Cheney OK'd CIA's harsh interrogation tactics, says ex-official

WASHINGTON — Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official.

The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods — including waterboarding, which simulates drowning — were discussed and ultimately approved, the official said.

The former intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that "there'd need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics" before using them on al-Qaida detainees, the former official said.

The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the former official said; attending were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The White House, Justice and State departments and the CIA declined to comment Thursday, as did a spokesman for Tenet. A message for Ashcroft was not returned.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., lambasted what he described as "yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) called on Congress to investigate. "With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House," ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said.

The former intelligence official described Cheney and the top national-security officials as deeply immersed in developing the CIA's interrogation program during months of discussions over which methods should be used and when.

At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of "principals" fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo. The former official said the principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps, pushes, sleep deprivation and waterboarding — strapping a person down and pouring water over his cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.

The small group then reportedly asked the Justice Department to examine whether using the interrogation methods would break domestic or international laws.

"No one at the agency wanted to operate under a notion of winks and nods and assumptions that everyone understood what was being talked about," said a second former senior intelligence official.

The Office of Legal Counsel issued at least two opinions on interrogation methods.

In one, dated Aug. 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee defined torture as covering "only extreme acts" causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. A second, dated March 14, 2003, justified using harsh tactics on detainees held overseas so long as military interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.

Both legal opinions since have been withdrawn.

The second former senior intelligence official said rescinding the memos caused the CIA to seek even more detailed approvals for the interrogations.

The department issued another still-secret memo in October 2001 that, in part, sought to outline novel ways the military could be used domestically to defend the country in the face of an impending attack. The Justice Department has not released it, citing attorney-client privilege, and Attorney General Michael Mukasey declined to describe it Thursday at a Senate panel where Democrats characterized it as a "torture memo."