Dems Demand Torture Memos

Anger erupts over secret approval for extreme interrogation techniques
By Peter Fearon,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 5, 2007 3:19 AM CDT
Dems Demand Torture Memos
FILE ** A Guantanamo detainee sits alone inside a fenced area during his daily outside period, at Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley, File)   (Associated Press)

The disclosure by the New York Times of secret Justice Department memos greenlighting the use of torture techniques on terror suspects has triggered an uproar on Capitol Hill. Democrats have demanded to see the memos, which authorized head-slapping, sleep deprivation, freezing, a near-drowning technique called water boarding and other painful treatment by CIA interrogators.

Senator John D. Rockefeller, chairman of the Intelligence Committee, blasted the secrecy of the opinions in an angry letter to the acting attorney general. "I find it unfathomable that the committee tasked with oversight of  the CIA interrogation program would be provided more information by the New York Times than by the Justice Department,” he wrote. (More Justice Department stories.)

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