Why Not Investigate?

"Pressure grows to investigate interrogations," the New York Times reports.

And why not investigate? Are not answers better than questions?

Here's why not: In Washington, there's an old rule that the process is the punishment. You don't have to convict people of any crime - you don't even have to charge them with any wrongdoing - in order to wreck careers and ruin lives. You can do that through the declaredly and allegedly neutral method of investigating them. While the investigation continues, they are subject to legal risk. They must pay legal fees out of government salaries. They must suspend other work. All for an uncertain and likely prolonged period of time. Really it might be more compassionate just to shoot them out of hand.

It might be useful here to remember the career of Robert Baer, one of the finest CIA officers of the 1990s. Baer was sent to Iraq in the 1990s to organize a coup against Saddam Hussein. The coup fizzled - and Baer found himself on the receiving end of an FBI investigation on charges of attempted assassination. That's a fine line to walk between dangerous duty and prosecutable offense! Baer was not charged with any crime. But his career at the CIA ended - and the agency collapsed again into the sluggish torpor that has characterized too much of its history in recent times.

Defenders of the Clinton record in intelligence often argued after 9/11: There is nothing in the rules that forbids targeted effective intelligence operations. But if a bureaucracy is threatened with prosecution if it crosses a line, the bureaucracy will respond by going nowhere near the line. That's the story of US intelligence gathering in the 1990s. Nobody wanted to face Baer's fate, so nobody took anything like Baer's actions - which meant in turn that people with the courage and imagination of a Robert Baer looked for careers elsewhere than the CIA.

Nobody was fired for doing too little to prevent 9/11. But unknown numbers of CIA and Bush administration officials face financial and career destruction for doing too much to prevent the next 9/11.

A message is being sent: Take no risks. Watch your back. Look out for your career first, your country second.

Let us hope that America's intelligence professionals have the patriotism and courage to disregard this signal. But if they do obey, when the next intelligence failure occurs, let us remember when we are tempted to blame them for returning to their pre-9/11 performance: They were just following our orders.