A 2004 report on the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prepared by a panel led by James Schlesinger determined that an action memorandum dated Feb. 7, 2002 that was signed by President Bush stating that the Geneva Convention did not apply to members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban led Lt. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top commander in Iraq to institute a “dozen interrogation methods beyond” the Army’s standard practice under the convention.
Sanchez said he based his decision on reasoning “from the President's Memorandum of February 7, 2002," which he said had justified "additional, tougher measures" against detainees, the Schlesigner report said.
And the abuses that took place at Guantanamo, according to a separate report issued by Army Maj. Gen. George R. Fay, were the result of Rumsfeld’s verbal and written authorization in December 2002 that said interrogators could use “stress positions, isolation for up to thirty days, removal of clothing and the use of detainees' phobias (such as the use of dogs).”
“From December 2002, interrogators in Afghanistan were removing clothing, isolating people for long periods of time, using stress positions, exploiting fear of dogs and implementing sleep and light deprivation,” the Fay report says.
Rumsfeld’s approval of certain interrogation methods outlined in a December 2002 action memorandum was criticized by Alberto Mora, the former general counsel of the Navy.
“The interrogation techniques approved by the Secretary [of Defense] should not have been authorized because some (but not all) of them, whether applied singly or in combination, could produce effects reaching the level of torture, a degree of mistreatment not otherwise proscribed by the memo because it did not articulate any bright-line standard for prohibited detainee treatment, a necessary element in any such document,” Mora wrote in a 14-page letter to the Navy’s inspector general.
Additionally, a Dec. 20, 2005 Army Inspector General Report relating to the capture and interrogation of Mohammad al Qahtani includes a a sworn statement by Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt that Secretary Rumsfeld was “personally involved” in the interrogation of al Qahtani and spoke “weekly” with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the commander at Guantanamo, about the status of the interrogations between late 2002 and early 2003. Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, who represents al Qahtani, said in a sworn declaration that his client, who is imprisoned at Guantanamo, was subjected to months of torture based on verbal and written authorization’s from Rumsfeld.
“At Guantánamo, Mr. al Qahtani was subjected to a regime of aggressive interrogation techniques, known as the “First Special Interrogation Plan,” that were authorized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld,” Gutierrez said. “Those techniques were implemented under the supervision and guidance of Secretary Rumsfeld and the commander of Guantánamo, Major General Geoffrey Miller. These methods included, but were not limited to, forty-eight days of severe sleep deprivation and 20-hour interrogations, forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, physical force, prolonged stress positions and prolonged sensory overstimulation, and threats with military dogs.”
Gutierrez’s claims about the type of interrogation al-Qahtani endured have since been borne out with the release of hundreds of pages of internal Pentagon documents describing interrogation methods at Guantanamo and at least two independent reports about prisoner abuse.
All told, the Schlesinger report says, orders signed by Bush and Rumsfeld in 2002 and 2003 authorizing brutal interrogations “became policy” at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, the Schlesinger report says.
In February, the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) confirmed that it launched a formal investigation to determine, among other issues, whether agency attorneys, including Chertoff, provided the White House and the CIA with poor legal advice when it said CIA interrogators could use harsh interrogation methods against detainees
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