Cheney Approved Harsh Interrogations

Reports: Senior Officials Kept President Bush In Dark Over Meetings On "Torture" Tactics

(CBS/AP)  Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.

The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that "there'd need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics" before using them on al Qaeda detainees, the former official said.

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. Attending the sessions were then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The White House, Justice and State departments and the CIA refused comment Thursday, as did a spokesman for Tenet. A message for Ashcroft was not immediately returned.

Democratic Sen. Edward M. Kennedy lambasted what he described as "yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture."

"Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?" Kennedy said in a statement. "Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration's renegade repudiation of the rule of law and fundamental human rights."

The American Civil Liberties Union called on Congress to investigate.

"With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House," ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said. "This is what we suspected all along."

The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al Qaeda detainees would undergo. The principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding. This technique involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.

The small group then asked the Justice Department to examine whether using the interrogation methods would break domestic or international laws.

"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a second former senior intelligence official. "People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."

The Office of Legal Counsel issued at least two opinions on interrogation methods.

In one, dated Aug. 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee defined torture as covering "only extreme acts" causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. A second, dated March 14, 2003, justified using harsh tactics on detainees held overseas so long as military interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.

In a column on the now-disgraced White House legal counsel who drafted the March 14 memo, CBS News legal analyst Andrew Cohen said the brilliance of the document was that it enabled the administration to "hold a duck in its hand and sell it to the rest of the government (at least temporarily) as a swan."

"When an attorney has bad facts, he argues the law; when he has bad law, he argues the facts. (Memo author John) Yoo had bad law but two really 'good' facts to offer: 1) the United States had been attacked by terrorists on September 11, 2001; 2) the attack had made the nation’s legal and political establishment willing (as it always is in times of war) to bend over backward in deference to a sitting president," Cohen said in his column.

Both legal opinions since have been withdrawn.

The second former senior intelligence official said rescinding the memos caused the CIA to seek even more detailed approvals for the interrogations.

The department issued another still-secret memo in October 2001 that, in part, sought to outline novel ways the military could be used domestically to defend the country in the face of an impending attack. The Justice Department so far has refused to release it, citing attorney-client privilege, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey declined to describe it Thursday at a Senate panel where Democrats characterized it as a "torture memo."

Not all of the principals who attended were fully comfortable with the White House meetings.

The ABC News report portrayed Ashcroft as troubled by the discussions, despite agreeing that the interrogations methods were legal.

"Why are we talking about this in the White House?" the network quoted Ashcroft as saying during one meeting. "History will not judge this kindly."

[gce65]

In case anyone else would care to join me and many others, including the National Lawyers Guild, in asking the U Cal Berkeley school of law (Boalt Hall) to remove John "Torture Memo" Yoo from its faculty, where he has been corrupting young minds teaching his version of constitutional law (!) for the last 3 or so years, please call or address your emails to the dean and associate deans at the addresses below. Thank you.

Christopher Edley, Jr.
Dean; Professor of Law
[e-mail]

Stephen McG. Bundy
Associate Dean
436 Boalt Hall North
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

Richard M. Buxbaum ''53
Associate Dean, Professor of International Law
888 Simon Hall
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
[e-mail]

Howard A. Shelanski
Associate Dean
Tel: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
334 Boalt Hall North
[e-mail]

Jonathon Simon
Associate Dean
510-643-5169
[e-mail]

Stephen Sugarman
Associate Dean
510-642-3856
327 Boalt Hall North
[e-mail]

Doug Feith, Rumsfeld''s "number two" (how fitting) at the Pentagram has also been teaching natl security policy at the school of foreign service at Georgetown. He''d be another good one to jettison over the side.

[eroosevelt08]

I can see why Mr. Powell resigned.

[ioweign]

Posted by libsrweak at 11:34 AM : Apr 12, 2008


feed him ice cream - you are on the right track...


Fort Hunt''s Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII
Interrogators Fought ''Battle of Wits''

By Petula Dvorak
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 6, 2007

For six decades, they held their silence.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

Back then, they and their commanders wrestled with the morality of bugging prisoners'' cells with listening devices. They felt bad about censoring letters. They took prisoners out for steak dinners to soften them up. They played games with them.

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler''s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria.

Several of the veterans, all men in their 80s and 90s, denounced the controversial techniques. And when the time came for them to accept honors from the Army''s Freedom Team Salute, one veteran refused, citing his opposition to the war in Iraq and procedures that have been used at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.

[hermitdave]

WELL VMC either way I am sure glad we were able to obtain vital high tech data on massive war plans of rag tag terror dudes. I worry that the German guy we released from 5 years at Club Gitmo might still have some vital information. LOL

[vmcneal2]

hermitDave... Remember it''s not torture, it''s "harsh interrogation" We Americans don''t like the word torture.

[hermitdave]

What I want to know in the high tech world of 2008, is just what important information critical to the safety of the United States we can torture out of Afghan cave dwellers, goat herders, and cab drivers. Of course I don''t believe 9/11 was worked out in a cave either.

[vmcneal2]

Libsrweak...You assume that I disagree with "harsh Interrogations"..I just want to call what it is.

When we do it it''s called harsh interragations when the other side does the same thing, it''s called something else.

[libsrweak]

Harsh Interrogations..why don''''t they just call it what it is?


Posted by vmcneal2 at 10:19 AM : Apr 12, 2008
+ report abuse

*****************


WELL HOW DO YOU THINK INTERRROGATIONS ARE SUPPOSE TO BE????????show us how naive you are...WHAT DO YOU PREFER?? feed him ice cream until he beg for us to stop?? or hey about tickle his feet to submission??
I know..you prefer that we do not interrogate at all TILL SOMETHING HAPPENS..

[aldee41]

The indictments of 2009 and subsequent trials will be an indelible part of the history of our once great nation and will offer an opportunity for us to find our way back to democracy and fair play.

[vmcneal2]

Harsh Interrogations..why don''t they just call it what it is?