CIA report revives legal debate

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

When the CIA sought permission to use harsh interrogation methods on a captured al-Qaida operative, the response from Bush administration lawyers was encouraging, even clinical.

In one of several memos forming the legal underpinnings for brutal interrogation techniques, the CIA was told that Abu Zubaydah could lawfully be placed in a box with an insect, kept awake for days at a time and slapped multiple times in the face. Waterboarding was acceptable because it did not cause the lengthy mental anguish needed to meet the legal standard of torture, the 2002 Justice Department memo says.

The release last week of a Senate report cataloging years of such interrogation tactics has revived debate about legal opinions since discredited and withdrawn and about the decision to not prosecute the program’s architects or officers who used the methods. Civil-rights groups in the U.S. and abroad are renewing calls to prosecute those who relied on techniques that President Barack Obama has called torture.

The Justice Department, which spent years looking into the matter, says it lacks sufficient evidence to convict anyone and found no new information in the report.