Bush Administration Blocked Waterboard Critic

Source: ABC

By Peter Sheehy and Will Thomas - November 5, 2007, 9:49AM
ABC’s “The Blotter” asserts that “only three have been waterboarded.” Make that four, if you include Daniel Levin, the acting assistant attorney general in 2004. Levin, tasked with reworking the administration’s legal position on torture, was so concerned about the use of waterboarding that he took the plunge himself. Levin, who was shocked by the controlled drowning, penned a new memo calling “torture abhorrent,” but stopped short of calling waterboarding either torture or illegal. And, well, the administration quickly replaced him. (ABC “The Blotter,” ABC News)

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Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic
Former DOJ Official Tested the Method Himself, in Effort to Form Torture Policy

(ABC News Photo Illustration)
From World News with Charles Gibson
By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG and ARIANE de VOGUE
Nov. 2, 2007

A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration's legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News.

Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform his analysis of different interrogation techniques.

After the experience, Levin told White House officials that even though he knew he wouldn't die, he found the experience terrifying and thought that it clearly simulated drowning.

-snip

In December 2004, Levin released the new memo. He said, "Torture is abhorrent" but he went on to say in a footnote that the memo was not declaring the administration's previous opinions illegal. The White House, with Alberto Gonzales as the White House counsel, insisted that this footnote be included in the memo.

-snip

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