Despite asking some questions about the way the CIA is putting some of its questions to high-ranking al-Qaeda detainees it is interested in (see October 2003), the 9/11 Commission fails to inquire more deeply into the harsh interrogation methods the CIA uses on detainees. One Commission staffer will say: “We did not delve deeply into the question of the treatment of the prisoners. Standards of treatment were not part of our mission.” Another will admit: “We did not ask specifically. It was not in our mandate.” In 2008, Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, will say he is “shocked” by the failure to ask about interrogation techniques, “If you’re sitting at the 9/11 Commission, with all the high-powered lawyers on the Commission and on the staff, first you ask what happened rather than guess.” [MSNBC, 1/30/2008]
January 31, 2008: Civil Liberties Organization Says Abuse of Detainees ‘Undermines Credibility’ of 9/11 Commission Report
The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), an organization dedicated to the protection of civil liberties, releases a statement saying it is “outraged” by revelations about the extent to which the 9/11 Commission report was based on statements from detainees who are said to have been tortured. After MSNBC finds that over a quarter of the report’s endnotes cite detainee interrogations (see January 30, 2008), CCR President Michael Ratner says: “If the Commission suspected there was torture, they should have realized that as a matter of law, evidence derived from torture is not reliable, in part because of the possibility of false confession…at the very least, they should have added caveats to all those references (note: the Commission’s report does contain one caveat related to two chapters—see After January 2004). The Commission’s heavy reliance on tainted sources reinforces the notion that we as a nation have not yet come to terms with the reality that the US engaged in torture. Until we do so, we undermine our credibility in the eyes of the world as a nation of hypocrites.” [Center for Constitutional Rights, 1/31/2008]
