Chain of Command: The Road From 9/11 to Abu Ghraib'
Seymour M. Hersh
2004
Page 16
"Rice and Rumsfeld know what many others involved in the prisoner discussions did not -- that sometime in late 2001 or early 2002, the President had signed a top-secret finding, as required by law, authorizing the Defense Department to set up a specially recruited clandestine team of Special Forces operatives and others who would defy diplomatic niceties and international law and snatch -- or assassinate, if necessary -- identified 'high-value' Al Qaeda operatives anywhere in the world. Equally secret interrogation centers would be set up in allied countries where harsh treatments were meted out, unconstrained by legal limits of public disclosure. The program was hidden inside the Defense Department as an 'unacknowledged' special-access program, or SAP, whose operational details were known only to a few in the Pentagon, the CIA and the White House."