New dosuments shed light on FBI-CIA torture interactions
October 31st, 2009
Yesterday was Friday, so the Obama administration, like all administrations, released embarrassing documents. In addition to the Cheney Plame case interview materials, they released more torture documents to the ACLU in its long-running FOIA case. Among other things, these documents provide additional insights into the FBI’s relations with the CIA torturers: at times they collaborated and at other times they contemplated prosecution.
An ACLU Press Release is here while the have links to the documents here. The New York Times blog has a brief discussion, with links to seven documents [my downloads of several of these were damaged, as were retries]. Here’s what these dead with:
F.B.I. agents who arrived at a secret C.I.A. jail overseas in September 2002 found prisoners “manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock,” and a C.I.A. official wrote a list of questions for interrogators including “how close is each technique to the ‘rack and screw,”’ according to hundreds of pages of partially declassified documents released Friday by the Justice Department.
The documents also include handwritten notes, apparently prepared by Justice Department officials, discussing the possibility of prosecuting some personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency. The notes reveal that the Justice Department considered prosecuting a C.I.A. interrogator for a previously reported incident in which a detainee was threatened with a gun and a power drill, but it says Justice officials declined to prosecute the case.
The AP also has an article. Here is the relevant section:
Newly released documents show the FBI interviewed a naked, chained terror suspect back in 2002 as the bureau struggled with the CIA over how to treat high-value prisoners.Details of the interrogation were contained in documents released late Friday as part of Freedom of Information Act lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Judicial Watch.
As the CIA began to use harsh interrogation techniques against captured terror suspects, the FBI became wary of the legality of the methods, which ranged from forced nudity to waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. As a result, FBI agents were ordered not to participate in such harsh interrogations.
Yet sometime in late 2002, an FBI agent interviewed accused Sept. 11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh at a CIA site. The agent later said he got valuable information out of Binalshibh before the CIA shut down the questioning.
According to one document, FBI officials told investigators when they arrived at the unidentified CIA site “the detainees were manacled to the ceiling and subjected to blaring music around the clock.”
The FBI agents worked with the CIA in developing questions, but were denied direct access to Binalshibh for four or five days, according to a report on detainee interrogations by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine.
The report says eventually one agent was allowed to speak to Binalshibh for about 45 minutes.
“Binalshibh was naked and chained to the floor,” the report said. The FBI agent later said “he obtained valuable actionable intelligence in a short time but that the CIA quickly shut down the interview.”
The report said FBI officials later had serious misgivings about their participation in the Binalshibh interrogation.
The incident “indicates that a ‘bright line rule’ against FBI participation or assistance to interrogations in which other investigators used non-FBI techniques was not fully established or followed” at the time of the interrogation, the report said.
Even the new release of documents still holds back many details. Still missing is a transcript of FBI Director Robert Mueller’s interview with investigators examining the interrogation issues.
A censored version of the inspector general’s report was released last year, but Friday’s release disclosed a few more details about the Binalshibh case.
Binalshibh is one of five prisoners currently at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility facing a possible death sentence for allegedly taking part in the 2001 terror attack on the U.S.
Military doctors have diagnosed him with a psychiatric disorder and he has been treated with a drug for schizophrenia, according to court papers, but the exact nature of the apparent illness is unknown.
The government papers released Friday also reveal that after Saddam Hussein was captured by U.S. forces in Iraq, FBI officials debated whether he should be read his Miranda warning of legal rights, but they ultimately decided he did not need such a warning because he was unlikely to be brought back to the United States to face criminal trial. He was ultimately tried by Iraq’s new government and executed.
Entry Filed under: CIA,FBI,International Law,Interrogation,Law,Torture,War Crimes