{"id":5054,"date":"2008-12-29T04:49:37","date_gmt":"2008-12-29T03:49:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=5054"},"modified":"2008-12-29T05:59:37","modified_gmt":"2008-12-29T04:59:37","slug":"cheney-admits-he-%e2%80%98signed-off%e2%80%99-on-waterboarding-of-three-guantanamo-prisoners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/politics\/cheney-admits-he-%e2%80%98signed-off%e2%80%99-on-waterboarding-of-three-guantanamo-prisoners\/","title":{"rendered":"Cheney Admits He \u2018Signed Off\u2019 on Waterboarding of Three Guantanamo Prisoners"},"content":{"rendered":"

Author’s note: Cheney\u2019s admission during an interview with the Washington Times<\/em> this week about his role in approving the waterboarding of three Guantanamo detainees and the so-called “enhanced interrogation” of 33 prisoners was, disturbingly, not covered at all by the mainstream media.<\/p>\n

By Jason Leopold<\/a> – www.pubrecord.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission during his campaign to burnish the Bush administration\u2019s legacy, said he personally authorized the \u201cenhanced interrogations\u201d of 33 suspected terrorist detainees and approved the waterboarding of three so-called \u201chigh-value\u201d prisoners.<\/p>\n

\u201cI signed off on it; others did, as well, too,\u201d Cheney said about the waterboarding, a practice of simulated drowning done by strapping a person to a board, covering the face with a cloth and then pouring water over it, a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.<\/p>\n

Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al Nashiri. \u201cThat\u2019s it, those three guys,\u201d Cheney said in an interview<\/a> with the right-wing Washington Times<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Other detainees at secret CIA prisons and at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to harsh treatment, including being stripped naked, forced into painful stress positions, placed in extremes of heat or cold and prevented from sleeping \u2014 actions that international human rights organizations, and previously the U.S. government, have denounced as torture and illegal abuse.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do,\u201d Cheney said of what he called the \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d of the detainees. \u201cI thought the [administration\u2019s] legal opinions that were rendered [endorsing the harsh treatment] were sound. I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they [the CIA interrogators] were asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheney also took issue with the notion that waterboarding was torture.<\/p>\n

\u201cWas it torture? I don\u2019t believe it was torture,\u201d Cheney said. \u201cThe CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately. They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration, about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other experts, including some military and intelligence interrogators, have disputed Cheney\u2019s claims of success in extracting reliable information through waterboarding and other harsh techniques. Much of the confessed information turned out to be dubious or incorrect.<\/p>\n

The First Case<\/strong><\/p>\n

Zubaydah was the first \u201cwar on terror\u201d detainee to be subjected to the Bush administration\u2019s waterboarding, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents, news reports and several books written about the Bush administration\u2019s interrogation methods.<\/p>\n

However, according to author Ron Suskind who interviewed CIA and other insiders, Abu Zubaydah was not the \u201chigh-value detainee\u201d that the Bush administration had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind wrote in his book The One Percent Doctrine.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, Suskind said President George W. Bush became obsessed with Zubaydah and the information he might have about pending terrorist plots against the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cBush was fixated on how to get Zubaydah to tell us the truth,\u201d Suskind wrote. Bush questioned one CIA briefer, \u201cDo some of these harsh methods really work?\u201d<\/p>\n

Abu Zubaydah\u2019s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was \u201cechoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,\u201d Suskind wrote.<\/p>\n

But Bush did not want to \u201close face\u201d because he had stated Zubaydah\u2019s importance publicly, according to Suskind.<\/p>\n

Zubaydah was strapped to a waterboard and, fearing imminent death, he spoke about a wide range of plots against a number of U.S. targets, such as shopping malls, the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. Yet, Suskind wrote, Zubaydah\u2019s information under duress was judged not credible.<\/p>\n

Still, that did not stop \u201cthousands of uniformed men and women [who] raced in a panic to each \u2026 target,\u201d Suskind wrote. \u201cThe United States would torture a mentally disturbed man and then leap, screaming, at every word he uttered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheney Unapologetic<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last week, in an interview with ABC News<\/em>, Cheney was unapologetic about the waterboarding and other harsh techniques used against the detainees. But Cheney\u2019s matter-of-fact response to the Washington Times<\/em>\u2018 questions on Monday provided the most detailed look yet at the administration\u2019s highly classified interrogation program.<\/p>\n

In the interview, Cheney defended the interrogation program by claiming the Justice Department\u2019s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) drafted legal memorandums stating Bush had the authority to suspend the Geneva Convention and order harsh interrogations of prisoners in the \u201cwar on terror.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the memos were written after Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and other high-ranking Cabinet officials known as the Principals Committee met in July 2002 to discuss specific interrogation techniques \u2013 including the outlawed technique of waterboarding \u2013 to be used against \u201cwar on terror\u201d detainees.<\/p>\n

The OLC attorneys fashioned the legal arguments that then gave legal cover for the interrogation strategies that the White House wanted to carry out.<\/p>\n

The Aug. 1, 2002, opinion, widely referred to as the \u201cTorture Memo,\u201d was written by Jay Bybee, an assistant attorney general at the OLC, and John Yoo, Bybee\u2019s deputy. It was addressed to Gonzales and stated that unless the amount of pain administered to a detainee during an interrogation results in injury \u201csuch as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions\u201d than the technique could not be defined as torture.<\/p>\n

Additionally, the memo said CIA interrogators would not be prosecuted for violating anti-torture laws as long as they acted in \u201cgood faith\u201d while using brutal techniques to obtain information from suspected terrorists.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo validate the statute, an individual must have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering,\u201d the memo said. \u201cBecause specific intent is an element of the offense, the absence of specific intent negates the charge of torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

The memo was drafted the same month Abu Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding.<\/p>\n

Jack Goldsmith, who succeeded Bybee as head of the OLC in October 2003, quickly determined that the Aug. 1, 2002, memo was \u201csloppily written\u201d and \u201clegally flawed\u201d and withdrew it.<\/p>\n

Administration critics also have noted that actions are not made legal simply by having friendly lawyers give favorable opinions.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can\u2019t just suddenly change something that is illegal into something that is legal by having a lawyer write an opinion that saying it\u2019s legal,\u201d said Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee whose panel spent two years investigating the Bush administration\u2019s interrogation policies.<\/p>\n

Jameel Jaffer, director of the American Civil Liberties Union National Security Project, said Cheney used the Justice Department to \u201ctwist\u201d the law \u201cand in some cases ignored it altogether, in order to permit interrogators to use barbaric methods that the U.S. once prosecuted as war crimes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, said, \u201cthere must be consequences for [these] illegal activities.\u201d He added, \u201cA special prosecutor should be appointed. To do otherwise is to send a message of impunity that will only embolden future administrations to again engage in serious violations of the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Justice Department\u2019s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is close to wrapping up a formal investigation to determine whether agency attorneys, including Yoo and Bybee, provided the White House with poor legal advice when they drafted the legal opinions.<\/p>\n

The waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, Al Nashiri and Kalid Sheikh Mohammed was videotaped, but those records were destroyed in November 2005 after the Washington Post<\/em> published a story that exposed the CIA\u2019s use of so-called \u201cblack site\u201d prisons overseas to interrogate terror suspects.<\/p>\n

John Durham, an assistant attorney general in Connecticut, was appointed special counsel earlier this year to investigate the destruction of that videotape as well as destroyed film on other interrogations.<\/p>\n

Despite the torture criticism, Cheney said he has no regrets about the interrogation methods that he signed off on, claiming they were \u201cdirectly responsible for the fact that we\u2019ve been able to avoid or defeat further attacks against the homeland for seven and a half years.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheney added, \u201cI feel very good about what we did. I think it was the right thing to do. If I was faced with those circumstances again, I\u2019d do exactly the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cheney\u2019s remarks to the Washington Times<\/em> were part of a two-week media blitz that has sought to highlight the Bush administration\u2019s \u201caccomplishments.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House has published two lengthy reports, \u201cHighlights of Accomplishments and Results of the Administration of George W. Bush<\/a>,\u201d and \u201c100 Things Americans May Not Know About the Bush Administration Record<\/a>\u201d in an attempt to change the emerging historical consensus about a failed presidency.<\/p>\n

However, Cheney\u2019s blas\u00c3\u00a9 responses to questions about torture have instead fed growing demands for a criminal investigation against Cheney and other Bush administration officials.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Author’s note: Cheney\u2019s admission during an interview with the Washington Times this week about his role in approving the waterboarding of three Guantanamo detainees and the so-called “enhanced interrogation” of 33 prisoners was, disturbingly, not covered at all by the mainstream media. By Jason Leopold – www.pubrecord.org Vice President Dick Cheney, in another stunning admission […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[33],"class_list":{"0":"post-5054","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-politics","7":"tag-guantanamo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054","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=5054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}