And Rummy signed off on 15 torture techniques c. three months later. (See the NYTimes piece below.)
MCM Rice gave early approval for CIA waterboarding, Senate report reveals * Go-ahead in July 2002 is first known official approval * Finding suggests greater Rice role than she admitted <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/ewenmacaskill>Ewen MacAskill in Washington, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/stephenbates>Stephen Bates and agencies <http://www.guardian.co.uk/>guardian.co.uk, Thursday 23 April 2009 12.27 BST <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/23/condoleezza-rice-cia-waterboarding#history-byline>Article history Condoleezza Rice: gave the first known official approval of waterboarding, Senate report claims. Photograph: Stefan Zaklin/EPA http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/23/condoleezza-rice-cia-waterboarding Condoleezza Rice gave permission for the CIA to use waterboarding techniques on the alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah as early as July 2002, the first known official approval for the technique, according to a report released by the Senate intelligence committee yesterday. The revelation indicates that Rice, who at the time was national security adviser and went on to be secretary of state, played a greater role than she admitted in written testimony last autumn. The committee's <http://armed-services.senate.gov/Publications/Detainee%20Report%20Final_April%2022%202009.pdf>narrative report (pdf) also shows that dissenting legal views about the interrogation methods were brushed aside repeatedly. The mood within the Bush administration at the time is caught in a handwritten note attached to a December 2002 memo from Donald Rumsfeld, the then defence secretary, on the use of stress positions. "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" he asked. The intelligence committee's timeline comes a day after the Senate armed services committee <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/22/torture-bush-administration-senate-report>released an exhaustive report detailing direct links between the harsh interrogation programme of the CIA and abuses of prisoners at the US prison at <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/guantanamo-bay>Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, in Afghanistan and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison. The latest report, which compiles legal advice provided by the Bush administration to the CIA, indicates that Rice personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding Zubaydah to the then CIA director, George Tenet, in July 2002. Last autumn, Rice acknowledged to the armed services committee only that she had attended meetings where the CIA interrogation request was discussed. She said she did not recall details. Within days, the justice department secretly approved the use of waterboarding. Zubaydah underwent waterboarding at least 83 times in August 2002. In the years that followed, according to yesterday's report, there were numerous internal legal reviews, suggesting government lawyers were concerned that methods such as waterboarding might violate federal laws against <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/torture>torture and the US constitution. Bush administration lawyers continued to validate the programme, but the CIA voluntarily dropped the use of waterboarding after 2005. The 232-page armed services committee report, the most detailed investigation yet into the background of torture, undercut the claim of the then deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, that the abuse of prisoners in Iraq was the work of "a few bad apples". Its release yesterday added to the debate raging within the US after President Barack Obama, who regards the techniques as torture,<http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/21/obama-prosecution-torture-memos-bush-administration>opened the way for possible prosecution of members of the Bush administration. Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the committee, said: "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots." The report shows a paper trail going from Rumsfeld to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq. The report says: "The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples" acting on their own. The fact is that senior officials in the <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/usa>United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorised their use against detainees." The report, the result of an 18-month inquiry, revealed that the administration rejected advice from various branches of the armed services against using more aggressive techniques. The military questioned the morality and the reliability of information gained. The report condemned the techniques adopted, saying: "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority." The report disclosed that waterboarding and other techniques used were based on a faulty premise. The methods were lifted from a military programme known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, but the armed forces pointed out this was intended to train troops in resisting torture during the Korean war, rather than establishing whether these were useful interrogation methods. A <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22detain.html>New York Times report says that, even then, it was appreciated that the techniques induced false confessions from the American personnel on which it was tried. The paper adds that the US prosecuted torturers who employed waterboarding in war crimes trials following the second world war and that it was a technique known to have been used by despots including Pol Pot in Cambodia. The New York Times says administration officials briefed by Tenet were not aware that the former military psychologist who played a central role in persuading the CIA to use waterboarding had never conducted a real interrogation and that the justice department lawyer most responsible for declaring the method legal had "idiosyncratic ideas" that the department would later renounce. Bush administration memos <http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/16/torture-memos-bush-administration>released by Obama last week were confined to interrogations at Guantánamo and CIA secret prisons around the world, but the Senate report goes wider, including prisons run by the US military in Iraq and Afghanistan. ========================= Report Gives New Detail on Approval of Brutal Techniques By <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/brian_knowlton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>BRIAN KNOWLTON http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/us/politics/22report.html?_r=1&hp WASHINGTON - A newly declassified Congressional report released Tuesday outlined the most detailed evidence yet that the military's use of harsh <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/cia_interrogations/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>interrogation methods on terrorism suspects was approved at high levels of the Bush administration. The report focused solely on interrogations carried out by the military, not those conducted by the <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>Central Intelligence Agency at its secret prisons overseas. It rejected claims by former Defense Secretary <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/donald_h_rumsfeld/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Donald H. Rumsfeld and others that Pentagon policies played no role in harsh treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq or other military facilities. The 232-page report, the product of an 18-month inquiry, was approved on Nov. 20 by the Senate Armed Services Committee, but has since been under Pentagon review for declassification. Some of the findings were made public in a <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/washington/12detainee.html>Dec. 12 article in The New York Times; a spokesman for Mr. Rumsfeld dismissed the report at the time as "unfounded allegations against those who have served our nation." The Senate report documented how some of the techniques used by the military at prisons in Afghanistan and at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as well as in Iraq - stripping detainees, placing them in "stress positions" or depriving them of sleep - originated in a military program known as Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape, or SERE, intended to train American troops to resist abusive enemy interrogations. According to the Senate investigation, a military behavioral scientist and a colleague who had witnessed SERE training proposed its use at Guantánamo in October 2002, as pressure was rising "to get 'tougher' with detainee interrogations." Officers there sought authorization, and Mr. Rumsfeld approved 15 interrogation techniques. The report showed that Mr. Rumsfeld's authorization was cited by a United States military special-operations lawyer in Afghanistan as "an analogy and basis for use of these techniques," and that, in February 2003, a special-operations unit in Iraq obtained a copy of the policy from Afghanistan "that included aggressive techniques, changed the letterhead, and adopted the policy verbatim." Months later, the report said, the interrogation officer in charge at Abu Ghraib obtained a copy of that policy "and submitted it, virtually unchanged, through her chain of command." This ultimately led to authorization by Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez of the use of stress positions, "sleep management" and military dogs to exploit detainees' fears, the report said. "The paper trail on abuse leads to top civilian leaders, and our report connects the dots," Senator <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/carl_levin/index.html?inline=nyt-per>Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said on Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. "This report, in great detail, shows a paper trail going from that authorization" by Mr. Rumsfeld "to Guantánamo to Afghanistan and to Iraq," Mr. Levin said. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to Mark Crispin Miller's "News From Underground" newsgroup. To unsubscribe, send a blank email to newsfromunderground-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com OR go to http://groups.google.com/group/newsfromunderground and click on the "Unsubscribe or change membership" link in the yellow bar at the top of the page, then click the "Unsubscribe" button on the next page. 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