4um: CIA Bans Water-Boarding in Terror Interrogations

Title: CIA Bans Water-Boarding in Terror Interrogations
Source: ABC the Blotter
URL Source: http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/cia-bans-water-.html
Published: Sep 14, 2007
Author: By Brian Ross, Richard Esposito, Martha
Post Date: 2007-09-14 20:07:41 by Zipporah
Keywords: None
Views: 263
Comments: 19

CIA Bans Water-Boarding in Terror Interrogations

The controversial interrogation technique known as water-boarding, in which a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex, has been banned by CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden, current and former CIA officials tell http://ABCNews.com. (Image above is an ABC News graphic.)

The officials say Hayden made the decision at the recommendation of his deputy, Steve Kappes, and received approval from the White House to remove water-boarding from the list of approved interrogation techniques first authorized by a presidential finding in 2002.

The officials say the decision was made sometime last year but has never been publicly disclosed.

THE BLOTTER RECOMMENDS

One U.S. intelligence official said, "It would be wrong to assume that the program of the past moved into the future unchanged."

A CIA spokesman said, as a matter of policy, he would decline to comment on interrogation techniques, "which have been and continue to be lawful," he said.

Click Here for Full Blotter Coverage.

The practice of water-boarding has been branded as "torture" by human rights groups and a number of leading U.S. officials, including Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., because it amounted to a "mock execution."

Today, in New Hampshire, Sen. McCain told ABC News, "I have sought that result for years. Water-boarding is a form of torture. And I'm convinced that this will not only help us in our interrogation techniques, but it will also be helpful for our image in the world."

While new legislation reportedly gave the CIA the leeway to use water-boarding, current and former CIA officials said Gen. Hayden decided to take it off the list of about six "enhanced interrogation techniques."

While welcoming the move, some critics say the CIA did not go far enough.

"I can say it's a good thing, but the fact remains that the entire program is illegal," John Sifton of Human Rights Watch told >http://ABCNews.com.

As a result of the decision, officials say, the most extreme techniques left available to CIA interrogators would be what is termed "longtime standing," which includes exhaustion and sleep deprivation with prisoners forced to stand, handcuffed with their feet shackled to the floor.

"It is a very severe form of torture which causes tremendous psychic toll to people," said Sifton.

It is believed that water-boarding was used on fewer than five "high-value" terrorist subjects, and had not been used for three to four years.

Its most effective use, say current and former CIA officials, was in breaking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, known as KSM, who subsequently confessed to a number of ongoing plots against the United States.

A senior CIA official said KSM later admitted it was only because of the water-boarding that he talked.

Ultimately, KSM took responsibility for the 9/ll attacks and virtually all other al Qaeda terror strikes, including the beheading of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

"KSM lasted the longest under water-boarding, about a minute and a half, but once he broke, it never had to be used again," said a former CIA official familiar with KSM's case.

Kappes' role at the CIA puts him in charge of day-to-day CIA operations.

A career intelligence officer, he left the CIA in disagreement with the leadership of Porter Goss, the former Republican congressman, who George Bush chose to replace George Tenet in 2004.

When Goss in turn was replaced in May 2006 by Gen. Hayden as director of Central Intelligence, he moved quickly to get Kappes to return.

I honestly thought people would be so disgusted by this that this administration would be toast.. so much for believing in the 'goodness' of Americans..

I'm shocked by the widespread support the gubment has to torture anyone they want to.

.. as I have been.. it's terribly sad to think that people will put aside their principles for politics or faith in the wrong thing..that is if they truthfully ever held those principles in the first place.. maybe it's my faith that was misplaced?

He also confessed to killing JFK, MLK, Bobby and Robert Kennedy, Lincoln, Alexander Litvinenko, John Lennon, Malcolm X, Lee Harvey Oswald, William McKinley, Ron Goldman and Nicole Brown Simpson, JonBenet Ramsey, Black Dahlia, ...

..that would be hilarious if it werent such a somber topic.. Im still taken back by the support of torture.. it boggles the mind.

It's not so much the 'goodness' of Americans. It's human nature, writ large. It's not like we're the first nation to descend to that level. We probably won't be the last. How many decades did people watch old films of masses of sycophants on roadsides cheering on Der Fuhrer and wonder what the fuck was going through their thick heads? Now we know. The Nazis had Leni Riefenstahl and "Victory of Faith." We have the Fox network and Jack Bauer.

"I'd like to live just long enough to be there when they cut off your head and stick it on a pike as a warning to the next ten generations that some favors come with too high a price." Vir Cotto, Babylon 5

Was it so much that it was debated, or the fact that it was debated and nothing was done about it?

Both, why did anyone think there was anything to debate about? It's like a Twilight Zone episode.

We've become a sick parody of our own pop culture. We get treated to ever so conveniently released videos of bin laden, saying exactly what the opposition to the administration is saying. Do we have masses of people saying Look, it's Emmanuel Goldstein!"? No...we get commentary on the color of his fake beard, interspersed with the requisite two minutes of hate. The powers that be don't need to burn the books when no one bothers to fucking read them any longer. HG Wells had the best all-time epitaph on his headstone: "God damn you all, I told you so."