Washington: The military agency that helped devise harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects referred to the application of extreme duress as "torture" in a July 2002 document sent to the Pentagon's chief lawyer and warned that it would produce "unreliable information".
"The unintended consequence of a US policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured US personnel," says the document, an unsigned two-page attachment to a memo by the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA).
It remains unclear whether the attachment reached high-ranking officials in the Bush administration. But the document offers the clearest evidence that has come to light so far that those who helped formulate the harsh interrogation techniques voiced early concerns about the effectiveness of applying severe physical or psychological pressure.
The document was included among July 2002 memoranda that described severe interrogation techniques used against Americans in past conflicts and the psychological effects of such treatment.
The cautionary attachment was forwarded to the Pentagon's Office of the General Counsel as the administration finalised the legal underpinnings to a CIA interrogation programme that would sanction the use of 10 forms of coercion, including waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning. The JPRA material was sent from the Pentagon to the CIA's acting General Counsel, John Rizzo, and on to the Justice Department, according to testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
An August 1, 2002, memo from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel authorised the use of the 10 methods against Abu Zubaida, the nom de guerre of an Al Qaida associate captured in Pakistan in March 2002. Former intelligence officials have recently contended that Abu Zubaida provided little useful information about the organisation's plans.
The August 1, 2002, memo on the interrogation of Abu Zubaida draws from the JPRA's memo on psychological effects to conclude that while waterboarding constituted "a threat of imminent death" it did not cause "prolonged mental harm".
But the JPRA's two-page attachment, titled Operational Issues Pertaining to the Use of Physical/Psychological Coercion in Interrogation, questioned the effectiveness of employing extreme duress to obtain intelligence.
The reasoning contrasted sharply with arguments at the time by military psychologists in the SERE programme, including James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, who later formed a company that became a CIA contractor advising on interrogations.
The JPRA attachment said the key deficiency of physical or psychological duress is the reliability and accuracy of the information gained. "A subject in pain may provide an answer, any answer, or many answers in order to get the pain to stop," it said.
In conclusion, the document said, "the application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress [torture] has some serious operational deficits, most notably, the potential to result in unreliable information."