Michael Chertoff, President Bush's nominee for secretary of homeland security, said at his Senate confirmation hearing yesterday that he did not give intelligence officials any specific advice in 2002 when they asked him which interrogation techniques used on alleged terrorists might someday be prosecuted as illegal torture.
Chertoff was responding to repeated questions from Democratic senators who asked him yesterday whether he knew about aggressive and possibly improper interrogation methods used by U.S. forces on detainees when he was a top Justice Department official. He said he did not know and he did not recall which interrogation methods were discussed then.
Now a federal appeals court judge in New Jersey, Chertoff, 51, was treated cordially even by Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who asked him about his record as head of the Justice Department's criminal division from 2001 to 2003. His approval is all but assured when the committee votes, probably Monday, and leaders of both parties say the full Senate is almost certain to confirm him soon after that.
The hearing did not feature the kinds of heated exchanges that occurred last month when Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, Bush's nominee for attorney general, about his role in administration memos defining torture and approving some interrogation techniques.
Questioned pointedly yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) about what he told lawyers in the intelligence community who asked him what interrogation methods might violate U.S. laws barring torture, Chertoff said that he could not recall his precise words but that in general he declined to discuss "hypothetical" cases.
"I was not prepared . . . to approve things in advance or to give people speculative opinions that they might later take as some kind of a license to do something" improper, Chertoff said in reply to Levin. He said his essential message to the intelligence officials was "If you are dealing with something that makes you nervous, you'd better make sure you are doing the right thing."
Asked about a legal memo by another branch of the Justice Department at the time that allowed some harsh interrogation tactics and narrowed the definition of torture, Chertoff said yesterday: "I do not believe that definition is a sufficiently comprehensive definition of torture."
Levin also asked Chertoff whether he recalled hearing about FBI officials' complaints as early as 2002 that military interrogators abused some detainees at the prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
The senator showed Chertoff a heavily edited internal FBI memo written last year that recalled bureau officials' observations in 2002 that military and FBI interrogators employed differing techniques when interrogating the Guantanamo Bay detainees. Chertoff replied that he had no memory of hearing then that torture was used there, "or anything approaching torture."
The memo, obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union through the Freedom of Information Act, said that at some point FBI officials had discussed with lawyers in Justice's criminal division the ineffectiveness of some military interrogation techniques in producing reliable information.
Chertoff said he was not aware of any discussion of harsh methods being employed at Guantanamo Bay while he ran the criminal division.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.) asked Chertoff about his thoughts on the FBI's controversial detention of more than 700 Muslim foreign nationals on immigration violations for an average of nearly three months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. A critical report by Justice's inspector general released in 2003 said that many were prevented from contacting lawyers for weeks, and none was prosecuted for terrorism-related crimes. Some were beaten or abused in prison, the report said.
Chertoff said that he didn't know in the 2001 and 2002 period that many of the detainees had been barred from reaching lawyers and that "it clearly shouldn't have happened." He said he was "troubled" by findings in the inspector general's report, which was released shortly before his 2003 confirmation as a federal judge.
He said that in the weeks after Sept. 11, hundreds of FBI agents who were inexperienced in counterterrorism were told to hurriedly probe every potential terrorism lead. Based on the belief that other terrorists could be in the country plotting attacks, and in the atmosphere of "emotional stress," some agents made mistakes in not clearing the Muslim detainees for release, he said.
The ACLU said in a statement yesterday that Chertoff has "an alarming record" of endorsing improper methods in the name of national security.
Despite the questioning, Chertoff received effusive praise from all the Republicans on the committee and from some Democrats. He was introduced at the hearing by the two Democratic senators from his home state of New Jersey, Frank Lautenberg and Jon S. Corzine.
"I know him as an honorable man . . . a tough, straight shooter," Corzine told the committee yesterday.
