Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Five years after it was written, and 15 months after the Bush administration released a heavily redacted version, the Obama administration has published a less censored version of the report by the CIA’s inspector general that reviewed the early interrogation of detainees. It will be some time still before all of the related documents are completely vetted by the media. But for now what is known is that the Bush administration carried out a disorganized program for interrogating, and torturing, suspected terrorists using “unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented” techniques. Some interrogators received only two weeks’ training.
The report revealed that interrogators threatened to kill the children of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed if another attack befell the United States. Other revelations included a detainee being lifted off the floor by his arms while they were bound behind his back with a belt, and a detainee’s neck being squeezed so hard he nearly passed out. The IG also determined that waterboarding was utilized in a manner that exceeded the authority permitted by Justice Department lawyers. Yet Attorney General John Ashcroft said that waterboarding a prisoner 119 times was “well within the scope of the DOJ opinion and the authority given to the CIA by that opinion.”
Former CIA Inspector General John Helgerson, who served from 2002 to early 2009 and supervised the report, told The Washington Post that the government should also have published the recommendations he and his staff offered to agency heads. “I am disappointed that the government did not release even a redacted version of the Recommendations, which described a number of corrective actions that needed to be taken.”
-Noel Brinkerhoff
CIA Report Calls Oversight Of Early Interrogations Poor (by Peter Finn, Joby Warrick and Julie Tate, Washington Post)
Inspector General’s Report (Central Intelligence Agency)
Former IG: Gov't Should Have Released Recommendations (Washington Post)
Latest Documents Released by DOJ (Washington Post)
Dig Through Interrogation Reports (Washington Post)
Key Documents in The Torture Archive National Security Archive)
Top CIA Officials Ordered Detainee Tortured Even Though He Cooperated (by Jason Leopold, Public Record)
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