Author of ‘torture memos’ says CIA exceeded limits in interrogations
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Author of ‘torture memos’ says CIA exceeded limits in interrogations
Jay Bybee, who drafted the controversial legal memoranda with lawyer John Yoo, tells a House committee that repeated waterboarding and other techniques were not approved by the Justice Department.
Reporting from Washington —
The former Justice Department official who co-wrote the so-called torture memos testified that the department did not sanction some of the harsh methods the CIA used against detainees during the George W. Bush administration, including the repeated waterboarding of two suspected terrorists.
Jay S. Bybee, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said in testimony released Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee that the CIA went further in its tough tactics than he had outlined as permissible in a widely criticized legal memoranda. Bybee appeared before the committee May 26.
For example, Bybee said, his memo, co-written with lawyer John C. Yoo, authorized waterboarding only if there were no “substantial repetitions.”CIA contractors waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, 183 times, government documents show.