http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603516.html?wpisrc=newsletter
CIA Fights Full Release Of Detainee Report
White House Urged to Maintain Secrecy
By R. Jeffrey Smith and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
The CIA is pushing the Obama administration to maintain the secrecy of
significant portions of a comprehensive internal account of the agency's
interrogation program, according to two intelligence officials.
The officials say the CIA is urging the suppression of passages describing in
graphic detail how the agency handled its detainees, arguing that the material
could damage ongoing counterterrorism operations by laying bare sensitive
intelligence procedures and methods.
The May 2004 report, prepared by the CIA's inspector general, is the most
definitive official account to date of the agency's interrogation system. A
heavily redacted version, consisting of a dozen or so paragraphs separated by
heavy black boxes and lists of missing pages, was released in May 2008 in
response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the American Civil
Liberties Union.
After an ACLU appeal, the Obama administration promised in May to review the
report, which consists of more than 100 pages of text and six appendixes of
unknown length, and to produce by Friday any additional material that could be
released.
CIA spokesman George Little said the agency "is reviewing the report to
determine how much more of it can be declassified in accordance with the
Freedom of Information Act."
An administration official said the CIA has not yet forwarded the document to
the White House or the Justice Department for final review.
A senior intelligence official who has studied the document defended the CIA's
redactions. "There is a lot about how the CIA operated the overall program of
detention and interrogation -- not just about how they used techniques -- that
would be sensitive and rightly redacted," the official said. "I think the Obama
administration has made the correct decision that transparency only goes so far
on the national security side."
Some former agency officials said that CIA insiders are fighting a rear-guard
action to prevent disclosures that could embarrass the agency and lead to new
calls for a "truth commission" to investigate the Bush administration's
policies.
Two former agency officials who read the 2004 report said most of its contents
could be safely released and, if anything, would seem familiar. General
information about the agency's interrogation program has already been made
public through the Obama administration's release of memos by the Justice
Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorizing the harsh CIA techniques and
through the earlier leak of a 2005 report on CIA interrogations by the
International Committee of the Red Cross. The broad conclusions of the
inspector general's report, as well as its specific assertion that some
interrogators exceeded limits approved by the Justice Department, have
previously been disclosed.
"[CIA Director] Leon Panetta has been captured by the people who were the
ideological drivers for the interrogation program in the first place," said a
former senior officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity when discussing
the still-classified report.
But one intelligence official countered that Panetta "was never a fan of the
interrogation program."
"He's reached his own independent decisions on these issues. He's standing up
for people who followed lawful guidance" issued to the agency during the Bush
administration, the official said.
The report was based on more than a year of investigation, including more than
100 interviews and a review of 92 interrogation videotapes -- which the CIA
later said it had destroyed -- as well as thousands of internal CIA e-mails and
other documents. Then-Inspector General John L. Helgerson and his team of
investigators traveled to secret CIA prisons and witnessed interrogations
firsthand, making them the only observers allowed into the detention sites who
were not participants in the program, officials said.
The report's critical comments helped prompt a suspension of the interrogations
for several months, until the agency received fresh affirmations of their
legality from President George W. Bush's appointees at the Justice Department.
The CIA's lawyers and its counterterrorism center also prepared detailed
written rebuttals, which the CIA is considering releasing alongside the
censored report this week.
According to a summary of the report incorporated in a declassified Justice
Department memo, its authors concluded that some useful information was
produced by the CIA program but that "it is difficult to determine conclusively
whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting
specific imminent attacks" -- the principal justification for using harsh
techniques.
The report also expressed particular concern that questioners had violated a
legal prohibition against "degrading" conduct by stripping detainees, sometimes
in the presence of women, according to a source who has read it. The report
said waterboarding, meant to simulate drowning, was used more often than had
been proved effective, and it quoted CIA doctors as saying that interrogators
from the military's survival school who took part in the sessions had probably
misrepresented their expertise.
The report further questioned the legality of using different combinations of
techniques -- for example, sleep deprivation combined with forced nudity and
painful stress positions, according to sources familiar with the document.
While Justice Department lawyers had determined in August 2002 that the
individual techniques did not constitute torture, the report warned that using
several techniques at once could have a far greater psychological impact,
according to officials familiar with the document.
"The argument was that combining the techniques amounted to torture," said a
former agency official who read the report. "In essence, [Helgerson] was
arguing in 2004 that there were clear violations of international laws and
domestic laws."
Another former official who read the report said its full text laid bare "the
good, the bad and the ugly" and added that "I believe that some people would
find offensive" what was done, because it was "not in keeping with American
values."
At the CIA, the report was welcomed by some lower-ranking officials who were
privy to what was happening at the prisons and had complained to Helgerson's
office about apparent abuses, according to an official familiar with the study.
But it provoked immediate anger and resistance among the agency's top managers,
lawyers and counterterrorism experts, who charged that Helgerson had
overstepped his authority and that the report contained factual inaccuracies
and a misreading of the law.
A former intelligence official said that at the time, Helgerson seemed to be on
a moral crusade: "He was out to prove a theory, and it came across as simply
'You're wrong,' " said the official, who cited the report's secrecy in speaking
on the condition of anonymity. "He was calling in officers willy-nilly and then
bringing them in a second time. It was like he was conducting his own
interrogations." Most of those involved in the program felt at the time, and
still do, that they took great pains to follow the law, the official said.
After the report was issued, then-CIA Director George J. Tenet demanded that
the Justice Department and the White House reaffirm their support for the
agency's harsh interrogation methods, even when used in combination, telling
others at the time, "No papers, no opinions, no program." At a White House
meeting in mid-2004, he resisted pressures to reinstate the program
immediately, before receiving new legal authorization, according to a source
familiar with the episode.
The Justice Department subsequently sent interim supporting opinions to the
CIA, allowing the program's resumption after Tenet's departure, and went on to
complete three lengthy reports in 2005 that affirmed in detail the legality of
the interrogation techniques with some new safeguards that the CIA had begun to
implement in 2003.
Helgerson, who retired from the agency this year, declined to comment for this
story. A former CIA employee familiar with Helgerson's views said he has
advocated for the release of the whole report, with minimal redactions, so that
interested parties can see the context. "The report says a number of things
positive about the agency as well as raising some serious questions about the
legal underpinnings of the program and the way it was carried out," the
official said.
Staff writers Peter Finn and Carrie Johnson and staff researcher Julie Tate
contributed to this report.
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