Gonzales approved ‘borderline torture’ months before ‘torture memos’ issued: report

Months before the first “torture memo” was issued by Bush administration lawyers in 2002, Alberto Gonzales – then White House counsel – personally approved “borderline torture” techniques used on Abu Zubaydah, according to a new report.

An anonymous source told NPR that in April and May of 2002 CIA contractor James Mitchell sought approval on a daily basis for so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” via top-secret cables to the CIA’s counterterrorism center. The CIA forwarded those cables to the White House, according to National Public Radio, and Gonzales would approve the technique, thus granting a legal basis for Mitchell’s actions – in theory at least.

Yesterday, the CIA sent the ACLU a document that corroborates the source’s account. The document shows that during the spring and summer of 2002 many top-secret cables went from Zubaydah’s black site prison to CIA headquarters every day.

Zubaydah was taken into CIA custody on March 28, 2002. The first “torture memo” was issued by the Office of Legal Counsel on August 1 of that year.

Last week, former FBI interrogator Ali Soufan told Congress that CIA contractors “had to keep requesting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods.” Zubaydah, Soufan said, was subjected to nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and extreme temperatures during Mitchell’s interrogations. Soufan called the methods “borderline torture.”

Soufan has said that “no actionable intelligence” was gained from Zubaydah using “enhanced interrogation techniques” that wasn’t, or couldn’t have been, gained from regular tactics. (For a detailed account and timeline of Zubaydah interrogations, read this Raw Story article.)

“The use of ‘borderline torture’ against Zubaydah months before the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations raises the question of whether Mitchell had legal permission to use abusive techniques,” NPR’s Ari Shapiro reported. The CIA maintains he did.

But the White House does not ordinarily provide advice to anyone outside the White House, according to Bradford Berenson, who worked in the White House counsel’s office under President Bush. “These were highly unusual and extraordinary times after 9/11,” Berenson said.

Another former official familiar with top officials’ discussions about the legal basis for “War on Terror” detainee interrogations believes that any approval that may have been given by Gonzales could not have provided a sufficient legal basis for Mitchell’s actions.

“I can’t believe the CIA would have settled for a piece of paper from the counsel to the president,” the former government official told NPR. “If that were true,” says the former official, “then the whole legal and policy review process from April through August would have been a complete charade.”

Gonzales didn’t respond to the report’s allegations.

Spencer Ackerman, writing for the Washington Independent, notes that at the time of these early Zubaydah interrogations Gonzales wasn’t “the chief legal official for the government.”

“He was the president’s lawyer, powerless to bless the actions of a federal agency like the CIA,” Ackerman writes.

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