Ashcroft testifies on terror interrogations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Attorney General John Ashcroft on Thursday disavowed the now-defunct legal reasoning used to justify harshly questioning terrorism suspects but dug in his heels to defend White House officials who pressured him while he was hospitalized four years ago to approve terror surveillance programs.

For a House Judiciary Committee hearing focused on a somber subject — whether methods used to interrogate al-Qaida plotters amount to torture — the four hours of testimony included moments of humor and repeated problems pronouncing the names of terror suspects.

At the heart of the hearing was whether U.S. interrogators acted legally in using harsh tactics on captured terror suspects — including waterboarding — in the years immediately after 9/11. Waterboarding involves strapping a person down and pouring water over his or her cloth-covered face to create the sensation of drowning. Critics call it torture.

Ashcroft was attorney general when he approved two Justice Department legal opinions in 2002 and 2003 that, essentially, approved the use of waterboarding and other harsh methods so long as they did not “cause pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure.”

Both memos were written, in part, by former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo. Ashcroft agreed to withdraw both memos a few years later after his advisers said they were concerned that the legal reasoning behind them overstepped the limits of executive authority.