NYT: CIA Cites Order on Supervised Interrogations (CIA/Pentagon "battle")

[DeepModem Mom]

PRISON POLICY
C.I.A. Cites Order on Supervised Interrogations
By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: September 11, 2004


WASHINGTON, Sept. 10 - A classified directive issued in August 2003 by the Central Intelligence Agency specifically prohibited the agency's employees from conducting the kinds of unsupervised interrogations of Iraqi detainees that military investigators say occurred on a widespread basis at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, senior intelligence officials said Friday.

The officials described the directive for the first time, building on what has become a fierce battle between the Pentagon and the C.I.A. over responsibility for the abuses at Abu Ghraib. On Thursday, two Army generals investigating the abuses told Congress they had not been able to determine who had authorized C.I.A. operatives' practices at the prison and elsewhere in Iraq, including the use of the military facility by the agency to hide at least two dozen detainees from the Red Cross.

The senior intelligence officials suggested that the use of Abu Ghraib by C.I.A. officers for unsupervised interrogations had not been authorized, at least by the agency's headquarters. But they declined to speak for the record, or to discuss the matter in any detail, saying allegations of abuse and misconduct by C.I.A. officials in Iraq were still being investigated by their inspector general.

Senior members of Congress who oversee the military and the C.I.A. said they were increasingly convinced that the question of the agency's role in interrogations in Iraq, including the treatment of the "ghost detainees," required further investigation....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/11/international/middleeast/11abuse.html

[teryang]

1. No independent authority outside Pentagon allowed

Because the Pentagon and the Executive Office are one, total power requires the complete neutering of the CIA as an independent institution (regardless of the moral qualities of its various parts). The legislative initiatives and this phony PR war over responsibility for the torture policy that came directly from the very top are a necessary part of the power struggle which will result in consolidation of the fascist state.

[annabanana]

2. kick

[sattahipdeep]

3. Direction of the President

Neither the number of employees nor the size of the Agency's budget
can be publicly disclosed. Both the Congress and the Executive Branch
oversee the Central Intelligence Agency's activities. The CIA is not a
policy-making organization; it advises policymakers on matters of
foreign intelligence, and it conducts covert actions only at the direction
of the President.

http://www.pbs.org/now/politics/intellservices.html

[tanyev]

4. Or maybe a Vice-President?

n/t

[Rose Siding]

5. kick