By Matt Spetalnick
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President George W. Bushauthorized the CIA to give its most detailed public account ofits use of a widely condemned interrogation technique known aswater boarding, the White House said on Wednesday.
CIA Director Michael Hayden testified before Congress onTuesday that government interrogators used water boarding,often described as simulated drowning, on three suspectscaptured after the September 11 attacks of 2001.
Hayden's admission, the first time a U.S. official publiclydisclosed the number of people subjected to water boarding andnamed them, drew calls for a criminal investigation. Criticsworldwide condemn water boarding as torture, but the Bushadministration has refused to define it as such.
"The president authorized Gen. Hayden to say what he saidin the testimony yesterday," White House spokesman Tony Frattotold reporters.
Bush's decision to allow testimony on water boarding, amajor shift from his policy of keeping it under wraps, wasprompted by heated public debate and a consensus in theadministration on the need "to be very clear about how thosetechniques were used and what the benefits were," Fratto said.
Hayden told the Senate Intelligence Committee that waterboarding was used on suspected September 11 mastermind KhalidSheikh Mohammed and senior al Qaeda leaders Abu Zubaydah andAbd al-Rahim al-Nashiri.
He said water boarding has not been used in five years,though U.S. officials say it could potentially be revived ifthe president and the attorney general authorize it.
"It is dependent on the circumstances," Fratto said.
But a senior intelligence official said earlier it wasunclear whether the CIA could legally use water boarding again,given changes in U.S. law.
"REALITIES HAVE CHANGED"
Hayden testified that at the time water boarding was usedit was believed that "additional catastrophic attacks againstthe homeland were imminent" and the CIA had limitedintelligence on al Qaeda. "Those two realities have changed,"he said.
Congress is considering banning water boarding, a moveopposed by the Bush administration, which insists it neitheruses nor condones torture.
"water boarding is torture, and torture is a crime," HumanRights Watch said in response to Hayden's testimony.
Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat and judiciarycommittee member, demanded that Attorney General MichaelMukasey investigate the CIA water boarding and vowed to delaythe nomination for Mukasey's deputy until the attorney generalresponds to that and other issues.
Defending the harsh interrogations, Hayden told reporterson Tuesday the questioning of Mohammed and Zubaydah accountedfor one-quarter of human intelligence reports on al Qaeda fromthe time of their capture in 2002 and 2003 until they weredelivered to Guantanamo Bay prison in 2006. But some analystshave questioned Mohammed's credibility under interrogation.
(Additional reporting by Randall Mikkelsen; editing byStuart Grudgings)
