Secret US Endorsement of Severe Interrogations

[bigtree]

{snip}

October 04, 2007 -- If emerging reports are true, Alberto Gonzales' Justice Department issued interrogation instructions to the CIA quite different than the ones it publicly espoused.

When the Justice Department publicly declared torture "abhorrent" in a legal opinion in December 2004, the Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations.

But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales's arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures.

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on "combined effects" over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion's overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be "ashamed" when the world eventually learned of it.

Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard.

The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of President Bush's second term and Mr. Gonzales's tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil.


full article: http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,509355,00.html

[Tesla]

1. "Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed”

when the world eventually learned of it."

YEAH RIGHT!!


How can you be ashamed when you don't care????

[bigtree]

2. he's a republican, loyal to Bush. But I'd bet he looks at that bunch a lot differently since he left

He did the right thing when he revealed Gonzales' hospital visit to a sedated Ashcroft. He also contradicted his boss by testifying that the fired US Attorneys had exemplary job performance.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/15/AR2007051501945.html

[TwilightGardener]

3. I wish Comey had spoken out in 2005, but still--he's a whistleblowing hero of late.

He at least had a conscience.

[Tesla]

4. Don't ride in a small plane Mr. C !!

They don't like whistleblowers!!

[Solly Mack]

5. kick