Hydrablog

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/30/new-details-on-interrogations/
The Cacus: The Politics and Governmanet Blog of the New York Times
New York Times Blogs
October 30, 2009, 8:56 pm
[accessed 10/31/09 7:58 AM]
New Details on Interrogations
By Scott Shane and Charlie Savage [Obama white house] [residual from Bush white house] [bureaucracy] [from bureaucracy to NSC level] [IC] [ODNI, DNI, other pillars of intelligence-gathering and analysis bureaucracy] [IRPTA’s provisions after it became law in Dec 2004] [the substantial changes that have occurred in the FBI, in particular, since IRTPA] [FBI’s interrogation process verus other parts of IC] [use psci355] [*]
F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “how close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw,”’ according to hundreds of pages of partially declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department. [it became clear sometime ago, when Bush was still in, that FBI split with CIA and others over interrogations] [this is just some more detail] [*]
The documents also include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, [that was in Senate Armed Service Committee report from 2009][*] but it says Justice officials declined to prosecute the case.
The documents were released in the latest response to several Freedom of Information Act lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Judicial Watch, [*]a Washington advocacy organization. Some are new versions of documents previously released.
Newly disclosed passages from a 2008 report by the Justice Department inspector general describe what agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigatino saw at the C.I.A. jail where Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the plotters of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, was being questioned.
The F.B.I. agents helped C.I.A. officers prepare questions for Mr. Binalshibh but “were denied direct access to him for 4 or 5 days,” the report said. Then an F.B.I. agent, identified with the pseudonym “Thomas,” was allowed to see him and found him “naked and chained to the floor.” [*]
The agent told the inspector general “that he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the C.I.A. quickly shut down the interview,” the report said. [*] [who knows but what’s clear is there has long been badblood between the two] [*]
The September 2002 visit marked the last F.B.I. involvement in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas interrogations, which senior F.B.I. officials questioned on grounds of both legality and effectiveness.
The reference to the “rack and screw” comes from an undated list of questions that appears to have been designed to prepare C.I.A. interrogators to discuss whether their use of physical pressure was legal.
“Do any of the techniques cause ‘severe mental distress or suffering’?” the document asks, citing legal standards for torture and abuse. “Do the techniques ‘violate the decencies of civilized conduct’?” [*]
The questions are not answered.
Jameel Jaffer, an A.C.L.U. attorney who has spent several years working on the lawsuit, said the new documents were “a reminder of human rights abuses that have yet to be investigated seriously by Congress or the Justice Department.”
In August, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. asked a Justice Department prosecutor, John H. Durham, to review the C.I.A. interrogation program, as well as the deaths of several prisoners in American custody, to see if prosecution is warranted.
Here are links to the files released Friday.