Former vice-president questions ability of Obama administration to defend US, writes R JEFFREY SMITH
THE JUSTICE department’s decision on Monday to expand an existing investigation into potentially illegal actions related to the CIA’s counterterrorism programme has provoked fresh criticism from former vice-president Dick Cheney, a strong supporter of the harsh interrogation techniques central to the programme.
Mr Cheney said in a statement that “President Obama’s decision to allow” prosecutor John Durham, a Republican appointed during the Bush administration to investigate the CIA’s destruction of interrogation videotapes, to examine the legality of other interrogation-related activities was “a reminder, if any were needed” of why some Americans question the Obama administration’s ability to protect the nation’s security.
He said that CIA summaries of the results of its interrogations, released on Monday by the CIA at his request, document that the intelligence agency’s implementation of Bush administration policies were “directly responsible for defeating all efforts by al-Qaeda to launch further mass-casualty attacks” against the country.
A senior administration official, responding on condition he not be named, called Cheney’s comments “off-base” and took umbrage at the idea that Obama had personally allowed Durham to expand his investigation. “This was not something the White House allowed, this was something the AG (attorney general Eric Holder) decided,” the official said.
“Now this might have been the SOP (standard operating procedure) in the previous administration as far as what you ‘allow’ the justice department to do, but I thought that there was statutory authority and responsibility to make sure that the attorney general has to make sure he does what he believes is in the best interest of justice,” the official said.
Unredacted portions of the two memos Cheney wanted released describe several plots disclosed by detainees who were subjected to harsh questioning, but do not specifically attribute the revelations to the use of those techniques. For example, one called the intelligence reports produced from CIA detainee questioning “a crucial pillar of US counterterrorism efforts.”
That CIA report was written on June 3rd, 2005, a period when the Bush administration was trying to fend off legislation sponsored by a handful of Senate Republicans that barred “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of military detainees during similar interrogations.
The other CIA report released at Cheney’s urging summarised information provided by reputed al-Qaeda military planner Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was subjected to waterboarding, or simulated drowning, 183 times in March 2003, mostly in sessions lasting less than 10 seconds.
It said he “not only dramatically expanded our universe of knowledge” on al-Qaeda plots, but also provided leads that led to the capture of others. – (Washington Post service)