Taylor wrote:
> <monkey_cartman1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
>
news:4029379f-f74c-4174-b34a-d28fcbdc1bc7@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> > ("Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not
> > judge this kindly.")
> > ------
> > http://www.abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/LawPolitics/story?id=4583256&page=1
> >
> >
> > Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation'
> >
> > Detailed Discussions Were Held About Techniques to Use on al Qaeda
> > Suspects
> > By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG, HOWARD L. ROSENBERG and ARIANE de VOGUE
> > April 9, 2008
> >
> > In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the
> > most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved
> > specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be
> > interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC
> > News.
> >
> > The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also
> > approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using
> > different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one
> > method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to
> > break, sources said.
> >
> > Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how
> > the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would
> > be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated
> > drowning, called waterboarding.
> >
> > The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation
> > techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the
> > interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number
> > of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
> >
> > The advisers were members of the National Security Council's
> > Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met
> > frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security
> > policy.
> >
> > At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney,
> > former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary
> > Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA
> > Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
> >
> >
> > he discussions and meetings occurred in an atmosphere of great concern
> > that another terror attack on the nation was imminent. Sources said
> > the extraordinary involvement of the senior advisers in the grim
> > details of exactly how individual interrogations would be conducted
> > showed how seriously officials took the al Qaeda threat.
> >
> > It started after the CIA captured top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah
> > in spring 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. When his safe house was raided
> > by Pakistani security forces along with FBI and CIA agents, Zubaydah
> > was shot three times during the gun battle.
> >
> > At a time when virtually all counterterrorist professionals viewed
> > another attack as imminent -- and with information on al Qaeda scarce
> > -- the detention of Zubaydah was seen as a potentially critical
> > breakthrough.
> >
> > Zubaydah was taken to the local hospital, where CIA agent John
> > Kiriakou, who helped coordinate Zubaydah's capture, was ordered to
> > remain at the wounded captive's side at all times. "I ripped up a
> > sheet and tied him to the bed," Kiriakou said.
> >
> > But after Zubaydah recovered from his wounds at a secret CIA prison in
> > Thailand, he was uncooperative.
> >
> > "I told him I had heard he was being a jerk," Kiriakou recalled. "I
> > said, 'These guys can make it easy on you or they can make it hard.'
> > It was after that he became defiant."
> >
> > The CIA wanted to use more aggressive -- and physical -- methods to
> > get information.
> >
> > The agency briefed high-level officials in the National Security
> > Council's Principals Committee, led by then-National Security Advisor
> > Rice and including then-Attorney General Ashcroft, which then signed
> > off on the plan, sources said. It is unclear whether anyone on the
> > committee objected to the CIA's plans for Zubaydah.
> >
> > The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects
> > subjected to waterboarding.
> >
> > After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable
> > information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik
> > Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-****bh.
> >
> > Mohammad was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA. At a hearing
> > before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on March 10, 2007, KSM,
> > as he is known, said he broke under the harsh interrogation.
> >
> > -----------
> > COURT: Were any statements you made as the result of any of the
> > treatment that you received during that time frame from 2003 to 2006?
> > Did you make those statements because of the treatment you receive
> > from these people?
> >
> > KSM: Statement for whom?
> >
> > COURT: To any of these interrogators.
> >
> > KSM: CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning, when they transferred me...
> >
> > -----------
> >
> > Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which
> > was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to
> > government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on
> > suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then
> > head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the
> > so-called "Golden ****eld" for CIA agents, who worried they would be
> > held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.
> >
> > Old hands in the intelligence community remembered vividly how past
> > covert operations, from the Vietnam War-era "Phoenix Program" of
> > assassinations of Viet Cong to the Iran-Contra arms sales of the 1980s
> > were painted as the work of a "rogue agency" out of control.
> >
> > But even after the "Golden ****eld" was in place, briefings and
> > meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations
> > continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents,
> > regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific
> > interrogation plans were legal.
> >
> > According to a former CIA official involved in the process, CIA
> > headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking
> > for authorization for specific techniques. Agents, worried about
> > overstepping their boundaries, would await guidance in particularly
> > complicated cases dealing with high-value detainees, two CIA sources
> > said.
> >
> > Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later ****ter Goss
> > along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney,
> > Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.
> >
> > "It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time,"
> > said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. "They'd
> > say, 'We've got so and so. This is the plan.'"
> >
> > Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present
> > approved.
> >
> > "These discussions weren't adding value," a source said. "Once you
> > make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude
> > it's legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it."
> >
> > Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He
> > agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics
> > and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that
> > senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details
> > of interrogations, sources said.
> >
> >
> > According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting:
> > "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not
> > judge this kindly."
> >
> > The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different
> > methods, pu****ng the limits of international law and even the Justice
> > Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC
> > News.
> >
> > At one meeting in the summer of 2003 -- attended by Vice President
> > Cheney, among others -- Tenet made an elaborate presentation for
> > approval to combine several different techniques during
> > interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a
> > highly placed administration source.
> >
> > A year later, amidst the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi
> > prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave
> > formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the
> > top al Qaeda suspects, leaked to the press. A new senior official in
> > the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo -- the
> > Golden ****eld -- that authorized the program.
> >
> > But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said
> > CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for
> > approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation
> > techniques."
> >
> > Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive.
> > Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the
> > program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say
> > she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."
>
> It's not torture.
Oh really, good lets hope it happens to mindless anti-American ****s
like you.
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