- (The New York Times, Reuters, Cox News Service) -- The
director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Porter Goss, has told senators
he cannot say for sure that its methods of interrogating suspected terrorists
since September 11, 2001 have been legally permissible.
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- Under sharp questioning at a Senate armed services committee
hearing on Thursday, Mr Goss defended interrogation techniques used to
combat terrorism.
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- When challenged by the Republican John McCain about the
CIA's use of a technique known as waterboarding, in which a prisoner is
made to believe that he will drown, he replied only that the approach fell
into "an area of what I will call professional interrogation techniques".
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- Mr Goss was anything but apologetic.
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- "Terrorists brought the war to our soil," he
said. "We have taken the war to them. Sometimes this requires what
we euphemistically call a kinetic solution on foreign soil. We have to
be able to use all the tools at our disposal and understand the consequences
of how we use them."
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- At one point Mr Goss told senators: "I'd much rather
explain why we did something than why we did nothing." AdvertisementAdvertisement
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- Between 100 and 150 terrorist suspects are believed to
have been flown by US authorities to Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan,
Pakistan and other countries for questioning, supposedly after those countries
had given assurances that the people would not be tortured.
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- Mr Goss sought to reassure the senators that all interrogations
"at this time" are legal and that no methods at present in use
constituted torture. But he declined, when asked, to make the same broad
assertions about practices used over the past few years.
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- "At this time there are no techniques, if I could
say, that are being employed that are in any way against the law or would
meet ... would be considered torture or anything like that."
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- Asked if he could say the same about techniques employed
by the agency in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, he said: "I
am not able to tell you that."
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- Mr Goss's statements came closer than previous agency
statements to an admission that at least some of its practices may have
crossed the legal limits, and had the effect of raising new questions about
the CIA's conduct in detaining and questioning terrorist suspects, and
in transferring them to foreign governments.
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- Also on Thursday - the day after President George Bush
said the US obtains assurances that torture will not be used when terrorist
suspects are returned to their home countries - the White House declined
to say whether prisoners were shipped to nations other than their country
of origin.
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- Congressional Democrats are working on legislation that
includes a provision barring the sending of prisoners to countries the
State Department lists as using torture.
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- Three years after the US opened its prison for terrorism
suspects at Guantanamo Bay, 65 detainees have been handed over to their
home countries but none has been convicted of any crime.
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- Copyright © 2005. The Sydney Morning Herald.
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- http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/CIA-chief-
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