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FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TO GUANTANAMO BAY: ADMINISTRATION LAWYERS 

AND ADMINISTRATION INTERROGATION RULES 

(PART V) 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

JULY 17, 2008 

Serial No. 110–196 

Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://judiciary.house.gov 

(II) 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY 

JOHN CONYERS, JR., Michigan, Chairman 

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California 

RICK BOUCHER, Virginia 

JERROLD NADLER, New York 

ROBERT C. ‘‘BOBBY’’ SCOTT, Virginia 

MELVIN L. WATT, North Carolina 

ZOE LOFGREN, California 

SHEILA JACKSON LEE, Texas 

MAXINE WATERS, California 

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts 

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida 

LINDA T. SA ́ NCHEZ, California 

STEVE COHEN, Tennessee 

HANK JOHNSON, Georgia 

BETTY SUTTON, Ohio 

LUIS V. GUTIERREZ, Illinois 

BRAD SHERMAN, California 

TAMMY BALDWIN, Wisconsin 

ANTHONY D. WEINER, New York 

ADAM B. SCHIFF, California 

ARTUR DAVIS, Alabama 

DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Florida 

KEITH ELLISON, Minnesota 

LAMAR SMITH, Texas 

F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, JR., 

Wisconsin 

HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina 

ELTON GALLEGLY, California 

BOB GOODLATTE, Virginia 

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio 

DANIEL E. LUNGREN, California 

CHRIS CANNON, Utah 

RIC KELLER, Florida 

DARRELL ISSA, California 

MIKE PENCE, Indiana 

J. RANDY FORBES, Virginia 

STEVE KING, Iowa 

TOM FEENEY, Florida 

TRENT FRANKS, Arizona 

LOUIE GOHMERT, Texas 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

PERRY APELBAUM, Staff Director and Chief Counsel 

SEAN MCLAUGHLIN, Minority Chief of Staff and General Counsel 

(III) 

C O N T E N T S 

JULY 17, 2008 

Page 

OPENING STATEMENT 

The Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 

State of Michigan, and Chairman, Committee on the Judiciary ..................... 1 

The Honorable Lamar Smith, a Representative in Congress from the State 

of Texas, and Ranking Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......................... 2 

WITNESSES 

The Honorable John Ashcroft, former Attorney General, U.S. Department 

of Justice 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 3 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 7 

Mr. Benjamin Wittes, Fellow and Research Director in Public Law, The 

Brookings Institution 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 13 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 16 

Mr. Walter Dellinger, former Assistant Attorney General, Office of Legal 

Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice 

Oral Testimony ..................................................................................................... 21 

Prepared Statement ............................................................................................. 24 

APPENDIX 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

Prepared Statement of the Honorable John Conyers, Jr., a Representative 

in Congress from the State of Michigan, and Chairman, Committee on 

the Judiciary ......................................................................................................... 85 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Maxine Waters, a Representative in 

Congress from the State of California, and Member, Committee on the 

Judiciary ............................................................................................................... 86 

Prepared Statement of the Honorable Steve Cohen, a Representative in Congress from the State of Tennessee, and Member, Committee on the Judiciary ......................................................................................................................... 87

Appendices to the Prepared Statement of Walter Dellinger, former Assistant 

Attorney General, Office of Legal Counsel, U.S. Department of Justice ......... 88 

(1) 

FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE TO 

GUANTANAMO BAY: ADMINISTRATION LAWYERS AND ADMINISTRATION INTERROGATION RULES (PART V) 

THURSDAY, JULY 17, 2008 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY, 

Washington, DC. 

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:09 a.m., in room 

2141, Rayburn House Office Building, the Honorable John Conyers, 

Jr. (Chairman of the Committee) presiding. 

Present: Representatives Conyers, Nadler, Scott, Lofgren, Waters, Delahunt, Wexler, Sa ́nchez, Cohen, Johnson, Sherman, Baldwin, Schiff, Davis, Ellison, Smith, Coble, Gallegly, Goodlatte, 

Chabot, Lungren, Cannon, Keller, Issa, Pence, King, Feeney, 

Franks, Gohmert, and Jordan. 

Staff Present: Elliot Mincberg, Majority Chief Oversight Counsel; 

Sam Sokol, Majority Oversight Counsel; Paul Taylor, Minority 

Counsel; and Renata Strause, Majority Staff Assistant. 

Mr. CONYERS. Good morning. The Committee will come to order. 

The hearing today is entitled ‘‘From the Department of Justice to 

Guantanamo Bay: Administration Lawyers and Administration Interrogation Rules’’ that are being examined before the Committee. 

Actually, this is the fifth in a series of hearings on the subject, the 

first four which have been held in the Constitution Subcommittee 

of the Judiciary Committee. 

In recent months, our Constitution Subcommittee has conducted 

a vigorous investigation of the Administration’s interrogation policy, and some of the legal theories that allowed it. Today the investigation comes to the full Committee, with a remarkable opportunity to hear from our former Attorney General and two other distinguished witnesses. 

I think that all of us, witnesses and Members of the Committee 

alike, share in the view that there is important common ground in 

the subject matter that brings us together. I could recite a number 

of examples of where the former Attorney General made me very 

proud of the decisions he made or some of the things that he said. 

But our subject today is a narrow one about interrogation rules. 

Our overall inquiry, however, is about the rule of law. In prior 

hearings, the Subcommittee heard testimony, including claims of 

Presidential power, that made it seem that no act or conduct was 

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mony about how dissenting views were handled on this issue. I 

have great concern about the way any executive branch responds 

to legal advice it doesn’t like, especially when it results in the firing of the lawyer that provided it. 

So while one goal of this hearing is to continue to develop as well 

as we can these recent important historical incidents on the interrogation issue, I am also appreciative of the opportunity to hear 

from all our witnesses on what is happening to the rule of law 

today and how they best think we can move forward on this issue, 

and to continue it. After all, that is the role, one of the important 

roles of the Constitution Committee—of the Judiciary Committee, 

which has jurisdiction over the Constitution. And so we hope that 

we can restore meaning and significance to the promise that America does not torture, and that further, America respects the rule of 

law. 

I now turn to our distinguished Ranking Member from Texas, 

Lamar Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman, this is the 

ninth hearing of this Committee and its Subcommittees regarding 

the interrogation of known terrorists. After nine hearings, like nine 

innings, the game should be over. Yet all the curve balls thrown 

at these many hearings cannot obscure the simple fact that Members of both political parties had been fully briefed on the CIA’s interrogation program, and no objections were raised. 

According to the Washington Post, four Members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, were given a thorough review 

of the CIA interrogation program in September 2002. The methods 

outlined included waterboarding. No objections to the interrogation 

program or the methods were raised at the time by the Members. 

Torture is, and has been, illegal under U.S. law, as it should be. 

We do not, have not, and will not condone acts of torture. In fact, 

Congress has taken additional steps in recent years to strengthen 

laws against torture. The McCain amendment prohibits persons in 

the custody or control of the U.S. Government, regardless of their 

nationality or physical location, from being subjected to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. 

It should come as no surprise that special interrogation methods 

that do not amount to torture are legal and can and have been 

used appropriately to save American lives. For example, the interrogation of terrorist Zubaydah, a high level logistics chief of alQaeda, resulted in the disruption of several terrorist attacks. When 

Zubaydah was captured, he and two other men were in the process 

of building a bomb. A soldering gun used to make the explosives 

was still hot on the table, along with building plans for a school. 

According to a former CIA official, when asked what he would do 

if released, he responded I would kill every American and Jew I 

could get my hands on. He refused to offer any actionable intelligence until he was subjected to special interrogation procedures 

for between 30 to 55 seconds. According to what he said, quote, 

from that day on he answered every question. The threat information that he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens 

of attacks. 

The Supreme Court has determined that unconstitutional acts, 

or torture, are those that shock the conscience. And what shocks 

3 

the conscience depends on the circumstances and purpose of the interrogation. For example, if someone were picked at random on the 

streets of New York and subjected to special interrogation techniques, it would undoubtedly shock the conscience. But what if that 

person was one of the 9/11 terrorists? Or perhaps a known terrorist 

who is found in possession of explosives, the blueprint for a U.S. 

embassy, and expresses his desire to kill Americans? Given the recent events in Turkey, this is a realistic hypothetical. Using legal 

means, even as a last resort, to gather information that could save 

hundreds or thousands of American lives does not shock the conscience. Though rarely used, these legal methods work and have 

saved lives. 

The Schlesinger report, an independent report on Pentagon detention operations, concluded that at Guantanamo the interrogators used those additional techniques with only two detainees, 

gaining important and time-urgent information in the process. A 

separate review found that the interrogation program in the case 

of alleged 20th hijacker, Mohammad al-Qahtani, ultimately provided extremely valuable intelligence. 

Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution, one of our witnesses today, perhaps said it best. Whatever rhetorical pose politicians adopt, categorical opposition to coercive interrogation is not 

a tenable position for anyone with actual responsibility for protecting the country. Those charged with the responsibility of keeping Americans safe must do what they can within the limits of the 

law. And when they do so in very difficult circumstances, there will 

inevitably be debates regarding what those limits are. But while 

those debates should be welcomed, we should be careful not to unjustly persecute anyone, especially those whose sleepless efforts enable us and our families to sleep better at night. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. Would the witnesses please stand to 

be administered the oath? Raise your right-hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. All the witnesses said yes. Without objection, other Members’ opening statements will be included in the 

record. 

Our first witness this morning is the distinguished former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who served in that position from 2001 

to 2005. He was additionally a United States Senator from Missouri. He was also the State’s Governor for two terms. And we are 

very proud to welcome him back again to the House Judiciary Committee. Sir, you may proceed. 

TESTIMONY OF THE HONORABLE JOHN ASHCROFT, FORMER 

ATTORNEY GENERAL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you, Chairman Conyers and Ranking 

Member Smith. I am grateful for the opportunity to testify about 

interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees. This Committee’s prior hearings on this topic have focused principally on three legal opinions 

authored by the Office of Legal Counsel, opinions authored in August of 2002, March 2003, and December of 2004. I served as Attorney General of the United States when each of these opinions was 

4 

written. And before delving into the specifics of the memos, I would 

like to make a few preliminary points. 

First, after 7 years without an attack, it is perhaps easy to forget 

just how perilous the time was. But during the summer of 2002, 

we in the Justice Department were confronted with daily reminders that the lives of countless Americans depended on our efforts 

to prevent another terrorist attack, and that even the slightest mistake could result in tragedy. After 9/11, the Administration’s overriding goal, which I fully embraced, was to do everything within its 

power and within the limits of the law, I repeat within its power 

and within the limits of the law, to keep this country and the 

American people safe from terrorist attacks. 

As this Congress and the Nation now turn to reevaluate the 

work that was done, with the altered perception of 7 years of safety, we would all do well to remember the dangers we faced and the 

dangers we still face, and the potentially catastrophic consequences 

of error. 

Second, the process we will discuss here today, the examination 

of difficult legal questions by the Office of Legal Counsel and OLC’s 

reassessment of its opinions when warranted by new concerns, conditions or information, is a distinct virtue, and reflects this Administration’s commitment to the rule of law. There is no room in the 

Justice Department for an assumption that its work is perfect, nor 

for an attitude of resistance to reconsideration. Determined to provide the best advice possible, I sought to ensure that the Department adhered to the highest professional standards of quality and 

integrity. 

In rendering legal advice to the President and the executive 

branch agencies, the Office of Legal Counsel, or OLC, is bound to 

adhere faithfully to the holdings of relevant Supreme Court precedents. So too are the lower Federal courts. That is why, I submit, 

the Justice Department’s legal positions in the major war on terror 

cases uniformly prevailed in the courts of appeals, courts where the 

Supreme Court precedent is binding. Indeed, the Department of 

Justice lost only one vote of the 12 Court of Appeals judges that 

heard such cases. The Department’s positions to be sure did not 

fare as well in the Supreme Court, where unlike the Court of Appeals, the justices are free to depart from the Court’s precedents. 

It simply cannot be denied, however, that each of these cases presented close, difficult issues on which reasonable legal minds, acting in good faith, disagree. 

The Justice Department serves both the institution of the presidency and the presidency—or the President himself, in whom the 

Constitution of the United States vests the executive power. While 

OLC is bound to adhere faithfully to Supreme Court precedent, 

that precedent is often genuinely open to more than one interpretation, and thus contemplates an executive branch interpretive role. 

It follows, I believe, that when OLC is presented with a close and 

difficult legal question, one on which it cannot conclude that an Administration’s proposed policy is legally foreclosed, OLC is obliged 

to so inform the President and to offer any advice it may have on 

steps that might be taken to reduce any legal uncertainty. 

It is difficult to imagine an area in which the imperative to afford the President the benefit of genuine doubt is greater than with 

5 

respect to his judgments as Commander in Chief on how best to 

protect the lives and liberties of the American people in the war 

on terror. 

A final preliminary point I would like to make is this. Before 

these hearings commenced, I had but a limited recollection of many 

of the events pertinent to your inquiry. In attempting to prepare 

for this hearing, I reviewed testimony from prior hearings, I read 

portions of publications recounting some of the timely events, and 

I must admit that it has been difficult for me sometimes to distinguish between what I in fact recall as a matter of my own experience and what I remember from the accounts of others. As a result, 

what I hope I will be able to say will be of value to the Committee. 

Reliance on my statements and observations ought to be tempered 

by these awarenesses. 

In March of 2002, the United States and Pakistan captured Abu 

Zubaydah, al-Qaeda’s third in command, the highest value capture 

up to that point. The Administration turned to OLC for guidance 

as to the standard for interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees outside 

the United States under the anti-torture statute and the Convention Against Torture. OLC issued its opinion August 1, 2002. 

In 2003, the Department of Defense requested that OLC provide 

an opinion on the scope of Federal and international law standards 

governing military interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees held outside 

of the United States. The resulting opinion was issued on March 

the 14th, 2003. 

Former Deputy Attorney General John Yoo has testified to this 

Committee that OLC followed its normal process in preparing both 

of these highly classified opinions, including consultations with 

other components of the Justice Department and executive branch 

agencies, and he provided a fairly detailed account of the process 

that attended the preparation and issuance of the August 2002 

opinion. 

My own memory is not nearly so detailed, but I do not generally 

recall that I was—pardon me, but I do generally recall that I was 

made aware that a legal opinion relating to the interrogation of alQaeda detainees was being prepared by OLC, that a draft or drafts 

were provided to my office, and that I was briefed on the general 

contours of the opinion’s substantive analysis and on its conclusions, and that I approved its issuance. 

Thus, as best I can recall, the August 2002 interrogation opinion 

followed the normal review process in my office for such matters. 

In this regard, it is important to bear in mind that each week during my tenure as Attorney General, and especially following 9/11, 

scores of critically important matters came to my desk. Necessarily 

then I did what every Attorney General and Cabinet official must, 

I daily relied on expert counsel and painstaking work of experienced and skilled professionals who staffed the Department. 

With respect specifically to the March 2003 opinion, while I have 

no recollection of the process that attended its preparation by OLC 

or the review it received in my office, I have no reason to doubt 

the testimony of Mr. Yoo on this matter. 

It is now well known that Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith withdrew the August 2002 and March 2003 memos during 

his tenure as head of the OLC. He did so with both my knowledge 

6 

and my approval. Upon review of the memos, concerns were raised 

about the appropriateness of some of the analysis, and that the 

memos addressed certain issues beyond those necessary to answer 

the narrow questions presented to the Department. 

This remedial process worked as it should have. When concerns 

were raised about the Department’s work, I directed the professionals at the Department to reexamine the work and to make any 

warranted adjustments. The December 2004 memo that ultimately 

replaced the August 2002 memo advanced a narrower interpretation of the standard defined by the anti-torture statute. It also deleted unnecessary discussions of the scope of Presidential power 

and potential defenses to prosecutions under the anti-torture statute. 

The memo did not, however, call into question any of the actual 

interrogation practices that OLC had previously approved as legal. 

In fact, the new memo, the replacement memo stated we have reviewed the office’s prior opinions addressing issues involving treatment of detainees, and do not believe that any of their conclusions 

would have been different under the standards set forth in this 

memorandum. 

One way to think about this is to imagine that a highway had 

a posted speed limit of 85 miles per hour, but the cars traveling 

upon it never moved faster than 65 miles per hour. Taking down 

the 85 mile per hour signs and putting up 65 mile per hour signs 

would not require a change in driving conduct. It would merely redefine the outer boundaries of what drivers would be said legally 

could be done. This is precisely what happened with the interrogation advice rendered by the Department in 2002 and 2003. When 

I was informed about concerns relating to overly broad advice, the 

limits of which were never tested, I directed the OLC to correct it. 

To the extent my memory will allow and the extent I am permitted under the guidance I have received from the Department of 

Justice, I would be pleased to answer your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Ashcroft follows:] 

7 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF JOHN ASHCROFT


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Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. 

Benjamin Wittes is a Fellow and Research Director in Public 

Law at the Brookings Institution, a well known writer and author 

of a recently published book, entitled Law and the Long War: The 

Future of Justice in the Age of Terror. 

Mr. Benjamin Wittes, welcome to the Judiciary Committee. 

TESTIMONY OF BENJAMIN WITTES, FELLOW AND RESEARCH 

DIRECTOR IN PUBLIC LAW, THE BROOKINGS INSTITUTION 

Mr. WITTES. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking 

Member, and Members of the Committee, for inviting me to testify 

concerning American interrogation policy. I do not intend today to 

focus on the past, but on the future; that is, on the contours of the 

interrogation laws we need prospectively in order to prosecute the 

war on terrorism in a manner that is at once effective and consistent with American values. 

I would like to make three points. First, that Congress in the 

McCain amendment successfully addressed the problem of military 

interrogations. That law gave the military, within the parameters 

of more general requirements of humane treatment of detainees, 

great latitude to set its own rules, requiring only that it publish 

and follow them. The new field manual that the Army promulgated 

in response offers a limited degree of additional flexibility over the 

old one in certain areas. It also contains a great deal more specificity about all of the interrogation tactics it authorizes than did 

the prior version. These policy changes have been so successful that 

today neither human rights groups nor the military is complaining 

a whole lot about contemporary Army interrogation rules. And the 

result of this is that the currently contested terrain in the battle 

over interrogation policy is actually a lot narrower than most people imagine it to be. 

Second point, that the policy Congress adopted in that statute is 

relatively easily adapted to address interrogations by the CIA, 

though not simply by applying the McCain amendment itself to the 

agency; that is, applying the Army Field Manual to the agency. 

The residual dispute; that is, the rules that govern the interrogations of the comparatively tiny number of detainees held by the 

CIA, is a narrow, but important one. It is important both because 

these detainees present the highest stakes interrogations, and because the rules that are applied against them in the CIA’s program 

define the outer parameters of what the U.S. will do in interrogations under any circumstances. 

The current state of the law for these detainees is in my judgment simply inadequate. Current law articulates flat bans on 

vaguely defined categories of abuse, torture, and cruel, inhuman, 

and degrading treatment. These amount in practice to absolute injunctions not to do anything too mean, but leave far too open the 

question both of what meanness is and the additional question of 

how much of it is too much. The result of this is a terrible conundrum for interrogators in the field. We want these people to be aggressive. We want them to walk up to the line of legality in order 

to get information that will stop the next attack. Yet on the other 

side of that line is illegality. And we have refused as a society to 

draw the line clearly or to promise that it won’t move. We are askVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00017 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
14 

ing men and women in the service of this country to live their professional lives leaning over the border of unlawful conduct that we 

haven’t the courage to define precisely. 

It is an abdication that we need to redress. And Congress can do 

so simply using the McCain amendment as a model for the CIA. 

The CIA should not be bound by the Army Field Manual itself, for 

even a completely responsible palette of procedures for the CIA 

would probably differ in some respects from the list in the Army 

Field Manual. Yet the CIA, like the military, should have its own 

list of approved techniques, amendable at any time, to which the 

law binds its compliance. 

Think of it as a CIA field manual. That is, within the confines 

of the existing legal strictures on interrogation, Congress should 

permit the agency the use of any technique to which it will willingly attach its name. Ideally, Congress would insist that this document, like the Army Field Manual, be openly disclosed so that all 

approved interrogation techniques available on the law could withstand debate and scrutiny. This may not be possible with the CIA, 

however. The agency may rather need to maintain a certain level 

of ambiguity about its interrogation palette. But Congress should 

still require of it as much transparency and accountability as possible. 

Binding the CIA to its own interrogation palette by law would 

likely fix the problem that we are currently fighting about for all 

but a tiny number of the highest value detainees. 

Third, that tiny subset of high value detainees will stress the 

rules. The agency sometimes interrogates highly resistant detainees in time-sensitive efforts to avert catastrophes. In these efforts 

the executive branch will face extraordinary pressure to get information and will sometimes make a decision to breach the rules in 

order to get it. We should be honest that these breaches are 

breaches of the rules, not within the rules, and that reality requires that the rules here do something genuinely extraordinary, 

which is to contemplate the circumstances of their own violation. 

The question, and it is a tremendously difficult question, is what 

legal zone the President and his Administration and the people in 

the field will occupy when they do what they deem necessary in 

those dire circumstances. Many people believe in structuring the 

law so as to render the interrogator in the field culpable of a felony 

for the interrogation expected of him under these circumstances. I 

do not. To ask that interrogators subject themselves to prosecution 

for these acts, approved at the highest levels, is unlike anything we 

ask of other government officials for acts we expect them to take 

in foreseeable situations. Congress needs to create a mechanism to 

recognize that in such situations the President has the authority 

to stand alone accountable for the interrogations he orders. This 

implies a law that clarifies that the President’s authority—that the 

President has the authority to assume legal and political responsibility for breaches of the normal rules, and also ensures that the 

legislature is kept informed and has the opportunity to object. 

Congress can accomplish this relatively simply. The law should 

forbid the President to authorize any deviations from CIA interrogation policies except by written finding to the congressional intelligence committees identifying the need for enhanced techniques in 

15 

the specific case and the individual techniques the President is ordering. The law should insist that these techniques under no circumstances violate the prohibition on torture, and the findings 

should require the personal signature of the President. Congress 

should require as well that the White House annually publish the 

number of such findings the President issues, so that while each 

finding would remain classified, the public may determine whether 

coercive interrogation has remained an exception or is drifting toward more of a norm. 

The law should further immunize against all criminal and civil 

liability those personnel carrying out the enhanced techniques 

specified within such a finding. 

I am happy to take your questions. Thank you very much. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Wittes follows:] 

16 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF BENJAMIN WITTES


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Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. 

Walter Dellinger was the head of the Office of Legal Counsel, 

OLC, under President Clinton. And as Acting Solicitor General, he 

argued nine cases before the Supreme Court, more than any Solicitor General in more than 2 decades. He is a visiting professor at 

Harvard Law School, and is on leave from teaching law at Duke 

University, and belongs to the O’Melveny & Myers law firm. Welcome again to the Committee. 

TESTIMONY OF WALTER DELLINGER, FORMER ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE 

Mr. DELLINGER. Chairman Conyers, Ranking Member Smith, 

Members of the Committee, on September the 12th 2001, the New 

York Times had a single sentence paragraph: It was a moment that 

split history. And because I will use my time to take issue with 

some of the things that each of our witnesses has said, I want to 

begin by acknowledging how difficult were the circumstances faced 

by General Ashcroft and the others in government. 

There was a real sense that further attacks, perhaps even more 

deadly, were in the offing, a palpable sense. I can hardly imagine 

what the pressures must have been on those who were in the government. And we all could exercise some humility in judging how 

well we would have done under those extraordinary pressures. 

General Ashcroft is, we know, a man of the law who is willing to 

stand up and take tough and courageous positions when in his 

view the law is being violated. And my friend, Ben Wittes’s 

thoughtful work, Law and the Long War, is indispensable reading 

for anyone who wants a really balanced and thoughtful approach 

to these issues. 

Nonetheless, I want to say that I fear that we have not had an 

adequate defense of the torture memos, which more than anything 

else are the source of this hearing, the memos of 2002 and 2003. 

I don’t think it was a process that worked well in the end, because 

they were reversed. I think it is also the case that these memoranda were not close questions. 

As Jack Goldsmith, the subsequent head of the Office of Legal 

Counsel said, the memos were deeply flawed, sloppily reasoned, 

overbroad, incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President. 

As Dean Harold Koh said, the 2002 memo was a stain upon the 

law and upon America’s reputation in the world. 

In his testimony, General Ashcroft refers us to the fact that the 

Federal courts were closely divided on the issues that came to the 

U.S. Supreme Court in Rasul, and Hamdi, and Hamdan, and in the 

Court’s most recent case of Boumediene. But no one has disputed 

that. Those were difficult cases. Whether habeas corpus applied in 

a territory over which we did not have de jure sovereignty with respect to noncitizens was a question of first impression. And the extraordinary arguments were evenly divided in that case. And the 

Court came close. But that segue in General Ashcroft’s testimony 

is away from the separate issue of the torture memos, where I 

think it is hard to defend the extraordinary reading of the torture 

statute that would, as the Office of Legal Counsel memorandum 

22 

read the statute, approve even of the worst techniques of Saddam 

Hussein if they were intended to get information, and not simply 

to inflict pain. 

The connection and the assertion of a Presidential authority to 

disregard criminal statutes enacted by Congress, signed into law by 

the President, intended to limit the authority in precisely these circumstances, which was true of the torture statute of the Foreign 

Intelligence Surveillance Act and the war crimes law, the ability to 

disregard those statutes was I think a virtually shocking assertion 

of Presidential authority not to comply with the law. There is a 

connection between those memoranda and the Supreme Court decision. 

I think that one thing that led the Supreme Court to require the 

use of habeas corpus was because it had lost trust in the Administration of justice because of the extraordinary position taken with 

respect to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the torture 

laws, and other issues. The Court felt that it did not have confidence that the processes in the absence of judicial oversight would 

work appropriately. So that I think at the end of the day, the process did not work well, and we need to acknowledge how extraordinary those assertions of power were. 

Ben Wittes offers very thoughtful, very thoughtful views on how 

we should think about these issues going forward. And with much 

of what he says I concur. A couple of points with which I disagree, 

and then I will yield for questions for our panel. 

It seems to me that to say that the CIA ought to have authority 

beyond what is in the Army Field Manual for interrogations, to 

open up a gap there between what is cruelty and what is torture 

when the U.S. military has complied with the field manual in questioning the Viet Cong, in questioning throughout our history, I am 

not sure that we want to be a Nation which officially approves of 

the use of cruelty as a matter of government policy. I think that 

the President does not have the lawful authority to pardon someone in advance for what would be a criminal offense. I do believe 

the pardon would be effective, just it would be I think if someone 

is bribed to give a pardon, the pardon cannot be called into question. But it is an offense for the Governor or the President who accepted the bribe. And I think that a Presidential pardon intended 

to facilitate the commission of a violation of a criminal statute 

would itself be lawless, even if the pardon were to be sustained. 

Finally, let me just address the notion that we should have a 

specific exception for extraordinary circumstances where someone 

has information that would save the lives of countless Americans, 

the ticking time bomb in the middle of Manhattan. I don’t think 

the law should make an exception for that. I believe that is a situation, if and when it ever arose, that calls for civil disobedience. 

I think what we would expect a President to do in those circumstances is to authorize what was necessary to save the lives of 

countless Americans when there is a direct and immediate threat 

in those circumstances, and to turn himself in after having done so, 

and to submit to the criminal process. We ask sacrifices of men and 

women in the military more serious than that. That to me would 

be the answer, not to engraft in our code of laws the notion that 

we are a country that would tolerate that kind of cruelty. 

23 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Dellinger follows:] 

24 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF WALTER DELLINGER


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Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. Before I invite our Ranking Member 

to begin the questions, Lamar, I have only one question. I got some 

others a little later. But the notion that we have not been attacked 

since September 11, 2001, means that we are doing things right to 

me begs the question. I mean is that safe, Mr. Attorney General, 

to assume that that is the conclusion we ought to come to? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. Chairman, I believe that there have been disrupted plots. I believe there have been numbers of them. I believe 

the evidence of that is good. So that something we have done is 

right enough to have disrupted those plots. The fact that you are 

doing some things right doesn’t mean that you are doing everything right. And so I think it is appropriate for us always to be 

looking at what we are doing. And if we are being successful, to 

be grateful that some of what we are doing is participating in the 

success, but not assuming that everything we are doing is responsible for it. And we have to look intelligently. 

It is a complex question. So it is one of those things like when 

we run for office. You know, if you win, everything you did was 

right. If you lose, everything you did was wrong. It may have 

turned out that you were just running in the wrong year or the 

right year. 

So I think overly simplistic approaches that say everything we 

are doing is right—really, as a matter of fact they are dangerous 

approaches because they lead us not to make good judgments about 

corrective behavior, how we might improve our performance. You 

know, if you think everything you are doing is right, then when 

you get hit the next time, it tells you that maybe we should have 

done something a little differently. 

We learned a powerful lot after 9/11. I did. And we learned that 

we had to make changes. Wouldn’t it be great if we not assume 

that everything is right and we always ask ourselves how can we 

make changes so that we don’t have to be awakened by something 

that cost Americans lives? 

Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Wittes, what is your response to that question? 

Mr. WITTES. It is not an argument that I have ever made, and 

so I feel a little awkward about responding to it. I largely agree 

with Mr. Ashcroft. I think, you know, there has obviously been 

some successes. I don’t think 7 years ago people would have imagined that we would go another 7 years without another major attack. So we can assume something is going right as a result of that, 

and I don’t think one should overread that. I don’t think one should 

assume therefore everything is going right, or therefore there is no 

cause for course correction. 

Mr. CONYERS. Professor Dellinger. 

Mr. DELLINGER. Mr. Chairman, this is not an area in which I 

have an informed view except to say that I know that the threat 

assessments that come in daily to the Attorney General and others 

must be extraordinary. And surely, credit is due to this Administration for the fact that we have in many areas appeared to have 

been successful in countering activities. I think at the end of the 

day our long-range national security is best served by our adherence to the fundamental constitutional values that should make us 

a country respected by the world. 

30 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you. I turn now to Lamar Smith. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Dellinger, just a few 

minutes ago you complimented the other witnesses in I think unusually flattering terms. You don’t often hear a witness do that, 

particularly a witness who might disagree with them strongly on 

the legal analysis that might be contained in memos. But I thank 

you for doing that. And I think, quite frankly, your graciousness 

adds to your stature. And I appreciate your comments a while ago. 

Mr. Ashcroft, I would like to direct my first question to you. It 

is traditional, I think, that congressional leaders are briefed on interrogation techniques that are being used by various agencies 

within the government. But why specifically, for example, were 

then Congresswoman Pelosi and others informed about the use of 

waterboarding to obtain information from terrorists several years 

ago? What is the specific reason? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I didn’t make the decision to do that. That was 

a decision made by others. I am not in a position to comment on 

it. And to the extent it has been revealed, I believe those briefings 

were classified. And I am very sensitive about making comments 

about classified matters. 

Mr. SMITH. The briefings were classified. Let me just assume 

that those types of briefings occur simply because the Administration, whatever Administration it might be, wants to make sure that 

congressional leaders understand and appreciate, and presumably 

approve of the techniques that are being used to obtain valuable 

information. At least that would be my view. 

Mr. Wittes, let me ask you whether you feel in general that enhanced interrogation techniques are effective in obtaining valuable 

information that we might not otherwise get. 

Mr. WITTES. As I say in my book, I am actually somewhat agnostic on that point. I think the—you know, I have spoken to a lot of 

interrogators over the years who are very emphatic about the general proposition that the best intelligence is always gathered 

through rapport building, noncoercive interviews. 

Mr. SMITH. And if that is not successful, what techniques do 

you—— 

Mr. WITTES. And I have also been impressed by the fact that 

there is, you know, a fairly large number of people, and I outline 

some of this in the book, who are—you know, who do contend that 

there are situations in which these techniques do not succeed and 

you don’t have time to develop them. The best academic work that 

I have seen evaluating the data came to the conclusion, such as it 

is, came to the conclusion that we really don’t know what works— 

there is a very striking discussion of this—and concludes that we 

need a lot more study about what works, both in the coercive and 

in the noncoercive. 

Mr. SMITH. It seems to me that I might disagree with the academics who say we don’t know what works, because clearly some 

techniques do work, and there is evidence of it. And I have given 

some quotes in my opening statement. 

Mr. WITTES. Well, if I may, I mean I think the general pattern, 

at least as I have noticed it, is that everybody believes that the 

techniques that they have used successfully work. And people tend 

to generalize the success. So if you talk to FBI people who use nonVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00034 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
31 

coercive stuff, they are very convinced that they have the best way 

to do it. If you talk to the people who have, you know—— 

Mr. SMITH. Maybe they all work at different times. Who knows? 

Mr. WITTES. You know, there may be something to be said for 

that. And I think what I conclude from this is that unless you 

know that it does not work in the highest stakes situations, where 

there is enormous time pressure, and you know that what you are 

doing isn’t working, there will be enormous pressure on you to 

ratchet it up. And I think, you know, that is a reality that, you 

know, exists whatever the optimum level of coercion is, whether it 

is zero or considerable. 

Mr. SMITH. Okay. Thank you. 

Mr. Ashcroft, the last question for you. What are the disadvantages of taking a criminal law approach to trying to combat terrorism? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, my belief is that there are some times when 

the criminal law is the appropriate approach. There are some times 

when it is not. We apprehended people who were involved in terrorist plots in the United States, brought them to trial when I was 

in the Justice Department. A number of them have been convicted, 

a number of them are serving time. There are other individuals 

that were detained as enemy combatants that were terrorists and 

involved in terrorist activity, and some that I think the Administration will eventually seek to try in military commissions. When 

you are defending the country, I think you should have the full 

array of potentials available. And I think maybe that splashes over 

a little bit into the interrogation world. Not everything is appropriate in every circumstance. There are different things that work 

in different settings. Sometimes the security associated with the 

national security would be jeopardized by having an Article 3 

criminal proceeding, and so other views or other avenues ought to 

be explored. 

Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Ashcroft. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, 

Jerry Nadler. 

Mr. NADLER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Attorney General 

Ashcroft, in your testimony you mentioned Abu Zubaydah, who was 

captured in March 2002. The Inspector General report on the FBI’s 

role in interrogation makes clear that he was interrogated beginning in March of that year. The Yoo-Bybee legal memo was not 

issued until August 2002. So was the interrogation of Abu 

Zubaydah before August 2002 done without DOJ legal approval? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. 

Mr. NADLER. Well, did you offer legal approval of interrogation 

methods used at that time? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. At what time, sir? 

Mr. NADLER. Prior to August of 2002, March 2002. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I have no recollection of doing that at all. 

Mr. NADLER. And you don’t know if anyone else from the Department of Justice did? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. 

Mr. NADLER. One FBI agent objected to the interrogation at this 

time before the Yoo-Bybee memo was issued as, quote, borderline 

torture. He described the techniques used on Abu Zubaydah as 

32 

comparable to harsh techniques used during military SERE training. SERE training, as we know, includes waterboarding. Do you 

know if waterboarding was used on Abu Zubaydah before the DOJ 

approved it? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I do not. 

Mr. NADLER. Okay. Your written testimony stated that the December 2004 interrogation memo by Mr. Levin, which withdrew the 

August 2002 memo, did not, quote, call into question any actual interrogation practices authorized by the prior Office of Legal Counsel opinions. You used the 65 to 85 mile an hour example there. 

But Dan Levin, the final author of the 2004 memo, testified to our 

Subcommittee that the 2004 memo did change interrogation practices. He said, quote, I believe it is the case that there were certain 

changes in practices as a result of the change in legal analysis, 

close quote. Do you think Mr. Levin was in error? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It is possible that there have been changes in 

practices in a variety of times and in a variety of intervals, both 

prior to and subsequent to the issuance of the various opinions. My 

statement is not that there hasn’t been an ability, within the limits 

expressed in the opinions, for those practices to be adjusted. I 

wouldn’t have knowledge of that. 

Mr. NADLER. No, but he said that—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The point of the opinions is that what was defined as permissible or explained as permissible in the memos did 

not render impermissible things that had been determined permissible in prior memo. 

Mr. NADLER. That was what you said. But Mr. Levin said exactly 

the contrary. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t think he did. 

Mr. NADLER. Let me read you the—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t want to quibble about it. He may have 

said the practices changed. 

Mr. NADLER. Well, let me read you an exchange between myself 

and him in an earlier hearing. Mr. Levin: ‘‘I don’t think it is accurate that nothing changed as a result in the change in legal analysis. What do you think was the change? Well, I unfortunately am 

not authorized to discuss certain matters, but I believe it is the 

case that there were certain changes in practices as a result of the 

change in legal analysis.’’ Representative Nadler: ‘‘So as a result of 

the change in your memo you think there were changes in practices? That means required changes in interrogation policies?’’ Mr. 

Levin: ‘‘I believe that’s the case, sir, yes.’’ 

So you are saying in effect that you and he would disagree on 

that point? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My understanding is related to what he said in 

the footnote of his opinion, that while they have identified disagreements with the memorandum, we have reviewed the office’s prior 

opinions addressing issues involving treatment of detainees, and do 

not believe that any of the conclusions would be different. 

Mr. NADLER. But he explained at the hearing that this footnote 

simply, in his view—simply that in his view the people who wrote 

the original opinions would not have reached different conclusions 

even under a different legal analysis. He himself was at the time 

33 

drafting new, more restrictive legal opinions to address the specific 

practices when he was fired by Attorney General Gonzales. 

So what he said was that memo simply said that the people who 

wrote the original memo would not have believed that that memo 

would have changed the analysis, but that he believed it did. So 

you are disagreeing not with the memo—forget the footnote. But 

are you disagreeing with his opinion and his testimony at the hearing? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. He may have more information about what was 

an actual practice than I do. 

Mr. NADLER. Okay. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. But I have—the Department has on a consistent 

basis reiterated its conclusion, including testimony by General 

Mukasey last week, when he said but it is fair to say that the conclusions—— 

Mr. NADLER. Okay. 

Mr. ASHCROFT [continuing]. The ultimate bottom line is the 

same. And the acting head of OLC has indicated that they have on 

numerous occasions revisited the various definitions of practice by 

the agencies, and have found them in each instance—— 

Mr. NADLER. Okay—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT [continuing]. Consistent with the new opinion. So 

there seems to be a pretty substantial consensus of people who believe the fair, understandable reading of the footnote, the subsequent statements and evaluations by OLC, and the recent last 

week testimony by the Attorney General, that the second opinion 

had adjusted the reasoning and a number of other things, but as 

it relates to practices and techniques, they remained legal under 

the new tests. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chair recognizes the senior Member from 

North Carolina, Howard Coble. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is good to have you all 

on the Hill. General, I was going to pursue the waterboarding 

briefing that Mr. Smith mentioned, but you advised us, and I recall, that they were classified, so I don’t think I can insert my oars 

into those waters at this time. 

Let me ask you this, General. Waterboarding, as we all know, is 

a controversial issue. Do you think it served a beneficial purpose? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The reports that I have heard, and I have no reason to disbelieve them, indicate that they were very valuable. I 

think the Director of the CIA, George Tenet, indicated that the 

value of the information received from the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, I don’t know whether he was saying 

waterboarding or not, but assume that he was for a moment, the 

value of that information exceeded the value of information that 

was received from virtually all other sources. 

When the lives of Americans are at stake, and in significant 

numbers, as we well know they were, on one day we lost more people in New York—way more than we lost at Pearl Harbor, and we 

lost more people in the combined New York, Pennsylvania, and 

Washington area, that the people expect, and I think the President 

has a duty, to do everything within the law and within his power. 

I emphasize both of those phrases. And using techniques that do 

not violate the law that bring us the kind of productivity that the 

34 

Director of the CIA, George Tenet, said they brought, and I have 

no reason to doubt that, I think is a duty, not just an option of a 

chief executive, commander in chief. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, General. 

Mr. Wittes, is it your opinion that waterboarding is torture and 

why? 

Mr. WITTES. Well, you know, I think—I say this in the book, I 

think it is very difficult for me anyway to reconcile it with the text 

of the torture statute. And for the simple reason that it is designed, 

as I understand it, to induce a perception of drowning. And I believe the torture statute, I don’t have the text in front of me, specifically identifies the fear of—the inducing of the fear of imminent 

death as a prototypical definition. So I think it is at least extremely 

close. And you know, I am not a lawyer, and I am not—you know, 

I wouldn’t, you know, declare my views on this authoritative in any 

respect. But I have a lot of trouble reconciling it with the torture 

statute. 

Mr. COBLE. I thank you, sir. 

Mr. Dellinger, do you believe that the President of the United 

States could lawfully order the assassination of Osama bin Laden? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Yes, I do. 

Mr. COBLE. Let me give you Part B. 

Mr. DELLINGER. It would require—let me qualify that by saying 

it would probably require—it may well require the revision of an 

Executive order of the President prohibiting assassination. 

Mr. COBLE. Mr. Dellinger, let’s assume that the Congress enacted a statute that provided that the United States shall never engage in an assassination. In view of those circumstances, what 

would be your answer? 

Mr. DELLINGER. No. 

Mr. COBLE. An assassination could not be ordered? 

Mr. DELLINGER. That is correct. 

Mr. COBLE. Do you know whether or not during your time with 

President Clinton that he ever argued that a Federal law should 

not be followed by him? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Yes. On more than a few occasions we took the 

position, which every President has taken, and which I believe, 

that the President has not only the authority, but the responsibility 

to decline to enforce laws that in the President’s view are unconstitutional. That should be done with great care and with deference 

to the courts and what the courts might hold. But I do believe that 

every President has that authority. 

And if I may add a word, Mr. Coble, because the important qualification is I am concerned that that legitimate authority of the 

President has been called into question by the assertion of Presidential authority to decline to enforce laws that I believe are unquestionably valid and constitutional, and that it is the exercise of 

that authority with respect to, for example, the FISA law, the torture law, where I believe that there is not a good case that those 

laws were unconstitutional, and the President nonetheless asserted 

the authority not to comply with those. 

Mr. COBLE. Thank you, sir. 

Mr. Chairman, I think this is a very fine panel that appeared before us, and I thank you all for being here. 

35 

Mr. ISSA. Would the gentleman yield? Would the gentleman 

yield, Mr. Coble? Never mind, we have lost our time. 

Mr. COBLE. All right. I took a lot of time. Yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chair recognizes the Chairman of the Crime 

Subcommittee, Bobby Scott of Virginia. 

Mr. SCOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I thank our witnesses for being with us today. 

Attorney General Ashcroft, there is no question that torture is illegal. Is that—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. That’s correct. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. Now, is there an exception to that if it is done 

during a crisis? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. There is no exception that I know of that allows 

people to violate the law. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. Well, suppose you got some good information 

as a direct result of torture. Would that be an exemption to the 

statute? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No, the outcome or product of torture doesn’t justify it. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. Now, you’ve made a comment that we have not 

been attacked since 9/11. Are we to surmise that that is a direct 

result of the fact that people have been tortured and we got good 

information? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, first of all, I don’t know of any acts of torture that have been committed by individuals in developing information. So I would not certainly make an assumption. 

I would attribute the absence of an attack, at least in part, because there are specific attacks that have been disrupted, to the excellent work and the dedication and commitment of people whose 

lives are dedicated to defending the country. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, we are here to talk about—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. That includes interrogators, who have used enhanced interrogation techniques, but they haven’t used torture. 

Mr. SCOTT. So you are not suggesting that we should forgive torture because we got good information and we are therefore safer. 

That is not your position. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No, that is not my position. 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay. It is a defense against torture that traditional 

techniques were not working? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Not to my knowledge. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is it an exemption from the criminal law on torture 

that a Department of Justice or an Office of Legal Counsel lawyer 

wrote a memo that said what people generally perceive to be torture is okay? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think the ultimate definition of ‘‘torture’’ will be 

rendered in the courts. 

Mr. SCOTT. And if a Department of Justice or Office of Legal 

Counsel writes a memo saying a technique is okay when everybody 

else in the world thinks it constitutes torture, would that be an exemption for the criminal statute? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It would be a marvelous thing of unanimity if everybody else in the world agreed. 

[Laughter.] 

36 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, I think just about everybody agrees 

waterboarding is torture. There hasn’t been much controversy 

about that. 

No? You don’t believe that waterboarding is torture? 

Well, excuse me. Everybody on this side of the aisle, I believe, 

believes that waterboarding is torture. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, in all deference and respect to the Members 

of this Committee, I believe that the legal definition of ‘‘torture’’ 

will prevail. 

One of the things about the rule of law that the Chairman eloquently brought to our attention at the beginning of the hearing is 

that people are not convicted based on polls taken from men on the 

street or people in the world. People are convicted of violations of 

the law based on what the statute says—— 

Mr. SCOTT. Okay, so my question, though, is that you don’t get 

an exemption because of Department of Justice or an Office of 

Legal Counsel lawyer wrote a memo excusing it. 

Do you get an exemption if the CIA does it rather than Department of Defense? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know of any exception in the law that relates to the different parties that are involved in the activity. 

Mr. SCOTT. Is there an exemption of the law if we hand someone 

over to another country, believing that they will torture the person, 

where we might not have been able to do it because of our statutes? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think you are taking me beyond my awareness 

of the statute, at this point. And I am going to decline to try and 

be exhaustive about the law. 

First of all, you have amended the statute, I think, several times 

since I left office. I wasn’t an expert in this arena when I was in 

office. So I am going to have to decline to follow down a more and 

more intricate set of options, which are obviously beyond my capacity. 

If you want legal advice on this, as a Member of Congress, you 

have your own legal counsel and you have the Attorney General. 

I am not there anymore. 

Mr. SCOTT. Let me ask Mr. Dellinger a question. 

If the United States is generally believed to be a Nation which 

inflicts torture on detainees, what impact would that have on our 

troops and our national security? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Mr. Scott, I am not an expert on that. I think 

I agree with Senator McCain. His view has been that it would put 

our own troops at serious risk and greater risk if we take the position that techniques like that are lawful, and others who have 

taken that position. 

May I add a word to your question to General Ashcroft? 

Mr. SCOTT. Yes, please. 

Mr. DELLINGER. Which is just that I think it has to be the case 

that when the Office of Legal Counsel issues an opinion that a 

given activity is lawful to an officer or agent of the Government, 

that criminal prosecution of such a person is ruled out in all but 

the most extreme, unusual circumstances. 

Mr. SCOTT. Well, in that case, who would be responsible and accountable for the torture? 

37 

Mr. DELLINGER. Well, I think that moral responsibility would lie 

with lots of people, but that, in terms of legality, that is the way 

it has to work. It means you ought to be very careful about who 

is approved to head the Office of Legal Counsel. But the office is 

given the delegated authority to make law for the executive branch 

of the Government. I think that is binding. 

I am not necessarily happy to give you that answer, but I 

think—— 

Mr. SCOTT. And some laws are so poorly written that people really ought not—— 

Mr. CONYERS. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The gentleman from California, Elton Gallegly. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Welcome, General, Mr. Wittes and Professor Dellinger. 

In your opening statement, General Ashcroft, you talked about 

the success, if you will, of how we have been able to avoid any significant attacks since 9/11, something that we have all been concerned about. Unfortunately, sometimes people have a tendency to, 

kind of, forget after a period of a year or 2 years or 3 years, although the threat is still there, even though we have had success. 

Some might argue that that has just been a matter of luck. Some 

might argue that it is 100 percent a result of the actions of your 

office and your successors. But I think, clearly, the Chairman 

asked and Bobby Scott, my good friend from North Carolina, also 

asked about, is this all a result of the Justice Department? 

The one thing that we all know, that have been following this for 

years, is the fact that there have been many, many direct attacks 

that we are aware of that have been foiled by our interrogation 

process. Many are public; many are classified. But we do know that 

there have been specific attempts to attack us and do harm to the 

level of the World Trade Center and maybe even more, and they 

have been foiled. 

You have also said, as I understand it, that, to the best of your 

knowledge, during your administration you lived within the letter 

of the law, as it related to your understanding of the interrogation 

process. Is that correct? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My understanding of what process? 

Mr. GALLEGLY. What was legally permissible through the laws at 

the time as it related to interrogation. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Yeah, I think the request for guidance on this by 

the Administration signals that it’s an Administration that is very 

eager to do everything possible, but within the law. And there was 

almost an obsessive demand that we get clarity and do what we 

could to define the law clearly, because you had these parallel aspirations: One, we have to stop terrorists; and, two, we have to do 

it within the law. So it demands and requires that you get as much 

definition as you can. 

And, with that in mind, there was this sensitivity to making sure 

we stayed within the limits of the law. But we, within those limits, 

were as aggressive as possible in defending America. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. And in dealing with those limits, would you say 

that this Nation—had we not used these interrogation techniques 

that we did during the past 7 years, had we not used those, would 

38 

the probability of another attack not only been a probability but a 

certainty? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It could well have been. No one can say what 

would have happened exactly, but I believe specific attacks were 

disrupted. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. Well, we know for a fact that many were, and 

there are people in prison as a result of those. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. There are people in prison that were prosecuted 

successfully, in this metropolitan area, but all across America. I 

happen to have been Attorney General when the excellent work of 

the prosecutors resulted in their detentions and incarceration. And 

absent, I believe, their incarceration, they would be out doing 

things that would threaten the American people. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. Mr. Wittes, I know that—maybe I am paraphrasing—but we talked a little bit about plan A in interrogation 

and plan B, if you will, and rapport-building, and then enhanced, 

if that doesn’t work. 

Can you give me some thoughts about why some terrorists do not 

respond to rapport-building? 

Mr. WITTES. Well, look, I am not in any sense an interrogator, 

and I have never engaged in, you know, a high-stakes interrogation. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. But you have written about it. 

Mr. WITTES. But I think what we do know is that there has been 

a certain amount of training to known interrogation techniques. 

We also know that, you know, if you are trying to protect something—these are extremely motivated, very serious people, and if 

you are trying to protect something, you have a lot of incentive to 

resist whatever interrogation techniques are being used. And that 

is true, by the way, in the criminal justice system too. You know, 

that is a general truth about trying to get information from noncooperative suspects. 

And so, I mean, you know, whenever you are an in-custody detainee who is trying to protect something that you want to succeed 

from an official who is trying to prevent you from doing it, you 

have a lot of incentive to use whatever resources are at your disposal, including, in some cases, very high intelligence and very 

deep-seated convictions and motivations in order to protect those 

pieces of information that you are trying to protect. 

Mr. GALLEGLY. Thank you. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chairwoman of the Immigration Subcommittee and an expert in our intellectual property issues, Zoe 

Lofgren of California. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am appreciative of 

this hearing. 

This is a very troubling subject. And, you know, as I think about 

where we are in this country today and the various challenges that 

we as a Nation have faced, certainly we should be concerned about 

international terrorism. We need to be vigilant. There are enemies 

of our country who wish to do us harm. But surely that challenge 

isn’t greater than the harm posed to us by the Soviet Union during 

the entire Cold War. Surely that challenge is not more serious than 

that posed by the Nazis in World War II. 

39 

I mean, we have always been able to face off with those who 

would do harm to our country while living within our Constitution 

and our rule of law. And whenever we decide that our safety is 

more important than our freedom, then we’ve lost, we’ve lost it. 

I think that we are coming fairly close to that spot right now, 

which is why I think we need to sort through this and make sure 

that our system of government is preserved as we continue to preserve the safety of this Nation. I think that’s the seriousness of 

what we are doing here today. 

So I just have a couple of questions. 

Mr. Ashcroft, I appreciate your willingness to be here and the 

light that you are shedding on these important issues. 

On the withdrawal of the interrogation memos, both the August 

1, 2002, memo and the March 14, 2003, memo on interrogations 

were withdrawn by the Department of Justice while you were the 

Attorney General. In accordance with your testimony, Jack Goldsmith wrote that you were fully supportive of his judgment that 

these memos needed to be withdrawn and corrected. 

Can you describe your decision to support Mr. Goldsmith on this? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. You know, when I said I approved the issuance 

of the memos, I relied on the experts in the Department. 

And let me just say for a moment that John Yoo is a noted expert in national security, and he is a person of incredible intelligence and is an outstanding person who wants to serve America 

and, I thought, served America in good faith. And we accepted the 

judgment of the Department reviews and all. 

But it became apparent, when further examination of those opinions was made by others in another time frame and at a subsequent time, that there were matters of concern that they brought 

to my attention. And it was not a hard decision for me. My philosophy is that if we have done something that we can improve, you 

know, why would we not want to improve it? Why would we not 

want to adjust it? 

And let me just say this, that when it was brought to me that 

there were matters of concern that related to the appropriateness 

of the analysis and, secondly, that related to the scope of the opinion itself, my own—and I am, kind of, conjecturing here a little 

bit—my way of looking at it would be just to make sure this wasn’t 

one attorney picking at another attorney. As you well know, attorneys can pick at each other pretty—— 

Ms. LOFGREN. We have seen that. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. We’ve restrained ourselves so far here. 

But once I satisfied myself that these were concerns that were 

not just isolated and were not part of one-upsmanship by attorneys, 

I said, ‘‘Any time this Department has the ability to improve what 

it is doing, by way of giving advice or counsel to the executive 

branch, we owe it to the President, we owe it to America, we owe 

it to ourselves to make sure we do the best job possible.’’ 

With that in mind, it wasn’t a hard decision for me when they 

came to me and I came to the conclusion that these were genuine 

concerns: Get about the business of correcting it. 

Ms. LOFGREN. Let me just mention, I certainly don’t question Mr. 

Yoo’s patriotism or his love of country. I do question his legal analysis. I mean, there seems to be, you know, the Constitution and the 

40 

Constitution as Mr. Yoo thinks it should be, and the two are remarkably different. 

But I want to get to the FBI’s role on this. As you know, the DOJ 

Inspector General recently released a report. And, to summarize, I 

mean, the FBI was very concerned about what was going on at 

Gitmo and, in fact, would not participate. 

And I am wondering, I mean, these are people who know interrogation, and whether their lack of participation because of their concern has really led to a situation where we are less safe because 

we are missing their expertise. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. First of all, I don’t think that is the case. 

Ms. LOFGREN. You mean the Inspector General is wrong? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No. No. I think that it’s fair to say that the report 

can be—I have no reason to quarrel with the report. 

Different cultures and different bureaucracies of the American 

Government handle things in different ways. And I think it has already been alluded to on the panel that everybody seems to think 

his way is the best way. 

I think the Congress of the United States, for example, has been 

reluctant to extend to the CIA the ability to operate domestically, 

because we know that they operate worldwide and they are accustomed to a different set of rules. Sort of, when in Rome, do as the 

Romans do. I don’t mean to say anything about the Italians, but 

just that they operate in a variety of forums. 

Now, the point that I would make, the FBI has a tradition and 

culture of being involved in Article 3 court proceedings, where what 

it does is done in a way that is consistent with what is expected 

for use in prosecutions and the like. So their approach to interrogations reflects that culture. But—— 

Ms. LOFGREN. If I may—my time is running out. I don’t mean 

to be rude and interrupt. But that really gets to the gist of it, 

whether this process has led to a situation where we are not going 

to be able to convict these people because of the prosecution—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, you know, very frankly, people that we 

intercept on the battlefield are not people frequently that we expect 

to convict. They were out there fighting. What we want to interrogate them for is not so we can try them someday. We expect to detain them for the pendency of the battle and then to release them 

when the war is over. 

The value of the interrogation is to provide the basis for prevention, and especially in the modern world, where lethality of weaponry is so robust, so that if you wait and try to penalize someone 

after an event, you have really taken a super risk, especially when 

al-Qaeda has an express desire to gain nuclear and chemical and 

other weapons. 

So the CIA may tend more toward a culture which is preventionoriented. One of the things we hoped to do at the FBI was to bring 

prevention to the top of our list of priorities. That is what I hoped 

to do. Not that we would abandon our commitment to the Article 

3 processes, but our exclusive effort at intelligence is not designed 

to bring evidence to Article 3 courts; it is designed to prevent damage to the country. 

Mr. CONYERS. Bob Goodlatte, the Ranking Member of Agriculture, distinguished Member of Judiciary. 

41 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

And I want to thank all of our witnesses for their contributions 

here today. 

I would like to follow up on the questions of my colleagues, Mr. 

Scott of Virginia and Ms. Lofgren of California, Attorney General 

Ashcroft. 

Congressman Scott asked and you affirmed that torture is illegal 

and it is a violation of the law under all circumstances. Then he 

started moving in the direction of what constitutes torture, citing 

his specific example, waterboarding. And I think therein lies the 

crux of the problem that we have to look at here today. 

And that is, if you attempt to define that, the McCain amendment refers you to the Constitution. So if you look at the Constitution to determine what constitutes torture, you are then looking at 

court decisions interpreting various circumstances under which torture has been alleged throughout our judicial history. And what 

you find is that the courts have a general standard that torture 

constitutes what shocks the conscience. 

Now, I can see and I think many can see that what shocks the 

conscience under one circumstance, taking somebody off the street 

under some minor charge and conducting certain activities, might 

be very different than under circumstances where somebody is a 

known terrorist, known to have been involved in a particular activity and may have extraordinarily valuable information and information that, under the circumstances following 9/11, we might 

have felt a need to gather very promptly. 

So I would like to ask you to comment on that. And then I am 

going to ask Mr. Dellinger a follow-up question about that, as well. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, the question you have asked, Congressman 

Goodlatte, is one that relates to the amendments in the torture 

framework of statutory prohibition that you have enacted since I 

have left office. And it does, I think, make reference to the kinds 

of language that appear under the—I believe it’s the eighth amendment that prevents cruel and—— 

Mr. Goodlatte. Unusual punishment. 

Mr. Ashcroft.—unusual punishment. And so there is a different 

body of law and there is a different body of analysis and reasoning 

that is now available. And I think that makes our understanding 

a little bit clearer. 

And, as Mr. Wittes has indicated, we need clearer definitions 

here. One of the problems that we had at the Department of Justice was that the severe pain standard for torture was just not very 

clear; it was hard to define. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Well, in light of that, let me ask you this question, in following up on what Ms. Lofgren asked. And that is, looking back now, to the best of your knowledge, under the circumstances at the time and the information available to you, do 

you believe that any memo that your Department provided the 

President on interrogation techniques contained legal advice that 

was inaccurate? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The conclusions of all the memos were, I believe, 

accurate conclusions. There was some of the reasoning which is of 

arguable appropriateness, and we thought that we would be best 

served and the Nation would be best served if that was withdrawn. 

42 

But the Attorney General himself, as short a time ago as last 

week, I believe, and the Office of Legal Counsel several times in 

the last 5 years, according to its leader, Mr. Bradbury, has indicated that they have gone back over and, applying the reasoning 

and analysis of the second memo, have indicated that all of the 

conclusions reached in the first memo relating to enhanced interrogation would be acceptable under the second memo. 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you. 

Now, let me ask Mr. Dellinger whether or not it’s easy to define 

‘‘torture.’’ 

Mr. DELLINGER. No, except that I think the definitions reached 

and the—it may not be easy to affirmatively define what is not torture. But, certainly, the techniques approved in the 2003 memo 

would seem, to me, clearly to be within the category of torture. 

That is—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Can you give us a framework of that? Can you 

state what you think torture would be that would allow those 

things to, as you say, clearly fit into that framework? 

Mr. DELLINGER. That is beyond my, sort of, competency to do 

here, to affirmatively define it. Someone once said it’s easier to 

identify instances of injustice than it is to define justice, and so it 

is here. But—— 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Do you agree with the line of thought that is included in the Supreme Court cases that uses a standard that 

‘‘shocks the conscience’’ as being a measure of what constitutes torture? 

Mr. DELLINGER. No, because I think the standards are different 

from that. 

And let me give you one particular example. The 2002 memorandum says that something is not torture if it is not specifically 

intended to inflict pain; that is, if it’s intended to gain information. 

And that would simply exclude virtually any technique that you’re 

using to gain information from the definition of ‘‘torture.’’ 

And it also uses the definition of ‘‘severe pain’’ that is taken from 

a completely different context to indicate that it has to be something equivalent to that associated with organ failure or death. 

And I don’t think that anybody in the world has ever thought that 

the definition of ‘‘torture,’’ as enacted by this Congress as a prohibition, was so narrowly defined as it is in that memorandum 

Mr. GOODLATTE. I think my time has expired, Mr. Chairman. 

I would just add that, in other words, you are saying that that 

line of reasoning from the courts, that a definition of ‘‘torture’’ as 

something that shocks the conscious and, therefore, might be different under different circumstances, you do not agree with that 

being at least a part of how you would define ‘‘torture’’? 

Mr. DELLINGER. It may well be a part. I don’t think it is particularly helpful. And I certainly don’t think that the techniques approved by the 2003 memo are outside the definition of ‘‘torture.’’ 

Mr. GOODLATTE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CONYERS. The gentlelady from California, Maxine Waters, 

Chair of the Housing Subcommittee on Finance and distinguished 

Member of Judiciary. 

Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I certainly 

appreciate you holding this hearing today. 

43 

And I want to get back to a subject that has been in the papers 

consistently, and they may have already been touched upon or discussed here this morning. I was a little bit late coming in. And if 

so, our witnesses can just refer to their earlier testimony. 

I want to ask about, were there ever allegations of torture or 

other misconduct by U.S. personnel involved in interrogations that 

you, Mr. Ashcroft, considered to rise to the level as to justify a 

criminal investigation? 

I understand there has been some discussion, but I am not clear 

whether or not you feel that there was information that emerged 

in these interrogations that really did rise to that level of a criminal investigation. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I’m not aware of any interrogation process that 

resulted in a request or in a situation that would have given rise 

to a basis for prosecution for torture. 

Ms. WATERS. Where you ever aware that U.S. personnel were indeed involved with waterboarding? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I have been aware of that. 

Ms. WATERS. How did you become aware of this? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I’m not sure. I know that I have become aware 

of it as a result of this discussion in areas before this Committee 

and the like. But I’m not sure at what other points. And if I had 

received information, it probably would have been in classified settings that I couldn’t discuss. 

Ms. WATERS. So you believe that the information that you received about waterboarding was not in a setting—but where you 

were being advised, you were being told that, based on news reports, other reports, that some very serious was going on and described to you in detail, perhaps? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I believe that a report of waterboarding would be 

serious, but I do not believe it would define torture. The Department of Justice has consistently—when I say the word 

‘‘waterboarding,’’ I mean waterboarding as defined and described 

by the CIA in its descriptions. And the Department of Justice has, 

on a consistent basis over the last half-dozen years or so, over and 

over again in its evaluations, come to the conclusion that, under 

the law in existence during my time as Attorney General, 

waterboarding did not constitute torture, if you say waterboarding 

as the CIA interrogation methods were described. 

So I could receive information about waterboarding. That’s clear 

that that was a possibility. But if I received information about 

waterboarding being conducted as the CIA had described it, the experts at the Department, who very carefully went over this material uniformly over the last half-dozen years, under the law in effect at that time, indicated to me that it was not a violation of the 

law. 

I am trying to be clear. 

Ms. WATERS. I understand what you are saying. And I suppose 

that I would like to explore just a moment whether or not, given 

those analyses, those explanations, those descriptions and what 

you have since learned about it, do you think that that advice was 

good advice, it was an accurate description of what was going on? 

Have you had second thoughts about it? 

44 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, let me just say this, that I believe that the 

conclusions of the memoranda, that concluded that as described by 

the CIA’s interrogation methods that waterboarding did not constitute torture, I think those are valid conclusions. 

I don’t think I could, under oath, say that I’ve never had a second thought about it. But when the Department has revisited over 

and over again, as it has testified according to the head of OLC, 

Mr. Bradbury, they have concluded on each occasion that it did not 

violate the laws enacted by the Congress, signed by the President, 

that prohibited torture. 

Ms. WATERS. Finally, if I just may ask, based on all of that information, those descriptions, your understanding, and the conclusions, if, in fact, these practices as they were identified in the reports were applied to American soldiers, do you think that that 

conclusion would be a good one? Or do you think that if these techniques were used on American soldiers, that they would be totally 

unacceptable and even criminal? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, my subscription to these memos and my belief that the law provides the basis for these memos persisted even 

in the presence of my son serving two tours of duty overseas in the 

Gulf area as a member of our Armed Forces. I know that his training included a number of activities that I think would be very, very 

difficult for any of us to sustain, including having to deal with evil 

chemistry and the like. 

But my job as Attorney General was to try and elicit from the 

experts and the best people in the Department definitions that 

comported with the statutes enacted by the Congress and the Constitution of the United States. And those statutes have consistently 

been interpreted so as to say, by the definitions, that 

waterboarding as described in the CIA’s request is not torture. 

Mr. CONYERS. The gentleman from Ohio, the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, Steve Chabot. 

Mr. CHABOT. I thank the Chairman for yielding. 

And welcome, General Ashcroft. Just a couple of questions. 

First of all, waterboarding has come up a couple of times this 

morning already. And we hear about it so much in the press and 

others; it’s as if this is a fairly routine thing that is done all the 

time. How many times has it actually occurred, to our knowledge, 

at this point? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t really have knowledge other than what I 

read in the newspapers, but my understanding is that it has been 

done three times. 

Mr. CHABOT. Three times. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Excuse me, as part of an interrogation process. 

There are other times people have done it as part of training our 

own military and to be resistant to and to understand what kind 

of techniques might be used on them. 

Mr. CHABOT. But in an actual interrogation environment, the 

three individuals you mentioned, what type of people were these? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, I think they were people that would be labeled as high-value detainees, people that we think might have significant information that could relate to the safety and security of 

the United States. 

45 

I think also it’s fair to say that generally in people who have that 

kind of information, members of al-Qaeda, they have been trained 

in resisting interrogation and they have been hardened both in 

their own—as I recall from reading their training manual, which 

I had a copy of, or translations of it, they are hardened in resisting 

interrogation and, of course, in accusing—whether or not their detainers do anything to them or not, always alleging abuse. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. 

And, secondly, the term ‘‘cruel and unusual punishment’’ has 

come up a couple of times. Do you know in advance what the Supreme Court is going to say or is likely to say in what is cruel and 

unusual punishment? 

An example that has come up recently is there are a number of 

States that believe that a child rapist who has committed an unspeakable crime should be subject to the highest penalty, which is 

the death penalty. A number of States have taken that posture. 

But the Supreme Court recently, on a 5-4 vote, decided no, that it 

is cruel and unusual punishment to execute somebody who has 

raped a child under the age of 12. For that reason, a number of 

us, because it is the only thing available to us, have introduced a 

constitutional amendment to reverse the court on that particular 

issue. 

But do you know in advance what the court is likely to say? And 

if not, what is your procedure that you undergo to make sure that 

you’re as closely as possible following the law as defined by the 

U.S. Supreme Court? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. That may seem like a simple question, but it’s 

not a simple question. 

When you’re trying to figure out what the law is, in a rule-of-law 

culture you should be able to go and find out what the courts have 

said in the past that that is what the law is. And that is why we 

were very successful. In the major terrorism cases, of the 12 judges 

at the Court of Appeals level, where they repair to the standard of 

what finding out what has been said previously on the law, 11 out 

of 12 judges said, the Justice Department has got this right. 

But you get to the Supreme Court, and the way our system is 

is that the Supreme Court is the court that, while it respects precedent, or at least it likes to allege that it does, it is free to abandon 

it if it so chooses. 

Now, it makes difficult, then—guessing where the Supreme 

Court might go is a lot harder than ascertaining where the Supreme Court has been. And this puts some tension into the law. 

It’s the way our system operates, and it puts some uncertainty 

into it. It’s one of the things that gives lawyers the space in which 

to argue. As you well know, what it does is it provide for the employment of lots of lawyers, because when things are uncertain, you 

have to have more and more advice. Unfortunately, when it’s uncertain, it shrinks freedom. 

Mr. CHABOT. General, not to interrupt you, but I am almost out 

of time. I had one more question I wanted to slip in. 

I had the opportunity to visit Guantanamo Bay on two separate 

occasions, the second time actually accompany the gentleman from 

New York, Mr. Nadler, and some of our colleagues, and Mr. 

Gohmert, Judge Gohmert also, and a few others. And I happened 

46 

to be, for 6 years, the Chairman of the Subcommittee on the Constitution, which Mr. Nadler is now, and so we wanted to see firsthand. 

We witnessed an interrogation that was going on. We were in another room over a closed-circuit TV. We also saw the type of medical care they were receiving. We learned that they gained about 

15 pounds per person, were getting better medical care than they 

ever had, that there was an arrow pointing to Mecca, and all the 

other types of things that were going on at that time. 

Relative to the interrogation that we viewed—and, of course, you 

weren’t with us—but is that typically what an interrogation is? It 

was a person essentially talking to another person in another 

Chair. 

Could you comment on the interrogations that were taking place 

there? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I suppose that’s the most frequent kind of interrogation. 

But I think one of the problems is to assume that there is a best 

way to interrogate. I mean, we are all different kinds of people. We 

all have different training. We all have different kind of heritage. 

For this Congress to say, ‘‘This is the only way we are going to interrogate; we are going to have a warm and fuzzy approach to everybody,’’ I think it would be to jeopardize the Nation’s security. 

I think what we need to do—yes, I’m in favor of rules that can 

provide the right parameters to what we do, but I think we need 

to have variety, because we are unrealistic if we don’t anticipate 

a variety of people that we’ll be up against. 

And if I just had a second, someone raised the issue of, well, we 

made it through the Second World War with one set of rules, and 

we made it through the Cold War with another set of rules; 

shouldn’t we just lock in on all those things and pretend the world 

is the same? It’s not. 

I offer to you that in the Second World War we didn’t have people dying on the streets of America. We had 3,000 that died in 

American streets on the first day of the war on terror that came 

to the United States—far more than we had in even in what was 

then a territory, not a State. 

So the lethality and the nature of weaponry and the fact that 

small groups of individuals can pose threats to the entire Nation, 

which wasn’t true before, shouldn’t lead us to narrow unduly our 

ability to defend America. 

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you. 

Yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. The distinguished gentleman from Florida, Attorney Bob Wexler. 

Mr. WEXLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

I first want to thank you, Chairman Conyers, for aggressively 

pursuing the issue of torture and the potentially abusive interrogation practices and detainee abuse practiced by this Administration. 

Simply put, in my view, torture is antithetical to who we are as 

Americans. And how we respond to allegations of the illegal use of 

torture defines the character of our Nation. 

47 

I also, Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Attorney General, want to commend you 

for your willingness to appear before this Committee. I think it 

says a lot about you in a positive way. 

I want to follow, Mr. Attorney General, Mr. Nadler’s question to 

you, if I could. If I understand it correctly, Mr. Nadler asked, are 

you aware whether Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded before August 

2002, and you answered you didn’t know. 

In your testimony, you had indicated that Mr. Zubaydah was 

captured in March 2002. The Department of Justice Inspector General report on the FBI’s role in the interrogation makes clear that 

he was interrogated beginning in March of that year. 

So the question I would like to offer you, was the interrogation 

of Mr. Zubaydah before August 2002, from March until August, 

done with or without the Department of Justice’s legal approval? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. I don’t know if we—it was done 

without the opinion, which was issued on the 1st of August. And 

I don’t know what other kinds of activity there would have been. 

Mr. WEXLER. So from March to August, did you offer any legal 

approval of the interrogation methods used at that time? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t have any recollection of doing so. 

Mr. WEXLER. And did anyone else at the Department of Justice? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

Mr. WEXLER. Did you provide anybody at the White House or the 

CIA or the Defense Department, prior to August in 2002, with any 

instructions or advice regarding waterboarding, hypothermia, or 

any enhanced interrogation techniques? Did you tell anybody at the 

White House, the Defense Department or the CIA that those actions do not violate the Anti-Torture Act or any other Federal 

criminal law? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. If I had a recollection about that, it would be 

classified communication and outside the guidelines of what I could 

answer. 

Mr. WEXLER. Did any other attorney, to your knowledge, at the 

Justice Department provide advice to those people prior to August 

2002? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think my answer should be the same as it was 

before. 

Mr. WEXLER. Okay. Let’s move on. 

News reports described detailed meetings in the White House 

Situation Room at which interrogation methods were discussed 

and, in some cases, apparently demonstrated. 

It is reported that you attended those meetings. Is that accurate? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Let me just say that I attended a lot of meetings 

in the Situation Room. I don’t know if I attended those meetings, 

but I attended a lot of meetings there. They were all classified, and 

I will not comment on the meetings. 

Mr. WEXLER. Well, two different accounts place you at the meetings. ABC News reports they have a quote from you saying, quote, 

‘‘History will not judge this kindly.’’ And journalist Jane Mayer 

quotes you as saying, quote, ‘‘History will not treat us kindly.’’ 

Did you make those statements about history and the judgment 

of history? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Any statement I did or did not make or would or 

would not make in a classified setting I would not comment on. 

48 

I am appalled that so much seems to be available from classified 

settings. This town leaks like a sieve. I think the easiest job in the 

world would be to be a spy against America. 

Mr. WEXLER. Well, yeah, I am appalled too. But from what we 

know, it was only yourself, Secretary Rice, the Secretary of Defense, the head of the FBI, the CIA that were in the rooms. That’s 

all, reportedly, and possibly the Vice President. So it’s not just ancillary people. 

Can you tell us who was in those meetings? Was the President 

in the meeting? Just a yes or no? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I will not tell you who was in the meetings. I will 

not comment on meetings that are classified. I think it would be 

for me to break the law to do so. And I really want to cooperate 

with the Committee, but I don’t want to break the law in doing so, 

and I don’t want to be invited to break the law before the Committee. 

Mr. WEXLER. I’m not asking you to break the law. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I’ve been making this statement on a regular 

basis. I just want you to know that the consistency of my answer 

is not my attempt to be obdurate or less than cooperative, but it 

is my persistence in wanting to respect the law. 

Mr. WEXLER. Sure. Apparently, Mr. Attorney General, you were 

specifically uncomfortable with what the principals at that meeting 

were doing or were being asked to do, to your credit. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Do you think I would want to break the law if 

I thought it was to my credit? 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. WEXLER. No. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, then I’m not going to answer. I mean, with 

all due respect, Congressman—— 

Mr. CONYERS. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

Mr. WEXLER. Thank you. 

Mr. CONYERS. The only ex-attorney general we have in the Congress is Dan Lungren. I am pleased to present him to you at this 

time. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Actually, Congressman Udall would be very upset 

for you to say that. 

But that brings up a point. I would just like to say that the enhanced stature with which you are now observed by Members of 

both sides of the aisle, I think, reflects on the fact that you performed well as Attorney General. 

And just a comment. I happen to think it is a good idea to have 

someone as Attorney General who is both a distinguished attorney 

and has submitted himself to the voters for different positions. I 

think that gives you a view of the Constitution that is, in some 

ways, enriched and, in some ways, helps guide you in your performance. And I want to thank you for your service. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Mr. Dellinger, I would like to ask you a question. 

You set up a scenario by which you think we ought to operate. 

That is, in certain circumstances, dire circumstances, the President 

ought to break the law by directing people to do something that 

would save American lives. 

49 

If that had been the case in World War II, should President Truman have submitted himself to the law after he ordered the dropping of the atomic bomb on two occasions? 

Mr. DELLINGER. I don’t know that that was unlawful, in violation 

of any statute. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Even though it ended up with the loss of a tremendous number of lives of that were innocent men, women and 

children who were not at that time in any way described as belligerents or combatants? 

Mr. DELLINGER. I think that may well have been within the 

scope of his authority. 

Mr. LUNGREN. I was reading ‘‘Crusade in Europe’’ by Eisenhower. And President Eisenhower mentioned that we had a circumstance in which we had some of our ships in the Mediterranean 

loaded with mustard gas, which we were forced to carry with us 

because of the uncertainty of German intentions in the use of the 

weapon. There was damage to this ship. Luckily, the wind was offshore, and the escaping gases caused no casualties. 

He said, ‘‘Had the wind been in the opposite direction, great disaster could well have resulted. It would have been indeed difficult 

to explain even though we manufactured and carried this material 

only for reprisal purposes in case of surprise action on the part of 

the enemy.’’ And the fact is, during the war against Germany, we 

had things such as mustard gas, which, as I understand, were illegal under the conventions after World War I. We carried it because 

we used it as a deterrent to the Germans. 

Had we used it in those circumstances under the direction of 

President Roosevelt—what I am trying to say is, is it practical to 

assume under those circumstances a President would order that action and then immediately turn himself over to the authorities? 

Mr. DELLINGER. No, because there are circumstances in which 

the President can constitutionally decline to comply with an act of 

Congress where it would impinge upon the core of his responsibility. 

Mr. LUNGREN. So the core of the responsibility of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in that circumstance was to protect this Nation 

against our enemy, Germany, correct? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Yes, but—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. And the core of the President of the United States 

at the present time, as least reflected in these actions, is to attempt 

to protect us against the terrorist threat that we have at the 

present time, correct? 

Mr. DELLINGER. That is correct. But—— 

Mr. LUNGREN. Okay. I am not trying to catch you in something. 

I am just trying to follow through with your recommendation. And 

what I am trying to suggestions these are not easy questions with 

easy answers. You have said that. 

And your prescription is to the President to direct those actions, 

not allowing criminal liability with respect to those who carry it 

out, but the President subjecting himself to that, because you said 

other people make greater sacrifices. 

That is in contrast to what Alan Dershowitz has suggested when 

he said, in an article in the Wall Street Journal, ‘‘This brings us 

to waterboarding. Michael Mukasey is absolutely correct as a matVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00053 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
50 

ter of constitutional law that the issue of waterboarding cannot be 

decided in the abstract. Under the prevailing precedence, the court 

must examine the nature of the governmental interest at stake and 

the degree to which the Government actions at issue shock the conscience and then decide on a case-by-case basis. In several cases involving actions at least as severe as waterboarding, courts have 

found no violations of due process.’’ 

I take it you would disagree with that. 

Mr. DELLINGER. I disagree with the proposition that we ought to 

engraft an exception for torture in certain circumstances into the 

law. And in the most extreme hypothetical, of someone who had information about a weapon in the middle of Manhattan, I thought 

the President should violate the law and take whatever consequences exist. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Okay. Let me ask you then very specifically, not 

dealing with thousands, but we have been told that, of the three 

people that have been waterboarded, one was Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and that he, after being waterboarded for some period of 

time, gave us information. 

One of the things he admitted to was personally murdering Wall 

Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. He said, ‘‘I decapitated with 

the blessed right hand the head of the American Jew Daniel Pearl 

in the city of Karachi, Pakistan.’’ 

So let me ask you this. Both morally and legally, if we knew beforehand that we could find out the location of Daniel Pearl by 

waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, if we had been able to 

capture him and thus stop Daniel Pearl from being beheaded, 

would that that be morally justifiable and would that be legal 

under the law? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Morally justifiable, probably yes. 

But it seems to me that—one of the things we are in serious danger of missing as a point here when we struggle to define what 

would be the morally correct thing to do about torture is that the 

2002 and 2003 memoranda which say whatever the Congress of the 

United States decided ought to be the law, the President can simply disregard. It is a breathtaking claim that the President can 

simply disregard whatever conclusion the Congress reached, enacted into law. And, moreover, the President could decide to keep 

that secret from the Congress and the American people. I don’t 

want us to lose sight of that. 

Mr. LUNGREN. In this case, if he had ordered that and we had 

saved Daniel Pearl, but then he revealed that to the American people, would that have been justifiable and legal? 

Mr. DELLINGER. There is much to be said for transparency because of the toxic combination of an assertion that anything the 

President could do when Congress has enacted, which I think is a 

broad range of authority, he can also do after Congress has chosen 

to make it a crime. And then the fact that we don’t know what 

laws the President is not complying with renders this Congress as 

if your laws are notes that you are putting in a bottle, never knowing whether anybody is going to find them or pay attention to them 

or not. And that is an issue that cuts across all of these areas of 

discussion. 

Mr. LUNGREN. Thank you very much. 

51 

Mr. CONYERS. The distinguished gentleman from Massachusetts, 

Mr. Delahunt. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. Dellinger, I think you just hit the gravamen of this whole 

discussion, which is that this is as much about the constitutional 

order and the relationship between the branches as it is about the 

specific issue of torture. And it is a question of whether this Congress will stand and accept the burden and the responsibility of, in 

a transparent fashion, enumerating what is acceptable under our 

law and what is unacceptable. I think that you made a significant 

contribution by responding to the question of the gentleman from 

California. 

I would also—I find interesting, not the hypothetical, but the 

constant reference to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and the premise 

that the information that has been generated from him was, as a 

proximate cause, a result of waterboarding, because my information contradicts that. It’s when the rapport effort was undertaken 

that information came from Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, and that 

he was resistant during the course of the efforts to secure information from him as a result of waterboarding. 

So I think it’s important to put that on the record so that we understand that waterboarding, from my information, was not effective in that case. 

So I just wanted to respond to my dear friend, the former attorney general of California. 

Mr. LUNGREN. I thank the former district attorney. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. I wasn’t in the room, but I understand that you 

stated that you believe that officials relying on the legal opinion 

issued by OLC should not or could not be subject to criminal prosecution if, at a later point in time, there was a decision by the relevant court that there was a criminal violation of American domestic law. 

Is that accurate? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Yes. And the only exception to that, in my view, 

would be where the legal opinion was a sham not issued in good 

faith, and the action officer knew that the opinion was a sham not 

offered in good faith. 

Mr. WITTES. I agree with that, I mean, not that you asked 

me—— 

Mr. DELAHUNT. We have such limited time. I would like to ask 

everybody. 

What I find very interesting here is, in your written testimony, 

sir, you reference the fact that Jack Goldsmith was extremely critical of the so-called torture memoranda prior to his assuming the 

lead in the OLC. You quote him as saying, it was deeply flawed, 

sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the President. 

To me, that is very damning. And I don’t know if I share your 

perspective in terms of exposing people who could very well be acting in good faith in reliance on these memoranda to criminal prosecution, but I would say it could very well be an open question. 

Mr. DELLINGER. If I might just say, the fact that I believe an 

OLC opinion would offer protection to officers who relied upon it 

52 

is why it is so terribly important to get the OLC opinions right and 

to—— 

Mr. DELAHUNT. One could hypothecate that any OLC opinion, no 

matter how deeply flawed, would give cover. I am not even talking 

about torture. I am talking about, you know, any conduct that 

amounted to criminal violations. If reliance could be demonstrated 

on an OLC opinion, you get a free pass, you know, a get-out-of-jail 

card, so to speak. 

Mr. DELLINGER. It also works the other way. This formerly obscure office, which I headed for a while, also cannot be overruled 

in a real sense by superior officers when they say that an action 

is unlawful. If I offered an opinion that it would be unlawful to do 

X and the Deputy Attorney General or the Attorney General, the 

President, overruled me and then did that, they would have no protection. If they ordered the legal opinion reversed and then relied 

upon it, there would be no reliance because they would know that 

the real legal opinion was you can’t do that. 

So the OLC’s authority is, in that sense, binding and very important both ways, which is why so many of us were so distressed by 

the extraordinarily shoddy quality of the 2002-2003 memoranda 

and their deeply flawed view of almost a Presidential authority beyond anything we know in the rule of law. 

Mr. DELAHUNT. I appreciate your embarrassment, but I also now 

find a Nation that’s embarrassed by that opinion. 

And I understand that my time has run out despite the fact I 

would love to ask some other questions, but I thank the Chair. 

Mr. CONYERS. The distinguished gentleman from Florida, Ric 

Keller. 

Mr. KELLER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. 

And, Mr. Dellinger, let me thank you for being here; and I respect your service and your opinions. 

Let me tell you the gist of what I am concerned about from your 

testimony; and I want to be fair to you, give you the chance to explain. It seems to me that the gist of your testimony is that it was 

okay for the Clinton Justice Department to authorize the killing of 

bin Laden, but it is not okay for the Bush administration to aggressively question terrorists who want to kill us, and that seems just 

a bit inconsistent to me. 

Go ahead. 

Mr. DELLINGER. I can answer that precisely. 

Mr. KELLER. Okay. 

Mr. DELLINGER. The reason is quite simple. It was not against— 

it would not have been against the law of the United States to assassinate bin Laden. It was against the law of the United States 

to engage in torture. Those are decisions that had been made by 

Congress. 

Mr. KELLER. Isn’t killing the ultimate torture? I mean, my God, 

what worse torture is there than killing somebody? 

Mr. DELLINGER. We kill enemy combatants all the time. That is 

very different than subjecting them to cruelty. And I happen to 

have a personal belief that the executive order forbidding assassinations, whenever it went into effect, is probably a mistake. But 

your question goes right to the heart of the matter. 

53 

Mr. KELLER. Well, let me just say to you—because we have a Supreme Court, and they just ruled that the death penalty was too 

cruel and unusual punishment for someone who raped an 8-yearold girl. And so if the death penalty is too cruel of an unusual punishment, how the hell is it okay to kill someone but not okay to aggressively question them? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Well, Osama bin Laden is not a United States 

citizen and not being detained in the United States under the custody of the United States; therefore, has no constitutional rights. 

Mr. KELLER. Right. So you agree with me that the Clinton Justice Department specifically authorized the killing of Osama bin 

Laden. 

Mr. DELLINGER. I am not privy to that, nor could I address it if 

I did. But I will answer the part of your question, which is, had 

we done so, I would have defended it. 

Mr. KELLER. I am privy to that and how I was, you know, in 

school during that Administration. Because I am looking at page 

132 of the 9/11 Commission report, and I will let you be privy to 

it now. 

Quote, the new memorandum would allow the killing of bin 

Laden. The Administration’s position was that, under the law of 

armed conflict, killing a person who posed an imminent threat to 

the United States would be an act of self-defense, not assassination. On Christmas Eve, 1998, Berger sent a final draft to President Clinton with an explanatory memo. The President approved 

the document. 

‘‘Because the White House considered this operation highly sensitive, only a tiny number of people knew about this memorandum 

of notification. A message from Tenet to CIA field agents directed 

them to communicate to the tribals the instructions authorized by 

the President of the United States that preferred that bin Laden 

and his lieutenants be captured, but if a successful capture operation was not feasible, the tribals were permitted to kill them.’’ 

Now you see the contradiction? You have testified with respect 

to questioning from my colleague from California, Mr. Lungren, 

that even with Khalid Sheikh Mohammad that is not an exceptional extraordinary circumstance that should allow us under the 

law to question him aggressively. Right? 

Mr. DELLINGER. The question—— 

Mr. KELLER. He is not a U.S. citizen. That was your concern before. He is not a U.S. citizen. 

Mr. DELLINGER. The question you are asking I think is a question directed to the Congress of the United States; and if there is 

a contradiction between our legal authority to assassinate persons 

who are foreign leaders and the prohibition on torture, that is to 

be resolved by Congress. 

My concern is that the claim in this—the fundamental flaw in 

these memoranda is they take the term ‘‘inherent authority of the 

President’’—that is, what a President could do in the absence of 

any prohibition by Congress, which I think is a broad area in the 

area of national defense, and then will say, once Congress has enacted a criminal prohibition, the President can still do it because 

it is, quote, within his, quote, inherent authority. That I think funVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00057 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
54 

damentally disregards the central role of Congress in establishing 

what the law is. 

Mr. KELLER. All right. My time has expired. 

Let me just one question to Mr. Wittes. Would you agree with 

me that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is a ticking time bomb and that 

to protect our citizens from further attack failing to get all the information available from him is simply not acceptable? 

Mr. WITTES. I say in the book that I don’t like the ticking time 

bomb example, because I think it is something of a—it is something of a fiction. You know, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in some 

ways is less than a ticking time bomb and in a very critical respect 

is more than the prototypical ticking time bomb. Less in the sense 

that, as best as I know at the time of his capture, we didn’t know 

of a bomb ticking. So, you know, it is not the situation where, you 

know, you capture somebody and you know there is a bomb planted 

in Manhattan and it is going to go off and you have got 3 hours 

and you can hear it in your mind going tick, tick, tick. 

On the other hand, you do, knowing who he is, knowing that he 

is, you know, to the extent that there are ongoing operations he is 

probably directing them, he is in some sense all the ticking time 

bombs. And I do think that it is, as a practical matter, sort of unacceptable as an option to not do what you are going to do to find 

out what he knows. 

And that is a different question from the question of what techniques are the optimal way to do that or the morally acceptable 

way to do that. 

Mr. KELLER. Well, look, I thank you both for being here. And I 

am sorry, Mr. Attorney General, that my time has expired, and I 

didn’t get a chance to ask you some questions. 

And, Mr. Chairman, thank you for indulging me, and I will yield 

back the balance of my time. 

Mr. CONYERS. The distinguished Chairwoman of the Administrative and Commercial Law Subcommittee of the Judiciary, Linda 

Sa ́nchez. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I have a number of questions that I am anxious to get through, 

so I am going to jump in and begin my questioning with Mr. 

Ashcroft. 

At any point during your tenure as Attorney General did the 

President himself approve or order either of the Office of Legislative Counsel August 1, 2002, OLC memoranda? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Pardon me, did the President order what? 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Approve or order either of the Office of Legislative 

Counsel August 1st, 2002, OLC memoranda? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. You don’t know? You didn’t discuss it with him? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t believe so. If I did, it would be privileged. 

I wouldn’t tell you about it. Because it is the responsibility of the— 

but in terms of communication to me, I would not share communication with you that the President made to me. I think it is my 

responsibility as his attorney, and it is the deliberative product 

that attorneys are supposed to be able to talk to the people they 

serve confidentially. 

55 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. But if the President ordered it, he would have spoken with more than just you about it. He would have spoken with 

the OLC about it. Is that not correct? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I can’t answer a hypothetical about what the 

President might or might not have done. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Do you—at any point during your tenure as Attorney General, did the President approve of the use of any of the tactics listed in either of the August 1st, 2002, OLC memorandums? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I can’t answer that question based on the fact 

that I believe what the President did in this area is classified information. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Do you know at any point during your tenure as 

Attorney General if the President himself approved the use of 

waterboarding either as a policy or as applied to a specific detainee? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I believe my previous answer covers that question. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Do you know if at any point during your tenure 

as Attorney General the President himself approved induced hypothermia or forced sleeplessness or stress positions in general as a 

policy or as applied specifically to any detainee? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My previous answer covers that question. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Do you know if the Vice President himself approved or ordered any of these tactics either as a policy or as applied to a specific detainee? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The answer is the same as the previous. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Did you ever advise the President or the Vice 

President that the approval or ordering of any of these tactics could 

constitute crimes under the War Crimes Act? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The answer to the question is the same as the 

one previous. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Did you ever advise the President or the Vice 

President that any of these tactics could constitute crimes under 

the Anti-Torture Act? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My communications with the President are privileged communications. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Did you ever advise the President or Vice President that the approval or ordering of any of these tactics could constitute crimes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for uniformed personnel? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My communications with the President are privileged communications. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Did you ever advise the President or the Vice 

President that the approval or ordering of any of these tactics could 

constitute crimes under the general Federal criminal laws of the 

United States? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My communications with the President were 

privileged communications. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. In March of 2004, then acting Attorney General 

James Comey refused to sign an order extending President Bush’s 

warrantless domestic spying program, quote, amid concerns about 

its legality and oversight, end quote. 

56 

Mr. Comey testified in May, 2007, that the White House tried to 

force you to overrule him, despite the fact that you were debilitated 

in a hospital with pancreatitis. 

Former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias, who was fired 

by the Administration for refusing to file questionable voter fraud 

charges, has stated that your refusal to support the warrantless 

wiretapping program led to your being, quote, unquote, pushed out 

of the Bush administration. Is Mr. Iglesias’ statement correct? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am trying to think of all the reasons that are 

appropriate for me to refuse to answer that question. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. I would sure be interested in knowing what they 

are. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am not a book writer, like so many other people 

are. I have written books, but they are not very interesting. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Was your departure entirely voluntary? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My departure was a decision of my own. It was 

a decision I made. It was voluntary. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Was it ever suggested that you should step down 

from that position? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Communications between me and those responsible for my opportunity to serve America as Attorney General are 

the subject of privilege, and I won’t make comments about them. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. One last question for you. In the June 24th IG 

OPR report on the politicized hiring in the Department honors program and summer law intern program found that in 2002 the involvement of political appointees in the hiring process was greatly 

expanded. As Attorney General, did you know that applicants for 

career positions at the Department were being screened for their 

political affiliation? Were you aware of that? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t have any recollection of an awareness of 

that. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. And you don’t—as to this day you were not informed of that? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know whether it has ever been mentioned 

to me. I—— 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. Have you read the IG report? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No, I have not. 

Ms. SA ́ NCHEZ. I highly suggest that you do. It might be a very 

eye-opening experience for you. 

I see that my time has expired. I yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. The distinguished gentleman from Indiana, Mike 

Pence. 

Mr. PENCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I want to apologize 

to you and to our distinguished panel for my tardiness. I was attending the funeral of a friend, Tony Snow, this morning. And I appreciate very much your written testimony and am grateful for 

your time. 

General Ashcroft, I would like to direct my questions to you in 

the time that I have. Thank you for being here today. More importantly, thank you for your service to the United States of America. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It was a privilege. 

Mr. PENCE. I must say to you I have been through many hearings on the topic of the day, policies of the Department of Justice 

and the decisions that were made in the immediate aftermath of 

57 

9/11. I want to concede that all of my thinking about that day is 

colored by the fact that I was here, like you were. I was standing 

on the Capitol grounds at 20 minutes after 10, which, as my wife 

and children and I paid respects at the now-under-construction memorial to flight 93 this summer, we did the math. And had Khalid 

Sheikh Mohammed had his way, I would be 7 years dead. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Yeah. 

Mr. PENCE. Of that I am convinced, but for the courage and sacrifice of those on that flight. 

And so, while legal arguments are fascinating to me, have been 

since law school, while semantic arguments, ticking time bomb and 

the like, interesting, I was here. And General, you were here that 

day. And I remember your service of stepping into the gap and 

your calm demeanor, and I don’t know that I have had the opportunity to thank you publicly for your steady hand at the tiller that 

day, but I thank you now. 

In the course of many of these hearings we have heard suggestions from witnesses in the academic world, authors and others, 

that many have believed that simply by asking terrorists nicely the 

United States can obtain the information that it needs to wage the 

war on terror and protect our country from the advent of another 

day like that day. Can you explain to this panel why it is that some 

terrorists do not respond to the so-called rapport-building approach, the noncoercive approach to questioning? 

And, secondly, not pulling you into specific methods and tactics 

that were approved and utilized—I am sure that has been well covered today—but rather how valuable was the information that we 

were able to extract from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others to 

prevent that kind of violence against this country in the intervening 7 years? 

So if you can speak to me about the value of those techniques 

and what we profited from. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I get a little bit emotional to have you describe 

where you were that day, because it brings that day back to me 

rather dramatically. 

The information is only valuable if you care about the lives of 

American citizens, and then it is extremely valuable. And the idea 

that all prisoners would respond to the same approaches is naive. 

The idea that we can arrive at a single way of interrogation, inflexible, would be totally absurd. And what is even more I think 

important is to understand that some detainees would respond to 

the rapport-building only after they had been shocked out of—I 

don’t mean to use the electric shock analogy—but shocked by some 

more aggressive techniques. So that techniques are not necessarily 

uniform or appropriate in one area or not in another or not even 

individual-specific. There has to be an expertise. 

That is why it is important that our people be well trained and 

that they have reasonable boundaries, and it is important that they 

know what the law says. And if I misspoke earlier, it is important 

that they have communicated and they should be able to rely on 

the protection of an opinion by a Department which says certain 

things are permissible, certain things aren’t. 

That is why I was so pleased when I reissued one opinion that 

was able to say that the conclusions remained intact. Because we 

58 

didn’t expose our people to additional jeopardy on account of that. 

That was very important to me, however we let the chips fall as 

they may on the reissuance. 

So, yes, it is very important to take very seriously and to understand in the context of reality. 

And Professor—I don’t know. Are you both professors? 

Mr. WITTES. I am not. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Pardon me, Mr. Wittes. 

The ticking time bomb may not be something we are pleased 

with, but I tell you we ought to think about it, and there may come 

a day when it is there. I think there was too much we didn’t think 

about prior to 2001. I wish I would have thought more carefully 

about terrorism prior to 2001. I think all of us need to think about 

these scenarios. 

And so let me just say that I am very grateful for the fact that 

we had people who were willing to use enhanced interrogation 

techniques, sometimes shouting, sometimes grabbing the shirt 

maybe of someone, sometimes going beyond that, within the limits 

of the law, to save lives. And I think that is—you know, it is not 

a sacrifice of liberty to protect it and to enhance it. 

Mr. CONYERS. Steve Cohen, the distinguished gentleman from 

Tennessee. 

Mr. COHEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I would like to follow up, General, with what you were saying 

about our concerns about the ticking time bomb and what we 

might have perceived and what might happen. 

Senator Graham in the 9/11 Commission Report makes clear 

that we had information about a possible airplane attack on this 

country or in this world by terrorists. Are you familiar with that? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am not sure what attack you are making reference to, but the President of the United States I think spoke 

openly about a proposed attack against the—what is it—the library 

towers in Los Angeles, I believe. 

Mr. COHEN. I believe what was quoted in the intelligence inquiry 

was that President Bush and his Administration had inaccurately 

said that it was a surprise, a bolt from the blue, that no one could 

have imagined such attack. That since no one could have envisioned a commercial aircraft as weapon of mass destruction, that 

no one could be held accountable. 

But the fact is the report showed that there was consideration 

by the FBI of a possible airplane attack, of a 747 being blown up 

over the Olympic stadium, or 747 being flown into the Olympic stadium, that Algerian terrorists in 1994 tried to fly an Air France 

plane into the Eiffel Tower, that there was another project to blow 

up 11 planes simultaneously and crash one into the Pentagon and 

one into the CIA. 

So isn’t the information clear that somebody should have been 

held responsible for 9/11 when that information was in the public 

knowledge? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t think so. 

Mr. COHEN. You don’t think that, with this information out 

there, that the Administration should have been held responsible? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, I think the responsibility of the Administration was to pursue and to prevent further terrorist attacks. There 

59 

were a number of reasons why what we sought to do to prevent the 

9/11 attack were unsuccessful. And thanks to the Congress and 

others, we were able to remediate a number of the circumstances, 

for instance, the wall that existed that kept information from being 

passed from the intelligence community to the law enforcement 

community. We find out that—— 

Mr. COHEN. All right. Let me ask you—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT [continuing]. We knew about—one of those communities knew about the existence of two of the terrorists in the 

country. The other community was looking for those terrorists but 

couldn’t get the information because of the wall, which the Patriot 

Act took down. And I think our responsibility is not to try and find 

somebody to blame for 9/11. Our responsibility is to try and prevent 9/11 from happening again. 

Mr. COHEN. Let me ask you this, General. There are torture laws 

that it is understood that the Bush administration has gone beyond. The memo that Jack Goldsmith gave you that you approved 

to change what Mr. Yoo and the Bybee proposal had that were 

contoured down. Do you know if the Bush administration has ever 

recommended that our torture laws be changed so they extended— 

so they come within the parameters that they would like to have 

them be? Or do they think it simply is within the inherent power 

of the Presidency to do what they want, regardless of what this 

Congress wants the law to be? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I hope you will let me answer this question. 

Mr. COHEN. I hope you will. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. First of all, the Bush administration has not engaged in activities, to my knowledge, that constitute torture under 

either of the memos. The constant and consistent representations 

of the Justice Department that recount reconsideration on a recurring basis of the law has indicated that, as the law stood prior to 

the amendments by the Congress, neither of the memos would 

have disallowed any of the activities in which the Administration 

has engaged. 

I am not in a position to talk about things that have been done 

with the law changed. So I just wanted to clarify that. 

Now the other part of your question has left my mind. 

Mr. COHEN. Let me go to a new one. You suggested that when 

the President—and let me read from your statement. As this Congress and the Nation now turn to reevaluate that work with the 

altered perception of—no, we are starting here. 

It is difficult to imagine an area in which the imperative to afford the President the benefit of genuine doubt is greater than with 

respect to his judgments as Commander in Chief as to how best to 

protect the lives and liberty—and I will question that in a 

minute—of the American people in the war on terror. When was 

there a benefit of the doubt given to the President? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, it is the policy of the Justice Department—— 

Mr. COHEN. Can you name me specific situations where you had 

to give him the benefit of the doubt? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. We always do. Whenever it is not—— 

Mr. COHEN. Sometimes there is not a doubt, though, correct? 

Sometimes there is. 

60 

Mr. ASHCROFT. And sometimes you just say no. 

Mr. COHEN. Well, Mr. Yoo. Let me ask you about Mr. Yoo. You 

called him Mr. Yes, did you not? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No, I did not. I don’t remember doing that. 

Mr. COHEN. Mr. Goldsmith, I think, suggested that you did. Mr. 

Yoo, how was he appointed? Was he a political appointment by you 

or did he precede your coming into the Justice Department? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think he came in after I came into the Justice 

Department. 

Mr. COHEN. And do you know if Vice President Cheney or Mr. 

Addington recommended him to you? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. 

Mr. COHEN. You don’t know. 

Let me ask you this. When Mr. Wexler was asking you some 

questions about statements attributed to you where history will not 

judge us kindly and history will not treat us kindly, you correctly 

refused to comment on things you said in hearings that were of a 

particular nature. I am not asking you to say what you said in 

those hearings and who said it. I am asking you now, with the benefit of retrospect, how do you think history will judge you and the 

Administration for what you did? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think history is already judging this Administration as being successful in the deterring and preventing additional terrorist acts. 

Mr. COHEN. How about upholding the Constitution and abiding 

by the law of the Nation? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am confident that the Constitution has been 

upheld, and it will continue to be upheld. 

Mr. COHEN. One last question. You said that you believe we have 

disrupted plots to hurt our liberty and hurt our country. Was one 

of those plots when Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card came to your hospital room? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. You know, this isn’t late night television, so your 

wink may not appear to everyone else. 

No, I don’t think that’s—let me make a comment on—there 

should be robust debate. If you take—and I am not in a position 

to recount, and wouldn’t, but say you take the reports as being 

true. I certainly wouldn’t call those people untruthful folks about 

what happened. 

You have a situation where there is people who have differing 

legal opinions, and eventually somebody has to decide whether they 

are going to side with the legal professionals or others. And the 

President comes down on the side of the Department of Justice according to all the accounts, no matter which one you believe. President comes down on the side of the Justice Department with the 

professionals there at the Department, the career people there at 

the Department. 

What is wrong with that picture? Eventually, you get to the right 

decision being made. That is something that I would expect a free 

society to involve vigorous debate, especially if you have got as 

many lawyers as we do in this country. You get a lot of debate, and 

you get controversy. You get the decision-maker finally to make the 

right decision. 

61 

You know, I am just right now next to standing up and singing 

the national anthem. I think that is the way the system ought to 

work. 

Pardon me. Mr. Chairman, I apologize. 

Mr. COHEN. I know my time has expired. 

Mr. CONYERS. Yes, it has. 

Mr. COHEN. So I will yield back the remainder of my time. 

Mr. CONYERS. Very good. 

The Chair is pleased to recognize Steve King of Iowa, distinguished gentleman of the Judiciary Committee. 

Mr. KING. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I want to thank the witnesses all for their testimony, and I 

would like to turn initially to—I am not sure whether to address 

Mr. Ashcroft as Governor or Senator or Attorney General. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. For you and me, it can be John and Steve. 

Mr. KING. Let’s get to that socially at a subsequent time. I would 

very much appreciate that. 

But I want to make that point, that the long continuum of your 

service to this country has stepped along on some of the highest 

standards and some of the most responsible positions that any individual could be called upon to serve this country; and I do regret 

some of the tone that you have been faced with here that does not 

reflect their understanding of your contribution to this country. 

And so, first, I would ask if you could quickly and briefly just 

bring this Committee and the folks that are watching on C-SPAN 

and in this room up to speed on this situation of the moving target 

of the law. What during your tenure changed specifically on how 

one interpreted the statute on torture? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, the statute on torture has never—there has 

never been a prosecution under the statute on torture. So when 

this Administration sought advice as to exactly how it could operate within the law and not violate it, there was not a lot of guidance out there for how it had previously been implemented. So an 

attempt was made by John Yoo and others in the OLC, Office of 

Legal Counsel, at the Department of Justice. 

That statute—pardon me, that opinion included an evaluation 

and was done in conjunction with an evaluation of techniques that 

all were ruled to be acceptable to the extent they did not violate, 

for al-Qaeda detainees maintained and detained outside the United 

States, the provisions of the U.S. statute regarding torture and the 

International Convention Against Torture. That was what they 

were designed to do. 

Mr. KING. If I could just summarize, it is pretty much encapsulated in the analogy that you gave of the 85-mile-an-hour speed 

limit versus 65-mile-an-hour car. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Yeah. 

Mr. KING. And I appreciate that. 

And then you said something earlier that I would like to reiterate. 

Guessing where the Supreme Court might go is a lot harder than 

determining where the Supreme Court has been. And yet you are 

caught in this crossfire here today, the blur of the effort between 

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ers have their staff do last night. And that is what I hear happening in this Committee. 

And so I am going to take you to a question that I think is actually a hard one, and it is one that may well illuminate this situation. And it comes from my analysis of this and not this but nearly 

everything that I deal with. 

I would just make this statement. 

In the end, I went back to 1802 and I read the Congressional 

Record on the debates on whether they could eliminate a couple of 

Federal judicial districts, a profound constitutional debate that 

took place in 1802 in this Congress. And I read that carefully, very 

thick, word for word, notes and highlights and all that. And I got 

through that, and I concluded that everything was political in 

1802. 

This was 2002, and now it is 2008, and I will submit to you that 

everything is political 206 years later. 

And then, with that being the framework for this question, when 

you analyze the legal implications of that statute and the controlling, limited amount of case law that was there and memoranda 

were produced and the two that are the matter of the subject here, 

did you do an analysis of the political implications at the time and 

did you really game this out to the scenario where we are today 

and anticipate that there might be a different majority in the 

House with a different Chairman of the Judiciary Committee and 

a different Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee, a different 

majority in the Senate, a different political scenario whereby 

maybe this war wouldn’t work as easy as some folks thought it 

would and now there would be people that were seeking to beat up 

on the Bush administration as a political tool and try to set the 

scenario for November elections? Did that all come into mind or 

were you just simply looking at this cleansed and sanitized from 

the political implications? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think, by and large, OLC has a tradition, which 

is to be respected, of looking at questions to try and figure out 

what the law is. And, obviously, when you have a moving target 

that comes with a Supreme Court that characterizes the law as organic and growing, and meaning it is subject to their adjustment, 

there are challenges in doing that. 

So—but I think when Mr. Dellinger was at OLC, which is earlier, 

and I don’t think Administrations really change that much in 

terms of the good-faith effort on the people of OLC. 

It is almost quasi-judicial. In some respects, I think it is less political than the courts from time to time appear to be. It is a desire 

to find out what does the law say and what can we ascertain from 

the previous rulings in this arena which would inform our judgment? 

One of the problems—and they are related to the law regarding 

torture—is there hadn’t been previous rulings. And there still 

haven’t been. And it is one of the reasons it has been in the interests of this country to have the Congress be more active in this 

area and to enact things subsequent to this time. But I believe that 

the conclusions to which those opinions came are both worthy of respect. 

63 

Mr. KING. I thank you for your answer, and I just ask if the 

Chair if I could indulge in one brief follow-up question on this. 

If you had had the political looking glass that would allow you 

to look into the future, to where we are today, how might you then 

go back and make some different decisions along the way? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, I think the opinion would have been written 

so that I didn’t have the responsibility of asking that it be adjusted. 

But I never thought I was—entered the office thinking I could be 

perfect, we wouldn’t have to make any corrections. My intention is, 

when you need a correction, make it. That is the best I can do. 

The second thing is I don’t think I would make any basic fundamental difference. This opinion has been discussed, and there has 

been numerous allegations that it is wrong. I don’t believe it to be 

wrong, and I believe the careful analysis that persists on a recurrent basis sustains it. 

I differ with Mr. Dellinger on whether these things constitute 

torture. He could be right. I could be wrong. That is not a threat 

to me. I have been wrong enough times to understand that it can 

happen, and I don’t know whether he has or not. But we will have 

those differences. 

Mr. KING. I thank the General and thank the Chairman, and I 

yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. The distinguished gentlelady from Houston, Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on Transportation with the Homeland 

Security Commission, and a distinguished Member of this Committee, Sheila Jackson Lee. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Chairman, thank you so very much, as well 

to the Ranking Member, to General Ashcroft. It is certainly good 

to see you, as it is it to see the other witnesses. 

I believe one of the witnesses—and forgive me for being delayed. 

We were in a hearing dealing with Homeland Security with Secretary Chertoff, and I thank you for the indulgence. 

But I understand one of the witnesses said—and it seems that 

you might have said that yourself—that we should be looking at 

going forward. I think you said that we should—or you would be 

willing to correct what was done and go forward. And you raised 

a good premise. 

And I think it is also important to acknowledge the Constitution, 

which details Founding Fathers’ wisdom, probably assisted by 

founding women who were giving them some of the answers, that 

we had three branches of government and there was a checks and 

balance and there was an oversight. So I, frankly, believe it is crucial to be able to go forward, to be reminded of one’s past. And we 

have been consistently troubled by some of the issues that have occurred, some after your tenure. So let me start with some pointed, 

probably narrow questions and maybe yes or no answers. 

Should an independent prosecutor be appointed to evaluate the 

missteps of the Administration as relates to the Iraq war? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. What power should Congress exercise in the 

future to ensure that the President does not overstep the authority? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think the Congress has the responsibility to 

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64 

zens. The Congress, obviously, has some limits on what it should 

do. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. So, General, if I might—finish your sentence. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. For example, if the Congress sought to pass a law 

saying the President is not the Commander in Chief, which the 

Constitution says the President is the Commander in Chief and 

shall be, it would be an unconstitutional enactment, even if the 

President signed it. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And I agree with you. If I might—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. So there are limits. There are limits on the Congress. There are limits on the President. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. The good news is no Congress has ever passed 

that kind of law. 

I think Congress has questioned the abuse of power. Mr. 

Dellinger, that is the point that I am getting at. I am not a fan 

of the special prosecutor, not necessarily independent prosecutor, 

but does Congress have an obligation to assess missteps that have 

occurred? 

For example, many of us characterize the Iraq war as a misstep 

in spite of the statutory—alleged statutory authority. I have legislation that said that, having met all of the standards that was in 

that 2002 resolution, in fact, the President’s powers have expired. 

Obviously, he is the Commander in Chief. But do we have that responsibility to oversee missteps and to hold back the abuse of 

power? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Certainly. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. And so how would you give us the road map 

to do so? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Well, I think that the series of hearings that this 

Committee has had afford that ventilation, insofar as possible, of 

what has happened. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Could we use a vehicle such as an independent prosecutor? 

Mr. DELLINGER. I have long shared the view of the dissenting 

opinion in the Act upholding the special prosecutor that I think 

they are generally unwise. One in very special circumstances, for 

example, to bring actions perhaps involving contempt of Congress, 

if an Administration would not bring those to the court, is something that might well be worth considering. 

Generally, generally, I am hesitant to have it—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Many scholars are. 

In general then, any punitive measures? You consider holding 

hearings and, of course, potential of processes that are allowed by 

the Constitution? I am not suggesting you are supporting impeachment but processes allowed by the Constitution. Is that what you 

would adhere to? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Sure. Sure. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Let me go quickly to the General and just try 

to go back to this troubled hospital room. And I know the limitations, but would you share with us what you remember of now this 

widely known visit to the hospital room in March of 2004—I am 

delighted for your recovery—with White House Counsel—then 

White House Counsel Gonzales and Andrew Card? Can you describe your condition at the time? 

65 

There is a recounting by Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey 

that mentions that when they came to you—and, by the way, it is 

on the record that there is some relation to the torture memo of 

sorts. But when they came to you that you looked at whatever the 

document was, and you rose from the pillow and said something 

very direct and seemingly harsh. Maybe you rejected the idea of 

torture or whatever dastardly memo was there. Can you recall the 

facts or to the best of your ability, General? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I can recall the facts. 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. All right, General. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. My health records I consider to be private—— 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. I do, too. 

Mr. ASHCROFT [continuing]. And my communications to the members of the Administration regarding legal matters and deliberations I consider to be private. And, for that reason, while I don’t 

want to argue with people who have made representations of what 

happened, I am not going to try and recount what happened. 

I was in a rather—I had been in intensive care for about a week, 

and the way they treated me was—my condition was not to give 

me food or drink. So I was both thirsty and hungry. So I might 

have been grouchy. Who knows? 

Ms. JACKSON LEE. Mr. Chairman, let me just conclude by saying 

we have had hearings before that have documented the fact that 

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card was in the room, and we have had 

hearings that have alluded very carefully that they were carrying 

a memo dealing with the torture issue, and that this might have 

been one living example of a man who was both dehydrated and 

without food, an excessive abuse of power. And I think that we are 

warranted in this hearing and as well warranted in going further 

in determining the abuse of power that may have occurred on actions by the individuals in this Administration. 

Mr. Chairman, I yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. I am pleased now to recognize the distinguished 

gentleman from California, Darrell Issa. 

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

General, good to see you again. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you. 

Mr. ISSA. It is sort of amazing that, as a Member of the Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, I have actually never heard 

any allegation of any detainee being denied food or water for a 

week. It is clear—it is clear that we treated our hospital patients 

at times worse than we do people with al-Qaeda. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. What’s more, they were poking needles into me 

all the time. 

Mr. ISSA. Clearly, we would never do that, either. 

General Ashcroft, a lot of people here want to relive the events 

of Speaker Pelosi, Jane Harman and others being told about the 

enhanced interrogation and saying and doing nothing about it, not 

even sending an opposing letter or minority opinion in a classified 

setting, and now they want to say this was heinous torture. I think 

that is really the scandal that we are dealing with here today, is 

that you can’t be informed and then later on pretend like you are 

shocked. 

66 

But, having said that, I want to have something good come out 

of this experience. I, for one, as a Member of the Committee, have 

concerns that the current law that would describe in detail, would 

require the President to avail this information in detail is often 

limited to just the Speaker, majority and minority members of the 

HPSCI and SSCI. 

From your experience, and you have the luxury—and maybe it 

is not a luxury. You paid heavily for it. But, you know, you have 

been in so many parts of government, including, obviously, appreciating the House and Senate, would it be good for the Congress 

to look at more broadly—insisting that more broadly disseminated 

information to cleared personnel, both staff and Members, so that 

we wouldn’t have just X Members on the Republican side and X 

Members on the Democratic side that are a very small group, you 

know—— 

And I have some sympathy for the fact that Speaker Pelosi may 

not have been the one who could determine what torture was, and 

she may have just seen this as less than she now sees it when 

more people know about it. 

So my question to you is, should the House for future Administrations begin looking at expanding the information pool? 

And would you agree that that is constitutionally, with the advice and consent—sometimes the consent the Administration debates—and this would be for both you and Mr. Dellinger—the advice portion, shouldn’t we expand that to make sure that we have 

a large enough pool in the future who were informed who later on 

have to admit they were informed and therefore are part of the 

broad conspiracy, to the extent there is one? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. This is a very interesting idea, but it has got its 

plusses and minuses. 

With classified matters, when the safety of the Nation is at 

stake, anytime you expand the pool of individuals who are made 

aware of something, you elevate the risks of its disclosure. And the 

risks of disclosure can make a big difference for things like methods of interrogation, because people are trained to resist various 

methods of interrogation once they are known. 

And in all deference to both the House and the Senate—and I 

served in the Senate, had the privilege of being there for 6 years. 

You weren’t here earlier when I said the easiest job in the world 

might be to be a spy in Washington, because information just— 

classified and otherwise—just keeps pouring out of this place. 

I remember one briefing, even before an Intelligence Committee—and I won’t get more specific than that—that by the time 

the Committee meeting was over the press knew what was said in 

the meeting. It turns out that there had been a break taken midway through the meeting. 

So we have this tension between the protection of America that 

is necessary with limiting information and what would obviously I 

think be very helpful, as what you suggest. 

Mr. ISSA. Let me give a quick follow-up before the time expires. 

If we were as a body to take the measure of holding our own people accountable, make them eligible for criminal prosecution, those 

who get the select information also make them do what the CIA 

and other groups do, submit to polygraph, if we were to discipline 

67 

ourselves, would it then be reasonable to insist that we be treated 

at a peer level to the highest level of people within an Administration? 

I know that is a tough hypothetical, but I ask you because this 

is something we would have to do. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think that is a very—it changes the equation 

if there could be more responsibility if it is successful. There is absolutely no reason, in my judgment, that we wouldn’t want to have 

more buy-in by the Congress, the leadership of the country in 

whatever we are doing. It is valuable. It gives you greater strength. 

It gives you the opportunity to be more successful. And I think that 

is where you are going. 

Mr. ISSA. It is. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. How do you provide a basis for sharing this understanding? And if it can be done without additional risks, I think 

it is something well worth considering. 

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, thank you for your indulgence, and 

hopefully we can work on a bipartisan basis to facilitate that happening in the next Administration. 

Mr. CONYERS. Thank you for your idea. 

The Chair recognizes, finally, a former magistrate and distinguished Member of this Committee, Hank Johnson of Georgia. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and thank you, witnesses, for appearing today. 

And I would just like to comment that, Attorney General 

Ashcroft, you have served with distinction, both as an attorney and 

as a Governor, Senator and, finally, as Attorney General. 

And as Attorney General—and, by the way, I really respect you 

as a formidable witness. I think you are probably the most formidable witness that I have experienced during my short tenure as 

a Member of this Committee. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. This is going to be a pretty rough question. This 

is not a buildup for a good-bye. 

Mr. JOHNSON. But now, as Attorney General, you were the President’s senior law enforcement officer, were you not? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think it would be fair to say that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And in that capacity then as senior law enforcement officer, you supervised the FBI? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The FBI is under the Justice Department. 

Now, the Director of the FBI is an independently appointed—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. I understand that. 

Mr. ASHCROFT [continuing]. For a 10-year term. 

Mr. JOHNSON. But you supervised—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Yes, I did. And I was in the FBI every single day 

after 9/11, and most of them before then. 

Mr. JOHNSON. And you also oversaw terrorism prosecutions nationwide, correct? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The U.S. Attorneys answer to the Attorney General—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. Yes. 

Mr. ASHCROFT [continuing]. Since about 1870. 

Mr. JOHNSON. So you would agree that you oversaw terrorism 

prosecutions nationwide? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Yes, sir. 

68 

Mr. JOHNSON. So therefore your position has always been that 

the Department of Justice would have to have a voice in the military tribunal process to try terrorism suspects. Is that correct? 

That would have been your opinion? Yes or no. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I had an interest in that. Not that I had the right 

to insist that I have a voice. 

Mr. JOHNSON. But you felt strongly that the Office of the Attorney General—being the senior law enforcement officer, you, and 

you overseeing the activities of the FBI and the terrorism prosecutions, that your office should have a voice in the military tribunal 

process. Is that a fair—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think there are some other things that are important. One, the military tribunals do not try criminal violations. 

Mr. JOHNSON. You are going a little bit afar of the question I am 

asking. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. No, I am not. Military tribunals try war crimes, 

and the Attorney General has no authority to try war crimes. He 

deals with the laws enacted by Congress. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, let me take it in this direction then. 

Press reports describe a heated meeting in November of 2001 between yourself and Vice President Cheney on the subject of military tribunals for terrorism suspects. And, in particular, it was reported that you were upset because, without your knowledge, Mr. 

Yoo, who was your subordinate, had advocated keeping the Department of Justice out of the process of trying terrorists. Is that true? 

Is it true? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Is it true that there was a meeting? Is it true—— 

Mr. JOHNSON. That you were upset because—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t recollect. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Because without your knowledge—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t recollect that. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Well, is it true without your knowledge Mr. Yoo 

was advocating keeping the Department of Justice out of the process of trying terrorists? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. I don’t know. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Now, Mr. Yoo was dealing with the White House 

and/or the office of the Vice President directly and without your 

knowledge about his opinions with respect to whether or not the 

Department of Justice should be included in that process. Is that 

true? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am aware of those reports, and there were individuals in the Department who were concerned. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Are the reports true? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. There were individuals in the Department who 

came to me and expressed concerns that we would make sure that 

we always maintained the independence and detachment that 

would serve the President best with legal advice. 

Mr. JOHNSON. Thank you. My time has expired. I will say that 

history will judge you differently than it will judge your successor. 

And I appreciate it. Thank you very much. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Thank you. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Committee will stand in recess for two short 

votes, and we will resume immediately thereafter. 

[Recess.] 

69 

[1:25 p.m.] 

Mr. CONYERS. The Committee will come to order. The Chair recognizes the distinguished gentleman from Ohio, Jim Jordan. 

Mr. JORDAN. Let me thank our witnesses as well. I know they 

have been here several hours and done a tremendous job. I will 

start with the Attorney General. I want to give you a chance to 

talk about this respect issue that has been raised. I think Mr. 

Dellinger in his opening comments talked about a country respected by the world. The Subcommittee Chairman, Representative 

Nadler, and I am quoting from a New York Times story a couple 

of weeks ago, said that as a result of the harsh interrogations, ‘‘the 

reputation of this Nation and our standing as a leading exponent 

of human rights and human dignity has been seriously damaged.’’ 

I would like your thoughts on that. And I guess I want to give 

it a little context, too. When I hear statements like that, I think 

about somehow they have forgotten all the good things our country 

does. I think they forget about the relief when there is a disaster 

around the world, helping African nations with AIDS, malaria, 

what we did with the tsunami relief effort a few years ago. 

Again, just your thoughts on those statements and activities that 

the Justice Department was involved with over the last several 

years. 

We will start with General Ashcroft. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. First of all, I am concerned and care about, I 

guess that is the right word. But I do care about how we are 

viewed abroad. I do believe, as Ronald Reagan said, that we are a 

city set on a hill, that we stand for something. 

But I also believe that there are forces afoot in the world that 

are against what we stand for. They don’t believe in the freedom 

we believe in and they believe in what I call imposition, that they 

want to impose their religion, impose their views on other people, 

and they are willing not to offer it in the marketplace but to impose it by terror. They seek to force people to their view. 

And I think we have to resist them. And in doing so, whenever 

you fight for what you believe in, there is a risk that someone will 

misinterpret what you are doing. The risk is enhanced and is expanded when you may be misrepresented in what you are doing. 

The suggestion, with the reckless labeling of enhanced interrogation techniques, that they are automatically torture, does little to 

help our image overseas, in spite of the fact that the best legal 

minds I know that have looked at this very carefully have concluded that it is not torture. 

With that in mind, I think we have to defend ourselves and we 

have to represent and defend freedom as aggressively as we can, 

and we should do what we can to make sure that we don’t unduly 

besmirch the representation of the United States by recklessly 

charging that the officials of the United States are engaged in activities in which they are not engaged. 

So my own view is that we have to do what is right. That is the 

first responsibility we have. The second responsibility we have is, 

having done what is right, we have to make sure we do our best 

to market it so that the world doesn’t misinterpret it and we don’t 

allow people to take what we have done which is right and try and 

portray it as being criminal. 

70 

Mr. JORDAN. Do you believe, Mr. Wittes, that there are some individuals out there who are so—terrorists who are so evil that all 

the great things that our country does, there is nothing that is 

going to diminish the hatred they have for the United States? 

Mr. WITTES. I have no doubt of that. 

Mr. JORDAN. Mr. Dellinger, you made a comment in your opening 

statement. I feel like I should give you a chance to respond to the 

general question about respect. Go ahead. 

Mr. DELLINGER. I think that the pictures from Abu Ghraib have 

hurt our reputation in the world, whatever term one uses to describe that. I also agree with you that there are people who would 

hate the U.S. regardless of what we did. 

Mr. WITTES. May I? I think in some ways the reputational question is more salient less with respect to how much the terrorists 

hate us than to how wide an audience they have for that hatred. 

I think to the extent that we have a set of laws that we are proud 

of, that we observe meticulously, and that we are not sort of constantly chafing at and finding ways to stress, we put a better face 

to the people who the terrorists are talking to. 

But I wouldn’t frame it as how the terrorists feel about it. These 

are not people that we are trying to impress, really. 

Mr. JORDAN. I understand. Thank you, Chairman. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chair is proud to recognize Brad Sherman, a 

distinguished Member of the Committee from California. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would comment that 

there are tens of millions of people who are going to hate us even 

if we live up to our highest standards. But I agree with the witness 

that the audience for that hatred would be contracted a bit if we 

lived up to our highest standards. 

General Ashcroft in his book the Terror Presidency, former OLC 

Chief Jack Goldsmith said this about OLC Deputy John Yoo: In 

practice, Yoo worked for Gonzalez, who at that time was White 

House Counsel. He took his instructions mainly from Gonzalez, and 

at times gave Gonzalez opinions and verbal advice without running 

the matters by his superiors in the Department of Justice. Actually, the quote says, ‘‘without fully running the matters by the Attorney General.’’ 

This arrangement was an understandable affront to you, who 

worried about the advice Yoo was providing in the Attorney General’s name. So when the White House wanted to elevate Yoo to 

lead the office of OLC, you put your foot down and vetoed Yoo for 

the job. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Sounds like who’s on first. 

Mr. SHERMAN. I know that. Let me rephrase that. Ashcroft put 

his foot down and vetoed Mr. Yoo for the job. Is that accurate? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Let me say what I can say here. I think it is very 

important, and this is consistent with the traditions and responsibility of OLC to have independent, detached, fully vetted advice 

provided by the OLC, the Office of Legal Counsel, to the President 

of the United States. 

During this time in the Justice Department there were key individuals in the Department that served me and served the Department, served America, that expressed to me reservations that reVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00074 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
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lated to the proximity that characterized the relationship that he 

had with various individuals in the Administration. 

My view is simply this; that I wanted to make sure that that 

wasn’t some singular view and that that wasn’t some isolated conclusion. 

I developed in my own mind a sense of confidence about the nature of their reservations and that they merited our serious consideration, and so as a result of these items being brought to my 

awareness, I raised these issues. 

Mr. SHERMAN. So you were opposed to Mr. Yoo getting the job 

as Chief of OLC? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I felt that the United States of America and the 

President would both be best served, especially as it related to the 

characteristics I previously mentioned, if there would be an OLC 

Chief that would emphasize those characteristics more profoundly. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Does the OLC speak only for itself, or does it 

speak for the Department of Justice? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It is part of the Department of Justice, and when 

it speaks, I think the Department of Justice—we have got an OLC 

Chief here that can probably answer this. 

Mr. SHERMAN. You described to me how much fun you have at 

these House hearings. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I do, that’s right. It is a thrill a minute here. 

I have always taken it as the gospel. When OLC speaks, I have 

given it the highest level of respect. As a matter of fact, I don’t 

know of a better set of attorneys that has existed in any Administration. 

Mr. SHERMAN. There are press reports that describe a heated 

meeting in 2001 between you and Vice President Cheney on the 

subject of military tribunals for terrorism suspects. In particular, 

it was reported that you were upset because, without your knowledge, Mr. Yoo had advocated keeping DOJ out of the process of trying terrorists. Is that accurate? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I won’t comment on meetings which otherwise 

would be and are classified or meetings that involved communications by their attorney with the Administration. 

Mr. SHERMAN. Thank you. My time has expired. 

Mr. CONYERS. The gentleman from Arizona, the Ranking Member of the Constitution Committee, Mr. Trent Franks. 

Mr. FRANKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I appreciate it, and I appreciate the tone of the Committee so far, even though we perhaps 

have some differences here. 

General Dellinger, as an associate with the Ranking Member of 

the Committee, I appreciated some of your comments. I couldn’t 

help but be intrigued by your thoughts of making a law that did 

not provide for exceptions with dealing with that ticking bomb scenario but that relied upon the courage of people to just do what 

was necessary to protect their country. I find that very intriguing, 

quite honestly. 

I say this in absolute respect to you. My concern is something 

like that can only work in an environment where we have an age 

of congressional reason because this hearing, in my judgment, is 

proof that we are kind of off track here already. 

72 

I think that the Administration and the Attorney General here, 

in my judgment and evidence I have seen, is they acted well within 

their constitutional bounds and yet we are still dragging them before this Committee. I wonder what we would do if they had to actually do something along the lines you have talked about. 

We have had 11 hearings that in my judgment make the lives 

of terrorists easier and make it more difficult for us to protect citizens from terrorists in this Committee, and yet I don’t know one 

that we have had that makes it easier for us to defend citizens 

against terrorists. I think balance is one thing, but 11 to 0, that 

concerns me. I think it represents essentially a misunderstanding 

of what we are really up against. 

So I want to start with a quote by Mr. Stuart Taylor. He wrote 

in the National Journal, ‘‘The CIA had reason to believe that 

unlocking the secrets of Khalid Sheikh Mohammad might save 

hundreds of lives, and perhaps many, many more in one unlikely 

but then conceivable event that al-Qaeda was preparing a nuclear 

or biological attack on a major American city. This tough, smart 

committed jihadist was not about to betray his cohorts to his hated 

enemies if interrogators stuck to the kid-glove interrogation rules 

demanded by human rights and recently by most congressional 

Democrats, unquote. I think Mr. Taylor was correct. 

I even in this Committee asked Marjorie Cohn, President of the 

National Lawyers Guild, how she would write a statute defining 

how terrorists should be handled; what we should do to try to encourage them to give information that they didn’t want to give voluntarily. I want to just read what her reply was. She said, Well, 

what kind of a statute would I write? I would write a statute that 

says when you’re interrogating a prisoner that you want to get information from him, you treat him with kindness, compassion, and 

empathy; you gain his trust, get him to like you and trust you, and 

he will turn over information to you. 

I wish the world was like that. I really do. I teach Sunday school 

for 2 year olds. I really wish the world was like that. Unfortunately, the terrorists have shown that they have a little different 

mindset than we do. I am convinced that unless we get ahold of 

that there will be blood on the wall again in this country, and we 

will look back to Committees like this and wonder why we weren’t 

focusing on more of our primary job, which is to defend our citizens. 

My first question is to you, General Ashcroft. I want to be fully 

open about this. I think General Ashcroft’s career is a model to 

public service. So I am very biased. But I want to ask you, General 

Ashcroft, what was your goal in these discussions that we are having, what was your goal at that time and in what legal framework 

were you trying to pursue that goal in trying to accomplish the 

things that you believed that needed to be done? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Well, I think we wanted to do everything within 

our power and within the law to provide a basis for defending 

America. I came back to the Justice Department and I put it this 

way, I said, We have got to think outside the box. We can’t be 

thinking just like we always thought because the same things will 

happen to us that happened before. But I said, We can never think 

outside the Constitution. 

73 

That was the way of saying we have got to change. If you don’t 

change, you get what you got before. Albert Einstein put it this 

way, he said, Ignorance is defined as doing the same thing over 

and over again and expecting a different result. Well, we needed 

a different result. We didn’t want to get hit again. 

So we needed to change, we needed to be able to do things, but 

we needed to do them within the Constitution. That was the controlling motivator for me. Sounds pretty simple. But my view is 

that it was the right thing to do and I believe that should be— 

when it comes to national defense, we ought to be thinking in those 

terms, what are the tools that are available to us and what are the 

legal tools that are available to us, and we should use them. 

Mr. FRANKS. Mr. Chairman, I can only say that I believe that 

that perspective will be vindicated in history. The coincidence of 

terrorism and nuclear proliferation I am afraid make it necessary 

for us to look at this a little differently than we have. I hope General Ashcroft’s perspective prevails in the final analysis. 

I yield back. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chair is pleased to recognize the gentlelady 

from Wisconsin, a distinguished Member of the Committee, Tammy 

Baldwin. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. General Ashcroft, can 

you describe for the Committee briefly your understanding with regard to detainee interrogations and discussions regarding concerns 

that might have been raised with regard to mistreatment of detainees? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The Attorney General of the United States is only 

occasionally called to meet with the National Security Council, is 

not a member of the National Security Council, and so for me to 

try to define the National Security Council and its role would be 

beyond my expertise. 

Ms. BALDWIN. But the principals committee, as I understand, it 

is one in which you participated. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. There were times when I was called to meet with 

various groups that were part of the National Security Council. But 

in terms of its jurisdiction and what its function is, it is not something that I am prepared to comment on. I would say that I think 

they called on me when they thought there were matters that related to my responsibilities that could be of assistance to them and 

their deliberations. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Well, in particular during your time as an NSC 

principal when you did attend those meetings, or in the years since 

then in looking back at your NSC principal tenure, did you come 

across any evidence of what you believe may be crimes by government officials in the headquarters of DOD, DOJ, CIA, State, or the 

White House and, if so, did you make any referral for criminal investigation? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. To the extent that I was involved in meetings of 

the National Security Council, they were classified meetings, and 

I will not comment on what I found, didn’t find, or what was said 

or wasn’t said. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Well, let me then ask you a different question. 

Where do you believe the ultimate decision on what interrogation 

tactics would be approved for use on U.S. held detainees was 

74 

made? At the White House, the Justice Department headquarters, 

at the FBI headquarters, at the Defense Department headquarters, 

at the CIA headquarters, or out in the field? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Part of that answer is yes. I think different agencies make different decisions regarding what techniques would be 

used in different situations, and the purpose for having a generalized understanding that would help people know what could be 

done legally and not be done is the basis for the opinions. 

I might indicate to you that the opinions that we have been discussing today were very limited in terms of their application. They 

were opinions relating to the interrogation of al-Qaeda detainees 

outside the United States, and as a result, they didn’t apply to a 

variety of other detentions in other settings that related to people 

who were say fighting in the war in Iraq. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Let me follow up on that same line of questions 

but with regard to a specific detainee, Abu Zubaydah. Where do 

you believe the ultimate decision on the choice of interrogation tactics for his interrogation was made? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Are you aware of whether our allies, any of our 

allies in the war on terror condone or use techniques that the U.S. 

would define as torture in the course of their interrogations? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. In other words, am I aware that some of our allies might use techniques that would be considered torture? 

Ms. BALDWIN. Yes, that is the question. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I have not witnessed anything that would cause 

me to have that awareness. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Related to that, are you aware of whether the U.S. 

has ever turned over any of its detainees to an ally in the war on 

terror so that they could take the lead on interrogation of such a 

detainee? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Has the U.S. ever turned over—— 

Ms. BALDWIN. A detainee to one of our allies in the war on terror 

to let them take the lead on interrogations. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. I couldn’t name a person that that 

would apply to. 

Ms. BALDWIN. Are you aware of whether it ever has in the course 

of the war on terror? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I can’t say 

Ms. BALDWIN. Do you know what the U.S. policy is on turning 

over a detainee so that an ally in the war on terror could lead the 

interrogation? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. 

Mr. CONYERS. Judge Gohmert of Texas is a distinguished Member of the Committee and is frequently the acting Ranking Member 

of the Judiciary Committee. 

Mr. GOHMERT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It is an honor to be 

sitting beside you. Maybe one of these days we will be switched. 

We will talk about that later. 

I just wanted again to thank General Ashcroft. Going back to my 

days as a judge, we never met, but I always had great respect and 

admiration for the way you conducted yourself with class and veracity, and I have never heard anything that you have ever said 

either through the media or in person that had the least cloud over 

75 

it until earlier today when you made a comment that stretched, I 

felt, like the bounds of credibility when you said you were thankful 

for the opportunity to be here to testify. I wasn’t real sure about 

that one. I do want to come back. 

Mr. Dellinger, I wanted to ask you, this discussion about 

waterboarding brought out the comment I think from General 

Ashcroft that some of our agents may have been hardened in training by the use of waterboarding. So I am wondering, would those 

people who use waterboarding on one of our trainees be susceptible 

to being prosecuted for violating the law? 

Mr. DELLINGER. One of our U.S. agents who engaged in training 

on one of our folks? 

Mr. GOHMERT. One of our trainees. 

Mr. DELLINGER. It has been a while since I have taught criminal 

law, but I believe there is a mens rea intentional requirement that 

would clearly not be met and therefore that criminal liability would 

not apply in those circumstances. 

Mr. GOHMERT. It would seem like he would certainly intentionally be waterboarding one of our own agents. 

Mr. DELLINGER. Assisted by Mr. Wittes, it reminds me when 

there is voluntary participation by the subject, that may in and of 

itself eliminate a requirement of criminality. 

Mr. GOHMERT. So it is possible waterboarding could be acceptable in that scenario. You are saying if he volunteered for the service, even though he may not have known that the waterboarding 

was coming, he knew some tough training was coming, and the 

goal is to harden him to make him a good agent so he could withstand torture in some other setting. So there are settings where it 

may be acceptable then, correct? 

Mr. DELLINGER. Whether it is wise or acceptable is beyond my 

ken. I do not think that would be a crime. Indeed, I have heard 

press accounts of Mr. Levin of the Department of Justice himself 

who asked to be subjected to this to learn about and gain a sense 

of what the technique was like. 

Mr. GOHMERT. There are probably others we would like to ask 

if they would volunteer for that technique as well. You had indicated that if we use waterboarding then you would basically agree 

that that would put our troops at risk, and you are so well-educated you are surely aware that before waterboarding was ever an 

issue, before Abu Ghraib was ever an issue, that we had extremist 

radical Islamics who I believe mistakenly believed the Koran gives 

them and tells them they should destroy infidels. That was going 

on. We had our soldiers being disemboweled, we had their heads 

being cut off. What is more risky than being disemboweled and 

having your head cut off? 

Mr. DELLINGER. My answer to that question was that I was not 

an expert in these matters but I had always been impressed by 

Senator McCain’s arguments that he thought, having been a prisoner of war, that the standards that we set as a country—— 

Mr. GOHMERT. My time is running out. I wasn’t interested in 

what Mr. McCain had to say, I was interested in your perspective. 

But when you go back in history to the late 1700’s when we had 

never done anything and Thomas Jefferson was sent to negotiate 

with the radical Muslims who felt like it was okay to take our sailVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00079 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
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ors and either put them in bondage, torture them, or kill them, we 

had done nothing. He didn’t understand. That is when he bought 

a Koran. 

If I might just ask Attorney General Ashcroft, he has been so patient, what would you say to those who have accused you of war 

crimes? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t think they know what war crimes are. I 

am glad people care about what their public officials do. I think it 

is important that they do—I certainly am a Ronald Reagan fan, 

and he said, Trust but verify. I think that is the way people ought 

to be about public officials. 

So when people and the public and others, people in the Congress want to verify, and they don’t want to totally rely on trust, 

I am for that. I just think it would be very—I think it is important 

to be very careful before you accuse anybody of committing any 

crime. 

It stuns me that some people want to run around and call other 

people criminals. That is a serious offense to me to call someone 

a criminal. I find that the people who do it sometimes are the people who speak about being the most liberal and the most rightsoriented, and for them to announce the criminality of individuals 

is stunning to me. It takes my breath away. 

It was my job to protect their right to do so, and I think that is 

one of the privileges of serving in government and one of the great 

aspects of America, is that we are very, very tolerant of people expressing an opinion that others are even criminal. I think, on the 

other hand, I think that is a term that ought to be reserved and 

used with great care. And when it is used recklessly, it has a way 

of diminishing our freedom, if not our respect for each other. I 

think that is unfortunate. 

Mr. GOHMERT. I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Thank you, 

Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chair recognizes Adam Schiff, himself a 

former U.S. Attorney, and a Member of this Committee, who has 

been here from the very beginning this morning and has sat 

through all of the proceedings. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Assistant U.S. Attorney, 

but I appreciate the promotion. Thank you all for being here for so 

long with us. I think it has been a very important hearing. 

I have a couple of questions I wanted to ask Mr. Ashcroft and 

Mr. Dellinger. Mr. Ashcroft, I am not going to ask you about your 

conversations with the White House, but as Mr. Dellinger has testified, the choice of who runs the OLC is extremely important, given 

the substance of the opinions that come out of that office. Is it fair 

to say that you are concerned that the White House was trying to 

foist an OLC director that, in your opinion, might be too pliable to 

the wishes of the White House, and that raised a concern for you? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Since you have asked me if it is fair to say, I 

have got to quibble with some of the words, foist is not—I will say 

something about that. I don’t want to answer your specific question 

using your words because they are not my word and it is not fair 

to say. If you want me to answer it, I will. I will say no. 

Mr. SCHIFF. I would like you to answer it, so please do. 

77 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am concerned about independence and detached 

advice and have the right kind of vetting, and sometimes relationships can prevent that from happening. And so I developed that 

concern when people in the Department came to me and raised 

them. And I expressed those concerns in order to make sure that 

the White House eventually would get the best kind of legal advice, 

and not only the White House, but the rest of the country that depends on OLC. That is the long and short of it. 

I felt that with a level of intensity that made me committed to 

it. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Why do you feel the White House rejected the candidates that you offered who were well thought—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I really don’t have any feelings about that. The 

President of the United States is elected by the American people 

to have people that he is comfortable with in office. To the extent 

that he wants to have someone that he can rely on and is comfortable with, he ought to. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Here is my concern, Mr. Attorney General, and that 

is—and I want to question Mr. Dellinger. I think there is a dangerous circularity of logic within the Administration that says we 

can put someone in a position like the head of OLC, which Mr. 

Dellinger points out is an obscure office; actually for most of America it is on obscure office. The fact that enhanced interrogation 

techniques are approved by this obscure legal office gives no confidence to people either in the country or around the world that we 

are distinguishing between what is torture or what is not, or that 

as the current Attorney General said, because OLC has said something is not torture, ipso facto it is not torture and we don’t need 

to look beyond the opinion of the OLC. 

That is why I think the choice of that opinion is so important, 

and if you had concerns about whether improper considerations 

were being brought to bear; in other words, they were trying to 

pick someone for that post, not who was best qualified to make the 

legal judgments but who was best positioned to approve of what 

they were doing, that is something this Committee ought to know. 

That is why I am asking. 

Furthermore, it concerns me, and I invite you both, Mr. Ashcroft 

and Mr. Dellinger, to respond to this, it concerns me when you both 

seem to be implying that because OLC approved of this, even if it 

was a flawed opinion, that there is no liability to be had. 

I would think the better course for the current Attorney General 

would be to authorize an investigation into whether the prohibition 

on torture was violated. If it is determined that in fact the prohibition was violated, then there can be a determination made by the 

President whether to pardon the interrogators who were following 

this erroneous opinion. 

We don’t know whether there were proper considerations brought 

to bear in the selection of the head of the OLC at the time or 

whether the opinions were flawed, or whether, as you say, the 

speed was 65 or 85. You say it was authorized to be 85 in the 

flawed memo but they were only doing 65. At the same time, you 

also say, Mr. Ashcroft, you don’t know exactly what techniques 

were being employed. So I don’t know how you can say with conVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00081 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
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fidence whether people were going in fact 75 or 80 or maybe 84. 

I don’t know. I haven’t heard you say that you know either. 

What concerns me is unless we in Congress or the Department 

of Justice are willing to investigate this issue, we will never know, 

and we will create a precedent where any President can pick the 

right person to head the OLC that will do what they wish and 

through this circularity of immunity and logic will protect themselves. 

We see the same circularity of logic in the subpoena issue, which 

our Chairman has led, where the statute says that when the Congress holds someone in contempt, the U.S. Attorney General shall 

bring it before a grand jury. Not may, not might, not if they feel 

like it, but shall. But the President and the Attorney General now 

say that ‘‘shall’’ doesn’t mean ‘‘shall’’ because they disagree with 

‘‘shall.’’ We seem to be willing to accept that. We have taken it to 

court in a different way. But this circularity concerns me and I 

want to know if you can both comment on it. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. With all respect, you are saying that there is a 

circularity, and I think the situation at hand demonstrates that the 

circle is interrupted. There was an opinion that the Department 

itself generated a sense of concern about, and it was re-evaluated 

and it was withdrawn and a new opinion was issued. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Let’s say it was the conclusion in the second memo 

that in fact not only was the first OLC opinion wrong but in fact 

torture had been authorized and torture had been conducted. 

Where would the liability lay? I think you are saying nowhere. Because we took this corrective action. We stopped doing what we 

were actually violating the law by doing. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. First of all, I am not here to answer hypotheticals 

like that. I am here to say that if you outlined this as a circular 

situation, the circle is not complete. The ends don’t meet because 

we did take action. We changed things. We didn’t find the conclusion to be wrong, but we wanted to make sure that the opinion reflected the best judgment, and we changed it. 

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. Dellinger, can you comment? Because I think 

the hypothetical is enormously significant going forward as well as 

looking backward. How do we provide some accountability for putting the wrong person in the job and then simply saying that we 

relied on the erroneous opinions of someone who should never have 

had the position? 

Mr. DELLINGER. I am not happy with the answer that the law 

leads me to, that you can put someone in at OLC who can issue 

get-out-of-jail-for-free cards and that those cards would be effective. 

I genuinely understand the problem with that. 

The issue is this. Unless you were to show that the individual 

who was engaged in the action, whether it is an interrogation or 

rendition from another country, knew that the legal opinion he or 

she was relying on was in fact part of a plan to engage in the 

criminal law and to cover it with immunity, in which case I think 

everybody who did that with knowledge would be criminally liable, 

you have to have some way of having the executive branch determine what is lawful and what is unlawful. That is the executive 

power invested in a President. Whoever makes that decision can be 

79 

wrong, whether it is a prosecutor, OLC official, the Attorney General. 

Once you have an opinion of the Office of Legal Counsel and 

whoever relies upon it is not shown to have relied upon it in bad 

faith or a part of a plan to have a fake opinion, I don’t see how 

you can have a different officer, say the U.S. Attorney for Northern 

Virginia or the District of Columbia, reach a different judgment 

and prosecute someone for committing a crime when that person 

was operating—— 

Mr. GOHMERT. We are so far beyond the time. I need to ask regular order here. 

Mr. SCHIFF. May the gentleman be able to finish his answer? 

Mr. GOHMERT. It seems to go on and on and on, and that is why 

I waited so long to bring it up. 

Mr. SCHIFF. It is an important answer. 

Mr. DELLINGER. There is a footnote in the 2004 opinion about 

whether the conclusions—they would still stand by the conclusions 

of the earlier opinion. That is a very ambiguous footnote, footnote 

8, and there are some press accounts that Mr. Levin has said that 

he only meant that they would have reached the 2003 opinion if 

people reached the same opinion even under the 2004 standards. 

I read the footnote and I do find it is ambiguous as to whether in 

2004 they actually did say that they would agree with the results 

reached in 2002 and 2003. 

Mr. CONYERS. The Chair recognizes another U.S. Attorney, this 

time from Alabama, a distinguished Member of the Committee, 

Artur Davis. 

Mr. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. As with Mr. Schiff, I appreciate the promotion given by the Chairman. 

Let me thank the witnesses for being here. 

Let me assert a proposition to you, General Ashcroft, and to you, 

Professor Dellinger, and get some response to it. We have heard a 

lot of commentary from the other side about the special circumstances after September 11, and the argument from a lot of my 

Republican friends on the Committee has been we faced a heightened danger, a heightened threat of weapons of mass destruction, 

a committed set of terrorist cells that we were working against, 

and that that somehow changed the state of play in a number of 

ways. I think there is something to that argument. I think there 

is something else about the context, the aftermath of 9/11, I want 

to ask you to comment on. 

At the time, there was an incredible spirit of unity in the country. The authorization of force resolution regarding Afghanistan 

passed with, I think, one vote against it in the combined two bodies 

of the House and Senate. The PATRIOT Act passed frankly with 

scant opposition in the House and Senate. A policy decision to that 

one would think would be highly controversial to launch a preemptive attack on a nation that had not attacked us, that happened 

with overwhelming bipartisan support in the House and Senate. 

Fast forward to today, or fast forward to 2006, 2007. Intense political division around every aspect of this Administration’s policies 

related to the war on terror, intense partisan division, intense ideological debate. 

80 

Professor Dellinger tell me, and we only have 5 minutes, I would 

ask for a brief answer, but tell me briefly, how do we get from a 

point where we had such a level of bipartisan enthusiasm for this 

Administration’s policies to the divided world we are in now? 

Mr. DELLINGER. I think the biggest mistake was the decision by 

the executive branch to take on this task unilaterally; to exclude 

the other branches from some of the critical decisions. It is not the 

benefit of hindsight. In December of 2001, I wrote a piece for the 

Washington Post saying that the idea to have no judicial review of 

military commissions was a very big mistake, that the courts would 

never accept it and that you could channel that judicial review; the 

decision not to go to Congress to say that we believe that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act provisions are not adequate to 

the needs. But to unilaterally decide not to comply with its criminal terms and not even to reveal the fact that you were not complying with it, not to comply with the torture statute, and have 

that known only because of leaks and not releases, that that unilateral approach of not involving respecting the role of the courts or 

respecting the role of Congress, I think, has got us to a place where 

we need to reclaim the role of the three branches. 

Mr. DAVIS. I agree, Professor Dellinger. I have made the observation to Mr. Addington, made the observation to Mr. Feith, who appeared a few days ago. Even with respect to the interpretation of 

the torture statutes I was struck that Mr. Addington and Mr. Yoo 

made a virtue of the fact that an Administration trying to interpret 

the will of Congress never asked a single Member of Congress, 

What did you mean in 1996? There were people who helped draft 

the 1996 statute who still serve in the Congress now, who served 

in the Congress then, and Mr. Yoo and Mr. Addington blithely 

mentioned that we didn’t feel the need to talk to them. 

General Ashcroft, given even the time constraints that we have 

today, I don’t want a long answer from you either on this, but 

would you concede in retrospect, sir, that the Administration would 

have benefited from drawing in the legislative branch to shape this 

detainee policy? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. That is a judgment that has to be made. 

Mr. DAVIS. I am asking you to make it. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Okay. I see my time has expired. 

Mr. SCHIFF. I would happily ask additional time for the able Attorney General to venture his opinion. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. We spend a lot of time working together. I spent 

a considerable amount of time not only assembling the PATRIOT 

Act but—working for about 40 days. 

Mr. DAVIS. What about detainee policy though, sir? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I don’t know. We tried to work on military commissions law and things like that recently. 

Mr. DAVIS. Let me give you one example. The interpretation of 

the torture statutes. What would have been the harm—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I am trying to finish my first answer. I am not 

going to start on the second without the opportunity to finish the 

first. 

Mr. DAVIS. I am trying to point you toward detainee policy. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. I think I know where you are trying to point me, 

sir, but I would really prefer to be pointed toward the door. 

81 

Mr. DAVIS. I appreciate your earlier observation about the reasonableness of skepticism; unfortunately, the Congress has reason 

to be skeptical about this Administration. We appreciate you for 

being here. You have been a wonderful witness today. I am simply 

asking why your Administration—— 

Mr. ASHCROFT. First of all, it is not my Administration, sir, with 

all due respect to the Congress. We benefited greatly when we did 

work for things like the PATRIOT Act and even for the reenactment of the PATRIOT Act. 

Mr. DAVIS. Would have it benefited—— 

Mr. CONYERS. The time of the gentleman has expired. 

The Chair recognizes the distinguished gentleman Minnesota, 

Keith Ellison. 

Mr. ELLISON. General Ashcroft, as to waterboarding, what 

changes took place in the legal reasoning that approved this technique when the American soldiers were convicted of war crimes 

when it was used on prisoners in Vietnam? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. Could you speak up just a little louder? 

Mr. ELLISON. No problem. As to waterboarding, what changes 

took place in the legal reasoning that approved this technique 

when American soldiers were convicted of war crimes when it was 

used on prisoners in Vietnam? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. The process, in my understanding, at OLC for 

evaluating whether or not waterboarding is criminal was that the 

statute, which was passed in 19—I think it is 1996, whether or not 

its terms were violated. The statute is then decades after Vietnam. 

To the best of my awareness, the Department, in its reassessment 

of that decision and of that evaluation on several occasions, according to the head of OLC, and last week, according to the now Attorney General, has come to the same conclusion, and it was based 

on that rather than on any other experiences in other setting, that 

I know of, and that is my understanding, that the judgment was 

reached. 

Mr. ELLISON. Thank you. I would like to turn away from the detainee policy for a moment and ask you about some other things. 

You answered a lot of questions about that. 

I am sure you would agree with me that there are many Americans who happen to be Muslim, who love our country, support our 

country, fight for our country. The question I want to ask you revolves around some of the treatment, some of the experiences since 

9/11. In particular, there were a few groups that were identified as 

unindicted coconspirators in a Dallas case. I know that—are you familiar with the case that I am talking about, the Holy Land Foundation case? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. That name is familiar to me. I recognize the 

name. 

Mr. ELLISON. Really, I don’t want to ask you about the case 

itself. What I really want to ask you is could you offer your views 

on the advisability of publicizing a list of unindicted coconspirators? I know some U.S. attorneys don’t do it, some do it. In the U.S. 

attorney manual it is actually frowned upon. What are your views 

on the publication of an unindicted co-conspirator list in an ongoing 

prosecution? 

82 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It probably makes a difference what the facts are 

and the circumstances are. So for me to—— 

Mr. ELLISON. That is fair. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. If it is expressed in the manual in one way, but 

not strictly prohibited, it probably recognizes that it is discretionary. 

Mr. ELLISON. Do you think there should be some way for people 

on a list to get themselves off the list if there is no basis for them 

to be on it? At this point it is not much they can do. And yet you 

would agree it is kind of not good for your reputation to be on such 

a list. 

Mr. ASHCROFT. There are a number of aspects in the criminal 

justice system that sometimes people are spoken of in the process 

and it presents challenging circumstances for them and they would 

prefer to be able to clear their name. There aren’t a lot of ways for 

that to happen, and I don’t know if I have any good suggestions. 

The Congress might find those or think of them. But on the spot 

it is a pretty novel question. I hadn’t prepared that here. 

Mr. ELLISON. I know that. That is why I just thought you have 

got a lot of background, I thought you might offer a view. 

Here is another one that you weren’t asked to prepare for. We 

have got watchlists in our country; have had them. As I understand it, the names on the watchlist have grown and yet we really 

don’t have a good process for cleaning those lists to make sure that 

we are watching the people who need to be watched. In so doing, 

we have got a lot of people on there who we probably don’t need 

to watch but we don’t have a good process to get people off these 

lists. 

I actually heard, I can’t confirm, but an FBI employee, because 

they have a name similar to somebody who was associated with the 

IRS, was on a watchlist. Do you have any views on whether we 

should clean these lists up, these watchlists, and if so, how should 

we go about it? 

Mr. ASHCROFT. It is certainly not in our interest to have 

watchlists that have people on them that don’t belong on there. It 

increases the risk of error and inhibits the ability of people to travel without inconvenience. So the quality of the list is important not 

only to the success of our operation but to the liberty and freedom 

of the American people. If there are ways to improve that, and I 

would hope that whoever is involved in the watchlist, I think that 

is probably in the Department of Homeland Security, but whoever 

that is would be sensitive to ways of trying to minimize the risks. 

The only way not to have errors is not to have a list. We all know 

that. We are willing to accept some error rate, but our objective 

ought to be to drive it down. 

Mr. ELLISON. Thank you, Mr. Attorney General. 

Mr. Wittes, I have got a few questions for you. 

Mr. CONYERS. Just a moment. Your time has expired. 

Mr. ELLISON. Really? 

Mr. CONYERS. Yes, really. 

Mr. ELLISON. That was fast. 

Mr. CONYERS. The witnesses, Attorney General Ashcroft, Mr. 

Wittes, Mr. Dellinger, I consider this, and I think most of the Members of the Committee think this was an extremely important hearVerDate Aug 31 2005 10:01 May 26, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00086 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6601 H:\WORK\FULL\071708\43527.000 HJUD1 PsN: 43527
83 

ing. Your testimony was valuable. It has helped us examine the 

question that brings us here. I am very grateful for your return appearance to the House Judiciary Committee. We thank you very 

much for your contributions. 

We are going to leave the record open for 5 days in case there 

are questions that Members want to ask you that will be put on 

the record. So I thank you very, very much for your attendance. 

The Committee is adjourned. 

[Whereupon, at 2:20 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.] 

(85) 

A P P E N D I X 

MATERIAL SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING RECORD

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE JOHN CONYERS, JR., A REPRESENTATIVE

IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, AND CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON THE

JUDICIARY

In recent months, our Constitution Subcommittee has conducted a vigorous and 

detailed investigation of the Administration’s interrogation policy and the extreme 

legal theories that allowed it. Today, that investigation comes to the full Committee 

with a remarkable opportunity to hear from our former Attorney General and our 

other distinguished witnesses. Let me make three short observations as we begin. 

First, while the former Attorney General and I will disagree about many of the 

issues that come before the Congress, on this one I am hopeful that we share some 

important common ground. 

I was impressed, for example, to learn that when Jack Goldsmith determined that 

the John Yoo interrogation memos needed to be withdrawn, Mr. Ashcroft supported 

his judgment. That could not have been an easy decision to make and it is one that 

has done our nation a great deal of good. The well known story of Mr. Ashcroft’s 

support, even from his hospital bed, for his Deputy Jim Comey’s actions on the secret warrantless surveillance program also shows an Attorney General trying to uphold the rule of law. 

Second, while our narrow subject today is interrogation rules, our overall inquiry 

is about exactly that—the rule of law. In prior hearings, the Subcommittee heard 

very disturbing testimony, including claims of Presidential power so extreme that 

virtually no act was out of bounds if the President thought it necessary. John Yoo 

would not even rule out burying a suspect alive if the President so desired. That 

is not the rule of law—it is the rule of one man. 

The Subcommittee also heard very troubling testimony about how dissenting 

views were handled on this issue. Daniel Levin, former head of the Office of Legal 

counsel under Attorney General Ashcroft, described being forced out of the Office 

of Legal Counsel by Alberto Gonzales while he was drafting legal opinions that 

would have imposed some constraints on the use of harsh interrogation methods. 

I have great concern about an Administration that responds to legal advice it does 

not like by firing the lawyer providing it and getting one who will tell them what 

they want to hear, as may have happened in this case. 

Third, while one goal of this hearing is to continue to develop the important historical facts on the interrogation issue, I am also grateful for the opportunity to hear 

from all of our witnesses on what has happened to the rule of law under this Administration and what they think is the best way forward on this issue. After years 

of confusing and misleading rhetoric, false promises, and horribly damaging revelations, what are the most important steps we can take to restore some concrete 

meaning to the promise that ‘‘America does not torture’’ and that ‘‘America respects 

the rule of law’’? 

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86 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE MAXINE WATERS, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA, AND MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

Mr. Chairman, thank you for arranging today’s hearing, the fifth hearing in the 

Judiciary Committee on interrogation rules and practices at Guantanamo Bay. I’d 

like to also welcome the witnesses this morning, who are distinguished experts on 

the law, particularly the former Attorney General. I hope your testimony and answers to our questions will help us better understand what went wrong and what 

should be done to ensure that in the future, practices at the Department of Justice 

will in fact protect the rule of law enshrined in our Constitution. 

From the inappropriate political considerations in appointments at the bottom of 

the personnel ladder, including interns, to the firing of qualified and experienced 

U.S. Attorneys, the Department of Justice has failed to set the standards Americans 

expect to fairly and impartially implement and enforce the laws of this nation. 

I hope that the Department of Justice will never again be complicit in allowing 

the law to be twisted and contorted for political purposes that resulted in the 

shameful and inhumane practices that were carried at Guantanamo Bay, and other 

locations, under the banner of ‘‘fighting terrorism.’’ In my mind, terror is having the 

law turned on its head and secretly manipulated to justify the terrible injustices 

that were practiced in the name of ‘‘protecting freedom.’’ 

I hope today’s hearing will help us re-establish the highest level of integrity and 

fidelity to the Constitution that will restore the confidence of all Americans in their 

government. Our work on this Committee is designed to ensure that under the next 

administration and future administrations, the Department of Justice will protect 

constitutional rights and not pervert them. 

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87 

PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE STEVE COHEN, A REPRESENTATIVE IN

CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF TENNESSEE, AND MEMBER, COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY

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88 

APPENDICES TO THE PREPARED STATEMENT OF WALTER DELLINGER, FORMER ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL, OFFICE OF LEGAL COUNSEL, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE


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