Cheney Intervened in CIA Inspector General’s Torture Probe

“Rockefeller wanted to know if the intelligence agency’s top lawyer believed that the waterboarding of [alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu] Zubaydah and [alleged 9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as captured on the secret videotapes, was entirely legal. The CIA refused to provide the requested documents to Rockefeller. But the Democratic senator’s mention of the videotapes undoubtedly sent a shiver through the Agency, as did a second request he made for these documents to [former CIA Director Porter] Goss in September 2005.”

Helgerson’s report has been highly sought after by members of Congress and civil liberties organizations for some time. Justice Department torture memos released last month contain several footnotes to the inspector general’s report noting the watchdog’s concerns about the fact that interrogators strayed from the legal limits set forth in the memos on how specific interrogation methods could be used.

For example, a footnote in a May 2005 Justice Department legal opinion says Helgerson found that, “in some cases,” the “waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated … and also that it was used in a different manner.”

According to court papers in a contempt lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the CIA over the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes, “at the conclusion of [Helgerson’s] special review in May 2004, [CIA Office of Inspector General] notified DOJ and other relevant oversight authorities of the review’s findings.”

A month later, according to documents released last month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Helgerson’s report was made available to top lawmakers on the committee.

That same month, June 2004, then-CIA Director George Tenet asked the White House to explicitly sign off on the agency’s torture program with a memo that authorized specific techniques, such as waterboarding. A similar request was also made by the agency at the start of Helgerson’s probe in 2003, according to a report published in The Washington Post last October.

“The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency’s use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects – documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public,” the Post reported.

“The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed (and remain classified), were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency’s interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.”

It’s unknown whether Helgerson’s report led Tenet to request the later memo from the White House.

According to the Post report, “the CIA’s anxiety was partly fueled by the lack of explicit presidential authorization for the interrogation program” and “Tenet seemed … interested in protecting his subordinates” from legal liability.

In July 2004, “the CIA briefed the [Senate Intelligence Committee’s] Chairman and Vice Chairman on the facts and conclusions of the Inspector General special review,” the Post report said.

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.”

In “The Dark Side,” Mayer wrote that Helgerson was “looking into at least three deaths of CIA-held prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

One of those prisoners was Manadel al-Jamadi, who was captured by Navy SEALs outside Baghdad in November 2003.

“The CIA had identified him as a ‘high-value’ target, because he had allegedly supplied the explosives used in several atrocities perpetrated by insurgents, including the bombing of the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in October 2003,” Mayer reported in The New Yorker.

“After being removed from his house, Jamadi was manhandled by several of the SEALs, who gave him a black eye and a cut on his face; he was then transferred to CIA custody, for interrogation at Abu Ghraib. According to witnesses, Jamadi was walking and speaking when he arrived at the prison. He was taken to a shower room for interrogation. Some forty-five minutes later, he was dead.”

At the time of his death, Jamadi’s head was covered with a plastic bag, he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe and according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he suffocated.

The CIA interrogator implicated in his death was Mark Swanner, who was never charged with a crime despite a recommendation by investigators working for Helgerson that the Justice Department launch a criminal investigation into the matter.

The Swanner/Jamadi case was forwarded in 2004 to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, where the file remained. McNulty is under scrutiny by a special prosecutor investigating the role he and other Bush administration officials played in the firings of nine US attorneys in 2006.

Helgerson also “had serious questions about the agency’s mistreatment of dozens more, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” Mayer wrote in her book, adding that there was a belief by some “insiders that [Helgerson’s investigation] would end with criminal

Jason Leopold is editor in chief of The Public Record, www.pubrecord.org.