A US military agency warned the administration of former US president George W. Bush in July 2002 that torture of terrorism suspects usually yields "unreliable information," The Washington Post reported late Friday.
But the newspaper said that just a few weeks later, the Justice Department authorised use of harsh interrogation techniques on some captives in the war on terror. "The unintended consequence of a US policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured US personnel," the report quotes a document attached to a memorandum by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency as saying.
Parts of the attachment, obtained in full by The Washington Post, were quoted in a Senate report on harsh interrogation released this week, the paper said. According to The Post, it remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration.
But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that technical advisers on the harsh interrogation methods voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure. The document was included among July 2002 memorandums that described severe techniques used against Americans in past conflicts and the psychological effects of such treatment, the paper said.
The JPRA material was sent from the Pentagon to the CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, and on to the Justice Department, according to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. But in a memo dated August 1, 2002, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorised the use of the 10 methods against Abu Zubaidah, an al Qaeda associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002, The Post pointed out.
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