Known and Unknown (70 page)

“However, I stand for 8–10 hours a day,” I wrote. “Why is standing limited to 4 hours?”
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My offhand comment was a statement of fact. I used a stand-up desk and spent much of the day on my feet. The note received enormous attention when detainee abuse became a major public issue. It was a mistake to make that personal observation to my general counsel. It certainly was not a signal to the Department that it would be okay to stretch the rules, as some have suggested.
¹⁹

Pentagon lawyers had determined that the interrogation methods I approved in that memo were both legal and humane. I believed then—and I believe today—that they were. However, the application of any interrogation technique requires care and the supervision of experts. Any technique that is legal and humane on its own could conceivably be applied in ways that are not legal and not humane if, for example, it is done repeatedly, over long periods of time or used in an inappropriate combination with other techniques. That is why detailed interrogation plans have to be approved at the appropriate levels of military command. Plan specifics were devised, as they should have been, by experienced interrogators and their commanders at Gitmo, not by officials in Washington far removed from day-to-day management of the interrogation operations.

Moreover, I understood that the techniques I authorized were intended for use only with one key individual. General Hill advised that Muhammed al-Qahtani had information that could save American lives. He and others in the chain of command believed additional techniques were warranted. Any proposals to use these methods on others would have to come back up the chain of command for review.
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M
any claims have been made about the usefulness of various interrogation strategies and methods. In the case of Qahtani, the reports from the interrogators say the approved techniques yielded important information. Qahtani ultimately acknowledged that he was an al-Qaida member and had met with bin Laden. He admitted he knew the 9/11 terrorists and was sent to the United States by Khalid Sheikh Muhammed, the chief planner of the attacks.
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Qahtani acknowledged he knew Richard Reid, the terrorist who plotted to blow up an airliner with explosives in his shoes, and also knew Jose Padilla, who was thought to have plans to bomb apartment buildings in Chicago.
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Qahtani provided useful information about al-Qaida's planning for 9/11, its methods of cross-border infiltration, and information about bin Laden's bodyguards. Much of the information from Qahtani's interrogations remains classified, but the Schlesinger and Brown panel concluded that the interrogation was critical in “gaining important and time-urgent information.”
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One military report by two general officers found that Qahtani “ultimately provided extremely valuable intelligence.”
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Qahtani's interrogation did not lead, as some critics have alleged, to the abuse at Abu Ghraib, or anywhere else for that matter. “We found no link between approved interrogation techniques and detainee abuse,” Vice Admiral Albert Church concluded from his independent investigation of detainee operations.
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He noted that “the Office of the Secretary of Defense was a moderating force that cut back on the number and types of techniques under consideration.”
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The Church report stated of Guantánamo Bay:

At the time, my approval of Haynes' December 2002 cover memo, in response to SOUTHCOM's request for additional interrogation techniques for Qahtani, was uncontroversial. My decision to accept the DoD general counsel's recommendations, approving some interrogation strategies sought by General Hill but rejecting others, was done with the concurrence of senior Defense Department officials, both military and civilian.

It was not until January 10, 2003, thirty-nine days After I had approved a limited number of the proposed techniques, that Haynes informed me that some military lawyers had expressed concern and suggested that Qahtani's interrogation plan might be construed as mistreatment. As urgent as it was to obtain terrorism-related intelligence, I was not willing to allow the use of methods that could be reasonably challenged as improper. It made no sense to fight terrorists in a way that might raise questions about our respect for the law and that could ultimately undermine our efforts. When I learned of the concerns, I promptly suspended my prior approval of the additional interrogation techniques.
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I then instructed Haynes to assemble a team to review the interrogation guidelines. I wanted the team to include any and all of those military orcivilian personnel who were concerned about them or the interrogation plan: intelligence officials, defense policy experts, and lawyers from every military service. When I met with the group one weekend in February or March 2003, I told them that I wanted their honest views. They seemed to appreciate that they had been brought into the process, and gave me the clear impression that if they had any concerns, they were being resolved.

In April 2003 the review group we had impaneled reached its conclusions. Their report identified thirty-five techniques that they believed could be used legally for key al-Qaida members under proper interrogation plans.
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After reviewing their report, I authorized only twenty-four of the thirty-five techniques they had recommended. Each of the techniques I approved, I was told, had been unanimously supported by the members of the legal review team, as well as by each of the service secretaries and each of the members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff involved in the process.
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I was informed that several senior military officials participating in the review expressed concern that my decision was too restrictive, that we might be risking American lives by authorizing only limited interrogation methods and excluding other techniques. Some officials were especially dismayed by my suspension of the methods being employed in the Qahtani case, because they thought they were on the verge of an intelligence breakthrough. However, I wanted an approach that would reflect the best judgment of all of the relevant components of the Department of Defense, military and civilian. The techniques I approved After receiving the April 2003 conclusions did just that.

The subsequent politicized public debate about this subject has obscured a fact of great importance: None of the authorized interrogation methods—either those approved in December 2002 and used on one detainee until I rescinded them, or those that I later approved in April 2003—involved physical or mental pain. None were inhumane. None met any reasonable person's definition of torture. From start to finish, my goal in interrogation matters was to balance the nation's need for intelligence against considerations of military tradition and morale. Like all solutions that balance complex and weighty issues, Qahtani's interrogation was imperfect and not without controversy, but as soon as concerns were raised, I addressed them immediately.

Some two and a half years later, I learned what had happened to Muhammed al-Qahtani during his interrogation.
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I was surprised and troubled. Some of what took place sounded to me as if the interrogation plan may have gone beyond the techniques I had approved. Apparently Qahtani was exposed to cold temperatures at some point, which I had rejected in my authorization. It appears he was stripped and humiliated. The combination and frequency of techniques interrogators had used with Qahtani called into question their appropriateness, at least in my mind. They may not have been in keeping with the intent of my January 2002 order that all detainees in the custody of the Defense Department were to be treated humanely.
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I
f Qahtani's true identity had been known at the time of his capture, before he came into DoD custody, it is highly likely the CIA would have assumed responsibility for him, rather than DoD. The Defense Department's detention operations often are confused with those undertaken by the CIA, but they were two separate sets of activities. At some point in the months After 9/11, the CIA established an interrogation program for high-level al-Qaida operatives captured around the world. Their highly classified program apparently began After Pakistani forces captured senior bin Laden lieutenant Abu Zubaydah in a March 2002 gun battle.
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Over the next year, the Agency successfully collected intelligence from Zubaydah and captured and interrogated other senior al-Qaida lieutenants, which eventually led to the capture of the mastermind of 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed.
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As a member of the National Security Council, I was made aware of the Agency's interrogation program—but as I now understand it, it was not until well After it had been initiated, and well After the senior members of the congressional intelligence committees in Congress, including future Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and others had been briefed.
^†
Along with my colleagues on the NSC I learned that the CIA had developed a series of enhanced techniques to achieve Zubaydah's cooperation. The CIA's program employed some of the interrogation methods that I had rejected for use in the Defense Department. We were told the Justice Department had determined that the interrogation techniques the CIA was using—up to and including waterboarding—were legal.

Though the CIA utilized waterboarding and other techniques that I rejected in the Department of Defense, I saw no contradiction. Some techniques that might be appropriate for a very small number of high-value terrorists by a highly trained and professional group of CIA interrogators in a controlled environment were not appropriate for use by military personnel. It would have been unwise to blur the difference between two distinct institutions. Tight limits on interrogation, such as those contained in the Army Field Manual, are appropriate for the U.S. military. Tens of thousands of detainees passed through U.S military custody in Afghanistan and Iraq. Conversely, the CIA was dealing with a small number of key terrorist leaders believed to be senior al-Qaida operatives. CIA personnel were trained to use enhanced interrogation tactics in carefully monitored situations. We didn't want young military personnel making decisions on interrogating high-level al-Qaida terrorists.
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It was for precisely this reason—the difference between the CIA interrogation program and the military's detention operations at Guantánamo Bay and in Iraq and Afghanistan—that in the summer of 2006 I became a thorn in the administration's side. By then the
Washington Post
had published the news, obtained by a leak, that the CIA was holding senior al-Qaida terrorists in secret prisons around the world.
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In response to the disclosures and the resulting press furor, the CIA and the President's White House staff wanted to announce that the al-Qaida terrorists were being sent to Gitmo. I argued strongly against the proposed transfer.

There was some logic to the idea of the move. The CIA would be able to close the prisons it had operated in friendly countries abroad—countries that were less than enthusiastic that their cooperation might become public. Increasing pressure from the federal courts and evolving interpretations of international law also threatened the CIA program if it remained in the shadows, a legal limbo that understandably made many in intelligence agencies uncomfortable. And finally, the CIA had no better place to put them.

Still, I believed the Defense Department was in the worst possible position to deal with the public aspects of the CIA's handling of high-value al-Qaida detainees. We had not been involved in their detention program and would not be able to defend it with the persuasiveness required. Further, the Defense Department was particularly ill suited to take on another burden After the abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. The military men and women at Guantánamo Bay already were being criticized in the media and in Congress for allegations of abuse (most of which were proven false). I was convinced the military would be damaged further by allegations of detainee mistreatment if the CIA program became conflated with the Department of Defense's detention operations.

I asked Steve Cambone, the Defense Department's undersecretary for intelligence, to be the bearer of the news the White House did not want to hear. It was one of many thankless tasks I assigned to Cambone. Steve had an air of reserved intelligence that, when combined with his physical height, could make him seem intimidating to those who did not know his ready wit and warm personal loyalty. But for a problem like this one, it wasn't a bad thing to have a representative from DoD whom people took seriously. We argued that there needed to be clear lines between the CIA program and the Defense Department program. Critics would ignore the important differences if both the military and CIA detainees were located at Guantánamo.

But the momentum behind the decision was too strong to overcome, even for someone as persistent as Cambone. Though he held the line for months, by late summer it became clear the President favored the transfer. On September 6, 2006, Bush announced that fourteen high-value CIA detainees were on their way to Guantánamo Bay, where they would be confined on the military base run by the Defense Department. In the years that followed, the controversy over the treatment of the CIA detainees only escalated. So did confusion about the many differences between the legal authorities, standards, and operations of the CIA and the Defense Department.