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Local Expert Reacts to Senate Report on CIA Interrogation Techniques

RIT adjunct professor Robert Gerace
rit.edu
RIT adjunct professor Robert Gerace

A local terrorism expert says there is a gray area between what is necessary to protect American security and what is moral.

Robert Gerace, a retired captain in the U.S. Naval Reserve Intelligence program, is reacting to the recently released Senate report on harsh techniques used by the CIA to question terror suspects.

The adjunct professor at RIT said there is a fine line that government officials have to walk.                    

"The president's responsibility overall is to protect the American people and our way of life. In doing so, sometimes he is not aware of some of the programs being conducted by the CIA or agents for the CIA. But the most critical thing is the protection of the American people. It looks like in this case, they went too far."

The Senate report concludes that CIA interrogators used sleep deprivation, waterboarding, slapping, slamming and death threats against captives in so-called ``black sites'' following 9/11. Gerace called the techniques “cruel, inhuman and degrading.”

He said there is a government term called "plausible denial" that may make it difficult to determine whether the CIA misled the president, Congress, and the public.

"What that means is somebody in a higher-up position can say something like, 'Get them to tell us all that they know.' And they leave it at that. The next ranking person then becomes the implementer of that and can do things in terms of interrogation without the higher-ranking senior person knowing about it."

Gerace believes U.S. agents do need to continue to pursue interrogation of terror suspects to a certain degree. 

He said despite America's overwhelming military force, terrorist organizations can pose a significant threat with IEDs (improvised explosive devices) that cost less than $100 to produce.

Beth Adams joined WXXI as host of Morning Edition in 2012 after a more than two-decade radio career. She was the longtime host of the WHAM Morning News in Rochester. Her career also took her from radio stations in Elmira, New York, to Miami, Florida.