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white house memo on justification of torture


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didn't know what else to call the thread.

passed on to me today.

yakoff shmirnoff was right...america is wicked awesome.

 

 

 

Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture

Justice Dept. Gave Advice in 2002

By Dana Priest and R. Jeffrey Smith

Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, June 8, 2004; Page A01

 

 

In August 2002, the Justice Department advised the White House that torturing al

Qaeda terrorists in captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international

laws against torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations"

conducted in President Bush's war on terrorism, according to a newly obtained

memo.

 

 

 

If a government employee were to torture a suspect in captivity, "he would be

doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the Al

Qaeda terrorist network," said the memo, from the Justice Department's office

of legal counsel, written in response to a CIA request for legal guidance. It

added that arguments centering on "necessity and self-defense could provide

justifications that would eliminate any criminal liability" later.

 

The memo seems to counter the pre-Sept. 11, 2001, assumption that U.S.

government personnel would never be permitted to torture captives. It was

offered after the CIA began detaining and interrogating suspected al Qaeda

leaders in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the wake of the attacks, according to

government officials familiar with the document.

 

The legal reasoning in the 2002 memo, which covered treatment of al Qaeda

detainees in CIA custody, was later used in a March 2003 report by Pentagon

lawyers assessing interrogation rules governing the Defense Department's

detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. At that time, Defense Secretary

Donald H. Rumsfeld had asked the lawyers to examine the logistical, policy and

legal issues associated with interrogation techniques.

 

Bush administration officials say flatly that, despite the discussion of legal

issues in the two memos, it has abided by international conventions barring

torture, and that detainees at Guantanamo and elsewhere have been treated

humanely, except in the cases of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq for which

seven military police soldiers have been charged.

 

Still, the 2002 and 2003 memos reflect the Bush administration's desire to

explore the limits on how far it could legally go in aggressively interrogating

foreigners suspected of terrorism or of having information that could thwart

future attacks.

 

In the 2002 memo, written for the CIA and addressed to White House Counsel

Alberto R. Gonzales, the Justice Department defined torture in a much narrower

way, for example, than does the U.S. Army, which has historically carried out

most wartime interrogations.

 

In the Justice Department's view -- contained in a 50-page document signed by

Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee and obtained by The Washington Post --

inflicting moderate or fleeting pain does not necessarily constitute torture.

Torture, the memo says, "must be equivalent in intensity to the pain

accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of

bodily function, or even death."

 

By contrast, the Army's Field Manual 34-52, titled "Intelligence

Interrogations," sets more restrictive rules. For example, the Army prohibits

pain induced by chemicals or bondage; forcing an individual to stand, sit or

kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time; and food

deprivation. Under mental torture, the Army prohibits mock executions, sleep

deprivation and chemically induced psychosis.

 

Human rights groups expressed dismay at the Justice Department's legal reasoning

yesterday.

 

"It is by leaps and bounds the worst thing I've seen since this whole Abu Ghraib

scandal broke," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It appears that

what they were contemplating was the commission of war crimes and looking for

ways to avoid legal accountability. The effect is to throw out years of

military doctrine and standards on interrogations."

 

But a spokesman for the White House counsel's office said, "The president

directed the military to treat al Qaeda and Taliban humanely and consistent

with the Geneva Conventions."

 

Mark Corallo, the Justice Department's chief spokesman, said "the department

does not comment on specific legal advice it has provided confidentially within

the executive branch." But he added: "It is the policy of the United States to

comply with all U.S. laws in the treatment of detainees -- including the

Constitution, federal statutes and treaties." The CIA declined to comment.

 

The Justice Department's interpretation for the CIA sought to provide guidance

on what sorts of aggressive treatments might not fall within the legal

definition of torture.

 

The 2002 memo, for example, included the interpretation that "it is difficult to

take a specific act out of context and conclude that the act in isolation would

constitute torture." The memo named seven techniques that courts have

considered torture, including severe beatings with truncheons and clubs,

threats of imminent death, burning with cigarettes, electric shocks to

genitalia, rape or sexual assault, and forcing a prisoner to watch the torture

of another person.

 

"While we cannot say with certainty that acts falling short of these seven would

not constitute torture," the memo advised, ". . . we believe that interrogation

techniques would have to be similar to these in their extreme nature and in the

type of harm caused to violate law."

 

"For purely mental pain or suffering to amount to torture," the memo said, "it

must result in significant psychological harm of significant duration, e.g.,

lasting for months or even years." Examples include the development of mental

disorders, drug-induced dementia, "post traumatic stress disorder which can

last months or even years, or even chronic depression."

 

Of mental torture, however, an interrogator could show he acted in good faith by

"taking such steps as surveying professional literature, consulting with

experts or reviewing evidence gained in past experience" to show he or she did

not intend to cause severe mental pain and that the conduct, therefore, "would

not amount to the acts prohibited by the statute."

 

In 2003, the Defense Department conducted its own review of the limits that

govern torture, in consultation with experts at the Justice Department and

other agencies. The aim of the March 6, 2003, review, conducted by a working

group that included representatives of the military services, the Joint Chiefs

of Staff and the intelligence community, was to provide a legal basis for what

the group's report called "exceptional interrogations."

 

Much of the reasoning in the group's report and in the Justice Department's 2002

memo overlap. The documents, which address treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban

detainees, were not written to apply to detainees held in Iraq.

 

In a draft of the working group's report, for example, Pentagon lawyers

approvingly cited the Justice Department's 2002 position that domestic and

international laws prohibiting torture could be trumped by the president's

wartime authority and any directives he issued.

 

At the time, the Justice Department's legal analysis, however, shocked some of

the military lawyers who were involved in crafting the new guidelines, said

senior defense officials and military lawyers.

 

"Every flag JAG lodged complaints," said one senior Pentagon official involved

in the process, referring to the judge advocate generals who are military

lawyers of each service.

 

"It's really unprecedented. For almost 30 years we've taught the Geneva

Convention one way," said a senior military attorney. "Once you start telling

people it's okay to break the law, there's no telling where they might stop."

 

A U.S. law enacted in 1994 bars torture by U.S. military personnel anywhere in

the world. But the Pentagon group's report, prepared under the supervision of

General Counsel William J. Haynes II, said that "in order to respect the

President's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign . .

. [the prohibition against torture] must be construed as inapplicable to

interrogations undertaken pursuant to his Commander-in-Chief authority."

 

The Pentagon group's report, divulged yesterday by the Wall Street Journal and

obtained by The Post, said further that the 1994 law barring torture "does not

apply to the conduct of U.S. personnel" at Guantanamo Bay.

 

It also said the anti-torture law did apply to U.S. military interrogations that

occurred outside U.S. "maritime and territorial jurisdiction," such as in Iraq

or Afghanistan. But it said both Congress and the Justice Department would have

difficulty enforcing the law if U.S. military personnel could be shown to be

acting as a result of presidential orders.

 

The report then parsed at length the definition of torture under domestic and

international law, with an eye toward guiding military personnel about legal

defenses.

 

The Pentagon report uses language very similar to that in the 2002 Justice

Department memo written in response to the CIA's request: "If a government

defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner

that might arguably violate criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order

to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist

network," the draft states. "In that case, DOJ [Department of Justice] believes

that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to

protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

 

The draft goes on to assert that a soldier's claim that he was following

"superior orders" would be available for those engaged in "exceptional

interrogations except where the conduct goes so far as to be patently

unlawful." It asserts, as does the Justice view expressed for the CIA, that the

mere infliction of pain and suffering is not unlawful; the pain or suffering

must be severe.

 

A Defense Department spokesman said last night that the March 2003 memo

represented "a scholarly effort to define the perimeters of the law" but added:

"What is legal and what is put into practice is a different story." Pentagon

officials said the group examined at least 35 interrogation techniques, and

Rumsfeld later approved using 24 of them in a classified directive on April 16,

2003, that governed all activities at Guantanamo Bay. The Pentagon has refused

to make public the 24 interrogation procedures.

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this memo has been in the news for a while now, although i nev er gotten to read it.

 

 

whats funny is when i write a memo its like, "get milk", or "pick up dry cleaning". short and to the point. when a memo turns into a multi page document then its no longer a memo.

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dont feel like making another topic.

 

in case no one saw this before.

 

Berg beheading: No way, say medical experts

By Ritt Goldstein

 

American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

 

"I certainly would need to be convinced it [the decapitation video] was authentic," Dr John Simpson, executive director for surgical affairs at the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, said from New Zealand. Echoing Dr Simpson's criticism, when this journalist asked forensic death expert Jon Nordby, PhD and fellow of the American Board of Medicolegal Death Investigators, whether he believed the Berg decapitation video had been "staged", Nordby replied: "Yes, I think that's the best explanation of it."

 

Questions of when the video's footage was taken, and the time elapsed between the shooting of the video's segments, were raised by both experts, reflecting a portion of the broader and ongoing video controversy. Nordby, speaking to Asia Times Online from Washington state, noted: "We don't know how much time wasn't filmed," adding that "there's no way of knowing whether ... footage is contemporaneous with the footage that follows".

 

While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg's last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

 

"I would have thought that all the people in the vicinity would have been covered in blood, in a matter of seconds ... if it was genuine," said Simpson. Notably, the act's perpetrators appeared far from so. And separately Nordby observed: "I think that by the time they're ... on his head, he's already dead."

 

Providing another basis for their findings, in the course of such an assault, an individual's autonomic nervous system would react, typically doing so strongly, with the body shaking and jerking accordingly. And while Nordby noted that "they rotated and moved the head", shifting vertebrae that should have initiated such actions, Simpson said he "certainly didn't perceive any movements at all" in response to such efforts.

 

During the period when Berg's captors filmed the decapitation sequence, circumstances indicate that he had already been dead "a quite uncertain length of time, but more than ... however long the beheading took", Simpson stated. Both Simpson and Nordby also noted the difficulty in providing analysis based on the video, the inherent limitations presented by this. But both also felt that Berg had seemed drugged.

 

A particularly significant point in the video sequence occurred as Berg's captors attacked him, bringing the supposedly fatal knife to bear. "The way that they pulled him over, they could have used a dummy at that point," reflected Simpson regarding what the video portrayed. Separately, Nordby said Berg does not "appear to register any sort of surprise or any change in his facial expression when he's grabbed and twisted over, and they start to bring this weapon into use".

 

Subsequently, Nordby said it was likely that the filming sequence was manipulated at the point immediately preceding this, allowing Berg's corpse to be used for the decapitation sequence. Nordby also emphasized that the video "raises more questions than it answers", with the most fundamental questions of "who are you, and how did you die", being impossible to answer from it. But broad speculation exists regarding a number of factors surrounding both Berg's death and the video, and its timing in regard to revelations of US prison atrocities.

 

In a May 13 article, the Arabic newsgroup Aljazeera reported that a Dubai-based Reuters journalist first broke the story, "but while Fox News, CNN and the BBC" were able to secure the video from the "Arabic-only website" that hosted it, Aljazeera was unable to locate it. And also on May 13, the Associated Press (AP) reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency had determined that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was the individual who beheaded Berg.

 

Since Secretary of State Colin Powell's United Nations presentation of February 5, 2003, al-Zarqawi has been portrayed as the single most dangerous element facing the Bush administration's "war on terror". Powell's UN presentation has since been widely accepted as empty; nevertheless, al-Zarqawi appears to have surpassed even Osama bin Laden as the administration's No 1 terror target. And on May 15, Brigadier-General Mark Kimmitt, the Coalition Provisional Authority's chief Iraq military spokesman, declared that al-Zarqawi will be eventually caught, though that may prove particularly difficult.

 

On March 4, Brigadier-General David Rodriguez of the Joint Chiefs of staff revealed that the Pentagon didn't have "direct evidence of whether he's [al-Zarqawi] alive or dead", providing commentary on the nature of prior "evidence" linking al-Zarqawi to attacks and bombings. But that same day, AP reported that an Iraqi resistance group claimed al-Zarqawi had been killed the April prior in the US bombing of northern Iraq.

 

Speaking off the record, intelligence community sources have previously said they believe it "very likely" that al-Zarqawi is indeed long dead. Such a fact makes al-Zarqawi's alleged killing of Berg difficult to reconcile, and there has been broad speculation that blaming al-Zarqawi is an administration ploy. Further anomalies surrounding Berg's death have fueled added speculation.

 

According to e-mails sent from a US consular officer in Baghdad, Beth Payne, to the Berg family, Nick Berg was being held in Iraq "by the US military in Mosul". A May 13 AP report notes that a US State Department spokesperson subsequently said this was untrue, an error, and that Berg was being held by Iraqi authorities. But another May 13 AP report quoted "police chief Major-General Mohammed Khair al-Barhawi" as claiming that reports of Iraqi police having held Berg were "baseless".

 

And Berg is seen on the beheading videotape in what appears to be US military prison-issue clothing, sitting in what appears to be a US military-type white chair, virtually identical to those photographed as used at Abu Ghraib prison. However, the taking of hostages has occurred in the region, and beheadings are not unheard of.

 

According to a February 2003 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), on September 23, 2001, radical Islamists captured a group of 25 Kurdish fighters in the Iraqi village of Kheli Hama. "Some prisoners' throats had been slit, while others had been beheaded," HRW reported, noting that the television station KurdSat had broadcast pictures of the dead that September 26. The report also noted that a videotape "apparently filmed" by those committing the atrocities had been found.

 

The strict Islamist community in Iraq denied that the acts were committed by their people, stating that the incident was fabricated.

 

Additional reports of beheadings also exist, with the victims usually noted as killed with a bullet before the beheading occurs. But HRW's report also raised an issue that the Berg video's makers, and Berg's father, both raised: prisoner exchange.

 

HRW noted that Iraq's radical Islamists did pursue exchanges of captives, and the Berg video specifically noted that his captors claimed they were killing him as their attempts to exchange Berg had been rebuffed by US authorities. Berg's father, Michael, has pressed the administration of US President George W Bush as regards what the facts of this allegation are, with the administration denying any knowledge that such a trade was offered. And added questions still exist.

 

Because Iraq's radical Islamists speak in a particular manner, and live by a closely proscribed code, apparent contradictions between these ways and the way Berg's captors appeared has generated speculation. Some observers have speculated on the possibility that the individuals weren't native Arabic speakers. Conversely, it is reported that in Saudi Arabia, where Sharia law allows for beheadings in cases of severe crimes, the condemned is heavily drugged with tranquilizers prior to the execution, reportedly leaving them in a state similar to that which Berg appeared in during parts of the video.

 

Again, Nordby emphasized that the video "raises more questions than it answers".

 

Ritt Goldstein is an American investigative political journalist based in Stockholm. His work has appeared in broadsheets such as Australia's Sydney Morning Herald, Spain's El Mundo and Denmark's Politiken, as well as with the Inter Press Service (IPS), a global news agency.

 

(Copyright 2004 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for information on our sales and syndication policies.)

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Guest BROWNer

so if he was drugged, it still wouldn't explain the supposed lack of profuse bleeding.

 

on an unrelated note, seeking, was it you that was on here talking about the official story of the plane that hit the pentagon awhile back????

yesterday somebody brought it up and they are really convinced that the official

story is total bullshit. they cited some AP photo that apparently showed a hole that was only 14ft in diameter with zero wreckage anywhere...i knew about the lack of wreckage but..

i haven't bothered to look into it much, nor did i pay much attention at the time this

seemed to be hot topic on the net..

but i certainly started to think, how the fuck does a jumbo jet aircraft 'vaporize'?

oh yea...speed + fuel=complete vaporization?

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...and so continues our demise

 

we have totally become The Evil Empire.

 

this is really just another cog in out foreign policy machinations of death.

 

anyone who thinks this is new for our government should learn more about our foreign policy.

 

it's just now, we have a president so stupid, he doesn't know or understand how to keep it covert.

 

the hypocrisy is gonna come back to kick our ass

 

www.killinghope.org

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Guest imported_El Mamerro

The worst part is that there's a good number of people in the country that not only won't give a fuck about this memo, but will actually be in total agreement with what it details.

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this isnt a war, it's an occupation.

 

browner,

ive always talked about it. there is a very detailed story with alot of photos on the whole thing, but i dont have thelink. check in the last couple of political threads. probably the original nick berg thread. in it, there is either a link to that exact thing, or a link to a site that has it prominently displayed on their site.

i'll do some digging myself.

it's a very good write up with alot of pictures.

 

im not sure what the point about the drugging was, but i think its kind of irrelivent. i think what really matters were the words of the 2 dr's, who echoed (with more credibility, although less detail) exactly what i said in the original thread on this topic. (thank you very much ;) )

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READ THIS. I mean it. Read it. Now.

 

From Billmon:

 

 

 

 

Praise the Lord and Pass the Thumbscrews

 

It's been pointed out to me (tip of the hat to Bernhard H.) that the team of lawyers who wrote the Pentagon's treatise on presidential torture powers was led by this woman:

U.S. Air Force's General Counsel, Mary L. Walker, discusses what it takes to leave a legacy of significance.

Ms. Walker, it turns out, is a long-time Republican political appointee first brought to Washington during the Reagan administration to help oversee the looting of America's natural resources, um, that is, I mean, to serve as principal deputy in the environmental division at Ed Meese's Justice Department.

 

It also appears that Ms. Walker is a devout Christian - much like her fellow Reagan alum and environmental despoiler, Interior Secretary James "I don't know how many generations we've got until the Lord returns" Watt. And she's the co-founder of a San Diego group called Professional Women's Fellowship, an offshoot of the Campus Crusade for Christ "dedicated to helping professionals find balance, focus and direction in life."

 

God knows, we all need balance, focus and direction in our lives - and I'd be the last person to criticize Ms. Walker for looking for it in Jesus. As a devoted follower of John Lennon (bigger than Christ, but we won't dwell on that) I'm a firm believer in whatever gets you through the night. It's all right. It's all right.

 

But knowing what we now know about the subject matter of the Pentagon report, and the legal theories expounded therein, I do have to wonder how seriously Ms. Walker takes her Golden Rule.

 

At the very least, the report lends a curious overtone to some of the comments in this interview with Walker, which was published on the PWF web site:

 

Walker: "I wanted to be involved in policy development at the highest level, and lawyers in our society are often involved in shaping policy."

 

The report: After defining torture and other prohibited acts, the memo presents "legal doctrines ... that could render specific conduct, otherwise criminal, not unlawful."

 

Walker: "I can't divorce faith from success because God is the foundation for my life."

 

The report: "Good faith may be a complete defense" to a torture charge."

 

Walker: "My relationship with God and with others in the community of faith has been central in my life."

 

The report: "The infliction of pain or suffering per se, whether it is physical or mental, is insufficient to amount to torture." It "must be of such a high level of intensity that the pain is difficult for the subject to endure."

 

Walker: "It helped to find someone who could mentor me and help me see my faith as relevant to the challenges of life and work."

 

The report: For involuntarily administered drugs or other psychological methods [to be considered torture], the "acts must penetrate to the core of an individual's ability to perceive the world around him."

 

Walker: "When God is the center of your life and everything you do revolves around His plans for you and the world, then that is when life really gets exciting."

 

The report:The executive branch [has] "sweeping" powers to act as it sees fit because "national security decisions require the unity in purpose and energy in action that characterize the presidency rather than Congress."

 

Walker: It's a travesty to be in a place of strategic importance to the world as a business or political leader and not allow God to accomplish the truly significant through you.

 

The report: To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

And of course, I saved the best for last:

 

Walker: "Making moral decisions in the workplace where it is easy to go along and get along takes courage. It takes moral strength and courage to say, 'I'm not going to do this because I don't think it's the right thing to do.' "

 

The report: Officials could escape torture convictions by arguing that they were following superior orders, since such orders "may be inferred to be lawful" and are "disobeyed at the peril of the subordinate."

And so there you have it: Mary L. Walker - Christian, Republican, Patriot, Torture Attorney.

 

I know my personal military hero, Gen. J.C. Christian, Patriot, is already married. But if he ever feels like emulating the prophets of old and taking unto him a concubine, as Abraham knew Hagar, I think this just might be the girl for him.

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JC Christian=best satire ever.

 

This shit is jacked, josh marshall has more:

 

So the right to set aside law is "inherent in the president". That claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks and prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional monarchy, let alone a constitutional republic, that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around. This is the essence of what the rule of law means -- a government of laws, not men, and all that.
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Guest BROWNer

first off, that lady is a friggin' werewolf.

secondly, i think it's high time we all started identifying

'christian' politicos for what they really are...covert satanists.

third...that biatch is freakin' me out..i don't know if it's becuz the

photo is jaggy or what, but that photo must've been taken at 11:59pm.

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and the fucking congressional hearing yesterday was a total joke.

ashcroft just stonewalled them, which clearly puts him in contempt of congress(as one of the members pointed out). but there's no way he'll be tried because republicans are the majority and wouldn't stand for his being tried as such.

 

kennedy- will you give us the memos?

ashcroft- no i won't

kennedy- why? you need a reason?

aschroft- not anymore. i don't need to explain myself really at all as long and i make sure to say that bush didn't know/authorize anything.

kennedy- are you invoking executive priviledge?

ashcroft- no i'm not invoking anything but my ability to fuck the system.

 

paraphrased, obviously, but that's basically what was said.

makes you want to cry.

this article doesn't do it justice, but it's an overview of the hearing from the new york times:

 

 

Ashcroft Grilled About U.S. Rules on Torture

By REUTERS

 

Published: June 8, 2004

 

 

Filed at 5:20 p.m. ET

 

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Attorney General John Ashcroft on Tuesday refused to release memos detailing U.S. torture policy as lawmakers accused him of trying to hide how the Bush administration has justified the abuse of prisoners.

 

Several U.S. senators demanded he release copies of memos obtained by newspapers that showed Ashcroft's Justice Department had offered justification to use torture of al Qaeda detainees if it were done in the name of national security.

 

Advertisement

 

 

During three hours of testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee -- a session marked by several sharp exchanges -- Ashcroft refused to provide copies of the memos, saying they were part of his private advice to the president.

 

``We believe that to provide this kind of information would impair the ability of advice-giving in the executive branch,'' Ashcroft said.

 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, said critical information was being withheld from the Congress. ``These memos clearly do exist, and ... they appear to be an effort to redefine torture and narrow the prohibition against it by carving out a class of something called exceptional interrogation,'' she said.

 

``So these memos actually either reverse or substantially alter 30 years of interpretation by our body, as well as the executive, of the Geneva Conventions.''

 

Ashcroft said it was not the Justice Department's policy to define torture.

 

But he did say the international rules governing treatment of detainees did not apply to groups like al Qaeda since only countries are signatories to the treaty.

 

Democratic Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts warned that abuses like those recently uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq occur when international laws regarding torture are not followed.

 

``The memoranda claim that existing laws and international treaties prohibiting torture do not apply (in certain circumstances),'' he said.

 

``We know when we have these kinds of orders what happens,'' Kennedy added, holding up photographs of the prisoners mistreated at the prison near Baghdad. ``This is what directly results when you have that kind of memoranda out there.''

 

Ashcroft said the administration had done nothing that contributed to the abuses in Abu Ghraib, and said the Justice Department was investigating the matter that has sparked an international outcry.

 

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the committee, said it was ``inexcusable'' to read about memos in newspapers then have them denied to the Senate.

 

``It is troubling to see Attorney General Ashcroft take the Bush administration into cover-up mode as the Senate tries to get to the bottom of the prison abuse scandal,'' Leahy said. ``If government agencies have rationalized the use of torture, that would seem to go to the heart of what we are investigating.''

 

Bush has not directed or ordered any conduct that would violate the U.S. Constitution or any treaties dealing with terrorism that the United States has signed, Ashcroft said.

 

He also said that President Bush had ordered the Defense Department to treat al Qaeda captives ``humanely.''

 

Ashcroft had one of his sharpest exchanges with Sen. Joseph Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, who said the U.S. Congress had a right to ensure the administration was not abusing the Constitution or treaties.

 

``There's a reason why we sign these treaties: to protect my son in the military,'' Biden said. ``That's why we have these treaties. So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it.''

 

Ashcroft responded that he too had a son in the military now on active duty. ``I'm aware of those considerations. And I care about your son,'' he said.

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