Profiles in Character #8: Alberto Mora Takes a Stand

On January 15, 2003, Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora sent an unsigned, draft memo to his boss, Pentagon General Counsel William Haynes.  Mora’s draft, which he said he would sign later that day – making it official and on the record – described the interrogation techniques he had learned were being used on detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as “at a minimum cruel and unusual treatment, and, at worst, torture.”  The stronger phrasing referred to both the prohibition of such treatment in the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions.  Mora had first learned of these techniques the previous December 17th from the head of the Navy’s Criminal Investigative Service (NCIS), and he had spent the last month verifying what he had been told, speaking with peers and confronting Gordon England, Secretary of the Navy. He had even met with Haynes and tried to convince him that the policy being followed and the memos used to support it could lead to criminal prosecution of many of those involved, including very high level officials.  Haynes was not swayed.  Since no one chose to act, Mora did. 

Mora was no “dove” or “bleeding heart.” His parents were both refugees from communist rule.  He had admired President Reagan and had served in the first Bush Administration before being asked to serve under President George W. Bush.  He supported the war on terror.  But, as he later told a reporter, “I was appalled by the whole thing.   It was clearly abusive and it was clearly contrary to everything we were ever taught about American values.”

Mora recognized he confronted a serious and career-defining ethical dilemma. He had taken, as everyone else in government service, an Oath of Office that required him to “support and defend” the Constitution.  This required him to put Constitutional values above the orders of higher level officials.  He knew he needed to protest, but he wanted to do so loyally and effectively.  Thus, he did not react impetuously. He did not call the Washington Post and “blow the whistle.”  He chose to be what Harvard Business School professor Joseph Badaracco, Jr., calls a “quiet hero.”  Quiet heroes leverage rather than leave their official positions. 

His first step was to verify the facts.  He learned from NCIS sources that one prisoner, a Saudi detainee, Mohammed al-Qahtani, had been subjected to 160 days of continuous abuse that included, for example, isolation in a pen perpetually flooded with artificial light, interrogation  for eighteen to twenty hours at a stretch, being led on a dog leash, stripped naked, and being threatened by dogs.  Further investigation revealed that on December 2nd Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had approved “hooding,” “exploitation of phobias,” “stress positions,” “deprivation of light and auditory stimuli,” all prohibited by the Army Field Manual.

Mora next met with Gordon England, Secretary of the Navy, who approved Mora’s next meeting - with Haynes, on December 20th.  Haynes denied that Rumsfeld’s memo approved torture.  By early January, nothing had been done, so Mora met with Haynes again on January 9th.  It was at this meeting that Mora warned about the potential criminal prosecution of those involved.  When  nothing was done, Mora drafted the memo he alerted Haynes to on January 15th.  Later that day, Haynes told Mora that Rumsfeld was suspending use of the techniques and setting up a working group to review and make recommendations going forward.  Mora assumed his protest had succeeded.

His confidence proved premature.  A week later, an Office of Legal Counsel lawyer in the Justice Department, John Yoo, authored a memo providing legal justification for the techniques Rumsfeld wanted to use, and the working group was, for practical purposes, a sham.  Undaunted, Mora met with Haynes again, to no avail.  The techniques spread next to Abu Ghraib prison in Afghanistan.  Their public disclosure led the Justice Department, by December, to withdraw Yoo’s memo, and in 2005 the Detainee Treatment Act prohibiting such abuses was signed into law.

In May 2006, Mora received a Profile in Courage award from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.  He took no credit for what he had done, indicating that it was Americans in arms who deserved, every day, to be considered courageous.  But he did remind us of what led him to speak truth to power.  Near the end of his acceptance speech, he said:

“We need to be clear.  Cruelty disfigures our national character.  It is incompatible with our constitutional order, with our laws, and with our most prized values.  Cruelty can be as effective as torture in destroying human dignity, and there is no moral distinction between one and the other.  To adopt and apply a policy of cruelty anywhere within this world is to say that our forefathers were wrong about their belief in the rights of man, because there is no more fundamental right than to be safe from cruel and inhumane treatment.  Where cruelty exists, law does not.”

 Speaking truth to power does not always succeed, but failing to do so may surely sacrifice the best of who we want ourselves and our nation to be.

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy