By Jason Leopold

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein urged President Barack Obama Monday to reserve judgment about whether or not Bush administration officials should be prosecuted for torture until her committee completes its review of the CIA’s so-called “enhanced interrogation” program in six to eight months.

“I am writing to respectfully request that comments regarding holding individuals accountable for detention and interrogation related activities be held in reserve until the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is able to complete its review of the conditions and interrogations of certain high value detainees,” Feinstein’s letter says.

“This study is now underway, and I estimate its completion within the next six to eight months. A study of the first two detainees has already been completed and will shortly be before the committee,” the California Democrat added.

It’s unclear who the two detainees are that Feinstein referred to in her letter. Gil Duran, a spokesman for Feinstein, said he could not comment beyond Feinstein’s statement.

However, according to published reports, Abu Zubaydah, an alleged al-Qaeda operative was the first “high-value” detainee to be subjected to the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program. Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and whisked to a CIA “black site” prison where he was tortured. 

Abu Zubaydah, appeared to have been used as something of a test case by his interrogators. According to various accounts, he was transferred to a secret prison in Thailand and possibly elsewhere to be brutally questioned. According to one of four “torture” memos the Justice Department released last week, Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, the month the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a pair of opinions authorizing the CIA to use harsh methods during interrogations.

Zubaydah told the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) that CIA interrogators told him he was the first prisoner to be tortured in this way, “so no rules applied. It felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people.”

Feinstein told Newsweek last month in response to the ICRC’s findings: “I now know we were not fully and completely briefed on the CIA program.”

According to a report in the Washington Post earlier this month, Zubaydah’s torture did not produce valuable intelligence and failed to foil terrorist plots against the U.S.

Feinstein and Intelligence Committee vice-chair, Sen. Christopher Bond, R-Missouri, announced last month that their committee would conduct a yearlong “review” and “study” the CIAs’ interrogation and detention practices to determine whether it produced viable intelligence. The senators’ review is running parallel to one being conducted by the White House.

“The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has agreed on a strong bipartisan basis to begin a review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” Feinstein and Bond said in a joint news release. “The purpose is to review the program and to shape detention and interrogation policies in the future.”

Feinstein and Bond said their “study” “will consist of extensive document review and interviews as are necessary to fully understand the creation and operation of the CIA detention and interrogation program.”

Last month, CIA Director Leon Pannetta told agency employees in a letter that he had been “assured” by Feinstein and Bond “that their goal is to draw lessons for future policy decisions, not to punish those who followed guidance from the Department of Justice. That is only fair.”

Panetta told agency employees that he enlisted the help of former Republican Sen. Warren Rudman to assist him with the Senate Intelligence Committee’s review.

Rudman, who represented New Hamspshire until his retirement in 1993, and had served on the Senate Intelligence Committee, was named Panetta’s “special adviser” working exclusively to assist the CIA in dealing with inquiries from the Senate Intelligence Committee. Rudman will not be paid for his work, a CIA spokesman said.

Rudman is co-chair and an advisory board member of Partnership for a Secure America, a non profit group dedicated to “recreating the bipartisan center in American national security and foreign policy,” according to the organization’s website.

He supported a senate amendment to ban torture and, along with former Sen. Gary Hart, was appointed by Bill Clinton to chair the Commission on National Security, which, prior to 9/11 issued three white papers predicting a major terrorist attack on U.S. soil that was ignored by the Bush administration.

Rudman was also vice chairman of a committee that investigated the illegal sales of weapons to Iran in the 1980s.

The Los Angeles Times said Rudman’s appointment to help with a “congressional investigation…represents an unusual step for the CIA, which has faced similar probes in recent years without enlisting such high-profile help. But the move reflects a recognition of the stakes of a Senate inquiry into one of the agency’s most controversial programs in recent years, as well as the political instincts of its new director.”

Feinstein’s letter to Obama was sent just as Obama had paid a visit to CIA headquarters in Langley, Va., to reassure agency employees that they would not face prosecution for participating in “enhanced interrogations” as long as they followed Justice Department legal advice.

Bond, however, seems to have already reached a conclusion on the effectiveness of torture even while the committee he co-chairs is in the midst of reviewing the program. He said Monday the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used against “high-value” detainees kept “America safe since 9/11.” He also sharply criticized Obama’s decision to release the four “torture” memos last week and said his “pep rally” at the CIA Monday was nothing but “lip-service.”

“The President’s visit to boost morale at the CIA today can’t erase the dangerous message he sent last week – which is that the CIA better change their mission to ‘CYA [cover your ass],’ because our government is not going to stand behind you,” Bond said.

But Obama made his position clear during his visit to Langley Monday afternoon.

“I will be as vigorous in protecting you as you are vigorous in protecting the American people.”