McClatchy Newspapers: Assessing CIA culpability in detainee deaths will be tricky

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Assessing CIA culpability in detainee deaths will be tricky

By Marisa Taylor and Warren P. Strobel, McClatchy Newspapers Thu Sep 3, 6:29 pm ET

WASHINGTON — By all accounts, the interrogation of Iraqi Maj. Gen. Abed Hamed Mowhoush went terribly wrong. Military guards accused his interrogators of beating the detainee and stuffing his body into a sleeping bag bound with electrical cord until he suffocated.

When it came time for a CIA employee to testify during the court-martial of Army Chief Warrant Officer Lewis Welshofer , however, officials went to great lengths to protect the employee's identity, erecting a high, Army -green tarpaulin to shield him from spectators. Even the unidentified man's employment by the CIA was off-limits, until Welshofer's civilian attorney mentioned it in a slip of the tongue.

"The CIA was a kind of specter hanging on the edge of the case the entire time," said David Danzig, of the advocacy group Human Rights First, who attended the trial. The CIA's role in questioning Mowhoush "was not being investigated, not being discussed," he said.

With the appointment of special prosecutor John Durham , critics of the Bush administration's interrogation policies are hoping that the CIA's role in the alleged mistreatment of detainees finally will be revealed.

Attorney General Eric Holder has asked Durham to determine whether there should be a criminal investigation into CIA officers or contractors who may have gone beyond the limits of the Bush administration's broad interrogation policies. In several incidents, detainees died.

Judging from previous investigations of the agency, Durham will have his work cut out for him. Although the CIA's former inspector general referred the Mowhoush case and eight others to federal prosecutors during the Bush administration, only one CIA contractor ended up being prosecuted.

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