FBI Chief: No Waterboarding Here

This month, President Bush is expected to veto a Senate bill that would restrict the CIA to using interrogation techniques approved by the Army Field Manual. That would unequivocally outlaw waterboarding, the inducement of hypothermia, sensory deprivation, and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques that have been in the CIA’s arsenal.

The veto is likely to survive an attempt by Senate to override because ever since 9/11, the administration and Republicans (including Sen. John McCain) have preferred to keep legal restraints on CIA interrogators loose.

But the FBI, which, unlike the CIA had ample experience with interrogation, took a different tack. During today’s hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked FBI Director Robert Mueller why:

LEAHY: And you have a policy, as does the military, the military handbooks, not to use coercive techniques like waterboarding. Why do you have that policy?

MUELLER: There are a number of reasons that probably contributed to the development of that policy years ago. Generally, our questioning has been, in the past, done in the United States, and the results of our questioning often end up in a court. Whereas, you and other who have been prosecutors know the question of voluntariness is at issue for the admissibility of information you have.

And, consequentially, the policy was established, I would imagine, given our particular unique mission here and the operation under the Constitution, the applicable statutes and the attorney general guidelines.

It also is a result, I believe, of the analysis of our Behavioral Science Unit as to effective use of particular techniques where we believe that the rapport-building technique is particularly effective.

Mueller also acknowledged that the “rapport-building” approach apparently was quite successful with Saddam Hussein.

Remember that down in Guantanamo Bay, FBI and military interrogators (the “Clean Team“) had to re-examine detainees because the techniques used by CIA interrogators meant that the testimony would not hold up in court. Not that the director of national intelligence has any doubt that “enhanced interrogation” techniques produce reliable information (“we can tell in minutes if they are lying”). I guess it’s just a different way of doing things.