Malcolm W. Nance, a former Navy interrogation instructor and counterterrorism intelligence specialist, said Thursday that the practice of waterboarding "is torture and should be banned," during a hearing held by the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties of the US House Judiciary Committee. Nance said he both underwent waterboarding during his own Navy training and practiced the method on other special forces trainees, but said that harsh interrogation methods were unreliable for eliciting accurate information. […] Another witness, Marine Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, had agreed to testify that waterboarding hindered the prosecution of suspected terrorists, but said that he had been prevented from testifying by the Department of Defense.
When Col. Couch was invited to testify originally he said he told his superiors and there was no problem.
Yesterday, however, he was advised by email that the Pentagon general counsel, William J. Haynes II, “has determined that as a sitting judge and former prosecutor, it is improper for you to testify about matters still pending in the military court system, and you are not to appear before the Committee to testify tomorrow.”Couch was going to testify about the dilemma he faced as a prosecutor when he learned that a potential defendant against whom he was trying to build a case had been tortured. Couch was assured not to worry, the fact that the detainee had been tortured would be suppressed, so that the court would never learn about it. That would, of course, have entailed a conscious fraud on the Court—which appears to be standard Department of Defense operating procedure these days. But Col. Couch didn’t want to play that game.
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