Posted on 06/27/2004 9:07:32 PM PDT by FairOpinion
ASHINGTON, June 27 — Confusion about the legal limits of interrogation has begun to slow government efforts to obtain information from suspected terrorists, American intelligence officials said Sunday.
Doubts about whether interrogators can employ coercive methods, the officials said, could create problems at the start of a critical summer period when counterterrorism officials fear that Al Qaeda might attack the United States.
Interrogators are uncertain what rules are in effect and are worried that the legal safeguards that they had believed were in place to protect them from internal sanctions or criminal liability may no longer exist, the officials said.
Some intelligence officials involved in the C.I.A.'s interrogation program have told colleagues that they are bitter because their superiors, in the months after the September 2001 attacks, had assured them that aggressive interrogation techniques were necessary and legal.
Other intelligence officials have expressed a sense of resignation, saying they had a feeling that, from the early days in the war on terror, aggressive steps taken in an effort to protect the country from another attack would lead to criticism and internal investigations.
The uncertainty follows the Bush administration's decision to review and revise the legal basis on which interrogations of high-level Qaeda detainees have been conducted.
A Justice Department legal memo in August 2002 said the government had broad legal authority over detainees, approving tactics that stopped just short of a prisoner's death.
The memo said interrogators would use extreme interrogation methods without violating international treaties or federal law, which bars inhumane treatment.
Senior administration legal advisers announced last week that the legal memo, signed by Jay S. Bybee, head of the Office of Legal Counsel, had been disavowed. In repudiating the memo, they said it was too broad and created the false impression that the Bush administration condoned torture.
The C.I.A.'s interrogation program has been troubled.
A C.I.A. contractor has been indicted in North Carolina in the death of a detainee in Afghanistan. The Justice Department has been reviewing two other cases in Iraq in which C.I.A. personnel had contact with detainees who died.
C.I.A. personnel had become increasingly wary of the interrogation methods used in 2002 and 2003 against some detainees, including sleep and food deprivation and procedures in which detainees were led to believe that they might be shot, drowned or hanged.
The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the use of extreme measures had been halted while the government re-examined the law regarding how far interrogators could go in questioning terror subjects. A spokesman for the C.I.A. would not discuss the report, but other officials said that the status of a suspension was somewhat unclear and that the rules for interrogation were being reviewed but not necessarily rescinded.
Intelligence officials say the C.I.A.'s detention system was designed to handle only the most important Qaeda operatives captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Less important captives from the war in Afghanistan, as well as Iraqi prisoners, have been held by the American military.
With the approval of President Bush, the C.I.A. decided early in the war on terrorism to isolate top-level Qaeda detainees in remote and undisclosed locations outside the United States, keeping them far removed from the rules governing the American judicial system.
The agency also decided to segregate them from the larger numbers of low-level Afghan and foreign fighters sent to a detention facility at the Guantánamo Bay naval base in Cuba. The C.I.A. wanted complete control over the so-called high-valuedetainees; at Guantánamo, officials from several United States agencies had access to the low-level captives.
Abu Zubaydah, who managed Al Qaeda's recruiting system for its training camps in Afghanistan, was among the first Qaeda leaders to be captured, and his treatment in detention raised early concerns about the C.I.A.'s harsh tactics.
After his April 2002 capture in Pakistan, he was believed to have been taken to Thailand, where the local government had agreed to allow the C.I.A. to establish a secret interrogation facility for important prisoners. The tactics used on Mr. Zubaydah prompted concern among some F.B.I. agents who were aware of how the C.I.A. was treating him.
The Bybee memo was prepared after an internal government debate about the tactics used in Mr. Zubaydah's interrogation, and provided a legal basis for the use of coercive tactics used against other high-value detainees, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, believed to have been a planner of the Sept. 11 attacks.
We may lost the War against Terrorists -- along with losing many innocent lives, our innocent lives -- because liberals won the battle of protecting the terrorists over us.
Unintended consequences anyone?
Anybody know if Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was drugged prior to his capture?
"Unintended consequences anyone?"
The problem is that these are very much intended consequences. Only a fool couldn't see this would happen. The Democrats, while they are despicable, they are no fools. They are even willing to form an alliance with the terrorists, just to get back into power.
Like the children they are, they figure someone will clean up this mess before they might actually be in any danger.
Correct. And if we're hit again with another large terrorist attack, especially if that attack were the consequence of not being able to interrogate prisoners properly, you can bet the farm those same libs will be blaming the administration. It's a no-lose situation for them (except if they happen to be killed in the attack in question).
I saw O'Reilly interview some Federal prosecutor a couple weeks ago, and the piece of manure - the Fed, that is - actually said that under no circumstances should any prisoner associated with any terrorist organization be "coercively" interrogated for any reason. .....even if we knew without question that the prisoner possessed info that could save the lives of millions of American citizens.
That's the sort of sickness we're dealing with here.
Uncertainty About Interrogation Rules Seen as Slowing the Hunt for Information on Terrorists
It looks like the left-wing radical anti-american reporters and politicians have SUCCEEDED AGAIN!
It IS another vietnam with kerry / fonda / mccain at the helm of our enemy's propogandad machine!
Anyone who argues against this need look no further than the film archives of 9-11 and the recent beheadings by our subhuman adversary. In the end, I fully expect to see the day when I am forced to kill muslims on sight in my home town. Hell's coming.
What does that matter? IMO, he should receive mega-doses of LSD to calm him prior to any interrogation.
In spite of 9/11 commission BS of no Iraqi and AQ connections, there is the Iraqi from Prague who met with Atta and he was captured. Imagine the US change of opinion of the war effort if we had grilled this guy and he told the world, "YES, Iraq was involved with AQ to hit the Trade Towers..." Putting a hood on this guy naked with barking dogs salivating to rip his privates off doesn't seem to nasty then to America. We would have 200 million angry Americans shouting, "LET'S ROLL!"
Well, when the terrorist's finally get around to capturing people on our own soil and beheading them for primetime viewing, that these victims are from the Kerry/Kennedy Klan.
You're being generous. I don't think they were entirely unintended.
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