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The
Washington
Post
Hill Briefed on
Waterboarding in 2002
In Meetings, Spy
Panels' Chiefs Did Not Protest, Officials Say
By Joby Warrick and
Dan Eggen, washingtonpost.com on the Web, December 10, 2007
Washington Post Staff
Writers, Sunday, December 9, 2007
In September 2002, four members of
Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to
wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.
For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas
detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to
make their prisoners talk.
Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a
practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some
Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised.
Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two
U.S. officials said.
"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a
U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.
Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding as a
symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism
effort. The CIA last week admitted that videotape of an interrogation of
one of the waterboarded detainees was destroyed in 2005 against the advice of
Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its
actions were illegal and the destruction was a coverup.
Yet long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key
legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included
descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according
to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.
With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers
briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was
employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct
knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the
period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.)
and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.)
and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).
Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically,
but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet
acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there
was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who
chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as
CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just
approval, but encouragement."
Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was
hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take
notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while
various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is
unclear precisely what members were told about waterboarding and how it is
conducted. Several officials familiar with the briefings also recalled
that the meetings were marked by an atmosphere of deep concern about the
possibility of an imminent terrorist attack.
"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept.
11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the
early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The
attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the
information you need to protect the American people.' "
Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005
-- by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding -- did doubts about
its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent.
The opposition reached a boiling point this past October, when Democratic
lawmakers condemned the practice during Michael B. Mukasey's confirmation
hearings for attorney general.
GOP lawmakers and Bush administration officials have previously said members of
Congress were well informed and were supportive of the CIA's use of harsh
interrogation techniques. But the details of who in Congress knew what,
and when, about waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that is the most
extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique -- have not previously been
disclosed.
U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the
briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight,"
including the four top congressional leaders of both parties as well as the four
senior intelligence committee members. In this case, most briefings about
detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republican and
Democrat on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to
attend some of the briefings.
That decision reflected the White House's decision that the "enhanced
interrogation" program would be treated as one of the nation's top secrets for
fear of warning al-Qaeda members about what they might expect, said U.S.
officials familiar with the decision. Critics have since said the
administration's motivation was at least partly to hide from view an
embarrassing practice that the CIA considered vital but outsiders would almost
certainly condemn as abhorrent.
Information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out after a
furious internal debate among military lawyers and policymakers over its
legality and morality. Once it became public, other members of Congress --
beyond the four that interacted regularly with the CIA on its most sensitive
activities -- insisted on being briefed on it, and the circle of those in the
know widened.
In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House
and Senate intelligence committees, producing some heated exchanges with CIA
officials, including Director Michael V. Hayden. The CIA director said
during a television interview two months ago that he had informed congressional
overseers of "all aspects of the detention and interrogation program." He
said the "rich dialogue" with Congress led him to propose a new interrogation
program that President Bush formally announced over the summer
"I can't describe that program to you," Hayden said. "But I would suggest to you
that it would be wrong to assume that the program of the past is necessarily the
program moving forward into the future."
Waterboarding Used on at Least 3
Waterboarding as an interrogation technique has its roots in some of history's
worst totalitarian nations, from Nazi Germany and the Spanish Inquisition to
North Korea and Iraq. In the United States, the technique was first used
five decades ago as a training tool to give U.S. troops a realistic sense of
what they could expect if captured by the Soviet Union or the armies of
Southeast Asia. The U.S. military has officially regarded the tactic as
torture since the Spanish-American War.
In general, the technique involves strapping a prisoner to a board or other flat
surface, and then raising his feet above the level of his head. A cloth is then
placed over the subject's mouth and nose, and water is poured over his face to
make the prisoner believe he is drowning.
U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was
used on three individuals -- Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of
the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaida,
a senior al-Qaeda member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in
March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.
Abu Zubaida, the first of the "high-value" detainees in CIA custody, was
subjected to harsh interrogation methods beginning in spring 2002 after he
refused to cooperate with questioners, the officials said. CIA briefers
gave the four intelligence committee members limited information about Abu
Zubaida's detention in spring 2002, but offered a more detailed account of its
interrogation practices in September of that year, said officials with direct
knowledge of the briefings.
The CIA provided another briefing the following month, and then about 28
additional briefings over five years, said three U.S. officials with firsthand
knowledge of the meetings. During these sessions, the agency provided
information about the techniques it was using as well as the information it
collected.
Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.
Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other
harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January
2003, and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it,
so I couldn't object," Graham said in an interview. He said he now
believes the techniques constituted torture and were illegal.
Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings.
But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position on the matter said
the California lawmaker did recall discussions about enhanced interrogation.
The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still
in the planning stage -- they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers
but not yet put in practice -- and acknowledged that Pelosi did not raise
objections at the time.
Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003,
disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of
that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman
said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's
program because of strict rules of secrecy.
"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of
secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held
to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."
Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings.
Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia
Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded
congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices.
"I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the
committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation
activities," Rockefeller said in a statement Friday.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Vietnam War prisoner who is seeking the GOP
presidential nomination, took an early interest in the program even though he
was not a member of the intelligence committee, and spoke out against
waterboarding in private conversations with White House officials in late 2005
before denouncing it publicly.
In May 2007, four months after Democrats regained control of Congress and well
after the CIA had forsworn further waterboarding, four senators submitted
written objections to the CIA's use of that tactic and other, still unspecified
"enhanced" techniques in two classified letters to Hayden last spring, shortly
after receiving a classified hearing on the topic. One letter was sent on
May 1 by Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.). A similar letter was sent May 10
by a bipartisan group of three senators: Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.),
Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
In a rare public statement last month that broached the subject of his
classified objections, Feingold complained about administration claims of
congressional support, saying that it was "not the case" that lawmakers briefed
on the CIA's program "have approved it or consented to it."
Staff writers Josh White and Walter Pincus and staff
researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
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