Saturday, February 16, 2008

Secret draft of Iraq war dossier to be revealed

The secret first draft of the notorious Iraq dossier that helped to take Britain to war is expected to be released tomorrow, in a victory for freedom of information campaigners.

The early version written by John Williams, then director of communications at the Foreign Office, has been the subject of a three-year legal wrangle amid hopes that it could reveal whether the supposedly intelligence-led dossier was actually based on a press officer's script - and whether it was subsequently 'sexed up' by Alastair Campbell.

The draft is understood not to contain the infamous claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a strike with 'weapons of mass destruction' within 45 minutes, a claim that was central to the final 'dodgy dossier'.

Yesterday Williams attacked the decision to withhold the document for so long. 'If the government withholds a piece of paper, it immediately makes it significant; it almost doesn't matter what it says,' he argued. 'That's what I said at the time: why are we withholding it?'

A former journalist, who left Whitehall in May, Williams said the row was particularly frustrating as he had never wanted the government to produce a dossier. He had argued, he said, that rather than attempting to prove that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction, the government should have challenged him to prove he did not: 'I was against the idea of a dossier because I thought it was wrong.'

The Hutton inquiry into the road to war on Iraq identified the existence of an early draft by Williams, but was told by Campbell that it had become 'redundant' when John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee linking Downing Street to the security services, took charge of the process. However, an information tribunal last month ruled that the Williams draft should be disclosed. Anti-war campaigners regard it as key evidence of who introduced the most contentious material into the final draft, and whether Scarlett was too heavily influenced by aides with an interest in making a case for war.

Williams said that critics of the war were likely to find significant similarities between his draft and Scarlett's version, but insisted that should not be surprising since both were working with 'the same assumptions, the same policy, with much of the same material'.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to confirm in a statement to the Commons tomorrow that the government will bow to the information tribunal's ruling, rather than exercising ministerial powers to veto it or challenge it in court. Ministers had argued that the draft should not be disclosed because it jeopardised the confidentiality - and therefore candour - of advice given to them by civil servants.

The release is in response to pressure by Chris Ames, a former charity worker from Surrey, who began pursuing the document early in 2005.

The government will hope that the publication finally draws a line under the sorry saga of the dossier, which led indirectly to the suicide of scientist David Kelly after he was identified as the apparent source of BBC reports that the dossier had been 'overspun' by Campbell.

Friday, February 15, 2008

Lieberman Defends Waterboarding: It’s ‘Not Like Putting Burning Coals On People’s Bodies’

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) “reluctantly acknowledged” that he doesn’t believe waterboarding is torture. According to the Connecticut Post, Lieberman downplayed the severity of the waterboarding because it doesn’t inflict permanent physical damage:

In the worst case scenario — when there is an imminent threat of a nuclear attack on American soil — Lieberman said that the president should be able to certify the use of waterboarding on a detainee suspected of knowing vital details of the plot.

“You want to be able to use emergency tech to try to get the information out of that person,” Lieberman said. […]

“It is not like putting burning coals on people’s bodies. The person is in no real danger. The impact is psychological,” Lieberman said.

Lieberman appears to be mimicking his close friend Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) pandering to the right wing. Like Lieberman, McCain voted against banning waterboarding this week, even though he had previously called the technique “very exquisite torture.”

Until recently, Lieberman had also raised objections to the Bush administration’s interrogation practices:

– In 2006, Lieberman said that “the most effective way to get information from a suspect is persistent, long-term questioning. ‘If terrorists are tried and convicted of committing a terrorist act, they should be subject to the death penalty,’ he said.” [AP, 9/18/06]

– As recently as December, Lieberman said, “Obviously, waterboarding is a rough, to put it mildly, technique.” He added that he hadn’t “resolved absolutely” whether waterboarding should be allowed to “gather information that would stop an imminent terrorist attack.” [CNS News, 12/12/07]

To be classified as torture, a procedure does not have to inflict permanent physical damage. In fact, psychological torture can be worse. Former Navy airman Richard E. Mezo was subjected to “water torture” and concluded, “Pulling out my fingernails or even cutting off a finger would have been preferable. At least if someone had attacked my hands, I would have had to simply tolerate pain. But drowning is another matter.”

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Feds admit to jailing U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but call incidents rare

WASHINGTON — A top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official acknowledged Wednesday that his agency has mistakenly detained U.S. citizens as illegal immigrants, but he denied that his agency has widespread problems with deporting the wrong people.

Gary Mead, ICE's deputy director of detention and removal operations, testified during a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing that U.S. citizens have been detained on "extremely" rare occasions, but he blamed the mix-ups on conflicting information from the detainees.

Nonetheless, Mead said his agency is reviewing its handling of people who claim to be U.S. citizens "to determine if even greater safeguards can be put in place."

The testimony before the House Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security and International Law came after immigration advocates told McClatchy that they'd seen a small but growing number of cases of U.S. citizens who've been mistakenly detained and sometimes deported by ICE. They accuse agents of ignoring valid assertions of citizenship in the rush to deport more illegal immigrants.

Unlike suspects charged in criminal courts, detainees accused of immigration violations don't have a right to an attorney, and three-quarters of them represent themselves.

Last month, Thomas Warziniack, a U.S. citizen who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, was mistakenly detained for weeks in an Arizona immigration facility and told that he was going to be deported to Russia.

Warziniack, 40, was released after his family, who learned about his predicament from a McClatchy reporter, produced his birth certificate.

In another high-profile example, ICE agents in California mistakenly deported Pedro Guzman, a mentally disabled U.S. citizen, to Mexico. Guzman was found months later when he tried to return to the United States.

Mead contended that both Warziniack and Guzman said they were illegal immigrants, and he said ICE agents have to be careful not to release the wrong people. Guzman and Warziniack had been serving time for minor offenses when their jailers turned them over to immigration authorities.

Although Mead said that Guzman is the only U.S. citizen he knows who's been deported erroneously, immigration lawyers have said they've found at least seven others. In the past four years, ICE agents have detained more than 1 million people.

House committee members also heard stories of ICE agents interrogating or detaining U.S. citizens in their homes, at their workplaces and on the street.

Marie Justeen Mancha, a 17-year-old born in Texas, said ICE agents raided her family's home in Georgia in 2006 while her mother was running an errand. Her mother is also a U.S. citizen.

"I started to hear the words, 'Police! Illegals!'" she recalled. "I walked around the corner from the hallway and saw a tall man reach toward his gun and look straight at me."

Mancha said the agents left after grilling her about her citizenship.

"I carry that fear with me every day, wondering when they'll come back," she said.

Mancha is one of five U.S. citizens named in a pending lawsuit by the Southern Poverty Law Center that alleges wrongful interrogations or detentions by ICE in Southeast Georgia.

Rep. Steven King, R-Iowa, the ranking minority member of the committee, described the cases as isolated and urged the agency not to be distracted from detaining and deporting illegal immigrants.

"ICE does not aim to harass and detain U.S. citizens," he said.

But Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the committee, said that after hearing such stories, she feared an "overzealous government is interrogating, detaining and deporting its own citizens."

Nancy Morawetz, who runs an immigration rights clinic at New York University, said getting proof of citizenship is one of the biggest stumbling blocks for detainees, especially when they're shipped to a facility far from home.

In 2006, the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, identified 125 people in immigration detention centers who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

"As a country we do not have a national identity card," Morawetz said in an interview. "People don't walk around with a 'C' on their forehead that says they're a U.S. citizen."

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Camp 7 and the Torturer's Shrink

"I am proud to be a member of the American Psychological Association, proud for what APA has stood for in these troubling times, and deeply grateful to the Association for supporting me and my colleagues in our quest to ensure that all in our custody are treated with human decency and respect."
— Larry C. James,
Colonel, United States Army, June 23, 2007

"This is my second tour at Gitmo, Cuba. I was also the first psychologist at Abu Ghraib. I'm going to repeat what I said earlier. If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die. If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to get hurt."
— Larry C. James,
Colonel, United States Army, June 23, 2007
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Sounds good Colonel James. Great sound bytes. Good enough to convince thousands of psychologists that you're the real thing, as American as Stealth bombers and pre-emptive war. Who would possibly think that psychologists in the military would engage in torture after listening to you? Good enough that you became the poster child for the American Psychological Association as they pulled out all stops in their attempts to defeat those few psychologists opposed to torture, inhuman conditions and the disappearance of habeas corpus. They brought you all the way from Guantanamo for their song and dance show. Not even most psychologists, those who are supposed to understand human behavior, saw through your charade, as you convinced them that their professional association really IS on the side of truth and goodness.

The APA used you to introduce a different resolution against torture for the second year in a row, in an attempt to deflect the dissenters and detractors. APA's use of resolutions as a means to stop torture have proven to be simply a sleight of hand to appease the multitudes and the media, but actually signifies nothing.

Perhaps you'll repeat history, Colonel James. In 2006, Surgeon General Kevin Kiley was used by APA leaders to offer the 2006 "Resolution on Torture." Remember him? He lost his job a few months after presenting THAT resolution, another military officer who was willing to overlook the inhumane treatment of people that were considered to have no value.

But you blew it this week, Colonel. One might say you fell out of role, and the truth became evident. Though you are in charge of the team of psychologists that assists interrogators at Guantanamo, when the Associated Press reported last week on the just-revealed Camp 7 at Guantanamo where detainees from CIA secret detention facilities are kept, including the detainees who HAVE been water-boarded, including Abu Zubaydah who endured water-boarding with two psychologists present, you stated you just don't want to know about it.

"I learned a long, long time ago, if I'm going to be successful in the intel community, I'm meticulously -- in a very, very dedicated way -- going to stay in my lane," he said. "So if I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."

You, the military psychologist, who spoke so piously of how much you cared to protect detainees at Gitmo, who so scrupulously defended your character as patriotically humane - didn't you just sell out the fate of those detainees for the advancement of your career?

You commanded the Guantanamo Behavioral Science Consultation Teams from January 2003 to mid-May 2003, during a time when the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo amounted to torture.

Under your command and supervision, psychologists from the military's Survival, Evasion Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program were instructed to apply their expertise in abusive interrogation techniques to the interrogations of detainees in Guantanamo, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector General.

According to the Standard Operating Procedure manual at the time that you were the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo, all incoming detainees were to be held in isolation for the first 30 days "to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process" and were not entitled to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

So while you and the American Psychological Association continue to assert that military psychologists are necessary at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other detention sites - to build rapport, to "protect" the detainees, to stop other military personnel from harming and killing the detainees - you're telling reporters that the secret to your success is to look the other way. What else could it mean when you say, "if I'm going to be successful in the intel community . . . I'm meticulously . . . going to stay in my lane . . . I don't want to know?"

The fact is, for you and our professional organization, it's all about keeping your job. You toe the military line for your paycheck. And the APA toes the military line to curry the favor of the Department of Defense and the current administration for contracts. All the rest is window dressing, such as the APA's gratuitous letter to Attorney General Mukasey this week. The letter is a lobbyist's masterpiece, suggesting that waterboarding is legal torture in one paragraph and then asking the AG to please hurry up and render a legal ruling in the next.

But as you seem not to be motivated by considerations of ethics, Colonel James, perhaps the potential for life in prison might have more impact. At the Nuremberg Trials, it was held that merely following orders will not absolve you from criminal liability. In that rare moment of truthiness, you told us that your guilty knowledge may pose inconveniences for you: "[I]f I don't have a specific need to know about something, I don't want to know about it. I don't ask about it."

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

The "Clean Team"

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it intends to bring capital murder charges against half a dozen men allegedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based partly on information the men disclosed to FBI and military questioners without the use of coercive interrogation tactics....
FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team" and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.

To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspects' trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said....

Prosecutors and top administration officials essentially wanted to cleanse the information so that it could be used in court, a process that federal prosecutors typically follow in U.S. criminal cases with investigative problems or botched interrogations. Officials wanted to go into court without any doubts about the viability of their evidence, and they had serious reservations about the reliability of what the CIA had obtained for intelligence purposes.

"It was the product of a lot of debate at really high levels," one official familiar with the program said. "A lot of people were involved in concluding that it may not be the saving grace, but it would put us on the best footing we could possibly be in. You can't erase what happened in the past, but this was the best alternative."

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Gitmo's Makeover to Reduce Hostilities

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba - Seeking to ease conditions for angry and frustrated Guantanamo detainees, the commander of the prison camps has instituted language classes, a literacy program and wants to open communal areas for men held in isolation 22 hours a day.

In an exclusive interview with The Associated Press, Army Col. Bruce Vargo, commander of the military's Joint Detention Group at Guantanamo, said he hopes the changes at Guantanamo, where 275 men suspected of links to al-Qaida and the Taliban are held, will lead to fewer attacks on guards.

The makeover contrasts with the situation at this isolated base in 2006, when commanders hardened the detention camps in the wake of a guard-prisoner clash and suicides of three detainees. They converted a new medium-security jailhouse into maximum-security, eliminating communal living areas - a move which Vargo said he intends to reverse.

"Make no bones about it, these are very dangerous men," Vargo said, citing incidents in which detainees splashed guards with bodily fluids, and head-butted, kicked and bit them. "But at the same time, you have to provide them with some type of out."

Attorneys for detainees say the assaults are partly triggered by frustration among men who, more often than not, were captured far from any battlefield and have been locked up for as many as six years with no real chance to confront accusations that they are enemy combatants.

David Remes, a Washington attorney who represents 16 Guantanamo detainees, said the military should recognize it must improve its treatment of detainees and not justify these changes by saying they are aimed at reducing assaults. He said most detainees are in virtual solitary confinement, reportedly leading to mental problems.

There is now TV night for some of the best-behaved detainees, with DVDs of movies and TV shows shown on a high-definition Sony TV. A classroom in Camp 4, designated for the most compliant detainees, has metal desks and plastic chairs. Detainees are leg-shackled to the classroom floor.

Language courses have begun in English, Arabic and Pashto, Vargo said in the interview last week. He intends to soon offer classes on diverse subjects, perhaps including oceanography.

"If we can get them to focus on humanities programs, if we can get them to focus on recreation, then their sole focus is not going to be on the guard force," Vargo said. "It is my thought that if they are focused on those things, then the level of assaults and things of that nature will go down."

At Camp 4, dozens of birds sat on coils of barbed wire, chirping and singing, as Soldiers escorted AP journalists inside. Five detainees in loose-fitting white shirts and pants sat at tables outside their communal living area, sharing a rice dish. On the other side of a chain-link fence, a bored guard standing in the shade of a plastic tarp watched the men. White and tan prison uniforms freshly washed by the detainees hung along the fence, drying in the winter sun. Guantanamo rules prohibit journalists from talking to detainees.

"I have instituted a very strict vetting program to get into Camp 4," Vargo said. "If you abide by the rules and you get through the vetting program then we move you in there."
Living conditions in Camps 5 and 6 are far stricter. Detainees are isolated up to 22 hours a day in individual cells.

Vargo said he wants to make Camp 6 more like Camp 4, and has mock-ups of modifications that will allow detainees to use communal areas. He wants to keep guards separate from the detainees but still enable them to check on each prisoner every three minutes to prevent suicides.

"We're doing something that is probably different in that this is a high-security detention facility with the amenities of a lower security facility," Vargo said. "That's what I'm trying to achieve."
Zachary Katznelson, an attorney representing detainees, said he welcomes planned changes.

"Right now the men in Camp 6 sit in steel boxes without windows for at least 22 hours a day," he said. "They have no mental stimulation, nothing to do.
"But the real issue remains the fact that the men are being held without charge or trial," Katznelson added. "English lessons do not equal a return to American values like due process. It's just putting lipstick on a pig."