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Media Stoke Debate on Torture as U.S. Option

Jim Rutenberg New York Times Service
Tuesday, November 6, 2001

NEW YORK In many quarters, the Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter is considered a liberal. Yet there he was last week, raising this question:

"In this autumn of anger," Mr. Alter wrote, "even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to ... torture." He added that he was not necessarily advocating the use of "cattle prods or rubber hoses" on men detained in the investigation into the terrorist attacks. Only, "something to jump-start the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in American history."

The column, titled "Time to Think About Torture," is worrying to human rights groups. The sense of alarm was heightened because Mr. Alter is just one of a growing number of voices in the mainstream U.S. news media raising, if not necessarily agreeing with, the idea of torturing terrorism suspects or detainees who refuse to talk. On Thursday night, the Fox News anchor Shepard Smith introduced a segment asking: "Should law enforcement be allowed to do anything, even terrible things, to make suspects spill the beans? Jon DuPre reports. You decide."

A week earlier, on the CNN program "Crossfire," the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson said: "Torture is bad. Keep in mind, some things are worse. And under certain circumstances, it may be the lesser of two evils. Because some evils are pretty evil."

The legitimacy of torture as an investigative tool is the latest in a progression of disturbing and horrific topics that news outlets are now presenting to audiences, like the potential of a biological attack on an American city or a terrorist nuclear strike, the kind that, as an article in The Economist put it in its latest issue, could cause the disappearance of a large part of Manhattan.

Some human rights advocates say they do not mind theoretical discussions about torture, as long as disapproval is expressed at the end. But they say that weighing the issue as a real possible course of action could begin the process of legitimizing a barbaric form of interrogation.

Journalists are approaching the subject cautiously. But some said last week that they were duty-bound to address it when suspects and detainees who have refused to talk could have information that could save thousands of lives. Plus, they added, torture is already a topic of discussion in bars, on commuter trains and at dinner tables. And last, they said, well, this is war.

The historian Jay Winik, in an opinion article on Oct. 23 in The Wall Street Journal, detailed the reported torture in 1995 of the convicted terrorist plotter Abdul Hakim Murad by the Philippine authorities that led to the foiling of a plot to crash nearly a dozen U.S. commercial aircraft into the Pacific and another into CIA headquarters in Virginia.

Mr. Winik went on to write: "One wonders, of course, what would have happened if Murad had been in American custody?" He did not, however, endorse the use of torture but suggested that the United States might have to significantly curtail civil liberties, as it had done in past wars.

Mr. Alter said he was surprised that his column did not provoke a big flood of e-mail messages or letters. And perhaps even more surprising, he said, was that he had been approached by "people who might be described as being on the left whispering, 'I agree with you.'"

The problem with those comments, Mr. Alter said, is that they presume that by writing about torture, he is advocating it, which he said he was not doing, as evident in his point about the likelihood that torture could produce false information.

The Fox News Channel was less apologetic about its report Thursday night, in which advocates for torture said desperate times called for desperate measures; critics said that by abusing suspects, the United States would lose its moral standing in pressuring other governments on human rights violations.

"They're sitting around and not talking and may have information that could save American lives here and abroad," Bill Shine, the executive producer of the Fox News Channel, said of current government detainees. "And people are starting to say how can we get information out of them while respecting their constitutional rights."

But where Fox News Channel was willing to run a traditional, network-news-style segment on the pros and cons of torture and suspending the writ of habeas corpus, the broadcast news divisions have shied away from this. Jim Murphy, the executive producer of the CBS News program "Evening News with Dan Rather," said he would address the topic only if a correspondent found that law enforcement was seriously considering using torture. Mr. Murphy said speculation about torture and discussion of its merits were, for now, best left to talk shows and columnists. Of course, even that level of discourse is considerably disturbing to groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, which criticize the use of torture by regimes around the world. And yet even their leaders said they understood the source of the sentiments.

"It reflects people's fear and the somewhat unexamined instinct to do whatever it takes to meet the threat," said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. "And when people step back for a moment, they understand there are reasons why you don't want to open the door."