Ex-CIA officials to testify on brutal interrogations program

Four former and current senior officials at the CIA will be required to answer questions under oath about the spy agency’s history of brutal interrogations, a federal judge ordered this week.

The deposition of former top lawyer John Rizzo and counterterrorism chief Jose Rodriguez comes as part of a lawsuit against two psychologists who designed the interrogation program and could renew interest in one of the darker moments of the CIA’s recent past. Also being deposed in the case are James Cotsana, a former intelligence officer, and Jonathan Fredman, a current CIA lawyer.

{mosads}The officials will be questioned despite opposition from the Justice Department, which had expressed concerns that classified information could be made public.

Andrew Warden, a lawyer for the government, called the request “unprecedented” during a court hearing on the issue last week, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has helped to bring the suit.

But Judge Justin Quackenbush, of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Washington, was unmoved.

“It is the court’s impression a deposition could occur … that would not necessitate the disclosure of classified information,” he wrote in an order this week.

The ACLU brought the suit against the two psychologists on behalf of three men who underwent some of the brutal interrogations techniques.

The two psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, are credited with developing interrogations methods that included waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other tactics and helping to implement them in the CIA. The methods are frequently referred to as torture and are currently illegal under U.S. law.

The psychologists had requested that the four CIA officials answer questions as part of their defense against the ACLU lawsuit, which is being viewed as a potential watershed moment for critics of the George W. Bush-era program.

“This ruling is a critical step towards accountability, and it charts a way forward for torture victims to get their day in court,” Dror Ladin, an attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement. “This order affirms that our judicial system can handle claims of CIA torture, including when those claims involve high-level government officials.”

A trial in the case is scheduled for next June.

Rizzo served as acting general counsel of the CIA when the Bush administration approved the harsh techniques. He has acknowledged that his long tenure at the CIA will likely be defined by the interrogations program.

Rodriquez was the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center and is believed to have ordered the destruction of videotapes showing detainees undergoing the brutal methods.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a scathing 500-page public summary of an even longer, classified report into the CIA’s so-called enhanced interrogation techniques in late 2014. The report concluded that the methods amounted to torture, were ineffective and were carried out without appropriate oversight from Washington.