Fright tactics by CIA spur criminal probe

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration disclosed new cases of purported abuse in the CIA's interrogation program, issuing a report Monday that describes prisoners being choked to the point of passing out and threatened with harm to their immediate families.

The newly declassified report by the CIA's inspector general also reveals that agency personnel were nervous almost from the interrogation program's inception that they might face prosecution in U.S. or international courts.

Attorney General Eric Holder named a veteran federal prosecutor on Monday to examine purported abuses of prisoners held by the CIA.

Holder chose John Durham, a prosecutor from Connecticut who has been investigating the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes, to determine whether a full criminal investigation of the conduct of agency employees or contractors is warranted.

The move was driven largely by details in the 2004 inspector general report, a document that became available for public view for the first time Monday. Large sections of the report remained blacked out.

The document includes details not previously disclosed. Among them are that top al-Qaida prisoners were told that family members faced harm if detainees didn't yield information.

"We could get your mother in here," a CIA interrogator told Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the purported plotter behind the bombing of the naval destroyer USS Cole, according to the report.

The threat was meant to prey on fears in Middle East circles that prisoners would be made to witness the sexual abuse of their immediate family members, the report said.

In another case, purported Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was told, "We're going to kill your children," the report said.

The document provides the most extensive examination to date of CIA conduct in a constellation of secret prisons the agency set up in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. In some cases, the report praises the way the prisons were run and acknowledges that the program provided intelligence that led to other captures and the disruption of planned attacks.

But the inspector general said it was unclear whether so-called enhanced interrogation tactics contributed to that success. The report concluded the CIA used "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane" practices in questioning "high-value" terror suspects.

The techniques being used "are inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights," the report states, citing the anxieties of case officers concerned that eventually they would be held accountable.

"One officer expressed concern that one day, agency officers will wind up on some 'wanted list' to appear before the World Court for war crimes stemming from activities" in the secret prison sites, the report states.

Many of the purported abuses described in the document were disclosed previously. The report expresses its deepest misgivings with regard to the simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

Among new disclosures was that the CIA in at least one 2002 instance employed a method known as "pressure points." It involves wrapping hands around a prisoner's carotid artery. The interrogator "watched his eyes to the point that the detainee would ... start to pass out" before being shaken awake.

President Barack Obama outlawed the CIA's use of "enhanced interrogation" techniques in January and ordered the agency's secret prison facilities closed.

BLOW TO THE CIA

CIA Director Leon Panetta issued a statement to the agency's work force Monday saying that the release of the details was "in many ways an old story. The outlines of prior interrogation practices, and many of the details, are public already. ... For the CIA now, the challenge is not the battles of yesterday but those of today and tomorrow."

Panetta also said he intended "to stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given. That is the president's position, too," he said.

Holder's decision to investigate was a significant blow to the CIA, and he said he would be criticized for undercutting the intelligence agency's work. Holder said he agreed with Obama's oftexpressed desire not to get mired in disputes over the policies of former President George W. Bush, but Holder said his review of reports on the CIA interrogation program left him no choice.

"As attorney general, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law," Holder said in a statement. "Given all of the information currently available, it is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of action for me to take."

The attorney general said his decision to order an inquiry was based in part on the recommendation of the Justice Department's ethics office, which called for anew review of several interrogation cases.

Members of Congress from the left and the right criticized Holder's decision.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, criticized the potential focus on interrogators, suggesting that ignoring Justice Department lawyers and senior Bush administration officials in the investigation had echoes of the Abu Ghraib scandal, when "lower ranking troops who committed abuses were hung out to dry."

But Rep. Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said the Justice Department inquiry risked disrupting current counterterrorism operations. He said abuse charges have already been "exhaustively reviewed."

NEW INTERROGATION UNIT

Separately, senior administration officials said Monday that Obama has approved creation of a new multi agency interrogation unit that will be based at the FBI but overseen by policy-makers at the White House and the National Security Council.

The CIA still will play a role in the interrogation and transfer of future high-value terrorist suspects, including al-Qaida leaders and their financiers and facilitators, according to the administration officials, who briefed reporters on the new plan but refused to discuss its details by name.

The new unit, called the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, will be housed at FBI headquarters in Washington and will be led by an as-yet-unnamed FBI official and comprise interrogators, analysts and linguists from numerous civilian and military agencies, the officials said. The deputy director will come from a U.S. intelligence agency.

The unit's primary goal, Holder said, "would be gathering intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks and otherwise to protect national security."

But he also said advance planning and interagency coordination under the new unit "would also allow the United States, where appropriate, to preserve the option of gathering information to be used in potential criminal investigations and prosecutions."

HUMAN-RIGHTS CONCERNS

Also on Monday, administration officials said the Obama administration will continue the Bush administration's practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured.

Human-rights advocates condemned the decision, saying it would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called "diplomatic assurances," were no protection against abuse.

"It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice of relying on diplomatic assurances, which have been proven completely ineffective in preventing torture," said Amrit Singh, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, who tracked rendition cases under Bush.

Singh cited the case of Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian sent in 2002 by the United States to Syria, which offered assurances against torture but beat Arar with electrical cable.

The administration officials, who discussed the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would operate more openly and give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused.

"The emphasis will be on ensuring that individuals will not face torture if they are sent overseas," said one administration official, adding that no detainees will be sent to countries that are known to conduct abusive interrogations.

Information for this article was contributed by Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times; by Devlin Barrett, Pamela Hess, Matt Apuzzo, Jennifer Loven and Philip Elliott of The Associated Press; by Mark Mazzetti, Scott Shane and David Johnston of The New York Times; and by Josh Meyer of Tribune Co.