WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld last year personally approved a series of aggressive interrogation techniques for suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda detainees to extract information about the Sept. 11 attacks and help prevent future ones, Pentagon officials said Thursday.
Rumsfeld approved in April 2003 a request five months earlier by Army Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who had arrived at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in November 2002 to oversee prisoners. Miller sought permission to use a broad range of extraordinary "nondoctrinal" questioning techniques on an Al Qaeda detainee, a general with the Pentagon's Judge Advocate General's office said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The defense officials did not detail the procedures Miller had sought to use, or identify the detainee, but they said the prisoner was believed to have valuable information about future attacks by Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. Pentagon lawyers and interrogators clashed over the proposed procedures, which some of the lawyers said would violate international law.
The account confirmed portions of media reports on the development of post-Sept. 11 interrogation practices. But it was the first official acknowledgment that Rumsfeld had been personally involved in the development of interrogation policies for war detainees.
Miller was sent to Iraq to oversee prison operations after physical abuse and sexual humiliation of detainees were uncovered at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. Miller also issued a report last year recommending improvements at the prison, including more effective interrogation.
The abuse scandal touched off congressional hearings that have widened from an investigation into the conduct of seven military police officers at a single cellblock to an inquiry into the Pentagon's detention policy and interrogation practices. Human rights groups have accused the United States of violating terms of the Geneva Convention.
The methods Miller sought to use at Guantanamo were harsher than those used in standard military doctrine, and some drew objections from military lawyers in the Judge Advocate General's office, the JAG official said. Intelligence and other Pentagon officials, however, said they felt an immediate need for better information.
"There became some urgency because we had an individual that had some information that people at Guantanamo believed was important not just to 9/11, but to future events," a senior Pentagon lawyer said.
