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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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June 17th,
2009 - CIA Fights Full Release Of Detainee Report |
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CIA Fights
Full Release Of Detainee Report White House Urged to Maintain Secrecy By R. Jeffrey Smith & Joby Warrick Washington Post 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. External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/16/AR2009061603516.html |