NEWSWEEK: White House Memo About Interrogation Prompted by CIA Questions About Top Qaeda Captive Who Turned Uncooperative http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/micro_stories.pl?ACCT=617800&TICK=NEWS&STORY=/www/story/06-13-2004/0002192062&EDATE=Jun+13,+2004NEW YORK, June 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Last week the White House dismissed news
accounts of an explosive August 2002 brief from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel which has been widely criticized for seeming to flout conventions against torture. The memo, drafted by former OLC lawyer John Yoo, defends most interrogation methods short of severe, intentionally inflicted pain and permanent damage.
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Although White House officials said that such legal reasoning was
insignificant and did not reflect the president's orders, Newsweek has learned that Yoo's memo was prompted by CIA questions about what to do with a top Qaeda captive, Abu Zubaydah, who had turned uncooperative. And it was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush's chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel, who discussed specific interrogation techniques, says a source familiar with the discussions.
Among the methods they found acceptable: "water-boarding," or dripping water into a wet cloth over a suspect's face, which can feel like drowning; and threatening to bring in more-brutal interrogators from other nations, reports Senior Editor Michael Hirsh, National Security Correspondent John Barry and Washington Bureau Chief Daniel Klaidman in the June 21 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, June 14). In this report, Newsweek examines the long-running battle over interrogation tactics inside the Bush administration, a struggle that continued right up until the Abu Ghraib scandal broke in April.
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