White House 'Duped' General Into Torture: Book

The Bush administration "hoodwinked" one of the country's top military men in order to establish harsh interrogation techniques on Guantanamo Bay prisoners, according to revelations in a new book reported in the Guardian. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Richard Myers was misled by White House aides into abandoning the military's long-standing ban on inhumane treatment of prisoners, according to London law professor Phillipe Sands in his book Torture Team.

The professor discovered that the general thought techniques like hooding and sensory deprivation had come from the military's own field manual—but they actually breached the military's rules, and some had been thought up by young officers inspired by the TV series 24. "As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled," the professor writes. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was "able to run rings around him." (More Joint Chiefs of Staff stories.)