US attorney general hints at Bush's permission for torture

Under questioning from a Democratic senator, US attorney general Michael Mukasey on Jan. 30 suggested that President Bush might have personally authorized the waterboarding of suspected terrorists. Mukasey immediately corrected himself to say that he was not permitted to discuss past events. But in describing the process by which the CIA could seek legal clearance to resume waterboarding, he appeared to tie the president to the controversial technique. When Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein asked if the current path to authorizing waterboarding -- a request from the CIA director, followed by approval from the attorney general, followed by consultation with the president -- had applied in the past, Mukasey said yes. "I should take a step back," he then added. "I'm not authorized to say what happened in the past, but I was told this wasn't news." Feinstein pointed to the Bush administration's reported admission that the CIA waterboarded at least three senior members of al-Qaida. Given that the outlined process for authorizing the tactic would have involved Bush, she repeated, "Did the president approve that?" Mukasey declined to answer the question. His refusal to state directly whether waterboarding, which is not currently in use by the CIA, is a form of torture nearly prevented Mukasey from taking over the justice department last fall. During Mukasey's appearance before the senate judiciary committee, several Democrats sought to pin him down on his views of the interrogation method. Considered illegal by human rights groups and some in the US military, waterboarding involves simulating the sensation of drowning by dousing a prisoner in water. Mukasey said he would consider waterboarding to be torture if he were personally subjected to it. But he contended that its application by the US involved a separate balancing test, weighing the cost of the brutal action against the value of the information it could yield. "I don't think I'm saying it is simply a relative issue," Mukasey told Democratic senator Joseph Biden. "There is a statute under which it is a relative issue." Mukasey invoked the so-called "shocks the conscience" standard, causing Biden to marvel at the implication that the potential profit from waterboarding could have any role in determining its moral value. "I find [Mukasey's interpretation] to be fairly unique," Biden said. "Matter of fact, it shocks my conscience a little bit." In addition to its souring of Democratic relations with Mukasey, the debate over waterboarding has fuelled a criminal investigation at the justice department into videotapes trashed by the CIA in 2005. The tapes, destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations, show two al-Qaida members being questioned and potentially waterboarded by the CIA on foreign soil. The justice department has appointed a Connecticut prosecutor to probe whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders by destroying the tapes. Mukasey also was asked whether private contractors in the CIA's employ used harsh interrogation tactics, but said he did not know. The Washington Post reported last year that such contractors comprise about one-third of the spy agency's workforce.