WASHINGTON - Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee expect to release findings this summer from an 18-month investigation into the CIA's interrogation of terrorism suspects, a review that could provide some clarity on whether harsh techniques - or even torture - played a role in helping the CIA find Osama bin Laden.
The public is being treated to a dizzying back-and-forth between current and former U.S. officials - some with direct knowledge, some without - making claims they can neither prove nor disprove since classified information is involved.
Senate staffers, by contrast, have examined 5 million pages of emails, cables and other classified materials that likely will shed light on which detainees said what and under what conditions.
Separately, U.S. officials have been granted access to bin Laden's three widows, who were detained by Pakistani security forces after Navy SEALs killed bin Laden on May 1 and left handcuffed at the compound in Abbottabad.
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White House spokesman Jay Carney declined to say who was questioning the women or if they were cooperating. Another official said it is unimaginable that anyone other than CIA officers is conducting the interviews.
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the CIA carried out interrogations at a network of now-closed secret prisons.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., who chairs the Intelligence Committee, said Thursday that the detainee who gave the CIA its best understanding of the courier who ultimately led to bin Laden - a detainee identified by U.S. officials as Hassan Ghul - did so before he was subject to unspecified harsh techniques at a CIA site in Poland.
Feinstein knows this, she explained, because her staff has examined records documenting the CIA interrogations - records that few others have been able to examine.
Her assertion contradicts several former officials from President George W. Bush's administration who have suggested that Ghul gave help only after rough treatment. Those claims have fueled the belief that so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," which President Obama banned after he took office, were instrumental in finding bin Laden.
Moreover, a U.S. official disclosed that Hassan Ghul was not named in a 2005 Justice Department memo that approved use of sleep deprivation, slapping, nudity and water dousing, as the Los Angeles Times reported last week. The memo referred to a detainee named Janat Gul, the official said, and no one suggests he provided information about bin Laden's courier.
Feinstein's comments came hours after Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., argued on the Senate floor that torture did not lead to bin Laden. McCain said CIA Director Leon Panetta told him that the first mention of the courier's nom de guerre, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, came from a detainee who was held and interrogated by another country with no U.S. involvement.
McCain lashed out at former Bush administration officials, including former U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who have argued that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, architect of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, provided details on the courier.
Mohammed was one of three al-Qaida detainees who was water-boarded, a near-drowning technique. The notion that he was important to finding bin Laden is simply false, McCain said, citing information he got from Panetta.
Mukasey countered hours later with a written statement in which he insisted that Mohammed's lies had provided useful clues. Other former officials have argued that Mohammed would not have talked at all were it not for water-boarding.
Panetta has been silent on whether Mohammed was helpful. But the CIA chief said some details came from detainees who were given brutal interrogations. He has not publicly disclosed which details, which detainees or which techniques were involved.
porn seized
Two U.S. officials say pornography was among the items seized when U.S. Navy SEALs raided the Pakistani hideout of Osama bin Laden almost two weeks ago.
The officials say it was unclear who the material belonged to, or whether Bin Laden viewed it. Bin Laden's son and two other adult male couriers lived at the compound, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.
The pornography was confiscated in addition to a handwritten journal, five computers, 10 hard drives and 110 thumb drives seized at the site, which are now being analyzed by a CIA-led team.
The Associated Press
