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WASHINGTON -
FBI agents are increasingly complaining about what they consider abusive physical and mental torture by military officials against prisoners held in Iraq and Cuba, including lighted cigarettes stuck in detainees' ears and Arab captives being humiliated with Israeli flags wrapped around them, according to new documents released today.
The FBI records are the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government and include instances in which bureau officials were disgusted that military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.
In addition, the FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners.
"We know what's permissible for FBI agents but are less sure what is permissible for military interrogators," the FBI's "on-scene commander-Baghdad" complained to his bureau colleagues last May, well after the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison had become public.
"We cannot have our (FBI) personnel embedded with military units abroad, which regularly use these interrogation techniquesÂ…"
Another unidentified FBI agent told his superiors in July that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners.
"I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive, but personally very upsetting," he said.
At the Pentagon, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a military spokesman, said the Defense Department would have no comment about the FBI records or the Bush executive order.
The FBI documents did not include a copy of the Bush order, or make clear when it was signed. But it described the order as allowing interrogation tactics that are forbidden for FBI agents, who routinely interview some of the most notorious crime suspects in this country.
According to FBI officials, the Bush order approved interrogation tactics that include "sleep deprivation and stress positions," as well as "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."
Other White House documents surfaced earlier this year in which the president was given legal advice that the detainees are enemy combatants and not strictly prisoners of war, and that therefore the Geneva Conventions may not always apply in the post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism.
Nevertheless Jameel Jaffer, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, maintained that "the methods that the Defense Department has adopted are illegal, immoral and counterproductive."
He added that the ACLU, which has been obtaining torture records under a lawsuit it filed against the federal government, finds it "astonishing that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by the highest levels of government."
In many of the records released today, FBI officials expressed disgust upon learning that military interrogators posed as FBI agents in their interviews with prisoners.
They said they had learned that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved the "ruse," and that it actually had an adverse effect, getting little "cooperation" from prisoners.
In one instance, an FBI official told his superiors in a December, 2003 e-mail that impersonation "tactics have produced no intelligence." The official added that these techniques actually "have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee."
The FBI official added: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DoD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done (by) the `FBI' interrogators. The FBI will be left holding the bag before the public."
Another FBI official, who worked in the bureau's counterterrorism division and was assigned to Guantanamo Bay, wrote in a memo last July that military interrogators often interrupted efforts underway by FBI agents.
Every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative," the FBI official wrote. "The military did not stop the interviews while they were in progress but routinely took control of the detainee when the interview was completed.
"The next time that detainee was interviewed, his level of cooperation was diminished."
The FBI records are the latest set of documents obtained by the ACLU in its lawsuit against the federal government and include instances in which bureau officials were disgusted that military interrogators pretended to be FBI agents and used the scheme as a "ruse" to glean intelligence information from prisoners.
In addition, the FBI complained that military interrogators have gone far beyond the restrictions of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting torture and have followed an apparently new executive order from President Bush that permits the use of dogs and other techniques to harass prisoners.
"We know what's permissible for FBI agents but are less sure what is permissible for military interrogators," the FBI's "on-scene commander-Baghdad" complained to his bureau colleagues last May, well after the abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison had become public.
"We cannot have our (FBI) personnel embedded with military units abroad, which regularly use these interrogation techniquesÂ…"
Another unidentified FBI agent told his superiors in July that he had witnessed military interrogators and government contract employees at the U.S. Navy Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using "aggressive treatment and improper interview techniques" on prisoners.
"I did observe treatment that was not only aggressive, but personally very upsetting," he said.
At the Pentagon, Air Force Maj. Michael Shavers, a military spokesman, said the Defense Department would have no comment about the FBI records or the Bush executive order.
The FBI documents did not include a copy of the Bush order, or make clear when it was signed. But it described the order as allowing interrogation tactics that are forbidden for FBI agents, who routinely interview some of the most notorious crime suspects in this country.
According to FBI officials, the Bush order approved interrogation tactics that include "sleep deprivation and stress positions," as well as "loud music, interrogators yelling at subjects and prisoners with hoods on their heads."
Other White House documents surfaced earlier this year in which the president was given legal advice that the detainees are enemy combatants and not strictly prisoners of war, and that therefore the Geneva Conventions may not always apply in the post-Sept. 11 war against terrorism.
Nevertheless Jameel Jaffer, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in New York, maintained that "the methods that the Defense Department has adopted are illegal, immoral and counterproductive."
He added that the ACLU, which has been obtaining torture records under a lawsuit it filed against the federal government, finds it "astonishing that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by the highest levels of government."
In many of the records released today, FBI officials expressed disgust upon learning that military interrogators posed as FBI agents in their interviews with prisoners.
They said they had learned that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had approved the "ruse," and that it actually had an adverse effect, getting little "cooperation" from prisoners.
In one instance, an FBI official told his superiors in a December, 2003 e-mail that impersonation "tactics have produced no intelligence." The official added that these techniques actually "have destroyed any chance of prosecuting this detainee."
The FBI official added: "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DoD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done (by) the `FBI' interrogators. The FBI will be left holding the bag before the public."
Another FBI official, who worked in the bureau's counterterrorism division and was assigned to Guantanamo Bay, wrote in a memo last July that military interrogators often interrupted efforts underway by FBI agents.
Every time the FBI established a rapport with a detainee, the military would step in and the detainee would stop being cooperative," the FBI official wrote. "The military did not stop the interviews while they were in progress but routinely took control of the detainee when the interview was completed.
"The next time that detainee was interviewed, his level of cooperation was diminished."
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