White House fingered in harsh interrogation edict

On ABC National's PM radio program tonight the following:

"Newly released documents have brought the question of who authorised American forces to torture prisoners a step closer to the President himself, George W Bush.

The proof came in a list of answers which the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The papers show that Dr Rice, the then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the then attorney general John Ashcroft discussed the torture question as early as 2002.

It's the latest in a string of evidence about the US decision to use a variety of what it called harsh interrogation techniques but which the Red Cross described as "categorically" torture.

That Red Cross report was one among a number of revelations in a book, "The Dark Side", by the New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer.

She told me on the line from Washington today that the torture program was originally the brain child of the Vice-President Dick Cheney and his chief of staff David Addington."

Read [or listen to] the interview with the author Jane Mayer here.

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