The US may use waterboarding to question terrorism suspects in the future, the White House said today, rejecting the widely held belief that the practice amounts to torture.
‘It will depend upon circumstances,’ spokesman Tony Fratto said.
His comments came one day after CIA Director Michael Hayden for the first time admitted publicly that the agency had used waterboarding, a practice that amounts to controlled drowning, to question three top al-Qaeda detainees after the 11 September 2001 terrorist strikes.
The technique was used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a time when further catastrophic attacks on the US were believed to be imminent, Mr Hayden said.
‘The president will listen to the considered judgment of the professionals in the intelligence community and the judgment of the attorney general in terms of the legal consequences of employing a particular technique,’ Mr Fratto said.
After years of insisting that disclosing any specific interrogation techniques would harm US national security, US President George W Bush authorised General Hayden to say what he said, Mr Fratto told reporters.
US Senate Democrats have demanded that Attorney General Michael Mukasey launch a Justice Department investigation into whether waterboarding violated the law.
Mr Mukasey told Congress last week that the CIA no longer uses waterboarding and that it was not ‘currently’ an authorised interrogation technique – but refused to say whether waterboarding is torture.
Amnesty International demanded a criminal investigation following the CIA's admission. The London-based human rights organisation said waterboarding was torture.
And Human Rights Watch said Mr Hayden's remarks were ‘an explicit admission of criminal activity’.
