CIA director asked to handle Saddam interrogation

WASHINGTON - United States Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday that the Central Intelligence Agency will be responsible for the interrogation of Saddam Hussein.

CIA director George Tenet had been asked to be responsible for the handling of the interrogation.

Rumsfeld said he had requested that the CIA control the questions and "the management of the information that flows from those interrogations".

Interrogators are trying to build on information on anti-US resistance networks gleaned from documents kept by the captured former dictator of Iraq.

So far Saddam - in detention at an undisclosed location believed to be in Iraq - has provided little of much use, US officials say. He has again denied his regime had links with international terrorism and repeated that the weapons of mass destruction that were the ostensible reason for the US-led invasion in March do not exist.

Initial questioning has focused on establishing what, if anything, Saddam knows about the guerrilla insurgency against the US occupation, in the hope of preventing attacks.

Saddam's documents run to 500 pages and include passages from the Koran and personal notes. But they also contained information enabling US forces to capture some middling-level figures from the Ba'ath regime, including a major-general in the dissolved Iraqi army.

US officials were confident that interrogators armed with detailed psychological profiles, information from other prisoners and techniques such as sleep deprivation, will crack Saddam's resistance.

Military intelligence experts say a mix of carrots and sticks can still persuade Saddam to talk.

"It is quite amazing how big, tough people can crumple," said Ellie Goldsworthy, a former British military intelligence officer who heads the British Armed Forces Programme at the Royal United Services Institute think tank in London.

Washington has said Saddam will be treated as a prisoner of war under the Geneva Convention. That means he cannot be forcibly interrogated.

Under the third Geneva Convention, the only information a fully fledged POW can be ordered to give is his name, rank, serial number and date of birth.

"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever," the convention says.

"Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."

Stephen Jakobi, of London-based rights group Fair Trials Abroad, said "they can question him reasonably but they can use no other method of trying to get him to answer".

"The only information that isn't in a grey zone is information freely volunteered."

Goldsworthy said Western military interrogators receive careful training in methods that are effective in making prisoners talk, without crossing the convention's lines.

"It's surprising how upset you can make people by the fact they are incarcerated, the fact that they don't know what is happening next and the fact that they are totally in somebody else's power.

"The best tactic they use is just persistence. This is one guy who is going to face countless interrogators. So the interrogators aren't going to dry up or run out of ideas or run out of steam."

In video pictures in the initial hours of his capture, Saddam appeared docile and co-operative.

Later reports have suggested he has since become less co-operative.

Goldsworthy said once the initial shock of capture wore off, prisoners became tougher to crack.

"He will now be plotting his own strategy," she said.

Ways of making Saddam talk

* Saddam's captors will control whom he speaks to, when and for how long.

* They cannot deny him sleep or food, but they control what and when he eats, when he sleeps.

* Interrogators can reward cooperation with improved living conditions or contact with his family.

* Since the rules under which Saddam may be tried for war crimes have not been drawn up, he could be persuaded that cooperation could spare him the death penalty.

- INDEPENDENT, REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq