Cheney ‘OK’ with violating felony torture statute

By Muriel Kane

In an interview with Fox News to be aired this Sunday, former Vice President Dick Cheney said he is “OK” with CIA interrogations that violated Justice Department guidelines and condemned the prospect of any investigation of abuses as potentially “devastating” to morale.

The 2004 Inspector General’s report released on Monday cited numerous cases of possible violations of the felony torture statute, which prohibits both “the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering” and “the threat of imminent death.”

Beginning on page 69 of the report (pdf) is a list of “Specific Unauthorized or Undocumented Techniques,” in some of which the facts “warranted criminal investigations.” Among the cases cited are one in which a CIA officer repeatedly choked a shackled prisoner until he almost passed out and several examples of mock executions. These are the cases that Cheney is now defending.

“The approach of the Obama administration should be to come to those people who were involved in that policy and say, ‘How did you do it? What were the keys to keeping this country safe over that period of time?’” Cheney stated. “Instead, they’re out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions.”

Calling the extreme interrogation techniques “absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives,” Cheney insisted, “It was good policy, it was properly carried out, it worked very, very well.”

Cheney has consistently asserted that when reports on the interrogations are released, they will show that torture of detainees worked. However, recently declassified documents show no such thing.

For example, Cheney’s claim that “the individuals subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques provided the bulk of the intelligence we gained about Al Qaeda” does not necessarily mean that any usable intelligence resulted from the use of torture on those individuals rather than more conventional techniques.

As Raw Story reported two days ago, even a former homeland security adviser to President Bush has admitted that “it’s very difficult to draw a cause and effect, because it’s not clear when techniques were applied versus when that information was received.”

Cheney further described Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to proceed with a probe of detainee abuse as an “outrageous political act.” He blamed President Obama for “trying to duck the responsibility of what’s going on here” when he indicated that the decision was the attorney general’s to make.

A story in Friday’s Washington Post, in contrast, describes Holder’s decision to proceed with the investigation of detainee abuse as signaling a “new dynamic.”

“In this and other big battles,” the Post writes, “including the decision to release memos this year by Bush administration officials giving the green light to harsh interrogation tactics, Holder and his Justice Department have prevailed over strong objections from the CIA and the intelligence community.”

“The victory signals a dynamic that could play out on a range of sensitive issues that will come to define the Obama administration and its differences from the Bush era, including the detention of terrorism suspects and the protection of state secrets.”