CIA interrogators exceeded legal limits on harsh interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees during the Bush administration, according to a former top Justice Department official who was interviewed by congressional investigators.
House Democrats said Thursday that Jay S. Bybee, who headed the department's Office of Legal Counsel, told them in May that he never approved a number of interrogation techniques used on detainees in CIA custody. Techniques his office did approve -- such as waterboarding, the simulated drowning of terror suspects -- were used too many times on detainees, Bybee told investigators.
The House Judiciary Committee released a transcript of its interview with Bybee, who authored two of the Bush administration memos that blessed waterboarding, sleep deprivation and other tactics used after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Committee Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) said Bybee had revealed "that many brutal techniques reportedly used in CIA interrogations were not authorized by the Justice Department" and that the committee had sent the interview transcript to department lawyers.
The question of whether CIA contractors stepped outside legal boundaries in interrogating terror suspects lies at the heart of a criminal inquiry into interrogation practices, which are one of the Bush administration's most fraught legacies. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in August expanded the mandate of Assistant U.S. Attorney John H. Durham to include the actions of CIA interrogators and contractors at "black site" prisons. Durham had been investigating the destruction of videotapes of some of the interrogations.
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