Her written statement to Senate investigators is the first official high-level acknowledgment of meetings that led to harsh methods such as waterboarding.
By Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
11:47 PM PDT, September 24, 2008
WASHINGTON -- Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators.
Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods.
In particular, Rice wrote in the Sept. 12 statement that officials discussed simulated torture techniques that elite U.S. soldiers were subjected to as part of a survival training program, and that she and other officials were told that such methods "had been deemed not to cause significant physical or psychological harm."
Rice, who was serving as national security advisor at the time of the discussions, did not identify the source of that assertion. She was referring to a U.S. military program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE, which at times has included waterboarding and other controversial methods subsequently employed by the CIA.
Rice's written responses were released Wednesday by the office of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the armed services committee, which has been investigating apparent interrogation abuses by U.S. military personnel.
"We've long believed they took place," Levin said in an interview, referring to the high-level meetings that Rice described. Her responses, however, provide what he described as "new, concrete evidence that they took place in the White House."
more:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-interrogate25-2008sep25,0,7213775.story
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