1
1
1
Now, five years later in a July 27 editorial, The Post deviated from the logic of its earlier position, by urging Holder to move forward with an investigation focused only on rogue individual interrogators who exceeded the legal limits outlined in the torture memos.
Evidence of Approval
But such an approach would ignore evidence that senior Bush administration officials and high-level officials at CIA headquarters in Langley micromanaged the torture of at least one high-level detainee.
Documents released earlier this year in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and the CIA showed that CIA interrogators provided top agency officials at Langley with daily "torture" updates of Abu Zubaydah, the alleged "high-level" terrorist detainee, who was held at a secret "black site" prison and waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.
Additionally, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in the span of a single month. CIA Inspector General Helgerson also "had serious questions about the agency's mistreatment of dozens more, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," according to Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker and author of the book "The Dark Side."
Senior Bush administration officials were known to be closely following these developments and pressed the CIA for more and more results.
In an interview with Harper's magazine last year, Mayer said Helgerson "investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees" and forwarded several of those cases "to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution."
"Why have there been no charges filed? It's a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers," Mayer said. "Sources suggested to me that " it is highly uncomfortable for top Bush Justice officials to prosecute these cases because, inevitably, it means shining a light on what those same officials sanctioned."
One possible reason that the Justice Department investigations went nowhere was that Vice President Cheney intervened and demanded that Helgerson meet with him privately about his investigation. Mayer characterized Cheney's interaction with Helgerson as highly unusual.
Cheney's "reaction to this first, carefully documented in-house study concluding that the CIA's secret program was most likely criminal was to summon the Inspector General to his office for a private chat," Mayer wrote.
"The Inspector General is supposed to function as an independent overseer, free from political pressure, but Cheney summoned the CIA Inspector General more than once to his office."
"Cheney loomed over everything," one former CIA officer told Mayer. "The whole IG's office was completely politicized. They were working hand in glove with the White House."
Cheney's Admission
Last year, in several interviews prior to exiting the White House, Cheney admitted that he personally authorized the waterboarding of three so-called "high-value" prisoners.
"I signed off on it; others did, as well, too," Cheney said.
Waterboarding, in which a person is strapped down to a board with a cloth covering his face and then water is poured over it, is a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition. The victim feels as if he is drowning.
