Documents show CIA's legal concerns as it started torture program

CIA lawyers sought guarantees the US spy agency would never be prosecuted for torturing suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks, while other staff warned of a "train wreck waiting to happen," according to correspondence.

The documents provide a new glimpse into the tussles within the CIA as its agents tried to thwart further attacks that may have been in the works.

But in their rush to glean information from several detainees, they swept aside legal misgivings around "enhanced interrogation techniques."

The documents, released in response to a freedom of information request from the American Civil Liberties Union, detail the early days of the CIA's use of torture, after then-president George W. Bush directed the agency to detain terror suspects around the world.

A July 2002 draft letter from CIA lawyers to the attorney general sought legal protections before agents interrogated Abu Zubaydah, an alleged Al-Qaeda member who is still detained at Guantanamo Bay. 

"The use of more aggressive methods is required to persuade Abu Zubaydah to provide the critical information we need," the letter states.

"I respectfully request that you grant a formal declination of prosecution, in advance, for any employees... who may employ methods in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah that otherwise might subject those individuals to prosecution."

The Department of Justice at the time ruled that certain detainees could be subjected to enhanced interrogation, including the use of a simulated drowning technique called waterboarding.

The CIA last used these methods in December 2007. President Barack Obama banned them when he took office in January 2009.

But the newly released CIA documents show that agency employees had misgivings much sooner.

"I will no longer be associated in any way with the interrogation program," an agency employee stated in a January 2003 memo. The CIA blanked out the name of the sender and the recipient. 

"This is a train wreck waiting to happen and I intend to get the hell off the train before it happens."

The documents show the CIA believed it extracted details from Zubaydah of a purported plot to detonate a "dirty bomb" in the Washington area.

The agency also thinks evidence acquired through enhanced interrogation led to other vital information, but a Senate committee later found the CIA's brutal methods produced no useful information.

The documents included new details in the death of detainee Gul Rahman, who died -- probably from hypothermia -- at a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan in 2002.

"Prisoners who possess significant or imminent threat information are stripped to their diapers during interrogation and placed back into their cells wearing only diapers," a death investigation stated. 

"This is done solely to humiliate the prisoner for interrogation purposes. When the prisoner soils a diaper, they are changed by the guards."

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has said he would "bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding."

Source: AFP