The agency has stopped trying to detain or interrogate suspects caught abroad, except those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He's considered one of world's most dangerous terrorism suspects, and the U.S. offered a $1-million reward for his capture in 2005. Intelligence experts say he's a master bomb maker and extremist leader who possesses a wealth of information about Al-Qaeda-linked groups in Southeast Asia.
Yet the U.S. has made no move to interrogate or seek custody of Indonesian militant Umar Patek since he was apprehended this year by officials in Pakistan with the help of a CIA tip, U.S. and Pakistani officials say.
The little-known case highlights a sharp difference between President Obama's counter-terrorism policy and that of his predecessor, George W. Bush. Under Obama, the CIA has killed more people than it has captured, mainly through drone missile strikes in Pakistan's tribal areas. At the same time, it has stopped trying to detain or interrogate suspects caught abroad, except those captured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“The CIA is out of the detention and interrogation business,” said a U.S. official who is familiar with intelligence operations but was not authorized to speak publicly.
Several factors are behind the change.
Widespread criticism of Bush administration interrogation and detention policies as brutal and degrading led Obama to stop sending suspected terrorists to the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Public exposure also forced the CIA to close a network of secret prisons. That left U.S. officials with no obvious place to hold new captives.
In January 2009, Obama ordered the CIA to abide by the interrogation rules of the U.S. Army Field Manual, which guides military interrogators and includes prohibitions on the use of physical force against detainees. Critics warn that Al-Qaeda operatives could study the manual, which is available on the Internet, to learn how to resist its techniques, although no evidence has emerged suggesting that has happened.
In addition, some CIA officers are spooked by a long-running criminal investigation by a Washington special prosecutor into whether CIA officers broke the law by conducting brutal interrogations of suspected terrorists during the Bush administration.
“Given the enormous headaches involved … it's not surprising there are fewer people coming into our hands,” said Paul Pillar, a former senior CIA official.
Patek, described by intelligence officials and analysts as a central figure among extremists in Southeast Asia, could reveal links between Al-Qaeda sympathizers across the region. He is a prime suspect in the 2002 nightclub bombings that killed 202 people on the Indonesian island of Bali.
In the years after the Bali bombings, Patek is believed to have led a terrorist cell in the Philippines, where U.S. Special Forces have helped the military hunt militants on Mindanao island for years, said Sidney Jones, a Jakarta-based analyst for the International Crisis Group, an independent nonprofit organization that studies conflicts.
Patek's information “would be a gold mine” to U.S. intelligence, she said.
Pakistani officials say they plan to deliver Patek to authorities in Indonesia, where he is wanted in the Bali case. Although seven Americans were among those killed in the bombings, no U.S. criminal charges are pending against him, a senior Justice Department official said.
A Pakistani intelligence source said no one from the CIA or any other U.S. agency had asked to question Patek.
U.S. officials say they expect the CIA will be given access to intelligence gleaned from Indonesia's interrogations of Patek, and may even be allowed to sit in and provide guidance, given the close ties between U.S. and Indonesian counter-terrorism officials.
But that is not the same as controlling the questioning, critics say. “Having access to someone in someone else's custody is never the same as setting the conditions of their interrogation,” said a congressional aide who is briefed on intelligence issues but who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Senior Republican lawmakers say the U.S. may be giving up valuable intelligence by not acting more aggressively to detain and question suspects captured overseas.
“It is a shame that our administration has made the decision to defer to others to pursue the detention and interrogation of our enemies,” said Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee. “Now we'll have to rely on a foreign government to grant us access to this terrorist to obtain vital intelligence, if we're lucky.”
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, said: “The tangled mess of legal and policy issues surrounding detention right now makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to gain complete access for questioning. This forces us to work through the host country, which is not always optimal for a number of reasons.”
(Source: Los Angeles Times)
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