Bill Keller Suppresses American Tradition of Opposition to Torture

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When asked by NYT’s own media reporter about the NYT’s refusal to use the word torture, Bill Keller could barely exert himself to say more than the official press statement. Here’s what the spokesperson gave to Michael Calderone.

A spokesman told Yahoo! News that the paper “has written so much about the waterboarding issue that we believe the Kennedy School study is misleading.”However, the Times acknowledged that political circumstances did play a role in the paper’s usage calls. “As the debate over interrogation of terror suspects grew post-9/11, defenders of the practice (including senior officials of the Bush administration) insisted that it did not constitute torture,” a Times spokesman said in a statement. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves. Thus we describe the practice vividly, and we point out that it is denounced by international covenants and in American tradition as a form of torture.” [my emphasis]

And here’s what Keller gave NYT’s Brian Stelter.

Bill Keller, the executive editor of The Times, said the newspaper has written so much about the issue of waterboarding that, “I think this Kennedy School study — by focusing on whether we have embraced the politically correct term of art in our news stories — is somewhat misleading and tendentious.”

In an e-mail message on Thursday, Mr. Keller said that defenders of the practice of waterboarding, “including senior officials of the Bush administration,” insisted that it did not constitute torture.

“When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves,” Mr. Keller wrote. “Thus we describe the practice vividly, and we point out that it is denounced by international covenants and human rights advocates as a form of torture. Nobody reading The Times’ coverage could be ignorant of the extent of the practice (much of that from information we broke) or mistake it for something benign (we usually use the word ‘brutal.’)” [my emphasis]

I guess all you need to do to be Executive Editor of the NYT is to bandy about insults like “politically correct” and “tendentious” and drop all acknowledgment that not just human rights advocates–but American tradition (notably, the tradition propagated by the NYT until the US embraced torture as official policy)–considers waterboarding torture.

Which is all the more pathetic, given that Bill Keller himself was once part of that tradition. As NYTPicker notes, NYT reporter Bill Keller has a long history of referring to torture as torture without bowing to the spin of the governments who use it.

On February 18, 1987, a 38-year-old NYT reporter named Bill Keller published his first story about torture.

The young Moscow correspondent — who, two years later, would win the Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Soviet Union — referred to “the torture case” in writing eloquently about revelations that officials in Petrozavodsk, in the Karelian republic, had been fired in the wake of torture accusations.

[snip]

Keller went on to write more than a dozen stories for the NYT — from the Soviet Union and, later, South Africa — that referenced interrogation techniques as “torture.” His stories never alluded to any questioning of the term by the governments that used the techniques.

[snip]

In applying a different standard to the NYT’s coverage of waterboarding, Keller has betrayed a reprehensible weakness in the face of his own government’s stance on torture — one that he never showed in his years as a courageous and straightforward reporter.

I’m not sure whether the difference in approach makes reporter Bill Keller nothing more than a human rights activist or makes editor Bill Keller tendentious, but along the way, NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller appears to have actively suppressed an American tradition that treats torture as torture, regardless of who uses it.

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  1. bobschacht says:

    Glenn Greenwald has a great post on this subject as well. Thanks for adding your analysis!

    IMHO, this Orwellian duplicity by the NYT and the WaPo has been the direct cause of the failure of the Obama administration to prosecute these war crimes. If they had been willing to call a spade a spade, public opinion might well have risen to a level that the Obama administration could not ignore. That, and the eager complicity of Congress to allow Sec. Def. Gates to prevent public release of many photos and archives of torture have sealed the deal.

    Bob in AZ

  2. Ishmael says:

    I guess Keller agrees with Rudy Giuliani – that waterboarding may not be torture depending on who does it. According to the NYT, the “American tradition” of treating waterboarding as torture has become as “quaint” as the Geneva Conventions.

  3. earlofhuntingdon says:

    X-posted from an earlier thread:

    See Greenwald’s follow-up to this story and the related fine piece by nytpicker here. Gobsmacking.

    Bill Keller hasn’t the balls to use the word torture when it comes to the actions of the American government, but he used his own judgment to use it to describe the actions of the Russian and South African governments in the 1980’s, when he was a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter.

    The gobsmacking part is his Orwellian description of his critics. Keller uses a classic Rovian reversal: it is critics of his editorial policy not to use the word “torture” when American governments do it who are “somewhat misleading and tendentious”.

    “Torture”, you see, is the politically correct term; its use should be avoided by quality newspapers. Enhanced interrogation, verschaerfte Vernehmung in the original German, is the more accurate, streetwise, less politically correct term.

    If ever a multi-millionaire Manhattan editor ever deserved to be run out of town on a figurative rail, it is Bill Keller, in memory of the prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere whose torture he enabled by helping to relieve its perpetrators of political and legal consequences for their actions.

    Keller is doubling down on a bad bet. It worked for Rove, Bush and Cheney, so far; it’s not really working for Obama; it’s definitely not working for the gray lady.

  4. klynn says:

    The issue of waterboarding…

    The waterboard issue…

    Bill remember an important writing rule:

    “Compare theory to theory and praxis to praxis.”

    Waterbroading is a practice of torture, not an issue to dialogue.

    It is that simple.

  5. john in sacramento says:

    Well, it seems to me that Mr Keller has a “tendentious” propensity for grandiloquent sesquipedalian excess

    But wtf I’m just a commoner

    Bill Keller in his best Thurston Howell III voice:

    I say old chap, torture is such a “common” hoi polloi word, you must really get with the times and use the vernacular of enhawnced interrogation. Torture sounds so middle ages; we’re so much more sophisticated than those savages. After all, those brown people we’re “interrogating” are such ruffians

    Anyone for some beluga caviar I had flown in on my private jet, before I go to the polo match?

  6. rosalind says:

    totally OT, but for EW’s domestic terrorism file: the Police in Hemet in Riverside county have been targeted by someone out to do harm for several months. The attacks include, via the LATimes:

    “In January, the Hemet-San Jacinto Valley Gang Task Force discovered that a natural gas line had been diverted into their office, filling it with fumes, although the gas never ignited. A month later, a booby trap — a so-called zip gun — fired a bullet at an officer when he opened a security gate.

    In March, a suspicious device was attached to a gang enforcement officer’s unmarked vehicle; two weeks later, four city code-enforcement trucks were torched in the Hemet City Hall parking lot.

    In April, an early morning fire damaged the Hemet police shooting range. And in June, authorities found a vintage military rocket on the roof of a nearby market, pointed in the direction of the police station.” (emphasis mine)

    Yup, a freakin’ rocket and still nary a “domestic” or “terrorist” to be found in the press accounts so far. Today, two arrests. Suspects possibly tied to a white supramicist group. Oh, and:

    “The arrest comes less than a week after a suspected arson fire damaged a Hemet Police Department building that housed evidence gathered from those attacks as well from thousands of pending and closed criminal cases.”

    Happy 4th, y’all!

  7. JasonLeopold says:

    another OT

    DOJ Fights to Keep Information Secret in ‘Torture Memo’ Report

    Responding to a lawsuit over a U.S. Justice Department report on the lawyers who wrote the so-called torture memos, the government said last week that blacked-out passages in the report should remain confidential in the interest of national security and the privacy of government lawyers.

    …

    Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis said in a declaration last week that the report shields the names of lower-level department employees who were not decision makers. The report, Margolis wrote, “did not conclude that any of those lower-level employees committed professional or other misconduct in connection with their role in that work.”

    Margolis said that “disclosure might subject these individuals to embarrassment or harassment because of their role, however small or ministerial, in a matter that has received significant media attention.” He said there is “little or no public interest” in disclosing their names.

    • bobschacht says:

      This is just so sick. I don’t see the imperial “we” in the wording, but evidently no outside body is allowed to question whether these “lower level” people were guilty of anything, such as covering up the crimes of their superiors, if nothing else. Will no one rid us of this Margolis creep, who deigns to be judge and jury of who is innocent and who is not?

      Bob in AZ

      • Gitcheegumee says:

        Some of those lower level employees might be high level employees,now..

        Could be embarrassing,don’t ya think?

    • bobschacht says:

      Margolis said that “disclosure might subject these individuals to embarrassment or harassment because of their role, however small or ministerial, in a matter that has received significant media attention.” He said there is “little or no public interest” in disclosing their names.

      These people ought to be, should be, and deserve to be thoroughly embarrassed and discredited. There is a lot of public interest in disclosing their names. Margolis is full of BS and it is time that he retired.

      Bob in AZ

    • Palli says:

      For the safety of American citizens and other residents the names of torturers should be made public.

  8. JohnLopresti says:

    Keller also asks people to pay for his newspaper on the street stand, and even online if one accumulates frequent visitor cookies. I*d rather read MSLedmn , who in 2005 was writing about similarly politically recommended semantics promulgated by two public figures who are named in the linked article, one a prof, the other an attorney general.

  9. Gitcheegumee says:

    Just a Saturday afternoon rumination, but has the term pedophilia (most especially, in NYT and other top tier MSMreportage dealing with the Catholic Church), been the recipient of such delicate chiaroscuro as has the term torture?

    Do not the victims of pedophilia indeed feel tortured–even after many years have elapsed?

  10. Professor Foland says:

    In an e-mail message on Thursday, Mr. Keller said that defenders of the practice of waterboarding, “including senior officials of the Bush administration,” insisted that it did not constitute torture. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves…”

    Lesson for the political class: if you want to get the NYT off your back, insist they are taking sides in a political dispute. It actually works.

    • Mary says:

      Mr. Keller said that defenders of the practice of allowing priests to have intercourse with children, “including senior officials of the Vatican,” insisted that it did not constitute child rape and was instead a holy union. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a religious dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves…”

      Mr. Keller said that defenders of the practice of, whatever the President does is legal, “including senior officials of the Nixon administration,” insisted that a President cannot break the law. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a political dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves…”

      Mr. Keller said that defenders of the practice of cannibalism, “including senior members of the Dahmer defense team,” insisted that it did not constitute a crime – but rather, it was a gastromic adventure necessitated by our changing times. “When using a word amounts to taking sides in a digestive dispute, our general practice is to supply the readers with the information to decide for themselves…”

      And I guess all those “dripping water on the face” description – that really did a lot to supply readers with inforamtion to decide for themselves. The necessity of a tach kit and more than a dozen dozen drownings, only to revive and drown again, and again, and again, and again – yeah, they really put themselve out there to supply “the information.”

  11. klynn says:

    EW
    Thinking about those who fought for our liberty and the framers of our Constitution today.

    Thanks for carrying the spirit of an open, free society through accountability.
    This is the foundational import of July 4th.

  12. JohnLopresti says:

    It may be worth noting, Keller*s foreign correspondent post bracketed the years of perestroika перестройка. I wonder how the young reporter thought about the reportage lexicon in Izvestia Известя.

  13. Mary says:

    the names of lower-level department employees who were not decision makers

    When you’re talking about lawyers, that is such bull. Every lawyer working on a matter is a decisionmaker. It’s your job to be a decisionmaker. Having someone who is lead, or ultimately responsible on the file or the matter is never an excuse to join in bad advice without noting your exceptions (it’s what your client deserves from you) and you don’t get to use ‘but Maaaaaaaa, everyone else did toooooooo’ to claim that you can abandon your role and engage in professional misconduct bc your “boss” did.

    *Just following orders* – doesn’t work for soldiers, much less for lawyers who aren’t looking at being shot, just being fired.

    When DOJ’s take from the top is that there is “little or no public interest” in disclosing the names of lawyers who engaged in professional misconduct or torture conspiracies – that’s beyond the pale. And Holder wants to preach to the courts that they should quit “picking on” a DOJ whose delegated overseer on OPR review is saying that any then-department lawyers who worked on an Exec branch directed torture conspiracy and thereby on suppressing info from the courts in active cases – – – they don’t have to follow the law or Codes of Prof Conduct and their misconduct is not of interest, bc they weren’t the “decision-makers”

    Such bull – go pull an associate at a major firm who helped a client destroy subpoenaed documents before a judge and see how the, “but the partner on the case thought it was a good idea to destroy the evidence” works as an out.

  14. bobschacht says:

    On this Fourth of July, I want to celebrate our Independence by giving thanks for all the patriots on this blog and elsewhere who are taking an active role as citizens to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, as amended. Please know that all your efforts are appreciated and are vitally important. As Glenn Smith comments on the FDL front page,

    Authors of the U.S. Constitution, which arrived some years after the day we celebrate as our nation’s birthday, considered their document a living one, one that would safeguard freedom while providing plenty of room for change in future circumstances.

    In other words, the citizens of every generation would carry the heavy responsibility of founding America anew. Let that sink in.

    Our Constitution was not perfect from the beginning, or it would not have been amended 14 times. And it is not perfect now. Nevertheless, it is the best and most insightful charter for governance that has ever been conceived and implemented. Significant parts of this marvelous document have been neglected and undermined in recent years, and there is no one but ourselves to remedy these excesses.

    Please continue the important work of protecting and defending our Constitution.

    Bob in AZ

  15. Petrocelli says:

    Happy 4th of July to everyone !

    Thank you, to the smartest, funniest group of Americans on teh toobz; thank you for your insights, hard work and commitment. You truly represent the very best of humanity.

    Your insights are making a difference in the World and at home. Onward & upward !

  16. Leen says:

    Keller sounds like he defines following international law and agreements as “politically correct” Pathetic. Just more evidence of the NYT’s bloody dangerous reporting and interpretations of laws and standards.

  17. skdadl says:

    Happy Fourth of July to y’all.

    Liberty, equality, fraternity! (And at long last, sorority!)

    And furthermore, for Texas and Miss Lily!

    Your Bill of Rights is an utterly magnificent document. I will always consider anyone who defends that document a best friend forever. Que l’on continue.

  18. Nell says:

    Focusing on waterboarding as torture is itself a dangerous moving of the goalposts, although it does make clear who the outright apologists are. Walter Pincus performed the same ambiguous service as the Kennedy School study four years ago, and I had the same reaction then:

    So, for glass-half-full adherents, the Pincus article blogged here previously can be viewed as playing a constructive role in setting the baseline that waterboarding is torture.

    Sourpusses like me object to any such moving of the goalposts, and insist on maintaining the pre-September 2006 clarity that torture is torture. Sleep deprivation is torture, forced standing is torture, forced nudity is torture, dousing with cold water is torture, sustained loud music is torture, sexual humiliation is torture. Not “aggressive interrogation techniques that some human rights activists say border on torture”. Torture. Crimes against humanity and war crimes, for which Dick Cheney will someday stand trial.

    Given that anything like justice or accountability for torture usually takes at least a few decades, death may spare Dick Cheney his time in the dock. But as we struggle toward that goal, please don’t forget that there is much more to U.S. torture than waterboarding, and that it is, shamefully, ongoing.

    What to the detainee is the Fourth of July?

  19. fatster says:

    ‘Twas about ready to settle down to my 4th of July tradition and re-read the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights (High-five, skdadl!), but then I saw this so need to vent by sharing it with all of you. Sowwy.

    Sept. 11 terrorism trials still in search of a venue

    “Now, the decision on where to hold the high-profile trials of [Khalid Sheik] Mohammed and four others accused of being Sept. 11 conspirators has been put on hold and probably will not be made until after November’s midterm elections, according to law enforcement, administration and congressional sources. In an unusual twist, the matter has been taken out of the hands of the Justice Department officials who usually make prosecutorial decisions and rests entirely with the White House, the sources said.”

    LINK.

  20. chetnolian says:

    Slightly OT but good for 4th July.

    Frank Gaffney, on BBC today defending Obama administration attempts (now there’s a thought!) to get access to all European Bank records of everyone (including me so I care). Cue usual war against terrorists guff. His interlocutor, a British Member of the European Parliament, asks how the USA would react to reciprocity on this, Gaffeny says absolutely no becuase European governments are compromised vis a vis the “Moslem Brotherhood”. When it is suggested this is close to a gross insult (the MEP was calmer than I would have been)he says in effect “See, you’re using privacy arguments just like them which proves you are on their side.”!

    With advocates like Gaffney on the airwaves is it any wonder some really quite reasonable people in Europe hate and distrust the USA, whoever is in power?

    • Gitcheegumee says:

      What’s in a name?

      Well, in Gaffney’s case ,quite a lot. Gaffe after gaffe…what a tool!

  21. Hugh says:

    Came late. Bill Keller is a neocon. As executive editor, he has run defense for first Bush and then Obama. He kept on Michael Gordon and John Burns despite their dismal reporting from Iraq. He suppressed the Risen-Lichtblau story on Bush’s illegal wiretap programs through the 2004 elections, and only eventually released it when Lichtblau made it known that Risen was going to in a book. If you want to know why the NYT has done so little investigation of the criminality and disasters of Bush, now Obama, you really need to look no further than Keller.