Behind the Debate, Controversial CIA Techniques
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post
President Bush's push this week for legislation that narrowly defines U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions is motivated by his aides' conviction that the CIA must continue using a small number of highly controversial interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, according to current and former U.S. officials. These methods include some that cause extreme discomfort and have been repudiated by other federal agencies.
The nature and legitimacy of these coercive techniques is the largely unpublicized subtext of the legislative dispute that has erupted between the administration and its opponents on Capitol Hill, including lawmakers from both parties who have said privately that they find some of the CIA's past interrogation methods abhorrent.
On the surface, Bush's proposal requires that interrogations in the previously secret CIA prison system comply with legal rules written by Congress last year. Privately, the administration has concluded that doing so would allow the CIA to keep using virtually all the interrogation methods it has employed for the past five years, the officials said.
That conclusion is based on an unpublicized memo to the CIA from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which named the precise interrogation methods the department believed to be sanctioned by last year's broadly written congressional requirement that no U.S. detainees "shall be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" as those terms are defined in U.S. laws.
(The rest of the article is here.)
Washington Post
President Bush's push this week for legislation that narrowly defines U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions is motivated by his aides' conviction that the CIA must continue using a small number of highly controversial interrogation techniques on suspected terrorists, according to current and former U.S. officials. These methods include some that cause extreme discomfort and have been repudiated by other federal agencies.
The nature and legitimacy of these coercive techniques is the largely unpublicized subtext of the legislative dispute that has erupted between the administration and its opponents on Capitol Hill, including lawmakers from both parties who have said privately that they find some of the CIA's past interrogation methods abhorrent.
On the surface, Bush's proposal requires that interrogations in the previously secret CIA prison system comply with legal rules written by Congress last year. Privately, the administration has concluded that doing so would allow the CIA to keep using virtually all the interrogation methods it has employed for the past five years, the officials said.
That conclusion is based on an unpublicized memo to the CIA from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which named the precise interrogation methods the department believed to be sanctioned by last year's broadly written congressional requirement that no U.S. detainees "shall be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" as those terms are defined in U.S. laws.
(The rest of the article is here.)
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