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On March 14, 2003, the same quartet issued another memo - this one for the military titled: "Military Interrogation of Alien Unlawful Combatants Held Outside the United States." It became known as "the Torture Memo" because it swept away all legal restraints and authorized military interrogators to use extreme measures amounting to torture. It also gave the President as Commander-in-Chief "the fullest range of power....to protect the nation." It stated he "enjoys complete discretion in the exercise of his authority in conducting operations against hostile forces."Military law expert and Yale University lecturer, Eugene Fidell, called it "a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency....(and) a road map for the Pentagon (to avoid) any prosecutions." It denied due process is applicable and virtually all other constitutional protections. It argued against any prohibition banning "cruel and unusual treatment." It was a document that would make any despot proud. So much so that in late 2004, Office of Legal Counsel head, Jack Goldsmith, rescinded the Memorandum saying it showed an "unusual lack of care and sobriety in (its) legal analysis (and it) seemed more an exercise of sheer power than reasoned analysis."
Nonetheless, other administration documents authorized continued use of practices generally reflecting John Yoo's views. They may inflict "intense pain or suffering" short of what would cause "serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure, (loss of significant body functions), or permanent damage" may result.
It authorized the Director of CIA to determine interrogation practices. Based on what's now known, they include sleep deprivation, waterboarding or simulated drowning, stress positions (including painfully extreme ones), prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation and/or overload, beatings (at times severe and life-threatening), electric shocks, induced hypothermia, and other measures that can cause irreversible physical and psychological harm, including psychoses.
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on Bush Administration Use of Torture
In a secret 2007 report, the ICRC concluded that CIA interrogators tortured high-level Al Queda prisoners. Abu Zubaydah was one, a reputed close associate of Osama bin Laden and Guantanamo detainee. He was confined in a box "so small (that) he had to double up his limbs in the fetal position" and stay that way. He and others were also "slammed against the walls," waterboarded to simulate drowning, and given other harsh and abusive treatment.
The report also said Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the supposed chief 9/11 planner, was kept naked for over a month - "alternately in suffocating heat and in a painfully cold room." Most excruciating was a practice of shackling prisoners to the ceiling and forcing them to stand for as long as eight hours. Other techniques included prolonged sleep deprivation, "bright lights and eardrum-shattering sounds 24 hours a day."
ICRC's Bernard Barrett declined to comment but confirmed that Red Cross personnel regularly visit Guantanamo detainees, including high-level ones. They also "have an ongoing confidential dialogue with members of the US intelligence community, and we would share any observations or recommendations with them."
In her new book just out, "The Dark Side," Jane Mayer went further using sources familiar with ICRC's report. She wrote it "warned that the abuse (at torture prisons) constituted war crimes, placing the highest officials in the US government in jeopardy of being prosecuted." She also explained that Red Cross investigators based their report largely on prisoner interviews. However, CIA officers she spoke to confirmed what ICRC disclosed. More on Mayer's book below.
Presidential July 20, 2007 Executive Order (EO) 13440: Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency
The EO is noteworthy for what it doesn't say, not what it does. Its language is reassuring but avoids stopping short of the administration's official policy of torture. Or real compliance with Geneva's Common Article 3 that states in part:
(1) Noncombatants, including "members of armed forces who laid down their arms....shall in all circumstances be treated humanely...."
...."the following acts are prohibited at any time and in any place....:
-- violence to life and person (including) murder, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;
-- taking of hostages;
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