U.S. used waterboarding: ex-spy chief

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States used waterboarding in terrorism interrogations but no longer does, a former U.S. spy chief said in the Bush administration’s clearest confirmation of the technique’s use.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to acknowledge the CIA’s use of the simulated drowning technique, which human rights groups call an illegal form of torture.

The remarks by former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in an interview with National Journal magazine come as senators are expected on Wednesday to grill Attorney General Michael Mukasey on a promised review of the legality of interrogation methods.

Asked by the magazine if debate over U.S. counterterrorism techniques was hampering its effort in a “war of ideas,” Negroponte said, “We’ve taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years.”

Negroponte served from 2005 to 2007 as the first director of national intelligence, a position created by President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Negroponte is now deputy secretary of state. He spoke in an interview published in the National Journal’s January 25 issue.

“It (waterboarding) wasn’t used when I was director of national intelligence, nor even a few years before that,” he said. “I get concerned that we’re too retrospective and tend to look in the rearview mirror too often at things that happened four or even six years ago.”

Negroponte’s remarks appear to confirm earlier reports that the CIA discontinued waterboarding in 2003, after using it on three “high-value” detainees. Vice President Dick Cheney once suggested waterboarding was “an important tool” used to interrogate September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Bush has regularly insisted that the United States does not torture but has declined to discuss what interrogation techniques are used. The CIA declined comment on Negroponte’s remarks. 

 Mukasey, who took office in November, promised in his Senate confirmation hearings to review U.S. interrogation methods. But he gave no sign in a meeting with reporters last week that he was ready to discuss the review at Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mukasey said it would focus on the existing interrogation program and the validity of department legal opinions regarding it — a hint that he might not review discontinued practices.

Mukasey made no mention of the review in his prepared testimony to the committee, released by the Justice Department on Monday.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, took note of the omission and vowed in a statement to ask Mukasey “whether he agrees that waterboarding is torture and illegal.”

Mukasey was asked last week if he would answer senators’ inevitable questions about the issue, and replied, “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t answer it, I didn’t say that I would.”

Mukasey on January 2 ordered the Justice Department to investigate the CIA’s destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2002. At least one of the subjects, Abu Zubaydah, was believed to have been subjected to waterboarding.

Mukasey has rejected calls to appoint an independent counsel for the investigation. He has indicated investigators would be free to pursue evidence of illegal interrogation techniques in their probe, but department officials have said the focus remains on the tapes’ destruction.

Justice Nomination Seen as Snub to Democrats

The Justice Department lawyer who wrote a series of classified legal opinions in 2005 authorizing harsh C.I.A. interrogation techniques was renominated by the White House on Wednesday to a senior department post, a move that was seen as a snub to Senate Democrats who have long opposed his appointment.

The lawyer, Steven G. Bradbury, who has run the department’s Office of Legal Counsel without Senate confirmation for more than two years, has been repeatedly nominated to the job of assistant attorney general for legal counsel.

But the earlier nominations stalled in the Senate because of a dispute with the Justice Department over its failure to provide Congress with copies of legal opinions on a variety of terrorism issues. Under Senate rules that place a time limit on nominations, Mr. Bradbury’s earlier nominations expired.

Late last year, Democrats urged the White House to withdraw Mr. Bradbury’s name once and for all and find a new candidate for the post after it was disclosed in news reports in October that he was the author of classified memorandums that gave approval to harsh interrogation techniques, including head slapping, exposure to cold and simulated drowning, even when used in combination.

Mr. Bradbury’s memorandums were described by Democrats as an effort by the Bush administration to circumvent laws prohibiting torture and to undermine a public legal opinion issued by the Justice Department in 2004 that declared torture to be “abhorrent.”

The department and the White House have insisted that there are no contradictions between Mr. Bradbury’s legal opinions, which are still secret, and laws and rules governing interrogation techniques. A department spokesman, Peter A. Carr, said Wednesday that the department remained eager to see Mr. Bradbury confirmed.

“Steve Bradbury is a dedicated public servant and a superb lawyer, who has led with distinction the department’s Office of Legal Counsel,” Mr. Carr said. “He has proven invaluable to the department, and we will continue to work with the Senate to get him confirmed.”

Joe Shoemaker, a spokesman for Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, said that by putting Mr. Bradbury’s name forward again as a nominee, “the president has thumbed his nose at Congress and chosen an individual who has been involved in authorizing some of the most controversial policies of this administration.”

Mr. Durbin led the previous efforts to reject Mr. Bradbury’s nomination and sits on the Judiciary Committee, which would have to approve the nomination.

Mr. Bradbury’s new nomination is almost certain to be a focus of questions next week when Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey is scheduled to appear before the Judiciary Committee for his first public hearing since his confirmation to the job in November.

Mr. Mukasey has suggested that he is a firm supporter of the Bush administration’s tough anti-terrorism policies, and his nomination was nearly derailed over criticism of his refusal to condemn as torture the interrogation practice known as waterboarding. He has since said he is studying its legality.

Mr. Durbin and the nine other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee joined in a letter on Wednesday asking Mr. Mukasey to clarify his views on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques. The letter noted there had been “ample time for you to study this issue and reach a conclusion” and asked him to respond to the question: “Is the use of waterboarding as an interrogation technique illegal under U.S. law, including terrorism obligations?”

Also Wednesday, Vice President Dick Cheney offered a broad and impassioned defense of the administration’s antiterrorism efforts as he urged Congress to act quickly in reauthorizing broad wiretapping powers for the National Security Agency and in giving broad immunity to phone companies involved in the wiretaps.

The vice president, who was closely involved in the N.S.A.’s program of eavesdropping without warrants from its inception weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, depicted the vote in the Senate as a matter of national security.

“It is a fact,” Mr. Cheney told a friendly audience at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group in Washington, “that the danger to our country remains very real, and that the terrorists are still determined to hit us.”

Democrats concede that they probably lack the votes to stop a White House-backed plan to give immunity to phone carriers that assisted in the N.S.A. program, and they urged President Bush anew on Wednesday to agree to a one-month extension in the law to allow time for a full debate.