FBI had qualms over Gitmo tactics

WASHINGTON — Military interrogators posing as FBI agents at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, wrapped terrorism suspects in an Israeli flag and forced them to watch homosexual pornography under strobe lights during interrogation sessions that lasted as long as 18 hours, according to one of several FBI memos released Thursday.

FBI agents working at the prison complained about the military interrogators' techniques to their superiors from 2002 to 2004, 54 e-mails released by the American Civil Liberties Union showed.

According to the memos, the FBI favored a law-enforcement approach geared toward collecting evidence that could be used later in prosecutions, while military officials preferred a more psychologically and physically aggressive approach derived from counterinterrogation methods taught at the Army's survival school. The FBI warned that the harsh methods could hinder future criminal prosecutions because information gained illegally is inadmissible in court.

In one e-mail, an FBI agent, whose name was blocked out, described observing interrogation that used pornography and strobe lights.

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge of the prison at the time, overrode the FBI agents' protests, according to the documents.

A matter of policy?

"These documents show that the abuse at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib was not caused by rogue elements, but rather it was the consequence of policies that were deliberately adopted by senior military and Pentagon officials," said Jameel Jaffer, an ACLU lawyer.

Miller later left Guantánamo and was sent to Iraq under orders to find better ways of extracting intelligence from prisoners at Abu Ghraib and other American detention facilities. Photos taken at Abu Ghraib in 2003 showed guards physically abusing and sexually humiliating prisoners.

A military investigation into FBI reports of prisoner abuse at Guantánamo recommended that Miller be reprimanded, but a top general rejected the recommendation. Miller recently requested early retirement.

Lt. Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, said 12 major investigations and reviews have been conducted and never found a "DoD policy that ever encouraged or condoned abuse of detainees at Guantánamo."

The FBI memos contained extensive information that was blocked out when originally released in 2004 under the Freedom of Information Act.

A senior officer also "blatantly misled" his Pentagon superiors into thinking the FBI had endorsed the "aggressive and controversial interrogation plan" for one detainee, according to one of the memos.

Officials' sanction

FBI officials, whose names were blacked out, indicated that senior military officials, including former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, were aware of and in some cases had approved of putting hoods on prisoners, threatening them with violence and subjecting them to humiliating treatment.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved an expanded list of interrogation tactics in December 2002 on one suspect but later rescinded the list.

Also yesterday, a federal judge ordered the Pentagon to release the identities of hundreds of Guantánamo detainees to The Associated Press, a move that would force the government to break its secrecy and produce the most comprehensive list yet.

Compiled from Knight Ridder Newspapers, The Washington Post and The Associated Press