奥巴马拒绝参与CIA酷刑辩论

 

奥巴马拒绝参与CIA酷刑辩论

WASHINGTON — The C.I.A. maintains that the brutal interrogation techniques it used on terrorism suspects a decade ago worked. The Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that they did not. And on that, at least, President Obama is not taking sides.

华盛顿——中央情报局(CIA)坚持认为，10年前对恐怖主义嫌疑人使用的残酷审讯手法是有效的。参议院情报委员会(Senate Intelligence Committee)的结论则是这些手段无效。至少在这个问题上，奥巴马总统没有站队。

Even as Mr. Obama repeated his belief that the techniques constituted torture and betrayed American values, he declined to address the fundamental question raised by the report, which the committee released on Tuesday: Did they produce meaningful intelligence to stop terrorist attacks, or did the C.I.A. mislead the White House and the public about their effectiveness?

奥巴马重申了他的看法，即这些审讯技巧构成了虐待，是违背美国价值观的，但是他拒绝回应委员会周二发布的报告提出的一个根本问题：这些手段是否带来了对阻止恐怖袭击有帮助的情报，或者说，CIA在有效性方面是否对白宫和公众进行了误导?

That debate, after all, has left Mr. Obama facing an uncomfortable choice between two allies: the close adviser and former aide he installed as director of the C.I.A. versus his fellow Democrats who control the Senate committee and the liberal base that backs their findings.

最重要的是，这场争论让奥巴马不得不尴尬地要在盟友之间做出抉择：一边是过从甚密的顾问，被他任命为CIA局长的前助手，另一方是控制参议院委员会的民主党同僚，以及对该报告发现持支持态度的自由派人士。

“We are not going to engage in this debate,” said a senior administration official close to Mr. Obama who briefed reporters under ground rules that did not allow him to be identified.

“我们不打算参与这场争论，”一位与奥巴马关系密切的高级政府官员称，这位官员向记者介绍了情况，但前提条件是不能在报道中透露他的身份。

The written statement Mr. Obama released in response to the report tried to straddle that divide. He opened by expressing appreciation to C.I.A. employees as “patriots” to whom “we owe a debt of gratitude” for trying to protect the country after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Then he judged that the methods they used in doing so “did significant damage to America’s standing in the world.”

在就参议院报告做出的书面声明中，奥巴马试图保持一种跨越分歧的姿态。他先是表达了对“忠于祖国的”CIA雇员们的敬意，称他们在2001年9月 11日的袭击后奋力保卫这个国家，“我们对他们感激不尽”。然而他接着表示，他们在保卫国家的过程中使用的方法，“对美国的国际声誉构成了严重损害。”

And finally, Mr. Obama asked the nation to stop fighting about what happened so many years ago before he took office. “Rather than another reason to refight old arguments,” he said, “I hope that today’s report can help us leave these techniques where they belong — in the past.”

最后，奥巴马请求国民不要再为他上任几年前的事争吵。“我希望，与其让这份报告成为重启一场旧争论的理由，不如让它帮助我们，把这些手法留在它们应该待的地方——过去。”

Mr. Obama has struggled to find balance on this issue since taking office nearly six years ago. He made one of his first acts as president signing an order that banned the use of torture by the C.I.A. But he resisted pressure from activists to hold anyone accountable for the waterboarding of suspects.

自从六年前入主白宫以来，奥巴马一直在苦苦寻找这个问题的平衡点。在上任之初的一些举措中包括签署一项命令，禁止CIA使用酷刑。但是他顶住了活动人士的压力，在对嫌疑人进行水刑逼供一事上没有追究任何人的责任。

The Justice Department under Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. re-examined cases of prisoner abuse that were previously closed under President George W. Bush, but it did not prosecute anyone. Mr. Obama rejected the creation of a “truth commission” proposed by Democrats like Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. To this day, the president has resisted releasing photographs of harsh treatment of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his White House backed up the C.I.A. in seeking redactions of the Senate report.

小埃里克·H·霍尔德(Eric H. Holder Jr.)执掌下的司法部(Justice Department)对乔治·W·布什(George W. Bush)总统在任时已经完结的虐囚案进行了重新核审，但没有起诉任何人。奥巴马否决了佛蒙特州参议员帕特里克·J·莱希(Patrick J. Leahy)等民主党人设立“真相委员会”的提议。直到今天，总统还是拒绝公布伊拉克和阿富汗被关押人员遭粗暴对待的照片，他的白宫在就参议院报告涂黑的磋商中是支持CIA的。

As a president who receives regular briefings on terrorist threats and is responsible for stopping them, Mr. Obama sees the situation differently than he did as a candidate denouncing the incumbent of the other party. In his statement on Tuesday, Mr. Obama not only did not condemn Mr. Bush for authorizing the techniques, but he also sounded a note of empathy.

作为总统，奥巴马会定期听取恐怖主义威胁的汇报，并要负责遏制这些威胁，他对情势的看法已经今非昔比，不能再像一个候选人那样去谴责对方政党的在任者。在周二的声明中，奥巴马不但没有指责布什授权使用这些手法，反而流露出同情的口气。

“In the years after 9/11, with legitimate fears of further attacks and with the responsibility to prevent more catastrophic loss of life, the previous administration faced agonizing choices about how to pursue Al Qaeda and prevent additional terrorist attacks against our country,” he said.

“在9·11发生后的一年里，面对进一步袭击的真切威胁，前任政府肩负避免生灵涂炭的事件再度发生的重任，关于如何追查基地组织，以及制止更多的恐怖分子袭击我们的国家，他们要做出痛苦的抉择，”他说。

A major influence has been John O. Brennan, a career C.I.A. officer who has been at his side since the start of his presidency, first as his White House counterterrorism adviser and now as his C.I.A. director.

一个主要的影响来自CIA官员约翰·O·布伦南(John O. Brennan)，他从最初就一直辅佐奥巴马总统，先是任白宫反恐顾问，而后是CIA局长。

Both Mr. Brennan and the president’s first C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, have taken the position, contrary to critics, that the interrogations did yield useful intelligence at points but were nonetheless wrong and that Mr. Obama was right to ban them.

布伦南和奥巴马的第一任CIA局长利昂·E·帕内塔(Leon E. Panetta)都选择了和批评者相对立的立场，称通过审讯的确得到了有用的情报，尽管这样做依然是错的，而奥巴马发布禁令则是正确的。

Mr. Brennan did not back down on that position with the release of the committee report.

布伦南在委员会报告公布后仍未改变立场。

“Our review indicates that interrogations of detainees on whom E.I.T.s were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists and save lives,” he said in a statement on Tuesday, referring to enhanced interrogation techniques. “The intelligence gained from the program was critical to our understanding of Al Qaeda and continues to inform our counterterrorism efforts to this day.”

“我们的核查显示，在审讯中对在押人员使用EIT之后，的确能得到有助于阻挠袭击计划、抓捕恐怖分子和拯救生命的情报，”他在周二的一份声明中说，此处的EIT即加强型审讯技巧。“该项目获取的情报，对我们了解基地组织是至关重要的，对我们今天的反恐行动依然有帮助。”

Mr. Brennan acknowledged that the program “had shortcomings and that the agency made mistakes,” especially because the C.I.A. was unprepared for its new post-Sept. 11 role. But he rejected the assertion that the agency deliberately deceived the public about the efficacy of the interrogations.

布伦南承认，该项目“存在缺点，CIA犯了错误，”这主要是因为，CIA还没有准备好接受自己9·11事件后的新角色。但是，他驳斥了CIA曾就审讯效果蓄意欺骗公众的说法。

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, the Democratic chairwoman of the intelligence committee, said the program was not just morally wrong but ineffective. The committee’s report argues that information gleaned from the interrogations was often false, duplicative or could have been obtained in other ways.

情报委员会主席、加利福尼亚州民主党参议员戴安·范斯坦(Dianne Feinstein)称，该项目不仅有违道义，而且还没有什么效果。委员会的报告辩称，从审讯中收集的信息往往并不属实，而且存在重复，或者可以通过其他途径来获得。

“It finds that coercive interrogation techniques did not produce the vital, otherwise unavailable intelligence the C.I.A. has claimed,” she said.

她说，“报告认为，强制性审讯手段并没有获得那些至关重要的，CIA所说的无法通过其他途径来获得的情报。”

On Tuesday, he seemed at first to avoid such a straightforward assertion again. His written statement noted he had “unequivocally banned torture” but did not say the United States had actually committed torture. In discussing what had happened under his predecessor, Mr. Obama used phrases like “harsh methods” and even “enhanced interrogation techniques,” the phrase preferred by Mr. Bush and the C.I.A.

周二，总统刚开始似乎又在回避这种简单直白的说法。他的书面声明指出，他已经“明确禁止酷刑”，但并未表示美国其实曾使用酷刑。在讨论他前任的执政过程中所发生的事情时，奥巴马使用了“严厉的方式”等说法，甚至还提到了布什和CIA比较喜欢的“加强型审讯技巧”。

Aides quickly said that Mr. Obama was not trying to hedge and that when the president sat down with José Díaz-Balart from Telemundo for an interview several hours later, he used a more direct formulation.

助手迅速表示，奥巴马并未尝试回避问题，数小时后，在坐下来接受Telemundo的若泽·迪亚兹-巴拉特(José Díaz-Balart)的采访时，他使用了更直接的表述。

“Some of the tactics written about in the Senate intelligence report were brutal, and as I’ve said before, constituted torture in my mind,” Mr. Obama said.

奥巴马说，“参议院情报报告中写到的一些手段比较残酷，正如我此前所说，我认为已经构成了酷刑。”