The following articles are by James Everett, a 17-year CIA veteran.

On Wednesday morning April 8, 2009 the cargo ship MV Alabama was sailing in the Indian Ocean about 300 miles off the coast of Somalia en route to Mombassa, Kenya when pirates started threatening her with weapons. Her captain, Richard Phillips, sent out a radio distress call and ordered his crew to shut down the engines and generators and then lock themselves in an out-of-the-way compartment. He said he would stay in the pilot house and negotiate with the pirates. The following greatly redacted details were received from a confidential source to help give my readers what Paul Harvey would say is part of "the rest of the story."

The pirates boarded and ordered the captain to start the engines, but there was no answer from the engine room. The lead pirate ordered two of his four men to go down into the pitch black vessel to find the engineer and get the engines started. But the crew jumped then in the dark and took away their weapons. One pirate managed to get away, but the crew bound the other, taped his mouth shut and put a knife to his throat. In the meantime other crew members had opened the drain cock on the pirate's boat causing it to sink. The pirates then ordered the captain to launch one of his rescue boats for their use. He did, but at the same time made it non-operational.

The crew then appeared with their captive pirate to negotiate a trade but let him go too soon. So a situation developed where the pirates were able to hold the captain in a jammed rescue vessel and the crew on board is waiting for their rescue by the USS Bainbridge which will not reach them until the next day. Before its arrival, a U.S. Navy Maritime Patrol Aircraft, with a Navy SEAL Team, flew over the scene and dropped a buoy with a radio in order to talk to the pirates. Fearing the radio had a homing device they promptly threw it overboard and demanded a satellite telephone so they could call home for help; which they did. This resulted in a ship being sent by the pirates from Somalia containing some 54 hostages from previous raids; but it never played a significant role in the enfolding drama.

A rescue using "Combat Swimmers" was discussed, but was vetoed as the captain did not seem to be in immediate danger. By late Saturday night they talked the pirates into sending their wounded man over for treatment and, at the same time, attempted to provide them with food and water which was refused. The Navy then advised the pirates of incoming threatening weather and offered to tow their little rescue boat. The pirates agreed and the USS Bainbridge took them in tow using a 30 meter rope which is the exact distance the SEALS practice their shooting skills.

The towed lifeboat, riding the larger vessel's "roostertail," had a 17-second period of harmonic motion, meaning that at the end of every half-period (8.5 seconds) it was basically steady. At this range a Navy SEAL, using a .308 caliber Mark 11 Mod sniper rifle is trained to put slugs inside the head of a quarter day or night. Their monocular scopes can "see" heat and draw a bead on it. The pirates, while not realizing it, were now like the proverbial "fish in a barrel." The only problem was to remove the plexiglass window a split second before the kill-shots so that it would not deflect the trajectory of the bullets.

On the exact countdown of 8.5 seconds one shot removed the canopy, followed essentially simultaneous by three kill-shots and the standoff was over; Navy 3, Pirates 0.

While violence is almost always to be eschewed, there is comfort in knowing that our armed forces are eminently capable of advancing the security of the U.S., and ofttimes the world, when called upon under legitimate circumstances to do so.

One of the key news items recently has been the partial release of classified documents regarding the CIA's use of waterboarding of detainees in U.S. custody. This was brought into sharp focus when President Obama made a highly publicized visit to the CIA's headquarters where he indicated his administration would not prosecute CIA operatives for their harsh treatment of prisoners.

While my years of serving as deep cover CIA intelligence officer had no direct connection to these specific events, the fact that I have been exposed to CIA torture training gives me some personal insights on this issue. For the record, there has always been a firm CIA understanding that waterboarding is torture, even though the Bush Administration spent considerable effort and legal maneuvering to muddy that issue.

I find it ironic that the Bush administration did everything in their power to stop the release of these documents on torture. However, when that proved impossible, former V.P. Dick Cheney pulled a switcheroo calling for the release of memos which would detail the effectiveness of waterboarding in collecting valuable intelligence; thus, in his opinion, adding to the security of U.S. citizens. Based on the documents released this past week, Cheney appears to be simply spitting against the wind.

The first truth about intelligence gained from torture is that it is always highly suspect. Another truth is that if one destroys the person being tortured the torturer gets a failing grade. This is why, both on humanitarian reasons and the questionable value of the intelligence product, torture has been declared out of bounds by the Geneva Conventions.

We now know that waterboarding was used a total of 266 times on two of three al Qaeda suspects. One memo states, "… where authorized, it [waterboarding] may be used for two 'sessions' per day of up to two hours. During a session, water may be applied up to six times for ten seconds or longer (but never more than 40 seconds) in a 24-hour period, a detainee may be subjected to up to twelve minutes of water application. …" I find such information chilling and reminiscent of the clinical information written by Nazi's "death doctors" and totally out of character for what America stands for.

While much has been redacted from the memos, it is clear that slamming detainees against walls and various other demeaning torture techniques were in common use. Invariably such action by one nation provides justification for others to respond in a like manner. Thus, while we are talking about "enemy combatants," i.e. persons dehumanized by the Bush Administration, Americans in the future may suffer as a result of this unwise policy.

One can argue that CIA personnel were simply "doing their duty" as demanded by their superiors. The validity of that defense was pretty well invalidated as a result of the Nuremburg trials following WWII. Obama may be commended for wanting the nation to move on rather than "laying blame for the past;" thus ruling out prosecution for CIA personnel who carried out orders to torture.

On the other hand, it is still to be determined whether or not the American people will be content to easily overlook this sad chapter in our history. Obama did not rule out the possibility of a future Truth Commission or a Commission of Inquiry. In fact, a new organization "Partners of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT)," is, with both Catholic and Protestant support, pushing for just such a Commission.

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With Western democracies experiencing stagflating economies and China on the ascendancy, can an argument be made that the Cold War did not end with the Soviet Union formally dissolving in December 1991 but with the Communist Chinese riding out the bipolar epic and on the verge of capturing the banner of the world’s leading hegemonic power?

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