CIA Admits Waterboarding 3 Suspects
By LARA JAKES JORDAN,
AP
Posted: 2008-02-06 11:57:41
Filed Under: Law News, Politics News
WASHINGTON (Feb. 5) - Senate Democrats
demanded a criminal investigation
into waterboarding by government interrogators
Tuesday after the Bush administration
acknowledged for the first time that
the tactic was used on three terror suspects.
In congressional testimony Tuesday, CIA
Director Michael Hayden became the first
administration official to publicly acknowledge
the agency used waterboarding on detainees
following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. Waterboarding involves strapping
a person down and pouring water over
his cloth-covered face to create the sensation
of drowning.
“We used it against these three detainees
because of the circumstances at the time,”
Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“There was the belief that additional
catastrophic attacks against the homeland
were inevitable. And we had limited
knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings.
Those two realities have changed.”
Hayden said Khalid Sheik Mohammed,
Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.
Hayden banned the technique in 2006, but
National Intelligence Director Mike Mc-
Connell told senators during the same
hearing Tuesday that waterboarding remains
in the CIA arsenal - so long as it as
the specific consent of the president and legal
approval of the attorney general.
That prompted Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to
call on the Justice Department to open a
criminal inquiry into whether past use of
waterboarding violated any law. The Pentagon
has banned its employees from using
waterboarding to extract information from
detainees, and FBI Director Robert Mueller
said his investigators do not use coercive
tactics in interviewing terror suspects.
Durbin, already frustrated with Attorney
General Michael Mukasey’s refusal last
week to define waterboarding a form of torture
as critics have, said he would block the
nomination of the Justice Department’s
No. 2 official if the criminal inquiry isn’t
opened.
It was a particularly sharp threat by
Durbin, who represents Illinois - the same
state that U.S. District Judge Mark Filip of
Chicago, the deputy attorney general nominee,
calls home.
“In light of the Justice Department’s continued
non-responsiveness to Congress on
the issue of torture, including your disappointing
testimony on waterboarding last
week, I have reluctantly concluded that
placing a hold on Judge Filip’s nomination
is my only recourse for eliciting timely and
complete responses to important questions
on torture,” Durbin wrote in a letter to
Mukasey on Tuesday.
He added: “A Justice Department investigation
should explore whether waterboarding
was authorized and whether those who
authorized it violated the law.”
Justice Department spokesman Brian
Roehrkasse declined to comment except to
say that the department “is reviewing the
letter carefully.”
The delay in confirming Filip could leave
the Justice Department in leadership limbo
following a year of internal upheaval and
scandal, Mukasey, sworn in as attorney
general in November, has made rebuilding
the department a top priority for the final 11
months of the Bush administration.
2008-02-06 09:13:22
By LARA JAKES JORDAN,
AP
Posted: 2008-02-06 11:57:41
Filed Under: Law News, Politics News
WASHINGTON (Feb. 5) - Senate Democrats
demanded a criminal investigation
into waterboarding by government interrogators
Tuesday after the Bush administration
acknowledged for the first time that
the tactic was used on three terror suspects.
In congressional testimony Tuesday, CIA
Director Michael Hayden became the first
administration official to publicly acknowledge
the agency used waterboarding on detainees
following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist
attacks. Waterboarding involves strapping
a person down and pouring water over
his cloth-covered face to create the sensation
of drowning.
“We used it against these three detainees
because of the circumstances at the time,”
Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee.
“There was the belief that additional
catastrophic attacks against the homeland
were inevitable. And we had limited
knowledge about al-Qaida and its workings.
Those two realities have changed.”
Hayden said Khalid Sheik Mohammed,
Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
were waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.
Hayden banned the technique in 2006, but
National Intelligence Director Mike Mc-
Connell told senators during the same
hearing Tuesday that waterboarding remains
in the CIA arsenal - so long as it as
the specific consent of the president and legal
approval of the attorney general.
That prompted Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., to
call on the Justice Department to open a
criminal inquiry into whether past use of
waterboarding violated any law. The Pentagon
has banned its employees from using
waterboarding to extract information from
detainees, and FBI Director Robert Mueller
said his investigators do not use coercive
tactics in interviewing terror suspects.
Durbin, already frustrated with Attorney
General Michael Mukasey’s refusal last
week to define waterboarding a form of torture
as critics have, said he would block the
nomination of the Justice Department’s
No. 2 official if the criminal inquiry isn’t
opened.
It was a particularly sharp threat by
Durbin, who represents Illinois - the same
state that U.S. District Judge Mark Filip of
Chicago, the deputy attorney general nominee,
calls home.
“In light of the Justice Department’s continued
non-responsiveness to Congress on
the issue of torture, including your disappointing
testimony on waterboarding last
week, I have reluctantly concluded that
placing a hold on Judge Filip’s nomination
is my only recourse for eliciting timely and
complete responses to important questions
on torture,” Durbin wrote in a letter to
Mukasey on Tuesday.
He added: “A Justice Department investigation
should explore whether waterboarding
was authorized and whether those who
authorized it violated the law.”
Justice Department spokesman Brian
Roehrkasse declined to comment except to
say that the department “is reviewing the
letter carefully.”
The delay in confirming Filip could leave
the Justice Department in leadership limbo
following a year of internal upheaval and
scandal, Mukasey, sworn in as attorney
general in November, has made rebuilding
the department a top priority for the final 11
months of the Bush administration.
2008-02-06 09:13:22
I sure hope some of you pilgrims have asked yourselves, if these senators (they don't deserve a capital S) are so certain that waterboarding should be illegal, why don't they get off their collective dead asses, stand on their hind feet and pass a law making it illegal? They are the legislators -- they write the laws -- President Bush wouldn't veto it.... so why not pass a law --? 'Cause they know damn well even being the majority party, they haven't got the votes to pass the bill!
So instead they pose, scratch their butts and whine; "Everybody knows it should be illegal." Sounds like some spoiled brats to Ole Pecoz.
If you get a chance, why'nt you e-mail your Senator and ask the question and let me know what he/she says?
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