Torture Is Un-american

Our View: Announcement Of A Special Prosecutor To Probe Cia Abuses And A New Interrogation Unit Under White House Control Signal A Clean Break With Past Policies

With the economy still sputtering, unfinished wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and health care reform under attack, it's little wonder President Barack Obama isn't eager for a distracting debate over the Bush administration's policy on torture to extract information from suspected terrorists. But a report released Monday revealing new details of the abuses carried out by the agency shows why Mr. Obama will have to tackle the subject. Indeed, within hours of the report's release, the Justice Department announced a criminal probe of alleged detainee abuses, and the White House said it will assume direct control of interrogations of terror suspects.

The previously classified report - the result of a 2004 investigation by the Central Intelligence Agency's inspector general into allegations of illegal mistreatment of detainees at the agency's secret prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan - cited instances in which interrogators threatened detainees with guns and electric drills, conducted mock executions to make suspects believe they were about to be executed and told prisoners their families would be targeted for death if they refused to cooperate. One interrogator reportedly threatened to rape a prisoner's mother in front of him if he didn't answer questions.

Even under the extremely permissive interrogation rules adopted by the Bush administration, such methods were deemed illegal, although Justice Department lawyers at the time declined to prosecute those involved. In remarks defending the agency yesterday, CIA Director Leon Panetta said that some CIA officers had been disciplined and that a contract employee was prosecuted for detainee abuse.

A heavily redacted version of the report, released earlier this year in response to a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union, had already revealed some of the abuses carried out by the agency in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and the Pentagon. They included beatings, exposure to extreme temperatures, confinement in crippling stress positions, depriving prisoners of sleep, food and medical care, slamming them into walls and subjecting them to waterboarding. All are practices condemned as torture by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors compliance with the Geneva Conventions.