Senate panel bans private contractors in CIA interrogations

The US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted Thursday to approve a ban prohibiting the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from allowing private contractors to interrogate detainees.

The ban is part of a bill authorizing intelligence expenditures for the 2009 fiscal year which would also require intelligence agencies to give the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all intelligence prisoners.

The measure is intended to prevent the agencies from holding "ghost detainees", prisoners who are held in secret without record or communication.

The bill also contains a provision, added earlier this week, that restricts CIA interrogators to techniques included in the 2006 Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations.

That measure would effectively prevent the CIA from using waterboarding during interrogations. If passed, the bill would also create an inspector general for each of the 16 US intelligence agencies.

In March, President George W. Bush vetoed the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008, which included a similar provision limiting CIA interrogators to interrogation techniques explicitly authorized by the 2006 Army Field Manual, and an attempt to override the veto failed.

(Published by Jurist / My Way News 5, 2008)