At the time of Fine's request, the International Committee of the Red Cross had obtained access to Zubaydah and 13 other "high-value" detainees and concluded that their treatment "constituted torture." The ICRC sent its report to Rizzo on Feb. 14, 2007.
However, neither the ICRC's report nor Fine's include specific dates about the "enhanced" techniques used against Zubaydah.
First Prisoner
Zubaydah told the ICRC that CIA interrogators said he was their first subject, "so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people." Zuhbaydah said he was repeatedly smashed against a wall, placed inside a black wooden box, and was waterboarded, a technique that creates the panicked reflex of drowning.
Rizzo also has been questioned about his role in the videotape destruction by John Durham, who was appointed special prosecutor last year by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to probe whether the destruction of the tapes constituted a crime.
Last week, Durham questioned the CIA's former number three official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, about the destruction of the tapes. Foggo, who was sentenced to three years in prison for fraud for steering lucrative contracts to a friend, was due to report to federal prison last week but Durham asked for a delay so he could question him about the tape destruction.
Singh, the ACLU attorney, said Friday she could not speculate whether videotapes made prior to August 2002 might have depicted "enhanced" methods such as waterboarding. Those techniques were cleared for use by an Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion that narrowly defined torture, thus enabling the Bush administration to claim that its harsh tactics didn't qualify as torture.
Last year, Dick Cheney admitted in several interviews that he "signed off" on the waterboarding of three "high-value"- prisoners and personally approved the harsh interrogations of 33 other detainees.
Cheney identified the three waterboarded detainees as al-Qaeda figures Abu Zubaydah, al Nashiri and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. "That's it, those three guys," Cheney said in an interview with the right-wing Washington Times last December.
"There are questions as to who was authorizing what for the CIA before August," Singh said. "Those facts need to be made public and that's why we need to have an investigation."
Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.
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