[NYTr] CONGRESS Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by MichaelP 

[Another example of Congress asleep at the wheel - failure/refusal to 
exercise oversight. -MP]

The Washington Post - Dec 9, 2007
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/08/AR2007120801664.html


CONGRESS Briefed on Waterboarding in 2002

In Meetings, Spy Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look 
at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent 
terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan 
group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was 
given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh 
techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was 
waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture 
by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no 
objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked 
the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview two months ago that he 
had informed congressional overseers of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden 
said in an interview two months ago that he had informed congressional 
overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." (By 
Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press) "The briefer was specifically asked 
if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the 
exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding 
as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's 
counterterrorism effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an 
interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 
against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, 
provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction 
was a coverup.

Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave 
key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which 
included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation 
methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with 
firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the 
lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which 
waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and 
Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held 
oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman 
(D-Calif.)  and Sens.  Bob Graham (D-Fla.)  and John D. Rockefeller IV 
(D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts 
(R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied 
dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the 
reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among 
those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA 
was doing,"  said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 
1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006.  "And the 
reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices 
was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being 
able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own 
staffs.  And while various officials have described the briefings as 
detailed and graphic, it is unclear precisely what members were told about 
waterboarding and how it is conducted. Several officials familiar with the 
briefings also recalled that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of 
deep concern about the possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to 
Sept.  11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official 
present during the early briefings.  "But there was no objecting, no 
hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys 
as long as you get the information you need to protect the American 
people.' "

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts 
in 2005 -- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- 
did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more 
widespread dissent. The opposition reached a boiling point this past 
October, when Democratic lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael 
B. Mukasey's confirmation hearings for attorney general.

GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said 
members of Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's 
use of harsh interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress 
knew what, and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning 
that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- 
have not previously been disclosed.

U.S.  law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and 
allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a 
"Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both 
parties as well as the four senior intelligence committee members.  In 
this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the 
"Gang of Four," the top Republican and Democrat on the two committees.  A 
few staff members were permitted to attend some of the briefings.

That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced 
interrogation"  program would be treated as one of the nation's top 
secrets for fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, 
said U.S. officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said 
the administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an 
embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would 
almost certainly condemn as abhorrent.

Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out 
after a furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers 
over its legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of 
Congress -- beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its 
most sensitive activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the 
circle of those in the know widened.

In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the 
House and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges 
with CIA officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director 
said during a television interview two months ago that he had informed 
congressional overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation 
program." He said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a 
new interrogation program that President Bush formally announced over the 
summer

"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest 
to you that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is 
necessarily the program moving forward into the future."

Waterboarding Used on at Least 3

Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of 
history's worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish 
Inquisition to North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique 
was first used five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a 
realistic sense of what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union 
or the armies of Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded 
the tactic as torture since the Spanish-American War.

In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or 
other flat surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. 
A cloth is then placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is 
poured over his face to make the prisoner believe he is drowning.

U.S.  officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it 
was used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 
mastermind of the Sept.  11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed 
Hussein Abu Zubaida, a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden 
associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has 
not been publicly identified.

Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was 
subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he 
refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers 
gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu 
Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of 
its interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with 
direct knowledge of the briefings.

The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28 
additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with 
firsthand knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency 
provided information about the techniques it was using as well as the 
information it collected.

Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the 
briefings.

Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or 
other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in 
January 2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware 
of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now 
believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified 
briefings.  But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on 
the matter said the California lawmaker did recall discussions about 
enhanced interrogation.  The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques 
described by the CIA were still in the planning stage -- they had been 
designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not yet put in practice -- 
and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.

Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 
2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in 
February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation 
program.  Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the 
letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of 
secrecy,"  she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held 
to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said in an interview two months ago that he 
had informed congressional overseers of CIA Director Michael V. Hayden 
said in an interview two months ago that he had informed congressional 
overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." (By 
Charles Dharapak -- Associated Press)

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. 
Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West 
Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 
for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA 
interrogation practices.  "I proposed without success, both in committee 
and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of 
the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said in a 
statement Friday.

Sen.  John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking 
the GOP presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program 
even though he was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke 
out against waterboarding in private conversations with White House 
officials in late 2005 before denouncing it publicly.

In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and 
well after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators 
submitted written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, 
still unspecified "enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to 
Hayden last spring, shortly after receiving a classified hearing on the 
topic.  One letter was sent on May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). 
A similar letter was sent May 10 by a bipartisan group of three senators: 
Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his 
classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of 
congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers 
briefed on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."

[Staff writers Josh White and Walter Pincus and staff researcher Julie
Tate contributed to this report.]