Obama will not charge CIA officers

President Obama assures operatives they will not be prosecuted for their rough interrogation tactics.

WASHINGTON // In 2001, in the aftermath of the Sept 11 attacks, CIA operatives were allowed to shackle, strip and waterboard terror suspects. Now, President Barack Obama has assured these operatives that they will not be prosecuted for their rough interrogation tactics. At the same time, Mr Obama's lawyer general offered the operatives legal help if anyone else takes them to court over the harsh interrogation methods that were approved by the Bush administration.

The offer of presidential support, however, did not extend to those outside the CIA who approved the so-called enhanced interrogation methods or any CIA officers who may have gone beyond what was allowed in four legal memos written in 2002 and 2005 that the Obama administration released yesterday. The Bush administration memos authorised keeping detainees naked, in painful standing positions and in cold cells for long periods of time. Other techniques included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family also were used.

In releasing the documents, the most comprehensive accounting yet of interrogation methods that were among the Bush administration's most closely guarded secrets, President Obama said he wanted to move beyond "a dark and painful chapter in our history". Parts of the four memos were blacked out, and past and present CIA officials had pressed unsuccessfully for larger portions of the documents to be kept secret. Some critics argued that the release of the memos would make the United States less safe.

Michael Hayden, who led the CIA under President George W Bush, said CIA officers now will be more timid and allies will be more reluctant to share sensitive intelligence. "If you want an intelligence service to work for you, they always work on the edge. That's just where they work," Mr Hayden said. Now, he argued, foreign partners will be less likely to co-operate with the CIA because the release shows they "can't keep anything secret".

On the other side, human rights advocates argued that Mr Obama should not have assured the CIA that officers who conducted interrogations would not be prosecuted if they used methods authorised by Bush lawyers in the memos. Mr Obama disagreed and said in a statement: "Nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past." The CIA has acknowledged using waterboarding on three high-level terror detainees in 2002 and 2003, with the authorisation of the White House and the Justice Department.

Mr Hayden said waterboarding has not been used since, but some human rights groups have urged Obama to hold CIA employees accountable for what they, and many Obama officials, say was torture. The memos produced by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel were released to meet a court-approved deadline in a lawsuit against the government in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union. "It's impossible not to be shocked by the contents of these memos," the ACLU lawyer Jameel Jaffer said. "The memos should never have been written, but we're pleased the new administration has made them public."

*AP