TERROR WATCH

Michael Isikoff and

Mark Hosenball

'Borderline Torture'

A new Justice Department reports faults the CIA's handling of prisoner interrogation.

May 20, 2008 | Updated: 7:53 p.m. ET May 20, 2008

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The CIA last year refused to permit Justice Department investigators to question a key Al Qaeda detainee about what happened to him in the agency's custody, including reports that he was subjected to "waterboarding" and other abusive interrogation methods.

According to a report released Tuesday, the CIA's actions in blocking the investigators' access to Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah were "unwarranted" and "hampered" an investigation by the Justice Department's Office of Inspector General into the FBI's knowledge of abuse by CIA and U.S. military interrogators.

The long-awaited 370-page Justice report on the abuse issue may be the most authoritative public account yet on the fierce internal struggles within the Bush administration over how terror suspects should be interrogated. The report states that one FBI agent who witnessed the CIA's interrogation of Zubaydah in the spring of 2002 was so upset that he protested that it amounted to "borderline torture." But when investigators from the Office of the Inspector General sought to question Zubaydah in January 2007 (who by then had been transferred from an overseas agency "black" site to Guantánamo Bay), the CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, refused to let them do so, the report states.

This was in contrast to Defense Department officials who permitted the Justice investigators to question other detainees who were at Guantánamo and were also allegedly subjected to abusive interrogation methods. But Rizzo, acting for the CIA, refused in part on the grounds that Zubaydah "could make false allegations against CIA employes," the report by Inspector General Glenn Fine states.

Rizzo's action underscores yet again the CIA's extreme sensitivity about how it treated so-called high-value detainees in its custody. The Justice Department's criminal division is currently investigating whether agency officials obstructed justice when, in November 2005, they destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting the interrogation of Zubaydah and another Al Qaeda operative.

Asked today about Rizzo's actions, CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano pointed a reporter to language in Fine's report saying the agency "was not convinced when the request was made that the Department of Justice IG had an immediate need to interview Abu Zubaydah." He also added: "The interrogation methods that the CIA has used in its terrorist detention program were examined and found lawful by the Department of Justice itself."

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Posted By: Ramos5 @ 05/28/2008 9:17:30 AM

Hipocrit is one wno wants others do what they don't going to do. You can cal yourself Christian and kill your neighbor, Lie, and stole. Honesty is be truthfull, do what is right, what is good for everybody, what is natural. You can't go for all the world killing everybody only because they dont act acording your intere$. You can't said same sex marriage is natural, legal and aproved for God, That's unnatural, antinatural, and show some kind of mental sickenes. Even the animals don't do this. This is anti natura.
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Posted By: pwilso24 @ 05/21/2008 3:37:01 PM

al-Nashiri planned the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole.

Abu Zubaydah was the mastermind of the foiled millennium terrorist attacks, which had Los Angeles airport as one of its targets.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed directed the September 11 attacks, and has claimed to have personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl.

They are also the ONLY U.S. detainees to have been waterboarded. That fact, publicly confirmed by CIA Director Michael Hayden, shreds whatever is left to the so-called torture narrative, according to which the Bush Administration has engaged in widespread, needless and systematic torture of detainees.

Instead, we have sworn public testimony that the waterboarding was conducted against the three individuals best positioned to know about impending terrorist atrocities.

The interrogations took place when a second major terrorist attack was widely seen as inevitable. And we know that the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah helped lead to the capture of KSM, and to the foiling of an active terrorist plot against the United States.

The waterboarding was conducted by intelligence professionals who understood they were operating not only with the approval of the Justice Department but also the informed consent of key Congressional leaders, including Democrat Jay Rockefeller, then the ranking minority Member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, and then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi.

So when will the Congressional Committee question Democrats Jay and Nancy ?
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Posted By: coalpines @ 05/21/2008 11:39:34 AM

When are we going to let the CIA do there job? Are we such fools that we can stand by and let our enemys laugh at us be cause of our concern for someon's comfort. Lets not forget the detanees that we have released that have gone on to kill our troops. We must exibit strength and if that includes waterboarding so be it. It has no long term effects which cannot be said for having your head cut off on camera.