**CIA agents threatened to kill a terror suspect’s children as part of interrogation techniques, a newly declassified report has revealed.**The report was made in 2004 but only a heavily censored version appeared and a judge ordered fuller disclosure.
The findings could lead to prosecutions of CIA employees, analysts say. The CIA director said he would “stand up” for those who followed legal guidance.
Earlier, President Obama approved a new elite team to question terror suspects.
Also on Monday US media said the justice department was to reopen about a dozen prisoner abuse cases.
‘Aggressive’
The declassified document released by the justice department said that one agent told key terror suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that “we’re going to kill your children” if there were further attacks on the US.
Ahead of the document’s release, CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote on the agency’s website that the report was “in many ways an old story” and that he would make “no judgments on the accuracy of the report or the various views expressed about it”.
But he said it was clear that the CIA had “obtained intelligence from high-value detainees when inside information on al-Qaeda was in short supply”.
Mr Panetta said the CIA was “aggressive” in seeking regular legal advice from the department of justice on its techniques.
He said his primary concern was “to stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given. That is the president’s position, too.”
But Mr Panetta also said: “This agency made no excuses for behaviour, however rare, that went beyond the formal guidelines on counter-terrorism.”
The BBC’s Kevin Connolly in Washington says that for President Obama the issue of how prisoners were treated in the early years of the Bush administration simply will not go away.
The left of the Democratic Party wants to investigate, expose and prosecute any wrongdoing.
But our correspondent says that would be divisive and would leave the Democrats vulnerable to accusations that they are soft on national security as next year’s mid-term elections approach.
