The lawyer who exposed those behind America's interrogation techniques believes a criminal investigation is now essential
Philippe Sands
The Observer, Sunday 26 April 2009
... Early on, the very notion of criminal investigations against the senior lawyers and officials seemed almost preposterous. Yet as the idea got off the ground, it developed, fed by a seething, broad discontent that led, at last, to hearings before Congress, at which I testified three times. Last summer, 54 members of the House of Representatives called for the appointment of a special prosecutor. Hearings proceeded; thousands of pages of new documents emerged; the story firmed up; the central, dastardly role of the lawyers became ever clearer as a common plan to get around the laws came into sight. Laws didn't apply or they created no rights for detainees. Established definitions of torture were ditched. Objections from lawyers with knowledge were cast aside. Security and national interest trumped all.
Most accounts I was given held up, but not all. Diane Beaver was the military lawyer at Guantánamo, on whose erroneous legal advice the Bush administration said it relied. She told me again and again she had no knowledge of secret legal memos written in the DoJ. But last summer, a five-pager emerged, detailing a secret meeting just nine days before she signed off on her legal advice. It described a CIA lawyer alerting her to DoJ advice authorising new interrogation techniques. The document blew away her assurances. "If the detainee dies," the CIA lawyer says, "you're doing it wrong."
The complicity and weakness of others was more obvious. Doug Feith was third in command at the Pentagon, in charge of policy. He told me that he knew nothing about any specific interrogation issues until Rumsfeld's memo landed on his desk. But that wasn't right. In the memo, Haynes wrote: "I have discussed this with ... Doug Feith." When I read the sentence aloud to Feith, his response was to tell me that I had mispronounced his name. "It's Fythe," he said. "Not Faith." Last week, a new Senate report revealed that his office was involved at an early stage in supporting new techniques.
Other claims simply collapsed. Before the House Judiciary Committee, a Republican congressman reported that waterboarding was used on only three men for a grand total of three minutes. What's all the fuss about? Congressman Franks seemed to be asking. Seemingly, his source wasn't accurate. Last week, a new document emerged to show that two men were waterboarded 266 times ...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/apr/26/philippe-sands-torture-usa
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