White House accused of holding memos
Documents to CIA on interrogation methods revealed
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WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused the White House yesterday of withholding documents showing it authorized the CIA to use waterboarding and other tough interrogation tactics on suspected terrorists.
Senator Jay Rockefeller, Democrat of West Virginia, was reacting to a report that two White House memos, in 2003 and 2004, gave the CIA written approval for using specific interrogation techniques on Al Qaeda suspects. Those memos followed an earlier Justice Department opinion clearing the way for harsh interrogations as long as the methods did not cause intense pain similar to causing death or organ failure.
The existence of the White House memos was revealed in yesterday's editions of The
"If White House documents exist that set the policy for the use of coercive techniques such as waterboarding, those documents have been kept from the committee," Rockefeller said in a statement. "That is unacceptable, and represents the latest example of the Bush administration withholding critical information from Congress and the American people in an attempt to limit our oversight of sensitive intelligence collection activities.
"As chairman, I will not allow the Bush administration's stonewalling to prevent a full accounting of the facts," said Rockefeller, whose committee is already investigating whether the CIA's interrogation program was legal.
The White House declined to comment.
The top Republican on Rockefeller's panel, Senator Kit Bond of Missouri, called the report old news.
"I am not aware of anyone who believes that the CIA conducted this program without authorization," Bond said in a statement. "There is no new information here and I hope that my colleagues resist the temptation to politicize further this issue."
A former senior Bush administration intelligence official told the Associated Press that the White House "definitely, without a doubt" authorized the CIA's interrogation techniques. The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, was not aware of the memos but said the CIA sought approval for specific methods to protect it from questions about their legality.
Some of the methods, including waterboarding, were demonstrated for then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and other top administration officials before they were approved, the intelligence official said. David Addington, chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, was part of discussions about authorizing the interrogations at so-called CIA "black sites," secret foreign prisons, the official said.
Rice last month told the Senate Armed Services Committee that she was briefed on some tough interrogation methods at the White House in 2002 or 2003.
"I recall being told . . . that these techniques had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm," Rice wrote in a prepared statement to the panel.
The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the White House on legal matters, later determined the CIA's program to be legal.
