WASHINGTON: Senior US Justice Department lawyers in 2005 sought to limit tough interrogation tactics against terror suspects but were overruled.
James Comey, who was then the No2 official at the Justice Department, tried to convince Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales that some of the tactics were wrong and they would eventually damage the reputation of the department.
The New York Times reported that Mr Comey had sent an email at the time describing his efforts to curtail the use of the tactics that critics call torture. “I told him the people who were applying pressure now would not be there when the s… hit the fan,” Mr Comey wrote in an email obtained by the Times.
“It would be Alberto Gonzales in the bull’s-eye.
“I told him it was my job to protect the department and the A-G and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong.”
A person familiar with Mr Comey’s concerns, speaking anonymously, said Mr Comey had sought to put limits on the use of the interrogation tactics on moral and ethical grounds, and because they didn’t work.
The Justice Department has been conducting an investigation into the conduct of the lawyers, who wrote memos authorising the CIA to use a variety of measures, including sleep deprivation, slamming suspects into walls and waterboarding to make them talk. The memos were the subject of internal debates within the Bush administration and were later made public by the Obama administration.
AP
Tags: Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales, Bush administration, CIA, senior lawyers, terror suspects, torture, tough interrogation tactics, US Justice Department
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