From: "Mario Profaca" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: October 4, 2007 10:02:07 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: [SPY NEWS] Justice authorized CIA to use harshest
interrogation tactics
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nation/stories/
100407dnnatinterrogate.3784d49.html
After denouncing them, Justice authorized CIA to use harshest
interrogation tactics
11:42 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 3, 2007
From Wire Reports
WASHINGTON – When the Justice Department publicly declared torture
"abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush
administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly
unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.
But soon after Al Gonzales' arrival as attorney general in February
2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in
secret. It was a very different document, according to officials
briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation
techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided
explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination
of painful physical and psychological tactics, including
head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.
Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over
the objections of James Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was
leaving his job after clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with
what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Mr.
Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be
"ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it.
Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing "cruel, inhuman
and degrading" treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret
opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, according to current
and former officials. The Justice Department document declared that
none of the CIA interrogation methods violated that standard.
The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden
legacy of President Bush's second term and Mr. Gonzales' tenure at the
Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White
House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies
on surveillance and detention into turmoil.
Congress and the Supreme Court have intervened repeatedly in the last
two years to impose limits on interrogations, and the administration
has responded as a policy matter by dropping the most extreme
techniques. But the 2005 Justice Department opinions remain in effect,
and their legal conclusions have been confirmed by several more recent
memorandums, officials said. They show how the White House has
succeeded in preserving the broadest possible legal latitude for harsh
tactics.
A White House spokesman, Tony Fratto, said Wednesday that he would not
comment on any legal opinion related to interrogations. Mr. Fratto
added, "We have gone to great lengths, including statutory efforts and
the recent executive order, to make it clear that the intelligence
community and our practices fall within U.S. law" and international
agreements.
More than two dozen current and former officials involved in
counterterrorism issues were interviewed during the past three months
about the opinions and the deliberations on interrogation policy. Most
officials would speak only on the condition of anonymity because of
the secrecy of the documents and the CIA detention operations they
governed.
When he stepped down as attorney general in September after widespread
criticism of the firing of federal prosecutors and withering attacks
on his credibility, Mr. Gonzales talked proudly in a farewell speech
of how his department was "a place of inspiration" that had balanced
the necessary flexibility to conduct the war on terrorism with the
need to uphold the law.
Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted
relentless pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney and David
Addington, Mr. Cheney's counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as
effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought
the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and
Democrats in Congress. Critics said Mr. Gonzales turned his agency
into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department's
independence.
The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven Bradbury, who since
2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice
Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National
Security Agency's domestic surveillance program and detention policies
at congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal
scholars say is at odds with the office's tradition of avoiding
political advocacy.
Mr. Bradbury defended the work of his office as the government's most
authoritative interpreter of the law. "In my experience, the White
House has not told me how an opinion should come out," he said in an
interview. "The White House has accepted and respected our opinions,
even when they didn't like the advice being given."
The debate over how terrorist suspects should be held and questioned
began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, when the Bush
administration adopted secret detention and coercive interrogation,
both practices the U.S. had previously denounced when used by other
countries. It adopted the new measures without public debate or
congressional vote, choosing to rely instead on the confidential legal
advice of a handful of appointees.
The policies set off internal battles, pitting administration
moderates against hard-liners, military lawyers against Pentagon
chiefs and, most surprising, a handful of conservative lawyers at the
Justice Department against the White House in the stunning mutiny of
2004. But under Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Bradbury, the Justice Department
was wrenched back into line with the White House.
After the Supreme Court ruled in 2006 that the Geneva Conventions
applied to prisoners who belonged to al-Qaeda, Mr. Bush for the first
time acknowledged the CIA's secret jails and ordered their inmates
moved to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA halted its use of
waterboarding, or pouring water over a bound prisoner's cloth-covered
face to induce fear of suffocation.
But in July, after another months-long debate inside the
administration, Mr. Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the
use of what the administration calls "enhanced" interrogation
techniques – the details remain secret – and officials say the CIA
again is holding prisoners in "black sites" overseas. The executive
order was reviewed and approved by Mr. Bradbury and the Office of
Legal Counsel.
Douglas Kmiec, who headed that office under President Ronald Reagan
and President George Bush, said he believed the intense pressures of
the campaign against terrorism have warped the office's proper role.
"The office was designed to insulate against any need to be an
advocate," said Mr. Kmiec, now a conservative scholar at Pepperdine
University law school. But at times in recent years, Mr. Kmiec said,
the office, headed by William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia before they
served on the Supreme Court, "lost its ability to say no."
Like other military lawyers, John Hutson fears that official American
acceptance of such treatment could endanger Americans in the future.
"The problem is, once you've got a legal opinion that says such a
technique is OK, what happens when one of our people is captured and
they do it to him? How do we protest then?" asked Mr. Hutson, who
served as the Navy's top lawyer from 1997 to 2000.
Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen, The New York Times
Interrogators asked if they were breaking torture laws
From the secret sites in Afghanistan, Thailand and Eastern Europe
where CIA teams held al-Qaeda terrorists, questions for the lawyers at
CIA headquarters arrived daily. Nervous interrogators wanted to know:
Are we breaking the laws against torture?
The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory
beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the
International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure
tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid
cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock
music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate,
waterboarding.
Never in history had the U.S. authorized such tactics. While President
Bush and CIA officials would later insist that the harsh measures
produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators,
psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are
equally or more effective.
In August 2002, the Justice Department provided a sweeping legal
justification for even the harshest tactics. That opinion, which would
become infamous as "the torture memo" after it was leaked, was written
largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the
Office of Legal Counsel.
Despite that guidance, in March 2003, when the CIA caught Khalid
Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the Sept. 11 attacks,
interrogators were again haunted by uncertainty. Former intelligence
officials, for the first time, disclosed that a variety of tough
interrogation tactics were used about 100 times over two weeks on Mr.
Mohammed. Agency officials then ordered a halt, fearing the combined
assault might have amounted to illegal torture.
Some intelligence officers say that many of Mr. Mohammed's statements
proved exaggerated or false.
Other intelligence officers insist that the harsh treatment produced
invaluable insights into al-Qaeda's structure and plans.
The New York Times
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