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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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July 16th,
2010 - Lawyer: Some CIA Interrogation Tactics not OK’d News article from the Associated
Press |
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Lawyer: Some CIA Interrogation
Tactics not OK’d By Pete Yost Associated Press July 16, 2010 Washington - One of the key
Bush administration lawyers in the evolution of the CIA's interrogation
program cast doubt on whether the Justice Department approved some of the
harsh steps the agency took to get terrorist suspects to talk. Former Assistant Attorney
General Jay Bybee's remarks were contained in a transcript sent to the
special prosecutor investigating CIA interrogations by House Judiciary
Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., who also made a copy public on
Thursday. Interviewed by Judiciary
Committee members on May 26, Bybee stressed the limits that he helped set on
how far the CIA could go while at the same time acknowledging that his legal
advice helped pave the way for tactics such as waterboarding, which evokes
the sensation of drowning. "I do wish to repeat
that we said on page 2 of the techniques memo ... that repetition will not be
substantial" on waterboarding, Bybee reminded the committee in quoting
from one of his own legal memoranda. The professed mastermind of
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, was
waterboarded 183 times. Terrorist suspect Abu Zubaydah was subjected to the
procedure at least 83 times. "We were not given any
number of sessions as a range by the CIA," Bybee told the committee. Now a federal appeals court
judge, Bybee said there is "ambiguity" as to whether 83 and 183
refer to the number of times water was poured on a detainee, the number of
sessions in which waterboarding was used or something else. What the Justice Department
lawyers advised was that if "there are substantial repetitions, we told
the CIA 'you don't have a legal opinion from us'" providing legal
protection for an interrogator's conduct, Bybee said. Bybee was the head of the
Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which has been criticized by
Bush administration critics as an enabler for abuse rather than a traffic cop
telling the CIA not to violate legal prohibitions on torture. Bybee's statements "are
highly relevant to the pending criminal investigation of detainee abuse, and
I have provided the committee's interview to the Justice Department,"
Conyers said in a statement. The committee's top
Republican, Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, said he appreciated Bybee's
"thorough effort to be truthful and forthcoming." Smith said the
Democrats' agenda was to criticize Bush administration policies "that
kept America safe." In response Thursday, CIA
spokesman George Little said: "Opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel
were the foundation for the CIAs past detention and interrogation practices.
That program, now over, has been - and continues to be - the subject of
extensive review by the Department of Justice, among others. As the attorney
general has said, the focus is to see if anyone involved in the program may
have gone beyond the legal guidance Justice provided." Last August, Attorney
General Eric Holder appointed federal prosecutor John Durham to look into
abuse allegations after the release of an internal CIA inspector general's
report that revealed agency interrogators once threatened to kill a 9/11
terror suspect's children and suggested another would be forced to watch his
mother be sexually assaulted. President Barack Obama has
said interrogators would not face charges if they followed legal guidelines.
However, the inspector general's report said some CIA interrogators went
beyond Bush administration restrictions that gave them wide latitude to use
severe tactics, including waterboarding. Three high-level suspects underwent
waterboarding scores of times. The American Civil Liberties
Union, whose Freedom of Information lawsuit helped make some of the
interrogation documents public, said the criminal investigation should be
expanded. "Judge Bybee's
testimony underscores what we've been saying for a long time: that the
Justice Department should be conducting an investigation that encompasses not
just low-level interrogators but senior government officials who authorized
torture," said Jameel Jaffer, ACLU deputy legal director. Bush administration
officials obtained legal advice on the CIA's interrogation tactics by
bringing lists of planned techniques, or assumptions, to Bybee's office for
analysis. Bybee was questioned on
whether his office gave specific authorization for reported practices such as
dousing detainees with water and repetitive noise or loud music to keep
prisoners awake. "So if these things
occurred, dousing with cold water, subjecting to loud music to keep people
from falling asleep, if that occurred, that means they were done without
specific OLC authorization?" Bybee was asked. "That's right,"
Bybee replied. "So the answer is
'yes?'" a questioner asked. "Those techniques were
not authorized," Bybee replied. Bybee subsequently modified
his statements. Under questioning about some
of the reported techniques, Bybee said "the assumptions on which we were
given this were not authorized specifically" by OLC. The transcript
shows that Bybee later proposed a change in his testimony to say that
"if the assumptions that we were given changed, they were not authorized
specifically" by OLC lawyers. Copyright © 2010 The
Associated Press. External link: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gPx7tig_XprhbP6YYJCux62a3siAD9GVQJIG0 Ex-Justice
official says limits on detainee questionings may have been exceeded By Jerry Markon & Peter Finn Washington Post July 16, 2010 The former top Justice
Department official whose office wrote memos blessing harsh interrogation
techniques for terrorism suspects told congressional investigators that CIA
interrogators might have exceeded the legal limits set by those memos. Jay S. Bybee, who headed the
department's Office of Legal Counsel, told investigators in May that he never
approved some interrogation techniques that detainees say were used against
them, including punching, kicking and dousings with cold water. Techniques
his office did approve, such as waterboarding, or simulated drowning of
terrorism suspects, were used excessively, Bybee said. A CIA report released last
year concluded that interrogators exceeded legal guidelines, but Bybee's
voice carries particular weight because he wrote two of the Bush-era memos.
His words, released by House Democrats, reignited the fierce political debate
over the interrogations and whether those who authorized and carried them out
should face criminal charges. Judiciary Committee Chairman
John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) sent to the Justice Department a transcript of
Bybee's interview with the committee, saying Bybee revealed that "many
brutal techniques reportedly used in CIA interrogations were not
authorized" by the department. Rep. Jerrold Nadler
(D-N.Y.), called on Justice to expand its inquiry of interrogation practices
by appointing a special counsel; the American Civil Liberties Union said the
probe should extend to senior Bush officials. But former and current CIA
officials rejected that interpretation of Bybee's testimony. They said Office
of Legal Counsel opinions, including his own, had provided legal backing for
questioning terrorism suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The question of whether
interrogators stepped outside legal boundaries lies at the heart of the
investigation into interrogation practices, one of the Bush administration's
most fraught legacies. In August, Attorney General
Eric H. Holder Jr. expanded the mandate of Assistant U.S. Attorney John H.
Durham to include the actions of CIA interrogators and contractors at
"black site" prisons. Durham had been appointed the year before to
investigate the destruction of videotapes of some of the interrogations; that
probe is also continuing. The release of Bybee's interview
comes as Durham's inquiry appears to be reaching a critical stage. Holder
said recently that Durham is close to finishing a preliminary review of
whether there is a basis for criminal action and that the prosecutor would
make recommendations to him within several months. "What I made clear was
that for those people who acted in conformity with Justice Department
opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel that said you could do certain
things … if people acted in good faith relying on Justice Department
guidelines, those are not people we are looking at," Holder said after a
June 17 speech at the University of the District of Columbia. "The question is
whether or not people went beyond even those pretty far-out OLC
opinions," Holder said, according to a video of his remarks. The Justice Department
declined to comment Thursday, as did Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge
in Nevada. A spokesman for Durham, Tom Carson, said only that the
investigation is ongoing. One lawyer familiar with the case said Durham has
been in "radio silence" in recent weeks. Sources have said the
Justice Department review of detainee abuse is focusing on a small number of
cases. They include the 2002 death of a young Afghan man who was beaten and
chained to a cold concrete floor without blankets at a secret CIA facility in
Afghanistan known as the Salt Pit. The review has generated
criticism from Republicans and from former CIA directors, who argued it will
inhibit intelligence operations and demoralize agency employees. Two teams of
Justice Department prosecutors in the Bush administration had decided against
a criminal inquiry. In his closed-door
testimony, Bybee suggested that the legal advice validating particular
interrogation techniques applied only to Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, the
al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Zubaida, whose March 2002 capture led to the
writing of the Aug. 1, 2002, memos. Abu Zubaida, who officials have said was
waterboarded, was the first "high-value" detainee in CIA custody. "Our memo was very,
very specific to them that there were certain conditions, certain factual
assumptions that CIA gave us, and that if they acted outside of those factual
assumptions, that we had not issued an opinion to them," Bybee told the
committee. Christopher Anders, senior
legislative counsel at the ACLU, said the testimony showed that subsequent
interrogations - including those of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-described
Sept. 11 mastermind - were illegal because the memos did not provide legal
protection, or a "golden shield,'' for interrogators. "They should
have been going back for an opinion with every detainee that they wanted to
interrogate, and because they didn't do that there is no 'golden shield,'"
Anders said. But John A. Rizzo, the CIA's
acting general counsel at the time, said the agency was told shortly after
the Aug. 1 memos were written that they could be used as legal backing to
question other suspects. "It was a relatively short time after we got
the memo that Justice advised us that if the same criteria and standards
applied, the techniques are applied in the same way, the conclusions would be
the same," Rizzo said. The committee, citing
testimony that detainees give to the International Committee for the Red
Cross, asked Bybee if his memos had sanctioned prolonged stress standing,
dousing detainees with cold water and "daily beatings," including
punching and kicking. Bybee said that his office was not asked about such
tactics and that the memos did not cover them. The committee also pressed
Bybee on whether the "substantial repetition" of waterboarding - 83
times in Abu Zubaida's case and 183 times for Mohammed - took it beyond
Justice Department legal opinions and made it illegal. "To the extent that the
CIA departed from what they told us, yes, then we have not issued an
opinion," Bybee said. © 2010 The Washington Post
Company External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/15/AR2010071504171.html
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