Interrogations

Rice Okayed Waterboarding

As national security adviser, she gave Bush’s approval.

Among the bombshells in yesterday’s Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA interrogations: “As national security adviser to former President George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice verbally approved the CIA's request to subject alleged al-Qaida terrorist Abu Zubaydah to waterboarding in July 2002, the earliest known decision by a Bush administration official to OK use of the simulated drowning technique.” Last fall, Rice told the Senate only that she had attended meetings on CIA interrogations, but now, reports The Associated Press, it appears she “personally conveyed the administration's approval for waterboarding of Zubaydah, a so-called high-value detainee, to then-CIA Director George Tenet in July 2002.”