CIA Sought Contractors for Interrogators

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=513&ncid=716&e=3&u=/ap/20040512/ap_on_go_ot/prisoner_abuse_cia

WASHINGTON - The CIA (news - web sites) did not have a trained corps of interrogators until the war on terror began and turned in part to contractors to handle the surge of detainees, including in Iraq (news - web sites). Some of those sent in are now under investigation in prisoner deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites). Officials are considering one case as a homicide and have referred it to the Justice Department.

In interviews, intelligence veterans who spent decades with the CIA said interrogators are needed mostly during conflicts when a nation holds large numbers of military prisoners, which, until Afghanistan and Iraq, the United States had not had since the Vietnam War.


The CIA has therefore had to develop the skill of interrogation since the 2001 Afghanistan invasion, said Milt Bearden, a former senior manager for the agency.


"There is no reserve within the CIA of experienced, trained interrogators," Bearden said. "There never was."

more...I got a feeling that the 4 Blackwater contractors were interrogators.

[maddezmom]

1. we will never know about the contractors

~snip~
The CIA's defenders caution the agency's inspector general has not completed its investigation into at least two deaths in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Some say the investigation's scope also appears to narrower than the Army's inquiries into perhaps a dozen unjustified deaths and even more allegations of abuse at military-run prisons.

But agency critics caution that, unlike the Army's leaked Taguba Report, there is no documentation to offer a glimpse of the CIA personnel's alleged abuses. And with the CIA inspector general investigating, it is possible that the final report could remain classified, as is often the case, leaving many details largely unknown.


Two agency officials declined to comment on interrogation issues.


The CIA runs a network of detention facilities worldwide, but details about them are largely kept secret, including their locations. The military and the CIA are believed to have separate rules and guidelines on prisoner detentions and interrogations, which the agency has declined to provide.

~snip~

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. All the more reason that they should have either waited a while

or called the whole thing off. However, it was getting hot and sooner or later the UN would have declared that there were no WMD.

[phiddle]

3. Privatization!

Privatizing government functions is the wet dream of the hard right. That way, their buddies in private enterprise get paid from the public till, and all concerned avoid oversight, regulation, and responsibility.

[progressivebydesign]

4. Scares me to think what the job requirements were.. and how they were met.

I think of what the backgrounds must be of those considered qualified to do what the CIA felt they weren't ready to do. That would mean RECENT interrogation experience, and I'm sure it didn't mean local police departments. We're talking Central America, Negroponte, and that whole hornet's nest. Bush is the biggest failure of any person to hold that office.. he makes Nixon seem almost quaint.

[maddezmom]

5. similar story: U.S. arranges to detain and interrogate terror suspects in

~snip~
New rules of engagement


The CIA general counsel's office developed a new set of interrogation rules of engagement after the Sept. 11 attacks. It was vetted by the Justice Department and approved by the National Security Council's general counsel, according to U.S. intelligence officials and other U.S. officials.

The rules call for field operators to seek approval from Washington to use "enhanced measures," methods that could cause temporary physical or mental pain.

U.S. intelligence officials say the CIA had no real interrogation specialists on hand to deal with the number of valuable suspects it captured after Sept. 11. The agency relied on analysts, psychologists and profilers. "Two and a half years later," one CIA veteran said, "we have put together a very professional, controlled, deliberate and legally rationalized approach to dealing with the Abu Zubaidas of the world."

U.S. intelligence officials say their strongest suit is not harsh interrogation techniques, but time and patience.

~snip~
more:http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001926465_detain12.html

[KansDem]

6. I do believe you're right...

"There is no reserve within the CIA of experienced, trained interrogators," Bearden said. "There never was."

I got a feeling that the 4 Blackwater contractors were interrogators.


Hence, the need to "outsource." And we must remember, that "interrogators" does not mean "interpreters." Once supposes that interrogators need not speak the language to apply their craft...