New York Times November 15, 2006 C.I.A. Tells of Bush's Directive on the Handling of Detainees By DAVID JOHNSTON<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/j/david_johnston/index.html?inline=nyt-per>
WASHINGTON, Nov. 14 — The Central Intelligence Agency<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President Bush, that have guided the agency's interrogation and detention of terror suspects. The C.I.A. referred to the documents in a letter sent Friday from the agency's associate general counsel, John L. McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/american_civil_liberties_union/index.html?inline=nyt-org> . The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is "a directive signed by President Bush granting the C.I.A. the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees," the A.C.L.U. said, based on its review of published accounts. The second document, according to the group, is a Justice Department legal analysis "specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/a/al_qaeda/index.html?inline=nyt-org>members." A.C.L.U. lawyers said they would urge public disclosure of the contents of the documents. "We intend to press for release of both of these documents," Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the group, said in a statement. "If President Bush and the Justice Department authorized the C.I.A. to torture prisoners, the public has a right to know." A spokesman for the C.I.A. declined to discuss the matter. The documents had been sought by the A.C.L.U. in a suit filed in a New York federal court under the Freedom of Information Act. The suit has previously led to the disclosure of thousands of documents from the Pentagon, the F.B.I.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/f/federal_bureau_of_investigation/index.html?inline=nyt-org>, the Justice Department and other agencies. In the past, C.I.A. lawyers have sought to avoid any discussion of whether the agency had documents related to its interrogation and detention practices, the A.C.L.U. said. The group added that the agency had said national security would be jeopardized if it were compelled to disclose in any way its involvement in interrogations. In the C.I.A. letter, Mr. McPherson confirmed the existence of the documents but declined to release them, saying that essentially all of their contents were exempt from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act because release would damage national security and violate attorney-client privilege. "The documents are withheld in their entirety because there is no meaningful nonexempt information that can be reasonably segregated from the exempt material," he wrote. The A.C.L.U. sought the documents based on references to them in various news accounts. While both documents have been written about before, the C.I.A. had not previously acknowledged their existence. The directive from Mr. Bush is thought to have been issued shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and the Justice Department memo about a year later. The administration has acknowledged the agency's role in handling detainees. Mr. Bush said in September that 14 high-level terrorism suspects had been moved from secret prisons overseas to the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/15/washington/15intel.html?_r=2&ref=washington&oref=slogin&oref=slogin -- LET THE WAR CRIME TRIBUNALS BEGIN. -- -- -- G. Waleed Kavalec ------------------------- "Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." — Martin Luther King Jr.
