President vetoes legislation to limit CIA interrogation methods: superseded justice memorandum on interrogation techniques fans controversy.

• Author: Crook, John R.

In March 2008, President Bush vetoed legislation (1) containing a provision requiring that interrogations by Central Intelligence Agency personnel comply with the U.S. Army field manual on interrogations, FM 2-22.3 ("Human Intelligence Collector Operations"). (2) The manual expressly prohibits certain interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, electrocution, sensory deprivation, hypothermia, and the denial of food, water, or medical care, and requires application of the Geneva Conventions to detainees. (3) The disputed provision was contained in the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008.

The House of Representatives subsequently failed to override the president's veto, by a vote of 225-188, 51 votes short of the two-thirds majority required. President Bush explained his veto in a radio address.

The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror--the CIA program to detain and question key terrorist leaders and operatives. This program has produced critical intelligence that has helped us prevent a number of attacks. [The president here cited four such foiled attacks.] And it has helped us understand al Qaida's structure and financing and communications and logistics. Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that al Qaida and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American homeland. The main reason this program has been effective is that it allows the CIA to use specialized interrogation procedures to question a small number of the most dangerous terrorists under careful supervision. The bill Congress sent me would deprive the CIA of the authority to use these safe and lawful techniques. Instead, it would restrict the CIA's range of acceptable interrogation methods to those provided in the Army Field Manual ... designed for use by soldiers questioning lawful combatants captured on the battlefield. They were not intended for intelligence professionals trained to question hardened terrorists. Limiting the CIA's interrogation methods to those in the Army Field Manual would be dangerous because the manual is publicly available and easily accessible on the Internet. Shortly after 9/11, we learned that key al Qaida operatives had been trained to resist the methods outlined in the manual. And this is why we created alternative procedures to question the most dangerous al Qaida operatives.... The best source of information about terrorist...