WASHINGTON, 19 March 2005 — Central Intelligence Agency Director Porter Goss told US senators Thursday that the governments of Syria and Iran are helping insurgents in Iraq, despite US efforts to end the support.
Goss also defended US interrogation practices amid ongoing criticism that Americans’ treatment of prisoners amounts to torture.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Goss said that professional interrogation has been a “useful and necessary way” to obtain information that saves innocent lives and protects combat forces.
Denying torture tactics, Goss said: “The United States government does not engage in or condone torture. We don’t do torture.”
But Goss would not assure Congress that the CIA’s methods of interrogation were allowed under federal laws prohibiting torture.
Goss’s statements came closer than previous statements from the agency to an admission that at least some of its practices might have crossed the legal limits, and had the effect of raising new questions about the CIA’s conduct in detaining and questioning terror suspects and in transferring them to a foreign government, in what remains one of the most secretive areas of the government’s efforts to combat terrorism.
Goss described some of the approaches now used by the CIA, including the transfer of terrorism suspects to the custody of foreign governments, as not much more than a continuation of techniques used by the agency before the Sept. 11 attacks.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a former POW in Vietnam, said he was concerned about what he sees as a lack of policy on prisoners.
Under sharp questioning at the hearing, Goss told lawmakers that all interrogations “at this time” were legal and no methods now in use constituted torture.
Goss said he believes there is a policy in the intelligence community and where there is any uncertainty officials err on the side of caution.
But he declined, when pushed, to make the same broad statement about interrogation tactics used in the past few years.
Both Republicans and Democrats asked Goss why the CIA was taking so much time to review cases of alleged abuse. He responded saying the policies and procedures are clear and always with the law.
Adm. Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, said there are 12,000 to 20,000 insurgents, with a single-digit percentage that is made up of non-Iraqis.
Goss said he’s optimistic, but realizes that the United State must be patient as Iraqis establish their government.
“There is no misjudging the fact that there is still intimidation,” directed by terrorists toward innocent people, Goss said.
Dr. Ernest Latham, a retired US Foreign Service officer, said one of the problems the CIA is facing is that terrorists are not signatories of the Geneva and Hague conventions. “We are not dealing with sovereign nations,” he said.
Latham said he investigated the question of war and prisoners in Cyprus after the 1974 conflict, and said, “things have a terrible trend to spiral down,” when parties do not adhere to the Geneva Convention. So if one side abuses a prisoner, the other side will mistreat their prisoners even worse. And, before we finish, we are in the zone of bestiality.”
“America is the example for the rest of the world. We have been an international moral authority in the past, and this reputation is being eroded as the world perceives that we acting in a brutally opportunistic way,” said Dr. Latham.
