More of F.B.I. Memo Criticizing Guantánamo Methods Is
Released
By DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: March 22, 2005

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/22/politics/22detain.html

WASHINGTON, March 21 - The Justice Department on
Monday released an F.B.I. memorandum dated May 10,
2004, in which departmental lawyers dismissed
intelligence obtained by coercive methods used by the
military at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as "suspect at
best."

The existence of the memorandum has been known for
months. But when it was first made public by the
government, the memorandum was released in heavily
edited form, in response to a Freedom of Information
Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union.

In February, Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan,
asked the Justice Department to restore the deleted
parts of the document after confirmation hearings on
Michael Chertoff's nomination to be secretary of the
Department of Homeland Security.

"The facts related to interrogation practices used
against some detainees are slowly being forced to the
surface, and we will keep pushing for more," Mr. Levin
said in a statement in which he referred to the
Department of Defense as D.O.D. "Today we were able to
obtain some information that had previously been
blacked out in an F.B.I. document critical of D.O.D.
interrogation practices. As I suspected, the
previously withheld information had nothing to do with
protecting intelligence sources or methods, and
everything to do with protecting D.O.D. from
embarrassment."

Mr. Chertoff said at his confirmation hearing that he
did not engage in detailed discussions of
interrogation policies and never offered specific
advice when he headed the criminal division at the
Justice Department from 2001 to 2003, when he left the
department to take an appointment to a federal appeals
court.

But the newly released version of the memorandum
identified for the first time four of Mr. Chertoff's
top deputies who, according to the document, attended
weekly meetings with F.B.I. officials in which the
military's interrogation methods were frequently
discussed and criticized as ineffective and
unproductive.

The four Chertoff aides, whose names were edited from
the previous version of the memorandum, were
identified in the newly released version as Alice
Fisher, David Nahmias, Laura Parsky and Bruce Swartz.

Ms. Fisher was Mr. Chertoff's chief of staff. Mr.
Nahmias was his senior counterterrorism adviser and is
now the United States attorney in Atlanta.

The author of the memorandum, an F.B.I. employee whose
identity is still unknown, wrote that the group often
discussed how the military's tactics were not working
and might be a problem in its efforts to try
Guantánamo prisoners in special tribunals.

"We all agreed D.O.D. tactics were going to be an
issue in the military commission cases," the
memorandum said.

The author said it was Mr. Swartz who took the group's
complaints to the Pentagon's general counsel.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



Send instant messages to your online friends http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com