Sarah Baxter reports in The Sunday Times :
Only some of the secrets of US 'ghost' prisons have been revealed
The CIA fears some of its operatives could face prosecution for torturing high-level terrorist suspects, despite President Barack Obama's promise of legal immunity.
The confidential US Department of Justice guidelines on interrogating high-level detainees, which were made public last week, provide only a small window into the secret prisons or “black sites” run by the CIA.
“These are the first dominoes,” said Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit that forced the release of the memos. “It will be difficult for the new administration to argue now that other documents can be lawfully withheld.”
The memos, drawn up by Bush administration officials and lawyers, detailed what was permissible, such as placing detainees in a cramped box, “walling” them by slamming them against a wall, dousing them with a hose, depriving them of sleep, confining them with insects and simulating drowning - “waterboarding”.
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It is clear that some operatives exceeded the guidelines. One memo from December 2004 said waterboarding was used “with far greater frequency than initially indicated . . . with large volumes of water”, rather than those specified by the rules.
The lawyers and officials responsible for drawing up the “torture” memos also faced calls for their prosecution from some members of Congress.
John Conyers, chairman of the House of Representatives judiciary committee, said: “If our leaders are found to have violated the strict laws against torture, either by ordering these techniques without proper authority, or by knowingly crafting legal fictions to justify torture, they should be criminally prosecuted.”
Those at risk include Alberto Gonzales, the attorney-general under Bush, who convened a crucial meeting of justice department and defence department officials in 2002. America was at war, he said, and it was necessary to “lean forward”.
John Yoo, the deputy assistant attorney-general, drafted a memo stating that physical torture “must be equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death”.
Yoo and fellow officials Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, who issued the memos, are already subjects of an ethics investigation by the justice department.
The former senior CIA official said: “We knew this was going to come back and bite us . . . These people weren't judges, they were just lawyers in the justice department. It was kind of like us telling ourselves it was okay to do it.”
The official recalled the atmosphere at the time of the 9/11 attacks. “A colleague of mine said, 'I know this is all wrong but I keep picturing these people jumping out of windows and falling out of buildings'.”
The meticulous description of harsh interrogation techniques in the memos seemed chilling enough, but the reality was far worse, the official said.
It was one thing to describe a “facial slap . . . with fingers slightly spread” or pouring cold water “from a container or a hose without a nozzle”, as in the memos. When done continuously for an hour at a time, it was “something you want to stop”.
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