Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice chastised European leaders Monday, saying that before they complain about secret jails for terror suspects in European nations, they should realize that interrogations of these suspects have produced information that helped “save European lives.”
Her remarks were the Bush administration’s official response to the reports of a network of secret detention centers in at least eight European nations, said to house dozens of terror suspects.
At the same time, she denied that the U.S. has moved suspects to these prisons to allow interrogators to use torture.
“The United States,” she said, “does not permit, tolerate or condone torture under any circumstances.” At another point, she said, “The United States does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of interrogation using torture.”
Intelligence gathered from these interrogations, she said, “has stopped terrorist attacks and saved innocent lives in Europe as well as the United States.”
She declined to offer examples or provide specific information to support her assertions. She said any information related to the prisons is classified.
Rice did not explicitly confirm the existence of the detention centers. But acknowledgment was implicit.
“We must bring terrorists to justice wherever possible,” she said, “but there have been many cases where the local government cannot detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition is not a good option.
“In those cases,” she added, “the local government can make the sovereign choice to cooperate in” the transfer of a suspect to a third country, which is known as a rendition.
“Sometimes,” she added, “these efforts are misunderstood.”
Administration officials from the White House, State Department and Central Intelligence Agency labored over Rice’s statement for days and said it would serve as the basis of the government’s official answer to an inquiry about the covert detention centers issued by the European Union last week.
Rice offered her remarks to reporters Monday morning in a departure lounge at Andrews Air Force Base just outside Washington, moments before setting off for a trip to Europe.
Her five-day trip will take her to Germany, Belgium, Ukraine and Romania. Analyses of flight records of U.S. government aircraft have suggested that Romania may be the site of one covert detention center, but Romanian officials say that no such facility exists. Rice arrived in Berlin too late Monday night to meet with any German officials or to gauge any reaction to her remarks in Washington.
Administration officials, including Rice on Monday, have repeatedly maintained since the reports about the secret jails began that the government is abiding by American law and international agreements.
“We are respecting U.S. law and U.S. treaty obligations,” she said several times on Monday. “And we are respecting other nations’ sovereignty.”
That is a change in the position of the Bush administration, which has maintained in recent years that American law does not apply to prisoners held abroad. That is one reason some terror suspects were taken to Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and to other foreign locations.
Asked about that conflict while speaking to reporters on her plane, Rice did not answer directly and instead repeated her statement about respecting American laws and obligations.
Rice expressed impatience with the spiraling investigations and inquiries.
“Democracies are going to debate these things,” she said. “But they need to debate them not just on one side of the issue–that is, how the actual activities are being carried out.” They should also consider, “Are we doing everything we can to protect innocent lives?”
