Rice Admits She Led High-Level White House Talks About Torture
By Jason Leopold
The Public Record
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted for the first time that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 with other senior Bush administration officials about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists detained at military prisons to the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released late Wednesday by Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee.
Responding in writing to questions by Levin, who will convene a hearing today on the administration’s interrogation program, John B. Bellinger, Rice’s legal adviser at the State Department, said they recalled participating in meetings with Ashcroft and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in July 2002 about an Army and Air Force survival training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) meant to prepare U.S. soldiers for abuse they might suffer if captured by an outlaw regime.
Bellinger, who also worked with Rice at the NSC, the then National Security Adviser “expressed concern that the proposed CIA interrogation techniques comply with applicable U.S. law, including our international obligations” and that Rice asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to "personally review the legal guidance" of specific interrogation techniques.
In April, President George W. Bush told an ABC News reporter during an interview that he approved of meetings of a National Security Council's Principals Committee, whose advisers included Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, former CIA Director George Tenet and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, where these officials discussed specific interrogation techniques the CIA could use against detainees.
(Continued here.)
The Public Record
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has admitted for the first time that she led high-level discussions beginning in 2002 with other senior Bush administration officials about subjecting suspected al-Qaeda terrorists detained at military prisons to the harsh interrogation technique known as waterboarding, according to documents released late Wednesday by Carl Levin, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Armed Service Committee.
Responding in writing to questions by Levin, who will convene a hearing today on the administration’s interrogation program, John B. Bellinger, Rice’s legal adviser at the State Department, said they recalled participating in meetings with Ashcroft and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in July 2002 about an Army and Air Force survival training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) meant to prepare U.S. soldiers for abuse they might suffer if captured by an outlaw regime.
Bellinger, who also worked with Rice at the NSC, the then National Security Adviser “expressed concern that the proposed CIA interrogation techniques comply with applicable U.S. law, including our international obligations” and that Rice asked Attorney General John Ashcroft to "personally review the legal guidance" of specific interrogation techniques.
In April, President George W. Bush told an ABC News reporter during an interview that he approved of meetings of a National Security Council's Principals Committee, whose advisers included Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, former CIA Director George Tenet and former Attorney General John Ashcroft, where these officials discussed specific interrogation techniques the CIA could use against detainees.
(Continued here.)
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