• Richard Norton-Taylor


• The Guardian,


• Saturday April 19 2008


• Article history

America's
most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration
officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation
techniques of terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, leading to the US
military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment
of prisoners, the Guardian reveals today.
General Richard Myers,
chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly
believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by
the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.
The
way he was duped by senior officials in Washington, who believed the
Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date,
is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts of which
appear in today's Guardian.
In his new book, Torture Team, Philippe Sands QC, professor of law at University College London, reveals that:
·
Senior Bush administration figures pushed through previously outlawed
measures with the aid of inexperienced military officials at Guantánamo.
·
Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the
department of justice, the office of vice-president Dick Cheney, and at
Donald Rumsfeld's defence department.
· The Guantánamo lawyers
charged with devising interrogation techniques were inspired by the
exploits of Jack Bauer in the American TV series 24.
· Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army's field manual.
The
lawyers, all political appointees, who pushed through the interrogation
techniques were Alberto Gonzales, David Addington and William Haynes.
Also involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld's under-secretary for policy,
and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals.
The
revelations have sparked a fierce response in the US from those
familiar with the contents of the book, and who are determined to
establish accountability for the way the Bush administration violated
international and domestic law by sanctioning prisoner abuse and
torture.
The Bush administration has tried to explain away the
ill-treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay and Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq by blaming junior officials. Sands' book establishes that pressure
for aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the top and
was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers.
Myers was one top
official who did not understand the implications of what was being
done. Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, says he was
"confused" about the decisions that were taken.
Myers mistakenly
believed that new techniques recommended by Haynes and authorised by
Rumsfeld in December 2002 for use by the military at Guantánamo had
been taken from the US army field manual. They included hooding,
sensory deprivation, and physical and mental abuse.
"As we
worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly
hesitant and troubled," writes Sands. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been
able to run rings around him."
Myers and his closest advisers
were cut out of the decision-making process. He did not know that Bush
administration officials were changing the rules allowing interrogation
techniques, including the use of dogs, amounting to torture.
"We
never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do," Myers
said. Sands comments: "He really had taken his eye off the ball ... he
didn't ask too many questions ... and kept his distance from the
decision-making process."
Larry Wilkerson, a former army
officer and chief of staff to Colin Powell, US secretary of state at
the time, told the Guardian: "I do know that Rumsfeld had neutralised
the chairman [Myers] in many significant ways.
"The secretary did this by cutting [Myers] out of important communications, meetings, deliberations and plans.
"At
the end of the day, however, Dick Myers was not a very powerful
chairman in the first place, one reason Rumsfeld recommended him for
the job".
He added: "Haynes, Feith, Yoo, Bybee, Gonzalez and - at
the apex - Addington, should never travel outside the US, except
perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated
their professional ethical code. In future, some government may build
the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an
international court."