What did Bush know?
The CIA has admitted that it has documents explicitly signed by the President “specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members.†The content of the documents haven’t been disclosed, but I think everyone knows what to expect.
The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged for the first time the existence of two classified documents, including a directive signed by President Bush, that have guided the agency’s interrogation and detention of terror suspects.
The C.I.A. referred to the documents in a letter sent Friday from the agency’s associate general counsel, John L. McPherson, to lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union.
The contents of the documents were not revealed, but one of them is “a directive signed by President Bush granting the C.I.A. the authority to set up detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees,†the A.C.L.U. said, based on its review of published accounts.
The second document, according to the group, is a Justice Department legal analysis “specifying interrogation methods that the C.I.A. may use against top Al Qaeda members.â€
