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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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April 16th,
2009 - CIA Off The Hook For Past Waterboarding |
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CIA Off The Hook For Past
Waterboarding Obama Won't Prosecute CIA Officials Who Used Harsh Interrogation
Techniques During Bush Administration From CBS News April 16, 2009 Seeking to move beyond what
he calls a "a dark and painful chapter in our history," President
Barack Obama said Thursday that CIA officials who used harsh interrogation
tactics during the Bush administration will not be prosecuted. The government released four
memos in which Bush-era lawyers approved in often graphic detail tough
interrogation methods used against 28 terror suspects. The rough tactics
range from waterboarding - simulated drowning - to keeping suspects naked and
withholding solid food. Even as they exposed new
details of the interrogation program, Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder,
offered the first definitive assurance that those CIA officials are in the
clear, as long as their actions were in line with the legal advice at the
time. Mr. Obama said the nation
must protect the identity of CIA contractors and employees "as
vigilantly as they protect our security." "We have been through a
dark and painful chapter in our history," the president said. "But
at a time of great challenges and disturbing disunity, nothing will be gained
by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." Holder told the CIA that the
government would provide free legal representation to CIA employees in any
legal proceeding or congressional investigation related to the program and
would repay any financial judgment. "It would be unfair to
prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that
was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," Holder said. The CIA has acknowledged
using waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, on three high-level terror
detainees in 2002 and 2003, with the permission of the White House and the
Justice Department. In the months after 9/11,
three al Qaeda operatives - Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abd Al
Rahim Al Nashiri - were all waterboarded by the CIA, reports CBS News
correspondent Bob Orr. The memos claimed
waterboarding worked. Abu Zubaydah, for example, identified Mohammed or KSM
as the 9/11 mastermind, reports Orr and KSM in turn gave interrogators
details of potential plots including a plan to launch a second wave of
attacks. Former CIA Director Michael
Hayden said waterboarding has not been used since, but some human rights
groups have urged Mr. Obama to hold CIA employees accountable for what they,
and many Obama officials and others around the world, say was torture. Further, the statements
accompanied the Justice Department's release of four significant Bush-era
legal opinions governing - in graphic and extensive detail - the
interrogation of 14 high-value terror detainees using harsh techniques beyond
waterboarding, the officials said. One of the memos was produced by the
Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in August 2002, the other three
in 2005. The memos, released to meet
a court-approved deadline in a lawsuit against the government in New York by
the American Civil Liberties Union, detail the dozen harsh techniques
approved for use by CIA interrogators, the officials said. One memo also
specifically authorized a method for combining multiple techniques, a practice
human rights advocates argue crosses the line into torture even if any
individual methods does not. "It was carrot and
stick for the Justice Department toward Bush officials," said CBS News
legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "The good news for the architects of our
torture policies is that they DOJ apparently will not prosecute them. The bad
news for Bush officials is that the DOJ further embarrassed them by releasing
more appalling torture memos dating back to 2002." The Obama administration
last month released nine legal memos, and probably will release more as the
lawsuit proceeds. But the four released Thursday represent the fullest, and
now complete, accounting by the government of the methods authorized and
used, the officials said. Those include keeping
detainees naked for long periods, keeping them in a painful standing position
for long periods, and depriving them of solid food. Other tactics included
using a plastic neck collar to slam detainees into walls, keeping the
detainee's cell cold for long periods, and beating and kicking the detainee.
Sleep-deprivation, prolonged shackling, and threats to a detainee's family
were also used. The CIA also sought
permission to put suspects in a box and then fill the box with insects. Among the things not allowed
in the memos were allowing a prisoner's body temperature or caloric intake to
fall below a certain level, because either could cause permanent damage, said
senior administration officials. They discussed the memos on condition of
anonymity to more fully describe the president's decision-making process. The ACLU suit has sought to
use the Freedom of Information Act to shed light on the treatment of
prisoners - even though the Bush administration eventually abandoned many of
the legal conclusions and the Obama administration has gone further to
actively dismantle much of President George W. Bush's anti-terror program. Mr. Obama has ordered the
CIA's secret overseas prisons known as "black sites" closed and
ended so-called "extraordinary renditions" of terrorism suspects if
there is any reason to believe the third country would torture them. He has
also restricted CIA questioners to only those interrogation methods and
protocols approved for use by the U.S. military until a complete review of
the program is conducted. Also Thursday, Holder
formally revoked every legal opinion or memo issued during Bush's presidency
that justified interrogation programs. The documents have been the
subject of a long, fierce debate in and outside government over how much
officials should say. The Bush administration held
the view that the president had the authority to claim broad powers that
could not be checked by Congress or the courts in order to keep Americans
safe. Obama and Holder, among others, have said that the use of such
unchecked powers has actually made Americans less safe, by increasing
anti-U.S. sentiment, endangering American troops when captured and handing
terrorists a recruiting tool. "Enlisting our values
in the protection of our people makes us stronger and more secure," Mr.
Obama said in his statement. Even so, the officials
described the president's process of deciding how much to release in response
to the suit as very difficult. Over four weeks, there were intense debates involving
the president, Cabinet members, lower-level officials and even former
administration officials. Mr. Obama was concerned that
releasing the information could endanger ongoing operations, American
personnel or U.S. relationships with foreign intelligence services. CIA
officials, in particular, needed reassuring, the officials said. Former CIA Director Michael
Hayden said the Obama administration is endangering the country by releasing
the memos. Hayden told The Associated Press the release will give terrorists
a precise guide for what to expect in a CIA interrogation if those methods
are ever approved for use again. But in the end, the view of
the Justice Department prevailed, that the FOIA law required the release and
that the government would be forced to do so by the court if it didn't do so
itself, the officials said. In his statement, Mr. Obama
said he was reassured about the potential national security implications by
the fact that much of the information contained had already been widely publicized
- including some of it by Bush himself - and by the fact that the program
itself no longer exists. He said "exceptional
circumstances surround these memos and require their release" and does
not change his determination to keep other intelligence operations secret and
information about them classified. But, said Mr. Obama,
"Withholding these memos would only serve to deny facts that have been
in the public domain for some time. This could contribute to an inaccurate
accounting of the past, and fuel erroneous and inflammatory assumptions about
actions taken by the United States." Those assurances are not
likely to innoculate Obama against criticism from conservatives. Last month,
Vice President Dick Cheney said, for instance, that Obama's decisions to
revoke Bush-era terrorist detainee policies will "raise the risk to the
American people of another attack." © MMIX, CBS Interactive Inc.
All Rights Reserved. External link: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/16/politics/100days/main4950212.shtml |