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White House Disavows Memo on
Interrogation
The Associated Press/ABC News
June 22, 2004
WASHINGTON June 22, 2004 — The Justice Department on
Tuesday disavowed a memo that appeared to justify the use of
torture in the war on terror and argued that the president's
wartime powers superseded anti-torture laws and treaties.
The 50-page memo issued to the White House on Aug. 1, 2002,
will be replaced because it contained overbroad and irrelevant
advice, senior Justice Department officials said, speaking on
condition of anonymity.
The memo will be replaced with a new document narrowly
addressing the question of proper interrogation techniques for
al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the officials said, citing
department policy for requesting anonymity on their comments.
The White House, meanwhile, stung by suggestions the
administration had condoned torture, released hundreds of pages
of documents concerning the treatment of prisoners captured in
the war against terror.
"I have never ordered torture," said President Bush.
The memos were meant to deal with a public-relations headache
that followed revelations about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib
prison in Iraq but the documents shed little light on the
situation in that country.
The documents, many of them declassified from "secret,"
originated at the Pentagon, the White House and the Justice
Department.
Two inches thick, they chronicled how the administration
grappled between January 2002 and April 2003 with how
aggressively interrogators should push detainees in Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, and other facilities.
Besides providing the papers, top administration lawyers gave
lengthy briefings in hopes of countering a perception that the
administration felt the fight against the al-Qaida terror network
provided a legal foundation for mistreatment of prisoners.
"It was harmful to this country in terms of the notion that we
may be engaged in torture," said White House Counsel Alberto
Gonzales "That's contrary to the values of this president and
this administration."
The 2002 memo the Justice Department spoke of, signed by
former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, included lengthy
sections that appeared to justify the use of torture in the war
on terrorism and contended that U.S. personnel could be immune
from prosecution for torture. The memo also argued that the
president's powers as commander in chief allow him to override
U.S. anti-torture laws and international treaties banning the
practice.
"Congress may no more regulate the president's ability to
detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his
ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield," the Bybee
memo said.
Critics on Capitol Hill and elsewhere have said that memo
provided the legal underpinnings for subsequent abuses of
prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Justice Department officials said that no one asked for
much of the advice that was included in the memo signed by Bybee,
now a judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The
questions were focused entirely on how interrogators should treat
al-Qaida and Taliban detainees and on whether the Geneva
Conventions applied to them.
The officials said that other memos regarding treatment of
terror war detainees would be reviewed and could be repudiated
and replaced.
They declined to say whether they had issued any memos about
interrogation techniques to the CIA. They also said there were
additional techniques approved for use in the war on terrorism
that would remain classified so that terror operatives would not
know every possible method the United States could use.
The sun rises on the Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of
Baghdad, Iraq Tuesday, June 22, 2004. On Monday a judge declared
the notorious prison a crime scene and forbade its destruction,
as had been previously offered by President Bush.(AP Photo/John
Moore)
Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This
material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or
redistributed.
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