CIA head raises legal questions on issue of torture
WASHINGTON — Debate over waterboarding flared Thursday on Capitol Hill, with the CIA director raising doubts about whether it's legal and the attorney general refusing to investigate U.S. interrogators who have used the technique on terrorism detainees.
Vice President Dick Cheney, meanwhile, said "it's a good thing" that top al-Qaida leaders who underwent the harsh interrogation tactic in 2002 and 2003 were forced to give up information that helped protect the country.
"It's a good thing we had them in custody, and it's a good thing we found out what they knew," Cheney told the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, D.C.
Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning.
This week, for the first time, the Bush administration acknowledged it waterboarded three key al-Qaida detainees.
CIA Director Michael Hayden on Thursday said waterboarding was used, in part, because of belief among intelligence officials that more catastrophic attacks were imminent.
In 2006, the CIA banned waterboarding by its personnel after a Supreme Court decision and new laws on the treatment of U.S. detainees.
"It is not included in the current program, and in my own view, the view of my lawyers and the Department of Justice, it is not certain that that technique would be considered to be lawful under current statute," Hayden told the House Intelligence Committee.
Hours earlier, Attorney General Michael Mukasey pushed back against Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee demanding to know whether he would prosecute U.S. interrogators who used waterboarding in the past.
"Are you ready to start a criminal investigation?" committee chairman, Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., asked.
"No, I am not," Mukasey answered.