House Panel Gets Earful On Waterboarding

In Spite Of Bickering In D.C., Experts Say Interrogation Method Is Torture, Must Never Be Used

(CBS/AP)  A hearing on torture opened today on Capitol Hill, and itself launched into a protest about one witness who was gagged by the Pentagon.

Lt. Col. V. Stuart Couch, a former Guantanamo Bay prosecutor and appellate judge of the Navy-Marine Corps Court of Criminal Appeals, was scheduled to appear before a House subcommittee today to testify about the use of waterboarding and the legality of torture and other interrogation techniques.

In a March 31 Wall Street Journal story, Couch had said he had refused to prosecute a suspected terrorist because he believed the evidence had been tainted by torture.

The Journal revealed today that the Pentagon gagged Couch, preventing him from appearing at today's hearing.

"I find it outrageous that the administration has again chosen to stonewall an investigation into some very serious charges," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said at today's hearing, "and the outrageous claim that torture - or whatever you want to call it - is legitimate and in our national interest.

"The issues before this subcommittee today could not be more serious," Nadler added. "And once again, when important questions need to be answered, we are told that no one has the right to question the administration.

"I am very tired of the secrecy and stonewalling by this administration."

Yet those who did appear before the subcommittee today left no doubt that the law is clear:

"Waterboarding is torture, period," Malcolm Wrightson Nance, a former Navy instructor of prisoner of war and terrorist hostage survival programs, said. "I believe that we must reject the use of the waterboard for prisoners and captives and cleanse this stain from our national honor."

The hearing comes as Senate leaders struggled to agree on the timing of a confirmation vote for attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey, who has refused to equate waterboarding with illegal torture, or to say that a president has no right to order its use.

The former retired judge is expected to win confirmation, but his nomination has sparked a bitter debate about the questionable legality of waterboarding and its authorization by the Bush administration on detainees.

The interrogation procedure, which makes the subject think he's drowning, is banned by domestic law and international treaties. It has reportedly been used by CIA interrogators on terrorism suspects, or by those to whom U.S. prisoners have been sent via rendition flights.

Mukasey's repeated refusal to testify that waterboarding is illegal torture cost him the votes of most Democrats on the Judiciary Committee, and there remains the threat of a filibuster when the vote comes to the full Senate.

He won the votes of two Democrats, Sens. Charles Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California, with an assurance that he would enforce any additional ban on the practice passed by Congress. Both houses are considering legislation to ban the procedure in all circumstances.

The debate shifted to the House Thursday, as the subcommittee, chaired by Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a Democrat, convened a hearing on how the procedure is carried out and whether it meets the legal definition of torture.

As a former master training specialist in survival programs, Nance said that he underwent waterboarding as part of his training and that he personally led or was involved in using the procedure on hundreds of other trainees at the Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School.

Nance described the experience as a "slow motion suffocation" that provides enough time for the subject to consider what's happening: "water overpowering your gag reflex, and then feel(ing) your throat open and allow pint after pint of water to involuntarily fill your lungs."

"The victim is drowning," Nance said in materials submitted with his testimony. The intent during training, he added, is to stop the process before death occurs.

Training sessions are where waterboarding belongs, not as part of efforts to gain intelligence information from foreign agents, said a second witness.

Such "coercive" interrogation techniques are not as effective as those that elicit cooperation, because false information is often elicited under harsher methods, said Col. Steven Kleinman, a senior intelligence officer and military interrogator for the U.S. Air Force Reserves.

"Tragically, many of these same tactics have migrated into the repertoire of interrogators seeking intelligence information," Kleinman said.

The costs of torture are beyond the physical or emotional pain caused to the subject, or to the damage to prosecution cases against suspects, where information obtained through torture must be thrown out. Nance testified that the United States has wholly failed in its ability to influence the hearts and minds of those in the Middle East because of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay, and the invasion of Iraq.

He said many in the Middle East believe what the United States is doing comes out of pure malice, and that it will take "decades of very hard work" to turn that image around.

Kleinman and Nance both said that the reasons such coercive techniques have been used is that those in charge of interrogations are overruled by those higher up who, they say, are wrongly influenced by media representations of torture, like the TV show "24," and ignore the body of evidence that shows torture does not work.

"Technically they're doing a form of what we jokingly call 'Tom Clancy procedures,'" Nance said. "'It works in the book, it must work in real life.'"

Their comments were followed up by the subcommittee's ranking member, Rep. Trent Franks, R-Ariz., who said he is against torture but that "sometimes we have to take measures to protect the innocent that we do not like.

"Severe interrogations are sometimes part of doing that," added Franks, who asked the panel if a ticking bomb scenario meant that such procedures could be legitimized.

Kleinman said such speculative questions only cloud the issue, and that coarser techniques only produce information that can't be trusted even if some of the information were valid. "I can't cherry pick" to determine if the subject was trustworthy, he said.

During the hearing, Kleinman was asked if a legal definition of torture was comparable to that of obscenity - you know it when you see it.

Kleinman said that if lawmakers were to witness the procedures enacted, "any discussion about the use of those methods would cease immediately."

[trueprophet]

Ron Paul is THE ONLY CANDIDATE for President who does not support secret offshore prisons like the one in Guantanamo, wherein our government tortures prisoners, who have no right to redress of grievance, or to Writ of Habeus Corpus. Ron Paul promises he will close these "illegal prisons" down. He wouldn''t necessarily just release the prisoners either. He said he would simply bring them to detainment facilities on U.S. soil where they would be entitled to an attorney, and to their day in Court--"American Justice." Significant others agree with Paul. "Essentially, we have shaken the belief that the world had in America''s justice system by keeping a place like Guantanamo open and creating things like a military commission," former U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell recently said.

[trueprophet]

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-- No more U.N. (one world government) participation
-- No more NAFTA, CAFTA, WTO or GATT
-- No more North American Union
-- No more federal gun control laws
-- No more illegal aliens pouring-in over our country''s borders
-- No more illegal aliens allowed to roam freely in our streets
-- No more federal Laws which are not authorized by The Constitution
-- No more federal erosion of State sovereignty
-- No more all-powerful federal government

They don''t call him "Dr. No" for no reason. The Doctor is in! Join us in this 21st Century political revolution at ronpaul2008.com

"Liberty, when it takes root, is a plant of rapid growth."
- George Washington

"Those who expect to reap the blessing of freedom must...undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
- Thomas Paine

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- Mahatma Gandhi

[grammawhamma]

As a rule...I read all comments before I post. But it is late and I''m tired. So I read only about 5 pages of comments. I find it ironic that so many of you that are screaming that this is brutal torture are the same posters that dream up and condone horrid torture methods for murderers, child abusers and pedophiles in other articles.

[radiob-2009]

Mukasey, another lapdog of Bush''s was confirmed as AG even though he would not answer if waterboarding was torture. Hmmm is this a "new" congress or is it the old with grandstanding for political clout? They caved on financing the war, caved on wiretapping, and now they have caved on the AG.

[brianbwb-2009]

Sorry, "vases" should be "cases", the coffee is good in Singapore.

[brianbwb-2009]

Passing a law regarding water boarding as torture is redundant, vases have already been tried and people have already been convicted over this. Passing a law simply gives Hitler Jr. an out, he will then say (after lying about it at first) that "we only did it before the law was passed.

All the "eye for an eye" war worshipers fail to note that a future government , or even this one, will use this against all opposition, not just "terrorists", or "enemy combatants", but anyone who opposes their agenda, someone who will lie to start an illegal action that results in the deaths of soldiers and innocent civilians will not hesitate to use such a tool on anyone posing a threat to their agenda.

This means you.

[kansas1946]

I have looked everywhere and cannot find an article or news story about Al Qaeda and company debating the Geneva Convention, treatment of prisoners,
**************************

The Geneva Conventions apply to countries, not fringe groups, and secondly, Al Qaeda are the bad guys. So what you are saying is whe should become just like a terrorist fringe group and be the bad guys. Then heck, why stop at water boarding. Let''s start peeling their skin off, lets fill them with water until their stomachs rupture, lets put a live wire up their ***. Why not sterilize their women so they can''t reproduce, or we could slice off their testicles. Hey, we could even perform medical experiments on them, so what, they aren''t human..they''re just Jews..ur..I mean Muslims. And forget guilt, representation, and habias corpus, if George Bush says they are a terrorist, they must be a terrorist. He would never lie.

[formrusmcsgt]

I highly doubt you think that Congress will doing anything with regard to the legality of torture. This issue was a useful political tool, nothing more.

Posted by curse914 at 10:24 PM : Nov 08, 2007

I disagree. I think Congress is eager to show the world that Bush is as lame a duck as ever was and that neoconism is becoming the fringe movement that it so richly deserves to be.

[formrusmcsgt]

"I find it outrageous that the administration has again chosen to stonewall an investigation into some very serious charges," Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., said at today''s hearing.

What''s new about that?

[donbl1]

Cursed, it just seemed a little melodramatic.

Lets see if Congress passes a law on waterboarding. The onus is now on them. The Democratic Senators voting for Mukasey said they were going to do it as it was needed.....

[donbl1]

Cursed..... "this is our ascendancy"

hmmmmmm

[donbl1]

Cursed, you been watching too much Stargate......

[donbl1]

We have had all Presidents since Truman fail to get a peace. Some even won Nobels....... just goes to show what a politician can pull off.

If Rice "really" pulls it off (lasting peace), it would be unbelievable given all the others'' failures.

[iceman_1960]

"Ice, the ones I have met are pretty focused on an infinite war. Their country has been at war from inception with no end in sight.

Ice, also, Israel is not too focused on human rights......... Mossad likes their reputation as it helps them break people quickly often without much effort."
- Posts by donbl1 at 09:22 PM and 09:23 PM : Nov 08, 2007

That was before Condi Rice really started taking charge.

Now that Israel and the Palestinians are on her front burner, I expect that war will be over and a just and lasting peace established in the next few months.

They don"t call her "Minute Rice" for nothing.

[donbl1]

Ice, also, Israel is not too focused on human rights......... Mossad likes their reputation as it helps them break people quickly often without much effort.

[donbl1]

Ice, the ones I have met are pretty focused on an infinite war. Their country has been at war from inception with no end in sight.

[iceman_1960]

RE: Post by donbl1 at 09:12 PM : Nov 08, 2007

I"d say the Israelis are about as progressive as 7 million people could be, who are surrounded by a billion people, many of whom who would like to see them driven into the sea.

[iceman_1960]

Joel Surnow"s co-creator of "24" was Robert Cochran, presumably an Irish Catholic.

The idea that all Catholics are warlike and militaristic must be something Surnow got from watching a television show. Maybe "Fighting Father Duffy" - some old movie like that.

It isn"t true in real life.

[donbl1]

Ice, "because he prefers Catholics" supposedly more warlike and militaristic attitudes to the progressive traditions of Judaism:"

Are we talking all Jews or American Jews? Certainly not Israeli Jews......

[iceman_1960]

"Right Wing Neocon Chickenhawk propagandist Joel Surnow, a self-admitted Rush Limbaugh wannabe..."

This has absolutely nothing to do with his being Jewish, since he is a turncoat and has moved into Catholic circles, because he prefers Catholics" supposedly more warlike and militaristic attitudes to the progressive traditions of Judaism:

"Surnow%u2019s parents were F.D.R. Democrats. He recalled, "It was just assumed, especially in the Jewish community" - to which his family belonged. "But when you grow up you start to challenge your parents" assumptions [but never Rush Limbaugh"s]..." His wife, who used to work in film development, is Catholic; they have three daughters, whom they send to Catholic schools. He likes to bring his girls to the set and rushes home for his wife%u2019s pork-chop dinners. "I got to know who I was and who I wasn%u2019t," he said. "I wasn"t the perfect Jewish kid who is married, with a Jewish family." Instead, he said, "I decided I like Catholics. They"re so grounded. I sort of reoriented myself."

[Page 6 of the source previously posted]