Tuesday, October 18, 2005

important PBS documentary on the torture question tonight--

"The legal framework developed by administration lawyers like Berenson, Alberto Gonzales and John Yoo provided the impetus for unprecedented rules for interrogating detainees, rules authorized by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- rules officials insist never condoned torture.

FRONTLINE follows the implementation of the Rumsfeld rules from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, where eventually the FBI began to document a trail of abuses by interrogators.

In one e-mail, an agent reports on conditions in an interrogation room: "[T]he A/C had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room probably well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night."

The Torture Question follows the migration of such practices to the horrific scene photographed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in the fall of 2003. "Guantanamo Bay people were implanted in the prison around October, and they showed up and changed everything," a person with intimate knowledge of the events at Abu Ghraib tells FRONTLINE. "Things got more harsh." "