The CIA first sought in May 2002 to use harsh interrogation techniques including waterboarding on terror suspects, and was given a key early approval by then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, a US Senate intelligence document said. The agency got the green light to use the near-drowning technique, which has been widely judged to be torture, on July 26, 2002 when attorney general John Ashcroft concluded “that the use of waterboarding was lawful,” the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a detailed timeline of controversial “war on terrorism” interrogations released Wednesday. Nine days earlier, the panel said citing CIA records, Rice had met with Central Intelligence Agency then-director George Tenet and “advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaydah,” the agency's first high-value Al-Qaeda detainee, pending Justice Department approval. Rice's nod is believed to be the earliest known approval by a senior official in the administration of George W. Bush of the intelligence technique which current Attorney General Eric Holder has decried as “torture.” According to the Senate panel narrative, Rice was among at least half a dozen top Bush officials, including vice president Dick Cheney, who were in 2002 or 2003 meetings debating, approving or reaffirming the legality of the interrogation practices used on Abu Zubaydah and two other terror suspects. After a July 2003 meeting in which Tenet briefed Rice, Cheney, Ashcroft, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and others on the use of waterboarding and other interrogation methods, “the principals reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy,” according to the panel report. The revelations come amid a raging controversy over whether President Barack Obama and would seek prosecutions of Bush officials who devised legal cover for the interrogation tactics. Last week Obama blew the lid on harsh CIA terror interrogations approved by Bush by releasing four so-called “torture memos” prepared by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel that detailed the controversial tactics, including waterboarding as well as the use of insects and sleep deprivation. Obama said operatives who carried out the interrogations would not be prosecuted, saying they acted on orders and were defending their country. ‘No torture commission now' Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Thursday that he opposed, for now, creating an independent commission to probe harsh Bush-era interrogation techniques widely branded as torture. But Reid, who has denounced as torture the use of the near-drowning tactic called waterboarding, said he might be open to the idea once the Senate Intelligence Committee wraps up its enquiry into the matter later this year. “I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts are. And I don't know a better way of getting the facts than through the Intelligence Committee. I think that's a pretty good way to do it,” said the Nevada Senator. – AgenciesWHAT THE LAW SAYSThe United States has a historical record of regarding waterboarding as a war crime, and has prosecuted as war criminals individuals for the use of the practice in the past. In 1947, the United States prosecuted a Japanese military officer, Yukio Asano, for carrying out various acts of torture including kicking, clubbing, burning with cigarettes and using a form of waterboarding on a US civilian during World War II. Yukio Asano received a sentence of 15 years of hard labor. __
