Senators demand more answers on torture policies

Unsatisfied Democratic and Republican senators on Tuesday pressed the Bush administration for more answers on its torture policies.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee criticized a report from the Department of Justice as vague and incomplete.

{mosads}Panel members said the document by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine and testimony by FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni did nothing to resolve concerns that U.S. interrogators could still be allowed to torture terror suspects.

The report by Fine had said the FBI “generally avoided” controversial interrogation techniques that military interrogators used. However, the report said that agents only “separated themselves” from the techniques and that the bureau “could have pressed harder its concerns about detainee abuse by other agencies.”

The FBI also did not issue written rules on its interrogation policies until after the Abu Ghraib prison abuses became public in 2004, Fine’s report said, even though a sharp schism had existed over the issue with the Department of Defense starting in 2002.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who took the unusual step of chairing the committee meeting at the invitation of Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), used the report to press her fight to have the CIA adhere to Army Field Manual policies that ban torture. The Senate already unsuccessfully attempted to force such a step earlier this year, but Feinstein vowed that the chamber would insist.

“There is not going to be an intelligence authorization bill unless torture is stopped,” she said. “And torture right now is being carried out by CIA contractors … The bill’s not going to go ahead.”

Under questioning from senators, Fine said his investigators found that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had personally approved the harshest techniques despite uncertainty over their legality. Democrats pounced on that, too.

“These weren’t a few bad apples on the night shift, as we’ve been told,” said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

The committee’s ranking Republican, Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, suggested Fine’s report showed that agents were more concerned with avoiding blame than stopping illegal or immoral practices.

“It seems to me there’s a clear distinction between avoiding something and blowing the whistle,” Specter told Fine. “You seem to be saying they should be credited for not participating, but it’s not sufficient to not participate in these techniques. If they see it, they ought to blow the whistle and do what they can to stop it … Candidly, I don’t think you’ve gone far enough.”

Fine and Caproni also resisted senators’ questioning about whether the investigation revealed torture had occurred.

“We didn’t do a legal analysis,” Fine said.

“Torture has a legal definition, and that’s not within my pay grade,” said Caproni.

Caproni did say torture is “clearly not permissible in the United States,” and repeatedly noted that the FBI has avoided any controversial techniques since mid-2002. She also said the agency strongly prefers rapport-based interrogations, in which an agent will attempt to gain a suspect’s confidence over a period of time.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) noted that an FBI agent used that practice successfully over seven months in gleaning reams of information from deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.

“We’re talking here about a notorious, cruel dictator, and yet this pitiless tyrant cracked under rapport,” Schumer said. “If we didn’t use coercive techniques with Saddam, I can’t imagine why we’d use them against anybody else.”

Fine said his investigation found that despite their disagreement with military interrogators over techniques, no FBI agents resigned or threatened to resign from the government.

The committee adjourned at 11:30 a.m. for Senate votes, but Republicans objected to a reconvening in the afternoon, as part of an ongoing, unrelated procedural standoff over judicial nominees. The panel was procedurally allowed to reconvene only after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) recessed the entire chamber.