President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
BY JAN CRAWFORD GREENBERG, HOWARD L. ROSENBERG AND ARIANE DE VOGUE
ABC News/Truthout
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Vol. VIII, No. 10, April 13-19, 2008
President says he knew his senior advisors approved tough interrogation methods.
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
“Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
As first reported by ABC News on Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed – down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects – whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.
The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques – using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time – on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
Contacted by ABC News, spokesmen for Tenet and Rumsfeld declined to comment about the interrogation program or their private discussions in Principals Meetings. The White House also declined comment on behalf of Rice and Cheney. Ashcroft could not be reached.
Powell said through an assistant there were “hundreds of [Principals] meetings” on a wide variety of topics and that he was “not at liberty to discuss private meetings.”
In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals’ involvement was not so “startling.” The President had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before Wednesday’s report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans – down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner – had never been disclosed.
Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.
In interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”
The discussions and meetings occurred in an atmosphere of great concern that another terror attack on the nation was imminent. Sources said the extraordinary involvement of the senior advisers in the grim details of exactly how individual interrogations would be conducted showed how seriously officials took the al Qaeda threat.
It started after the CIA captured top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in spring 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. When his safe house was raided by Pakistani security forces along with FBI and CIA agents, Zubaydah was shot three times during the gun battle.
At a time when virtually all counterterrorist professionals viewed another attack as imminent – and with information on al Qaeda scarce – the detention of Zubaydah was seen as a potentially critical breakthrough.
