US memo cites frequent waterboarding of 2 suspects
Surfaces after US renounced use of method
NEW YORK - Waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, was used by CIA interrogators far more frequently on two key Al Qaeda prisoners than had been previously reported.
A 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum says that CIA officers used waterboarding at least 83 times during August 2002 against Abu Zubaydah, who has been described as an Al Qaeda operative.
A former CIA officer, John Kiriakou, told ABC News and other media organizations in 2007 that Zubaydah had undergone waterboarding for only 35 seconds before agreeing to tell everything he knew. But the May 30, 2005, memo, quoting a 2004 investigation by the CIA inspector general, says that in March 2003, waterboarding was used 183 times against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-described planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The New York Times reported in 2007 that Mohammed had been barraged more than 100 times with harsh interrogation methods, causing CIA officers to worry that they might have crossed legal limits and halting his questioning. But the number and the exact nature of the interrogation method used so many times was not previously known. The release of the numbers will probably become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Justice Department under the Bush administration declared legal.
President Obama plans to visit CIA headquarters today and make public remarks to employees, as well as meeting privately with officials, an agency spokesman said last night. It will be his first visit to the agency, whose use of harsh interrogation methods he often condemned during the presidential campaign.
CIA officials had opposed the release of the interrogation memos, but when Obama ordered the papers' release on Thursday, he said CIA officers who had used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods with the approval of the Justice Department would not be prosecuted. He has also repeatedly suggested that he opposes congressional proposals for a "truth commission" to examine Bush administration counterterrorism programs, including interrogation and warrantless eavesdropping.
Administration officials yesterday said information in the memos already was in the public realm and that releasing details about interrogation techniques gave no new edge to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
"The notion that somehow this all of a sudden is a game changer doesn't take cognizance of the fact that it's already in the system and in the public domain," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel said on ABC's "This Week." As a result of Obama's decision, he said, "we've enhanced America's image abroad. These were tools used by terrorists, propaganda tools, to recruit new terrorists. And the fact is, having changed America's image does have an impact on our security . . . and makes us stronger."
Emanuel also said that President Obama does not intend to prosecute Bush administration officials who devised the policies that led to the harsh interrogations.
In a statement last week, Obama said "it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice, that they will not be subject to prosecution." He did not specifically address the policy makers. Asked yesterday about the fate of those officials, Emanuel said the president believes they "should not be prosecuted either and that's not the place that we go."
The Senate Intelligence Committee has begun a yearlong, closed-door investigation of the CIA interrogation program, in part to assess assertions of Bush administration officials that brutal treatment, including slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in standing positions for days and confining them in small boxes, was necessary to get information.
The fact that waterboarding was repeated so many times might raise questions about its effectiveness, as well as assertions by Bush administration officials that their methods were used under strict guidelines.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. 