[DEBATE] : US officials 'sought waterboarding'

[Riaz K Tayob]

US officials 'sought waterboarding'         

Levin said the harsh techniques meant it was more likely US troops would 
be abused if captured [AP]

US military officials actively sought ways to implement harsh 
interrogation techniques such as waterboarding used at Guantanamo Bay 
despite legal objections, a senior Democratic senator has said.
 
Carl Levin, the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman, told a hearing 
the US government had "twisted the law to create the appearance of 
legality".
    
"If we use those same techniques offensively against detainees, it says 
to the world that they have America's stamp of approval," he said in 
Washington DC on Tuesday.
    
The committee was also shown US military memos saying that the 
techniques should be curbed while international monitors were present.
 
The hearing is the committee's first attempt to discover the origins of 
the harsh interrogation methods used in Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba 
and Abu Ghraib in Iraq and how policy decisions on interrogations were 
agreed across the US department of defence.
 
In video


US accused of encouraging the illegal use of torture
The CIA has admitted it used waterboarding, which simulates drowning, on 
several suspected al-Qaeda leaders, while US soldiers were photographed 
using dogs against prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
 
The interrogations have been widely condemned by international human 
rights groups.
 
Lindsey Graham, a Republican senator, said the Bush administration's 
legal analysis on detainees and interrogations following the September 
11, 2001, attacks would "go down in history as some of the most 
irresponsible and shortsighted legal analysis ever provided to our 
nation's military and intelligence communities".
 
Interrogation techniques
 
The Pentagon's most senior civilian lawyer at the time, William Haynes, 
was expected to testify at the hearing.
 
Also present were Richard Shiffrin, Haynes' former deputy on 
intelligence issues, as well as the legal advisers at the time to the 
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Guantanamo Bay prison.
 
According to the senate committee's findings, Haynes became interested 
in the use of harsher interrogation methods as early as July 2002 when 
his office inquired into a military programme that trained soldiers on 
how to resist enemy interrogations.
 
Protesters have campaigned against the
use of waterboarding [Reuters]
Haynes and other officials wanted to know if the programme - known as 
Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training - could be used 
used to develop more effective interrogation methods, the committee said.
 
Shiffrin said his interest in the programme was mainly to use military 
expertise in interrogations.
 
However, the head of the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, which ran the 
SERE programme, told the committee that the programme included 
resistance to sensory deprivation, sleep disruption, stress positions, 
waterboarding and slapping.
 
Official denials
 
The committee further released previously secret memos dating from 2002, 
when the programme of harsh interrogations began at Guantanamo Bay.
 
In one of them, the most senior military lawyer at Guantanamo, 
Lieutenant-Colonel Diane Beaver, says the US defence department had 
hidden prisoners who were being treated harshly, or abusively, from the 
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which monitors the 
treatment of military prisoners.
 
Beaver also said the military was secretly using previously forbidden 
techniques, such as sleep deprivation, but hiding them so as not to draw 
"negative attention", according to minutes of the committee meeting.
 
"Officially it is not happening," Beaver said, according to minutes from 
the meeting.
 
The treatment of detainees in Guantanamo has
caused global controversy [GALLO/GETTY]
"The ICRC is a serious concern. They will be in and out, scrutinising 
our operations, unless they are displeased and decide to protest and leave.
 
"This would draw a lot of negative attention."
 
Beaver said interrogators should "curb the harsher operations while ICRC 
is around".
 
Beaver was speaking at an October 2, 2002, meeting between CIA and 
military lawyers and military intelligence officials on how to break 
down the resistance of Guantanamo detainees to interrogations.
 
A senior CIA lawyer at the meeting, John Fredman, said that whether 
harsh interrogation amount to torture "is a matter of perception".
 
"If the detainee dies you're doing it wrong," Fredman said, according to 
a memo.
 
Waterboarding memo
 
Beaver also wrote in a memo dated October 11, 2002, that abusive methods 
could be used against detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison because they 
were not considered prisoners of war.
 
Her proposed methods included extended isolation, 20-hour 
interrogations, death threats and waterboarding.
 
On Tuesday, Beaver told the committee that she was surprised her memo 
justifying harsh interrogation techniques was the sole opinion relied on 
by the Pentagon.
 
"I did not expect that my opinion ... would become the final word," she 
said.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FC5CFA79-1BF8-4F70-8AE4-5415756D4D56.htm