senate Intelligence Committee found that the CIA’s use of what it calls enhanced interrogation techniques from late 2001 to 2006 “was not an effective means of acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.”

Senate Republicans countered with a rebuttal, arguing that “the CIA’s detention program saved lives and played a vital role in weakening [Al Qaeda] while the program was in operation.”

Despite widespread revulsion among liberals and some conservatives who consider torture immoral, polls show the public holds mixed views about torture. In August 2011, the Pew Research Center found that a narrow majority of Americans said that torture can sometimes or always be justified.

As they compete for conservative primary voters, the GOP candidates present themselves as ruthless foes of the Islamic State and Al Qaeda — while mostly remaining vague about what interrogation methods they would condone.

“If we capture any of them alive, they are getting a one-way ticket to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and we are going to find out everything they know,” Rubio said at the most recent GOP debate, on Jan. 14. Rubio did not elaborate on what methods he would approve to do that, and his campaign did not respond to an inquiry.

“We should do whatever we need to do to get actionable intelligence that’s within the Constitution,” Christie said on MSNBC last month. Asked whether waterboarding amounts to torture, Christie replied: “I don't believe so.” He complained that Obama’s actions had “demean[ed]” intelligence officers, adding: “These are people doing a dangerous job in a dirty world, and we need to support them because they are the first line of defense between us and ISIS, between us and Al Qaeda.”

Asked for his view about waterboarding on ABC’s “This Week” in November, neurosurgeon Ben Carson said, “There’s no such thing as political correctness when you’re fighting an enemy who wants to destroy you.” POLITICO could not find any statements on the subject by Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and his campaign did not respond to a query about his position.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, whose brother oversaw — and continues to defend — the post-9/11 CIA program, was noncommittal when asked about the issue in August.

“I don’t want to make a definitive, blanket kind of statement — this is something I’m not struggling with,” Bush told a group of Iowa voters. “I’m running for president. I’m not running for the Senate or running for governor. When you’re president, your words matter, and I’m cautious about making commitments without having all the facts because this is a serious one.”

Among the leading candidates, only Cruz has argued clearly against torture, even if he has not detailed his own definition of the word. (George W. Bush declared in November 2005 that “we do not torture,” a position he later defended on the grounds that he did not consider waterboarding and other methods approved by White House lawyers to meet that definition.)

But to the ears of some experts on interrogation policy, Cruz has clearly ruled out support for waterboarding and similar methods.

“Torture is wrong, unambiguously,” said Cruz in a statement after he voted for the McCain-Feinstein amendment. “Civilized nations do not engage in torture and Congress has rightly acted to make absolutely clear that the United States will not engage in torture.”

That position would be consistent with other stands Cruz has taken on matters of civil liberties in defiance of national security hawks. Cruz voted to end the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone call metadata. And he has repeatedly voted against annual Pentagon spending bills because he believes they contain unconstitutional language permitting the indefinite detention of U.S. citizens.

It would also be consistent with his revulsion at the torture his father, Rafael, underwent as a young Cuban revolutionary imprisoned by Fulgencio Batista’s government in the 1950s. “Men with clubs beat him. ... They bashed in his front teeth until they dangled from his mouth” in an effort to pry information from him, Cruz wrote in his 2015 memoir.

Cruz reiterated his position on torture in an interview with The Associated Press last month. “We can defend our nation and be strong and uphold our values,” he said. “There is a reason the bad guys engage in torture. ISIS engages in torture. Iran engages in torture. America does not need to torture to protect ourselves.”

But that view remains an outlier within the Republican presidential field, whose collective attitude was perhaps best captured by Donald Trump in a November interview on ABC’s “This Week.”

“I would bring it back. I think waterboarding is peanuts compared to what they’d do to us,” Trump said, referring to the Islamic State. “You know, they don’t use waterboarding over there; they use chopping off people’s heads.”