Inside the Ring

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By Bill Gertz INSIDE THE RING

New interrogation study

Amid the current debate over past harsh interrogation of terrorist suspects by the CIA, the Obama administration made clear this week it is prepared to add new interrogation techniques beyond the relatively mild approved methods outlined in the Army Field Manual.

The administration stated Monday, in announcing the work of a White House-level task force on the issue, that Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate past abuses does not mean that tough interrogations will be abandoned.

The Justice Department announcement on the task force includes a little-noticed reference to plans for developing better interrogation methods.

In addition to producing a "best practices" system for questioning captured terrorists, the task force urged setting up "a scientific research program for interrogation be established to study the comparative effectiveness of interrogation approaches and techniques, with the goal of identifying the existing techniques that are most effective and developing new lawful techniques to improve intelligence interrogations."

President Obama approved the recommendation, administration officials said in a background briefing Tuesday.

The approval means intelligence officials, psychiatrists, human-behavior experts and others will work on ways to make people talk in captivity.

The likely source for the research is expected to be the Intelligence Science Board, which studied and reported on U.S. interrogations several years ago. The board is made up of former intelligence officials and scientists.

One senior Obama administration official told reporters the president has approved that recommendation and that the new techniques could go beyond those outlined in the Army Field Manual, which currently limits both military and intelligence interrogations.

"There has been a lot of academic and scientific research done in the past half-dozen years or so looking at elicitation techniques and ways to gain information from individuals who may be under detention," the official said, noting that "we want to make sure that we're able to leverage anything that is newly identified as far as appropriate techniques that should be used."