NPR: Is it sometimes necessary to coerce or torture people in order to protect national security? to get information that you believe you really need?
Clinton: Well, I think as a policy it's in error. I think the Geneva Conventions are there for a reason. I think that 1) it's consistent with our values, and 2) it's consistent with our interests. There have been repeated examples where a pattern or policy of torture produces... sometimes it'll get you something you don't know is worthwhile but more often than not it just gets people to lie to tell you whatever you want to hear to keep from beating the living daylights beaten out of them. And when you do it, you run the risk that your own people, if captured, will be tortured in return. That's the reason, apart from the humanitarian and moral reasons that the world has moved away from torture. That's the reason Senator McCain and others passed that prohibition. Now, the President says that he's just trying to get the rules clear about how far the CIA can go when they're whacking these people around in these secret prisons. Most Americans would probably think, Well, I'd be happy to have someone beat up if that would keep them from blowing up another bomb, another 9/11. I get that. But I think it's important to remember the reason that the entire military apparatus is opposed to torture.
NPR: But, as you know, some of the President's supporters have said any president needs the option. You never know what might come up. Does the president need the option? speaking as someone who's been there?
Clinton: Look, if the president needs the option, there's all kinds of things they could do. Let's take the best case, okay? You've picked up somebody you know is the number two aide to Osama bin Laden. And you know that they have an operation planned for the US and some European capitol sometime in the next three days. And you know this guy knows it. That's a clear example. And you think you can only get it out of this guy either by shooting him full of some drug or waterboarding him or otherwise working him over. If they really believe that scenario is likely to occur, let them come forward with an alternative proposal! We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law. You don't need blanket advance approval for blanket torture. They could draw a statute much more narrowly which would permit the president to make a finding and that finding to be submitted even afterward to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.
NPR: But there would be some responsibility afterward for what was done -- is that what you're saying?
Clinton: Yes. The president could take personal responsibility for it. But you do it on a case by case basis and there'd be some review of it.
NPR: Do you think that scenario you laid out is actually a likely scenario at some point?
Clinton: I don't know if it's likely or not. But you don't make laws based on that. You don't sit there and say "in general torture's fine" if there's a terrorist suspect. For one thing, we know we have erred about who is a real suspect. We know there are people who have been deported, people who have been in jail for long periods of time, people who have been put through all this, who weren't terrorists at all, who weren't terrorist sympathizers, who didn't have any terrorist contacts. So you don't want to go around with some blanket law saying it's okay to violate the Geneva Conventions. The President says he doesn't want the CIA who does this hard work to be in the dark. So there's a way to avoid being in the dark. If they really believe when the time comes that the only way they can get a reliable piece of information is to beat it out of somebody or put a drug in their body and talk it out of them, then they can present it to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court or some other court on the same circumstances we do with wiretaps: post facto. The only case I can imagine where 100% of the people would agree with me is under the circumstances I've just outlined. I think you'd have a very hard time finding somebody to say, "If you knew this guy was a top aide of Al Qaeda, if you knew that there was going to be an attack in three days, if you knew that that person knew, then I'd like to see the world stand up and say the person who obtained the information from him should be sent to jail!" I don't think you'd have to worry about that! But I think if you go around passing laws that legitimize a violation of the Geneva Conventions and institutionalize what happened at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo, we're going to be in real trouble.
