Category: Torture

It Took You Long Enough!

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The New York Times has finally agreed to stop using euphemisms, and actually call the CIA’s torture program, well, torture :

Over the past few months, reporters and editors of The Times have debated a subject that has come up regularly ever since the world learned of the C.I.A.’s brutal questioning of terrorism suspects: whether to call the practices torture.

When the first revelations emerged a decade ago, the situation was murky. The details about what the Central Intelligence Agency did in its interrogation rooms were vague. The word “torture” had a specialized legal meaning as well as a plain-English one. While the methods set off a national debate, the Justice Department insisted that the techniques did not rise to the legal definition of “torture.” The Times described what we knew of the program but avoided a label that was still in dispute, instead using terms like harsh or brutal interrogation methods.

………

Meanwhile, the Justice Department, under both the Bush and Obama administrations, has made clear that it will not prosecute in connection with the interrogation program. The result is that today, the debate is focused less on whether the methods violated a statute or treaty provision and more on whether they worked – that is, whether they generated useful information that the government could not otherwise have obtained from prisoners. In that context, the disputed legal meaning of the word “torture” is secondary to the common meaning: the intentional infliction of pain to make someone talk.

Given those changes, reporters urged that The Times recalibrate its language. I agreed. So from now on, The Times will use the word “torture” to describe incidents in which we know for sure that interrogators inflicted pain on a prisoner in an effort to get information.

About f%$#ing time.

The Times has had absolutely no problem with calling other nations’ various brutalities, “torture,” but it’s taken 10 years, and a flat out admission from the President, for the New York Times to finally dip its toes in this water as it applies to the US state security apparatus.

It’s why I tend to look overseas, typically the Beeb and the Guardian, for accurate stories on these matters.

The New York Times Compares the CIA Torture Coverup to Catch-22

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If you recall, the Times was forced to publish its story about NSA spying on Americans when their James Risen, who co-wrote this story announced that he was going to publish on its own.

The “Gray Lady” has a long history of kowtowing to the US state security apparatus, which is why we see an OP/ED by Editorial Page Editor Andrew Rosenthal invoking the seminal Joseph Heller war farce to describe the CIA’s behavior with regard the Senate Inteligence Committee’s torture report:

In Joseph Heller’s anti-war satire, “Catch 22,” the hero, Yossarian, is assigned to a censorship detail. He amuses himself by deleting all the adverbs and adjectives from soldiers’ letters, then all the articles, then everything but the articles, and so on. His job was to delete details that threatened operational security. The result was gibberish.

It seems the Central Intelligence Agency was inspired by Yossarian’s example.

The C.I.A. was given the task of censoring the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report denouncing none other than the C.I.A. for torturing prisoners, lying to its overseers in Congress about the torture, and exaggerating how much valuable information the torture provided (if any). The result was predictable and proof, if anyone still needed it, that having the subject of the report censor that report is a very bad idea.

When the White House approved the C.I.A.’s censorship (the term of art in Washington is “redaction”) and sent the report to the Hill, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, said in his usual sneering way that 85 percent of the report was intact and that half the blackouts were made to footnotes.

The issue, of course, is not merely how much is deleted, but what is deleted. On Monday, McClatchy reported that C.I.A. censors had blacked out the pseudonyms used to protect the identities of agents involved in the detention and interrogation of suspected terrorists. That, McClatchy said, rendered parts of the report unintelligible.

“Redactions are supposed to remove names or anything that could compromise sources and methods, not to undermine the source material so that it is impossible to understand,” said Senator Martin Heinrich, the New Mexico Democrat, who is a member of the intelligence committee. “Try reading a novel with 15 percent of the words blacked out.”

………

Asked about the dispute, the White House press secretary Josh Earnest, offered the usual boilerplate about national security reviews. Here’s how Yossarian might have quoted him: “It is BLANK that a BLANK process be carried out that BLANKS sources and BLANK and other BLANK that is BLANK to our BLANK BLANK.”

Let me be clear: this is not one of the unsigned Times editorials, and as such, it is not as official as that would be, but this is the f%$#ing editorial page editor of the f%$#ing New York Times, and as such, is arguably the 3rd most official statement from the paper. (something from publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. coming in at number 2).

As I have said before, Obama, and the rest of his national security troika, fetishize secrecy, and you can expect a good faith declassification from them, so the Senate Intelligence Committee should exercise its statutory authority, and declassify the report on its own.

Barack Obama Just Admitting to Covering Up Crimes Against Humanity, Which is a Crime Against Humanity

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Barack Obama has blithely stated that, “We tortured some folks,” but continues to insist that there will not be any sort of accountability for this:

In startlingly blunt phrasing, President Obama on Friday acknowledged the CIA’s use of brutal interrogation tactics in the years after the Sept. 11 attack, even as he defended the agency’s top spy, who is a veteran of the era.

 “We tortured some folks,” Obama said to reporters during a news conference Friday. “We did some things that were contrary to our values.”

 ………

 He sought to put the interrogation program in context, recalling Americans’ fear after the Sept. 11 attacks and the “enormous pressure” on law enforcement to prevent more attacks.

 “You know, it is important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had,” Obama said. “And a lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.”

No, they weren’t patriots, they were “Good Germans”.

He also further makes it clear that not only will there be no prosecution of torturers, there won’t even be a real investigation of who gave the orders.

As Richard Nixon’s head in a jar might attest to, sometimes it’s the cover up that constitutes a crime, and Obama has thrown his lot in with the coverup.

Whoever performed, authorized, or ordered torture, at a very minimum, should be stripped of their security clearances and fired.  (I would argue that the same should apply to those who did not report torture through the chain of command)

He was forced to make this statement, since the Senate report on this reveals that the torture was more common and more brutal than was reported to Congress of the public, as well as the fact that it never produced meaningful actionable intelligence.

It is also important to note that many of the people tortured were guilty of nothing, and had just been swept up in a panic driven dragnet and bounty program.

Finally, it should be noted that torture comes home.  National guardsman who observe or participate in torture, and then come home to work in civilian law enforcement, are more likely to engage in torture themselves.

Prosecution, and public shaming, are essential to stopping this.

He Could Always Read the Report from the Well of the Senate

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Ron Widen (D-)R) is looking at using Congressional authority to declassify the CIA torture report:

A senior Senate Democrat is firing a warning shot at the White House against stalling the release of a report about the past use of torture by the U.S. intelligence community.

Sen. Ron Wyden is talking with his colleagues about the possibility of using a seldom-invoked procedure to declassify an Intelligence Committee report on the use of torture in the event the White House does not move ahead quickly.

Speaking with reporters on a variety of subjects Thursday, the Oregon Democrat referred to the Senate’s “Resolution 400″ — the Abraham A. Ribicoff-sponsored resolution that established the Intelligence Committee back in 1976.

Wyden said he was discussing invoking the resolution “in order to move this along if we have to, through the committee process, to get it declassified.”

………

Bringing up Senate Resolution 400 in conversations this week is a reminder from Wyden that the legislative branch would have recourse in the event the Obama administration stonewalls the release, a point made clear in the Senate manual:

“The select committee may, subject to the provisions of this section, disclose publicly any information in the possession of such committee after a determination by such committee that the public interest would be served by such disclosure. Whenever committee action is required to disclose any information under this section, the committee shall meet to vote on the matter within five days after any member of the committee requests such a vote. No member of the select committee shall disclose any information, the disclosure of which requires a committee vote, prior to a vote by the committee on the question of the disclosure of such information or after such vote except in accordance with this section.”

Of course he would actually have to get a majority vote in the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is pretty unlikely, which is why I think that invoking the Constitutionally granted Congressional immunity might be the way to go, though this would almost certainly get Wyden tossed of the Intel Committee.

They Will Destroy this Man

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The Miami Herald has discovered that a Navy nurse has refused to force feed the Guantanamo detainees:

In the first known rebellion against Guantánamo’s force-feeding policy, a Navy medical officer recently refused to continue managing tube-feedings of prison hunger strikers and was reassigned to “alternative duties.”

 A prison camp spokesman, Navy Capt. Tom Gresback, would not provide precise details but said Monday night that the episode had “no impact to medical support operations at the base.”

 “There was a recent instance of a medical provider not willing to carry out the enteral feeding of a detainee,” he said in an email. “The matter is in the hands of the individual’s leadership.”

 Word of the refusal reached the outside world last week in a call from prisoner Abu Wael Dhiab to attorney Cori Crider of the London-based legal defense group Reprieve. Dhiab, a hunger striker, described how a nurse in the Navy medical corps abruptly refused to “force-feed us” sometime before the Fourth of July — and disappeared from detention center duty.

(emphasis mine)

Needless to say, not only is this guy’s career over, you can be sure that the his command, and perhaps JAG Corps will go after him like the US Attorney went after Aaron Swartz, notwithstanding the declarations to the contrary made later in the article.

Guantanamo is an ethical black hole, our own little Abu Ghraib, our own little Gulag, and under those circumstances, they cannot allow people to assert a conscience objection, because would short circuit the cognitive dissonance that allows the facility to function..

Why is this Woman Still a Part of Our Political Discourse?

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Sarah Palin just said that, “Waterboarding Is How We Baptize Terrorists.”

No, I am not paraphrasing, this was a direct quote:

With her legitimate political career all but unsalvageable, Sarah Palin has embraced her new role as a carnival barker. Speaking over the weekend at the National Rifle Association “Stand And Fight” rally at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Palin attempted an Ann Coulter routine meant to offend anyone not white and at least a little racist. “Not all intolerant, anti-freedom leftist liberals are hypocrites,” she offered before endorsing torture. “I’m kidding — yes, they are!” Zing — plus 1,000 patriot points.

And then her centerpiece joke, which really had very little to do with the gun nuts directly. “If I were in charge …” — wistful pause — “they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists.” The crowd erupted.

How I long for the day that she is relegated to the ash heap of history.

Why Does this Psychopath Still Have a License to Practice Psychology?

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James Mitchell, who designed the CIA’s torture program, and who tortured people himself, has a sad over the prospect of the Senate Intelligence Committee Report describing how f%$#evil and twisted he is:

Mitchell insists the torture techniques he developed had produced results, and is dismissive of critics of the CIA program. Photograph: US Department of Defense/AP

 The psychologist regarded as the architect of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program has broken a seven-year silence to defend the use of torture techniques against al-Qaida terror suspects in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

 In an uncompromising and wide-ranging interview with the Guardian, his first public remarks since he was linked to the program in 2007, James Mitchell was dismissive of a Senate intelligence committee report on CIA torture in which he features, and which is currently at the heart of an intense row between legislators and the agency.

 The committee’s report found that the interrogation techniques devised by Mitchell, a retired air force psychologist, were far more brutal than disclosed at the time, and did not yield useful intelligence. These included waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation for days at a time, confinement in a box and being slammed into walls.

 But Mitchell, who was reported to have personally waterboarded accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, remains unrepentant. “The people on the ground did the best they could with the way they understood the law at the time,” he said. “You can’t ask someone to put their life on the line and think and make a decision without the benefit of hindsight and then eviscerate them in the press 10 years later.”

It’s nice to know that your alibi would apply to Nazi war criminals as well.

BTW, he continues to claim that torture worked, but as whistleblower Steve Keinman observes:

Steven Kleinman, an air force colonel who participated in interrogations in Iraq and who is credited with blowing the whistle on abuses taking place there, told the Guardian he did not understand how Mitchell could still believe torture methods that generated false confessions could also produce “reliable, accurate and timely intelligence”.

“Why would anybody think that a model that would produce those outcomes would also be effective in producing the opposite?” Kleinman said.

Charlie Pierce correctly derided him as, “another monster“:

Let us be quite clear. Nobody in the torture chambers — and certainly not Mitchell — was being asked to “put his life on the line.” If you have someone fastened to a plank, and you’re pouring water into his mouth to make him believe he’s drowning, he is in no position to threaten your life. James Mitchell was not in any kind of danger, unless whatever vestigial conscience he had came to life and ate him alive, which I sincerely doubt. There is no excuse for what we did. September 11 is no excuse. It wasn’t a matter of the “people on the ground” not understanding the law. It was a matter of them not caring what the law was because they had a thin legal excuse ginned up for them by pet lawyers in the employ of sociopaths. Mitchell should be facing a tribunal for war crimes, not whining about an unflattering Senate committee report.

He should be sharing a cell with John Yoo, who said that it was OK to crush the testicles of a child to get their parent to talk.

The problem with, “Looking forward, not backward,” as Obama is wont to say is that these people continue to poison our national culture.

Of course, looking backward, and charging the malefactors of the Bush administration would set a precedent that might lead to Obama charged for the excesses of his murder by drone program, but I really don’t care if any of them, from either administration, do some well-deserved time in a deep dark hole.

Dianne Feinstein* is Right, Both on the Principal, and the Form

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The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee is asking the White House, and not the CIA to conduct the declassification review of the Senate torture report:

The chairwoman of the Senate Intelligence Committee has called for the White House – not the Central Intelligence Agency – to lead the declassification process for the panel’s summary of its massive, scathing report on the CIA’s detention and interrogation program.

In a letter to President Barack Obama, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., challenged both the White House and CIA, which have suggested in recent days that the agency would spearhead the declassification.

“The CIA, in consultation with other agencies, will conduct the declassification review,” Caitlin Hayden, a spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said after the Intelligence Committee voted last week to declassify the 481-page executive summary.

Attorney General Eric Holder said the Obama administration wanted a thorough review.

“I agree that as much of the report as possible should be made public, of course allowing for redactions that are necessary to protect national security,” he told the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday. “So I was pleased that the committee voted to send portions of the report forward for declassification.”

Holder recalled that Obama “believes that bringing this program into the light will help the American people understand what happened in the past and can help guide us as we move forward so that no administration contemplates such a program in the future.”

In her letter, Feinstein calls for swift action on the summary, findings and conclusions of the report. The summary, she says, should be released quickly and with minimal redactions.

“As this report covers a covert action program under the authority of the president and National Security Council, I respectfully request that the White House take the lead in the declassification process,” the letter reads.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that while only the CIA could declassify, “We’re trying to build up pressure on the White House and the CIA. It’s not just declassify. It’s to do a minimum of redactions.”

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a longtime critic of the CIA’s interrogation methods – widely regarded as torture – said he fully understood Feinstein’s concerns.

“She doesn’t trust the CIA. I think she’s probably right. I don’t trust them either,” he told McClatchy.

“This is the same outfit that destroyed the videos of the interrogations. That’s one of the most outrageous things I’ve ever seen in my life,” he said.

Also note that a target of the investigation, whose name was mentioned more than 1600 times in the Senate report, was the one who supervised CIA “Cooperation” (i.e. hacking into) Senate computers while staffers were reviewing documents.

The CIA is not to be trusted.

What’s more, they don’t have the authority to take lead on declassification, because they did not classify the program in the first place.

That was the White House:

Five years ago, I reported (BREAKING) that the Bush Administration (aka Dick Cheney) made the torture program a Special Access Program in unusual fashion. Rather than CIA Director George Tenet make torture a SAP, as mandated by the Executive Order governing such things, unnamed people in the National Security Council did so.

………
Since that time, I’ve asked experts in classification and they agree that something funky went down (note, too, that torture wasn’t a SAP at the very beginning).
I believe torture’s odd SAP status is one of the things that has implicated the Presidency, which the Obama Administration went to some lengths to cover up.

But it also should dictate the White House take the lead on declassification of the torture program.

Don’t take my word for it — take Dianne Feinstein’s word. In a letter to the White House, she invoked torture’s status as a “covert action program under the authority of the President and National Security Council” to call for the White House to lead declassification.

In a letter to the President dated April 7 and obtained by McClatchy, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., called for swift action on the summary and the findings and conclusions of the report, which members voted last week to declassify. The summary, Feinstein said, should be released “quickly and with minimal redactions.”
“As this report covers a covert action program under the authority of the President and National Security Council, I respectfully request that the White House take the lead in the declassification process,” the letter reads.


Note, Dianne Feinstein has just formally confirmed the same detail the Obama Administration appealed to keep secret: torture was authorized by the President, not by OLC, not by George Tenet, not by John Rizzo. The President.

Which is why the President should take responsibility for releasing the report.

For some reason Barack Obama has the protection of Bush and Cheney as one of the most important goals of his presidency.

He may think that this position prevents a political schism, but what it really does is normalize corruption and create a criminogenic environment.

H/t Garrett at Daily Kos.

*Full disclosure, my great grandfather, Harry Goldman, and her grandfather, Sam Goldman were brothers, though we have never met, either in person or electronically.

Maybe Because They do not Want to be Revealed as Sociopathic Sadists?

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This would explain why the CIA has consistently lied about both the effectiveness and the extent of its torture program:

A report by the Senate Intelligence Committee concludes that the CIA misled the government and the public about aspects of its brutal interrogation program for years — concealing details about the severity of its methods, overstating the significance of plots and prisoners, and taking credit for critical pieces of intelligence that detainees had in fact surrendered before they were subjected to harsh techniques.

The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use — and later tried to defend — excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document.

“The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,” said one U.S. official briefed on the report. “Was that actually true? The answer is no.”

Current and former U.S. officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or “black sites,” that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.

Classified files reviewed by committee investigators reveal internal divisions over the interrogation program, officials said, including one case in which CIA employees left the agency’s secret prison in Thailand after becoming disturbed by the brutal measures being employed there. The report also cites cases in which officials at CIA headquarters demanded the continued use of harsh interrogation techniques even after analysts were convinced that prisoners had no more information to give.

(emphasis mine)

Also, the techniques used were far worse than previously revealed.

We now understand why the CIA has bee pushing back against the Senate Intelligence Committee. 

It’s one thing to argue that it was a necessary evil that yielded results, it’s another that the policies were prosecuted out of nothing more than a sadistic need to prove how macho they are.

Truth be told, I am not surprised.  This sort of narcissistic cruelty is something that I would expect to have originated from the mind of one Richard Bruce Cheney.

The problem is that for the entire Bush-Cheney years, being a sadistic torturer, or at least pretending to be one, was the only way for advancement in the CIA, and Obama has done nothing to clean house since then.

This means that the upper echelons of the CIA need to cover up this at all cost, or they will be sidelined.

Torture comes home, nu?

So Not a Surprise. The CIA F%$#ed Up, and then Covered it Up

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In Newsweek, of all places, we have Jeff Stein explaining part of why the CIA is trying to suppress and discredit the Senate Intelligence Committee report on torture.

Rather unsurprising, torturer and tape destroyer Jose Rodriguez figures prominently in all of this:

The hotel bar TVs were all flashing clips of Senate intelligence committee chair Dianne Feinstein denouncing the CIA for spying on her staff, when I met an agency operative for drinks last week. He flashed a wan smile, gestured at the TV and volunteered that he’d narrowly escaped being assigned to interrogate Al-Qaida suspects at a secret site years ago.

 “I guess I would’ve done it,” he said, implying you either took orders or quit. But everybody in the counterterrorism program knew what was going on in those places, he said, and he was glad the agency found something else for him to do at the last minute. “Look what’s happened.”

 Four years after Feinstein launched her probe of that interrogation program, her committee and the CIA are locked in a death-struggle over what can be released from the panel’s 6,300-page, still-classified report. The impasse is bringing renewed attention to statements by former CIA and FBI agents that buttress the committee’s all-but-official conclusion that the agency exaggerated the interrogation program’s successes and minimized its abuses.

 In early 2008, for example, the committee heard from Ali Soufan, one of the FBI’s top former counterterrorism agents, who has since gone public with his criticism of the enhanced interrogation techniques, or EITs, that CIA contractors had used on top Al-Qaida captive Abu Zubaydah. “The staffers present were shocked,” he wrote in his memoir, The Black Banners. “What I told them contradicted everything they had been told by Bush administration and CIA officials. When the discussion turned to whether I could prove everything I was saying, I told them, ‘Remember, an FBI agent always keep his notes.’ “

 A Lebanese-American who was decorated by both the FBI and Defense Department for his counterterrorism work, Soufan laid out a case for the committee that CIA officials, chiefly Jose Rodriguez, the former CIA counterterrorism boss who ordered the destruction of interrogation videotapes, lied about the value of torturing detainees-to the point of altering the dates on documents to show a cause-and-effect that didn’t exist.

 “In this area, it’s not a question of memory but of factual record,” he later told the New Yorker’s Amy Davidson. “There are now thousands of pages of declassified memos and reports that thoroughly rebut what Mr. Rodriguez and others are now claiming. For example, one of the successes of the EITs claimed in the now declassified memos is that after the program began in August 2002, Abu Zubaydah provided intelligence that prevented José Padilla from detonating a dirty bomb on U.S. soil, and identified Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks. Mr. Rodriguez has been repeating this claim.

This is why the CIA is terrified.

They are not afraid that their immorality will be revealed, they are afraid that their incompetence and mendacity will be revealed.

They are afraid that meaningful oversight will reveal that there are no adults in the room, which will lead to ……… meaningful oversight.

Capitalism, Huh?

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click a picture for a slide show

When Metallica discovered that their music was being used to torture inmates at Guantanamo, they send a cease and desist letter.

Canadian electro-industrial band Skinny Puppy went a different route, and have sent an invoice demanding payment:

By now we’re all familiar with the U.S. government’s practice of using heavy metal to torture detainees. We’ve all seen “Zero Dark Thirty” and “Homeland”—we get the drill. Usually metal music is used for its general unpleasantness. It’s impossible to sleep through and just all-around unnerving.

 Except Canadian band Skinny Puppy had no idea their music was being used in the service of the U.S. military.

 ………

 The Independent points out Friday that when Metallica learned their music was being used as a torture device at Guantanamo they sent the the government a cease and desist. Skinny Puppy, on the other hand, went the other way and just sent an invoice.

 “We heard that our music was used on at least four occasions,” Evin Key said. “So we thought it would be a good idea to make an invoice to the U.S. government for musical services.”

 Asked how he felt about his music being used to torture people, he said, “Not too good. We never supported those types of scenarios. Because we make unsettling music, we can see it being used in a weird way. But it doesn’t sit right with us.”

It doesn’t sit right with anyone who values the idea of rule of law and civil rights, Evin.

I would remind you thought that the statutory damages for such a use, it is clearly a public performance, are on the order of $150,000 per infraction.

It might be more worth your while to sue.

The Rotational Velocity of Kafka and Orwell Has Slowed a Bit

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The military commission in Guantanamo has decided that the defendants recollection of their own torture is not classified, so they can testify about their own experiences:

MILITARY COMMISSION RETREATS ON CLASSIFICATION OF TORTURE MEMORIES FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: James Connell 011(5399) 5168

Alternate: Erin Daste 011(5399) 5321

GUANTANAMO BAY, CUBA Today, the military commission in the 9/11 case issued several orders (AE200II, AE 013CCC, and AE013DDD) which lift the provision classifying the “observations and experiences” of defendants formerly held by the CIA.  Defense attorneys are still required to treat CIA information as classified, but the military commission acknowledged that it had limited authority to control defendants’ thoughts and memories.

“This ruling is an important step forward in accountability for torture,” said James Connell, attorney for Ammar al Baluchi.  “The real question is whether the prison will allow the prisoners to communicate with foreign government officials, medical care providers, human rights authorities, and media.”
This ruling is the latest vindication of a series of defense challenges to the United States’ authority to classify the thoughts, memories, and statements of the former CIA prisoners.  In September 2012, the government abandoned its long-held policy of “presumptive classification,” in which every statement of former CIA prisoners was considered classified, but substituted a provision defining all prisoner observations and experiences on CIA detention as classified.  Defense attorneys challenged that provision as violating the Convention Against Torture.  Today’s ruling, which the prosecution strenuously opposed, lifts that restriction.

“People who have been abused by officials have a right to tell human rights organizations, medical care providers, and others about their torture,” said Lt Col Sterling Thomas, United States Air Force, military attorney for Mr. al Baluchi.  “If governments are allowed to keep allegations of torture secret, the protection against torture is worthless.”

 Now to prosecute, or at least pull the security clearances, of everyone who had anything to do with conducting, managing, or approving torture.

Once Again, Eric Arthur Blair* is Spinning in His Grave

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Guess what, the US Government is now saying that prisoners own memories of their torture are secret, and so cannot be revealed:

I’d missed this story when it came out a few weeks ago, but thanks to Rob Hyndman for calling it to my attention. There was plenty of press around the fact that one of the guys being held by US forces in Guantanamo, and who faces trial as one of the co-conspirators for 9/11, supposedly sustained head injuries while being held by the CIA. But, that’s just the tip of the iceberg of the story. Apparently Ammar al Baluchi, and some of the other prisoners are trying to argue that the US violated the UN Convention Against Torture with how they treated prisoners at the infamous black sites. But here’s the crazy part: the US is arguing that the prisoners’ own recollections of what was done to them cannot be used in court, because it would reveal classified information. Talk about adding insult to injury.

Worst Constitutional Law Professor ever.™

* George Orwell.

The Classic Defintion of Chutzpah, Revisited

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A number of US detainees have sued the US contractor CACI International for directing torture at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The suit was dismissed, because the alleged abuse occurred in Iraq, and thus was out of the purview of the Federal Courts.

So now, CACI has counter-sued for legal fees:

Weeks after winning dismissal of a case alleging that CACI International employees directed mistreatment of Abu Ghraib detainees, the company has asked its accusers to pay a $15,580 bill for legal expenses. Lawyers for the plaintiffs, all Iraqis who served time at the prison, opposed the request in a federal court filing on Monday.

In July, CACI secured a long-fought victory when a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit against one of the company’s units, deciding that because the alleged abuse happened overseas, the U.S. District Court in Alexandria did not have jurisdiction to hear the case.

This is truly disgusting.

How Torture Comes Home, Part 55

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We now have a report that the CIA is hemorrhaging because its management sucks:

For the Central Intelligence Agency, he was a catch: an American citizen who had grown up overseas, was fluent in Mandarin and had a master’s degree in his field. He was working in Silicon Valley, but after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, he wanted to serve his country.

The analyst, who declined to be named to shield his association with the CIA, was hired in 2005 into the agency’s Directorate of Intelligence, where he was assigned to dig into Chinese politics. He said he was dismayed to discover that unimpressive managers wielded incredible power and suffered no consequences for mistakes. Departments were run like fiefdoms, he said, and “very nasty internecine battles” were a fixture.

By 2009, he had left the CIA. He now does a similar job for the U.S. military.

CIA officials often assert that while the spy agency’s failures are known, its successes are hidden. But the clandestine organization celebrated for finding Osama bin Laden has been viewed by many of its own people as a place beset by bad management, where misjudgments by senior officials go unpunished, according to internal CIA documents and interviews with more than 20 former officers.

So, how does this relate to torturers?

Because the torturers are people who are not that good at their jobs. If they were good, they wouldn’t have to break the law to create the illusion of results. (A quick Google shows that torture does not work)

Of course, between the torture fetishists of Bush and His Evil Minions™, and the torture apologists of Obama and His Evil Minions™, torture has become a ticket that you need to punch to advance in “the agency”.

So, because successive White Houses have institutionalized torture, they have also institutionalized incompetent agents who become incompetent managers who are fearful that their lack of ability will be exposed.

We have incentivized torture, incompetence, and corruption for people who want to have intelligence as a career path.

Silly Rabbit, Extradition is for Other Countries

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Robert Seldon Lady, the former CIA station chief in Rome, was arrested in Panama on an Italian warrant after he was convicted in absentia for kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr and sending him to Egypt to be tortured.

Less than 24 hours later, he was on his way back to the United States, free from any legal jeopardy:

Former CIA Milan station chief Robert Seldon Lady, who was convicted in Italy of kidnapping an Egyptian Muslim cleric and recently arrested in Panama, is headed back to the United States, a State Department spokeswoman said on Friday.

“It is my understanding that he is in fact either en route or back in the United States,” said Marie Harf, a State Department spokeswoman.

So he’ll probably never face trial for this.

In an interview, he invoked the good German defense:

He was quoted as telling Il Giornale newspaper in 2009 that he was not guilty and was carrying out orders from his superiors.

Just following orders. I thought that Nuremberg settled this matter. This is not supposed to be a valid defense.

But don’t worry, he has already suffered great punishment:

Also in that interview, he said he had wanted to stay in Italy but his retirement villa with vineyards had been seized to cover court costs.

Compare this to what is looking at Edward Snowden.

Note also the case of Posada Carriles, who blow up a civilian airliner, but lives in safety in the United States.

Barack Obama Gets a Warning from Dianne Feinstein*

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If there is one constant in the US Senate, it is that Dianne Feinstein is friendly to an expansive and intrusive state security apparatus.

Thus her signing onto letter to Obama suggesting that his allowing the force feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo is illegal is a big deal:

Dianne Feinstein and Dick Durbin sent Obama a letter yesterday, using Kessler’s [The Federal Judge who condemned the force feeding, but said that she had no standing to rule] ruling to connect the two explicitly.

U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Judge Gladys Kessler also expressed concern about the force-feeding of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The Court denied detainee Jihad Dhiab’s motion for a preliminary injunction to stop force-feeding due to lack of jurisdiction, but in her order, Judge Kessler noted that Dhiab has set out in great detail in his court filings “what appears to be a consensus that force-feeding of prisoners violates Article 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which prohibits torture or cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment.” The United States has ratified the ICCPR and is obligated to comply with its provisions. Judge Kessler also wrote, “it is perfectly clear from the statements of detainees, as well as the statements from the [medical] organizations just cited, that force-feeding is a painful, humiliating, and degrading process.” (emphasis added).

 The judge concluded by correctly pointing out that you, as Commander in Chief, have the authority to intercede on behalf of Dhiab, and other similarly-situated detainees at Guantanamo. The court wrote: “Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution provides that ‘[t]he President shall be the Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States. …’ It would seem to follow, therefore, that the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority—and power—to directly address the issue of force-feeding of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.”


 Feinstein only by association makes the next part of her argument. We comply with these treaties by complying with our Eighth Amendment prohibition on cruel or unusual punishment. And the government has long said that if we can do something elsewhere in a our gulag system, we can do it in Gitmo.

………

Say what you will about DiFi (lord knows I’ve often said the same, where I thought it appropriate), but she has just told a President from her own party that he’s breaking the law.

This is what you call a, “statement against interests.”

When DiFi is implying that your intelligence activities are over the top, you have jumped the shark.

I would also note that the Snowden matter might very have something to do with this, she also sent a letter expressing concerns to SecDef Hagel about a month ago (about a week and a half after the Snowden revelations).

The US state security apparatus still thinks that this will blow over, but even DiFi realizes that something has changed.

*Full disclosure, her grandfather, Sam Goldman, and my great-grandfather, Harry Goldman, were brothers.

I Liked Him Better as Ford Prefect

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Yasiin Bey (aka Mos Def) volunteers to be force fed to show what it’s like for the Guantanamo detainees. (Not for the faint of heart, I felt ill after watching)

Note that they stopped when he asked. In our Gulag in the Caribbean, they don’t stop, and it goes on for 2 hours ……… Twice a day.

Because torturing people who have been cleared of any crime, because Barack Obama lacks the balls to let them out, is what we have become as a society.

And still, the Republicans are working on a phony IRS and Benghazi scandal, instead of this, or his coddling the banksters.

There are very real crimes here, and the Republicans cannot bring themselves to complain about the torture of non-white people.

And this will be the response from the Obamabots:

American Extremists - Food for thoughtlessness

Food for thoughtlessness

Speaking of Fails………

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How about that funny looking guy with the big ears?

You know, the one who ran against John McCain in 2008?

Well, there are reports that that he will nominate Bush Administration apparatchik James Comey as the next FBI director:

President Obama plans to nominate James B. Comey, a former senior Justice Department official in the George W. Bush administration, to replace Robert S. Mueller III as FBI director, according to two people with knowledge of the selection process.

 Comey, 52, was at the center of some of the most bruising debates over counterterrorism during the Bush administration and established a reputation as a fierce defender of the law and the integrity of the Justice Department regardless of the political pressures of the moment.

 The expected nomination of Comey, a Republican, was seen in some quarters as a bipartisan move by a president besieged by Republicans in Congress. But Chuck Hagel’s prior service as a Republican senator from Nebraska did not spare him from a bruising nomination battle for secretary of defense.

(emphasis mine)

Yes, more of the PPUS (Post Partisan Unity Schtick).  It does not work, and neither does starting the negotiation process with capitulation does a disservice to the basic morals on that Obama purports to believe it.

Notwithstanding the fact that he opposed one the most egregious excesses of the Cheney Bush administration, he is a bad guy, who has next to no interest in supporting civil rights, as the ACLU has observed:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: 212-549-2666, media@aclu.org

WASHINGTON – Below is a statement from Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, on President Obama’s reported plan to nominate James B. Comey as the next director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

“While the ACLU does not take official positions on nominations to appointed office, there are many questions regarding Comey’s record that deserve careful scrutiny from the Senate Judiciary Committee. As the second-highest ranked Justice Department official under John Ashcroft, Comey approved some of the worst abuses committed by the Bush administration. Specifically, the publicly available evidence indicates Comey signed off on enhanced interrogation techniques that constitute torture, including waterboarding. He also oversaw the indefinite detention without charge or trial of an American citizen picked up in the United States and then held for years in a military brig. Although Comey, despite tremendous pressure from the Bush White House, deserves credit for courageously stopping the reauthorization of a secret National Security Agency program, he reportedly approved programs that struck at the very core of who we all are as Americans.

“It’s critical that the Senate ensures that the men and women of the FBI know that they have a leader who will demand adherence to the rule of law and will hold those accountable who do not, wherever he or she may find them.”

Seeing the Obama administration’s consistently dismissive attitude towards civil rights (Worst Constitutional Law Professor Ever), they may see his role in the some of the worst excesses of the Bush administration, including torture, as a plus.