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.

Crazy McCain is at it again!

Air firm accused of rendition flights role

The US government is attempting to halt a lawsuit that could establish whether any of the Central Intelligence Agency’s so-called rendition flights have been partly planned on British soil. Lawyers representing a number of men who have been held at Guantánamo are suing Jeppesen Dataplan, a subsidiary of the Boeing Corporation, accusing Jeppesen of involvement in the flights that took the men to secret prisons around the world. Once there, the men say, they were tortured. The lawyers say they strongly suspect that at least some of the logistic support for the CIA’s flights was arranged at Jeppesen’s office in Crawley, West Sussex, a few miles from Gatwick airport.However, the US government is asking a federal court to dismiss the lawsuit because “to proceed would risk the disclosure of highly classified information” about the agency’s methods.

According to Washington’s arguments, that information would include “whether any private entities or other countries assisted the CIA”, as well as the locations of any secret prisons and “the methods of interrogation employed”.

The men’s lawyers at Reprieve, a London-based legal charity, say that if the case is dismissed, they may sue Jeppesen for damages in the English courts.

Reprieve is seeking unspecified damages on behalf of six men, including Benyam Mohammed, an Ethiopian national who grew up in Notting Hill, west London, who was first arrested in Pakistan before being flown to Morocco on a flight allegedly facilitated by Jeppesen. In Morocco he was subjected to severe physical and psychological torture, according to Reprieve’s complaint. “He was routinely beaten, suffering broken bones and, on occasion, loss of consciousness due to the beatings. His clothes were cut off with a scalpel and the same scalpel was then used to make incisions on his body, including his penis. A hot stinging liquid was then poured into open wounds on his penis where he had been cut. He was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution, and death.”

Another plaintiff is Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen who had lived in Britain for 19 years when arrested in the Gambia in 2002, and who was freed from Guantánamo last March after it emerged that he had acted as a go-between for MI5 and the radical cleric Abu Qatada. Rawi says he was flown to Afghanistan, where he was “punched and badly beaten”, deprived of food, warmth or light, and subjected to loud noise around the clock.

According to Jeppesen’s publications, its international trip planning services are arranged by two offices, with San Jose in California managing the western hemisphere, and Crawley managing the eastern hemisphere. Papers filed by Reprieve and the American Civil Liberties Union at a US district court in San Jose say that “publicly available records demonstrate that Jeppesen facilitated more than 70 secret rendition flights over a four-year period to countries where it knew or reasonably should have known that detainees are routinely tortured or otherwise abused”.

Last June, Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who investigated the CIA’s use of European territory and airspace during prisoner operations, also concluded in his report to the Council of Europe that Jeppesen had falsified flight plans.

A spokesman for Jeppesen said: “We manage the logistics and planning of international operations for thousands of organisations and people operating aircraft. It is not necessary for us to know the specific nature of a customer’s flight. In the event that we learn something about the purpose of a flight, our customers have the reasonable expectation that it will be held in confidence.” Clive Stafford Smith, legal director of Reprieve, said: “There seems to be little doubt that these rendition flights were planned on British soil. The US government has intervened to prevent their dirty laundry from being washed in public, which is reprehensible.”