Renditions Under White House Interrogation Unit

[efoods]WASHINGTON — President Obama has created a team of interrogators to question key terrorism suspects as part of a broader effort to revamp United States policy on detention and interrogation. With the formation of this team, the administration indicated that it would more closely monitor, but not necessarily abandon, the controversial practice of sending some high-level terror detainees to other countries for questioning.

Bill Burton, the deputy White House spokesman who is with the vacationing president in Oak Bluffs, Mass., said that creation of the unit does not mean the C.I.A. is out of the interrogation business. The new unit will include “all these different elements under one group,” he said at the briefing, and would work out of F.B.I. headquarters in Washington.

In a background briefing about the interrogation unit, senior administration officials on Monday played down the notion that it would fall under direct, daily White House supervision. They also emphasized that while the National Security Council would provide it strategic guidance, the unit’s tactical operations would “be administratively housed within the F.B.I.” and involve officials drawn from many governmental agencies.

Read entire article

This article was posted: Monday, August 24, 2009 at 2:29 pm

---

---

---

---