WASHINGTON – The former Justice Department official who co-wrote the so-called “torture memos” testified that he did not sanction some of the harsh methods the CIA used against detainees during the Bush administration, including the repeated waterboarding of two terrorism suspects.

Jay Bybee, the former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, said in testimony released Thursday by the House Judiciary Committee that the CIA went further in its tough tactics than he had outlined as permissible in a widely criticized legal memoranda. Bybee appeared before the committee on May 26.

For example, Bybee said, the memos he and John Yoo wrote authorized waterboarding, an interrogation technique that simulates drowning, but only if there weren’t “substantial repetitions.”

CIA contractors used the waterboarding tactic 183 times on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the professed mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, government documents show. Government interrogators used waterboarding 83 times on Abu Zubeydah, an al-Qaida associate whose status within that organization is disputed.

Among the other techniques reportedly used on CIA detainees that were not approved by the Justice Department, Bybee testified, were diapering a detainee, forcing a detainee to defecate on himself, forcing a detainee to wear blackout goggles, extended solitary confinement or isolation, hanging a detainee from ceiling hooks, daily beatings, spraying cold water on a detainee and subjecting a detainee to high-volume music or noise.

“So if these things occurred, dousing with cold water, subjecting to loud music to keep people from falling asleep, if that occurred, that means they were done without specific (Justice Department) authorization?” Bybee was asked by the committee. “That’s right,” Bybee replied.

“So the answer is ‘Yes?’ ” a questioner asked. “Those techniques were not authorized,” Bybee replied.

The “testimony reveals that many brutal techniques reportedly used in CIA interrogations were not authorized by the Justice Department,” Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Thursday. ‘The author of these legal memos has now admitted this on the record. These statements are highly relevant to the pending criminal investigation of detainee abuse.”

Last month, Attorney General Eric Holder said that Assistant United States Attorney John Durham is close to completing a preliminary criminal review of whether CIA agents or contractors violated the law. Holder has said that the probe does not necessarily mean government interrogators will face charges. President Obama has said that CIA agents who were operating under Justice Department legal advice will not be prosecuted.

 

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