Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Obama administration is considering creating a new special interrogation team for handling high-value terrorists. The team is reportedly the brainchild of Obama’s Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies and would draw in specialists from the federal government’s various bureaucracies and agencies. The Associated Press provides additional details. According to the AP and WSJ, no ultimate decision has been made on the program, so none of the details have been finalized yet. But if these preliminary accounts are accurate, then there are some striking similarities between the reported details of Obama’s new interrogation team and the policies implemented by the Bush administration. The WSJ recognizes this, saying there could “be some similarities with the approach taken by the Bush administration.” In particular, the new interrogation team “would focus more on gathering intelligence than on assembling evidence suitable for use in a criminal trial.” This is important. There is a school of thought, advanced primarily by some FBI interrogators, that the U.S. government can get all of the information it needs out of terrorists using the Bureau’s by-the-book methods. So, they argue, one can simultaneously launch a criminal prosecution and learn the most sensitive details of the al Qaeda terror network’s plotting. Clearly, the Bush administration decided that the FBI’s methods for building a criminal justice prosecution were insufficient. Others within government, including some at the CIA, have disagreed with the FBI’s exclusive approach as well. That’s why, in part, the most controversial interrogation methods were employed in the first place. And now it appears that Obama’s Task Force has decided that intelligence-gathering is, in fact, a function that will have to be performed separately during at least some interrogations. The WSJ and AP report that the new interrogation team will explore alternative methods for interrogation as well. Techniques such as waterboarding, which was used (as far as we know) on all of three high value terrorists, are out. But, the WSJ says, “the team would be asked to devise noncoercive procedures that may differ from the 19 permitted in the Army Field Manual.” This is important too. The Task Force has reportedly found that the Army Field Manual, which has been cited as sufficient for interrogations, does not include the full array of techniques needed to gain information from detainees. One of the president’s first executive orders even included a provision that limited the interrogation methods used on all detainees in U.S. custody to those methods contained in the manual. Of course, the question remains: How far will this new interrogation team be allowed to go? One last note: The AP reports that Obama’s Task Force is sending only “some” of its conclusions to the White House on Tuesday and the Task Force “has not completed its work.” This tracks with what I’ve been hearing, namely, that the Task Force has asked for an extension to complete its work. Why the delay?
