CIA Report Details Interrogation Techniques

STEVE INSKEEP, host:

It's MORNING EDITION from NPR News. Good morning, I'm Steve Inskeep.

RENEE MONTAGNE, host:

And I'm Renee Montagne.

The debate over the interrogation of suspected terrorists entered a new phase yesterday. The Justice Department released newly declassified documents from 2004 detailing abusive interrogation methods used by the CIA against suspected terrorists. Also yesterday, the attorney general named a prosecutor to look into the legality of some CIA interrogations of detainees. We'll hear more about that investigation in a few minutes.

First, NPR's Dina Temple-Raston joins us now to talk about the report itself. Good morning.

DINA TEMPLE-RASTON: Good morning.

MONTAGNE: And Dina you have been following this story for some time. What's in this report that you didn't know?

TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, this is the largest single release of information about the Bush administration's interrogation program in its overseas prisons so far. And, you know, we have been hearing for some time about the really tough stuff the CIA employed to try get detainees to talk. I think what surprised me, in reading the report, were the other methods that interrogators decided to use. For example, it wasn't just that interrogators threatened to kill or possibly sexually assault members of detainee's families, which by the way violates anti-torture laws.

There were, like, these basic abuses; things like stepping on shackles or washing someone with a wire brush; or blowing smoke constantly in the detainee's face until he starts to throw up; or something that they called a hard take down, which was essentially meant grabbing a detainee and throwing him to the floor before moving him to a sleep deprivation cell.

All these revelations in the report are new. There was also this episode in July 2002, before the Justice Department formally authorized using harsh interrogation methods. And the report says a CIA interrogator, in July 2002, grabbed a detainee's neck and restricted the flow of the carotid artery until the detainee began to faint and then the CIA agent apparently shook the detainee to wake him. And he did that pressure point technique two more times. The point of all this is there was a sense, whether you agreed with it or not, that perhaps stress positions and waterboarding had some sort of rules that were outlined by Bush administration lawyers.

What this new information seems to reveal is that the interrogators felt that they could make up creative ways to try to get someone to talk as well.

MONTAGNE: And this report is still highly redacted. I mean, there is some entire pages are virtually blacked out. So, it gives one the impression that there is much more there that we're not seen.

TEMPLE-RASTON: Exactly. I mean there were sort of a number of ominous entries that I thought I would read for you. One began by November 2002, the agency had Abu Zubaydah and another high value detainee in custody. This is how the passage starts, and then it's followed by this big block of blacked out text and then the sentence quote "and the office of medical services provided medical care to the detainees." Clearly something bad happened before the medical services were called in and we don't know what that was. And there were also lots of names and locations that were redacted. So, we don't know really where all these abuses took place either.

MONTAGNE: The inspector general interviewed about hundred people involved in the interrogation process for this report, and there was some indication whether or not that some did think that something might be wrong.

TEMPLE-RASTON: Yeah, the report touches on that too. The report says some CIA agents were worried that they would wind up on some wanted list or have to appear before the World Court for war crimes because of what they did. In fact, one is quoted as saying, "Ten years from now, we are going to be sorry we did this."

MONTAGNE: Did the report have any recommendations to make sure that this would not happen again?

TEMPLE-RASTON: Well, inspector general reports always have recommendations at the end. Whether it's for something controversial like this or something more mundane, and in this case they did have this list of recommendations. In fact, there were four pages of them. But all four pages were blacked out.

MONTAGNE: Dina, thanks very much.

TEMPLE-RASTON: You're welcome.

MONTAGNE: NPR's Dina Temple-Raston. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.