Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Cheney's Secret Briefings Defended Interrogations

(AP) Dick Cheney as vice president conducted secret briefings for lawmakers in 2005 aimed at defending harsh interrogations as their methods were coming under congressional scrutiny, according to current and former government officials.

The secret briefings followed the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and public revelations about the CIA's rendition and interrogation program, current and former officials with ties to Congress and government intelligence told The Associated Press.

One official with direct knowledge of a March 8, 2005, meeting on the CIA's interrogation program said the briefing was run by Cheney in the situation room at the White House, a secure meeting room. The official said CIA officers were on hand to provide details.

The official said it was not unusual for Cheney to lead such briefings, as he was an aggressive champion of Bush administration national security policies and periodically conducted or sat in on meetings with members of Congress at the White House. The official asked not to be identified because the meeting was secret.

Another Cheney briefing occurred in October 2005 for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., around the time he had won overwhelming Senate support for banning cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment for all U.S. prisoners, The Washington Post reported in its Wednesday editions. Two other briefings took place in October and November 2005, according to the Post.

The briefings add to questions about the role Cheney played in the creation, approval and conduct of the CIA's interrogation program, either directly or through his powerful chief of staff, David Addington.

The Cheney briefings were among 40 conducted for members of Congress by Bush administration officials between 2002 and 2009.

The CIA detailed the briefings on a chart created in May at the request of members of Congress after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claimed that the CIA failed to tell her at a September 2002 briefing that waterboarding had been used against a prisoner. That briefing occurred within weeks of the waterboarding of terror suspect Abu Zubaydah.

Full article here.

No comments: