Outing Secret Jails

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The CIA refuses to comment, but Hadley insists that prisoners being held secretly are treated humanely: "The United States will not torture." Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for the European Union, to which Poland belongs and Romania aspires, says secret prisons would be illegal under E.U. rules requiring member states to abide by such legal conventions as due process and the right of prisoners to a lawyer. But Abbing added that the E.U. would accept the denials of Poland and Romania "unless we see hard evidence to the contrary."

So far the CIA has been able to escape the kind of congressional scrutiny the Pentagon endured after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. Only a few senior members of the congressional intelligence committees are briefed on the CIA's secret prisons, and the agency refuses to publicly disclose its interrogation procedures. But the agency may not be able to enjoy such latitude in the future. Cheney is meeting fierce resistance from Senator John McCain, a former Vietnam POW, in the Vice President's campaign to persuade Congress to exclude the CIA from a measure that McCain easily got through the Senate prohibiting cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoner in U.S. custody. And Negroponte's muteness on Cheney's push to exempt the CIA seemed to signal a reply of "thanks, but no thanks" from the chief of the spies.