Clifford D. May: My ideal interview with Jon Stewart

When I was asked to appear on "The Daily Show," the news-with-views-and-edgy comedy TV program, I was reluctant. The issue: whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" should be regarded as torture and those responsible prosecuted. How would Jon Stewart, the acerbic and unabashedly liberal host, make this issue funny? How would I make it serious?

In the end, I agreed. Why? Because millions of Americans don't read newspapers. If my mission is to tell the public what I believe to be the truth about life-and-death issues, I have to be willing to go where the public is.

As always on TV, I'd have to make my case in sound bites -- though in this instance, many would be swallowed by Jon's punch lines, and the studio audience's laughter, cheers and hoots. I figured I'd better try to prepare myself by running an interview in my head. What follows is the interview I fantasized.

Stewart: So, Cliff, let's get to the point: How can you support torture!?!?!

Me: Actually, Jon, I don't. But more important: The CIA officials who have performed harsh interrogations do not support torture. The lawyers who wrote the memos telling the CIA what was permitted and what was not permitted don't support torture. Nor do the congressmen -- including Democrats -- who not only didn't ban these practices -- they funded them.

Stewart: You don't think the torture memos told these guys to go ahead and knock yourself out -- or rather knock out your prisoners?

Me: The media keep calling these "torture memos." They're really "anti-torture memos." They tell the CIA where they must draw the line. They make clear that the CIA cannot go beyond coercive interrogations -- sometimes called "stress and duress" -- to torture, a practice which is defined under law, illegal and prohibited. You can disagree about where the attorneys drew the line -- but drawing it was indisputably what they were doing in these memos.

Me: It can be -- it certainly was when the Japanese did it. If you want to, you can kill someone in minutes by waterboarding. But that's not the way it was done by American intelligence officials. They had to have physicians on hand empowered to stop it at any time. They had to tell their subjects they were not going to be killed -- because if they didn't, that would cause them too much suffering.

And let's remember: Only three individuals were waterboarded. Three. All of them Al-Qaida leaders concealing information about active terrorist plots. And by the way, no one has been waterboarded since 2003.

Stewart: But answer my question: Is waterboarding torture? Yes or no?

Me: Defining torture is not easy. A simple legal definition is that it "shocks the conscience." Cutting off Daniel Pearl's head on videotape -- that shocks my conscience. Sending a child out as a suicide bomber -- that shocks my conscience. People jumping off the World Trade Towers because they'd rather die that way than by burning -- that shocks my conscience. Khalid Shaikh Mohamed, mastermind of the 9/11 atrocities, gagging for a few minutes and, as a result, providing life-saving information, then going back to his cell for dinner and a movie -- no, my conscience is not shocked by that.

Stewart: There's no proof any of this was effective.

I think the evidence is clear. But let's release the "effectiveness memos" as former Vice President Cheney has requested and let's release other data on this question. Perhaps at this point we need a national debate on security and morality.

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OK, this was my fantasy interview. It didn't actually go quite this well. How did it come out? Watch the real debate at www.thedailyshow.com and judge for yourself.