{"id":3538,"date":"2008-05-21T23:31:59","date_gmt":"2008-05-21T22:31:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/fbi-report-details-guantanamo-war-crimes\/3538\/"},"modified":"2008-05-21T23:31:59","modified_gmt":"2008-05-21T22:31:59","slug":"fbi-report-details-guantanamo-war-crimes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/war-terrorism\/fbi-report-details-guantanamo-war-crimes\/","title":{"rendered":"FBI Report Details Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo War Crimes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"guantanamo-sue.jpg\"By ERIC LICHTBLAU<\/a> and SCOTT SHANE<\/a>\u00a0| In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay<\/a> began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation<\/a> agents at the base created a \u201cwar crimes file\u201d to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The report, an exhaustive, 437-page review prepared by the Justice Department inspector general, provides the fullest account to date of internal dissent and confusion within the Bush administration over the use of harsh interrogation tactics by the military and the Central Intelligence Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In one of several previously undisclosed episodes, the report found that American military interrogators appeared to have collaborated with visiting Chinese officials at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay to disrupt the sleep of Chinese Muslims held there, waking them every 15 minutes the night before their interviews by the Chinese. In another incident, it said, a female interrogator reportedly bent back an inmate\u2019s thumbs and squeezed his genitals as he grimaced in pain.<\/p>\n

The report describes what one official called \u201ctrench warfare\u201d between the F.B.I. and the military over the rough methods being used on detainees in Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq.<\/p>\n

The report says that the F.B.I. agents took their concerns to higher-ups, but that their concerns often fell on deaf ears: officials at senior levels at the F.B.I., the Justice Department, the Defense Department and the National Security Council<\/a> were all made aware of the F.B.I. agents\u2019 complaints, but little appears to have been done as a result.<\/p>\n

The report quotes passionate objections from F.B.I. officials who grew increasingly concerned about the reports of practices like intimidating inmates with snarling dogs, parading them in the nude before female soldiers, or \u201cshort-shackling\u201d them to the floor for many hours in extreme heat or cold.<\/p>\n

Such tactics, said one F.B.I. agent in an e-mail message to supervisors in November 2002, might violate American law banning torture.<\/p>\n

More senior officials, including Spike Bowman, who was then the head of the national security law unit at the F.B.I., tried to sound the alarm as well.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeyond any doubt, what they are doing (and I don\u2019t know the extent of it) would be unlawful were these enemy prisoners of war,\u201d Mr. Bowman wrote in an e-mail message to top F.B.I. officials in July 2003.<\/p>\n

Many of the abuses the report describes have previously been disclosed, but it was not known that F.B.I. agents had gone so far as to document accusations of abuse in a \u201cwar crimes file\u201d at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo. The report does not say how many incidents were included in the file after it was started in 2002, but the \u201cwar crimes\u201d label showed just how seriously F.B.I. agents took the accusations. Sometime in 2003, however, an F.B.I. official ordered the file closed because \u201cinvestigating detainee allegations of abuse was not the F.B.I.\u2019s mission,\u201d the report said.<\/p>\n

The inspector general, Glenn A. Fine<\/a>, found that in a few instances, F.B.I. agents participated in interrogations using pressure tactics that would not have been permitted inside the United States. But the \u201cvast majority\u201d of agents followed F.B.I. legal guidelines and \u201cseparated themselves\u201d from harsh treatment, the report says.<\/p>\n

The report says that the F.B.I. \u201chad not provided sufficient guidance to its agents on how to respond when confronted with military interrogators\u201d who used interrogation techniques that were not permitted by the F.B.I., and that fueled confusion and dissension. But it also says that \u201cthe F.B.I. should be credited for its conduct and professionalism in detainee interrogations in the military zones.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jameel Jaffer, who tracks detainee issues for the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a>, took a more critical stance, saying the report shows \u201cthe F.B.I.\u2019s leadership failed to act aggressively to end the abuse.\u201d Mr. Jaffer said the report \u201conly underscores the pressing need for an independent and comprehensive investigation of prisoner abuse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report documents in greater detail than ever before the conflict between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. over interrogation methods, which began with the capture of Abu Zubaydah<\/a>, a senior Qaeda figure, in Pakistan in March 2002. F.B.I. agents began the interrogation using traditional rapport-building methods, and one agent even provided personal care for Mr. Zubaydah, who had been shot three times and grievously wounded, \u201ceven to the point of cleaning him up after bowel movements.\u201d<\/p>\n

But C.I.A. personnel who took over the case within a few days began to use harsher methods that one F.B.I. agent described as \u201cborderline torture,\u201d and which the C.I.A. has acknowledged included waterboarding<\/a>, in which water is poured over the prisoner\u2019s mouth and nose to create a feeling of suffocation.<\/p>\n

The report describes extensive debate inside the F.B.I. over the next six months over whether it should continue to observe or assist the C.I.A. with interrogations using harsh methods it believed were counterproductive.<\/p>\n

F.B.I. officials, including Pasquale D\u2019Amuro, then the bureau\u2019s top counterterrorism officer, believed the physical pressure being used by the C.I.A. was less effective than traditional noncoercive methods, that it would \u201ctaint\u201d any future effort at prosecution, and that it \u201cwas wrong and helped Al Qaeda<\/a> in spreading negative views of the United States,\u201d the report says.<\/p>\n

After the capture of another Qaeda figure, Ramzi bin al-Shibh<\/a>, in September 2002, F.B.I. agents again traveled to a secret C.I.A. site where Mr. bin al-Shibh was being questioned. But only in 2003, the report concludes, did the F.B.I. make a \u201cclean break\u201d and choose to have no involvement in the C.I.A.\u2019s harsh interrogations.<\/p>\n

The report said several senior Justice Department Criminal Division officials raised concerns with the National Security Council in 2003 about the military\u2019s treatment of detainees but saw no changes as a result. One Justice Department official said he believed that John Ashcroft<\/a>, the former attorney general, had spoken to Condoleezza Rice<\/a>, then the national security adviser, about the department\u2019s concerns about interrogation methods being used in late 2002 on Mohammed al-Qahtani<\/a>, a Qaeda member who was believed to be the so-called 20th hijacker in the attack of Sept. 11, 2001.<\/p>\n

But Mr. Ashcroft declined to be interviewed by the inspector general\u2019s office of the department he had headed, an unusual refusal and one that hampered investigators\u2019 effort to learn of discussions inside the National Security Council , the report says.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for Mr. Ashcroft, Mark Corallo, said the former attorney general had not cooperated because \u201chis conversations with the White House and with staff on national security matters are privileged.\u201d<\/p>\n

The report says that while some Justice Department officials believed that the physical pressure techniques being used by the military were wrong, others merely thought they might be ineffective.<\/p>\n

A Pentagon spokesman, Bryan Whitman, noted that abuses at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo were the subject of a 2005 Defense Department investigation that found no evidence of torture, though it did fault some interrogation tactics and called the Qahtani interrogation degrading and abusive.<\/p>\n

The Justice Department said it was pleased that the report \u201ccredited the F.B.I. for its conduct and professionalism during interrogations.\u201d<\/p>\n

A C.I.A. spokesman said the harsh methods it used were \u201cfound lawful by the Department of Justice itself\u201d and were \u201cemployed only when traditional means of questioning \u2013 things like rapport-building \u2013 were ineffective.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE\u00a0| In 2002, as evidence of prisoner mistreatment at Guant\u00c3\u00a1namo Bay began to mount, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at the base created a \u201cwar crimes file\u201d to document accusations against American military personnel, but were eventually ordered to close down the file, a Justice Department report revealed Tuesday. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,1616,16],"tags":[33,49],"class_list":{"0":"post-3538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-general","7":"category-usa-news","8":"category-war-terrorism","9":"tag-guantanamo","10":"tag-usa-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3538\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}