New US intelligence director: No more torture

WASHINGTON – The man tapped to oversee US intelligence promised Congress on Thursday there would be no torture and no warrantless wiretapping on his watch.

Retired Adm. Dennis Blair said the jail at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba, must be closed because it is “a damaging symbol to the world.”

“It is a rallying cry for terrorist recruitment and harmful to our national security, so closing it is important for our national security,” Blair said in prepared remarks.

US President Barack Obama ordered the detention center’s closure Thursday. It could take as long as a year for it to be emptied of prisoners, however.

Blair said one of his main responsibilities will be rebuilding the American people’s trust in the nation’s intelligence agencies. The secretive Bush administration authorized harsh interrogations, the secret kidnapping and transferring of suspected terrorists, and a domestic surveillance program that operated without the knowledge of a secret court created 30 years ago to oversee just such activities.

“The intelligence agencies of the United States must respect the privacy and civil liberties of the American people, and they must adhere to the rule of law,” Blair said.

Attorney General-nominee Eric Holder told Congress last week he considers waterboarding torture. Waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, was employed against three CIA prisoners in 2002 and 2003 during questioning. It was part of the CIA’s “enhanced” interrogation program approved by the Bush White House after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Outgoing CIA Director Michael Hayden told reporters Thursday that the CIA’s interrogation program worked.

Blair said he believes strongly that “torture is not moral, legal or effective.”

Blair will likely oversee the end of enhanced interrogations. President Obama is expected to sign an executive order Thursday setting a single humane standard for the treatment of all US detainees. It will limit the CIA to the US military’s interrogation methods but will leave latitude for additional CIA methods that comply with humane treatment, a congressional official told The Associated Press on Wednesday. He spoke on condition of anonymity because the Obama administration had not yet released the order.

Blair promised “transparency and accountability,” and said he intended to communicate as much as possible with the public about the secret work of the agencies.

“I will work to rebuild a relationship of trust with the American people,” he said.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat, said Blair has agreed to meet with the committee on a monthly basis with the CIA director to keep the committee informed of their activities.

Blair, a former head of the US Pacific Command, would oversee a budget of nearly $50 billion and a work force of more than 100,000. The 34-year Navy veteran spent a year at the CIA and won high marks for countering terrorism in Southeast Asia after the Sept. 11 attacks. He worked closely with foreign partners in crafting offensives that crippled the Jemaah Islamiyah terror faction in Indonesia and the Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines.

Feinstein also asked about a Pentagon conflict of interest investigation two years ago.

In 2006, Blair resigned from his top position at the Pentagon-funded Institute for Defense Analyses after the Senate Armed Services Committee raised concerns that after leaving the Navy he became the institute’s president while serving on the boards of two defense contractors that worked on the F-22 fighter jet.

At the institute, he participated in two reviews of the F-22 rather than disqualifying himself. However, the November 2006 report found that Blair took no action to influence the outcome of either of the two studies.

“It was a mistake not to have recused myself from those two studies,” Blair told the committee, saying the greatest damage was to his reputation for integrity. “Any decision I make as DNI will be completely free of suspicions that there was undue influence.”

Blair is expected to get a swift confirmation, but is likely to face questions about the role he played 10 years ago in US efforts to rein in the Indonesian military as it brutally cracked down on civilians in East Timor. – AP