My professional goal for the future is to be a special agent within one of our nation’s national security or intelligence services. My top two choices are to either be a special agent within the Federal Bureau of Investigation or a member of the clandestine service within the Central Intelligence Agency. Both organizations are tasked with the important work of protecting America’s interests and national security. Completing these tasks could often bring an individual into a situation where they need to determine if something is right and/or necessary.

Recently, in an episode of ABC’s "Quantico," the individuals at a CIA training camp were told to extract a secret from a target. They were instructed to do this by any means necessary within the law; however, as many know, when it comes to national security, some laws are overlooked and broken. Therefore, something that I have found myself interested in is whether or not torture is ever justified and/or necessary.

In the beginning of my research, I wanted to know where the law stood on the torture. As far as I knew, torture was not a protected practice under United States or International law. According to the Human Rights Watch, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Article 5 states: "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." This tenet has also been incorporated into Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the Convention against Torture ratified by the United States in 1992 and 1994, respectively. Furthermore, it can be argued that while it is not explicitly stated in the Constitution, participating in torture would be considered a violation of the Bill of Right’s Eighth Amendment that guarantees one’s freedom from cruel or unusual punishment. This being said, participants involved in activities specifically labeled as torture are not protected under U.S. or international law. However, learning that torture is not protected, it brought me to thinking: what separates enhanced interrogation tactics, processes that are permissibly used by the CIA and other security agencies, from torture.

It turned out, there was not truly a definitive line drawn between what is an enhanced interrogation tactic and what is considered torture. Therefore, as far as I can tell, the way the government gets around the legality issue of torture is by simply calling it a different name. Accepting that torture, which is defined as "any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person" by the UN Convention Against Torture and as "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering" by the US legal code is illegal, the government went around the definition in their usual trickery to not specifically state that the acts they were performing around the world were torture, but that they were enhanced interrogation tactics. World news source BBC wrote in a 2014 article, “the US government under Mr. Bush did not agree and [make] a distinction between ‘torture’, which it accepted is banned by US and international law, and ‘enhanced interrogation techniques.’” This roundabout of the law, calling torture by a different name, therefore allows all security agencies to use techniques and punishments without facing legal consequences.

Now that I understand how the government distinguishes enhanced interrogation techniques from torture, it made me curious-- exactly how horrible are the acts they are performing? I found my answer fairly easily; some of the acts that are considered enhanced interrogation techniques are horrific, while some, in my opinion, are not very bad. The most common techniques are: rectal feeding and rehydration, confinement in a box, the use of cold water, waterboarding, beatings and threats, stress positions, sleep deprivation, forced nudity and lastly, restricted diets. While some of the techniques don’t sound like they would be torturous to another human, they are often performed at extremes. For example, a detainee that was held in a CIA cell overseas who was interviewed by International Committee of Red Cross spoke up about how “If [he] started to fall asleep a guard would come and spray water in [his] face”. In techniques that are expected to be cruel such as stress positions, the ICRC accounted that detainees were told to “stand upright and shackled to the ceiling for up to three days, and in some cases at intervals for over three months” often causing health issues. However, the most extreme course of action, in my opinion, that was classified as an enhanced interrogation technique was the act of rectal feeding. According to Majid Khan, a legal resident of the US, while being held by the CIA “his “‘lunch tray’ consisting of hummus, pasta with sauce, nuts and raisins was ‘pureed and rectally infused’”. While traumatizing many, the Intelligence community justify that these enhanced interrogation techniques are necessary in order to protect the nation’s interests and security. However, others argue that torture and enhanced interrogation techniques, because of the line that they cross, are not justified, and that in reality, other methods are more valuable for acquiring the intelligence needed to protect the country.

A study that compiled interviews from multiple interrogators across the world discovered that the best way, that doesn’t include torture, to uncover information from detainees is to simply pretend to be their friend. The British Psychological Society wrote, “[d]isclosure was 14 times more likely to occur early in an interrogation when a rapport-building approach was used.” Furthermore, interrogators also found higher rates of success after interrogating detainees who were held in comfortable quarters. This being acknowledged, if these types of interrogation produce higher discourse rates, it brings one to question whether or not it is justified to use torture or enhanced interrogation methods on terrorists.

All in all, after reviewing the facts, I, like I presume many others, are still in a moral dilemma in regards to whether or not it is justified to use torture or enhanced interrogation techniques. On one hand, these techniques are used on terrorists and individuals who the government needs valuable information out of. However, on the other, if different methods to retrieve this information are proven to be successful, I propose: is it a moral obligation of the government to respect all people, regardless of their status? With everything in consideration, my moral conscious favors the alternative techniques; however, I believe if these techniques don’t work, the government should use any means possible to protect their citizens and their national security.