Christopher Hitchens: Why Obama cited Churchill on torture
He didn't get the attention he deserved for it, but President Obama was very cleverly fusing liberal principles with an appeal to the basic conservative values of"Old Europe" when, in his 100th-day press conference, he used Winston Churchill to justify his opposition to water-boarding and other"enhanced methods." He told his audience that, even at a time when London was being"bombed to smithereens" and the British government held hundreds of Nazi agents in an internment center, there was a prime-ministerial view that torture was never permissible.
It would be reassuring to think that somebody close to Obama had handed him a copy of a little-known book called Camp 020: MI5 and the Nazi Spies. This was published by the British Public Record Office in 2000 and describes the workings of Latchmere House, an extraordinary British prison on Ham Common in the London suburb of Richmond, which housed as many as 400 of Hitler's operatives during World War II. Its commanding officer was a man named Col. Robin Stephens, and though he wore a monocle and presented every aspect of a frigid military martinet (and was known and feared by the nickname"Tin-Eye"), he was a dedicated advocate of the nonviolent approach to his long-term guests. To phrase it crisply—as he did—his view was and remained:"Violence is taboo, for not only does it produce answers to please, but it lowers the standard of information."
To give you some of the flavor of this prohibition, I ask you to consider the case of the German agent codenamed"TATE," who was parachuted into England in September 1940, at a time when almost all of continental Europe was under Hitler's control and when neither the United States nor the Soviet Union had entered the war. Taken to Camp 020, TATE stubbornly maintained that he was a Danish refugee. An external interrogator unused to the rules of Ham Common was exasperated by this initial stubbornness and"followed TATE to his cell at the close of that first interrogation and, in flagrant violation of the Commandant's rigid rule that no physical violence should ever be used at Ham, struck the agent on the head. The incident led, on immediate representations by the Commandant, to the instant recall of [the offending officer] from the camp." One blow to the head at a time when undefended British cities were being blitzed every night, and the brute was out of there for good....
In other words, it is precisely because the situation was so urgent, so desperate, and so grave that no amateurish or stupid methods could be permitted to taint the source. Col. Stephens, who was entirely devoted to breaking his prisoners and destroying the Nazis, eventually persuaded many important detainees to work for him and began to receive interested inquiries"from the FBI and the North West Mounted Police, from the Director of Security in India to the Resistance Movements of de Gaulle, the Belgians and the Dutch." It would be nice to think that even now, American intelligence might take a leaf from his ruthless and yet humane book.