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<h1><b>CIA says used waterboarding on three
suspects</b></h1><font size=3>
<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN05191813?sp=true" eudora="autourl">
http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSN05191813?sp=true<br><br>
</a>Tue Feb 5, 2008 4:03pm EST<br>
(Adds Hayden quote, comments by FBI, national intelligence director,
background)<br><br>
By Randall Mikkelsen<br><br>
WASHINGTON, Feb 5 (Reuters) - The CIA used a widely condemned
interrogation technique known as waterboarding on three suspects captured
after the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA Director Michael Hayden told Congress on
Tuesday.<br><br>
"Waterboarding has been used on only three detainees," Hayden
told the Senate Intelligence Committee. It was the first time a U.S.
official publicly specified the number of people subjected to
waterboarding and named them.<br><br>
Critics call waterboarding a form of illegal torture. Congress is
considering banning the technique.<br><br>
Those subjected to waterboarding were suspected Sept. 11 mastermind
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah and Abd
al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Hayden said at the hearing on threats to the United
States.<br><br>
He said waterboarding has not been used in five years.<br><br>
"The circumstances are different than they were in late 2001, early
2002," Hayden said. "Very critical to those circumstances was
the belief that additional catastrophic attacks against the homeland were
imminent. In addition to that, my agency ... had limited knowledge about
al Qaeda and its workings. Those two realities have
changed."<br><br>
Hayden told reporters later that the interrogations of Mohammed and
Zubaydah were particularly fruitful.<br><br>
From the time of their capture in 2002 and 2003 until they were
delivered to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006, the two suspects accounted
for one-fourth of the human intelligence reports on al Qaeda, Hayden
said.<br><br>
Some analysts have questioned Mohammed's credibility under interrogation.
But Hayden said most of the information was reliable and helped lead to
other al Qaeda suspects.<br><br>
He told the committee he opposed limiting the CIA to using interrogation
techniques permitted in the U.S. Army Field Manual, which bans
waterboarding. CIA interrogators are better trained, and the agency works
with a narrower range of suspects in its interrogations, he
said.<br><br>
HARSH TACTICS<br><br>
Hayden said fewer than 100 people had been held in the CIA's terrorism
detention and interrogation program launched after the Sept. 11 attacks,
with fewer than one-third of them subjected to any harsh interrogation
techniques.<br><br>
But applying the field manual's limitations to the CIA, he said,
"would substantially increase the danger to America."<br><br>
The CIA is the only U.S. agency that uses harsh interrogation techniques,
National Intelligence Director Michael McConnell told the hearing. The
entire military adheres to the Army Field Manual and FBI Director Robert
Mueller told the hearing his agency does not use coercive
techniques.<br><br>
A senior intelligence official said after the hearing that it was unclear
whether the CIA could legally use waterboarding in the future, given
changes in U.S. law. The Bush administration says it neither uses nor
condones torture.<br><br>
The CIA said in December that it had destroyed videotapes depicting the
interrogations of Zubaydah and Nashiri, prompting a Justice Department
investigation.<br><br>
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