WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is considering creating a special unit of professional interrogators to handle key terrorism suspects, focusing on intelligence-gathering rather than building criminal cases for prosecution, a government official said Saturday.
The recommendation is expected from a presidential task force on interrogation methods that plans to send some findings to the White House on Tuesday.
The official said the panel has concluded that the unit of intelligence and law enforcement agencies should be created. The task force is unsure which agencies should have a role, though the CIA and FBI are expected to be important players, according to the official. He was not authorized to discuss the issue and spoke on condition of anonymity.
The structure would depart significantly from such work under the Bush administration, when the CIA had the lead and sometimes exclusive role in questioning suspects.
Ben LaBolt, a White House spokesman, said President Barack Obama has not reviewed the recommendations. The recommendation about the new unit was first reported in Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.
Such a unit would not alter the Obama administration’s decision banning harsh interrogation techniques such as waterboarding that were authorized by the Bush administration. The Obama task force is examining what techniques could be used, the official said.
