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The intelligence community's annual public report on the threats facing the nation was overtaken during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing Tuesday by the politically charged issues of waterboarding and other "coercive" interrogation techniques, extension of the government's evesdropping authority and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program.

National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden said waterboarding was a legal technique that should be available under certain circumstances if authorized by the nation's legal and political leaders. McConnell said, to his knowledge, only the CIA has used it. Hayden told the committee that the CIA has used the painful technique, which many consider a form of torture, only three times in its history. Those times, three years ago, were against "high value" al-Qaida terror suspects who were thought to have information on an imminent threat to the nation.

The intense discussion was triggered by a question from Senate Intelligence Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., about proposed legislation that would require all U.S. intelligence agencies to use only the interrogation procedures listed in the recently revised Army field manual.

Senate Intelligence ranking member Christopher (Kit) Bond, R-Mo., said he would seek to remove that requirement when the legislation reaches the Senate floor. Hayden said the Army manual lists only some of the "universe" of lawful interrogation techniques that, "we should feel as a nation we have a right to use." Although the manual serves the Army's needs, it is no more applicable to the CIA than the Army's grooming standards, he said.

The difference, he explained, was in the people who would be doing the interrogations and the people being interrogated. The manual applies to the Army's "relatively large population of relatively young" people who may deal with thousands of individuals and would be seeking information of short-term military significance. The CIA has held less than 100 detainees in its history, Hayden said, indicating that his agents were better trained and are seeking more subtle intelligence of national importance.

But under questioning from Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Hayden said such interrogations could be conducted by a mix of CIA agents and contracted personnel. He could not say who conducted the waterboarding. McConnell supported Hayden's views on the legality and acceptability of "coercive" techniques, but said before the CIA could use waterboarding, Hayden would have to explain to him the reason and, if he agreed, they would have to seek approval from the attorney general and the president.

McConnell also was questioned about legislation the committee has passed to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which authorized extensive monitoring of conversation supposedly involving foreign terrorist suspects. He praised the committee's work but said he was sending them a list of proposed changes. McConnell strongly supported the administration's request that the bill provide immunity to the telephone and Internet providers who allowed the CIA and FBI to monitor communication on their systems. Without it, he said, the intelligence services would lose the vital cooperation from the private sector.

COMMENTS

• Well said, New Yorker! If we ever had a terrorist in custody who had knowledge of an imminent threat, and we could learn of the threat by subjecting said terrorist to waterboarding, I could only say, "Surf's up"! Saving American lives is much more important than discomforting some fanatic who only wants to kill us anyway. In fact, in cases like that, waterboarding may be too mild, and even stronger measures should be available to be used as a last resort, if necessary. Just Saying Posted February 25, 2008 7:10 PM
• The Taliban and Al Queda don't waterboard, they behead. Congressional testimony showed that the U.S. has only used waterboarding 3 times since 9/11, hardly an abusive track record. American lives were saved because captured terrorists gave up information regarding pending attacks. If a terrorist has information regarding an imminent attack upon American citizens, do you think he would give it up if we just said please? Very naive, and totally out of touch with the current reality. If there was a nuke in an American city, and little time to act before it went off, I'd approve waterboarding or any other method that would force someone with information to give it up. The alternative is a lot of dead Americans, which is totally unacceptable. New Yorker Posted February 15, 2008 1:06 AM
• The U.S. deemed waterboarding a crime in the late 19th or early in the 20th century. We are now in the 21st century. Our legal scholars in this Administration were either poor students in law school and didn't do their required homework and due diligence; or they are merely insistent on breaking legal precedence. Their arrogance and misguided judgment is at best questionable at helping their efforts to catch the "evil doers", and certainly puts the future of our POWs at risk of torture and severely weakens our foreign policy. Will our military start issuing arsenic tablets to our soldiers, so they can avoid torture? frank Posted February 9, 2008 9:27 AM