Lets talk torture, is it the american way?

[Avery L. Breath]

FBI 'Warned Military on Guantánamo Techniques'
    By Demetri Sevastopulo
    The Financial Times

    Friday 24 February 2006

    Federal Bureau of Investigation agents at Guantánamo Bay warned military interrogators that some aggressive interrogation techniques were illegal, according to documents released on Thursday.

    The American Civil Liberties Organisation released internal FBI memos that outline agents' concerns about the interrogation tactics being used by Defense Intelligence Agency interrogators at the prison.

    According to a May 2003 memo, FBI agents in late 2002 believed DIA interrogators were using tactics that were of "questionable effectiveness."

    "Not only are these tactics at odds with legally permissible interviewing techniques used by US law enforcement agencies in the US, but they are being employed by personnel in GTMO [Guantánamo] who appear to have little, if any, experience eliciting information for judicial purposes," the memo said.

    Another memo documents how DIA interrogators used techniques such as showing pornographic videos and wrapping prisoners in the Israeli flag. It also alleges that the interrogators sometimes posed as FBI agents.

    According to the May 2003 memo, FBI agents complained that the US military officer overseeing interrogations at Guantánamo "blatantly misled" the Pentagon into believing that the FBI had endorsed some of the more aggressive techniques.

    The report said Major General Geoffrey Miller, overall commander of the prison from late 2002, who was later sent to Abu Ghraib to improve the flow of intelligence from interrogations, "favoured" the more aggressive techniques "despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information."

    "We now possess overwhelming evidence that political and military leaders endorsed interrogation methods that violate both domestic and international law," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer.

    A military investigation last year recommended that Gen Miller receive a reprimand for inadequate supervision of interrogations, but his commanding officer declined to act as Gen Miller had broken no law.

    Gen Miller, who is soon expected to retire from the military, last month invoked the right not to testify at the trial of two Abu Ghraib dog handlers, who are accused of using dogs to abuse prisoners at the notorious Baghdad prison.

    Lindsey Graham, an influential Republican on the Senate armed services committee, recently said he wanted to get to the bottom of allegations that Gen Miller told Abu Ghraib officers how to use dogs in interrogations. The allegations were made by Colonel Thomas Pappas, who was in charge of interrogations at the prison and recently agreed to co-operate with military prosecutors.

    A Pentagon spokesman said 12 major investigations had found no evidence of a Pentagon policy that encouraged or condoned abuse at Guantánamo. He said the FBI memos were "another example of recycling old information."

 


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    FBI Memos Reveal Allegations of Abusive Interrogation Techniques
    By Drew Brown
    Knight Ridder

    Friday 24 February 2006

    Washington - Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the US detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of a batch of FBI memos released Thursday.

    FBI agents working at the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques in e-mails to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union showed. The agents tried to get the military interrogators to follow a less coercive approach and warned that the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions of terrorists because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.

    Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of the prison at the time, overrode the FBI agents' protests, according to the documents.

    The memos offer some of the clearest proof yet that the abuses and torture of prisoners in US military custody weren't the isolated actions of low-ranking soldiers but a result of policies approved by senior officials, the ACLU said.

    "These documents show that the abuse at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib was not caused by rogue elements but rather it was the consequence of policies that were deliberately adopted by senior military and Pentagon officials," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer. "We think this should provide further reason to hold senior officials, not just low-ranking soldiers, accountable for the torture of prisoners."

    One of the memos said: "Although MGEN (Maj. Gen.) Miller acknowledged positive aspects of (the FBI's) approach, it was apparent that he favored (military) interrogation methods, despite FBI assertions that such methods could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information," said one memo from May 2003, by an agent with the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit.

    Miller later left Guantánamo and was sent to Iraq under orders to find better ways of extracting intelligence from prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other American detention facilities. He advocated that guards help set the conditions for interrogations. Photos taken in Abu Ghraib in 2003 showed guards physically abusing and sexually humiliating prisoners.

    Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, called the ACLU's release of the documents "another example of recycling old information." The Pentagon has conducted 12 major investigations and reviews and has never found a "DoD policy that ever encouraged or condoned abuse of detainees at Guantánamo," he said.

    The FBI memos originally were released in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act as part of a lawsuit by the ACLU, but were largely censored. The latest batch contained extensive information that had been blocked out originally.

    According to the memos, the FBI favored a law-enforcement approach geared toward collecting evidence that could be used later in prosecutions, while military officials preferred a more psychologically and physically aggressive approach derived from counterinterrogation methods taught at the Army's survival school.

    In one e-mail, an FBI agent, whose name was blocked out, described observing interrogation that used pornography and strobe lights. The agent wrote, "We've heard that DHS (defense human intelligence service, part of the Defense Intelligence Agency) interrogators routinely identify themselves as FBI agents and then interrogate a detainee for 16-18 hours using tactics as described above and others (wrapping in Israeli flag, constant loud music, cranking the A/C down, etc). The next time a real agent tries to talk to that guy, you can imagine the result."

    Military interrogators "were being encouraged at times to use aggressive interrogation tactics in GTMO (Guantánamo), which are of questionable effectiveness and subject to uncertain interpretation based on law and regulation," said a separate e-mail, dated May 30, 2003. "Not only are these tactics at odds with legally permissible interviewing techniques used by US law enforcement agencies in the United States but they are being employed by personnel in GTMO who appear to have little, if any, experience eliciting information for judicial purposes."

    Military interrogators "are adamant that their interrogation strategies are the best ones to use despite a lack of evidence of their success," it said.

    The same e-mail complained that the military officer overseeing interrogations, a lieutenant colonel whose name was blocked out, "blatantly misled the Pentagon into believing that the (FBI's behavioral-analysis team) had endorsed the (military's) aggressive and controversial interrogation plan" during a teleconference with Pentagon officials.

    That misrepresentation led the FBI agent in charge to take up the interrogation issue with Miller. The agent explained why his team's approach should be used, but Miller remained "biased" in favor of the military's way, the memo said.

    Another e-mail, dated May 5, 2004, said detainees were hooded, threatened with violence and humiliated, and that Defense Department employees had portrayed themselves as FBI agents.

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