CIA Official To Be Interrogated On Interrogations - TPM Muckraker

Excerpt:
"Many within the CIA, for years, have been uncomfortable with the guidance it received from the Justice Department about interrogations. In August 2002, the Office of Legal Counsel famously ruled that nothing short of "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" constituted torture, thereby blessing as legal interrogation techniques -- like waterboarding, which simulates drowning -- that fall short of that redefined standard. The worry within CIA was that, inevitably, word of the agency's expanded interrogations would leak out, prompting an Abu Ghraib-style outrage and leaving CIA interrogators vulnerable to prosecution by the very Justice Department that initially blessed the new regime. That fear compounded in late 2004, when the OLC revised its definition of torture without clearly defining it, further troubling CIA interrogators.

Nor has the White House resolved the confusion.

President Bush has yet to provide to congress an executive order interpreting what acceptable interrogation measures are for CIA interrogators, an administration obligation established by the Military Commissions Act of 2006."

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