John Brennan’s extraordinary nomination

Brennan is a strong supporter of torture, extraordinary rendition. An individual who has lost his moral compass.

The iconic photograph captures the final dramatic moment of President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton watching the death of Osama bin Laden. Released by the White House, the photograph shows President Obama and Clinton, hands held over their mouths, watching a video screen. It is not everyday a killing is witnessed live. John Brennan was in that room. He was heavily involved in planning the mission to kill Bin Laden. In the iconic photograph, he is the man standing in the upper left hand corner. There is not a hint of emotion on his face. He has the expression of an individual who has lost his moral compass. Brennan is at present President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser and has recently been nominated by the president to be the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). President Obama’s decision to nominate Brennan to lead the CIA has been riddled with controversy.

The New Yorker Magazine has described Brennan as a ‘supporter’ of the CIA’s torture programme, including but not limited to slamming detainees’ heads against walls while beating and kicking them. Brennan is also a strong supporter of extraordinary rendition — the practice of seizing suspects from one country and secretly shipping them to another for interrogation and torture. Rendition delivers suspects to unaccountable Third World governments where they are tortured at the bidding of the United States. Innocent people are caught up in the process. Maher Arar is a prime example of how wrong such a programme is. A Canadian citizen, Arar was detained by the US in 2002 and sent to Syria where he was tortured on suspicion of being an al Qaeda terrorist. Since his release, the Canadian government has apologised to Arar. His lawyers are currently seeking a deposition from the US government that their actions were illegal and violated Arar’s constitutional and charter rights.

I met Arar a few years ago. When I saw him last he was fidgety — jumping at the smallest sound. I have met many others who have been tortured and they share a similar trauma — manifesting itself as severe anxiety, depression and lapses in memory. Such symptoms are only normal responses to very abnormal treatment. Republican Senator John McCain has always been a vocal torture critic. In a recent statement, he said he had serious concerns regarding Brennan’s nomination, especially in “what role he played in the so-called enhanced interrogation programmes ... as well as his public defense of those programmes”.

President Obama has been quiet on the matter of torture but then denial is so often the precursor to justification. His nomination of Brennan raised red flags with the American Civil Liberties Union. The Union called on the Senate to “assess the role of the CIA — and any role by Brennan himself—in torture, abuse, secret prisons, and extraordinary rendition during his past tenure at the CIA, as well as review the legal authorities for the targeted killing programme that he has overseen in his current position”. It is time for the real President Obama to step up. It was he, who once said, “Today, we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.”

Brennan is certainly not the keeper of this moral compass.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2013.