Interrogation

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives voted yesterday to prevent the CIA from using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods that already are banned from use by the U.S. military. The bill, which would fund and set policies for U.S. intelligence agencies, passed 222-199. It now goes to the Senate, where it faces strong Republican opposition. Even if the Senate approves the bill, the White House said in a statement that the president's advisers recommend that he veto it. The White House objects to the interrogation provision and other sections that would increase congressional oversight.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's Supreme Court has banned the use of sleep deprivation, violent shaking and other "physical pressure" in interrogations, a historic ruling that outlaws the decades-long treatment of Palestinian suspects by the security police in their fight against terrorism.While acknowledging Israel's "unceasing struggle for both its very existence and security," the nine-judge panel ruled yesterday that state investigators cannot use any means available to interrogate a suspected terrorist -- even if the suspect knows where a bomb is.Interrogation methods must be reasonable, if not always painless, the court said.

Police can lie to suspects, mislead their relatives and keep juveniles from seeing their parents during an interrogation, legal experts say.The release of Allen Jacob Chesnet, a teen-ager from North East freed this week six months after he was charged in the killing of a neighbor, highlights the importance of the tools police use when they interrogate suspects.Prosecutors in Cecil County dropped murder charges against the 16-year-old suspect Tuesday after they disclosed what they had known for months: that blood in the home of the victim, Beulah G. Honaker, 52, matched neither the victim's nor Allen's.

WASHINGTON -- They read. They doodled. They dozed.There were times when the 23 grand jurors hearing the Monica Lewinsky case seemed as bored as could be with the testimony unfolding before them. They moved about the courtroom, consumed snack food and generally allowed aides to independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr to handle the interrogation -- at least according to some of the 70-odd witnesses who have come to testify during the past six months.But do not underestimate this group of everyday residents of the District of Columbia -- plucked at random from the city's voting rolls to participate in presidential history.

Seething because you're sure that vicious murderers are pampered and armed robbers are slipping through the loopholes of a loose criminal justice system?If so, there is one sure place to gain solace.In front of the television set.There, on the best cop shows of the day, there is little patience for constitutional nuance or legal nicety. Television suspects already live in a get-tough-on-crime-environment where Miranda warnings are seldom heard and police do whatever they must to get their man.And those familiar with what goes on in the police interrogation rooms of America say the shows are reflecting real life like never before.

Los Angeles -- A good bad man is hard to find. Unless Kevin Spacey's in the general vicinity.Brad Jenkel, a producer of the actor's directorial debut, "Albino Alligator," observes, "He plays guys who have this morality problem. They have this weird side to them. I guess that's what attracts him to them."Mr. Spacey's breakthrough came in 1988, when he played Mel Profitt, a drug-addicted gunrunner involved with his own sister, on the cult TV series "Wiseguy." He won a Tony on Broadway in 1991 for playing the charismatic yet unreliable Uncle Louie in "Lost in Yonkers."

JERUSALEM -- Almost any Israeli can explain the "ticking bomb" theory.For years, the example of a terrorist who has planted a bomb has been a central part in the national argument over how much physical force should be allowed when authorities interrogate a suspect.The theory is that police ought to be allowed to use whatever force is needed -- even violence that could maim or kill -- to force a suspect to tell where he put a deadly bomb.Last weekend, when the scenario became reality, the authorities did not know it was happening.

SINGAPORE -- Lost in the trans-Pacific debate about crime and punishment over the proposed caning of an 18-year-old American living here is a question that is on the minds of many Americans here: Did the teen-ager, Michael Peter Fay, really commit the crimes that could now result in six skin-splitting lashes from a rattan cane?Although Mr. Fay signed a statement last fall in which he confessed to spray-painting cars during 10 days of vandalism, he has since insisted to friends and family that the confession was coerced during a police beating and that he is innocent of any crime.

Moscow's Lefortovo is a forbidding-looking brick fortress prison built in the shape of a K -- a bizarre tribute to Katherine the Great by the architect, who was infatuated with the empress.Over the centuries, thousands have passed through Lefortovo's TC dark corridors. To some it was the starting point on a long journey through czarist penal colonies and, later, through Stalin's Gulag. Others languished in its tepid cells until they received the executioner's call. The lucky ones -- who were relatively few -- eventually were let go.Will Englund, a Moscow correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, has been making repeated trips to Lefortovo in recent days at the demand of the Russian Security Ministry, which is building a case against one of his sources.

Prosecutors will be allowed to use at his trial confessions obtained by police from a man accused of causing his wife to fall to her death from a ladder last May.Howard County Circuit Judge Dennis Sweeney ruled yesterday that investigators did not go beyond their bounds when they obtained a confession from the suspect, 51-year-old John Carroll Calhoun of Marriottsville.Any statements the police got from Mr. Calhoun during a 3 1/2 -hour interview last June can be used against him at trial, the judge ruled.

It's been a busy summer at the Guantanamo Bay detention center. The joint task force in charge of the 226 remaining detainees is spending about $440,000 to expand the recreation yards at Camp 6. At nearby Camp 4, which offers communal living for the most "compliant" captives, the soccer yard is being enlarged. At Camp 5, a maximum-security facility, a $73,000 classroom is under construction. In March, the task force added art classes to the thrice-weekly instruction it offers in Arabic, Pashtu and English, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.

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.

WASHINGTON - -U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is poised to appoint a criminal prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA abuses committed during the interrogation of terrorism suspects, current and former U.S. government officials said. A senior Justice Department official said Holder envisions a probe that would be "narrow" in scope, focusing on "whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized" in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws.

Calling climate change "the greatest challenge of our day," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi credited young voters yesterday with pressuring Congress to finally craft a national response, and she predicted that the United States would join other countries this year in an international pact to reduce planet-warming pollution. Pelosi, speaking at commencement ceremonies for the Johns Hopkins University's arts and sciences and engineering graduates, called climate change a national security, economic, environmental health and moral issue.

Tough tactics help stop attacks I imagine liberal Democrats and terrorists are sleeping more easily now that the new commander in chief has banned the use of waterboarding during interrogation of captured terrorists. Never mind that some at the CIA have said using "enhanced techniques" of interrogation, including waterboarding, on al-Qaida leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed led to his revealing information that helped thwart a planned 9/11-style attack on Los Angeles. But according to President Barack Obama's way of thinking, it's more important to reach out to our Islamic enemies than to protect our own citizens.

WASHINGTON - A U.S. military agency that trains troops to resist and survive torture offered critical help in developing harsh interrogation techniques used by the CIA, according to a Senate committee report to be released Wednesday. The military expertise also was used by the Justice Department to develop controversial legal justifications for abusive interrogation methods, according to the report by the Senate Armed Services Committee. Sen. Carl M. Levin, a Michigan Democrat and committee chairman, said the report "connects the dots" to show how the techniques familiar to military experts found their way into controversial memos by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that authorized abusive interrogation practices.

Public officials, media outlets and members of the public who use the words torture and coercion interchangeably are making a huge mistake - one that could threaten our safety and security. Formerly top-secret documents declassified recently by the Obama administration describe in detail 10 interrogation techniques, including the now-infamous water-boarding. This has led to the unfortunate branding of all coercive techniques as torture. Among the enhanced techniques listed were the "attention grab" and the "facial hold."

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama's nominee to head the CIA, Leon E. Panetta, said yesterday that he intends to test the claims by current agency officials that coercive interrogation methods were effective in getting terrorism suspects to talk. Panetta's comments were the latest indication that the administration might restore some of the CIA's authority to use interrogation techniques that go beyond those allowed for the U.S. military. But Panetta stressed that he would also examine the "downside" of using coercive methods and that the agency would operate within the law. Last month, Obama signed executive orders to abolish harsh interrogation methods and close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

WASHINGTON - The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition." "We tortured [Mohammed al-] Qahtani," Susan Crawford said in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007.

WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney said yesterday that he was directly involved in approving severe interrogation methods used by the CIA and that the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, should remain open indefinitely. Cheney's remarks on Guantanamo appear to put him at odds with President George W. Bush, who has expressed a desire to close the prison, though the decision is expected to be left to the administration of President-elect Barack Obama. Cheney's comments also mark the first time that he has acknowledged playing a central role in clearing the CIA's use of an array of controversial interrogation tactics, including a simulated drowning method known as "waterboarding."