Renditions May Continue Under Interrogation Unit
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By BRIAN KNOWLTON and MARIA NEWMAN
</NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>WASHINGTON ? President Obama has created a team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects as part of a broader effort to revamp United States policy on detention and interrogation. With the formation of this team, the administration indicated that it would more closely monitor, but not necessarily abandon, the controversial practice of sending some high-level terror detainees to other countries for questioning.
Bill Burton, the deputy White House spokesman who is with the vacationing president in Oak Bluffs, Mass., said that creation of the unit does not mean the C.I.A. is out of the interrogation business. The new unit will include ?all these different elements under one group,? he said at the briefing, and would work out of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington.
In a background briefing about the interrogation unit, senior administration officials on Monday played down the notion that it would fall under direct, daily White House supervision. They also emphasized that while the National Security Council would provide it strategic guidance, the unit?s tactical operations would ?be administratively housed within the F.B.I.? and involve officials drawn from many governmental agencies.
The officials were describing recommendations from a task force that examined both interrogations and transfers of terror suspects to other countries for questioning; they said that President Obama had accepted all the proposals.
Details on the new unit were emerging on Monday as the Justice Department prepared to release details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.?s inspector general but have never been released.
On the question of the transfers ? sometimes referred to as extraordinary renditions ? one official at the Washington briefing said that the State Department would be given a greater role in verifying assurances from other countries that they would not torture any transferred detainees. Such assurances, often provided by other countries to the Bush administration, did not always prove credible.
The task force recommended that the inspectors general of the departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security report annually on the record of countries providing assurances.
?The U.S. government should not and will not transfer any individual where there is a likelihood they will be tortured,? one official said.
As to the involvement of the C.I.A. in future interrogations, one official said that ?the C.I.A. is still going to play a very important role on the operational side.?
But the new approach, he said, would provide ?the overarching structure and discipline that ensures this is going to be done certainly consistent with U.S. law, consistent with the direction that the National Security Council sets.?
The administration officials said the new interrogation unit would study the latest research on interrogation to ensure that the most effective legally permitted techniques are used.
Since the task force recommended that all interrogations, by military or non-military teams, use only techniques approved in the Army Field Manual ? which allows methods like sleep deprivation and extreme cold but not more extreme techniques such as waterboarding ? the question arises of how new techniques might be cleared for use.
One official, when asked about this, said that ?there would certainly be at least congressional oversight.?
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</NYT_HEADLINE><NYT_BYLINE version="1.0" type=" ">
By BRIAN KNOWLTON and MARIA NEWMAN
</NYT_BYLINE><NYT_TEXT>WASHINGTON ? President Obama has created a team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects as part of a broader effort to revamp United States policy on detention and interrogation. With the formation of this team, the administration indicated that it would more closely monitor, but not necessarily abandon, the controversial practice of sending some high-level terror detainees to other countries for questioning.
Bill Burton, the deputy White House spokesman who is with the vacationing president in Oak Bluffs, Mass., said that creation of the unit does not mean the C.I.A. is out of the interrogation business. The new unit will include ?all these different elements under one group,? he said at the briefing, and would work out of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington.
In a background briefing about the interrogation unit, senior administration officials on Monday played down the notion that it would fall under direct, daily White House supervision. They also emphasized that while the National Security Council would provide it strategic guidance, the unit?s tactical operations would ?be administratively housed within the F.B.I.? and involve officials drawn from many governmental agencies.
The officials were describing recommendations from a task force that examined both interrogations and transfers of terror suspects to other countries for questioning; they said that President Obama had accepted all the proposals.
Details on the new unit were emerging on Monday as the Justice Department prepared to release details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.?s inspector general but have never been released.
On the question of the transfers ? sometimes referred to as extraordinary renditions ? one official at the Washington briefing said that the State Department would be given a greater role in verifying assurances from other countries that they would not torture any transferred detainees. Such assurances, often provided by other countries to the Bush administration, did not always prove credible.
The task force recommended that the inspectors general of the departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security report annually on the record of countries providing assurances.
?The U.S. government should not and will not transfer any individual where there is a likelihood they will be tortured,? one official said.
As to the involvement of the C.I.A. in future interrogations, one official said that ?the C.I.A. is still going to play a very important role on the operational side.?
But the new approach, he said, would provide ?the overarching structure and discipline that ensures this is going to be done certainly consistent with U.S. law, consistent with the direction that the National Security Council sets.?
The administration officials said the new interrogation unit would study the latest research on interrogation to ensure that the most effective legally permitted techniques are used.
Since the task force recommended that all interrogations, by military or non-military teams, use only techniques approved in the Army Field Manual ? which allows methods like sleep deprivation and extreme cold but not more extreme techniques such as waterboarding ? the question arises of how new techniques might be cleared for use.
One official, when asked about this, said that ?there would certainly be at least congressional oversight.?
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