Interrogation Broke UN Pact, CIA Report Warned

Interrogation broke UN pact, CIA report warned

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/...html?gusrc=rss

· 2004 internal document embarrasses
· White House 'Drowning' technique singled out as key concern

Julian Borger in Washington
Thursday November 10, 2005
The Guardian

The CIA's inspector general warned last year that interrogation procedures approved by the Bush administration could violate the UN convention against torture, it emerged yesterday.

The leaking of the inspector general's classified report represented an embarrassment for President George Bush, only a few days after he emphatically declared: "We do not torture." It also comes at a sensitive time when the vice-president, Dick Cheney, is lobbying to have the CIA exempted from legislation establishing stricter interrogation rules.

According to the New York Times, the 2004 report by the inspector general at the time, John Helgerson, expressed particular concern over an approved technique known as "waterboarding", which involves strapping a detainee to a board and submerging him until he believes he is drowning. Reports suggest the method was used on some top al-Qaida prisoners, such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the masterminds of the September 11 attacks, who is being detained in a secret location outside the US.
The CIA is also reported to be using secret detention cells in east Europe, possibly Poland and Romania, to carry out interrogations beyond the reach of US law. Senior Republicans have called for a congressional inquiry into the leaks that formed the basis of those reports. The CIA took steps to launch a criminal inquiry.

CIA officials made no comment on Mr Helgerson's report, but former CIA officials say most agents are unhappy about the blurred rules and doubt that harsh techniques are productive. "Americans do not join the CIA to commit torture," Jeffrey Smith, a former agency legal adviser, wrote in the Washington Post yesterday.

The UN convention bans torture, defined as the infliction of "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering, and "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. After the 2001 al-Qaida attacks, however, the justice department narrowed the definition of torture to the infliction of pain comparable to "organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death". Anything short of that standard was potentially permissible.

The administration disowned that recommendation after it became public last year in the wake of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. However, the interrogation guidelines have remained a grey area. A new Pentagon directive stipulates that "acts of physical or mental torture are prohibited", but its only specific prohibition is on using dogs to intimidate detainees.

A new law sponsored by Senator John McCain - a former Republican presidential candidate and a war hero who was tortured in Vietnam - would ban inhumane treatment and oblige all US agencies to abide by international law on torture. The draft law was approved by 90 votes to nine in the Senate earlier this month, but the House of Representatives has yet to give its support and Mr Cheney has launched an aggressive effort to modify the legislation to allow the CIA to be exempted.

Negotiations are under way to resolve the impasse, after the White House threatened that Mr Bush would make his first use of the presidential veto if the McCain draft law remained unchanged.