Harsh Methods Approved as Early as Summer 2002

According to a timeline, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice -- shown meeting with President George W. Bush, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales in September 2001 -- gave a key early approval, in July 2002, for the CIA to proceed with its proposed interrogation of a high-value terrorism suspect. (By J. Scott Applewhite -- Associated Press)

Holder Declassifies Timeline of Actions by Top Bush Administration Officials Regarding Interrogation

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, April 23, 2009

Condoleezza Rice, John D. Ashcroft and other top Bush administration officials approved as early as the summer of 2002 the CIA's use of harsh interrogation methods on detainees at secret prisons, including waterboarding, that new Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has described as illegal torture, according to a chronology prepared by the Senate intelligence committee and declassified by Holder.

At a time when the Justice Department is deciding whether former officials who set interrogation policy or formulated the legal justifications for it should be investigated for possible crimes, the new timeline lists at least a dozen members of the Bush administration who were present when the CIA's director or others explained exactly which questioning techniques were to be used and how those sessions proceeded.

Rice gave a key early green light, when, as President George W. Bush's national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA's then-director, George J. Tenet, and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaida," subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline. Abu Zubaida, the nom de guerre of Saudi-born Palestinian Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, was captured in Pakistan in March 2002. He was the first high-value detainee in CIA custody, and the agency believed the al-Qaeda associate was "withholding imminent threat information," according to the timeline.

(More here.)