ACLU Loses Bid for CIA Interrogation Documents

WASHINGTON (CN) - The ACLU won't get information on unauthorized interrogation techniques allegedly used by CIA agent on suspects captured in the wake of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a federal judge ruled.

The group sued the federal agency for refusing to release the records under the Freedom of Information Act. According to the ruling, the records are composed of reports written by the CIA Office of the Inspector General "relating to the detention, interrogation, or treatment of individuals apprehended after Sept. 11, 2001, and held at detention facilities outside the United States."

U.S. District Judge Amy Jackson dismissed the ACLU's claims for all the records except for one, which the judge ordered to be remanded back to the CIA to determine if it holds information that has already been released.

The judge accepted the CIA's argument that the records are protected by exemptions one and three of FOIA, which allow the government to withhold information sensitive to national security and protected by statute. In this case, the CIA cited the National Security Act as the statute protecting the records.

"The ACLU's only argument is that interrogation techniques cannot be properly classified as intelligence sources or methods when they are 'unauthorized,'" states Judge Jackson. "It provides scant support for this assertion, and there is nothing in statute or case law that requires courts to treat information about unauthorized interrogation techniques differently from information about authorized techniques."After the ACLU's initial complaint, the CIA released some records that were partially redacted, but withheld the 11 documents at issue in their entirety.

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