Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

Report: Abusive tactics used to seek Iraq-al Qaida link

By Jonathan S. Landay | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Tuesday, April 21, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the interrogation issue said that Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld demanded that the interrogators find evidence of al Qaida-Iraq collaboration.

"There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used," the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue's sensitivity.

"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

It was during this period that CIA interrogators waterboarded two alleged top al Qaida detainees repeatedly — Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times in August 2002 and Khalid Sheik Muhammed 183 times in March 2003 — according to a newly released Justice Department document.

"There was constant pressure on the intelligence agencies and the interrogators to do whatever it took to get that information out of the detainees, especially the few high-value ones we had, and when people kept coming up empty, they were told by Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people to push harder," he continued.

"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."

Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said.

A former U.S. Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, told Army investigators in 2006 that interrogators at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility were under "pressure" to produce evidence of ties between al Qaida and Iraq.

"While we were there a large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al Qaida and Iraq and we were not successful in establishing a link between al Qaida and Iraq," Burney told staff of the Army Inspector General. "The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link . . . there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results."

Excerpts from Burney's interview appeared in a full, declassified report on a two-year investigation into detainee abuse released on Tuesday by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., called Burney's statement "very significant."

"I think it's obvious that the administration was scrambling then to try to find a connection, a link (between al Qaida and Iraq)," Levin said in a conference call with reporters. "They made out links where they didn't exist."

Levin recalled Cheney's assertions that a senior Iraqi intelligence officer had met Mohammad Atta, the leader of the 9/11 hijackers, in the Czech Republic capital of Prague just months before the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

The FBI and CIA found that no such meeting occurred.

A senior Guantanamo Bay interrogator, David Becker, told the committee that only "a couple of nebulous links" between al Qaida and Iraq were uncovered during interrogations of unidentified detainees, the report said.

Others in the interrogation operation "agreed there was pressure to produce intelligence, but did not recall pressure to identify links between Iraq and al Qaida," the report said.

The report, the executive summary of which was released in November, found that Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and other former senior Bush administration officials were responsible for the abusive interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo and in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rumsfeld approved extreme interrogation techniques for Guantanamo in December 2002. He withdrew his authorization the following month amid protests by senior military lawyers that some techniques could amount to torture, violating U.S. and international laws.

Military interrogators, however, continued employing some techniques in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.

Bush and his top lieutenants charged that Saddam was secretly pursuing nuclear, biological and chemical weapons in defiance of a United Nations ban, and had to be overthrown because he might provide them to al Qaida for an attack on the U.S. or its allies.

(John Walcott and Warren P. Strobel contributed to this article.)

---

More on this Story

PDF | Senate Armed Services: Inquiry into the treatment of Detainees, part 1
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/21/20/Detainees-main1.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | Senate Armed Services: Inquiry into the treatment of Detainees, part 2
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/21/20/detainees-main2.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | Aug. 1, 2002, Bybee memo to CIA regarding treatment of Abu Zubaydah
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAtorturememo-1.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | May 30, 2005, Bradbury memo to the CIA on whether interrogation techniques violate U.N. Convention Against Torture (Part 1)
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAmemo3-1.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | May 30, 2005, Bradbury memo to the CIA on whether interrogation techniques violate U.N. Convention against Torture (Part 2)
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAmemo3-2.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | Office of Legal Counsel's April 15, 2009, repudiation of previous memos regarding harsh interrogations
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLCops_withdrawal.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

On the Web | Update: 2006 Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence gathering
http://www.army.mil/institution/armypublicaffairs/pdf/fm2-22-3.pdf

On the Web | Archive of McClatchy's Iraq intelligence reporting
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/reports/intelligence/

On the Web | McClatchy's investigation of Guantanamo Bay detainees
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/

---

© Copyright 2009 The McClatchy Washington Bureau

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html [with comments]


==========


Bush-era interrogations: From waterboarding to forced nudity

By Margaret Talev and Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Thursday, April 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — The long-awaited release Thursday of four Bush-era memos lays out in clinical detail many of the controversial interrogation methods secretly authorized by the Bush administration — from waterboarding to trapping prisoners in boxes with insects — while former President George W. Bush was publicly condemning the use of torture.

The memos were made public by the Justice Department with assurances from President Barack Obama that the intelligence officials who followed their guidance won't be prosecuted. However, the president's assurances don't apply to the former administration officials who crafted the legal justification for the interrogation program.

The newly released memos offer the public the most unvarnished and explicit look yet at once-top secret efforts to psychologically break high-level terrorism suspects.

Despite the graphic description of the techniques, the memos at the time concluded that the tactics didn't constitute "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," even as Congress was moving to ban such treatment.

The memos reveal that by May 2005 various "enhanced" techniques were used on 28 detainees. Three high-level al Qaida operatives — Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al Rahim al Nashiri — were subject to waterboarding, a procedure that simulates drowning and is widely regarded as torture.

Obama said Thursday that the U.S. won't prosecute CIA officials who used the techniques and ordered the memos rescinded. The CIA interrogators, some of whom were contractors, weren't identified in the partially censored documents.

"This is a time for reflection, not retribution," Obama said. "In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution."

While civil-rights groups applauded Obama for releasing the memos, some expressed frustration with his promises of immunity for those who followed the memos' guidance — and predicted that it would amount to blanket cover for all former Bush administration officials.

Obama's exemption also appears to contradict a prime tenet of the Nuremberg prosecutions of former top Nazis after World War II. The Nuremberg Principle IV says: "The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

For years, the Bush administration had refused to release the memos that provided the legal underpinning for harsh interrogations, eavesdropping without warrants and secret prisons, citing national security, attorney-client privilege and the need to protect the government's deliberative process.

Critics of the Bush administration see the release of the documents as necessary to determine whether former administration officials should be held accountable for legal opinions that justified various measures, including the use of waterboarding.

Human-rights advocates differed Thursday on whether Obama's pledge meant that the architects of the interrogation program were in the clear.

"The Department of Justice appears to be offering a get-out-of-jail-free card to individuals who, by U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder's own estimation, were involved in acts of torture," said Larry Cox, Amnesty International's executive director.

However, Jameel Jaffer, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's national security project, said he thought the Obama administration left open the possibility of prosecutions.

"There's a remarkable amount of detail in the memos that makes clear that people at the very top of the Bush administration knew exactly what was going on," he said. "President Obama doesn't say anything about the architects of the program. To the extent that it offers anything like immunity, it offers immunity only to CIA interrogators who relied in good faith on legal advice."

CIA Director Leon Panetta told agency employees in a memo Thursday that despite Obama's assurances, "This is not the end of the road on these issues," and agency officials should expect more pressure from the Congress, the public and the courts to release more information.

At the same time, he said, it was important to understand the "context" of the memos, coming soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. In fact, a newly released Aug. 1, 2002, memo explains the level of concern about another attack, saying that CIA intelligence "indicates that there is a currently a level of 'chatter' equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks."

Panetta said: "The fact remains that CIA's detention and interrogation effort was authorized and approved by our government. For that reason, as I have continued to make clear, I will strongly oppose any effort to investigate or punish those who followed the guidance of the Department of Justice." Panetta also said the CIA would provide legal representation to any officers investigated for their actions.

The Obama administration was compelled to release the memos, one written in 2002 and three in 2005, to the American Civil Liberties Union under a federal court-imposed deadline in an open-records lawsuit filed by the group.

The Aug. 1, 2002, memo to the CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee, detailed 10 techniques that were approved for use on high-level al Qaida detainee Abu Zubaydah.

The techniques were: waterboarding; placement inside a confinement box with a nonlethal insect; cramped confinement; sleep deprivation; placement in stress positions; "wall standing," in which the detainee's fingertips would have to support his full body weight as he leaned into a wall; facial slapping; facial holds to keep the head immobile; "walling" or pushing his shoulder blades against a wall constructed in a way that makes loud noises; and the "attention grasp," in which an interrogator pulls the detainee toward him.

A newly released May 10, 2005, memo gave the green light for additional methods for other detainees, including substituting normal meals with bland or liquid diets and forcing detainees to stand nude for periods of time.

Another memo on the same day, written by then-OLC head Steven Bradbury, described "prototypical interrogation." These techniques could be authorized for up to a month at a time, during which a detainee is stripped, shackled and hooded with a collar attached to his neck. As soon as the detainee does anything "inconsistent" with the interrogators' instructions, the interrogators use an "insult slap or abdominal slap."

The techniques Bradbury approved included "walling," sleep deprivation, liquid diets and forced nudity except for an adult diaper. If medical personnel approved, repeated sessions could be initiated. Interrogators also were permitted to use a water hose to douse a detainee for several minutes.

In one memo, Bradbury signed off on a long list of limits on interrogation — including setting a maximum of 180 hours for sleep deprivation and allowing for no more than 12 minutes of waterboarding daily. Overall, no detainee could be waterboarded for more than a month.

Bradbury also discussed in detail the legal questions raised by using the various techniques.

"Our conclusion is straightforward with respect to all but two of the techniques . . . " Bradbury wrote, adding that the use of sleep deprivation and waterboarding "involve more substantial questions, with the waterboard presenting the most substantial question."

Bradbury noted that Congress' prohibitions, written to meet U.S. obligations under international law, referred to actions constituting torture must be "specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.

His memo went on to say, "drawing distinctions among gradations of pain is obviously not an easy task."

Basing his opinion partly on specialized military training, Bradbury urged "great caution" in the use of waterboarding and sleep deprivation, but concluded the methods as described by the CIA in specific instances didn't constitute torture.

---

More on this Story

Graphic | What is water-boarding?
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2007/11/01/17/106-20061025-waterboarding.large.prod_affiliate.91.jpg

PDF | Letter to CIA employees regarding release of the "torture memos"
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/15/talev-cia-torturememos.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | Aug. 1, 2002, Bybee memo to CIA regarding treatment of Abu Zubaydah
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAtorturememo-1.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | May 10, 2005, Bradbury memo to the CIA on legality of specific interrogation techniques
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/19/788-Taylor-OLC-torture-memo1.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | May 10, 2005, Bradbury memo on the use in combination of harsh interrogation techniques
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAmemo2.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | May 30, 2005, Bradbury memo to the CIA on whether interrogation techniques violate U.N. Convention Against Torture (Part 1)
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAmemo3-1.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | May 30, 2005, Bradbury memo to the CIA on whether interrogation techniques violate U.N. Convention against Torture (Part 2)
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLC-CIAmemo3-2.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | Office of Legal Counsel's April 15, 2009, repudiation of previous memos regarding harsh interrogations
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Taylor-OLCops_withdrawal.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | Memo from the Director of National Intelligence on the torture memos
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/18/Taylor-DNI-Torture-Memo.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

PDF | ACLU letter on the release of the torture memos
http://media.mcclatchydc.com/smedia/2009/04/16/16/Talev-aclu.source.prod_affiliate.91.pdf

On the Web | McClatchy's investigation of Guantanamo Bay detainees
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/

On the Web | Archive of McClatchy's Iraq intelligence reporting
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/reports/intelligence/

---

© Copyright 2009 The McClatchy Washington Bureau

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/whitehouse/story/66339.html [with comments]


==========


In waning days, Bush officials backpedaled on terror memos

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Monday, March 2, 2009

WASHINGTON — In the waning days of the Bush administration, the Justice Department renounced some of its own sweeping legal justifications, which were enacted after the 9/11 attacks, for spying on Americans and for harsh interrogations of terror suspects.

In a memo written five days before President Barack Obama took office, Steven Bradbury, the then-principal deputy assistant attorney general, warned that a series of opinions issued secretly by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose."

Bradbury said he wrote the 11-page document to confirm that "certain propositions" in memos issued by the Justice Department from 2001 to 2003 "do not reflect the current views of this office."

The memo, unusual for its critique of a current administration's legal opinions, was released by the Justice Department Monday along with eight other previously secret opinions. The disclosures came on the same day that the Obama administration confirmed that CIA officials had previously destroyed 92 tapes of terror suspects, a higher number than previously known. The tapes included interrogations that critics think constituted illegal torture.

In January, the American Civil Liberties Union urged the Obama administration to release dozens of secret Bush Justice Department memos. For years, the Bush administration refused to release them, citing national security, attorney-client privilege and the need to protect the government's deliberative process.

Critics see the release of the documents as necessary to determine whether former administration officials should be held accountable for legal opinions that justified various antiterrorism measures, including the use of waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning.

Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday that he planned to release as many of the Bush administration's OLC memos and opinions as possible "while still protecting national security information and ensuring robust internal executive branch debate and decision-making."

"Americans deserve a government that operates with transparency and openness," he said.

The memos and opinions released on Monday portray an administration scrambling to determine what it could and could not do in the name of the war on terror.

In the early days after the attacks, the Justice Department gave the president broad authority.

In an Oct. 23, 2001, memo, for example, Justice Department lawyers John Yoo and Robert Delahunty assert that the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and seizure couldn't be used to restrain domestic military operations.

Jameel Jaffer, the director of the ACLU's National Security Project, said the memo, which the ACLU had been seeking for years, was among the most revelatory of the batch of documents released on Monday. He surmised that it might've provided justification for Bush's warrantless surveillance program.

"It essentially says that war is a blank check for the president not only on foreign battlefields but also inside the United States," he said. "In some ways that memo also succinctly summarizes the administration's national security policies more generally."

However, Bradbury warns administration officials in an Oct. 6, 2008, follow-up memo that "caution should be exercised before relying in any respect" on the assertions.

Although Bradbury noted the "extraordinary — indeed, we hope, a unique — period in the history of the nation," he concluded that several legal arguments in the memo were "either incorrect or highly questionable" and "should not be treated as authoritative for any purpose."

John D. Hutson, dean and president of Franklin Pierce Law Center, said the Yoo memo gave "precious little analysis to even the slightest hint of limitations on the president's power."

"There must be some limits on what the president can do in his role as commander in chief, particularly on American soil," he said. "What if the suspect isn't a terrorist at all, but just some American walking to a mosque in Los Angeles to pray?"

In another newly released memo, the Justice Department concludes the president had the authority to transfer terrorism suspects to other countries despite concerns they could be tortured.

Experts said the March 13, 2002, memo by Jay S. Bybee, then assistant attorney general, likely provided the justification for the Bush administration's rendition of suspects to other countries.

(Margaret Talev and Tish Wells contributed to this article.)

© Copyright 2009 The McClatchy Washington Bureau

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/justice/story/63135.html [with comments]