A Tortured Debate - lawyers in the WH discussed terror interrogation

A Tortured Debate

Amid feuding and turf battles, lawyers in the White House discussed specific terror-interrogation techniques like 'water-boarding' and 'mock burials'




An injured detainee in Samara : U.S. soldiers said 'he tripped'


By Michael Hirsh, John Barry and Daniel Klaidman
Newsweek

June 21 issue - Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi was America's first big trophy in the war on terror: a senior Qaeda operative captured amid the fighting in Afghanistan. What is less known is that al-Libi, who ran Qaeda training camps, quickly became the subject of a bitter feud between the FBI and the CIA over how to interrogate terror suspects. At the time of al-Libi's capture on Nov. 11, 2001, the questioning of detainees was still the FBI's province. For years the bureau's "bin Laden team" had sought to win suspects over with a carrots-and-no-sticks approach: favors in exchange for cooperation. One terrorist, in return for talking, even wangled a heart transplant for his child.

With al-Libi, too, the initial approach was to read him his rights like any arrestee, one former member of the FBI team told NEWSWEEK. "He was basically cooperating with us." But this was post-9/11; President Bush had declared war on Al Qaeda, and in a series of covert directives, he had authorized the CIA to set up secret interrogation facilities and to use new, harsher methods. The CIA, says the FBI source, was "fighting with us tooth and nail."

The handling of al-Libi touched off a long-running battle over interrogation tactics inside the administration. It is a struggle that continued right up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April-and it extended into the White House, with Condoleezza Rice's National Security Council pitted against lawyers for the White House counsel and the vice president. Indeed, one reason the prison abuse scandal won't go away-two months after gruesome photos were published worldwide-is that a long paper trail of memos and directives from inside the administration has emerged, often leaked by those who disagreed with rougher means of questioning.

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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5197853/site/newsweek



At TalkingPointsMemo:

Always the VP, always the VP.
-- Josh Marshall

Big, big, big. And the only thing competing with it in the magazine is Nancy Reagan's story.

...house of "Memos" is about to fall...

Wow...this is incredible...there may actually be "memos" and conversations tieing the White House directly to issues around interrogation and torture all the way to 2001....

I think this is going to be a very good week and beginning of a long summer for Asscroft, Cheney, Dubya, Rummy and the rest of the Mofos in the White House and administration...

What I wonder about is this - if there was infighting between the FBI and CIA and the FBI was using the "Carrot" method, then who is leaking this info? A lot of DUers think its the CIA, but could it be the FBI?

you could become an accessory...

I'm glad for the little things that go drip, drip, drip, though!

Thomas Jefferson

:scared: :grr: :cry:

"water-boarding," or dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face, which can feel like drowning

threatening to bring in more-brutal interrogators from other nations

"mock burial," in which a ... captive would be led to believe he was going to be buried alive

physical roughing up;

sensory, food and sleep deprivation,

"water pit" in which detainees have to stand on tip-toe to keep from drowning

:kick:

:kick:

"It's still not clear whether these first decisions made in the war on terror eventually led to the abuses at Abu Ghraib."