White House Defends Interrogation Method
By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer February 6, 2008
The White House on Wednesday defended the use of the
interrogation technique known as waterboarding, saying it is legal – not torture
as critics argue – and has saved American lives. President Bush could authorize
waterboarding for future terrorism suspects if certain criteria are met, a
spokesman said.
A day earlier, the Bush administration acknowledged publicly
for the first time that the tactic was used by U.S. government questioners on
three terror suspects. Testifying before Congress, CIA Director Michael Hayden
said Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri were
waterboarded in 2002 and 2003.
Waterboarding involves strapping a suspect down and pouring
water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. It has
been traced back hundreds of years, to the Spanish Inquisition, and is condemned
by nations around the world.
Hayden banned the technique in 2006 for CIA interrogations,
the Pentagon has banned its employees from using it, and FBI Director Robert
Mueller said his investigators do not use coercive tactics in interviewing
terror suspects.
Senate Democrats demanded a criminal investigation after
Hayden’s revelation.
Bush personally authorized Hayden’s testimony, White House
deputy spokesman Tony Fratto said.
“There’s been a lot written out there – newspaper, magazine
articles, some of it misinformation,” Fratto said. “And so the consensus was
that on this one particular technique that these officials would have the
opportunity to address them – in not just a public setting, but in a setting in
front of members of Congress, and to be very clear about how those techniques
were used and what the benefits were of them.”
Fratto said CIA interrogators could use waterboarding again,
but would need the president’s approval to do so. That approval would “depend on
the circumstances,” with one important factor being “belief that an attack might
be imminent,” Fratto said. Appopriate members of Congress would be notified in
such a case, he said.
“The president will listen to the considered judgment of the
professionals in the intelligence community and the judgment of the attorney
general in terms of the legal consequences of employing a particular technique,”
he said. “The president will listen to his advisers and make a
determination.”
Fratto said waterboarding’s use in the past was also
approved by the attorney general, meaning it was legal and not
torture.
Officials fear calling waterboarding torture or illegal
could expose government employees to criminal or civil charges or even
international war crimes charges.
“Every enhanced technique that has been used by the Central
Intelligence Agency for this program was brought to the Department of Justice
and they made a determination that its use under specific circumstances and with
safeguards was lawful,” Fratto said.
Critics say waterboarding has been outlawed under the U.N.’s
Convention Against Torture, which prohibits treatment resulting in long-term
physical or mental damage. They also say it should be recognized as banned under
the U.S. 2006 Military Commissions Act, which prohibits treatment of terror
suspects that is described as “cruel, inhuman and degrading.” The act, however,
does not explicitly prohibit waterboarding by name.
Human Rights Watch, which has been calling on the government
to outlaw waterboarding as a form of illegal torture, called Hayden’s testimony
“an explicit admission of criminal
activity.”