The FBI, Torture, and the Falseness of Agency Unity
Over at The American Prospect, Adam Serwer digests the Federal Bureau of Investigation Inspector General's report on the agency's position on torture, and pulls out the unsurprising fact that different officials within the agency had different positions on what it was and wasn't permissible to do to detainees. "The general narrative surrounding the use of torture is that the FBI conflicted with the CIA and the military over the use of harsh techniques to interrogate detainees," Adam writes. But as I've written a couple of times before, there was always going to be a difference of position on interrogation techniques. Institutions like the FBI never act--and never think--unilaterally. It's impossible to recruit for unity of thought, and no institution should want to do that, even if it was practical. The question for the FBI and for the intelligence agencies is to learn how voices are heard, how opinions are privileged, and how decisions are made--and then how agencies are reconciled after agonizing decisions.
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Government Executive Staff Correspondent Alyssa Rosenberg takes a look at news affecting the management and operations of the massive federal bureaucracy.
So was there an "official" doctrine and training on that doctrine?
William R. Cumming Posted Tuesday, November 3, 2009 5:55 AMAs early as the 20' s Mary Parker Follette (sic) wrote that modern technological society require a collaborative/cooperative style of business management since basically no one could know everything. This was juxaposed to an "authoritarian" management culture! Has any study ever been done on which Executive Branch organizations are "authoritarian" and which are "collaborative, cooperative" management cultures? I understand a seminal study of FAA in the 50's determined that it was too authoritarian for a safety regulatory agency. The same conclusion was reached by the NASA investigations on shuttle disasters. Perhaps a post?
William R. Cumming Posted Friday, November 6, 2009 12:10 PM