US:Controversy could affect Senate confirmation of AG nominee, writes Denis Stauntonin Washington
Yesterday's report that the Bush administration's justice department secretly authorised the use of painful interrogation techniques has reignited a bitter debate in Washington about the use of torture against suspected terrorists, and angered congressmen who had been kept in the dark about the secret memos.
The controversy over the 2005 legal opinions, which the New York Times reported yesterday are still in force, could have repercussions during the senate confirmation hearings for Michael Mukasey, president Bush's nominee to succeed Alberto Gonzales as attorney general.
More immediately, however, the report highlights the determination of Mr Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney to allow the CIA to use harsh interrogation techniques on detainees, despite efforts by the courts and Congress to ban cruel and inhuman treatment in all circumstances.
"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," the New York Times said.
The CIA had little experience of interrogating prisoners and took advice from the notorious intelligence services of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, as well as copying Soviet interrogation methods. According to one official quoted in yesterday's report, interrogators used "enhanced techniques" on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks, more than 100 times over a two-week period.
Although some intelligence officers feared that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was telling outlandish stories simply to stop the rough treatment he was receiving, Paul Kelbaugh, a former deputy legal counsel at the CIA's Counterterrorist Centre, claimed that the interrogations were fruitful.
Mr Kelbaugh said, however, that some interrogators became nervous that the techniques they were using may have been illegal.
"We leaned in pretty hard on KSM. We were getting good information, and then they were told: 'Slow it down. It may not be correct. Wait for some legal clarification'," he said.
According to yesterday's report, CIA interrogators were especially anxious about the legality of combining harsh methods which were individually approved but might have too harsh a cumulative impact. Mr Kelbaugh recalled officers asking: "These approved techniques, say, withholding food, and 50-degree temperature - can they be combined?" Or "Do I have to do the less extreme before the more extreme?"
In December 2005 Congress passed the Detainee Treatment Act, which bans "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment" of prisoners in US custody and six months later, the supreme court declared that, contrary to what Mr Bush claimed after 9/11, the Geneva Conventions apply to all detainees.
What Democrats in Congress now want to know is if the secret memos revealed yesterday have effectively exempted the CIA from these restrictions.
US allies throughout the world, particularly in Europe, will want more information from the administration about the revival of the CIA's secret prisons overseas. Mr Bush said last year that all detainees had been transferred from the secret prisons, believed to have been in Afghanistan, Thailand and EU member-states Poland and Romania, to Guantánamo Bay.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino yesterday declined to confirm or deny that the overseas prisons, known as "black sites" were again in operation.
"I'm not going to comment on that. If the CIA decides to comment, I'll let them. What I can tell is that any procedures that they use are tough, safe, necessary, and lawful," she said.