The International Committee of the Red Cross and Guantánamo Bay

The Geneva Convention gives the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) a mandate to visit prisoners of war and ensure that they are not mistreated. The ICRC has been visiting detainees at the Guantánamo Bay detention centre since its inception, but it reports any concerns privately to the US government. It is ICRC policy that its reports not be made public, in exchange for full access to prisoners. However, a 2004 report by the ICRC on Guantánamo was leaked to the New York Times, at the time of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. The report stated that interrogation techniques used at Guantánamo were "tantamount to torture".

In 2002, the US government declared itself exempt from obligations to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention. A White House press 'fact sheet' (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2002/02/20020207-13.html) stated that "Al-Qaida is not a state party to the Geneva Convention; it is a foreign terrorist group. As such, its members are not entitled to POW status." This position is reiterated in the leaked document Welcome Foreign Attache Visitors (to Iraq) (See 'Key Definitions' in the Introduction). The press 'fact sheet' continued: "Even though the detainees are not entitled to POW privileges, they will be provided many POW privileges as a matter of policy... The International Committee of the Red Cross has visited and will continue to be able to visit the detainees privately."

This claim is directly contradicted by both of the documents obtained by Wikileaks, Camp Delta SOP (2003) and Camp Delta SOP (2004). There it is revealed that some detainees are classified as being permitted "No Access: No contact of any kind with ICRC. This includes delivery of ICRC mail."

The US government cited the ICRC visits as evidence that prisoners were not being mistreated at Guantánamo, despite the ICRC's repeated (private) reports to the contrary. Now we find that some prisoners were kept even from the ICRC's gaze. It is not clear from the ICRC's 2004 Annual Report whether the ICRC knew this. Their more immediate concern was for the prisoners in the CIA's 'black site' prisons, to whom they were granted no access at all.

McCain Wants to Create New Army Interrogation Specialty to End Motivation to Torture

Republican White House hopeful John McCain said he wants "a crash program" in civilian and military schools that emphasizes language and creates a "new specialty in strategic interrogation" so the nation never feels the need for torture.

McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war who suffered mistreatment, talked about the new proposal at a Columbia campaign stop Saturday.

McCain said he wanted to create an Army Advisory Corps of 20,000 soldiers to act as military advisers and a new Office of Strategic Services to fight terrorists. He said he wanted them to pursue "a crash program in civilian and military schools" to prepare more experienced speakers in strategically important languages such as Arabic, Chinese, Farsi and others, and to "create a new specialty in strategic interrogation — a new, a new group of strategic interrogators so that we never have to feel motivated to torture anyone ever again."

When asked if he knew whether U.S. forces had engaged in torture in the past, the Arizona senator said he didn't.

"I do not know whether they've been involved in torture because I don't have that kind of information," McCain said. "I do know that when tapes are destroyed of interrogations, it contributes enormously to the cynicism, the skepticism, and also is further damaging to the image of the United States of America in the world."

The CIA recently acknowledged that in 2005 it destroyed videotapes made three years earlier of the CIA's interrogations of two terror suspects. The tapes were made to document how CIA officers used new, harsh questioning techniques approved by the White House to force recalcitrant prisoners to talk.

Intelligence officials have said the methods that were shown on the videotapes included waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that causes the sensation of drowning and is banned by the Pentagon.

McCain also said he met with a "high ranking member of al-Qaida in Iraq" who told him that post-invasion lawlessness and images of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib helped recruit insurgents. The latter was "a great recruitment tool," McCain said. "He said it and I believe it."

He also said he'd go after terrorists with a new military force. "I'll set up a new agency patterned after the old Office of Strategic Services that will be a small, nimble, can-do organization that will fight" terrorist anywhere in the world and on the Internet, McCain said.

Later, at Newberry College's commencement ceremony about an hour away, McCain talked about the response to torture being a measure of character.

"These tools are not American tools and the easy way is not the American way," McCain told the graduating class.

McCain said the people he spent time with as a POW in Vietnam were tortured and encouraged to make statements to stop their suffering, but didn't even when promised no one would find out. McCain said they would know what they'd said.

"That, my friends, is character," McCain told the graduating class.

Bush taking more authority over military lawyers

From Talking Points Memo:

The Bush administration? Undermining the independence of military lawyers with a dubious power grab? You don't say.

The Bush administration is pushing to take control of the promotions of military lawyers, escalating a conflict over the independence of uniformed attorneys who have repeatedly raised objections to the White House's policies toward prisoners in the war on terrorism.

The administration has proposed a regulation requiring "coordination" with politically appointed Pentagon lawyers before any member of the Judge Advocate General corps - the military's 4,000-member uniformed legal force - can be promoted.

A Pentagon spokeswoman did not respond to questions about the reasoning behind the proposed regulations. But the requirement of coordination - which many former JAGs say would give the administration veto power over any JAG promotion or appointment - is consistent with past administration efforts to impose greater control over the military lawyers.

The former JAG officers say the regulation would end the uniformed lawyers' role as a check-and-balance on presidential power, because politically appointed lawyers could block the promotion of JAGs who they believe would speak up if they think a White House policy is illegal. (emphasis added)


Charlie Savage's piece, which is well worth reading, adds that the plan would direct broad new power over the JAGs to William "Jim" Haynes, the Bush-appointed general counsel at the Pentagon, best known for writing the Pentagon's infamous 2002 policies endorsing physical and mental duress on terror prisoners, and reportedly cutting top military lawyers out of the loop if they were likely to object.

Guantanamo detainee asks court to declare that he was tortured

In a filing made public Friday, lawyers for a Guantanamo detainee have asked a federal court to examine the way he was questioned while in secret CIA custody for three years and decide whether he was tortured.

If the court takes up the request, it would shift from Congress to the courts the ongoing debate over whether so-called enhanced interrogation techniques authorized by President Bush against al Qaida suspects included illegal torture. Among those techniques was waterboarding, which simulates the sensation of drowning.

Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin said Friday the Bush administration had no immediate comment, and would respond in a brief on Thursday.

Lawyers for Majid Khan, 27, filed the motion Dec. 6 with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the only civilian court authorized under the Military Commissions Act to hear matters involving detainees at Guantanamo.

The filing was made public on Friday after an intelligence review. Two full pages of the 15-page filing were blacked out as were large sections of six other pages, apparently because they contained descriptions of Khan's treatment, which the Bush administration considers classified.

Khan, who was raised and educated in suburban Baltimore, says Pakistani security forces handed him over to the CIA in March 2003 and subjected him to a U.S. program of "state-sanctioned torture.''

President Bush announced Khan had been sent to Guantanamo in September 2006, along with 13 other "high-value detainees.'' The Pentagon, which has yet to charge him with a war crime, alleges that reputed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed assigned Khan to research how to poison U.S. water reservoirs and blow up U.S. gas stations.

There's no way to verify either Khan's or the Pentagon's assertions.

The allegations of torture first arose at Guantanamo on April 15 when a panel of military officers met to determine whether Khan should be declared an enemy combatant. News reporters were not allowed to attend the hearing, but a censored transcript released later deleted sections where Khan's treatment was discussed.

Khan remains the only high-value detainee to have met with his lawyers. The filing made public Friday refers to declarations written by Khan's lawyers, Gitanjali

Gutierrez and Wells Dixon, in which Gutierrez describes alleged CIA interrogation techniques used on Khan and Dixon describes those allegedly used on other individuals. Those declarations have not been made public.

Earlier this week, the appeals court ordered the government to preserve any evidence of how Khan was treated while in CIA custody. The CIA recently disclosed that it had destroyed tapes of interrogations of another suspected al Qaida member, Zayn Abidin Abu Zubaydah, who was subjected to waterboarding.

But the court said the order was only preliminary, until it had time to consider both Khan's and the government's arguments.

A decision to hear the case would be a major turn in the ongoing debate on what constitutes torture.

"We don't have any case law since 9/11 to give us guidance as to what techniques fall above or below the line of what constitutes torture or ill treatment or cruel or unusual or degrading treatment,'' said retired Army Lt. Col. Jeffrey F. Addicott, a law professor and director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, Texas.

Addicott, who retired in 2000, was senior legal counsel to the U.S. Army's Special Forces or Green Berets and argues that waterboarding is not torture because it is essentially trickery that takes seconds and "does not constitute severe physical or mental suffering.''

But others disagree. The Army's field manual specifically prohibits the procedure, and the House of Representatives this week approved a bill that would outlaw its use by the CIA as well. The bill's fate is unclear in the Senate and President Bush has threatened to veto it if it is passed.

Despite Past Anti-Torture Rhetoric, Graham Places Hold On Anti-Waterboarding Bill

From Think Progress:

Yesterday, the House passed a bill that bans waterboarding and holds the CIA “to the interrogation tactics permitted by the Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations.” President Bush has said he would veto the bill.

But he may not get the opportunity. Earlier today, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) placed a hold on the Senate version of the bill, blocking it from coming to a vote. He said the bill was “ill-advised” and would “destroy” a “lawful” program:

The Senate was prevented from voting on the intelligence bill because Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., placed a hold on it while the GOP procedural challenge goes forward.

“I think quite frankly applying the Army field manual to the CIA would be ill-advised and would destroy a program that I think is lawful and helps the country,” Graham said in an interview.

Graham’s effort to protect Bush’s torture policies directly contradicts his recent anti-torture rhetoric. Just this week, Graham raked Brigadier General Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser at Guantanamo Bay, over the coals for refusing to call waterboarding torture, even if done by Iranian “secret security agents” on an American pilot.

Given his record, the gap between Graham’s rhetoric and his legislative action isn’t altogether surprising.

In October, Graham hinted that he might oppose Michael Mukasey’s nomination unless he said waterboarding was illegal. But after Mukasey continued to refuse to explicitly call waterboarding torture, Graham reneged and helped push Mukasey through the Senate.

So, despite the fact that Graham believes a person doesn’t need “a lot of knowledge about the law” to know that waterboarding “violates” [the] Geneva Convention,” he is now blocking efforts to outlaw the CIA’s use of it.

Mukasey Rejects Call for CIA Tape Details

Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey today sharply rebuffed congressional demands for details about the Justice Department's inquiry into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, saying that providing such information would make it appear that the department was "subject to political influence."

In letters to the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee and others, Mukasey also reiterated his opposition to appointing a special prosecutor to the tapes investigation, saying he was "aware of no facts at present" that would require such a step.

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey wrote. "Consistent with that testimony, the facts will be followed wherever they lead in this inquiry, and the relevant law applied."

One letter was sent to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Similar correspondence was sent to Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and to House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) and other House Democrats.

The three letters represent an attempt by Mukasey to push back against growing pressure from lawmakers, primarily Democrats, who have showered the Justice Department with demands for investigations or information on topics ranging from the baseball steroids scandal to allegations of rape by a former military contractor employee.

The letters also are an assertive move by the new attorney general, who was confirmed last month with the lowest level of Senate support in the past half century because of his refusal to say whether a form of simulated drowning known as waterboarding amounts to torture under U.S. law.

Mukasey replaced former attorney general Alberto R. Gonzales, who left office in September after the furor over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and allegations that he misled Congress in sworn testimony.

The CIA disclosed last week that it destroyed videotapes in 2005 depicting interrogation sessions for alleged al-Qaeda operatives Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Administration officials have said that lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House, including former counsel Harriet E. Miers, advised the CIA against destroying the tapes but that CIA lawyers ruled their preservation was not required.

The Justice Department announced Saturday it had joined the CIA's inspector general in launching a preliminary inquiry into the tape destruction, and prosecutors asked the CIA to preserve any related evidence.

Leahy and Specter asked Mukasey on Dec. 10 for "a complete account of the Justice Department's own knowledge of and involvement with" the tape destruction. The two senators included a list of 16 separate questions, including whether the Justice Department had offered legal advice to the CIA about the tapes or had communicated with the White House about the issue.

Durbin had sent a letter to Mukasey Dec. 7 asking whether an investigation into the tape destruction would be pursued. Conyers and three other House Democrats authored a similar letter on the same day.

Mukasey wrote to the lawmakers that Justice "has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters.

"This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence," Mukasey wrote to Conyers and the others. "Accordingly, I will not at this time provide further information in response to your letter, but appreciate the Committee's interests in this matter."

The tape investigation is being led by Kenneth Wainstein, head of the Justice Department's National Security Division. Wainstein held his first substantive meeting on the case Wednesday with staffers at the CIA inspector general's office, according to a law enforcement official.

Several Democrats have raised questions about the propriety of having the inquiry run by the Justice Department, whose lawyers were involved in offering legal advice about the tapes, and the CIA inspector general, whose office reviewed the tapes before they were destroyed.

CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said last week that the inspector general's office examined the tapes in 2003 "as part of its look at the Agency's detention and interrogation practices."

Also yesterday, the beleaguered head of the Justice Department's Voting Rights Section disclosed in a letter to employees that he was being transferred to another job in the agency.

John K. Tanner said he was moving to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices after nearly 32 years in the Civil Rights Division.

Tanner had come under fire for making a series of racially charged statements earlier this year, including a suggestion that black voters are not hurt as much as whites by voter identification laws because "they die first."

Tanner apologized for the "tone" of his remarks in House testimony, but stuck with his overall argument that demographic differences temper the impact of identification laws on minorities. Tanner also was criticized by Democrats for approving a Georgia voter identification law in 2005 that was struck down by a federal court as discriminatory.

Tanner is the subject of an investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility into his travel records and trips he approved for a subordinate, officials have said.

The move to shift Tanner out of civil rights could be seen as a move by Mukasey to tamp down criticism of the department's recent record. But Justice also filed a friend-of-the-court brief earlier this week siding with an Indiana identification law, which has been criticized by liberal groups and many voting experts.

The Torture Party

House GOP voted unanimously yesterday to keep on torturing. The Democrats are clearly against torture. Like all else that's good in the world, this anti-torture bill will presumably suffer death by filibuster at the hands of Senate Republicans

CIA's Rodriguez Lawyers Up

From TPM:

Blink and you'll miss it in today's New York Times piece on the House's torture ban. But Jose Rodriguez, the CIA's ex-operations director who ordered the interrogation tapes destroyed in late 2005, has hired one of Washington's most prominent criminal attorneys:

Mr. Rodriguez has hired Robert S. Bennett, a well-known Washington lawyer, to represent him in Congressional and Justice Department inquiries into his handling of the tapes.
Mr. Bennett has represented a number of high-profile clients — among them former President Bill Clinton, Caspar W. Weinberger, the former defense secretary, and Paul D. Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary and World Bank president.

“Mr. Rodriguez has been a loyal public servant for 31 years and has always acted in the best interest of the country,” Mr. Bennett said. “He’s done nothing wrong.”


How in the world does a retiring CIA official have the cash to hire Robert Bennett?

YouTube-aided detainee sent home to Sudan

The military has sent home from Guantánamo Bay a Sudanese hospital worker whose lawyers campaigned in cyberspace for his freedom, in part by enlisting television's West Wing president to make a YouTube video.

Adel Hamad, 49, was among 15 long-held detainees whose release was announced by the Defense Department Wednesday night. Thirteen captives went to lockups in Afghanistan and two were set free in Sudan.

The transfer lowered the prison camp population at the U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba to ''approximately 290,'' or below 300 for the first time since an airlift filled the crude open-air compound called Camp X-Ray on Feb. 15, 2002.

Hamad, a charity worker in Peshawar, Pakistan, claims he was wrongly captured by Pakistani security forces and handed over to U.S. troops in Afghanistan in 2002. Thursday, he took part in a government-sponsored news conference in Khartoum, Sudan, to protest his five-year confinement.

But first, Hamad was reunited ''with his family by 5 a.m. Thursday, Khartoum time,'' according to Steve Wax, a federal public defender in Portland, Ore. Hamad met his youngest daughter, Rahmah, who was born while he was in detention.

''Even though Mr. Hamad is home, the fight for him to clear his name goes on,'' Wax said after speaking with his client by telephone. 'He told us, `I want justice.' ''

The Portland public defender's office turned the case of the father of four into a global cause célèbre by posting what it called the first-ever video habeas corpus petition on YouTube, the Internet video site.

The video, called Guantánamo Unclassified, showed one of Hamad's attorneys arguing his case in a homemade video filmed at the base, with the Caribbean in the background.

In March, left-wing activist and actor Martin Sheen joined the cause, appearing in a four-minute video vouching for Hamad in commentary that evoked his television persona as President Josiah Bartlett on the popular TV program The West Wing.

''No one should be detained without a court hearing just on the word of a president. Any president,'' Sheen said.

Hamad's attorneys say he was a humanitarian relief worker when Pakistani police took him from his bed in Peshawar in July 2002 and handed him off to U.S. forces across the border in Afghanistan.

Wax got the case in October 2005 and sent staff members to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Sudan to gather affidavits vouching for their client's innocence and character -- and also campaigned with the Khartoum government for his repatriation, which took two years.

The Pentagon said this week's transfer illustrated U.S. willingness to review each captive's case ``while hostilities are ongoing -- an unprecedented step in the history of warfare.''

Lydia Vickers, a Tallahassee activist, was so touched by the cyber-campaign that she has donned an orange jumpsuit, hid hear face beneath a black hood and waved a sign bearing Hamad's internment serial number -- ISN 940 -- from a street corner opposite the Pentagon's Southern Command headquarters in South Florida to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Conservative Military Journal Slams Giuliani And Mukasey’s ‘Tacit Support For Waterboarding’

When asked about the practice of waterboarding at a recent debate, former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani declared that he would allow “every method [interrogators] could think of and I would support them in doing it.” Attorney General Mike Mukasey consistently refused to render a legal opinion on the matter.

In its December issue, the military magazine Armed Forces Journal chastises Giuliani and Mukasey for “their tacit support for waterboarding”:

Let AFJ be crystal clear on a subject where these men are opaque: Waterboarding is a torture technique that has its history rooted in the Spanish Inquisition. In 1947, the U.S. prosecuted a Japanese military officer for carrying out a form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian during World War II.

Waterboarding inflicts on its victims the terror of imminent death. And as with all torture techniques, it is, therefore, an inherently flawed method for gaining reliable information. In short, it doesn’t work. That blunt truth means all U.S. leaders, present and future, should be clear on the issue.

Furthermore, Armed Forces Journal leans conservative. Four out of six of its contributing editors are either conservative pundits or have positions in conservative think-tanks:

Ralph Peters – New York Post columnist and Weekly Standard contributor

Peter Brookes — Senior Fellow, Heritage Foundation

Christopher Griffin — Research Fellow, American Enterprise Institute

Seth Cropsey — Former Bush administration member; fellow at the Hudson Institute, Heritage Foundation, and AEI.

The other two contributing editors — Sean Naylor and William Matthews — are noted military journalists with no political affiliation.

Military officials have long disdained the Bush’s administration’s sanctioning of torture. Yesterday, 28 retired generals and admirals wrote to the House and Senate intelligence committees “urging them to require the CIA to abandon harsh interrogation techniques.”

FBI agent threatened to arrest CIA interrogators in 2002.

Last week, the CIA revealed that it had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two al Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah. Newsweek reports today that methods used in the interrogation of Zubaydah “sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community” to such an extent that one FBI agent “threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators“:

The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the questioning of two high-level Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation at a secret cell in Thailand sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute.

New Evidence That Hayden Lied: Former Prisoner Claims His Torture Was Taped In 2003

Earlier this week, ThinkProgress raised the issue of whether CIA Director Michael Hayden is lying when he claims that “videotaping stopped in 2002.” The New York Times reported that former prisoner Muhammad Bashmilah, who claims “he was held by the C.I.A.,” said he “saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002.”

Since then, more evidence has emerged that videotaped interrogations were occurring after 2002. The Chicago Tribune reports that in Feb. 2003, the CIA abducted a man named Abu Omar and rendered him to Egypt. The prisoner, who is now living in Alexandria, Egypt, said he could hear interrogators recording “the sounds of my torture and my cries“:

A suspected terrorist abducted in Italy and flown to Egypt by the CIA said he believed his captors made audiotapes of his extensive interrogations in an Egyptian prison that recorded “the sounds of my torture and my cries.” The prisoner said he was blindfolded but could hear what sounded like a tape cassette being flipped over and reinserted.

“I remember once while being interrogated, the interrogator asked me to wait a second and then I could hear the click of the device and I could hear him changing the cassette,” said Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, who spent nearly four years in an Egyptian prison before an Egyptian court ordered his release earlier this year.

The former prisoner also said that, “the first seven months of my imprisonment, right after my kidnapping and arrival in Egypt, the place where I was held had cameras everywhere. There were cameras in the bathrooms, interrogation rooms as well as hallways. The cameras were all over the place.”

In 2005, an Italian judge ordered the arrest of American CIA agents for illegally abducting Abu Omar and torturing him. The case is still being litigated, but all the American defendants “have left Italy, and a senior U.S. official has said they would not be turned over for prosecution even if Rome requests it.”

In response to the new allegations, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) sent a letter to Director Hayden asking him to answer a series of questions, including:

To your knowledge, have any interrogations of detainees rendered by the CIA been video or audio recorded?

Were any such recordings made at the request of the CIA?

Has the CIA ever reviewed any such recordings?

Have any such recordings ever been in the possession of the CIA?

See Durbin’s full letter to Hayden here. He also wrote to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to determine her level of knowledge about these incidents, and he requested that Attorney General Michael Mukasey include this case as part of his investigation into the CIA’s destruction of tapes.

Anti-Cheney Forces Inside Bush Administration Have ‘Lost The Intensity’ To Close Gitmo

In June 2006, President Bush claimed, “I’d like to close Guantanamo.” Two months ago, Condoleezza Rice said, “The President has said, and I fully agree, we would like nothing better than to close Guantanamo.” Those words are proving to be nothing more than lip service.

In September, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Congress that his push to close Guantanamo was running into “obstacles” from administration lawyers. The Financial Times reports today that the prospects of closing Gitmo have since dimmed considerably:

But three months on, the lawyers have made little headway. In addition to facing complex legal issues involved in closing the prison and transferring detainees to the US, they are running into opposition from other parts of the administration, including Dick Cheney, the vice-president. […]

One former senior official said the push to close Guantánamo had lost the intensity needed to have a realistic chance of closing the prison during the Bush administration.

The New York Times reported in March that when Gates first arrived on the job, he “repeatedly argued that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, had become so tainted abroad that legal proceedings at Guantánamo would be viewed as illegitimate” and told President Bush “that it should be shut down as quickly as possible.” The Times reported:

Mr. Gates’s arguments were rejected after Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and some other government lawyers expressed strong objections to moving detainees to the United States, a stance that was backed by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, administration officials said.

Though Gonzales has since departed, Cheney has found a new ally in Attorney General Michael Muksasey, who said during his confirmation hearing, “I can’t simply say we have to close Guantanamo.”

In June, there was a meeting scheduled at the White House to discuss closing Guantanamo Bay. When word of that meeting leaked out to the press, Cheney allies seized the opportunity to cancel the meeting.

From a Critic of Tribunals to Top Judge

Back in 2002, a master’s degree candidate at the Naval War College wrote a paper on the Bush administration’s plan to use military commissions to try Guantánamo suspects, concluding that “even a good military tribunal is a bad idea.”

It drew little notice at the time, but the paper has gained a second life because of its author’s big promotion: Col. Ralph H. Kohlmann of the Marines is now the chief judge of the military commissions at the naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The system, Judge Kohlmann wrote in 2002, would face criticism for the “apparent lack of independence” of military judges and would have “credibility problems,” the very argument made by Guantánamo’s critics.

He said it would be better to try terrorism suspects in federal courts in the United States. “Unnecessary use of military tribunals in the face of reasonable international criticism,” he wrote, “is an ill-advised move.”

The paper is becoming a reference work of sorts in the curious history of Guantánamo, which includes a number of former officials who have become outspoken critics, including several former intelligence officers and a former chief military prosecutor.

Judge Kohlmann may be the only one who has switched the order, first delivering a fervent attack on Guantánamo and later becoming one of its officials.

The existence of his paper, written as an independent study project, has been noted occasionally in court in Guantánamo and elsewhere, though detainees’ advocates say it has become more noteworthy since his appointment as chief judge in March. But the details of his arguments escaped wide public notice until a few weeks ago, when David Glazier, an associate professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, came across the paper in a mass of newly released documents from a case Judge Kohlmann handled in March.

The documents showed that defense lawyers had asked Judge Kohlmann about the paper in written questions. “I chose the topic because it was in the news at the time,” he explained.

This week, Mr. Glazier said he had been fascinated. “My reaction was, this is pretty amazing, that even the chief judge of the commissions has recognized the horrendous problems of the commission process,” he said.

A few weeks ago, Professor Glazier sent an e-mail message to a group of human rights advocates. He included a link to the Pentagon Web site where the paper could be found in the newly released records of the war crimes prosecution of a former detainee, David Hicks.

Soon there were new readers for Judge Kohlmann’s five-year-old paper. “It seemed ironic in the extreme,” said David H. Remes, a detainees’ lawyer, who said he learned of the paper from Mr. Glazier’s message.

Jameel Jaffer, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who has been an observer at Guantánamo commission proceedings, read the paper at the request of a reporter and said it was “perplexing” that someone who seemed to agree with much that the critics have said about the Guantánamo legal system was now helping to run it. As to the judge’s arguments, Mr. Jaffer said, “He was absolutely right.”

Pentagon officials declined to discuss Judge Kohlmann’s paper this week, but in the past they have said the commissions give detainees many important protections, including the right to be represented by a lawyer.

Pentagon spokesmen said Judge Kohlmann declined to comment, and they said the telephone number for his chambers could not be revealed for security reasons.

Judge Kohlmann, a 49-year-old New Jersey native, is a decorated career officer with a down-to-business demeanor. He was a military judge in the first military commission system before it was struck down by the Supreme Court last year. He was appointed the chief judge in March by the Pentagon, after Congress created a new military commission system to replace the old.

Questioned about his paper by defense lawyers in March, he said he could not recall whether he had received a grade.

Mr. Jaffer said he would have given the judge an A. The paper was prickly at times, referring to Bush administration “spinmeisters” and dismissing the argument that the new challenges of fighting terrorism meant that civilian judges and juries would be endangered by federal trials.

Prior terrorism and organized crime cases, he wrote, showed that “the existing United States criminal justice system does not have to be put aside simply because the potential defendants have scary friends.”

Judge Kohlmann has not disavowed the paper. But the documents show that in March, perhaps illustrating the pressures of responsibility, he told defense lawyers for Mr. Hicks that he wanted to correct a misstatement in his paper.

He had been incorrect, he said, when he wrote that President Bush’s original order establishing military commissions “essentially states” that fundamental fairness would not be a part of commission trials.

“That I now believe to be incorrect,” he said.

One of Mr. Hicks’s lawyers, Joshua L. Dratel, said this week that Judge Kohlmann had seemingly reconciled his past as a critic of the system with his new role as one of its managers.

“He seemed to me,” Mr. Dratel said, “like a guy who was given a mandate to make the system work, and he was not going to let anyone interfere with it.”

Wikileaks busts Gitmo propaganda team

Read the rest of the story at FRUQTADA

Fox News ‘Comedian’ Declares ‘Waterboarding: It’s A Good Thing’

In a FoxNews.com column, Greg Gutfeld — host of Fox’s 2 a.m. “dark humor” news show you’ve never heard of — writes this “comedic” defense of waterboarding:

Now, waterboarding might be torture, but as long as people I hate also hate waterboarding, then I love it more than life itself. … So I cherish waterboarding. I want to make it our national sport, our national bird. I want to make the waterboard the state flower of Vermont, instead of the Birkenstock.

Watch Now:



For too many conservatives, waterboarding is a big joke to be taken lightly. Rachel Marsden — Gutfeld’s former co-host — claimed waterboarding was simply a “CIA-sponsored swim lesson.” Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) said yesterday that waterboarding is “like swimming, freestyle, backstroke.” Conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds said he’d “be happy to” be waterboarded, and John Ashcroft suggested he’d also be willing to take the dive.

Waterboarding is not “simulated drowning.” It is drowning. As Reps. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) and William Delahunt (D-MA) explained, “The victim’s lungs fill with water until the procedure is stopped or the victim dies.” Former Navy survival instruction Malcolm Wrightson Nance explained to Congress:

In my case, the technique was so fast and professional that I didn’t know what was happening until the water entered my nose and throat. … It then pushes down into the trachea and starts the process of respiratory degradation. It is an overwhelming experience that induces horror and triggers frantic survival instincts. As the event unfolded, I was fully conscious of what was happening: I was being tortured.

Perhaps these conservative armchair torture pundits need to follow Daniel Levin’s lead and gain some first-hand enlightenment about waterboarding.

CIA ‘furious’ at Kiriakou for talking about torture

On Monday, former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou confirmed to ABC News that al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded on orders from the White House. ABC News now reports that officials at the CIA were “furious” at Kiriakou and pushed for “a Justice Department investigation.” A Justice Department official, however, said that no such investigation is planned.

Reyes: ‘We still have a lot of questions.’

From Think Progress:

Following a closed-door hearing with CIA Director Michael Hayden, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) said there’s still “a lot of questions” that need answering:

We just had a three-hour session with Director Hayden. Obviously, there’s several things that we can say at this point. First and foremost, we still have a lot of questions. This is just the beginning of our bipartisan investigation into the issue of the videotapes, who gave the instructions to videotape, how long they were in the possession of the agency and also, ultimately, who decided to destroy them.

We’re going to follow this through and find out where the facts lead us, obviously. But suffice it to say that there is a tremendous amount of frustration because, notwithstanding what General Hayden put out last week, we feel, on a bipartisan level, that our committee was not informed, has not been kept informed and we are very frustrated about that issue.

Reyes said he “absolutely” plans to call Porter Goss and George Tenet to testify. Ranking member Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) added, “I think the list is going to be relatively long.”

UPDATE: Hayden told the AP that he knew that the videotapes had been destroyed before taking over as head of the CIA.

Sen. Kit Bond: Waterboarding Is Like ‘Swimming’

Yesterday on PBS’s Newshour, host Gwen Ifill asked Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) whether waterboarding constitutes torture. Bond replied that the technique is actually more like “swimming“:



GWEN IFILL: Do you think that waterboarding, as I described it, constitutes torture?

SEN. KIT BOND: There are different ways of doing it. It’s like swimming, freestyle, backstroke. The waterboarding could be used almost to define some of the techniques that our trainees are put through, but that’s beside the point. It’s not being used.

Conservatives have repeatedly tried to dismiss the seriousness of waterboarding, referring to it as a “swim lesson.”

There’s no doubt that waterboarding is torture. There’s also no question that it’s been carried out on detainees. Former CIA interrogator John Kiriakou came out this week and confirmed that in 2002, al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah was waterboarded on orders from the White House.

ACLU asks federal judge to hold CIA in contempt.

The ACLU filed a petition with a federal judge today “charging that the [CIA] flouted a court order when it destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the harsh interrogation of prisoners in its custody.” In October 2003 and May 2004, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York had ordered the CIA to preserve “all records pertaining to the treatment of detainees in its custody.”

Flip Flop Twins

Irony sucks, Romney and Huckabee had to appeal to centrists to get elected in there home states. I guess those voters are called Independents now and they would never vote for a shape shifting snake oil salesman who try to flip-flop their way to an election win! The tongue twisted way they explain position's reminds me of Rudy splain'n his national security experience.

Mukasey ‘undecided’ on whether waterboarding = torture.

In his first public statements regarding the CIA’s destruction of the torture tapes, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said today he “refused to be rushed into deciding whether he considers waterboarding a form of torture. … Mukasey said he has not yet concluded a review of Justice Department memos to determine whether waterboarding amounts to torture — which would deem it illegal.” During his confirmation hearing, Mukasey refused to call waterboarding torture.

Biden: Does preservation order cover Cheney?

Days after the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes was publicly revealed, White House Counsel Fred Fielding sent out a notice to “all employees” ordering them to preserve documents and evidence on the matter. Today, Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) wrote to Fielding asking how far the order reaches:

On December 10, 2007, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino stated that you issued a written directive to White House employees to preserve documents related to the destruction of the CIA interrogation tapes. Ms. Perino did not provide a copy of the directive, however, and she was unable to answer questions as to its breadth and scope.

Please confirm that the directive to preserve documents applied to the Executive Office of the President, including the National Security Council, in addition to immediate White House staff. In light of the Office of the Vice President’s record of fatuous arguments that it is not subject to the authority of the President, please also confirm that the directive included the Office of the Vice President and that the Office of the Vice President intends to comply.

FISA court refuses to release wiretapping docs.

In August, the ACLU asked the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to release “documents regarding the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. “In a rare public opinion” today, the Court ruled that “the public has no right to view the documents because they deal with the clandestine workings of national security agencies.” The AP reports:

Writing for the court, U.S. District Judge John D. Bates refused. Releasing the documents would reveal closely guarded secrets that enemies could used to evade detection or disrupt intelligence activities, he said. […]

Bates acknowledged that the public would benefit from seeing the documents. The decision-making process would be understood, he said, and public oversight could help safeguard against government abuse. But the dangers of releasing such sensitive materials far outweigh that public benefit, Bates said.

Is CIA Director Michael Hayden Lying About When The Agency Stopped Videotaping Interrogations?

Last week, in his letter to CIA employees informing them of the destruction of videotapes featuring interrogations, CIA director Michael Hayden claimed that “videotaping stopped in 2002.” Hayden said the agency “determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes.”

But the videotaping may not have actually stopped in 2002. The New York Times reports today that “a lawyer representing a former prisoner,” Muhammad Bashmilah, “who said he was held by the C.I.A. said the prisoner saw cameras in interrogation rooms after 2002“:

Meg Satterthwaite, a director of the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University who is representing Mr. Bashmilah in a lawsuit, said Mr. Bashmilah described cameras both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall. She said his descriptions of his imprisonment, in hours of conversation in Yemen and by phone this year, were lucid and detailed.

According to an Amnesty International report, Bashmilah was detained in October 2003 and was transfered nearly a year later to a “detention facility run by US officials, apparently underground.” Bashmilah told Amnesty that there were “surveillance cameras in the cells.” He was released in May 2005.

CIA spokesperson Paul Gimigliano refused to comment on Bashmilah’s claims, telling the New York Times only that “he had nothing to add” to Hayden’s previous statements.

In November, a court filing revealed that “the CIA has three video and audio recordings of interrogations of senior al Qaida captives” that it had previously refused to disclose, but it is unclear when those recordings were made.

It’s possible that the cameras Bashmilah saw weren’t actually recording anything, but if they were, it would mean that Hayden was not being truthful when he said that “videotaping stopped in 2002.”

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman comments: “The CIA lied for years about the existence of videotaped interrogations, so there’s no reason to credit Hayden’s account of when the recordings ceased.”

This cartoon tell's it all

Former CIA Interrogator: We Carried Out Torture Because The White House Told Us To

In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded, but defended those actions as having prevented “maybe dozens” of planned attacks and “probably saved lives.”

But despite his vigorous defense of his past conduct, Kiriakou says he now views what he did as torture and says that he would not recommend those tactics going forward. “We don’t need enhanced techniques to get that nugget of information,” he said in an interview with Matt Lauer this morning on The Today Show.

Lauer asked Kiriakou where the permission was given to carry out torture. “Was the White House involved in that decision?” Lauer asked. “Absolutely,” Kiriakou said, adding:

This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.

Lauer then referenced an earlier interview he did with President Bush, in which Bush said he was assured by the Justice Department “we were not torturing.” “I disagree,” Kiriakou said.
As evidence increasingly builds for the argument that CIA interrogators carried out illegal acts of torture, the New York Sun reports that President Bush may soon decide to issue pardons:

With talk of a special prosecutor again in the air and the looming prospect of a Democrat taking over the White House, CIA officials involved in prisoner interrogations and the disputed handling of videotapes of those sessions may seek the only ironclad assurance against any criminal prosecution: a presidential pardon. […]

“I think there’s a real possibility one of President Bush’s last acts very well might be granting immunity to certain CIA employees,” a defense attorney who has defended military personnel accused of prisoner abuse, Frank Spinner, said. “I think it depends in part on the election.”

Lawyer seeks Britain's help in preserving Guantanamo evidence

A lawyer for an Ethiopian prisoner in the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who claims that he was tortured when his interrogation was outsourced to Morocco, is asking the British government to help preserve alleged CIA photos that show how he was treated.

Binyam Mohamed, 27, claims through his lawyer and in an affidavit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court that U.S. forces turned him over for questioning to Morocco, where interrogators sliced his chest and penis with a scalpel during 18 months there in 2002 and 2003. He was transferred to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in September 2004.

Late Sunday, his attorney wrote British Foreign Secretary David Milliband asking that he intervene to preserve evidence, since Mohamed lived in Britain and sought asylum there in the early 1990s.

"We can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA,'' the lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, wrote.

"Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr. Mohamed's brutalized genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present, including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false

identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show,'' Smith wrote. Copies of the letter were sent to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of

State Condoleezza Rice.

In a statement, the CIA didn't address directly whether the photos exist. But it denied that it would "conduct or condone torture" and defended the practice of sending suspects to third countries for interrogation, a practice known as rendition.

"Rendition, which has been used on a very limited scale, has helped the United States and other nations disrupt terror plots and networks and is designed to get terrorists off the street,'' said George Little, a spokesman for the agency.

Smith's letter is the latest move by lawyers for Guantanamo detainees to preserve evidence since CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden acknowledged last week that the agency had destroyed videotapes of interrogations of two suspected al Qaida leaders now in military custody at Guantanamo.

On Thursday, lawyers for another detainee, former Baltimore resident Majid Khan, asked a federal judge to order the Bush administration to preserve evidence of how their client was treated during more than three years in secret CIA custody. They said that they have ample evidence that he was tortured.

On Sunday, an attorney for 11 Yemeni captives at Guantanamo Bay asked U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. in Washington to hold a hearing on whether the U.S. government had violated Kennedy's 2005 order that evidence be preserved in the case.

There's no way to verify independently Smith's claims about Mohamed's treatment. He first described the interrogation techniques in a sworn affidavit in a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court Guantanamo detainee rights case.

"I have been privy to materials that allegedly support the finding that Mr. Mohamed should be held,'' Smith wrote Milliband, referring to military proceedings at Guantanamo that found Mohamed to have been an enemy combatant. "And while I cannot discuss some here (due to classification rules), I can state unequivocally that I have seen no evidence of any kind against Mr. Mohamed that is not the bitter fruit of torture.''

Mohamed is one of five former British residents at Guantanamo whose release the British government sought over the summer. Four of the five are expected to be released this month and sent to Britain and Saudi Arabia. But Mohamed isn't among them, and lawyers believe he'll be referred to a military commission for a war crimes trial.

Rice Claims Ignorance Of CIA Tapes’ Destruction, Refuses To Comment On 2002 Interrogations

Today in a speech to the Women’s Foreign Policy Group, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice refused to answer what she knew about the interrogations that were videotaped in 2002, and then destroyed two years later. When moderator Andrea Mitchell asked Rice when she learned of the destruction of the tapes, Rice replied, “I myself don’t recollect any knowledge of the tapes.”

When asked about the 2002 interrogations, however, Rice was less forthcoming:

MITCHELL: Could we just ask, since the interrogations took place in 2002 when you were national security adviser, at the time were you aware — fully aware of the techniques being used and the videotape?

RICE: As I said, the Justice Department has now taken up this matter, and so I don’t think that it’s appropriate for me to comment further.

Rice is willing to publicly state that she had no knowledge of the tapes’ destruction in 2005, but won’t do the same on the 2002 interrogations.

In addition to Rice, at least five high-ranking administration officials and former officials have disavowed any knowledge of the tapes’ destruction. They have instead placed the blame on Jose Rodriguez, then the CIA’s head of the clandestine division. Former CIA officials, however, have described Rodriguez as “a cautious operator who probably would have ensured that top CIA managers knew of the plan” to destroy the torture tapes.

Transcript:

MITCHELL: To take it from the most topical things in the news today, can you tell us, now that we know there were people in the White House, in Congress, who urged the CIA not to destroy those videotapes — you were in the White House during that period — were you aware of it? And did you also urge that those tapes be preserved? And when were you aware of the fact that there were not preserved?

(LAUGHTER)

RICE: First of all, I think my take is that, well, this is an internal matter for the CIA.

I was secretary of state in 2005, indeed, and I can tell you that I myself don’t recollect any knowledge of the tapes.

But this is something that I’m sure that Mike Hayden, who is providing excellent leadership to the CIA, will resolve within their internal processes. The Justice Department is involved, and so I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to comment.

MITCHELL: Could we just ask, since the interrogations took place in 2002 when you were national security adviser, at the time were you aware — fully aware of the techniques being used and the videotape?

RICE: As I said, the Justice Department has now taken up this matter, and so I don’t think that it’s appropriate for me to comment further.

Chief Guantanamo Prosecutor Resigned When Placed Under Command Of Torture Advocate

Until Oct. 4, Morris Davis served as chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. When originally asked why he was stepping down, Davis said that the Pentagon had ordered him “not to communicate with the news media about my resignation or military commissions.”

Today in an LA Times op-ed, however, Morris reveals that part of the reason he resigned was that the Bush administration placed him under the chain of command of Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes, a torture advocate whose nomination to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals was blocked by the Senate. Morris writes:

I had instructed the prosecutors in September 2005 that we would not offer any evidence derived by waterboarding, one of the aggressive interrogation techniques the administration has sanctioned. Haynes and I have different perspectives and support different agendas, and the decision to give him command over the chief prosecutor’s office, in my view, cast a shadow over the integrity of military commissions. I resigned a few hours after I was informed of Haynes’ place in my chain of command.

Haynes is a close ally of Vice President Cheney and has been described as a “prime mover” in the effort to contravene the dictates of the Geneva Conventions. A 2003 working group appointed and supervised by Haynes argued the Geneva Conventions “must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to [Bush’s] Commander-in-Chief authority.”

More recently, Haynes blocked Lt. Col. Stuart Couch, a former Guantanamo Bay prosecutor, from testifying before Congress about his experiences with “enhanced” interrogation.

In October, Morris also revealed that the Pentagon had been pushing for “high-profile” convictions of detainees ahead of the 2008 elections. Morris said “that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed ’sexy’ over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.”

This is the Time For Lawyers to Speak

From Naomi Wolf:

If US lawyers are marching in the streets in support of the rule of law in Pakistan, why aren't we marching in support of the rule of law here?
- The Honorable Mario Cuomo, former governor of New York, in a speech before the Federal Bar Council, November 21, 2007

We have all seen over the past couple of months pictures of brave lawyers in Pakistan risking their careers and even their own health and safety to stand up for their nation's constitution. At the same time, we are witnessing at home a similar - if not quite as acute - assault on our own Constitution by the Bush administration. Yet we have not seen a coordinated movement of lawyers in defense of the Constitution in this country.

It seems like this is about to change. The American Freedom Campaign, in conjunction with the National Lawyers Guild, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Alliance for Justice, has launched a campaign called "American Lawyers Defending the Constitution" (ALDC). Conceptualized just last month, the campaign has already brought together scores of law professors and other prominent lawyers, including Governor Cuomo.

Overall, more than 700 lawyers and law students have signed on to the campaign's first project - a sign-on statement to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, calling for hearings to investigate unconstitutional and potentially criminal activities by the Bush administration.

We are pushing to have more than 1,000 lawyers and law students sign the statement before it is released later this week. With that kind of backing, we can open some eyes in Washington and help congressional leaders realize that they are not fighting a partisan battle in Washington; they are fighting for the survival of our Constitution.

If you are a lawyer or a law student, please take a moment to sign the statement - which is included at the end of this post - by clicking on the following link:

http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org/lawyers

If you are not a lawyer or law student, please email this post to any friends, colleagues, or family members who are. And encourage them to do the same.

The need for this kind of leadership from lawyers in this country has never been greater. From wiretapping to torture to extraordinary rendition, the Bush administration has ignored and disrespected our Constitution and our laws. It is time for someone to hold them accountable.

In particular, we need members of Congress to appreciate their constitutional duty to defend the nation against an overreaching executive branch. Upholding this duty requires them to move forward in both chambers with contempt citations against Bush administration officials - including chief of staff Josh Bolten, former White House counsel Harriett Miers, and former deputy chief of staff Karl Rove - for defying congressional subpoenas. Urging action on these contempt citations will be an immediate and primary focus of the "American Lawyers" campaign.

When a nation's leader suspends the constitution - as President Musharraf did in Pakistan last month - the need for protest is urgent and obvious. But when a nation's constitution is slowly undermined and its value gradually diminished, it is more difficult to stir the passions of citizens. We are faced with that situation in the U.S. today and it is time for the legal community to rise up in defense of the rule of law.

As Governor Cuomo said in the same speech mentioned at the top of this post, "There is a time to be silent and a time to speak. This is the time for lawyers to speak."

We hope all lawyers and law students will make their voices heard.

White House Finally Issues Preservation Order, Days After Destruction Of Torture Tapes Revealed

From Think Progress:

After the media revealed last Thursday evening that the CIA had destroyed at least two torture tapes, both the White House and the Department of Justice delayed in sending out a preservation order ensuring that federal government employees did not undertake any further acts of destroying evidence.

Lawyers from the Center for Constitutional Rights representing Guantanamo Bay detainee Majid Khan warned in a Nov. 29 filing that, “absent a preservation order, there is substantial risk that the torture evidence will disappear.”

On Friday’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Georgetown Law professor Neal Katyal — who successfully argued the Hamdan decision in front of the Supreme Court — expressed concern that further documents might be destroyed because the administration was delaying the issuance of a preservation order:

I am a little dismayed that [Attorney General Michael Mukasey] hasn’t done what I believe Attorney General Ed Meese did right when the Iran contra scandal broke, which was issue a preservation order — ordering all federal government employees to make sure no further documents were destroyed. Because who knows what’s being shredded right now as we speak.

In today’s White House press briefing, Press Secretary Dana Perino said that, “this weekend,” the White House counsel sent out a notice to “all employees” ordering them to preserve documents and evidence. Unfortunately, the order came much later than it should have.

UPDATE: In 2003, when the Justice Department first contacted the White House about the Plame investigation, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales waited 12 hours “to inform the White House staff that it must ‘preserve all materials‘ relevant to the investigation.”

Transcript:

QUESTION: Has the White House counsel directed everybody here to preserve all the documents?

PERINO: Yes.

QUESTION: A formal order has gone out?

PERINO: Yes.

QUESTION: And in what form? Was it a letter…

PERINO: As they usually do, it’s a notice that goes to all employees.

QUESTION: And it said — can you tell us what it says?

PERINO: I don’t remember. I don’t have it with me. I received it and (inaudible) preserve the documents, or preserve what you know. I just — I can’t remember exactly what the language was, but we’ll try to get it for you. It came out this weekend.

Leaked rules detail rewards and penalties at Guantánamo

The inner workings of the Guantánamo detention camp, ranging from items allowed in cells to how many witnesses should be present for cavity searches, have been revealed in a Pentagon manual leaked on the internet.
The manual covers almost every aspect of life at the base, from arrival to burial - with a graphic showing how Muslims should be buried.

Although the manual dates from 2003, the year after the camp at the US navy base in Cuba opened and before some changes in its running were implemented, it offers a rare glimpse of life in the high-security camp. The 238 pages list the rules governing the daily life of the prisoners but also provide insights into how the US guards and interrogators view the inmates.

It details an elaborate reward system in which prisoners who show signs of cooperating, or at least responding positively, are rewarded with "comfort items" such as a larger bar of soap. It covers how to identify potential leaders, orders latex gloves to be used when handling mail in case of hazardous chemicals, and specifies the number of military police to be present when prisoners take showers.
Lieutenant Colonel Ed Bush, a Guantánamo spokesman, said the document, which was labelled Unclassified, for Official Use Only, should not have been made public, even though much of it was outdated. Many changes to operating procedures had been made since then, he said.

More than 350 prisoners are still held in Guantánamo.

The leaked manual first appeared on Wikileaks, a website that invites people to send in sensitive documents. The manual tells how prisoners should be isolated to make them more cooperative under what it calls the behaviour management plan.

On arrival, they were denied basics and access to a Qur'an. But afterwards all prisoners were given one. "Do not disrespect the Qur'an (let it touch the floor, kick it, step on it)," the manual says.

In one of the most contentious parts, the manual states that some prisoners are not guaranteed access to the International Committee of the Red Cross, in spite of repeated assertions by the organisation that it had full access. It said that level-four prisoners should have: "No access: No contact of any kind with the ICRC. This includes the delivery of ICRC mail."

Rewards for positive behaviour included being allowed to take meals to cells, access to games, and three showers a week instead of the standard two. But some practices are denied to all inmates, including "hanging towel in cell to block sun or light at night when sleeping".

Main points

Behaviour management plan to "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganisation felt by a newly arrived detainee"

A reward system to encourage cooperation

Access to Red Cross denied to some prisoners

Guards told line to take with media: "We are making progress in global war on terror through a concerted effort with coalition partners"

A Cat May Look Upon a King, but Not at Gitmo

This common saying, dating back at least to 1590, encapsulates one of the most basic notions of equality: anyone may, at least, look at anyone else, even a King.

But not at Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay as of March 1, 2004.

On December 3, 2007 Wikileaks released the secret 2004 manual for the base, together with a detailed list of changes over its 2003 predecessor.

Between March 2003 and 2004,the SOP Manual added a new paragraph in section 11-5.

“Upon the approach of any Distinguished Visitor (DV), an escort team moving a detainee will stop movement and face the detainee away from the passing DV. Once the DV or DV party has passed, the escort team will resume movement of the detainee.”
This provision, while extreme, is in keeping with the spirit of the 2004 SOP Manual. In addition to prohibiting detainees from seeing high-ranking officials, the procedures reveal great efforts to keep detainees isolated, not just from each other, but from current events, the English language, and even basic general knowledge. Moreover, the 2004 manual goes to even greater extremes than the 2003 manual.

Section 15-9 of the manual prohibits detainees from reading books on certain topics. As in the 2003 manual, the 2004 manual prohibits English instruction materials.

In addition, both manuals prohibit reading of books on “extremism”, “anti-Semitism”, and “anti-Americanism”. With a broad interpretation, such stipulations could conceivably cover most books on US foreign policy.

But the 2004 manual adds new prohibitions — on current periodicals, “Dictionaries”, “Language Instruction”, “Technology/Medical Updates”, “Geography”. Now even the definition of words themselves are contraband to Guantanamo detainees.

State Department documents reveal U.S. dealings with Venezuela's Chavez

Read the story here...FRUQTADA

Issues: You say terrorism; I say economy

Democrats and Republicans in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina have dramatically different views of the nation's priorities, according to a new McClatchy-MSNBC poll. The fact that the two parties' bases don't even agree on which issues matter most may help to explain why the people they send to Washington have such a hard time agreeing on anything.

While pollsters didn't offer each side all the same choices, Democrats and Republicans in all three states differed widely when asked about the same issues. Voters were asked to identify which issue they felt was the most important.

Some of the disparities:

NATIONAL SECURITY OR TERRORISM

In Iowa, it's last on the Democrats' list, cited by just 1 percent, and first on the Republican list, mentioned by 31 percent.

In New Hampshire, it's the top priority for 2 percent of Democrats and 25 percent of Republicans.

In South Carolina, it's tops for 6 percent of Democrats but 25 percent of Republicans.

IRAQ

In Iowa, 24 percent of Democrats call it the biggest issue facing the country, but only 7 percent of Republicans do.

In New Hampshire, it's number one for 35 percent of Democrats and 7 percent of Republicans.

In South Carolina, it's the first priority for 19 percent of Democrats and 6 percent of Republicans.

THE ECONOMY AND JOBS

In Iowa, 28 percent of Democrats but just 8 percent of Republicans call it the top issue.

In New Hampshire, it's the top priority for 18 percent of Democrats, but also for 17 percent of Republicans.

In South Carolina, it's the top issue for 24 percent of Democrats and 15 percent of Republicans.

Lawyers charge the CIA tortured their client in secret prisons

Lawyers for a terrorism suspect from suburban Baltimore who's imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba claim they have evidence that their client "was subjected to a program of state-sanctioned torture" while he was in CIA custody.

The lawyers for Majid Khan are asking a federal court to order the Bush administration to preserve evidence of how their client was treated during his three-plus years in CIA custody, saying they have ample evidence that he was tortured.

Their heavily censored court filing, which was delivered under seal Thursday to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia and obtained by The Miami Herald, comes as Congress and the Justice Department have opened preliminary investigations into the CIA's destruction of tapes of interrogations of two men who were held with Khan in a secret prison camp for "high-value" detainees at Guantanamo.

Defense lawyers Gitanjali Gutierrez and Wells Dixon met with Khan for two weeks in mid-October at Guantanamo, where he's held in Camp 7, a previously unknown part of the prison that's reserved for former "ghost detainees", according to declassified notes of their meetings.

In the notes, the two wrote that they found Khan with a scar on his arm from trying to gnaw through an artery, and that he still suffers psychological trauma. Their brief, which includes two still-secret appendices, was crafted from those interviews and speaks of Khan's treatment in captivity and that of other prisoners who, it alleges, "were similarly abducted, imprisoned and tortured by U.S. personnel at CIA black sites around the world."

CIA censors redacted, or blacked out, whom the lawyers allege ran what they call "The CIA Torture Program." Censors also blacked out two full pages in which the lawyers argue why, "There is no doubt that Khan was subjected to a program of state-sanctioned torture."

There was no way to test the lawyers' allegations independently, and the U.S. government denies that it engages in torture. Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin Saturday said that the government was "reviewing the allegations" and preparing a response to the lawyers' motion.

No one but his lawyers and U.S. military and intelligence officials has seen Khan, and none of the other former CIA captives who've been detained at Guantanamo for more than a year has seen an attorney.

Still, the notes of the two attorneys from the New York Center for Constitutional Rights offer a glimpse inside the prison-within-a-prison at the detention center.

Camp 7 was opened when the alleged high-value detainees arrived at Guantanamo, around Labor Day 2006, to prevent their tales from spreading to the other 300 or so prisoners.

The lawyers' notes claim that Khan and another alleged al Qaida terrorist, Abu Zubaydeh, had contact with each other. The disclosure that the CIA destroyed tapes of interrogations of Abu Zubaydeh triggered the ongoing investigations.

Khan was born in Pakistan but grew up near Baltimore, where he graduated from a suburban high school, and got political asylum in the United States, where his father still lives. The son was visiting Pakistan in March 2003 when, he claims, CIA officers kidnapped him in Karachi. He then disappeared into a secret interrogation program shielded even from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which tracks prisoners around the globe.

President Bush ordered Khan and 13 other former CIA captives, among them alleged 9/11mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, transferred to military custody in September 2006

In October, granting the lawyers access to Khan, the Pentagon charged that he "reportedly had links to al Qaida operatives and facilitators, some who . . . involved him in a discussion of smuggling explosives into the United States."

Khan hasn't been charged with any crime, and his lawyers say in their brief that the alleged CIA torture "will be the central focus of any military commission proceedings involving Khan." They also allege that while he was in CIA custody, "Khan admitted anything his interrogators demanded of him, regardless of the truth."

Gutierrez was due back on the isolated naval base in southeast Cuba on Sunday night to meet with her client again and to brief him on the effort to preserve evidence in his case.

The information is being disclosed now because, under lawyer-access rights at Guantanamo, the attorneys had to turn all 500 pages of notes of their conversations with their client over to classification inspectors and only recently have had four pages of a summary cleared for public disclosure.

In Arrogant Defense of Torture

The White House is already complaining about reports that House and Senate conferees have come to an agreement on an intelligence measure mandating that all agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, comply with the Army Field Manual’s outlawing of torture. The manual properly reflects American law by explicitly proscribing the gamut of torture measures — including waterboarding — that have proved dear to the heart of administration zealots.

Waterboarding, in which interrogators subject suspects to the grisly conditions of simulated drowning, is illegal under both federal laws and international compacts, including the Geneva Conventions. But the administration has foolishly flouted these laws, which were adopted to protect American citizens captured overseas, as much as suspects captured by Americans, from barbaric abuse by interrogators.

The administration denies it has stooped to torture in intelligence gathering — despite its post-9/11 record of secret detention programs and rendition kidnappings that outsource interrogations to governments known to use torture. The Times reported last week that the C.I.A. destroyed hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives. Congress must find out what was on those tapes and who is responsible for their destruction.

“The C.I.A. program has provided valuable, actionable intelligence,” a White House spokesman insisted, dismissing Congress’s Army Field Manual initiative as “dangerous and misguided.” The new attorney general, Michael Mukasey, twisted himself into knots during his confirmation hearing, refusing to say whether waterboarding was torture and therefore illegal. Small wonder that Congress feels obliged to require that all agencies follow the Army manual’s clear proscription of torture.

There is certainly merit in a Congressional debate. Lawmakers should demand that the White House and its allies explain why intelligence operatives should scoff at a ban on torture that soldiers swear to and is unquestionably the law of the land.