Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is among the officials Human Rights Watch says is worthy of investigation. | Getty Human Rights Watch to Obama: Prosecute Bush officials for torture

Human Rights Watch, in a new report out Tuesday, urged President Barack Obama to prosecute top officials from George W. Bush’s administration as well as CIA contractors or their roles in creating, approving and implementing so-called enhanced interrogation techniques against detainees in CIA custody.

"There is substantial evidence supporting charges of conspiracy to torture against senior US officials and CIA contractors, including evidence that some individuals joined the conspiracy after it was first established," the report, titled "No More Excuses: A Roadmap to Justice for CIA Torture" states, outlining the ways in which it says U.S. officials knowingly violated the federal Torture Statute and other laws in committing "torture, assault, sexual abuse, war crimes, and conspiracy to commit such crimes."


A host of top-level officials should be investigated, the report recommends, including the former heads of legal counsel for the CIA, the White House and Justice Department, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, and Condoleezza Rice, Bush's second-term national security adviser.

"Based on the information outlined above, the following individuals should be investigated for their role in the conspiracy: Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, Head of the Justice Department OLC Jay Bybee, OLC Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, the person identified as 'CTC Legal' in the Senate Summary, CIA Director George Tenet, National Security Legal Advisor John Bellinger, Attorney General John Ashcroft, White House Counsel Legal Advisor Alberto Gonzales, Counsel to the Vice President David Addington, Deputy White House Counsel Timothy Flanigan, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice," the report states, in addition to CIA psychologist contractors James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen who devised the program, proposed it to the agency and helped implement it.

Bush and Cheney should be also investigated for their roles in approving torture, it states. The report cites the executive summary of a 2014 Senate Select Committee on Intelligence report, which noted that Bush had not been briefed on the Senate program until April 2006, at which time he "expressed discomfort." The president wrote in his autobiography that he discussed the program with CIA Director George Tenet himself in 2002, and "personally approved them," according to HRW's report. (Rizzo has questioned Bush's account.) The report also cites media reports in naming Cheney and Addington as the principal political forces behind urging the use of the interrogation techniques. In a 2010 interview with ABC cited in the report, Cheney defended Yoo and other OLC lawyers by remarking that they did "what we asked them to do."

Human Rights Watch pointed to its own research and reporting, as well as the declassified information provided in the December 2014 Senate report, which detailed such practices as rectal feeding and one instance of a waterboarding session that caused one detainee to become "completely unresponsive, with bubbles rising through his open, full mouth."

"Ultimately, the guilt or innocence of any of the US officials involved in organizing or carrying out the CIA program will rest with the criminal justice system," the report states in its executive summary. "Suspects should be tried in criminal proceedings that comport with international due process and fair trial standards, including allowing them to challenge evidence, present defenses, and raise mitigating circumstances. But before these fundamental institutions of democratic rule can even be set in motion, US criminal justice officials need to first conduct credible investigations and bring charges where appropriate, requirements that have gone unmet for well over a decade since the first revelations of CIA torture after 9/11."

The Bush administration insisted repeatedly that its interrogation practices did not amount to torture, though it ruled out several techniques after public criticism.