Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
London Daily Telegraph
April 19, 2008 By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Richard Myers, the former head of America's armed forces, has suggested he was duped into approving harsh interrogations at Guantanamo Bay detention centre and blamed "intrigue" among his political bosses.
In a new book British lawyer Phillipe Sands said Gen Myers, now retired, appeared shocked when he saw a controversial 2002 legal memo that authorised widely-criticised techniques including waterboarding, or simulated drowning of detainees.
Mr Sands, a QC and prominent critic of Guantanamo, said Myers was "hoodwinked" by then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a legal team headed by White House lawyer Jim Haynes. "As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled," Sands writes in Torture Team. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."
Earlier this month, Mr Sands described a meeting with Gen Myers in which the ex-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff reacted as if he had seen the document, known as the Haynes memo for the first time. "You don't see my initials on this," he said. "You just see I've 'discussed' it. This was not the way this should have come about."
As the top military official at the outset of the War on Terror, launched in the wake of the devastating attacks on America on September 11, 2001, Gen Myers spent years defending the detention facility, set up at a naval base on the southern tip of Cuba.
According to Mr Sands version, Gen Myers now claims he and his legal advisor, Jane Dalton, were the victims of intrigue involving other branches of government: "That I wasn't aware of, and Jane wasn't aware of, that was probably occurring between Jim Haynes, White House general counsel, and Justice."
The memo approved four levels of aggressive treatment outside the Geneva Convention at Guantanamo. Thousands of "enemy combatants," al-Qa'eda sympathisers picked up on battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, have been held without trial at the camp. In signing off the memo, the then Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld questioned the limits on one provision. "I stand 8-10 hours a day," he wrote. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" But Mr Sands adds that Mr Myers continues to deny that torture occurred at Guantanamo.
He said: "We never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do."
April 19, 2008 By Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Richard Myers, the former head of America's armed forces, has suggested he was duped into approving harsh interrogations at Guantanamo Bay detention centre and blamed "intrigue" among his political bosses.
In a new book British lawyer Phillipe Sands said Gen Myers, now retired, appeared shocked when he saw a controversial 2002 legal memo that authorised widely-criticised techniques including waterboarding, or simulated drowning of detainees.
Mr Sands, a QC and prominent critic of Guantanamo, said Myers was "hoodwinked" by then Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and a legal team headed by White House lawyer Jim Haynes. "As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled," Sands writes in Torture Team. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."
Earlier this month, Mr Sands described a meeting with Gen Myers in which the ex-chairman of the joint chiefs of staff reacted as if he had seen the document, known as the Haynes memo for the first time. "You don't see my initials on this," he said. "You just see I've 'discussed' it. This was not the way this should have come about."
As the top military official at the outset of the War on Terror, launched in the wake of the devastating attacks on America on September 11, 2001, Gen Myers spent years defending the detention facility, set up at a naval base on the southern tip of Cuba.
According to Mr Sands version, Gen Myers now claims he and his legal advisor, Jane Dalton, were the victims of intrigue involving other branches of government: "That I wasn't aware of, and Jane wasn't aware of, that was probably occurring between Jim Haynes, White House general counsel, and Justice."
The memo approved four levels of aggressive treatment outside the Geneva Convention at Guantanamo. Thousands of "enemy combatants," al-Qa'eda sympathisers picked up on battlefields in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, have been held without trial at the camp. In signing off the memo, the then Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld questioned the limits on one provision. "I stand 8-10 hours a day," he wrote. "Why is standing limited to 4 hours?" But Mr Sands adds that Mr Myers continues to deny that torture occurred at Guantanamo.
He said: "We never authorised torture, we just didn't, not what we would do."