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Attorney general doesnt want to be waterboarded { January 31 2008 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/washington/31justice.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=sloginhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/31/washington/31justice.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin
January 31, 2008
Mukasey Will Not Rule Out Waterboarding
By PHILIP SHENON
WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that while he would consider it torture if he underwent the harsh Central Intelligence Agency interrogation technique known as waterboarding, the practice was not necessarily illegal, and he would not rule out its use in the future.
Under sometimes angry questioning from Democrats at his first oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey found himself caught in the debate that nearly derailed his confirmation last fall: whether waterboarding is torture.
“Would waterboarding be torture if it were done to you?” asked Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, glowering at Mr. Mukasey.
“I would feel that it was,” Mr. Mukasey acknowledged in the low monotone that he uses in virtually all public settings.
But the attorney general, a retired federal judge, would not be drawn into a larger conversation with Senator Kennedy or other Democrats over whether waterboarding might amount to torture if it was carried out on others, including American citizens held abroad.
Congressional Democrats, as well as some Republicans and many human rights groups, have suggested that the Bush administration’s refusal to call for a ban on waterboarding might lead other governments to feel they could legally subject Americans to the practice.
“Under what facts and circumstances exactly would it be lawful to waterboard a prisoner?” Mr. Kennedy asked.
Mr. Mukasey said he could not answer the question because it might be “telling our enemies exactly what they can expect in those eventualities” and “those eventualities might never occur.”
The legality of waterboarding, in which a prisoner experiences a sensation of drowning, has been come under fierce debate since the acknowledgment by Bush administration officials that a small number of prisoners who were members of Al Qaeda had been subjected to it after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Mr. Mukasey said in a letter delivered to the Judiciary Committee on Tuesday night that he had been authorized by the White House to reveal that waterboarding was no longer being carried out and, for now, was considered an unapproved interrogation technique within the C.I.A. He repeated that assurance in his testimony Wednesday.
The issue has threatened to dominate Mr. Mukasey’s early dealings with Democrats in Congress, who voted in large numbers to oppose his nomination to replace Alberto R. Gonzales.
Mr. Mukasey was approved in November on a Senate vote of 53 to 40, the narrowest amount of support for any attorney general in more than half a century.
At the hearing Wednesday, several senators from both parties praised Mr. Mukasey for some of his management changes at the Justice Department, including his creation of new internal rules to limit contacts between political figures and prosecutors.
When the subject returned to waterboarding, there was especially tough questioning by Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who had initially championed Mr. Mukasey’s nomination and has sometimes defended his performance when other Democrats have not.
The senator appeared exasperated by Mr. Mukasey’s refusal to say whether waterboarding was torture and should be outlawed, despite the attorney general’s statement during his confirmation hearings that he found the technique “repugnant.”
“I find it hard to understand how you personally, when asked for advice, would not be able to say that something that’s repugnant should be outlawed,” Mr. Schumer said. “You said it’s repugnant. I don’t understand how you can now say, Well, I have to ask a whole lot of other people.”
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
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