Exclusive: Pentagon delays report on FBI role in detainee abuse

WASHINGTON — The release of a report on the FBI’s role in the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq has been delayed for months because the Pentagon is reviewing how much of it should remain classified, according to the Justice Department’s watchdog.

Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s inspector general, told McClatchy that his office has pressed the Defense Department to finish its review, but officials there haven’t completed the process “in a timely fashion.”

“Why that happened, I don’t know,” Fine said in an interview this week.

“It’s been slower than we would like, and it’s taken a long time. We provided our report to them months ago, and we are pushing hard to conclude this process.”

Fine is investigating whether FBI employees participated in detainee abuse, whether they witnessed or reported incidents of abuse, and how such reports were handled by the bureau.

Fine launched his investigation into the FBI’s role in the interrogations in early 2005 amid disclosures that FBI agents had witnessed and complained about harsh interrogation practices of detainees, including seeing Guantanamo Bay detainees who had defecated and urinated on themselves and who had been chained on the floor for more than 24 hours without food or water in more than 100 degree temperatures.

Government agencies that provide information during inspector generals’ investigations are routinely asked to review drafts of reports for accuracy and to determine what information in the reports should remain classified.

Fine said the Pentagon now appears to be moving on his request.

“My sense is they are working hard on it now, and I believe we’re going to reach a resolution one way or another in the not-too-distant future,” he said.

The Defense Department didn’t immediately respond to questions about the delay.

Fine’s comments are a rare critique of a government agency’s handling of one of his inquiries. His office has conducted a series of probes of the administration’s anti-terrorism tactics, but since he took office, Fine has taken pains to appear impartial and never speaks publicly about the contents of a report before its release.

The delays come as the Bush administration is under fire for its legal justifications of harsh interrogation practices, which critics say equated to an endorsement of torture prohibited by U.S. and international laws.

The allegations that FBI agents witnessed the abuse of prisoners were outlined in internal government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit. The documents raised questions about whether the bureau’s top officials did enough to investigate allegations of detainee abuse by military interrogators and whether military interrogators were impersonating FBI agents to avoid liability against allegations of torture.

Fine has no jurisdiction to investigate the actions of employees of the Defense Department, which has its own inspector general. Fine said his office hasn’t encountered similar problems with the FBI.

“There are issues we are working through regarding the FBI’s comments, but not to the same extent as the delay from the Department of Defense,” he said.

FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills

Telephone companies cut off FBI wiretaps used to eavesdrop on suspected criminals because of the bureau’s repeated failures to pay phone bills on time, according to a Justice Department audit released Thursday.

The faulty bookkeeping is part of what the audit, by the Justice Department’s inspector general, described as the FBI’s lax oversight of money used in undercover investigations. Poor supervision of the program also allowed one agent to steal $25,000, the audit said.

More than half of 990 bills to pay for telecommunication surveillance in five unidentified FBI field offices were not paid on time, the report shows. In one office alone, unpaid costs for wiretaps from one phone company totaled $66,000.

And at least once, a wiretap used in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act investigation – the highly secretive and sensitive cases that allow eavesdropping on suspected terrorists or spies – “was halted due to untimely payment.”

“We also found that late payments have resulted in telecommunications carriers actually disconnecting phone lines established to deliver surveillance results to the FBI, resulting in lost evidence,” according to the audit by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

Inquiry into CIA tapes seen as payback for FBI

The Justice Department’s criminal inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation tapes will be carried out largely by agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which has been sharply at odds with the CIA over the agency’s interrogation practices.In some law enforcement circles, the prospect of the FBI interviewing high-level CIA officials, under the plan announced Wednesday, and rummaging in the files of the agency’s secret interrogation programs represents a payback moment in the rich history of rivalry between the agencies.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, FBI officials have refused to allow agents to take part in CIA interrogations in which harsh methods were used, questioning the effectiveness of the techniques. Others have feared agents might be compromised if they later testified in criminal cases. Some former FBI officials have been among the most vocal critics of what the CIA calls enhanced interrogation techniques.

Some of the sharpest disputes between the agencies have focused on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, one of two terrorism suspects whose interrogations were recorded on the destroyed tapes. The tapes showed harsh interrogation techniques and were destroyed, according to the CIA, to protect the identities of personnel involved.

Some government officials have insisted that the most successful parts of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah came when FBI agents, using nonconfrontational interview techniques, extracted a wealth of information from him before the CIA authorized a tougher approach.

CIA officials have said their tactics were responsible for extracting the most important information from Abu Zubaydah. President George W. Bush has cited the Abu Zubaydah interrogation as an example of the success of the CIA program.

Leaders of both agencies have asserted for years that cooperation and coordination between the FBI and the CIA on counterterrorism issues have increased dramatically since 2001 attacks, which by accounts from each side, is true.

Nevertheless, despite the official pronouncements that the rivalry has ended, the investigation will be carried out against a backdrop of ill will that pervades the culture of the two agencies.

Law enforcement officials said Thursday that past disagreements would not influence the FBI investigation into the destroyed tapes.

They insisted the inquiry would be handled in a professional manner under the direction of a Justice Department team led by John Durham, a career U.S. prosecutor from Connecticut.

Intelligence officials have said they would cooperate fully with the criminal inquiry as they have with similar inquiries in the past.

Bush said Thursday that the White House would cooperate with the investigation. “I strongly support it,” Bush said in an interview with Reuters. “And we will participate.”

Bush, who was asked during the interview whether he was concerned that the investigation might raise questions about his counterterrorism policy, replied: “See what it says. See what the investigation leads to.”

In another development Thursday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California, released a letter she sent to the CIA in February 2003 in which she expressed concern about the agency’s interrogation techniques and its intent to destroy videotape of Abu Zubaydah. That Harman had expressed those concerns was reported last month, but the contents of the letter had not been released.

The letter, declassified at Harman’s request, was written shortly after she received a classified briefing about the agency’s detention and interrogation program because she had become the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

The letter, dated Feb. 10, 2003, said Harman had been informed five days earlier by Scott Muller, then the agency’s top lawyer, that the CIA planned to destroy the tape after its inspector general had completed an inquiry into the agency’s detention and interrogation program.

In the letter, Harman urged CIA officials to reconsider their plan to destroy the videotape, which she said “would reflect badly on the agency.” The letter from Harman asked whether White House officials had determined that the interrogation methods used by the CIA were “consistent with the principles and policies of the United States” and whether Bush had approved the methods.

In a brief reply, dated Feb. 28, 2003, and also released by Harman on Thursday, Muller did not answer directly, saying only that “a number of executive branch lawyers” had participated in the determination that “in the appropriate circumstances, use of these techniques is fully consistent with U.S. law.”

The reply did not address the issue of videotapes.

Feuding between the FBI and the CIA dates to the founding of the intelligence agency in 1947.

 In recent years, their debates have been sharpened by disputes about whether the CIA or the FBI bore greater responsibility for missing signals that might have uncovered the Sept. 11 plot before the attacks.

U.S. seen internationally as an ‘Endemic Surveillance Society.’

In the recently released annual survey of worldwide privacy rights by Privacy International and EPIC, the United States has been downgraded from “Extensive Surveillance Society” to “Endemic Surveillance Society.” As Glenn Greenwald notes, this is “the worst possible category there is for privacy protections, the category also occupied by countries such as China, Russia, Singapore and Malaysia.” In general, “the 2007 rankings indicate an overall worsening of privacy protection across the world, reflecting an increase in surveillance and a declining performance of privacy safeguards.” 

FBI investigates former CIA officer over waterboarding interviews

The Department of Justice is investigating whether a former intelligence officer illegally disclosed classified information in interviews he gave on how the CIA interrogated a suspected senior al Qaida member.In interviews with ABC News and The Washington Post earlier this month, former CIA officer John Kiriakou gave detailed descriptions of how a detainee known as Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded. The procedure produces the sensation of drowning and is widely considered a form of torture, which is illegal under U.S. and international laws.

The interviews were the first public confirmation that Zubaydah, a Palestinian who allegedly helped finance the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, had been subjected to the technique while in secret CIA custody. The CIA surrendered Zubaydah to the U.S. military in September 2006, and he’s now being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The department opened the criminal probe of Kiriakou after receiving a “criminal referral” from the CIA, according to officials familiar with the process. The officials requested anonymity because criminal referrals aren’t made public.

The investigation comes as the White House and the CIA face congressional investigations and court battles over a 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of Zubaydah’s interrogation and that of another al Qaida member while they were being held secretly by the CIA.

A federal judge scheduled a hearing in Washington on Friday on whether the destruction of the videotapes violated his order to the government to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought by 16 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

Kiriakou, who resigned from the agency four years ago, was a member of the CIA team involved in Zubaydah’s March 2002 capture in Pakistan.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment when asked if the agency had sought a criminal probe of Kiriakou. But the spokesman, George Little, added, “Separate and apart from any specific instance, when the agency has reason to believe there has been a possible violation of the law, such as the unauthorized disclosure of classified information, it has an obligation to refer the matter to the Department of Justice.”

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined to comment, as did FBI spokesman Richard Kolko.

Kiriakou’s lawyer, Mark Zaid, said that neither he nor his client had been notified of a criminal investigation. “It wouldn’t surprise me and I wouldn’t find it unusual,” Zaid said. “Knowing what I’ve seen or read, I’m not aware that he said anything that was unlawful.”

Several attorneys who represent other Guantanamo detainees said that Kiriakou’s disclosures could help their efforts to defend their clients’ legal rights.

“This could also be helpful in a civil action seeking damages from the abuse in the CIA secret detention program,” said Jonathan Hafetz of the New York University law school’s Brennan Center for Justice.

Kiriakou wasn’t present during Zubaydah’s interrogation, and he said in the interviews that he learned the details from briefing documents. He said that Zubaydah broke after 35 seconds of waterboarding and provided information that allowed the United States to disrupt “maybe dozens” of al Qaida attacks.

Kiriakou also described other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” used on Zubaydah and other detainees, including sleep deprivation, and the bureaucratic procedures by which interrogators obtained their superiors’ permission to employ the measures.

He said that at the time he believed the procedures were necessary to prevent more terrorist attacks on the United States, but that he’s since come to view waterboarding as torture.

The Bush administration and the CIA, while declining to confirm the use of waterboarding, have insisted that all of the interrogation methods used on detainees have been legal.

CIA Director Michael Hayden has taken a hard line against leaks because he believes national security has been damaged by disclosures of the administration’s domestic eavesdropping program and the identity of an undercover CIA officer married to a White House critic.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who asked not to be identified because of the issue’s sensitivity, said that current CIA officers have “expressed mixed feelings” about Kiriakou’s interviews.

They welcomed his defense of their effort to save American lives, “but they are faced with the problem of a guy going out there and talking about stuff that he is not authorized to speak about. You can’t send a signal to everybody to go out there and say what you know,” he said.

Bush Lawyers Discussed Fate of C.I.A.Tapes

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.

Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president’s office and the C.I.A. declined to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.

The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes’ destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in C.I.A. custody.

The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes.

The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Mr. Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws.

The agency did not make either Mr. Hermes or Mr. Eatinger available for comment.

Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the C.I.A.’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided. But officials said Mr. Rodriguez did not inform either Mr. Rizzo or Porter J. Goss, the C.I.A. director, before he sent the cable to destroy the tapes.

“There was an expectation on the part of those providing legal guidance that additional bases would be touched,” said one government official with knowledge of the matter. “That didn’t happen.”

Robert S. Bennett, a lawyer for Mr. Rodriguez, insisted that his client had done nothing wrong and suggested that Mr. Rodriguez had been authorized to order the destruction of the tapes. “He had a green light to destroy them,” Mr. Bennett said.

Until their destruction, the tapes were stored in a safe in the C.I.A. station in the country where the interrogations took place, current and former officials said. According to one former senior intelligence official, the tapes were never sent back to C.I.A. headquarters, despite what the official described as concern about keeping such highly classified material overseas.

Top officials of the C.I.A’s clandestine service had pressed repeatedly beginning in 2003 for the tapes’ destruction, out of concern that they could leak and put operatives in both legal and physical jeopardy.

The only White House official previously reported to have taken part in the discussions was Ms. Miers, who served as a deputy chief of staff to President Bush until early 2005, when she took over as White House counsel. While one official had said previously that Ms. Miers’s involvement began in 2003, other current and former officials said they did not believe she joined the discussions until 2005.

Besides the Justice Department inquiry, the Congressional intelligence committees have begun investigations into the destruction of the tapes, and are looking into the role that officials at the White House and Justice Department might have played in discussions about them. The C.I.A. never provided the tapes to federal prosecutors or to the Sept. 11 commission, and some lawmakers have suggested that their destruction may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

Newsweek reported this week that John D. Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence at the time the tapes were destroyed, sent a memorandum in the summer of 2005 to Mr. Goss, the C.I.A. director, advising him against destroying the tapes. Mr. Negroponte left the job this year to become deputy secretary of state, and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the Newsweek article.

The court hearing in the Guantánamo case, set for Friday in Washington by District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. over the government’s objections, will be the first public forum in which officials submit to questioning about the tapes’ destruction.

There is no publicly known connection between the 16 plaintiffs — 14 Yemenis, an Algerian and a Pakistani — and the C.I.A. videotapes. But lawyers in several Guantánamo cases contend that the government may have used information from the C.I.A. interrogations to identify their clients as “unlawful combatants” and hold them at Guantánamo for as long as six years.

“We hope to establish a procedure to review the government’s handling of evidence in our case,” said David H. Remes, a lawyer representing the 16 detainees.

Jonathan Hafetz, who represents a Qatari prisoner at Guantánamo and filed a motion on Tuesday seeking a separate hearing, said the videotapes could well be relevant.

“If the government is relying on the statement of a witness under harsh interrogation, a videotape of the interrogation would be very relevant,” said Mr. Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school.

In addition to the Guantánamo court filings, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to hold the C.I.A. in contempt of court for destroying the tapes. The A.C.L.U. says the destruction violated orders in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by several advocacy groups seeking materials related to detention and interrogation.

FBI withdrew from interrogation due to CIA’s ‘harsh tactics.’

In 2002, as the CIA used “harsh tactics” to interrogate al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaida, FBI agents involved in his detention increasingly “protested the aggressive methods that were used.” Reportedly, “one agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators.” The Washington Post reports today that the tensions between the two agencies became so bad that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III “eventually ordered the FBI team to withdraw from the interrogation” because of the tactics being used:

Tensions came to a head after FBI agents witnessed the use of some harsh tactics on Abu Zubaida, including keeping him naked in his cell, subjecting him to extreme cold and bombarding him with loud rock music. […]

FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III eventually ordered the FBI team to withdraw from the interrogation, largely because bureau procedures prohibit agents from being involved in such techniques, according to several officials familiar with the episode.