La CIA engañó sobre su programa de interrogatorios, según el Washington Post

La CIA engañó sobre su programa de interrogatorios, según el Washington Post
martes 1 de abril de 2014 08:20 GYT



(Reuters) - La Agencia Central de Inteligencia (CIA) engañó al Gobierno estadounidense y a la opinión pública durante años sobre aspectos de su programa brutal de interrogatorios, ocultando detalles sobre el duro tratamiento dado a los detenidos y otros temas, según un reporte publicado en el Washington Post.

Funcionarios estadounidenses que han visto un informe del Comité de Inteligencia del Senado sobre el programa de interrogatorios de la CIA describieron nueva información incriminatoria sobre una red de centros de detención secretos, también llamados "agujeros negros", dijo el diario.

El Comité de Inteligencia es responsable de supervisar a la CIA. Hace más de un año terminó un informe de 6.300 páginas sobre el programa de interrogatorios, pero sigue siendo un documento clasificado.

En los "agujeros negros", los prisioneros a veces eran objeto de duras técnicas de interrogatorio incluso cuando los analistas estaban seguros de que no tenían más información que dar, dijo el informe, que según el Post se basaba en entrevistas con antiguos y actuales funcionarios estadounidenses.

Los archivos revisados por un comité de investigadores describen casos de abusos previamente no revelados, incluidas supuestas inmersiones de sospechosos de terrorismo en tanques de agua helada en un centro de detención en Afganistán.

El método tenía similitudes con los ahogamientos simulados, pero nunca apareció en ninguna lista de técnicas aprobadas por el Departamento de Justicia, según el periódico.

Los funcionarios dijeron también que millones de grabaciones muestran que la capacidad de la CIA para obtener la información de inteligencia más valiosa, incluidos indicios que llevaron a la localización y muerte de Osama bin Laden en 2011, tenían poco, o nada, que ver con las "técnicas mejoradas de interrogatorio", dijo el diario.

Un portavoz de la CIA dijo que la agencia aún no había visto la versión final del informe y que no podía hacer comentarios, según el Washington Post.

Algunos antiguos y actuales funcionarios de la agencia han dicho en privado que el estudio está empañado por errores fácticos y conclusiones equivocadas, según el diario.

En marzo, la senadora Dianne Feinstein, que preside el Comité de Inteligencia del Senado, acusó a la CIA de registrar computadoras usadas por empleados del comité que contenían el informe y cuestionó si la agencia había quebrantado la ley al hacerlo.

(Reporte de Carey Gillam; Traducido por Raquel Castillo en Madrid; Editado por Lucila Sigal)

Release of study on detention program might further disrupt military commissions for terrorist suspects at Guantánamo

April 1, 2014 7:00AM ET
by Jason Leopold @JasonLeopold

The possible declassification and release of a Senate report into the CIA’s detention and interrogation program — begun in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks — could have a huge impact on the controversial military tribunals happening at Guantánamo Bay, experts and lawyers believe.

The proceedings have been moving at a snail’s pace at the U.S.-held military base on the island of Cuba, amid widespread condemnation that they are being held in a legal limbo and outside the U.S. criminal justice system.

Details surrounding the CIA’s activities have been one of the most contentious issues concerning the commissions at Guantánamo, where the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and his co-defendants are on trial. Their alleged treatment while in CIA custody has been a key stumbling block in the hearings’ progress. The same goes for the man alleged to be behind the USS Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another former CIA captive.

In both cases, there have been dozens of delays — mainly due to the fact that the attorneys have been battling military prosecutors over access to classified information about the CIA interrogation program that the attorneys want to use as evidence. Both cases have been dragging on for two years and are still in the pretrial evidentiary phase.

But now that the Senate Intelligence Committee appears set to vote on releasing its long-awaited 6,300-page, $50 million study — or at least some portion of it — the defense attorneys will finally get the opportunity to talk openly at the military commissions about torture. That could prove disastrous for military prosecutors. According to defense attorneys and human rights observers who have been monitoring the proceedings, it might also derail the government’s attempts to convince a jury that the detainees, if convicted, deserve to be executed.

“The U.S. government has gone to great lengths to classify evidence of crimes — crimes committed by U.S. actors,” said Army Maj. Jason Wright, one of Mohammed’s military defense attorneys. “Were this information in this Senate report to be revealed … it would completely gut the classification architecture currently in place before the commissions.”

The panel is expected to vote April 3, and it is widely believed the panel will approve release of its 400-page executive summary. If that happens, Wright said, he anticipates petitioning the military court to amend the protective order that treats all information about the CIA torture program as classified.


The report is likely to contain reams of information that has not yet come to light. Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein has said the report “includes details of each detainee in CIA custody, the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others.”

Wright said that in addition to seeking a change to the protective order, he would file discovery motions to gain access to the 6.2 million pages of documents the Senate had. Such a move would lead to further legal wrangling and delay the start of the trial, which the government hopes will get underway in September.

“We have an absolute right to review that and have it produced in discovery,” Wright said.

Richard Kammen, al-Nashiri’s civilian defense attorney, meanwhile, has already filed a motion with the military court to obtain a complete, unredacted copy of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report.

The motion, submitted in September prior to the revelations that have surfaced about infighting between the CIA and Senate committee investigators, said the report “will be central to the accused’s defense on the merits, in impeaching the credibility of the evidence against him and in mitigation of the death sentence the government is seeking to impose.”

If the entire report were declassified by the Intelligence Committee, it “would be huge because it would really eliminate the ‘need’ for military commissions, which are in my view mainly a vehicle to have what will look like trials but will keep whatever evidence of torture the judge ultimately allows secret from or sanitized to the public,” Kammen said.




But not everyone expects the report to be released in great detail. Air Force Capt. Michael Schwartz, the attorney for alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Walid bin Attash, doesn’t believe the Senate committee’s report will ever see the light of day. If it is released, he said it will be highly redacted, rendering it useless to the public and Attash’s defense team.

“This whole military commissions system is designed to make sure this information is never known to the public,” Schwartz said. “No one in my office is naive enough to think this report will come out in any unredacted form. Certainly that report contains a lot of mitigating information that would be relevant to the defense of this case. But I don’t believe for a second that we will see anything in that report that actually sheds light on the crimes committed by the CIA against our clients between 2003 and 2006.”

Air Force Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor at Guantánamo and a staunch critic of the military commissions, doesn’t believe the Senate committee’s report “is legally relevant” to the military commission trial of Mohammed and the other high-value detainees. But he does believe it will force the hearings more into the public.

“Where I do think it will have an impact is in the assessment of whether those legal relevance proceedings take place in open court or in secret closed sessions,” he said. “The report is likely to officially reinforce and amplify what the public already knows about this regrettable chapter in our history. It should further undercut the government’s claim that all this absolutely must stay hidden behind closed doors or else cataclysmic things will happen.”

Army. Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale, a Pentagon spokesman who deals with detainee matters at Guantánamo, declined to discuss the Senate report or how its release may affect the commissions.

"I can't imagine a world where competent counsel — be they from the government or defense — would announce in advance, any strategy they might pursue or make predictions on how any given issue might affect the progress of their case," Breasseale said.

Daphne Eviatar, a lawyer for Human Rights First who has closely observed and written about the military commission proceedings, said whether the Senate’s report is a game changer will ultimately depend on what is declassified. Perhaps details of the interrogations will be released, or they may be heavily redacted.

“Either way, you can be sure the defense lawyers will try to reopen this issue, and the government will fight it, and the case will get bogged down once again in months of argument in pretrial hearings that are already taking forever,” she said.