New Book Contradicts Bush’s Claim That He Never Saw Secret Red Cross Report On Torture»

In August 2007, investigative journalist Jane Mayer reported in the New Yorker that a highly confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross had found that interrogation methods used in CIA detention facilities were “tantamount to torture.” According to Mayer’s sources, the report warned that CIA “officials may have committed ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Conventions.”

After the article was published, President Bush was asked in a news conference if he “had read” the Red Cross report. “Haven’t seen it; we don’t torture,” Bush bluntly responded before moving on to another question. Watch it:

But Mayer’s upcoming book, The Dark Side, appears to contradict Bush’s claim that he never saw the report. In a preview of the book, the New York Times reports today that it claims the CIA “shared the report” with Bush:

The book says the C.I.A. shared the report, which Ms. Mayer first described last year in less detail in The New Yorker, with President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The Red Cross report, according to Mayer’s book, found that the torturous interrogation methods used by the CIA “could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes.”

As ThinkProgress noted at the time of Bush’s denial, Mayer originally reported that top administration officials, including Rice and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, were “believed to have seen” the report.

Original here