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US reaches interrogation deal
22/09/2006 09:31 - (SA)
Washington - The White House said on Thursday a deal reached with lawmakers on the treatment of detainees would allow the CIA's questioning of foreign terrorist suspects to continue.
"We got what the president asked for," White House
spokesperson Tony Snow said.
"The CIA programme to question detainees to get important information about al-Qaeda, to foil plots and save American lives - this programme is going
forward."
CIA refused to interrogate
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reported that the Bush administration
emptied its CIA prisons and transferred top terrorism suspects
to Guantanamo Bay partly because CIA officers refused to carry
out interrogations.
CIA officers were concerned they could be prosecuted for
using illegal interrogation techniques and refused to continue
their work until their legal situation could be clarified, the newspaper said in an article quoting unnamed former spy agency
officials.
Critics have said the secretive CIA programme of detentions
and interrogation amounts to allowing torture, but the White
House has denied this.
The CIA denied the report. "The notion that CIA interrogators refused to question detainees, and that is what led to their transfer, is flat out wrong," CIA spokesperson Mark Mansfield said.
The article appeared as the White House was embroiled in an
intense struggle on Capitol Hill to secure the new legislation to endorse tough interrogation tactics and protect agency interrogators from potential legal liability.
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