Guantanamo lawyers want ex-CIA official to testify | Reuters

Reuters) - Defense lawyers want to force a former CIA official who supervised what they called torture of al Qaeda captives to testify in the war crimes tribunal for five Guantanamo prisoners accused of plotting the September 11 attacks.
They argue that Jose Rodriguez, former director of the CIA's National Clandestine Service, has information pertinent to the defense allegation that the government is using security classifications to hide evidence their clients were tortured.
The lawyers want Rodriguez to testify during a hearing set for June 12-15 for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the confessed architect of the hijacked plane attacks, and four other captives accused of funding and training the hijackers.
All five face charges of conspiring with al Qaeda and murdering 2,976 people and could be executed if they are convicted. All were held in secret CIA prisons for three years before being sent to Guantanamo in 2006.
Rodriguez supervised the creation and implementation of the CIA detention program. In his book "Hard Measures," he described destroying videotapes showing interrogators using aggressive interrogation methods, including the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, on Mohammed and two other men now held at the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
After taking office in 2009, President Barack Obama said waterboarding is torture and ordered an end to the practice.



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