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by American Dream » Tue Mar 17, 2009 10:25 am
by JackRiddler » Wed Mar 18, 2009 11:56 am
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by American Dream » Thu Mar 19, 2009 9:12 am
by JackRiddler » Thu Mar 19, 2009 12:48 pm
Guest Post by Lawrence Wilkerson: Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay
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Lawrence B. Wilkerson was chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell and is chairman of the New America Foundation/U.S.-Cuba 21st Century Policy Initiative.
There are several dimensions to the debate over the U.S. prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba that the media have largely missed and, thus, of which the American people are almost completely unaware. For that matter, few within the government who were not directly involved are aware either.
The first of these is the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the U.S. operations there. Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation.
This was a factor of having too few troops in the combat zone, of the troops and civilians who were there having too few people trained and skilled in such vetting, and of the incredible pressure coming down from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others to "just get the bastards to the interrogators".
It did not help that poor U.S. policies such as bounty-hunting, a weak understanding of cultural tendencies, and an utter disregard for the fundamentals of jurisprudence prevailed as well (no blame in the latter realm should accrue to combat soldiers as this it not their bailiwick anyway).
The second dimension that is largely unreported is that several in the U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released.
But to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership from virtually day one of the so-called Global War on Terror and these leaders already had black marks enough: the dead in a field in Pennsylvania, in the ashes of the Pentagon, and in the ruins of the World Trade Towers. They were not about to admit to their further errors at Guantanamo Bay. Better to claim that everyone there was a hardcore terrorist, was of enduring intelligence value, and would return to jihad if released. I am very sorry to say that I believe there were uniformed military who aided and abetted these falsehoods, even at the highest levels of our armed forces.
The third basically unknown dimension is how hard Secretary of State Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage labored to ameliorate the GITMO situation from almost day one.
For example, Ambassador Pierre Prosper, the U.S. envoy for war crimes issues, was under a barrage of questions and directions almost daily from Powell or Armitage to repatriate every detainee who could be repatriated.
This was quite a few of them, including Uighurs from China and, incredulously, citizens of the United Kingdom ("incredulously" because few doubted the capacity of the UK to detain and manage terrorists). Standing resolutely in Ambassador Prosper's path was Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld who would have none of it. Rumsfeld was staunchly backed by the Vice President of the United States, Richard Cheney. Moreover, the fact that among the detainees was a 13 year-old boy and a man over 90, did not seem to faze either man, initially at least.
The fourth unknown is the ad hoc intelligence philosophy that was developed to justify keeping many of these people, called the mosaic philosophy. Simply stated, this philosophy held that it did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance (this general philosophy, in an even cruder form, prevailed in Iraq as well, helping to produce the nightmare at Abu Ghraib). All that was necessary was to extract everything possible from him and others like him, assemble it all in a computer program, and then look for cross-connections and serendipitous incidentals--in short, to have sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified.
Thus, as many people as possible had to be kept in detention for as long as possible to allow this philosophy of intelligence gathering to work. The detainees' innocence was inconsequential. After all, they were ignorant peasants for the most part and mostly Muslim to boot.
Another unknown, a part of the fabric of the foregoing four, was the sheer incompetence involved in cataloging and maintaining the pertinent factors surrounding the detainees that might be relevant in any eventual legal proceedings, whether in an established court system or even in a kangaroo court that pretended to at least a few of the essentials, such as evidence.
Simply stated, even for those two dozen or so of the detainees who might well be hardcore terrorists, there was virtually no chain of custody, no disciplined handling of evidence, and no attention to the details that almost any court system would demand. Falling back on "sources and methods" and "intelligence secrets" became the Bush administration's modus operandi to camouflage this grievous failing.
But their ultimate cover was that the struggle in which they were involved was war and in war those detained could be kept for the duration. And this war, by their own pronouncements, had no end. For political purposes, they knew it certainly had no end within their allotted four to eight years. Moreover, its not having an end, properly exploited, would help ensure their eight rather than four years in office.
In addition, it has never come to my attention in any persuasive way--from classified information or otherwise--that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement.
This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric--continuing even now in the case of Cheney--about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation and for secret prisons and places such as GITMO.
Lastly, there is the now prevalent supposition, recently reinforced by the new team in the White House, that closing down our prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay would take some time and development of a highly complex plan. Because of the unfortunate political realities now involved--Cheney's recent strident and almost unparalleled remarks about the dangers of pampering terrorists, and the vulnerability of the Democrats in general on any national security issue--this may have some truth to it.
But in terms of the physical and safe shutdown of the prison facilities it is nonsense. As early as 2004 and certainly in 2005, administration leaders such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, and John Bellinger, Legal Advisor to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and, later, to that same individual as Secretary of State, and others were calling for the facilities to be shut down. No one will ever convince me that as astute a man as Gordon England would have made such a call if he did not have a plan for answering it. And if there is not such a plan, is not its absence simply another reason to condemn this most incompetent of administrations? After all, President Bush himself said he would like to close GITMO.
Recently, in an attempt to mask some of these failings and to exacerbate and make even more difficult the challenge to the new Obama administration, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview from his home in McLean, Virginia. The interview was almost mystifying in its twisted logic and terrifying in its fear-mongering.
As to twisted logic: "Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo (sic) during the Bush administration...have gone back into the business of being terrorists." So, the fact that the Bush administration was so incompetent that it released 61 terrorists, is a valid criticism of the Obama administration? Or was this supposed to be an indication of what percentage of the still-detained men would likely turn to terrorism if released in future? Or was this a revelation that men kept in detention such as those at GITMO--even innocent men--would become terrorists if released because of the harsh treatment meted out to them at GITMO? Seven years in jail as an innocent man might do that for me. Hard to tell.
As for the fear-mongering: "When we get people who are more interested in reading the rights to an Al Qaeda (sic) terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. Who in the Obama administration has insisted on reading any al-Qa'ida terrorist his rights? More to the point, who in that administration is not interested in protecting the United States--a clear implication of Cheney's remarks.
But far worse is the unmistakable stoking of the 20 million listeners of Rush Limbaugh, half of whom we could label, judiciously, as half-baked nuts. Such remarks as those of the former vice president's are like waving a red flag in front of an incensed bull. And Cheney of course knows that.
Cheney went on to say in his McLean interview that "Protecting the country's security is a tough, mean, dirty, nasty business. These are evil people and we are not going to win this fight by turning the other cheek." I have to agree but the other way around. Cheney and his like are the evil people and we certainly are not going to prevail in the struggle with radical religion if we listen to people such as he.
When--and if--the truths about the detainees at Guantanamo Bay will be revealed in the way they should be, or Congress will step up and shoulder some of the blame, or the new Obama administration will have the courage to follow through substantially on its campaign promises with respect to GITMO, torture and the like, remains indeed to be seen.
On that revelation and those actions rests much of the credibility of our nation's return to sobriety and our truest values. In fact, on such positive developments may ultimately rest our entire future as a free people. For there shall inevitably be future terrorist attacks. Al-Qa'ida has been hurt, badly, largely by our military actions in Afghanistan and our careful and devastating moves to stymie its financial support networks.
But al-Qa'ida will be back. Iraq, GITMO, Abu Ghraib, heavily-biased U.S. support for Israel, and a host of other strategic errors have insured al-Qa'ida's resilience, staying power and motivation. How we deal with the future attacks of this organization and its cohorts could well seal our fate, for good or bad. Osama bin Laden and his brain trust, Aman al-Zawahiri, are counting on us to produce the bad. With people such as Cheney assisting them, they are far more likely to succeed.
-- Lawrence Wilkerson
by American Dream » Thu Mar 19, 2009 7:54 pm
by American Dream » Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:30 am
by Pele'sDaughter » Wed Mar 25, 2009 8:46 am
by rrapt » Wed Mar 25, 2009 11:10 am
by JackRiddler » Fri Sep 18, 2009 3:24 pm
by JackRiddler » Sat Sep 19, 2009 5:54 pm
CIA Torturers Running Scared
By Ray McGovern
September 19, 2009
For the CIA supervisors and operatives responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost; that is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law – and if they don’t fall victim to brazen intimidation.
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Unable to prevent Holder from starting an investigation of torture and other war crimes that implicate CIA officials past and present, those same CIA officials, together with what those in the intelligence trade call “agents of influence” in the media, are pulling out all the stops to quash the Justice Department’s preliminary investigation.
In what should be seen as a bizarre twist, seven CIA directors — including three who are themselves implicated in planning and conducting torture and assassination — have asked the President to call off Holder.
Please, tell me how could the whole thing be more transparent?
The most vulnerable of the Gang of Seven, George Tenet, is not the brightest star in the heavens, but even he was able to figure out years ago that he and his accomplices might end up having to pay a heavy price for violating international and U.S. criminal law.
In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet notes that what the CIA needed were “the right authorities” and policy determination to do the bidding of President George W. Bush:
“Sure, it was a risky proposition when you looked at it from a policy maker’s point of view. We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA had ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act.” (p. 178)
Tenet and his masters assumed, correctly, that given the mood of the times and the lack of spine among lawmakers, congressional “overseers” would relax into their accustomed role as congressional overlookers.
Unfortunately for him, Tenet seems to have confined his concern at the time to the invertebrates in Congress, not anticipating a rejuvenated Justice Department that might take its role in enforcing the law seriously.
Tenet proudly quotes his former counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black (now a senior official at Blackwater): “As Cofer Black later told Congress, ‘The gloves came off that day.’” That day was Sept. 17, 2001, when “the president approved our recommendations and provided us broad authorities to engage al-Qa’ida.” (p. 208)
Presumably, it was not lost on Tenet that no lawmaker dared ask exactly what Cofer Black meant when he said “the gloves came off.” Had they thought to ask Richard Clarke, former director of the counterterrorist operation at the White House, he could have told them what he wrote in his book, Against All Enemies.
Clarke describes a meeting in which he took part with President George W. Bush in the White House bunker just minutes after Bush’s TV address to the nation on the evening of 9/11.
When the subject of international law was raised, Clarke writes that the president responded vehemently: “I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” [p. 24]
It only took Bush six days to grant the CIA the “broad authorities” the agency had recommended.
It then took White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney’s lawyer David Addington, and William J. Haynes II, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s lawyer, four more months to advise the president formally that, by fiat, he could ignore the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
This gang of lawyers so advised at the turn of 2001-2002, beating down objections by William Howard Taft IV, Secretary of State Colin Powell’s lawyer. Bush chose to follow the dubious advice of imaginative lawyers in his and Dick Cheney’s employ; namely, that 9/11 ushered in a “new paradigm” rendering the Geneva protections “quaint” and “obsolete.”
Prosecutorial Warning
Addington and Gonzales did take care to warn the president, by memorandum of Jan. 25, 2002, of the risk of criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act of 1996. Their memo said:
“That statute, enacted in 1996, prohibits the commission of a ‘war crime’ by or against a U.S. person, including U.S. officials. ‘War crime’…is defined to include any grave breach of the GPW [Geneva] or any violation of Article 3 thereof (such as outrages against personal dignity)…Punishments for violations of Section 2441 include the death penalty….
“…it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors or independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination [that Geneva does not apply] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution.”
With that kind of pre-ordered reassurance, President Bush issued a two-page executive directive in which he states, “I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees…”
This is the smoking gun on Bush’s key role in the subsequent torture of “war on terror” prisoners. The Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report last December stating that that Feb. 7 memorandum “opened the door” to abusive interrogation practices.
Unhappily for Bush and those who carried out his instructions, on June 29, 2006, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Geneva DOES apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees.
One senior Bush administration official is reported to have gone quite pale at the time, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy raised the ante, warning that "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses."
What about U.S. criminal law? Despite the almost laughable attempts by lawyers like Addington and John Yoo to get around the War Crimes Act by advising that only the kind of pain accompanying major organ failure or death can be considered torture, those involved are now in a cold sweat — the more so, since those dubious opinions have now been publicly released.
Evidence of Torture
In releasing the sordid, torture-approving memoranda written by Justice Department lawyers and a critical “Special Review” by the CIA’s own horse’s-mouth Inspector General, Obama and Holder had to face down very strong pressure from those with the most to lose — former CIA directors and the functionaries (some of them in senior CIA positions to this very day) who were responsible for seeing to it that “the gloves came off.”
Now, out in the public domain is all the evidence needed to show that war crimes were committed — “authorized” as legal by Justice Department Mafia-type lawyers recruited for that express purpose — but war crimes nonetheless.
Torture, kidnapping, illegal detention — not to mention blatant violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) outlawing eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant.
The stakes are incredibly high. No wonder the CIA and its “agents of influence” (see Saturday’s lead story in the Washington Post) are going all out.
According to the story, seven former CIA directors wrote a letter to Obama on Sept. 18 asking him to “reverse Attorney General Holder’s August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place following the attacks of September 11.”
This is the saddest commentary on CIA covert action operatives’ disdain for the law since their predecessors loudly applauded former Director Richard Helms for lying to Congress about the CIA role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende on 9/11/73.
The largest CIA cafeteria was bulging with welcoming supporters of Helms, when the court got finished with him. They then took up a collection on the spot to pay the fine the court had imposed after he was allowed to plead nolo contendere.
Among the most transparent parts of the letter from the Gang of Seven is their corporate worry that “there is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused.”
Their worry is all too real. Evidence already on the public record shows that the first three listed – Michael Hayden, Porter Goss and George Tenet – could readily be indicted for crimes under U.S. and international law, including:
--Illegal eavesdropping by the National Security Agency (Hayden was NSA director when he ordered his employees to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a special court before wiretaps are undertaken.)
--assassination planning without notification to Congress (Goss, whose uncommonly abrupt departure in May 2006 was never looked into by the Fawning Corporate Media [FCM]); and Tenet (who turned out to be right about at least one thing — that “things could blow up.”)
The other “distinguished signatories” were:
John Deutch, arrogant to the point of criminality, Deutch disregarded the most elementary rules governing protection of classified information, and had to be given a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton.
R. James Woolsey, the man who outdid himself in trying to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and in pushing into the limelight spurious intelligence from the fabricator known as “Curveball.” (Remember those fictitious biological weapons labs for which Colin Powell displayed “artist renderings” to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003?)
William Webster, known mostly at Langley for his handsome face and his devotion to his late-afternoon matches with socialite tennis partners. (Folks like Webster should recognize that, once they have reached what my lawyer father used to call “the age of statutory senility,” they should be more careful regarding what they let themselves be dragged into.)
James R. Schlesinger, “Big Jim” launched his brief stint as CIA director by warning us CIA employees that his instructions were “to ensure that you guys do not screw Richard Nixon.” To give substance to this assertion, he told us that the White House had said he was to report to political henchman Bob Haldeman — not Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor. More recently, Schlesinger led one of the see-no-evil Defense Department “investigations” of the abuses of Abu Ghraib.
Quite a group, this Gang of Seven.
Their letter also is condescending toward President Obama: “As President you have the authority to make decisions restricting substantive interrogation… But the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help al-Qaeda elude US intelligence and plan future operations.”
The seven then proceed to repeat the canard alleging that such collection “have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks.”
It reads as though Dick Cheney did their first draft. Actually, that would not be all that surprising, given his record of doing quite a lot of CIA’s drafting for eight long years.
Hold firm Holder.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was a CIA analyst for 27 years, working under nine CIA directors and seven presidents, he now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Ray McGovern wrote:
September 16, 2009
The Fault is Not in Our Stars
Torture and Accountability
By RAY McGOVERN
Unlike many of my progressive friends, for me the current administration’s behavior on torture is a glass half full. In my view, the real scandal is how very few have taken a sip.
Sure, President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have adopted some of the secrecy habits of the previous administration. But, for heaven’s sake, read what Obama and Holder have gone ahead and released—and done—before you grouse any louder about the torture photos and other data still suppressed.
Lecturing around the country, I have come to expect blank stares when I ask how many in the audience have read any of the downright sickening “torture memos” appearing under Department of Justice letterhead. You know, the ones that Obama released on April 16; remember?
Nor have many read the horse’s-mouth “Special Review” by the CIA’s own Inspector General on torture and interrogation, which was released on August 24. Sure, it’s heavily redacted, but I am tired of hearing about delicate stomachs as an excuse for not reading and pondering the 60 per cent of that report that survived. Think for a moment, would you, about the detainees’ stomachs.
I feel fortunate to be part of the “Five for Truth” presentations and workshops that Veterans for Peace is arranging for New Mexico – at Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque – on Oct. 9, 10 and 11. The presenters will be Ann Wright, David Swanson, Cindy Sheehan, Elliot Adams, and I.
In thinking through how I might organize the workshop on “Torture and Intelligence,” I decided to bar those who have not read significant portions of the Justice Department torture memos and/or the CIA IG report. And if no one comes, well, so be it.
For me, the attendance will be a microcosmic answer to whether American citizens, including progressives, care enough about the torture conducted in their name that they will have the courage to learn more about it and then to hold accountable those responsible. I think we can safely assume that Obama and Holder are even more interested in a bottom-line answer to that.
We Five for Truth were asked to provide background on our workshops, including what a participant could expect to learn and references for further study. For me, this was an opportunity to do a short précis, distilling the abundant evidence now available on torture. Why, for example, is President Obama so wary of letting justice take its proper course regarding CIA functionaries and contractors (not to mention administration insiders).
If we can extrapolate from the glass half full—the courage that the President and Holder have shown on the issue of torture—we might have to conclude that they need strong support from us, the American people. So far, I am afraid, what they see is a preponderance of “quiet Germans.”
Here’s what I sent to the Veterans For Peace organizers:
Workshop on Torture and Intelligence
On April 16, President Barack Obama released official memoranda demonstrating serious crimes by the previous administration. The documents reveal that top CIA officials solicited and obtained from handpicked Department of Justice lawyers legal opinions based on an extraordinary premise; namely, that so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not amount to torture unless they caused “pain equivalent to organ failure or death.”
With that very high threshold, the CIA was given free rein to use harsh techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, to name just two of the torture techniques that find antecedents in the Spanish Inquisition.
Several detainees died in CIA custody; the murders appear to qualify as capital offenses under 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act passed into law in 1996 by a Republican-controlled Congress.
The president clearly is conflicted about what to do. That he wants to put this issue on the back burner is clear. Why, is less clear. What goes without saying — but shouldn’t — is that it is highly risky business to pursue felons who are armed and dangerous and fear the prospect of many years in prison or even execution, if they are brought to justice.
And yet, Obama has done what he promised in letting Attorney General Eric Holder decide to put a prosecutor on the case. As a result, those responsible for the torture are at more risk than ever. And so, one might argue, is Obama.
What might the president be expecting from us?
What an attendee will learn:
--In April, Obama faced down very strong pressure from, among others, CIA director Leon Panetta (not to mention Panetta’s four immediate predecessors) against releasing four Justice Department memoranda setting forth “approved” torture techniques. Why?
--Obama was quite aware at the time that the court-ordered release of the explosive findings of the CIA Inspector General’s investigation was imminent. It would add to our knowledge of how heinous the CIA abuses actually were — and from the horse’s mouth.
What did Obama expect — or at least hope — would happen once those damning findings were made public?
--Attorney General Eric Holder, reportedly “sickened” after reading the CIA Inspector General report and facing growing pressure to hold accountable those responsible for the deaths and torture of detainees, has now authorized a preliminary investigation.
This is precisely the fateful step that Dick Cheney and the corral of “anonymous” intelligence sources favored by the Washington Post have been agitating so strongly to prevent. The danger, as they see it, is that the whole ball of twine will unravel and that people will end up with prison terms or even worse.
Are Holder and Obama willing to run that risk? What are they likely to do, or avoid doing, if they conclude that most Americans don’t give a hoot about torture carried out in their name?
--Cheney’s current gambit is to make it crystal clear that he is not going down alone; that — as he told Bob Schieffer — it was his boss who “signed off” on waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques. The former vice president is betting on Obama not having the stomach to pursue a former president for crimes that the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) trivialize as “policy differences.”
Conflicted though he may be, President Obama did take a solemn oath to ensure that the laws of the land are faithfully executed. What would give him the political support — and the courage — to ensure that justice is pursued, this time not exempting rotten apples at the top of the proverbial barrel?
--What about the “just-following-orders” excuse, which was summarily dismissed at the post-WWII Nuremburg Tribunal? Does Obama’s and Holder’s curious willingness so far to accept that defense bespeak a preference for letting the torturers off rather than run the very real risks of bringing them to justice?
Is it not the case that men and women instinctively know that it is wrong to abuse the person of another human being? But what about fear of the consequences of disobeying an order?
There, at least the Nazi torturers had a stronger argument. They could expect to be shot in the head, whereas CIA operatives and contractors might expect to receive a bad fitness report. Do Obama and Holder really think they can hold to the view that “just following orders” is an adequate defense? Should we acquiesce in that?
--The entire civilized world cooperated after WWII to ban torture. Our own tradition goes back to Patrick Henry who insisted that the “rack and the screw” were artifacts of the Old World and needed to be left behind there. And Gen. George Washington strongly insisted from the outset that, whatever the practices of the English, torture was not to be tolerated in the new American army. Where are the Patrick Henrys, the George Washingtons, of today?
--How is it that the issue of torture, an intrinsic evil in the same moral category as rape and slavery, has gotten divorced from the realm of morality and been given a completely different focus; i. e., does torture “work?”
Torture does not provide reliable information; but that’s not the main point. Why is it that religious leaders, by and large, cannot find their voices? Why do they take the course of least resistance, adopting as their model the cowardice of the institutional churches of Nazi Germany? What are the implications for us?
What those who wish to attend the workshop will receive:
--A NO ADMITTANCE notice for those who have not read at least portions of:
1 - The four Department of Justice memoranda on torture, which President Obama decided to bear the political cost of releasing on April 16; and
2 - The CIA Inspector General’s “Special Review” of May 7, 2004 released, pursuant to an ACLU lawsuit, on August 24, 2009. (Yes, that’s a wait of more than five years. Pay no heed to the heavy redaction. There is quite enough readable prose to “sicken” you.)
Fair labeling: do not read these before bedtime. And think a bit on what Obama and Holder may be expecting of us at this point. How often has President Obama told us “make me do” the right thing? Are we unable to imagine effective ways to do that?
--Those qualifying for admittance can expect a challenge to find effective ways to ensure that the history books read by our children and grandchildren will record that:
—The Bush/Cheney chapter on torture as an immoral aberration in the life of our country, and
—At least some of us refused to act as “silent Germans.”
Ray McGovern was an Army officer and CIA analyst for almost 30 year. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He is a contributor to Imperial Crusades: Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, edited by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair (Verso). He can be reached at: rrmcgovern@aol.com
A shorter version of this article appeared at Consortiumnews.com.
by JackRiddler » Sat Sep 19, 2009 6:32 pm
Ashcroft aide takes Fifth in Abramoff aide's trial
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
September 17, 2009
Posted: September 17, 2009, 5:50 PM CDT Last updated: September 17, 2009, 5:52 PM CDT
A top aide to former Attorney General John Ashcroft claimed his Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination Thursday in a trial related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.
David Ayers, who was Ashcroft's chief of staff at the Justice Department in the Bush administration, refused to answer questions under oath about tickets he received from Abramoff's firm and any favors he might have granted for the firm's clients.
Ayers was called as a defense witness in the corruption trial of Abramoff deputy Kevin Ring who charges that he illegally influenced federal officials by providing them with expensive meals, drinks and tickets to concerts and sporting events.
Prosecutors say Ayers helped Ring get money from the Justice Department for one of his clients, the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, to build a $16.3 million jail on their reservation.
Prosecutors say Ring, with Abramoff signing off, then gave Ayers highly sought-after tickets to the 2002 NCAA March Madness college basketball tournament in Washington.
"Based on the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer, invoking my constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment," Ayers repeatedly said in response to questions about the jail and the tickets from Ring attorney Andrew Wise.
Ayers' wife, Laura, also was called to testify by Ring's attorneys and invoked the Fifth Amendment by reading a similar line off a piece of paper she held in her lap.
Prosecutors say Laura Ayers asked Ring for Washington Wizards basketball tickets in January 2003, saying she wanted to give them to her husband for his birthday.
The prosecutors say Ayers did not disclose any of the tickets on his financial disclosure forms as he was required to do under the law.
Ayers, now CEO of consulting firm The Ashcroft Group, has known Ring since 1998 when they both worked for Ashcroft when he was a Republican senator from Missouri. President George W. Bush named Ashcroft as his first attorney general after winning the 2000 election.
The Ayers have refused to speak with investigators in the Abramoff matter, which so far has led to criminal charges against 20 lobbyists and public officials who allegedly traded favors. Sixteen people have pleaded guilty, including Abramoff and former Ohio Republican Rep. Bob Ney.
by Pele'sDaughter » Tue Jun 29, 2010 11:25 am
by JackRiddler » Sun Feb 20, 2011 5:26 pm
From: http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn ... index.html
Friday, Feb 18, 2011 05:19 ET
U.S. Justice v. the world
By Glenn Greenwald
In March, 2002, American citizen Jose Padilla was arrested in Chicago and publicly accused by then-Attorney-General John Ashcroft of being "The Dirty Bomber." Shortly thereafter, he was transferred to a military brig in South Carolina, where he was held for almost two years completely incommunicado (charged with no crime and denied all access to the outside world, including even a lawyer) and was brutally tortured, both physically and psychologically. All of this -- including the torture -- was carried out pursuant to orders from President Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and other high-ranking officials. Just as the Supreme Court was about to hear Padilla's plea to be charged or released -- and thus finally decide if the President has the power to imprison American citizens on U.S. soil with no charges of any kind -- the Government indicted him in a federal court on charges far less serious than Ashcroft had touted years earlier, causing the Supreme Court to dismiss Padilla's arguments as "moot"; Padilla was then convicted and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
Padilla -- like so many other War on Terror detainees -- has spent years in American courts trying unsuccessfully to hold accountable the high-level government officials responsible for his abuse and lawless imprisonment (which occurred for years prior to his indictment). Not only has Padilla (and all other detainees) failed to obtain redress for what was done to them, but worse, they have been entirely denied even the right to have their cases heard in court. That's because the U.S. Government has invented -- and federal courts have dutifully accepted -- a whole slew of legal doctrines which have only one purpose: to insulate the country's most powerful political officials from legal accountability even when they commit the most egregious crimes, such as imprisoning incommunicado and torturing an American citizen arrested and detained on U.S. soil.
Yesterday, in South Carolina, an Obama-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by Padilla against former Bush officials Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz and others. That suit alleges that those officials knowingly violated Padilla's Constitutional rights by ordering his due-process-free detention and torture. In dismissing Padilla's lawsuit, the court's opinion relied on the same now-depressingly-familiar weapons routinely used by our political class to immunize itself from judicial scrutiny: national security would be undermined by allowing Padilla to sue; "government officials could be distracted from their vital duties to attend depositions or respond to other discovery requests"; "a trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges"; the litigation would risk disclosure of vital state secrets; and "discovery procedures could be used by our enemies to obtain valuable intelligence."
In other words, our political officials are Too Important, and engaged in far Too Weighty Matters in Keeping Us Safe, to subject them to the annoyance of the rule of law. It's much more important to allow them to Fight The Terrorists without restraints than to bother them with claims that they broke the law and violated the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. That's the mentality that has resulted in full-scale immunity for both political and now private-sector elites in a whole slew of lawbreaking scandals -- from Obama's refusal to investigate Bush-era crimes or high-level Wall Street criminality to retroactive immunity for lawbreaking telecoms and legal protection for defrauding mortgage banks. With very few exceptions -- yesterday's ruling, for instance, brushed aside a contrary decision from a Bush-43-appointed federal judge in California last year that refused to dismiss Padilla's lawsuit against John Yoo for having authorized his torture (that decision is on appeal) -- Executive Branch officials and the federal judiciary have conspired to ensure that the former are shielded from judicial scrutiny even for the most blatant and horrifying crimes.
There are legalistic questions involved in cases such as the one brought by Padilla -- i.e., whether courts should allow monetary damages to be sought against government officials for Constitutional violations in the absence of a Congressional statute (a "Bivens" claim) and whether such officials should enjoy "qualified immunity" for their illegal acts where the illegality is unclear (as Rumsfeld absurdly alleged the torture of Padilla was) -- but one key fact is not complex. Not a single War on Terror detainee has been accorded any redress in American courts for the severe abuses to which they were subjected (including innocent people being detained for years, rendered and even tortured), and worse, no detainee has been allowed by courts even to have their claims heard. After the U.S. Government implemented a worldwide regime of torture, lawless detention, and other abuses, the doors of the American justice system have been slammed shut in the face of any and all victims seeking to have their rights vindicated or even their claims heard. If an American citizen can't even sue political officials who lawlessly imprison and torture him in his own country -- if political leaders are vested with immunity from a claim of this type -- what rational person can argue that the rule of law or the Constitution binds our government officials?
In one sense, this is hardly surprising. As I've written about before -- and as my forthcoming (September) book documents -- we now have a multi-tiered justice system in the United States where citizens have their legal rights, obligations and punishments determined exclusively by their status and class. Thus, someone like Jose Padilla, in the lowest class of literal non-person (accused Terrorist), has virtually no chance regardless of the merits of his claims against someone like Donald Rumsfeld, who resides in the highest and most privileged class (high-level political official). As Padilla's counsel, Ben Wizner, said, the court yesterday ruled "that Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it." That's just what the American justice system is.
But compare the posture of the American justice system to those in other countries with regard to how victims of illegal War on Terror policies have been treated. Maher Arar -- a Canadian citizen who was abducted by the U.S. in 2002 at JFK Airport and sent to Syria to be tortured for ten months despite being innocent -- had his case dismissed by American courts before it was even heard on the ground (raised by both the Bush and Obama DOJ) that vital state secrets would be jeopardized by allowing him his day in court; by stark contrast, the Canadian government published a comprehensive public report detailing its own culpable role (and that of the U.S.) in his wrongful abduction, while the Canadian Prime Minister publicly apologized to Arar and announced that he would be paid $8.9 million in compensation for Canada's role in what happened to him.
Binyam Mohamed -- the British resident who was rendered to Morocco and then brutally tortured at Guantanamo -- suffered the same treatment in American courts as Arar thanks to the Obama DOJ's insistence that what was done to him was a "state secret": his case was dismissed at the initial stage; by contrast, British courts repeatedly ruled in favor of his right to be heard in court, and in November, 2010, it was announced that the British government would pay him, along with 15 other Guantanamo detainees, several million dollars in damages. In January, 2011, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen, Mamdouh Habib, reached a monetary settlement with the Australian government after winning the right to sue Australian officials in that nation's court system for their collusion in his torture at Guantanamo and other locations. Similarly, numerous countries in both Eastern and Western Europe and elsewhere have probed and publicly accounted for their governments' role in colluding with the U.S. in abusing human rights over the last decade.
The U.S. Government stands virtually alone in steadfastly blocking all such investigations even though it was the U.S. in the lead in creating this torture and detention system. Indeed, the American political class barely bothers any longer with even the pretense of legal accountability. Each political party shields the other from any accountability in a ritual of lawlessness, while the courts concoct ever-new doctrines for shielding our political class from any legal scrutiny
Simultaneously, official Washington's propagandists manufacture new terms to justify this elite immunity. The American Right has long referred to efforts to compel compliance by American political leaders with the law and Constitution as "lawfare," which they define to mean thusly: "when enemies of the United States attempt to use U.S. courts and legal protections to take action against those entrusted with defending the United States from national-security threats." Of course, whether someone is an actual "enemy" (as opposed to a wrongly accused one) can only be determined using "law." Moreover, adopting this mindset by definition means vesting American leaders with the power to break the law. But those logical quandaries have never undermined this thinking. This mentality now extends far beyond the American Right (those Reasonable Conservatives and Sober Centrists -- Jack Goldsmith, Benjamin Wittes, and Robert Chesney -- have even christened their War-on-Terror-venerating blog with that term, while it is this same mindset underlying Obama's Look Forward, Not Backward decrees). In essence, the very idea that political leaders should be constrained by the Constitution and other law is derided as dangerous, leftist, divisive radicalism.
The contrast between how America's War on Terror victims and abuses have been treated in the American justice system versus much of the rest of the world is instructive indeed. In those other places, at least some vestiges of the rule of law prevails. In the U.S., the rule of men does.
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