Some in Congress knew of CIA methods

WASHINGTON — In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included future-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

Congressional leaders from both parties would later seize on waterboarding — a form of simulated drowning that is the most extreme and widely condemned interrogation technique — as a symbol of the worst excesses of the Bush administration's counterterrorism effort.

The CIA last week admitted that its videotape of an interrogation of one of the waterboarded detainees and tapes of the harsh interrogations of others were destroyed in 2005 against the advice of Justice Department and White House officials, provoking allegations that its actions were illegal and the destruction was a cover-up.

Saturday, the Justice Department and the CIA said they had started a preliminary inquiry into the tapes' destruction.

Long before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter.

The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and fellow Democrats Rep. Jane Harman, of California, and Sens. Bob Graham, of Florida, and Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, and Republicans Rep. Porter Goss, of Florida, and Sen. Pat Roberts, of Kansas. Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support.

"Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval but encouragement."

Congressional officials said the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs. And while various officials have described the briefings as detailed and graphic, it is unclear what members were told about waterboarding and how it is conducted.

"In fairness, the environment was different then because we were closer to Sept. 11 and people were still in a panic," said one U.S. official present during the early briefings. "But there was no objecting, no hand-wringing. The attitude was, 'We don't care what you do to those guys as long as you get the information you need to protect the American people.' "

Only after information about the practice began to leak in news accounts in 2005 — by which time the CIA had already abandoned waterboarding — did doubts about its legality among individual lawmakers evolve into more widespread dissent.

U.S. law requires the CIA to inform Congress of covert activities and allows the briefings to be limited in certain highly sensitive cases to a "Gang of Eight," including the four top congressional leaders of both parties and the four senior intelligence-committee members.

In this case, most briefings about detainee programs were limited to the "Gang of Four," the top Republicans and Democrats on the two committees. A few staff members were permitted to attend some briefings.

Despite the secrecy surrounding the "enhanced interrogation" program, information about the use of waterboarding nonetheless began to seep out. In September 2006, the CIA for the first time briefed all members of the House and Senate intelligence committees.

U.S. officials knowledgeable about the CIA's use of the technique say it was used on three individuals: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks; Abu Zubaydah, a senior al-Qaida member and Osama bin Laden associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002; and a third detainee who has not been publicly identified.

Lawmakers have varied recollections about the topics covered in the briefings.

Graham said he has no memory of being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics. Graham left the Senate intelligence committee in January 2003 and was replaced by Rockefeller. "Personally, I was unaware of it, so I couldn't object," Graham said.

Pelosi declined to comment on her reaction to the classified briefings. But a congressional source familiar with Pelosi's position said the California lawmaker recalled discussions about enhanced interrogation.

The source said Pelosi recalls that techniques described by the CIA were still in the planning stage — they had been designed and cleared with agency lawyers but not put in practice — and acknowledged Pelosi did not raise objections at the time.

Harman disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February 2003 as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but his public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and a probe of CIA interrogation practices.

"I proposed without success, both in committee and on the Senate floor, that the committee undertake an investigation of the CIA's detention and interrogation activities," Rockefeller said Friday.