Torture Plans at Guantanamo Came From Rumsfeld’s Office

Perjury was committed in the previous torture hearings.

The new evidence challenges previous statements by William J. “Jim” Haynes II, who served as Defense Department general counsel under Rumsfeld and is among the witnesses scheduled to testify at today’s hearing. Haynes, who resigned in February, suggested to a Senate panel in 2006 that the request for tougher interrogation methods originated in October 2002, when Guantanamo Bay commanders began asking for help in ratcheting up the pressure on suspected terrorists who had stopped cooperating. A memo from the prison’s top military lawyer that same month had suggested specific techniques and declared them legal.

Haynes suggested that the requests had created a dilemma for the Pentagon’s top civilian leaders. “Many people struggled over that question,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2006. “I struggled over that question.”

Haynes committed perjury. He broke the laws against lying to Congress in order to protect Rumsfeld and Cambone.