Feds Plan to Build Team of Terror Interrogation Pros

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Jul 18, 2009 9:16 AM CDT

(Newser) – The Obama administration is working on plans to create a team of interrogation experts drawn from different agencies, insiders tell the Wall Street Journal. The unit would take the job of debriefing "high-value" terror suspects away from the CIA, the sources say, and would be tasked with creating new, noncoercive interrogation methods based on science and psychology.

The unit will likely include experts from the CIA, the Pentagon, and the FBI, sources say, and will be asked to create contingency plans for grilling of captured al-Qaeda leaders. Off-limits will be techniques like waterboarding used by the CIA, which based much of its program on the military's instructions to soldiers on how to cope with harsh interrogations by enemy forces.

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Handcuffs are shown locked to the chair and floor in an interrogation room at Camp V, at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, Cuba. (AP Photo/Haraz Ghanbari, file)

Terror suspect Omar Khadr is shown in an interrogation room at the Guatanamo US Naval Base prison while being questioned. (AP Photo/US Department of Defense via The Canadian Press)

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We have to figure out tactic by tactic: Would we allow some things that go beyond the criminal-justice system or the Army Field Manual? - John Radsan, a former CIA lawyer and federal prosecutor

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