By Muriel Kane
Last August, in response to an ACLU lawsuit, the Obama administration released a partially declassified 2004 report from the CIA's Inspector General on that agency's detention and interrogation programs. The report's descriptions of the treatment of detainees were sufficiently shocking to prompt Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a prosecutor to look into allegations of abuse.
Now additional documents (pdf), newly obtained by Judicial Watch under a FOIA request, make clear the depth of Inspector General John Helgerson's own concerns about the allegations in his 2004 report.
The documents include timeslines and redacted descriptions of CIA briefings of members of Congress -- primarily the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence oversight committees -- regarding the treatment of detainees and the use of enhanced interrogation techniques.
At a July 13, 2004 briefing, Inspector General Helgerson presented his then-secret report to Chairman Porter Goss (R-FL) and ranking member Jane Harman (D-CA) of the House Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence. He began by expressing doubts about the so-called "Bybee Memo" of August 1, 2002, which served to justify the use of waterboarding. According to the description in the document:
"The IG indicated that the 1 August memo did not address Article 16 of the [United Nations] Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. ... The question was whether CIA's use of the enhanced techniques would transgress US obligations under Article 16. The IG indicated he was also bothered in that the DOJ 1 August document did not address interrogations as we carried them out."
