Guantanamo

Wednesday, Apr 22, 2009 06:38 PDT

"Wolfowitz said GTMO should use more aggressive interrogation techniques"

A Senate report describes how the Bush administration began its torture program -- and may have pushed for the use of torture to produce evidence linking al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.

On Tuesday, the Senate Armed Services Committee released a report called "Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in U.S. Custody" that traces the genesis of the Bush administration's torture program to late 2001. You can download the entire report here, but below Salon has reproduced pages 41 and 42, which (despite redactions) describe pressure from Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz to use harsh interrogation techniques on detainees at Guantanamo Bay, as well as pressure from Washington to produce intelligence linking al-Qaida to Iraq.

(You can also read about Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's role in promoting harsh interrogation techniques here, and read about how the Bush administration began planning for torture here.)

Primary Sources