A Justice Dept. audit released yesterday shows that widespread complaints by FBI officials in 2003 over military and CIA interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay went ignored. Nearly half of the 450 FBI agents that the Justice Dept. inspector genral interviewed who worked at Guantanamo Bay said they personally witnessed brutal treatment of detainees like extreme temperatures and sleep deprivation. Yet neither the Justice Dept., then under John Ashcroft, nor the National Security Council, headed at the time by Condoleeza Rice, acted.

The Washington Post’s Carrie Johnson and Josh White report that the FBI may also be to blame as they didn’t go public with any of these complaints until after the May 2004 Abu Ghraib scandal. John Conyers, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, has Ashcroft testifying next June and will be sure to mention this latest chapter in the “war on terror.” Read Johnson and White here. MB

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