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C.I.A. Is Seen as Seeking New Role on Detainees

By DOUGLAS JEHL

This article was reported by Douglas Jehl, David Johnston and Neil A. Lewis
and written by Mr. Jehl.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 15 - The Central Intelligence Agency is seeking to scale
back its role as interrogator and custodian of terrorist leaders who are
being
held without charges in secret sites around the world, current and former
intelligence officials said.

The internal discussions, they said, reflect the agency's growing discomfort
with what is increasingly seen as an untenable position. The C.I.A.'s
current
leadership is concerned, the officials said, that the legal authority for
interrogations and detentions is eroding, and that there is no clear plan
for
how the agency can extricate itself from what could be a lengthy task of
holding and caring for a small population of aging terrorists whose
intelligence
value is steadily evaporating and who are unlikely ever to be released or
brought to trial.

The C.I.A. assumed the mission of detaining the leaders in the months after
the Sept. 11 attacks. But the officials said the effort required to
indefinitely
maintain what amounts to a secret prison system overseas is increasingly
regarded within the agency as conflicting with its core mission of
collecting
and analyzing intelligence.

As it rethinks its role, the C.I.A. is facing renewed scrutiny in Congress
and in the courts over practices like detentions without trial, harsh
interrogations
and the handing over of captives to third countries where they might be
abused.

The C.I.A. never expected to play a long-term role in the detention and
interrogation of terror suspects, the officials said. At the same time, they
added,
the Bush administration's repudiation of an August 2002 legal opinion
regarding the use of torture, sought by the C.I.A. to protect its employees
from
liability, is seen within the agency as undercutting its authority to use
coercive methods in interrogations.

C.I.A. lawyers, who have said nothing in public about the decision in June
2004 to invalidate the opinion, were furious about the decision, former
Justice
Department officials said. From the start, senior C.I.A. officials had
agreed to play a part in detention and interrogation as part of an immediate
sense
after the Sept. 11 attacks that all agencies must adopt a new approach to
counterterrorism. But current and former intelligence officials say there
was
concern that the C.I.A. might be left to bear sole responsibility and the
brunt of criticism for the use of harsh techniques.

That concern was recently heightened when high-level administration
officials seemed in public testimony to sidestep responsibility for shaping
interrogation
policies. The officials included Alberto R. Gonzales, the attorney general,
and Michael Chertoff, the new homeland security secretary. Both suggested in
their confirmation hearings that others might have played a greater role in
deciding how interrogations would be conducted.

Porter J. Goss, the new intelligence chief, is scheduled to make his first
public appearance in that role on Wednesday, in testimony before the Senate
Intelligence
Committee. Congressional officials have said that the panel would conduct a
review this year of the C.I.A.'s role in the detention and interrogation of
the terrorist leaders, but the facts surrounding their detention remain
among the government's most closely guarded secrets, and it is not clear
whether
senators will question Mr. Goss about the issue in a public forum.

The estimated three dozen people being held by the C.I.A. include Abu
Zubaydah, the personnel coordinator for Al Qaeda, and Khalid Sheikh
Mohammed, the
chief operational planner of the Sept. 11 plot. Under Bush administration
directives, they are being detained indefinitely as unlawful combatants,
without
trial, and without access to lawyers or human rights groups.

Among the options being discussed within the government is the possibility
of enlisting another agency, most likely the Federal Bureau of
Investigation,
to assume a role in their interrogation. Bureau officials said they knew of
no such discussions and would oppose any move to involve the F.B.I.

Other possibilities include more active efforts to hand over some of the
detainees to third countries. Neither the C.I.A. nor the F.B.I. would
comment for
this article, and the current and former intelligence officials who agreed
to discuss the issue would speak only on condition of anonymity. None would
say where the detainees were being held, or describe the interrogation
methods used on them.

But all of the officials described deep frustration within the C.I.A. about
its role as custodian of the detainees. While some of those in American
detention,
particularly Mr. Zubaydah, are said to have provided useful intelligence
during their first months in captivity, no more than a handful of those
still
in C.I.A. custody are seen as possessing much intelligence value.

"No one has a plan for what to do with these guys," a former senior
intelligence official said, "and the C.I.A. has been left holding the bag."

Any change would be a significant one for the C.I.A. The agency's
authorization to use coercive interrogation methods has been spelled out in
a series of
documents, most still highly classified, the former officials said,
including a narrow definition of torture in a Justice Department legal
opinion issued
in August 2002.

But some former intelligence officials said the C.I.A.'s latitude in
conducting interrogations had been reduced significantly and might have been
scaled
back by the agency itself in response to the White House's repudiation last
summer of the 2002 opinion and its decision in December to issue an opinion
that broadened the definition of torture, putting a wider range of
interrogation methods off limits.

Abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq have focused Congressional and
public scrutiny on the possibility that the agency engaged in excessive
force in
interrogations.

It has long been known that F.B.I. agents and behavioral science experts
took part in interrogations of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. F.B.I.
agents
have also taken part in interviews of high-level detainees in Iraq and spent
months questioning Saddam Hussein at an undisclosed site near Baghdad.

But until now, the F.B.I. has been unwilling to assign agents to routinely
interview high-value detainees in C.I.A. custody. After the Sept. 11
attacks,
senior F.B.I. officials urged the bureau's director, Robert S. Mueller III,
to keep agents out of those high-level interviews out of concern that it
would
damage the bureau's reputation and compromise agents as potential witnesses
in future criminal cases if it became known that they had engaged in
interviews
in which highly coercive techniques were used.

Since then, Mr. Mueller has assigned agents to work with the military and
the C.I.A. in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, current and former
associates
said.

At Guantánamo, where hundreds of captives from the war in Afghanistan are
held by the military, the F.B.I. has complained about excessive force being
used
against some detainees. Those complaints have been disclosed in recent weeks
in internal bureau documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union,
which obtained them in a Freedom of Information Act request.

The C.I.A.'s agreement to hold and question high-level Qaeda figures rather
than turn them over to other governments or agencies, was a departure from
the
agency's past practices. But legal opinions and other documents disclosed
recently show that the agency struggled to protect its employees by
repeatedly
asking the Justice Department how far they could go without violating the
federal law prohibiting the use of extreme force on anyone under custody.

Justice Department lawyers addressed the issue in the August 2002 legal
memorandum, which defined torture as "equivalent in intensity to the pain
accompanying
serious physical injury such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function
or even death."

A companion memorandum, which remains classified, outlined specific methods
that the agency could use.

Copyright 2005

Posted by Miriam V. Feb. 16