Docs: FBI, CIA Wrangled Over Detainees

Details of Interrogations Released As Part of FOIA Lawsuit Brought by ACLU

(CBS/AP)  Newly released documents show the FBI interviewed a naked, chained terror suspect back in 2002 as the bureau struggled with the CIA over how to treat high-value prisoners.

Details of the interrogation were contained in documents released late Friday as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union for details of U.S. treatment of terror detainees.

As the CIA began to use harsh interrogation techniques against captured terror suspects, the FBI became wary of the legality of the methods, which ranged from forced nudity to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. As a result, FBI agents were ordered not to participate in such harsh interrogations.

Yet sometime in late 2002, an FBI agent interviewed accused Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh at a CIA site. The agent later said he got valuable information out of Binalshibh before the CIA shut down the questioning.

According to one document, FBI officials told investigators when they arrived at the unidentified CIA site "the detainees were manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock."

The FBI agents worked with the CIA in developing questions, but were denied direct access to Binalshibh for four or five days, according to a report on detainee interrogations by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine.

The report says eventually one agent was allowed to speak to Binalshibh for about 45 minutes.

"Binalshibh was naked and chained to the floor," the report said. The FBI agent later said "he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the CIA quickly shut down the interview."

The report said FBI officials later had serious misgivings about their participation in the Binalshibh interrogation.

The incident "indicates that a 'bright line rule' against FBI participation or assistance to interrogations in which other investigators used non-FBI techniques was not fully established or followed" at the time of the interrogation, the report said.

Even the new release of documents still holds back many details. Still missing is a transcript of FBI Director Robert Mueller's interview with investigators examining the interrogation issues.

“The documents released today add to our knowledge about the origins, scope and consequences of the Bush administration’s torture program,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The documents are also a reminder, however, of gross human rights abuses that have yet to be investigated seriously by Congress or the Justice Department (DOJ). The last administration's decision to endorse torture undermined the United States' moral authority and compromised its security, but the failure of the country's current leadership to fully confront the abuses of the last administration is only compounding these harms.”

A censored version of the inspector general's report was released last year, but Friday's release disclosed a few more details about the Binalshibh case.

Binalshibh is one of five prisoners currently at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility facing a possible death sentence for allegedly taking part in the 2001 terror attack on the U.S.

Military doctors have diagnosed him with a psychiatric disorder and he has been treated with a drug for schizophrenia, according to court papers, but the exact nature of the apparent illness is unknown.

The government papers released Friday also reveal that after Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, FBI officials debated whether he should be read his Miranda warning of legal rights, but they ultimately decided he did not need such a warning because he was unlikely to be brought back to the United States to face criminal trial. He was ultimately tried by Iraq's new government and executed.

Since Barack Obama became president in January, many of the most closely held secrets about the CIA's treatment of detainees following the 2001 attacks have come to light.

One of Obama's first decisions as president was to order the CIA to close its network of secret overseas prisons.

He also prohibited harsh interrogations and required all U.S. personnel to adhere to the rules of the military's field manual.

The manual, last updated in September 2006, prohibits forcing detainees to be naked, threatening them with military dogs, exposing them to extreme heat or cold, conducting mock executions, depriving them of food, water, or medical care, and waterboarding, which Obama says is torture.

In August, Attorney General Eric Holder announced a criminal probe into abuse allegations of prisoners by CIA employees.

[searingtruth]

"If only we could once again stand as a nation and unequivocally proclaim that torture and murder is wrong."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[bzzpd]

Finkfust....actually it is suffocation. Water doesn't enter the lungs until the heart stops and the body relaxes letting the flap over the epiglottis open up to fill the lungs with water.Your body naturally closes this flap while you are alive, to keep foreign objects such as fluids and food out of your lungs.

When will all of you stand up for the babies that suffer a much crueler fate. They get their arms chopped off and legs. I haven't found a bleeding heart liberal interested in anything other than a cockroaches life.....a beetle....a tree....a flower.....etc....etc. .............................................
When are you going to take care of your kids......they have a body too. You just whack them off in amniotic fluid while they suffocate and can't scream out in agony to mask their identity as a human being.
They might be a real live baby if they scream.

[nextgenman09]

Yawn buzzy. Quit trying to control other people's bodies. We won't allow it.

[bzzpd]

Actually the whole Democratic party should be put into a tube filled with amniotic fluid. They should supply them an air line while they are naked.....and run a high pressure vacuum hose into the tube and dismember the whole party.......................................................................................................................................
The Democrats dispose of 1.2 million babies a year. They have systematically killed 100,000,000 million babies when you consider that they would have birthed a third generation of children since 1973. ..............................................................
But the Democrats would have you believe they care more about a terrorist and human life than the Republican Party. What a bunch of weasels. At least the baby didn't plot US citizens deaths before they were water boarded and dismembered. Once the umbilical cord is severed.....the fetus is being water boarded.....plus being dismembered to boot. But the Democratic Clowns try to make themselves into peace loving anti war hero's. They are at war with the entire infant population of the United States.They only give rights to liberals who can vote.....to hell with everyone else. Their deaths don't count.

[YouFail]

Democrats dispose of 1.2 million babies a year, eh?

Something like 31.1% of women who get abortions identify themselves as Catholic. Eighteen percent identify themselves as Born-again/Evangelical Christians. Baptists, Protestants and Lutherans account for 37.4%. Why don't you go ***** at religious people because they're aborting most of the babies in this country? See how ridiculous that logic sounds?

I'm a democrat, and I think abortion is immoral. Therefore, I'll never have one. But making them illegal won't stop them from happening any sooner than making drug use illegal has stopped crystal meth tweakers and crack heads from lighting up. It will however make the procedure much less safe for the mother.

In fact, of the estimated 46 million abortions occurring worldwide each year, about half take place in countries where the procedure is illegal.

You'll never be able to tell people what to do with their own bodies, no matter how much you'd like to. I don't know why I'm even trying to reason with you. You are obviously unreasonable.

[searingtruth]

"Our children suffered all we had proclaimed just."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[babooph]

Hung naked from the ceiling? Sounds like Bush crusified a semite?

[searingtruth]

"I writhed in anguish for years. Always knowing pain was coming, but never knowing what I should attempt to say next, or how I should appear so that my American torturers would believe me.

The problem was that I was innocent."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[boatdocster]

Agree. But to regain one's morale compass...

But before that day comes, Cheney needs to be stripped naked (ugh) and chained, then waterboarded about 116 times. I know, it's morally wrong but he does deserve it for all the people he tortured and murdered!

[searingtruth]

I understand your anger and frustration fellow patriot, but the only way to address injustice is with justice, despite all its requisite delays and rights and reexamination.

And then if guilt is confirmed to firmly apply just punishment.

And if Bush and Cheney and their minions are found guilty of subverting The Constitution of the United States of America, and committing treason, let them be imprisoned forever.

And if Obama and his minions are committing the same crimes, let them abide in adjucant cells.
ST


"Justice is simple. Beware of those who declare it is not."
SearingTruth

A Future of the Brave

[johnpatrick1]

The Bush years ....the years when AMERICAN NAZIIS RULED AND RUINED THE REPUBLIC AND DISGRACED AMERICAN IDEALS. I want to see the whole crew of American Fascists jailed from bush-the-worthless right on down to the dumbells "obeying orders." Hitler must be laughing in his grave at American Hypocrisy: "Naziis Bad. America Good!" RUBBISH!

[hermitdave]

So except for some valuable information on the correct way to herd goats in Afghanistan, just what secret stuff did the FBI and CIA get by chaining naked Muslim men to the floor? Some day we may all know what a super fraud the war on terror was. The innocent Muslim men who were used as evil worst of the worst FAKE enemy combatants were sold to the Americans by the CIA soldiers of fortune that makes up the phony enemy in this alleged war.

There is no real enemy and there never was. The criminals in the Cheney administration just elaborated on the old South American game that Ollie North and Ronnie Regan played. Have the CIA pay some right wing death squad guys to try and overthrow a government we didn't like. Or in the case of Allende in Chili just KILL him.

Now after several years innocent women and children are dying and being maimed with the stupid excuse that a world super power just has to use high tech drone aircraft with rockets to KILL the number 6,3,8,7, 2 TOP terror dude. Of course the number ONE fake terror dude Osama Bin Laden has been dead for years. Truth be known the real top terror dudes in all of this are Dick Cheney and Rummy.

[hungry1968-17]

"Binalshibh was naked and chained to the floor," the report said. The FBI agent later said "he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the CIA quickly shut down the interview."





The biggest question from this whole story: WHY did the CIA shut the interview down? What were they afraid of?

[ToolMangler1]

They didn't want to be shown up by people with morals..
(Compared to the CIA, the FBI are saints...)

[fss2009]

These sub-humans who participated in torture must now live with their crimes. These ignorant warmongering halfwits must now fear the wrath of any and all Gods, or proceed Godless to their graves. They are the cursed, the damned, the stupid. They know they committed unspeakable crimes.

[wyodutch]

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. - That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, - That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

[brianbwb-2009]

So, after the details about crimes against humanity, and war crimes, which most Americans already know occurred under the Bush Regime come to light, my question is who is going to be held responsible for it?

The chain of criminal command can be easily traced all the way up through the Bush administration, and even further up to those who pulled the Bush administration's puppet-strings, but after all is said and done, who in America is able to bring them to justice?

The GOP's "small government" agenda has put our country in the same position as Mexico, where the criminals are more powerful than the government, and the Democrats' passive acceptance of the right wing ideology has only aided the criminals.

So now it seems like the criminals are simply bragging, they allow the information to come to light because they really don't care, they are secure in the knowledge that Americans can do nothing about it.

[legacyABQ2]

Boy that's the truth brother

[bradkt1]

I gotta agree with you. Bush, Cheney and their neocon minions have profaned everything decent that the United States of America used to stand for. Thanks to them, we have become just another powerful country with no moral authority that operates according to the doctrine that "might makes right."

[ToolMangler1]

I mostly agree with that.