Security Nominee Gave Advice to the CIA on Torture Laws

[freestyle]

While all the attention is on Gonzales, we can't let Chertoff slip by. He was deeply involved with Patriot Act and apparently has a torture problem of his own. The appointment of proponents of torture to head theh Departments of Justice and Homeland Security should eliminate any remaining doubt that this is a fascist dictatorship. Snips for today's NYT on Chertoff follow. Don't let Chertoff's veneer of respectablity fool you.

.....One technique that C.I.A. officers could use under certain circumstances without fear of prosecution was strapping a subject down and making him experience a feeling of drowning. Other practices that would not present legal problems were those that did not involve the infliction of pain, like tricking a subject into believing he was being questioned by a member of a security service from another country......

But Mr. Chertoff left the door open to the use of a different set of far harsher techniques proposed by the C.I.A., saying they might be used under certain circumstances. He advised that they could be used depending on factors like the detainee's physical condition and medical advice as to how the person would react to some practices, the officials said......

In responding, Mr. Chertoff's division said that whether the techniques were not allowed depended on the standards outlined in an August 2002 memorandum from the Office of Legal Counsel that has since been disclosed and which defined torture narrowly. That memorandum, signed by Jay S. Bybee, then the head of the legal counsel's office, said inflicted pain, for example, qualified as torture only if it was of a level equivalent to organ failure or imminent death.......


The officials said Mr. Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect, evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the C.I.A. by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution.

more at the link

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/29/politics/29home.html