At What Cost, Intelligence? A Case Study of the Consequences of Ethical and Unethical Leadership

irst Place Winner of the MacArthur Military Leadership Writing Competition for the CGSC Class 2009 -- 01. In this essay, the hypothesis that the essential ethical position assumed by leaders is the most important determinant of, one, the level of detainee abuse in interrogation units, and, two, whether these units are strategically effective on today's battlefield. This hypothesis will be validated by the storyline beginning with an email exchange. If this hypothesis is correct, then interrogations at detention facilities influenced by the CJTF-7, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, and 4th Infantry Division leaders above should have escalated to serious detainee abuse, and conversely, the TF 1AD detention facility should have remained relatively free of allegations of detainee abuse since its leaders viewed interrogation operations from a higher ethical vantage point. Qualities shared by these detention facilities (such as theater policy, manning, overcrowding, interrogator experience, etc.) will be discussed before these "control factors" are discarded as largely irrelevant to the final results. Once this hypothesis is validated, it is applied to the present to indicate what steps our Army still needs to take to prevent future interrogation abuse and the strategic defeat such abuse creates.