Holder begins review of detainee-abuse allegations

WASHINGTON -- Amid revelations that U.S. interrogators threatened terror suspects with handguns and an electric drill, Attorney General Eric Holder opened a preliminary review Monday to determine whether criminal prosecutions are warranted in some detainee abuse cases.

The threats against the detainees, who were hooded, shackled and, in some cases, naked, were among new details included in a series of documents released by the Justice Department. The records included a 2004 report by the CIA's Office of Inspector General, which noted that some of the interrogation tactics used by the agency were "inconsistent with the public policy positions that the United States has taken regarding human rights."

The report notes that a CIA officer also threatened a detainee with the prospect that his mother would be brought in for questioning, leading the captive to believe he was in a Middle Eastern country where interrogators are known for sexually abusing the female relatives if their prisoners.

None of the threats was an authorized interrogation technique, the report says.

The new information, released to satisfy a court order in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, came as the Obama administration continues to struggle with how to handle continued fallout from the controversial detention and interrogation techniques sanctioned by the Bush administration for terror suspects.

Holder's preliminary review, which could lay the groundwork for criminal prosecutions, was announced just hours after the White House confirmed the creation of a new, interagency task force set up specifically to take over all interrogations of "high value" detainees linked to Al Qaida and other terror groups.

The FBI-based task force will "bring together all the different elements of the intelligence community to get the best intelligence possible based on scientifically proven methods," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said. He noted that, per a previous order from Obama, all interrogations will be limited to techniques authorized by the Army Field Manual, which does not allow some of the more controversial "enhanced" tactics, such as "waterboarding," that were condoned during the Bush years.

The White House reiterated in a statement that Obama doesn't believe in prosecuting CIA personnel who used "enhanced" techniques "in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance" that was provided by Bush administration officials. But the statement noted that, "ultimately, determinations about whether someone broke the law are made independently by the Attorney General."

Civil Rights groups, including the ACLU, reiterated their call for prosecutions.

Criminal investigations should go beyond "rogue interrogators" to include higher-level Bush administration officials "who authorized torture or wrote the memos that were used to justify it," the ACLU said in a statement.

Holder assigned the preliminary review of potential criminal charges to Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was appointed in 2008 by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate the destruction of CIA videotapes of detainee interrogations, including sessions involving waterboarding. Holder echoed Obama's sentiment that interrogators who acted in accordance with Bush administration doctrine should not be prosecuted.

Nevertheless, he said, the information in the inspector general's report and other documents demand further investigation and the Justice Department "will follow its obligation to take this preliminary step to examine possible violations of law."

The inspector general's report found it "challenging" to assess whether the "enhanced" interrogation tactics were effective in gleaning intelligence that detainees might not have provided under more traditional questioning, particularly since the techniques were used on only a handful of suspected al-Qaeda leaders.

However, the report did note particular concerns about waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning and was used on three captives. Those concerns included "whether the risks of (waterboarding's) use were justified by the results (and) whether it has been unnecessarily used." The report also noted that questioners may have used the technique in ways that skirted legal limits set by the Bush administration.

One detainee, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a suspected mastermind in the USS Cole bombing, became "compliant" after just two waterboarding sessions, the report found. But suspected al-Qaeda leader Khalid Shaykh Muhammad, "an accomplished resistor," proved far more resistant: he was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003.

In a message to CIA employees, agency director Leon Panetta declined to enter the debate over whether waterboarding and other "enhanced" questioning techniques were legal or crossed the line into torture. But he vowed to defend employees who were acting under the legal guidance they were given at the time and noted that any review must consider the pressures that agency personnel were facing.

"This much is clear," Panetta said: "The CIA obtained intelligence from high-value detainees when inside information on al-Qaeda was in short supply."