A cold-war case of CIA detention still echoes
The Yuri Nosenko affair unveiled US use of extreme isolation to try to 'break' the KGB defector.
from the January 8, 2008 edition
Page 2 of 4
In a recent telephone interview, Katzenbach said the CIA never shared with him any details of Nosenko's treatment. "All they were talking about was the amount of time he was being held, which was harsh," he says.
Katzenbach, who later served as attorney general in the Johnson administration, says the intelligence agency was operating under its own rules. "The CIA had no authority to question anybody any differently than the FBI or the local police force," he says.
The legality of Nosenko's treatment in the 1960s was never tested in court in part because Nosenko later waived his right to sue the US government over his detention and treatment. After his release, the agency declared Nosenko a bona fide defector, paid him $175,000, and hired him for $35,000 a year as a consultant. In 1974, he became a US citizen.
As with the Nosenko affair, the US government is working to avoid judicial scrutiny of interrogations of terror suspects. Former enemy combatant Yasser Hamdi was released in 2004 and is now living freely in Saudi Arabia after signing an agreement not to sue the US government over his treatment.
In contrast, lawyers working on behalf of the other two Charleston detainees, Mr. Padilla and Mr. Marri, have filed civil lawsuits claiming their clients were tortured in the military prison. Lawyers for Padilla also filed a second suit Friday in San Francisco against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo. The suit says Mr. Yoo was a legal architect of the Bush administration's harsh interrogation policies that were "intended to destroy Mr. Padilla's ordinary emotional and cognitive functioning ... to extract from him potentially self-incriminating information."
Padilla has been diagnosed with significant mental disabilities stemming from his three years and seven months in the Charleston brig. He was convicted last summer in a terror conspiracy trial in Miami. On Tuesday, a federal judge begins a week-long hearing to consider whether Padilla should receive a more lenient sentence because of his harsh treatment at the brig. Federal prosecutors want Padilla sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Marri remains in an isolation cell at the brig, but his conditions of confinement have eased since 2005. A federal appeals court in Richmond, Va., is currently examining the constitutionality of Marri's detention, though not the legality of the interrogation techniques used against him. A ruling is expected soon.
One common thread running through all four men's stories is a perceived need by the government to quickly extract information deemed essential to protect US national security.
"One of the difficulties with this kind of issue is that it is a slippery slope," says Katzenbach. "If you can put somebody in isolation for 24 hours, why not 48, why not a week?"
Mr. Turner agrees. "There is a very tough line here. What if you really think that by torturing somebody you are going to prevent a major catastrophe?" he asks. "My inclination is that you have to stick by your moral principles and put constitutional rights of individuals first regardless of the circumstance." But the former CIA director says the US government should not rule out any particular technique or tactic, nor should it adopt procedures automatically allowing such tactics.
A real defector from the Soviet KGB?
In the Nosenko case, the stakes were enormous, coming at the height of the cold war. Nosenko's interrogation began in April 1964 after a group of CIA officials became suspicious that Nosenko might not be a genuine defector. They thought he was sent by the KGB to throw the CIA off the trail of Soviet moles who they feared had penetrated America's spy network. In addition, they thought he was sent by Moscow to insulate the KGB from any connection to Lee Harvey Oswald. Mr. Oswald assassinated President John Kennedy in November 1963.
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