Strange isn´t it, how after a war ends, the winners end up imitating the losers?
As noted in Lobbyists (2), Ecuador paid the American lobbying firm Patton Boggs $65,000 a month for services.
Under existing circumstances, I would not hire Patton Boggs if Patton Boggs paid me $65,000 a day.
The reason: Patton Boggs condones torture.
Patton Boggs has, according to its own reckoning, “600 lawyers and nonlawyer specialists to provide our clients with the competitive edge required to succeed.”
600…definitely one of the big lobbyist firms. As for competitive edge:
I am going to pass over the Metabolife and “The Price of Sugar” controversies Patton Boggs was mired in. I´m also not going to mess with conflict of interest allegations against it.
Let´s cut to the chase. Or rather, the Fox hunt.
In a moment I will invite you, Dear Reader, to watch a short video. First, however, as a trailer for the coming attraction, I offer two clarifications:
(1) The words enhanced interrogation techniques are Bush/Obama newspeak for torture. To cite the most-publicized case:
(2) Waterboarding is torture -- not something else. You disagree? Then why don`t you volunteer to be waterboarded? You aren`t…afraid, are you? If you need less drastic convincing, you can watch waterboarding being performed on someone else.
Now, click on the Fox Network video, “How Did U.S. Get Information for Pakistan Raid?” The broadcast was made on May 3, 2011, 8:41, two days after bin Laden was killed. As for its contents, look below the video: “Patton Boggs partner Scott Louis Weber discusses the role of enhanced interrogation techniques in Osama bin Laden raid.”
I assume you watched the video.
Note, again, the topic for discussion, “How did U.S. get information for Pakistan raid?” The broadcast does not answer the question. Rather, it presents catch-as-catch-can three alternative explanations:
Version I. This is the version we have all heard. It is served up by Patton Boggs man Scott Lewis Weber.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,* Number 3 in al-Qaeda, was captured in 2003 and sent to Guantanamo. He was waterboarded 183 times. After four years he broke and gave the name of the courier of bin Laden. The courier was trailed to bin Laden´s compound in Pakistan.
Version II is offered by Dan Gerstein (note: for a more complete presentation, click on this New York Times article). Waterboarding did not break Khalid. Rather, after “winning his trust and from standard interrogation techniques,” Khalid gave the name of the courier.
Version III: offered by White House spokesman Jay Carney. He says “it simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information that may or may not have been gathered eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday [that killed bin Laden].” Implied therein is that both Versions I and II are wrong; numerous sources and techniques were involved. Note: Carney does not deny that waterboarding was used, nor does he confirm or deny (“may or may not”) that the courier was the key.
Version IV is offered here:
Versions I, II and III are wrong. Version III comes closest to the truth.
The story that bin Laden was tracked down by following his courier makes as much sense as a screen door on a submarine:
Put yourself in bin Laden`s shoes. (In a minute we will see why Patton Boggs man Weber is unable to perform this essential role.) You need to stay in contact with your organization but must hide out; the U.S. has a $25 million price tag on your head. You cannot pick up the phone or send an email or use Western Union; you must use a courier to contact your people. There it is: the indispensable courier is the weak link in the chain to you.
In 2003, one of your top lieutenants, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is captured. You know this because…there he is on CNN. You also know Khalid will be tortured and sooner or later give the name of the courier.
Common sense dictates that you…get another courier.
Boggs man Weber notes he has “several” security clearances. He says that even so, he is only entitled to know a small part of what happens.
I am sure the Secret Servicemen and military personnel cavorting in Cartagena hotel rooms with hookers had security clearances of the very highest order. What their quicky and quirky "Dirty Dozen" remake proved, unfortunately, does not need to be proven: common sense trumps security clearances every time.
In truth, no security clearance whatsoever is needed to answer the question, "How did U.S. get information for Pakistan raid?"
Somebody in bin Laden`s camp betrayed him. And somebody in the U.S. government, probably the C.I.A., dreamed up the story of the courier to protect the informant so that he/she could take the reward money and live happily ever after. I think the White House realized that the courier story is patently preposterous, and therefore invented as an alternative the many-sources version voiced by Carney.
An intriguing question remains. Did the C.I.A. or U.S. military kill the informant during the raid (or elsewhere), thereby avoiding the $25 million payout? Instead of reporting on Michelle Obama´s toned arms, the U.S. media should find out if the reward was paid. If it wasn´t, where is the money? Cartagena?
* * *
Time to focus on the arguments of Scott Lewis Weber, Boggs´ man.
Before beginning, one can argue that Weber was acting on his own on the Fox broadcast, speaking as an individual -- that he did not represent Patton Boggs. But look closer: beneath the video you will see the words “Uploaded by Patton Boggs May 4, 2011.” Weber, then, represented Patton Boggs. He is Boggsman.
1. “We´re not dealing with angels. We´re dealing with the exact opposite.”
We are dealing with devils, then. Unlike Biblical times, there are now multiple devils. What caused the upsurge, the proliferation?
Boggsman’s assertion is a residue of the Christian crusades underlying and contaminating over 90% of Western analyses of terrorism. I will not repeat facts and arguments presented elsewhere. The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion analyzed in depth The Official Explanation -- Islam is the source of terrorism -- and showed why it makes no sense whatsoever.
I wish the nonsense ended there...
Boggsman`s summary judgment of terrorists as devils cuts off at the knees any ability to put oneself in terrorists´ shoes, to think and feel as they think and feel, to see the world through their eyes. Patton Boggs and Homeland Security, you may have fun venting your spleen, but you will never thereby arrive at an understanding of your adversary.
2. Boggsman: “And counter terrorism is an ugly business because you´re dealing with ugly psychotic people that don´t respond to ordinary stimuli.”
Because. Boggsman´s working assumption becomes apparent. Counterterrorism would not be ugly, i.e., use torture, if terrorists were not ugly psychotic people. Thus, it is their fault if torture is used. If only they would respond to normal stimuli then waterboards, etc., would not be needed.
There is not a shred of evidence to support Boggsman`s contention that terrorists are psychotic people. On the contrary: 3 decades of research weigh against him. The foremost example: Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist who worked for the C.I.A.: “The failure of mental illness as an explanation for terrorism is consistent with three decades of research that has been unable to detect any significant pattern of mental illness in terrorists. Indeed, these studies have indicated that terrorists are surprisingly normal in terms of mental health.”
Surprisingly normal. In viewing terrorists as psychotics, Boggsman is alone, twisting in the wind, in total disagreement with scholars and his C.I.A. minders.** The finding that terrorists are suprisingly normal corresponds to my own personal experiences (see below).
Psychotic: here Boggsman makes a singularly revealing word choice. Tell me: do terrorists suffer from prominent hallucinations? Disorganized speech? Disorganized or catatonic behavior? Those are recognized symptoms of psychotic people. It appears that Boggsman commits a common error any Psych 101 student will be quick to correct: he confuses psychotic with psychopathic. (For an introductory discussion of the difference, go to this article.)
I have worked with psychotics and psychopaths. I don´t think there is a mental health professional in the country who will support the conclusion that psychotic = psychopathic, any more than a single real terrorism expert will support Boggsman`s notion that terrorists are psychotics.
We come to a startling but necessary conclusion:
Let us return to Boggsman´s premise: because terrorists are psychotics who don`t respond to normal stimuli, extraordinary stimuli -- torture – are necessary. Well, since terrorists are not psychotics and hence do respond to normal stimuli, Boggsman´s entire case for supporting torture evaporates.
Before leaving this point, it is important to note that the C.I.A., which views terrorists as mentally normal, nevertheless tortured them. (Khalid was waterboarded 183 times.) Why?
As I wrote in the post of 4-22-2011:
“I oppose torture in interrogations. Time and again, poor results show that anybody will say anything just to stop the pain. Which poses this question: sadism aside, why inflict it? The real purpose of torture, I submit, isn't information or confessions, but rather to cement the solidarity of the group performing the torture. Thus, torture serves as an indicator that the group practicing it had severe unity problems to begin with, long before the first victim entered the room. “
Watch the masked torturers in the waterboarding video cited above. There it is, right in front of you. A unity, a team, a commonality, a shared interest. A solidarity.
3. Boggsman: ”They took 4 years to break these people down in Guantanamo Bay before they got the identity of the courier. That shows you the steadfast resolve of the folks that we have working for us…”
I discussed torture with political prisoners who had been tortured. One major finding:
Everybody knows and accepts that torture eventually will make you talk. So, why not just give the authorities your information and be done with it?
The answer: timing. If you are being tortured, your goal is to hold out as long as possible so as to give your collaborators and families the time to flee, hide, change operations. If Boggsman is correct in saying that Khalid identified the courier four years after being captured, then Khalid did exactly what he was supposed to do: stall. By the time the U.S. got the courier´s name, the courier had been changed (probably more than once), making Khalid´s “revelation” worthless.
Steadfast resolve? There is another interpretation of the time flow. The four years needed to get information shows in demonstrable terms a conclusion noted in a former post: when it comes to terrorists, the C.I.A. has no idea whom it is dealing with.
Come on, you say. You find my conclusion exaggerated at best, false at worst? Indeed, I know of only one other group in the world that agrees with it…the C.I.A.
The post of 4-28-2011 on Khalid:
“Welcome aboard a trainload of discrepancies, denials, distortions. In all the slag, a thimbleful of truth glistens: the CIA simply did not know how to handle terrorists. The CIA made that admission in a New York Times article.
´“I asked, ´What are we going to do with these guys when we get them?´ recalled A. B. Krongard, the No. 3 official at the C.I.A. from March 2001 until 2004. “I said, ´We’ve never run a prison. We don’t have the languages. We don’t have the interrogators.”´
The CIA's resounding inexperience, plus a political pressure-cooker atmosphere to ‘do something,’ doomed the agency to follow the path of least resistance. The Times article continues:
‘In its scramble, the agency made the momentous decision to use harsh methods the United States had long condemned. With little research or reflection, it borrowed its techniques from an American military training program modeled on the torture repertories of the Soviet Union and other cold-war adversaries, a lineage that would come to haunt the agency.’”
Steadfast resolve, as Boggsman claims, or hopeless obstinacy? Take your pick -- only one is right. The four years needed to get information only confirms that the C.I.A. simply did not understand terrorists. Likewise, waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques favored by Boggsman also demonstrated -- at least 183 times -- the C.I.A. did not understand terrorists.
Dear Reader: you are, I hope, wondering, “Yeah, but what´s the alternative?” Go to my post of 06/23/2010 (“Who Are You?”). You will see how a French interrogator broke a hardcore terrorist in a matter of minutes. No waterboarding was necessary -- just good old-fashioned common sense and intuition about people.
We come to the core of the matter. Boggsman:
4. “We need to get out fingers deep, we need to get down in the mud. That´s how you get the intelligence that you need to be able to go and find Osama bin Laden.”
I was surprised by that direct, naked, no-holds-barred, let-ér-rip statement. No lawyer weasel words, no fudge factor anywhere. Torture, pure and simple -- that´s how you get information you need: period.
But Boggsman goes further. He is not content with extolling torture; he must deny and bully anybody who disagrees. When Dan Gerstein asserts that Khalid confessed after winning his trust and using non-torture techniques, Boggsman butts in, cuts him off: “You don´t really know that because you weren´t there with the interrogators...There is only so much that those of us on the outside know…”
Well, Boggsman, you weren´t there either. By your own admission, you have only a small piece of the puzzle. Maybe, the C.I.A. gave Khalid candy and flowers: Boggsman, you don´t really know because you weren´t there. Incredible but true: Boggsman leaps from his own self-confessed, nearly total ignorance to a full and complete knowledge that torture is absolutely necessary.
There is nothing new in Boggsman´s flight of fancy. Any extreme viewpoint or feeling always contains its opposite, albeit latently. Strange, isn´t it...that coexistence of opposite extremes characterizes middle class rebel ideology, the platform from which terrorism takes off. That point was analyzed at length in The Source of Terrorism.
* * *
I don`t know when Boggsman was born, but I guess the 1960s. The simple fact of the matter is, in 1969-70, while he and his Homeland Security colleagues were being toilet-trained, I was interviewing political prisoners in the infamous Lecumberri Prison in Mexico City. By today`s official U.S. government reasoning, they would be defined as terrorists. (Note: I disagree with all official definitions.***)
Of course, as Boggsman shows, anybody can say anything. To prove I was there:
How did I get inside? It’s impossible.
Well, not entirely. A close friend´s brother-in-law was a political prisoner. Had my friend not been a lawyer working as an Agente del Ministerio Público in the Procuraduría (Attorney General´s Office) in Mexico D.F., I could not -- indeed, would not -- have made the journey. Would not because between the Mexican Secret Police and the prisoners, you don`t stand a chance.
Sunday was visitors´ day. The authorities write down your name and address and give you a chip. “Don`t lose it,” my friend warned, “ If you do, they won´t let you out.” I kept the chip in my hot little hand the entire time.
At the end of the walkway to the cellblocks, a man was cheerfully greeting as many visitors as possible. A gatekeeper...
“Where did you get the beautiful suit?” I asked him.
“Right here!” he responded to a round of laugher.
I later learned he was a drug kingpin. His “suit” was a standard prison uniform that he had sent to Italy. They had cut it up and sewn it together, transforming the striped pattern into a stunning design, then tailor-made it. But why was he greeting everybody like a politician running for office?
The deal was this: the kingpin spent Sunday afternoons greeting visitors so as to make his presence known -- in exchange for being released the rest of the week. In that manner, he had his freedom and the authorities escaped media scrutiny of this tourist prisoner. The next time you play Monopoly take a look at the get out of jail free card; you will grasp instantly the essence of this arrangement.
They didn`t call the Lecumberri "The Black Palace" for nothing. The cellblocks formed a circle around a dilapidated tower. They were something out of Dante`s inferno: gigantic gates with huge Alice in Wonderland chains and padlocks. Crazed, stoned prisoners grabbed at everything and everybody passing by. My friend said if you wanted to speak to somebody in one of those cellblocks, the prisoners would bring him to the front gate and you would talk between the bars. You could not go inside; you would not last a minute. With growing unease, I approached the political prisoners’ cellblock, making sure my chip had not dematerialized.
Their area was entirely different. It consisted of separate cottages, a few men per cottage. Sparse, but neat as pins; no army barracks could be cleaner – suggesting a tight organization. There was even a garden, plants, greenery. Not bad, I thought, until I noticed a dried blood smear on the wall and a smashed transom in the first cottage. The prior week the political prisoners had held a hunger strike. To break it, the authorities threw a party in which they loaded up common prisoners with booze and dope, then opened the gate. Finding the door to this cottage blocked, they tried to climb through the transom.
They failed. The political prisoners had weapons, even cameras.
My contact was Federico Emery Ulloa, head of the Maoists. The baddest of the bad, according to government logic. My friend had introduced me to him a few years earlier at a fiesta in Dolores Hidalgo. We chatted. Apparently convinced I was serious, he presented me to the other prisoners. Later, we corresponded. I mention him by name only because he passed on in 2004. For the same reason I will give the name of one other prisoner, Dr. Fausto Trejo, a psychiatrist.
Before going to Mexico, a professor and member of my Ph.D. committee, who had worked with George Luckacs in Hungary, reaffirmed the core of my dissertation project. “Those guys won`t want to talk about Marx. Rimbaud, Baudelaire, the Dadaists, Breton, Max Ernst, nihilism, surrealism, Lautreamont: that´s who they´re into.”
Indeed, the prisoners never discussed the War in Viet Nam or Khrushchev. Once they were on text -- debating why the archetypal rebel Arthur Rimbaud turned into a mild mannered coffee exporter -- there was a volcano. We tapped into an international subculture of revolt that nobody had pieced together.
Understanding that subculture is essential to understanding middle class rebellion and its derivative, terrorism. In particular, if you haven´t read Albert Camus´ The Rebel, not only are you never going to get to first base, you aren´t even in the ballpark where the game is being played. If Cartagena is any indication, the Secret Service and Homeland Security are not in the country, much less the state or city, where the ballpark is located.
On the way out, the drug kingpin asked me what I thought of “his” Lecumberri. “In a place like this,” I said, “you don`t want to look back. You may have a knife in it.” He and his body guards judged this remark to be humorous, made me repeat it. An initiation rite had been performed; you had to show you would be a fun person to get drunk with.
After returning to the U.S., I went over the material with my Ph.D. committee. Since we were unable to determine what the repercussions would be on the prisoners and their families if the Mexican government disapproved of what I wrote, I dropped the project.
The material was not lost, however. It is there -- all of it -- in The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion.
* * *
Get ready -- torture and waterboarding are about to fly off Internet pages into mainstream media headlines. The trial of Kahlid Sheika Mohammad will start soon.
For a preview, see my post of 4-22-2011:
“Not surprisingly, KSM now disavows his 2007 testimony, claiming it was obtained under torture. A captive of his own unconscious ambivalence, in typical middle class rebel fashion KSM can't come up with anything better than to push the ´yes´ and ´no´ buttons simultaneously. He thereby conjures up a dilemma: was he lying then or is he lying now? We've already seen this tactic, the open secret, in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, a.k.a. Bambi (see post of 3/27/2011). ´Aye´ as well as ´nay´: that is how KSM votes ´maybe.´ Ambiguity, however -- not Guantanamo -- is the middle class rebel's hell. What the hell, he might as well make the most of it. It's called using the tools at one's disposal. And KSM does it; he uses ambiguity as a lever to gain mechanical advantage. The latter, by the way, is something he is well versed in; he has a degree in mechanical engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical University (1986). “
We come to the punch line:
Patton Boggs, when it comes to terrorists, you don`t know what you are talking about. Neither does the C.I.A. The only difference is that the latter agrees with that conclusion.
An error acknowledged is an error abolished. Torture degrades America, but it degrades even more those who perform and advocate it. We call upon Patton Boggs to repudiate categorically (1) torture in general**** and (2) waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in particular. We also (3) call upon Scott Lewis Weber to retract his offensive and inaccurate statements in support of torture made on the Fox Network.
We will be pleased to print the repudiation and retraction here.
Yes, I am aware that, on occasion, Patton Boggs defended victims of torture. In that regard, it is now apparent that nobody explained something to its 600 lawyers and specialists, so we will do it here:
Albert Camus poses this hypothetical case: you see a bully beating up a small guy. You step aside, saying you are neutral. In fact, you are not neutral: you are on the side of the bully. Patton Boggs, you want us to believe by your client list that you represent torturers and tortured alike, that you are “impartial” and "neutral" – just a hired gun. By that fact alone, you are neither: you are on the side of the torturer.
Patton Boggs, are you in or are you out? You can´t vote “maybe” on torture -- although (curious coincidence) like somebody else, you can try.
In conclusion, the Fox Network broadcast inadvertently showed the astonishing ignorance of terrorists that prevails in U.S. security circles. But even more astounding, the broadcast displayed that ignorance advertently:
K.T. McFarland, ex-Pentagon employee: “This is a different kind of adversary we have…We don´t know what his ideology is.”
Sorry, K.T. -- (i) there is precious little that is new about the adversary and (ii) we know his ideology only too well.
A RAND study (see below) pointed the way forward in its final conclusion about terrorism: “Other explanations appear to be needed.” Patton Boggs et al, you might start looking for them where they are -- not where they are not. Torture, to mention one.
_______________
*See this blog´s three-part series on Khalid: 4-22-2011 “Make Whatever You Want,” 4-28-2011 “Catch 23,” and 5-22-2011 “The Showdown.”
A mechanical engineer, Khalid is a vintage case of the middle class rebel analyzed in The Source of Terrorism: Middle Class Rebellion.
** Here is Claude Berrebi’s review of the serious literature on terrorism and mental health. It is from Social Science for Counterterrorism: Putting The Pieces Together, (pp. 167-169), published by the National Defense Research Institute of The RAND Corporation, The publication, prepared for the Secretary of Defense, is available at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2009/RAND_MG849.pdf
Mental health is crucially important in evaluating whether rational choice
behavior is a good model. If terrorists were disproportionately
mentally ill, there would be no point in searching for indications of
rational behavior or in using rational-choice theory to analyze such
behavior. In such a case, evidence about the characteristics of terrorists
that seemingly contradicted potential rational-choice explanations
would not be puzzling. On the other hand, if we were to find out that
terrorists, including suicide terrorists, are not typically mentally ill, we
would be compelled to continue our search for better explanations,
keeping in mind that costly behavior does not equal crazy behavior.27
Therefore, I have searched for evidence regarding the mental health of
terrorist operatives.28
Martha Crenshaw (1981) has concluded from her studies that:
No single motivation or personality can be valid for all circumstances.
What limited data we have on individual terrorists . . .
suggest that the outstanding common characteristic of terrorists
is their normality.
Ariel Merari, a psychologist who has studied the psychological
profiles of suicide terrorists since 1983 through media reports that contained
biographical details, interviews with the suicides’ families, and
interviews with jailed would-be suicide attackers, concluded that they
were unlikely to be psychologically abnormal (Merari, 2006). Hudson
and Majeska (1999) also suggest that the-terrorists-as-mentally-ill
approach appears to be contradicted (pp. 20–21).
Similarly, in a study of suicide terrorism, Scott Atran (2004) finds
that:
Overall, suicide terrorists exhibit no socially dysfunctional attributes
(fatherless, friendless, jobless) or suicidal symptoms. Inconsistent
with economic theories of criminal behavior, they do not
kill themselves simply out of hopelessness or a sense of having
nothing to lose.
Marc Sageman (2006) finds a near-total lack of mental disorders
in his sample of al-Qaeda–affiliated individual terrorists. He explains
that this makes sense, as individuals with mental disorders are usually
weeded out early from any clandestine organization for security
reasons.
Anat Berko, a criminologist and colonel in the IDF who studied
the inner world of suicide bomber terrorists through a series of prison
interviews she conducted with ‘would-be’ suicide bombers whose mission
was foiled either directly by the IDF or by some technical failure
in the mechanism of the explosives they were carrying, noted (Berko,
2007):
. . . many of the suicide bombers do not have financial
difficulties . . . not only do they generally not have economic
problems, but most of the suicide bombers also do not have an
emotional disturbance that prevents them from differentiating
between reality and imagination. . . . (p. 9)
In their work on the psychology of terrorism, Kruglanski and
Fishman (2006), reach similar conclusions:
Terrorists do not seem to be characterized by a unique set of
psychological traits or pathologies. . . . The vast heterogeneity
of terrorism’s users is consistent with the ‘‘tool’’ view, affording
an analysis of terrorism in terms of means-ends psychology. The
‘‘tool’’ view implies conditions under which potential perpetrators
may find terrorism more or less appealing. . . .
In an article that reviews the state of the art of available theories
and data regarding the psychology of terrorism and relies on data and
theoretical material gathered from the world’s unclassified literature,
Victoroff (2005) concludes that terrorists are psychologically extremely
heterogeneous. He explains that whatever the stated goals and group
identity, every terrorist, like every person, is motivated by his own complex
of psychosocial experiences and traits. I interpret his conclusion
to mean that we should not expect terrorists to be disproportionally
insane.29
Summary
In summary, individual terrorists do not fit the profile of poor, ignorant,
or religious individuals with low opportunity cost and no valued
marketable skills; nor are they mentally unstable. The various “root
causes” that have long been discussed may well be at work, but in complicated
and sometimes nonintuitive ways, and apparently not in decisive
ways. Other explanations appear to be needed.
The RAND Corporation is closely associated with the C.I.A. Thus, in disputing the RAND`s conclusion that terrorists are not mentally ill, Boggsman is picking a fight not just with scholars and medical doctors, he is taking on the epicenter of the United States security establishment.
***My definition, analyzed at length in The Source of Terrorism (p. 141):
A terrorist is most often a middle class rebel (1) experiencing magnified marginal and/or transitional conditions, who (2) voluntarily (3) goes through certain rites of passage, among which are (4) clique membership and (5) a deliberate decision to commit a criminal act which is almost always (6) violent and usually (7) murder, in (8) the name of higher intentions or convictions without (9) retaining consciously the ambiguity of his criminal act and his higher intentions/convictions. He manifests powerful, unconscious, ambivalent emotions in two ways: (10) converting his intentions/convictions into idées fixes or absolute truths, the opposite extreme from ambiguity, and (11) wielding uncertainty as a weapon. That uncertainty is total, as demonstrated by the fact that (12) everybody -- allies, non-combatants, even himself -- is a potential victim. A concluding note: it is the syndrome, the running together of components, which counts -- not components in isolation.
****Regrettably, the Fox broadcast is no isolated incident. For previous Patton Boggs ties to torture, see their Guatemalan interlude and work for the Egyptian military under Mubarak.