|
The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
|
June 11th,
2009 - ACLU Sues to Show White House Interrogation Link |
|
ACLU Sues to Show White
House Interrogation Link By Larry Neumeister Associated Press June 11, 2009 New York - The American
Civil Liberties Union sued the U.S. government Thursday to try to prove there
is a close link between the White House under President George W. Bush and a
program of rough interrogation techniques used against suspected terrorists. The ACLU said in the lawsuit
filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan that it wanted to force the public
release of all records on the subject issued by former President Bush, former
Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials. Defendants named in the
lawsuit were the CIA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice
and the Department of State. On Monday, CIA Director Leon
Panetta said in court papers responding to a related lawsuit that releasing
documents about the agency's terror interrogations would gravely damage
national security. A Justice Department probe
is under way to learn more about the CIA's destruction of 92 videotapes of
detainee interrogations that took place in 2002. Officials have said a dozen
of those tapes show so-called enhanced interrogation techniques, which
critics call torture. Yusill Scribner, a
spokeswoman for government lawyers in Manhattan, declined to comment. A
message for comment left with the Justice Department in Washington was not
immediately returned. The ACLU and other civil
rights groups in October 2003 brought a similar lawsuit seeking to use the
Freedom of Information Act to get records about the treatment of prisoners in
U.S. custody abroad. As a result, more than 100,000 pages of government
documents have been released. Jameel Jaffer, director of
the ACLU National Security Project, said the latest legal action was taken
after published reports suggested the White House had a direct role in the
efforts to change interrogation techniques after the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks. Jaffer said that when the
ACLU first sought documents related to detainee abuse in 2003, it suspected
that abuses carried out by the Defense Department and CIA might reflect a
broader pattern. "But we did not
consider the possibility that lawyers in the Justice Department and people at
the highest levels of the Bush administration were engaged in developing and
implementing a far-reaching and brutal torture program," he said.
"That is something that was a shock to us, just like it was a shock to
most other people." He said the lawsuits were an
effort to create a "complete public record of how the torture program
was developed and on whose authority." The Justice Department has
been studying the conduct of the lawyers who wrote legal memos authorizing
the CIA to take harsh measures to force terror suspect to talk, including
sleep deprivation and waterboarding - a form of simulated drowning. The memos were made public
earlier this year by the administration of President Barack Obama, prompting
some critics of the Bush administration to call for criminal prosecutions
against those who authorized the measures. Obama has said no CIA
officials will be prosecuted for following the legal advice they received. Copyright © 2009 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g_qpjE9xvlv0XsAdBeMP4ROkRmwgD98ON7Q80 |