"24" Co-Creator Joel Surnow wasn't able to attend the meeting with the West Point Commanders - he was busy in a meeting with Roger Ailes to discuss a new "Right-Wing Daily Show" for the Fox News Channel.
For all its fictional liberties, "24" depicts the fight against Islamist extremism much as the Bush Administration has defined it: as an all-consuming struggle for America’s survival that demands the toughest of tactics. Not long after September 11th, Vice-President Dick Cheney alluded vaguely to the fact that America must begin working through the "dark side" in countering terrorism. On "24," the dark side is on full view. Surnow, who has jokingly called himself a "right-wing nut job," shares his show’s hard-line perspective. Speaking of torture, he said, "Isn’t it obvious that if there was a nuke in New York City that was about to blow—or any other city in this country—that, even if you were going to go to jail, it would be the right thing to do?"
Maybe it would be Joel, but you'd still be going to jail. Maybe you should do the right thing and save those lives, but then you should also pay the price for the consquences of your actions - something that never happens on "24".
Problem is, those people would probably still die since torture doesn't work - and you'd still be going to jail.
To be fair not everyone on the "24" Staff is a "right-wing nut-job" like Surnow, Howard Gordon who had previously worked as a producer on "The X-Files" is a so-called moderate Democrat. He just likes the torture, just as much as he liked the horror and paranoia on X-Files.
Gordon, who is a "moderate Democrat," said that it worries him when "critics say that we’ve enabled and reflected the public’s appetite for torture. Nobody wants to be the handmaid to a relaxed policy that accepts torture as a legitimate means of interrogation." He went on, "But the premise of ‘24’ is the ticking time bomb. It takes an unusual situation and turns it into the meat and potatoes of the show." He paused. "I think people can differentiate between a television show and reality."
Of course most rational people know that "24" is just a television show. Most of them don't think that it has anything what-so-ever to do with real life, or fact, or the law --- well, most people isn't everyone.
Before the meeting, Stuart Herrington, one of the three veteran interrogators, had prepared a list of seventeen effective techniques, none of which were abusive. He and the others described various tactics, such as giving suspects a postcard to send home, thereby learning the name and address of their next of kin. After Howard Gordon, the lead writer, listened to some of Herrington’s suggestions, he slammed his fist on the table and joked, "You’re hired!" He also excitedly asked the West Point delegation if they knew of any effective truth serums.
At other moments, the discussion was more strained. Finnegan told the producers that "24," by suggesting that the U.S. government perpetrates myriad forms of torture, hurts the country’s image internationally. Finnegan, who is a lawyer, has for a number of years taught a course on the laws of war to West Point seniors—cadets who would soon be commanders in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. He always tries, he said, to get his students to sort out not just what is legal but what is right. However, it had become increasingly hard to convince some cadets that America had to respect the rule of law and human rights, even when terrorists did not. One reason for the growing resistance, he suggested, was misperceptions spread by "24," which was exceptionally popular with his students. As he told me, "The kids see it, and say, ‘If torture is wrong, what about "24"?’ " He continued, "The disturbing thing is that although torture may cause Jack Bauer some angst, it is always the patriotic thing to do."
Now I've mentioned before that a great many voices and perspectives are displayed on "24". One of the current plot-lines includes President Wayne Palmer's rejection of the hardline internment policies of one of his main advisors in favor of a more "liberal" direction of negotiation and persuasian with moderate muslims - which has apparently led to a right-wing plot to assasinate him just as his brother was assasinated.
In the latest episodes we've actually had dueling torture going on - where we see Jack torture his brother Graeme, since throttling him last episode didn't completely work, now using a chemical designed to induce a heart attack, which resulted in causing his brother to admit to being part of the plot to release nuclear suitcase bombs to terrorists (as well as having ordered the assasination at the beginning of last season of President David Palmer).
Meanwhile the terrorists have captured CTU technician O'Brien and have used various techniques including a basball bat and powerdrill to convince him to arm their nukes - which he does.
Unfortunately there's always a twist. In this case it's the fact that Jack's brother was actually working on the orders of their father - who slips into the room where Graem is still strapped down and finishes him off while Jack is out of the room to keep him from talking any further.
Naturally the bad guys actions are always much worse because they feel no remorse. Jack on the other hand, will be wracked with guilt and blame himself from Graeme's death, that's the kind of noble guy he is - but the truth is that this is idle nobility. If they actually followed the law he'd be tried for Murder and War Crimes, even though he didn't actually kill his brother - he admits that he wanted to - and was grossly negligent to leave him alone with their father.
Either way, he's responsible. But will he pay for what he's done? Not a chance.
And it's not exactly like our future military commanders coming through West Point are getting the point.
Gary Solis, a retired law professor who designed and taught the Law of War for Commanders curriculum at West Point, told me that he had similar arguments with his students. He said that, under both U.S. and international law, "Jack Bauer is a criminal. In real life, he would be prosecuted." Yet the motto of many of his students was identical to Jack Bauer’s: "Whatever it takes." His students were particularly impressed by a scene in which Bauer barges into a room where a stubborn suspect is being held, shoots him in one leg, and threatens to shoot the other if he doesn’t talk. In less than ten seconds, the suspect reveals that his associates plan to assassinate the Secretary of Defense. Solis told me, "I tried to impress on them that this technique would open the wrong doors, but it was like trying to stomp out an anthill."
But the most effectively issue, which is actually reflected in the CIA Kubark manuals, is that fact that torture is generally ineffective.
At the meeting, Cochran demanded to know what the interrogators would do if they faced the imminent threat of a nuclear blast in New York City, and had custody of a suspect who knew how to stop it. One interrogator said that he would apply physical coercion only if he received a personal directive from the President. But Navarro, who estimates that he has conducted some twelve thousand interrogations, replied that torture was not an effective response. "These are very determined people, and they won’t turn just because you pull a fingernail out," he told me. And Finnegan argued that torturing fanatical Islamist terrorists is particularly pointless. "They almost welcome torture," he said. "They expect it. They want to be martyred." A ticking time bomb, he pointed out, would make a suspect only more unwilling to talk. "They know if they can simply hold out several hours, all the more glory—the ticking time bomb will go off!"
Kubark States that inflicting Pain is often ineffective:
Interrogates who are withholding but feel qualms of guilt and a secret desire to yeild are likely to become intractable if made to endure pain. The reason is that they can interpret the pain as punishment and hence expiation.
Intense pain is likely to produce false confessions, concocted as a means of escaping distress. A time-consuming delay results, while an investigation is conducted and the admissions are proven untrue.
And we already know that the facts are something that Neo-Cons in the Bush Administration simply have little time or patience for.
The notion that physical coercion in interrogations is unreliable, although widespread among military intelligence officers and F.B.I. agents, has been firmly rejected by the Bush Administration. Last September, President Bush defended the C.I.A.’s use of "an alternative set of procedures." In order to "save innocent lives," he said, the agency needed to be able to use "enhanced" measures to extract "vital information" from "dangerous" detainees who were aware of "terrorist plans we could not get anywhere else."
Besides the clear fact that these are War Crimes - the public finds these actions more and more acceptable, and "24" helps with that. Meanwhile, Life imitates Art in Iraq.
Although reports of abuses by U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have angered much of the world, the response of Americans has been more tepid. Finnegan attributes the fact that "we are generally more comfortable and more accepting of this," in part, to the popularity of "24," which has a weekly audience of fifteen million viewers, and has reached millions more through DVD sales.
The third expert at the meeting was Tony Lagouranis, a former Army interrogator in the war in Iraq. He told the show’s staff that DVDs of shows such as "24" circulate widely among soldiers stationed in Iraq. Lagouranis said to me, "People watch the shows, and then walk into the interrogation booths and do the same things they’ve just seen." He recalled that some men he had worked with in Iraq watched a television program in which a suspect was forced to hear tortured screams from a neighboring cell; the men later tried to persuade their Iraqi translator to act the part of a torture "victim," in a similar intimidation ploy. Lagouranis intervened: such scenarios constitute psychological torture.
So now not only is "24" acting as justification for Bush brutal policies and helping to pacify public outcry, it's actually inspiring more crimes in the field.
And oh by the way - that shit doesn't work!
"In Iraq, I never saw pain produce intelligence," Lagouranis told me. "I worked with someone who used waterboarding"—an interrogation method involving the repeated near-drowning of a suspect. "I used severe hypothermia, dogs, and sleep deprivation. I saw suspects after soldiers had gone into their homes and broken their bones, or made them sit on a Humvee’s hot exhaust pipes until they got third-degree burns. Nothing happened." Some people, he said, "gave confessions. But they just told us what we already knew. It never opened up a stream of new information." If anything, he said, "physical pain can strengthen the resolve to clam up."
"24" isn't the first time that Surnow has used this type of theme. He was also a writer for the short-lived Police/Monter/Buffy-wannabe show "SU2 (Special Unit 2)" where brutal techniques and torture were regularly used against the Supernatural "(Missing) Links" that were the primary villians on the program. Anything goes when you're bad guys aren't human, eh?
On "24" not too much has changed - they just look human.
Fortunately it appears that Sutherland "gets it" - it's just too bad neither he nor anyone else as Fox is likely to upset the cash-cow cart.
"They were receptive. But they have a format that works. They have won a lot of awards. Why would they want to play with a No. 1 show?" Lagouranis said of the "24" team, "They were a bit prickly. They have this money-making machine, and we were telling them it’s immoral."
Afterward, Danzig and Finnegan had an on-set exchange with Kiefer Sutherland, who is reportedly paid ten million dollars a year to play Jack Bauer. Sutherland, the grandson of Tommy Douglas, a former socialist leader in Canada, has described his own political views as anti-torture, and "leaning toward the left." According to Danzig, Sutherland was "really upset, really intense" and stressed that he tries to tell people that the show "is just entertainment." But Sutherland, who claimed to be bored with playing torture scenes, admitted that he worried about the "unintended consequences of the show." Danzig proposed that Sutherland participate in a panel at West Point or appear in a training film in which he made clear that the show’s torture scenes are not to be emulated.
Good for Keifer. But what about Surnow?
(Surnow, when asked whether he would participate in the video, responded, "No way." Gordon, however, agreed to be filmed.)
Sutherland didn't speak to the New Yorker but he has previously spoken out about how he feels about torture.
...in a recent television interview with Charlie Rose, his ambivalence about his character’s methods was palpable. He condemned the abuse of U.S.-held detainees at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq, as "absolutely criminal," particularly for a country that tells others that "democracy and freedom" are the "way to go." He also said, "You can torture someone and they’ll basically tell you exactly what you want to hear. . . . Torture is not a way of procuring information." But things operate differently, he said, on television: "24," he said, is "a fantastical show. . . . Torture is a dramatic device."
Although there have been some "liberal friendly" plotlines in "24" including last years story involving President Logan's plot to allow terrorists access to nerve gas in order to justify a war (sound familiar?) that still doesn't change the over-arching political direction of the show coming from Joel Surnow.
Yet David Nevins, the former Fox Television network official who, in 2000, bought the pilot on the spot after hearing a pitch from Surnow and Cochran, and who maintains an executive role in "24," is candid about the show’s core message. "There’s definitely a political attitude of the show, which is that extreme measures are sometimes necessary for the greater good," he says. "The show doesn’t have much patience for the niceties of civil liberties or due process. It’s clearly coming from somewhere. Joel’s politics suffuse the whole show."
Surnow, for his part, revels in his minority status inside the left-leaning entertainment industry. "Conservatives are the new oppressed class," he joked in his office. "Isn’t it bizarre that in Hollywood it’s easier to come out as gay than as conservative?" His success with "24," he said, has protected him from the more righteous elements of the Hollywood establishment. "Right now, they have to be nice to me," he said. "But if the show tanks I’m sure they’ll kill me." He spoke of his new conservative comedy show as an even bigger risk than "24." "I’ll be front and center on the new show," he said, then joked, "I’m ruining my chances of ever working again in Hollywood."
We can only hope Joel, we can only hope.
Whether you like the show or not, whether you believe that that art should or shouldn't be held accountable for the impressions it leaves on those who are most vulnerable (or willing), the evidence is mounting that it is presenting a completely unbalanced view of Counter-terrorism -- a view that is clearly deliberate and intended via Mr. Surnow and other Conservatives -- and that it may take quite a bit of time and effort to undue this misperception not only among the public, but also among our future Military leaders which is a seriously dangerous situation for us internationally The "Whatever it takes" attitude expressed by "24" which is used to justify and excuse torture simply doesn't work and undermines our moral authority.
It can and has only made things worse - not better.
Vyan
