RENEE MONTAGNE, host:
This is Morning Edition from NPR News. I'm Renee Montagne. And we heard earlier that Eric Holder thinks waterboarding is torture. His view matters, because Holder is Barack Obama's choice to be attorney general. But waterboarding is just one of the techniques used by the CIA after 9/11 to extract information from suspected terrorists. It will be up to Mr. Obama to decide what other procedures will off limits under his administration. As NPR's Tom Gjelten reports, he's getting conflicting advice.
TOM GJELTEN: During his campaign, Barack Obama spoke out against the use of anything like torture in the interrogation of suspected terrorists. He said as president, he'd order that all interrogations be carried out in accord with the U.S. Army Field Manual, guidelines far more restrictive than the ones President Bush has given the CIA. Mr. Obama was supported in that position by a group of retired generals and admirals. As military officers, they worried that interrogation methods tantamount to torture might someday be used on American prisoners. About a dozen of them even asked for a meeting with Mr. Obama's transition team last month to make sure he wasn't backing down from his campaign promises. Among them was retired Marine General Joseph Hoar, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East.
General JOSEPH P. HOAR (Retired, U.S. Marine Corps; Former Commander, United States Central Command): The golden rule is the golden rule, that you don't do something to someone that you wouldn't have done to an American citizen that was held for interrogation. And I think that's as true for a CIA operative as it is for a person in uniform.
GJELTEN: The incoming Obama administration is also being pressured on this point by Congress. Last year, it passed legislation that would have required CIA interrogators to abide by the Army Field Manual guidelines. President Bush vetoed the bill, but the incoming chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, has introduced it again, as she reminded Eric Holder yesterday during his confirmation hearing.
(Soundbite of confirmation hearing, January 15, 2009)
Senator DIANNE FEINSTEIN (Democrat, California; Chair, Senate Committee on Rules and Administration): It has been revised by the military. It is a comprehensive, thoughtful manual. It has more than a dozen different techniques. Do you believe that the Army Field Manual should comprise the standard for interrogation across the United States government?
GJELTEN: Holder said President-elect Obama will make that call on his own.
Mr. ERIC H. HOLDER JR. (Appointee, Attorney General, Barack Obama Administration; Former Deputy Attorney General, William Clinton Administration): He's giving all components an opportunity to express their views, not only the military, but those on the intelligence side. If there's a contrary view, we want to give them an opportunity to make their case.
GJELTEN: There are contrary views. Many military officers not only worry about harsh interrogation methods being used against their own troops, they also doubt the reliability of information gained under any procedure that resembles torture. But outgoing CIA director Michael Hayden vigorously disputes the idea that the coercive methods used by CIA interrogators did not produce useful information. These techniques worked, Hayden insisted yesterday in a meeting with reporters. I'm convinced, he said, that the program got the maximum amount of information, particularly out of the first group of detainees taken into custody after 9/11. Hayden says there are various interrogation methods that are not in the Army Field Manual, but that are nevertheless legal. For that reason, he argues against limiting CIA interrogators to the Army manual. In his Senate testimony yesterday, Eric Holder personally took the military side in this debate over whose guidelines should govern CIA interrogations.
Mr. HOLDER: It is my view, based on what I've had and the opportunity to review and what I've been exposed to, that I think the Army Field Manual is adequate.
GJELTEN: Mr. Obama himself appears to be keeping his decision options open. He may be realizing that this issue, like others, is not clear cut. John McLaughlin, a former deputy director of the CIA, says the debate over what interrogation methods should be used is abstract, until the day the U.S. government finds itself holding a terrorist who really does know about an upcoming attack on the United States.
Mr. JOHN E. MCLAUGHLIN (Former Deputy Director, CIA; Senior Fellow, Senior Fellow, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies): Then, you do have a dilemma: Do you need to get that information or do you not? If you don't get that information, have you failed in your moral responsibility to your fellow citizens? And it's only when it gets real that that debate begins to bite.
GJELTEN: In the best case for the Obama administration, that scenario will not present itself and there won't be a dilemma. Tom Gjelten, NPR News, Washington.