A Justice Department-led task force is planning to propose creating an inter-agency unit to handle interrogations of “high-value detainees,” The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The unit would be tasked more with intelligence-gathering than building criminal cases and its members would be pulled from spy and law-enforcement agencies, according to The Journal. The unit would also review how interrogations are handled.
“One of the team’s tasks would likely be to devise a new set of interrogation methods, according to one person familiar with the proposal. Those techniques could be drawn from sources ranging from scientific studies to the psychology behind television ads.”
The interrogation policy task force — along with a similar task force reviewing detention policy and the shutting down of the facility at Guantanamo Bay — will miss a Tuesday deadline for reporting findings, news reports said. But at least some of the interrogation policy group’s findings will be sent to the White House by that date, the AP reported.
The Special Task Force on Interrogation and Transfer Policies is being led by J. Douglas Wilson, the Chief of the National Security Unit in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California. He was appointed to the role by Attorney General Eric Holder in March. The task force was established under an executive order signed by President Barack Obama during his first week in office.
Generally, the creation of such a multi-agency team is supported within the administration, according to The Journal, but there is some disagreement over the details, such as which agency it should fall under or who should head it.