Torturous Timeline [updated 12/15/08] post 3 of 5

November 27, 2002-“Notwithstanding the serious legal concerns raised by the military services, Mr. Haynes sent a one page memo to the Secretary [Rumsfeld], recommending that he approve all but three of the eighteen techniques in the [Dunlavey] GTMO request. […] [The] memo indicated that he had discussed the issue with […] Wolfowitz, [..] Feith, and General Myers and that he believed they concurred in his recommendation. When asked what he relied on to make his recommendation that the aggressive techniques be approved, the only written legal opinion Mr. Haynes cited was Lieutenant Colonel Beaver’s legal analysis, which senior military lawyers had considered “legally insufficient” and “woefully inadequate,” and which LTC Beaver herself had expected would be supplemented with a review by persons with greater experience than her own.” (DD)

December 2, 2002- “Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld [signed Haynes recommendation] gave formal approval for the use of “hooding,” “exploitation of phobias,” “stress positions,” “deprivation of light and auditory stimuli,” and other coercive tactics ordinarily forbidden by the Army Field Manual. (However, he reserved judgment on other methods, including “waterboarding,” a form of simulated drowning.)” He added a jocular aside: why could detainees be forced to stand for only four hours a day, when he himself often stood “for 8-10 hours a day. (O) “Secretary Rumsfeld authorized the techniques without apparently providing any written guidance as to how they should be administered.” (DD) “Torture? That’s not torture!-Rumsfeld (in regard to standing 8 hours a day)

December 17, 2002- Alberto J. Mora (General Counsel to the Navy) first learns about the problem of detainee abuse, when David Brant (former head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service) approaches him with accusations of wrongdoing at Guantánamo. Brant had already “conveyed the allegations to Army leaders, since they had command authority over the military interrogators, and to the Air Force, but he said that nobody seemed to care.” (O)

December 20, 2002- with Gordon England’s [the Secretary of the Navy, who is now the Deputy Secretary of Defense] authorization, Mora went to William Haynes, the Pentagon’s general counsel. (O)

December 30, 2002-“two instructors from the Navy SERE school arrived at GTMO. The next day, in a session with approximately 24 interrogation personnel, the two SERE instructors demonstrated how to administer stress positions, and various slapping techniques.” (DD)

December 2002-January 2003- Washington Post publishes a story, alleging that C.I.A. personnel were mistreating prisoners at the Bagram military base, in Afghanistan. (O)

Since 2002-“F.B.I. agents at Guantánamo had been telling their superiors that their military counterparts were abusing detainees. The F.B.I. complaints were ignored until after Abu Ghraib. (Q)

January 6, 2003- Mora is alarmed to learn from Brant that the abuse at Guantánamo had not stopped. In the next few days, his arguments reached many of the Pentagon’s top figures: Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz; Captain Jane Dalton, the legal adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Victoria Clarke, who was then the Pentagon spokeswoman; and Rumsfeld. (O)

January 9, 2003-Mora meets with Haynes again. Who explained that “U.S. officials believed the techniques were necessary to obtain information,” and that the interrogations might prevent future attacks against the U.S. and save American lives. Mora acknowledged that he could imagine “ticking bomb” scenarios, in which it might be moral—though still not legal—to torture a suspect. (O)

January 2003-Captain Carolyn Wood, the Officer in Charge of the Intelligence Section at Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan saw a power point presentation listing the aggressive techniques that had been authorized by the Secretary. (DD)

January 15, 2003-“having received no word that the Secretary’s authority would be withdrawn, Mr. Mora went so far as to deliver a draft memo to Mr. Haynes’s office memorializing his legal concerns about the techniques. In a subsequent phone call, Mr. Mora told Mr. Haynes he would sign his memo later that day unless he heard definitively that the use of the techniques was suspended. In a meeting that same day, Mr. Haynes told Mr. Mora that the Secretary would rescind the techniques.” (DD)

January 15, 2003-“Rumsfeld signed a memo rescinding authority for the [enhanced interrogation techniques at GTMO] (DD)

January 15, 2003- “GTMO suspended its use of aggressive techniques on Khatani.” [See also May 13, 2008] (DD)

January 15, 2003-“ On January 15, 2003, the same day he rescinded authority for GTMO to use aggressive techniques, Secretary Rumsfeld directed the establishment of a “Working Group” to review interrogation techniques. For the next few months senior military and civilian lawyers tried, without success, to have their concerns about the legality of aggressive techniques reflected in the Working Group’s report. Their arguments were rejected in favor of a legal opinion from the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) John Yoo. Mr. Yoo’s opinion, the final version of which was dated March 14, 2003, had been requested by Mr. Haynes at the initiation of the Working Group process, and repeated much of what the first Bybee memo had said six months earlier.” (DD)

January 22, 2003- Mora was shown a lengthy classified document written by John Yoo in the Office of Legal Counsel, at the Justice Department, that negated almost every argument he had made. [Yoo, working closely with Addington, had helped to formulate the argument that the treatment of Al Qaeda and Taliban suspects, unlike that of all other foreign enemies, was not covered by the Geneva conventions; Yoo had also helped to write the Torture Memo.

“Congress may no more regulate the President’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.”-Yoo (O)