Six months after the Senate released a report detailing some of the gruesome interrogation tactics employed by the CIA after 9/11, a bipartisan pair of senators is seeking to permanently outlaw torture.



Senator John McCain, a Republican of Arizona, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, introduced a measure on Tuesday that would limit the US government to the use of interrogation techniques specified in the Army Field Manual – a public document that prohibits enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation.

Feinstein and McCain, himself a victim of torture during the Vietnam war, hope to have the amendment included in the National Defense Authorization Act, a must-pass defense appropriations bill currently under consideration in the Senate.

If passed, the McCain-Feinstein amendment would codify into law an executive order signed by Barack Obama in 2009 that made it illegal for the US government to engage in torture, thus preventing a future president from reversing the Obama administration’s action.

The measure would also require that the Army Field Manual be reviewed every three years, with possible revisions, and effectively eliminate “secret prisons” by compelling the US government to grant the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) access to all detainees. Human rights groups said such loopholes have allowed the CIA to evade torture laws in the past, and welcomed the effort to eliminate any room for interpretation.

Katherine Hawkins, a national security fellow at OpenTheGovernment.org, said the McCain-Feinstein amendment made it considerably more difficult to evade laws against torture.

“In one sense, torture always was illegal. The CIA program always was illegal,” she said. “You can’t have a secret list of interrogation techniques. It makes it much, much harder to reinterpret the laws against torture in secret. [The amendment] both makes the legal prohibition crystal clear and it makes it very easy to enforce.”

Although it’s not yet clear when the amendment will come up for a vote, human rights watchers are optimistic that its proponents can use their influential perches on relevant committees to rally support among their colleagues. McCain is the chair of the Senate armed services committee and Feinstein is the ranking Democratic member on the Senate intelligence committee. Rhode Island senator Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the armed services committee, and Maine senator Susan Collins, a Republican on the intelligence committee, are co-sponsors of the anti-torture amendment.

Both McCain and Feinstein have routinely defended the intelligence community on other matters, but sharply condemned the revelations in the torture report – which Feinstein was instrumental in declassifying last year.

Steven Aftergood, a senior research analyst at the Federation of American Scientists, said the partnership could counter reluctance among some lawmakers to place statutory barriers before the intelligence community.

“They can bridge some gaps that others could not. There aren’t a lot of intelligence reforms where Senator Feinstein is the leading voice. Usually she’s the one saying ‘no or not now’,” Aftergood said. McCain has “several unique strengths in this area. Not only is he a one-time victim of torture and a Republican, but he’s also the chair of the armed services committee, so he’s in a very strong position to move this forward.”



The torture report, released by Feinstein in December when she was at the helm of the intelligence committee before Republicans took control of the Senate, detailed several shocking interrogation methods used by the CIA under the Bush administration after 9/11. Among them were forcing prisoners to stand on broken limbs, rectal rehydration, and rape threats. One detainee, Gul Rahman, died of hypothermia after being shackled to the floor while partially nude.

Last week, a Guantánamo Bay detainee disclosed even more abuses at the hands of the CIA that went beyond the contents of the torture report. In documents obtained by Reuters, Majid Khan, a former Guantánamo detainee who is now a witness cooperating with the government, said interrogators poured ice water on his genitals, touched his “private parts” repeatedly and twice recorded him naked.

“The law was clearly violated before,” said Laura Pitter, a senior national security counsel at Human Rights Watch. The McCain-Feinstein amendment “eliminates the possibility that it can be violated again no matter what Congress says … Very experienced interrogators will tell you that coercive interrogation techniques don’t work.”

Some who welcomed the anti-torture provision nonetheless argued that it did not go far enough. Naureen Shah, director of Amnesty International USA’s security and human rights program, noted that a prohibition on the CIA’s operation of so-called “black site” detention facilities overseas was still missing.

“This effectively leaves the door open to future CIA secret detention operations should a future US administration withdraw the president’s order, potentially an imminent risk given next year’s election,” Shah said in a statement.