Article Partners in Crime: An Empirical Evaluation of the CIA Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program Averell Schmidt and Kathryn Sikkink In the years following the attacks of 9/11, the CIA adopted a program involving the capture, extraordinary rendition, secret detention, and harsh interrogation of suspected terrorists in the war on terror. As the details of this program have become public, a heated debate has ensued, focusing narrowly on whether or not this program “worked” by disrupting terror plots and saving American lives. By embracing such a narrow view of the program’sefficacy, this debate has failed to take into account the broader consequences of the CIA program. We move beyond current debates by evaluating the impact of the CIA program on the human rights practices of other states. We show that collaboration in the CIA program is associated with a worsening in the human rights practices of authoritarian countries. This finding illustrates how states learn from and influence one another through covert security cooperation and the importance of democratic institutions in mitigating the adverse consequences of the CIA program. This finding also underscores why a broad perspective is critical when assessing the consequences of counterterrorism policies. he surprising ascendance of President Donald J. appeared designed to allow the Trump administration to Trump has disrupted U.S. politics and public return to the Bush-era policy of secret kidnapping, detention, T 2 policy. From immigration to health care, President and interrogation of suspected terrorists. One of the key Trump is blunt in his intention to revise fundamentally the sections in the draft order requests a “policy review” to policies of his predecessor. This is certainly true when it “recommend to the President whether to reinstate a program comes to counterterrorism policy. On the campaign trail of interrogation of high-value alien terrorists to be operated President Trump insisted that “torture works” and advo- outside the United States and whether such a program should cated for the resumption of waterboarding “and hell of a lot include the use of detention facilities operated by the Central worse.”1 Since assuming office, President Trump has signaled Intelligence Agency.” Although the Trump administration that he intends to fulfill this campaign promise. Amidst the later publicly backed away from some aspects of the draft flurry of Executive Orders issued by President Trump during order, given the mixed signals coming from the administra- his first weeks in office, a draft order on the “Detention and tion on torture, it remains important to examine the Interrogation of Enemy Combatants” was leaked, which consequences of such a decision.3 Based on a detailed A list of permanent links to Supplementary Materials provided by the authors precedes the References section. *Data replication sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/CC8VFT Averell Schmidt is a Doctoral Candidate in Public Policy at Harvard University and a fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government ([email protected]). Kathryn Sikkink is the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study ([email protected]). The authors would like to thank Dara Cohen, Max Goplerud, Robert Keohane, Gary King, Leslie Vinjamuri, Kala Viswanathan, Steven Worthington, David Yanagizawa-Drott, Ista Zahn, and three anonymous reviewers, as well as participants in the conference on the Strategic Consequences of the U.S. Use of Torture at the Harvard Kennedy School and the annual meeting of the Northeastern Political Science Association, for their valuable feedback. They also thank Douglas Johnson, Alberto Mora, Nicole Deitelhoff, Lisbeth Zimmermann, Richard Price, and Henry Farrell for their contributions to the broader research project. Meg Kumar and Jessica Tueller provided excellent research assistance. Any and all errors are our own. doi:10.1017/S1537592717004224 1014 Perspectives on Politics © American Political Science Association 2018 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. Harvard-Smithsonian Centerfor Astrophysics, on 07 Dec 2018 at 15:06:27, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1537592717004224 empirical evaluation of the Bush administration policy, we instrument of international security policy that is not often argue here that one consequence would be a worsening in the amenable to rigorous research and evaluation. We refer to human rights practices of the countries that aid the Trump the process of states learning from one another through administration in implementing this policy. participation in policy implementation as “learning by Public and academic debate concerning the Bush-era doing.” There is a shortage of systematic analysis in policy, known as the Rendition, Detention, and Interro- international relations about the impact of specific covert gation (RDI) program, has been both heated and narrowly activity, due in part to the difficulties in securing data.11 construed.4 Academic research has focused on the pro- This is the first quantitative analysis of the impact of covert gram’s legality and morality, rather than assessing its policy on human rights practices, illustrating the possibil- broader policy impact.5 Policy debates, on the other hand, ity of such research. Covert action continues to be a central have focused primarily on the program’s “effectiveness” in part of international politics, as evidenced by the rise of terms of whether it generated intelligence that disrupted cyber attacks and the Russian covert intervention in terrorist plots and saved American lives. In 2014, for foreign elections; therefore, it is imperative that we better instance, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence understand the policy consequences of covert action. released a major report concluding that the RDI program Practitioners have long been concerned with how U.S. had not produced unique intelligence that prevented foreign and security policy can advance human rights; our terrorist attacks; a response to the report by some of the findings suggest that covert interventions like the RDI Republican senators on the committee contended that it program can undermine core human rights.12 Not surpris- had. Several former high-ranking CIA officials published ingly, U.S. behavior has more influence than its discourse, concurrently a website defending themselves, citing the especially if it has direct bearing on agents of government program’s lifesaving results.6 Despite their differences, all repression. Our analysis shows how scholars can, and should, shared a narrow definition of the program’sefficacy: it apply their toolset to international security problems in “worked” if it generated actionable intelligence. a manner that spotlights the larger consequences of policies Assessing whether or not the RDI program worked like the RDI program, in addition to continuing the crucial requires a broader evaluation of its policy consequences.7 legal and normative critiques of policy.13 A recent article argues that the strategic costs of the U.S. The remainder of this article proceeds in four sections. decision to use torture far outweigh any possible benefits First, we provide a brief overview of past U.S. positions on obtained.8 Similar research by Robert Pape explores the human rights and international law and of the RDI program consequences of U.S. torture in the Iraq War, including itself in order to demonstrate that the program marked how U.S. torture fueled suicide bombing in Iraq and a historic break in U.S. policy and practice. Second, we undermined support for the war among the U.S. public.9 review the relevant theoretical and empirical literature on We investigate the human rights impact of the RDI the impact of U.S. foreign and security policy on the program, exploring how the security practices of the CIA’s repression of human rights. We then conduct a series of partner governments changed following their cooperation statistical analyses, which reveal a clear association between in the RDI program. By assessing statistically the repressive participation in the RDI program and worsening govern- behavior of 168 independent countries during the period ment human rights practices. We conclude with a discussion from 1992 to 2011, we show that countries that collab- of the impact of these findings for research and policy, orated actively with the CIA adopted worse human rights anticipating the possibility that President Trump will be practices in comparison to countries that were not in- able to return to these Bush-era policies and the likely volved. This pattern is especially strong for non- consequences if he proves successful in doing so. democratic partners of the CIA, and appears consistently across a variety of different ways of measuring human Rendition, Detention, and rights. Ongoing litigation and political opposition to Interrogation a policy of torture and black sites will make it difficult From September 2001 until January 2009, the CIA ran for Trump to revive the secret CIA prison system. Yet if the RDI program, which involved the disappearance, Trump succeeds, the consequences for human rights may extrajudicial detention, and torture of suspects in the so- be worse than those of the Bush administration’s policy. called war on terror.14 This program was global in scope These findings have implications for practitioners and and involved the cooperation of a multitude of foreign scholars alike. They highlight how U.S. policies can shape governments. For example, Abu Zubaydah, the first the domestic security practices of the country’s allies in individual targeted by the program, was captured in a joint ways that are at odds with broader U.S. foreign policy raid by U.S. and Pakistani officials in Faisalabad, Pakistan, objectives, a critical problem in any situation involving the in 2002.