AP: Torture Meeting, THEN Legal Memos (Updated)

By Cernig

An Associated Press report today cites a "former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings" who says that secret meetings to approve torture techniques occured before there were any legal memos justifying those techniques - and that the memos were ordered by the participants in those meetings as a CYA. The official spoke to AP to confirm the original ABC report of these high-level secret torturers meetings.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that "there'd need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics" before using them on al-Qaida detainees, the former official said.

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

...

"With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House," ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said. "This is what we suspected all along."

The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo. The principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding. This technique involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.

The small group then asked the Justice Department to examine whether using the interrogation methods would break domestic or international laws.

"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a second former senior intelligence official. "People wanted to be assured that everything that was conducted was understood and approved by the folks in the chain of command."

I stick by what I said yesterday - none of these senior Bush people will ever stand trial for this, which is quite clearly a crime under international and US law. But that they won't is a crying injustice in itself.

Update Steve Benen, writing at Crooks & Liars, notes that the whole thing was intended to "isolate" Bush from these decisions about how, when and who to torture.

It’s quite a concept. I’m trying to imagine the president walking through his White House asking his chief of staff, “Hmm. Dick, Rummy, Colin, Tenet, Ashcroft, and Condi are all huddled together. What’s that all about?” Only to hear in response, “Don’t worry about it.”

It’s vaguely reminiscent of the “out of the loop” defense utilized during the Iran-Contra scandal. Everyone around the president was engaged in criminal behavior, but we need not blame the president directly because he had no idea what was going on and no clue what the top members of his White House team were doing.

It may be implausible, but it's still deniable - that's the important bit from the administration's point of view.

Update 2 Bush knew! Go read the whole ABC report, but this is the clincher:

President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

"Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

So, no deniablity there any more. His defense is that America is so threatened by a bunch of guys with box-cutters and suicide vests that he had to do what what even the might of the British Empire couldn't compel George Washington to contemplate.

I've news for Georgie - no matter how large the threat, it wouldn't constitute a viable excuse under international law. Nor would "but the other guy is eviller". The thing about the Rule of Law is it is supposed to apply universally - even when the other guy is a bad person too.

British conservative pundit Andrew Alexander recently wrote: "So we have the free world, as we call it, the Western Alliance, the proclaimed centre of civilised values, led by a man endorsing methods applied by Hitler and Stalin. What do we do about it?"

For now, it seems, nothing. Bush obviously knows there's jack chance of his being impeached or held for criminal trial in the U.S. - or indeed any of its allies while he's still in office - but he might want to be careful about trips abroad in later life. Europeans have long memories, with just cause, when it comes to leaders who order and countenance torture, even torture of those who would themselves torture and worse.

Comments

[Batocchio]

These are the two most important revelations, I think. Previous accounts have said that Rice and Powell were in the dark about the memos — but even if they were, this account means they knew about the policy. Meanwhile, as The One Percent Doctrine and other works have documented, Bush, for all the bubble he's happily had constructed, knows far more than he and the administration let on. This is a great summation, and I hope the press keeps digging.