Obama's FBI Pick: Waterboarding is 'Torture'
President Barack Obama's nominee to head the FBI told lawmakers Tuesday he believes waterboarding is "torture" and that national security officials should steer clear of the interrogation practice.
James Comey, a former deputy attorney general who publicly broke with the Bush White House in 2004 over a secret surveillance program, is expected to win bipartisan confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
But his positions on George Bush's administration policies, including the controversial simulated drowning interrogation technique known as waterboarding, and surveillance programs similar to those now used during Obama's presidency, are likely to rekindle debate in Washington.
Comey was clear when asked by Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy whether waterboarding equated to torture.
"When I first learned about waterboarding, when I became deputy attorney general, my reaction, as a citizen and a leader, was this is torture. It's still what I think," Comey told the Senate panel.
"I went to the Attorney General and said, this is wrong, this is awful, you have to go the White House and force them to stare at this and answer that question," Comey added.
But the 52-year-old lawyer, who has earned plaudits from Democrats for forcing the Bush administration to change parts of its secret surveillance program in 2004, in the past has expressed support for harsh interrogations.
A revised memo that gave the go-ahead for enhanced interrogation techniques was signed on December 30, 2004, and Comey later "concurred" with the memo, according to the American Civil Liberties Union.
The ACLU wrote Leahy and the Judiciary Committee's top Republican, Senator Chuck Grassley, early this month urging them to seek more clarity on Comey's role.
Comey expressed concerns with the CIA's planned use of the interrogation techniques, but "this does not, unfortunately, change the acknowledged fact that he concurred in OLC's (Office of Legal Counsel's) legal judgment that waterboarding, lengthy sleep deprivation and other abusive techniques did not constitute torture and did not violate US law," ACLU wrote.
Comey also faced questions about ongoing surveillance programs, which took the spotlight after a former National Security Agency contractor leaked details about how intelligence agencies scoop up vast amounts of phone and Internet data on Americans and foreigners.
While he said he believed the collection of such metadata was "a valuable tool in counterterrorism," Comey said he wants more transparency in the national security debate, in part because allowing it would boost public support for the controversial programs.
"Transparency is a critical value especially when weighing the tradeoff between liberty and security," Comey said.
Congress has debated whether to seek declassification of some opinions and warrant summaries made by the secret FISA court authorized under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Comey has not had access to details of the court's warrants since he left government years ago, but said looking at declassifying some details would be "a worthy exercise."
"If they (the public) understood more, they would feel better about it," he said.
Source: Agence France Presse
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