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Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte.
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17 September 2006
Administration Officials Call for Clear Interrogation Standards, September 17, 2006(Hadley, Negroponte seek to apply McCain Amendment to CIA)
By Michael Jay Friedman
Washington File Staff Writer
Washington -- Administration officials in several television interviews September 17 urged Congress to adopt domestic legislation that defines clearly for Central Intelligence Agency interrogators their obligations under Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
On June 29, the Supreme Court ruled that Common Article 3 applies to the treatment of detainees and terror suspects in the War on Terror. The Bush administration had contended that the provision, triggered "in the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties," was intended to cover civil wars within a nation and not international terrorists.
"Something that everyone thought ... did not apply to al-Qaeda ... now suddenly was applied by the Supreme Court, and the question is how to define what that means," National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley said on ABC's This Week.
Common Article 3 provides that "Persons taking no active part in the hostilities, including members of armed forces" held in detention "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely." It prohibits several broad categories of acts against such persons, including "violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture" and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."
Hadley called these provisions "vague, very ambiguous." Speaking on CNN's Late Edition, he added that "nobody knows what humiliating treatment is. What does it mean?"
"This is not about redefining. It's about clarifying. It's in fact about defining our obligations under Common Article 3," Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte said on the Fox News Sunday program.
Negroponte said that the Bush administration intended neither to alter nor dilute the Geneva protections, but warned CIA interrogations would halt in the absence of a clear domestic legal standard interpreting those protections. Those interrogations have "provided invaluable information that has saved the lives of Americans. Significant plots against our homeland have been disrupted as a result," he said.
The Bush administration has proposed extending to CIA interrogators the standards governing military interrogators under the McCain amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.
The McCain amendment barred interrogation procedures not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation. It also prohibited "cruel, unusual, and inhumane treatment" and defined that phrase as punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States, as defined in U.S. reservations to the 1984 United Nations Convention Against Torture.
For more information on U.S. policy, see Detainee Issues.
A transcript of Hadley's remarks on CNN's Late Edition is available on the network's Web site.
