Friday, October 26, 2007

According to the Oct. 19 front-page article "On Day 2, Democrats See Change in Mukasey," Michael Mukasey, the nominee to be attorney general, was asked whether an interrogation technique known as "waterboarding" constitutes torture and is therefore illegal. He replied: "I don't know what's involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional."

Evan Wallach, a federal judge and a specialist in the law of war, wrote in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law this year: "Historical analysis demonstrates that U.S. courts have consistently held that artificial drowning interrogation is torture, which, by its nature, violates U.S. statutory prohibitions."

Other analysts have come to the same conclusion.

Mr. Mukasey is either unprepared to be attorney general or lacks the principles that this post requires.

The rush to approve Mr. Mukasey's nomination is not justified by his performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

EDWARD L. FINK

Silver Spring

In purporting to set the record straight on the CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program ["5 Myths About Rendition (and That New Movie)," Outlook, Oct. 20], Daniel Benjamin presented a highly misleading portrait of the program and its critics.

Mr. Benjamin conflated "rendition to justice" -- the extrajudicial transfer of terrorism suspects to countries where they face prosecution -- with "extraordinary rendition," a program with precisely the opposite goal: the apprehension and transfer of terrorism suspects to secret overseas detention and interrogation facilities where, the administration maintains, the protections of U.S. and international law do not apply.

Mr. Benjamin suggested that it is "not clear" whether the Bush administration has maintained the Clinton-era guarantee that rendition victims be transferred only to countries in which some legal process awaits them. But there is abundant evidence that the purpose of this administration's program of extraordinary rendition has been to detain and coercively interrogate suspects outside of any recognized legal process.

In depicting the transfer and brutal torture of an apparently innocent man, the film "Rendition" captures the truth of the program of extraordinary rendition, a truth to which our clients, all too painfully, can attest. It is Mr. Benjamin, clinging to legal frameworks rendered outdated by this administration's abuses of power, who is spreading myths.

BEN WIZNER

Attorney

STEVEN WATT

Attorney

American Civil Liberties Union

New York

The writers represent six rendition complainants in lawsuits against former CIA director George J. Tenet and several aviation corporations.