Top Bush aide vetted CIA torture methods

Washington: Bush administration officials from Vice-President Dick Cheney down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, it has been learned.

The officials also took care to insulate President George W. Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.

A former senior US intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them on Thursday to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday.

The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to publicly discuss the issue.

Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture. "If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that "there'd need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics" before using them on Al Qaida detainees, the former official said. The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the September 11 attacks in 2001.

Criticism

Attending the sessions were then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Democratic Senator Edward M. Kennedy lambasted what he described as "yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture". "Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?" Kennedy said in a statement. "Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration's renegade repudiation of the rule of law."