Thread: C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods

C.I.A. Agents Sense Shifting Support for Methods

By SCOTT SHANE
Published: December 13, 2007
WASHINGTON — For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.

Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil.

The Justice Department, which in 2002 gave the C.I.A. legal approval for waterboarding and other tough interrogation methods, is reviewing whether agency officials broke the law by destroying videotapes of those very methods.

The Congressional intelligence committees, whose leaders in 2002 gave at least tacit approval for the tough tactics, have voted in conference to ban all coercive techniques, and they have announced investigations of the destruction of the videotapes and the methods they documented.

“Exactly what they feared is what’s happening,â€

On Nightline they interviewed a former CIA agent who may have been John C. Kiriakou. He was speaking of water boarding and CIA agents tested water boarding on themselves before using it on detainees and he lasted about 10 seconds.

...I therefore believe it is my duty to my country to love it, to support its Constitution, to obey its laws, to respect its flag, and to defend it against all enemies. (William Tyler Page, The American's Creed)