Washington, Dec 17: The CIA is in charge of interrogation of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said. The agency's director George Tenet will decide who will interrogate him and what information they will seek, Rumsfeld told reporters yesterday.
Describing Saddam's relationship with his captors as "resigned", the Defence Secretary said he was accorded the "protections" of a prisoner of war but was not formally designated as such.
Rumsfeld also defended the release of a videotape of Saddam after his capture, saying Iraqis needed to see proof that the former dictator was "off the street, out of commission”.
"He has been handled in a professional way," Rumsfeld said. "He has not been held up to public curiosity in any demeaning way by reasonable definitions of the Geneva Convention."
According to officials, intelligence agencies are trying to get information from Saddam about the remaining principals of his regime who may be playing a more direct role in running guerilla operations in Iraq.
Some insurgents evidently kept Saddam informed about their activities "on the chance that someday he might be able once again to be their patron," Brig Gen Martin Dempsey, commander of the 1st Armoured Division in Iraq, has said. Bureau Report