WASHINGTON – President Bush claimed the right to waive anti-torture laws and treaties covering prisoners of war after the invasion of Afghanistan, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld authorized guards to strip detainees and threaten them with dogs, according to documents released Tuesday.
The documents were handed out at the White House in an effort to blunt allegations that the administration had authorized torture against al-Qaida prisoners from Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I have never ordered torture,” Bush said Tuesday. “I will never order torture. The values of this country are such that torture is not a part of our soul and our being.”
The Justice Department disavowed a memo written in August 2002 that appeared to justify the use of torture in the war on terror. The memo also argued that the president’s wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties.
That 50-page document will be replaced, Justice Department officials said, and a new memo will instead narrowly address the question of proper interrogation techniques for al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the Justice Department said.
Bush outlined his views in a Feb. 7, 2002, document regarding treatment of al-Qaida detainees from Afghanistan. “I accept the legal conclusion of the attorney general and the Department of Justice that I have the authority under the Constitution to suspend Geneva as between the United States and Afghanistan, but I decline to exercise that authority at this time,” the president wrote.
In a separate Pentagon memo dated Nov. 27, 2002, the Defense Department’s chief lawyer, William Haynes II, recommended that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld approve the use of 14 interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, including yelling at a prisoner during questioning and using “stress positions,” such as standing, for up to four hours.
Haynes also recommended approval of one technique among harsher methods requested by U.S. military authorities at Guantanamo: use of “mild, non-injurious physical contact such as grabbing, poking in the chest with the finger and light pushing.”
Among the techniques that Rumsfeld approved on Dec. 2, 2002, in addition to the grabbing, the yelling and the stress positions:
* Use of 20-hour interrogations.
* Removal of all comfort items, including religious items.
* Removal of clothing.
* Using detainees’ “individual phobias such as fear of dogs to induce stress.”
Rumsfeld scribbled a note on Haynes’ memo that said, “However, I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours.”
In a Jan. 15, 2003, note, Rumsfeld rescinded his approval of Haynes’ recommendations and said a review would be conducted to consider legal, policy and operational issues relating to interrogations of detainees.
Rumsfeld’s decision was prompted at least in part by objections raised by some military lawyers, who felt the techniques might go too far, officials said earlier this year.
The review was completed in April 2003, and on that basis Rumsfeld reissued his guidance on April 16, 2003. He approved 24 interrogation techniques, to be used in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions, but said that any use of four of those methods would have to be approved by him in advance: the use of rewards or removal of privileges; attacking or insulting the ego of a detainee; alternating the use of friendly and harsh interrogators; and isolation.
The removal of clothing was not among the authorized techniques in his revised guidelines issued in April 2003.
Associated Press
President Bush speaks Tuesday at the White House, saying, “I have never ordered torture.”
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