White House to supervise High-Value Interrogation Group
Monday, 24 August 2009 18:06
BY MICHAEL BOWMAN VOA NEWS
WASHINGTON — The White House says it will directly supervise a new unit that is being set up to interrogate high value terror detainees. The announcement came Monday as the Obama administration named a federal prosecutor who will investigate past cases of detainee mistreatment.
For years, the Central Intelligence Agency stood at the forefront of U.S. efforts to extract information from terror suspects in the post-9/11 era. That role is changing, according to White House spokesman Bill Burton.
"The president, at the consensus recommendation of his inter-agency task force on interrogations and detainees did put in place a new group, the High-Value Interrogation Group, which will be housed at the FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigations]," said Bill Burton. "And it will bring together all the different elements of the intelligence community to get the best intelligence possible."
Burton spoke in Massachusetts, where President Barack Obama is on a weeklong vacation.
Administration officials say the CIA will continue to take part in interrogations, but that an FBI official will direct the effort with oversight by the National Security Council, which reports directly to the president.
President Obama came to office promising to outlaw torture in U.S. intelligence gathering. But just what constitutes torture has been a matter of debate in Washington. The Bush administration strenuously defended so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" like sleep deprivation to obtain information from detainees, and admitted to harsher treatment, like the simulated drowning technique called water boarding, that was used in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks.