Impunity

R. Jeffrey Smith writes in the Washington Post:

Human rights experts have long pressed the administration of former president George W. Bush for details of who bore ultimate responsibility for approving the simulated drownings of CIA detainees, a practice that many international legal experts say was illicit torture.

In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him.

...

Georgetown University law professor David Cole, a long-standing critic of Bush's interrogation and detention policies, called prosecution unlikely. "The fact that he did admit it suggests he believes he is politically immune from being held accountable. . . . But politics can change."

What Mr. Smith does not say, and should have been said, is that the United States declared waterboarding to be torture in WWII and prosecuted enemies for doing it.

That war criminals like George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney can make admissions like this with no apparent fear of consequences speaks volumes about the lawlessness of their regime and of this nation.

--the BB

It may take a long time but the truth will out

Marcy updates us:

But in what I’ve reviewed so far, the new documents reveal one important new detail. Page 44 of this PDF provides a mostly redacted record of the briefing CIA gave Porter Goss and Nancy Pelosi on Abu Zubaydah’s torture on September 4, 2002. We know–because both Goss and Pelosi have described this detail the same way–that CIA did not tell the House Intelligence leadership that it had already tortured Abu Zubaydah. CIA told Goss and Pelosi about waterboarding, but spoke of it as a technique that might hypothetically be used in the future, not something that had been used 83 times on one detainee the prior month.

...

Assuming CIA’s own documentation is accurate (always a big assumption, given the CIA), then Jose Rodriguez–listed as D/CTC–is the one who gave Goss and Pelosi that deceptive briefing.

Jose Rodriguez went on to participate in destroying evidence of torture that should have been briefed to Congress. And these documents prove (again, presuming CIA’s documents are accurate) that Jose Rodriguez was deceiving Congress about torture right from the start.

Imagine my surprise.

Those who claimed loudly that Congress was briefed may now kindly go away and STFU.

--the BB

Watch us weasel

bmaz reports at emptywheel:

Mike Isikoff and Dan Klaidman put up a post about an hour ago letting the first blood for the Obama Administration’s intentional tanking of the OPR (Office of Professional Responsibility) Report. In light of Obama’s focused determination to sweep the acts of the Bush Administration, no matter how malevolent, under the rug and “move forward” the report is not unexpected. However, digesting the first leak in what would appear to be a staged rollout is painful:

…an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Sigh.

This is not about mercy, reconciliation, or - heaven forfend - truth. It is about impunity. And where impunity prevails the law is irrelevant.

One of my fiercest criticisms of the Obama administration is its refusal to enforce the law where war crimes BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT are concerned.

Yoo, Bybee, Addington, Cheney, Rice, Bush and several others should not be walking free.


--the BB

Right wing heads explode (oh, if they only would!)

CIA Man Retracts Claim on Waterboarding

That's the headline of an article by Jeff Stein at Foreign Policy.

Well, it's official now: John Kiriakou, the former CIA operative who affirmed claims that waterboarding quickly unloosed the tongues of hard-core terrorists, says he didn't know what he was talking about.

...

"I wasn't there when the interrogation took place; instead, I relied on what I'd heard and read inside the agency at the time."

In a word, it was hearsay, water-cooler talk.

With that admission, claims that waterboarding works sort of evanesce.

Imagine my surprise.

--the BB

Possible murders at Gitmo - don't gloss them over

The Rude Pundit puts it out there:

Torture and Murder at Gitmo: A Risky Political Opportunity If Obama Is Willing to Take It:
The Rude Pundit has said it before, and he'll keep saying it: the Obama administration's failure to investigate and prosecute the crimes of the Bush administration will lead to its downfall. You wanna establish moral authority to "change the tone" in Washington? Then adhere to some goddamned moral code. The laws of the land are a good place to start. As so many members of yer progressive punditry are saying, Barack Obama has to make Bush and the Republicans own the crises we are now in. And one way to do that is to reveal the extent that the United States under Bush tortured innocent people. It's ugly, and it's awful, but, hell, most violent crimes are.

So far the Obama administration has backpedaled on anything resembling holding the Bush crime group accountable. Which suggests Obama may preach rule of law but doesn't really believe in it. Political reality, you say? I offer this political reality: if you eschew the integrity of the law you have no lasting political future.

"Bush did horrible things," the observers in the future will say, "but Obama did nothing about it. The U.S. presidency is corrupt, though and through, devoid of moral principle."

As you read Horton's piece, you eventually get through the violence and the cover-up (as suicides, called "a good P.R. move" by an assistant secretary of state) to the stomach-churning section where, it seems, the Justice Department of the Obama administration is refusing to investigate the case in more than a cursory way. Why? More than likely because of fear of wrecking bipartisanship and ruining that oh-so-precious comity in Congress, under the notion of always "looking forward, not backward." Which sounds so Cheneyesque that it's even more nauseating than the Republican crowing over Scott Brown's victory lap.

Indeed.

I have seen pursuit of consensus paralyze churches. We are watching pursuit of comity destroy the Obama presidency.

--the BB

Citizens must insist that the government do its duty

The header for this post has many applications.

This morning we have an example of a letter written by several citizens urging the FBI to act upon the evidence that Condoleezza Rice is guilty of conspiracy to commit torture.

Clearly, there is probable cause to believe a crime has been committed, and Condoleezza Rice, among others, is one of the perpetrators. If you do not come to a similar conclusion, surely there is enough evidence to bring her in for questioning. Frankly, Ms. Rice has been a fairly public person, and we are surprised that she has managed to evade federal authorities thus far. Please feel free to email us if we can be of further assistance.

You may read the letter and other comments at this post by youmayberight. If you are in Minnesota, there is an invitation:

Join us for a peaceful candlelight demonstration outside Beth El Synagogue, 5224 W. 26th St., St. Louis Park, Minnesota, at 5:15 Nov. 8.

Where there is no enforcement, law is meaningless.

--the BB

When the perps are behind bars, I will let this rest

This is too delish:

“It cannot be suggested that information as to how officials of the U.S. government admitted treating (Binyam Mohamed) during his interrogation is information that can in any democratic society governed by the rule of law be characterized as ’secret’ or as ‘intelligence’…”

--Paisley Dodds for the AP (full article here)

What is this all about? In a nutshell:

In a stunning and refreshing decision, the British High Court has overruled the British government’s attempt to suppress torture evidence on the US and British treatment of Binyam Mohamed.

See bmaz's article at emptywheel.

“In our view, as a court in the United Kingdom, a vital public interest requires, for reasons of democratic accountability and the rule of law in the United Kingdom, that a summary of the most important evidence relating to the involvement of the British security services in wrongdoing be placed in the public domain in the United Kingdom.”

The British High Court shows the world how torture is considered in a real legal system.

Yes!

--the BB

Knock me over with a feather. Who knew?

I'm shocked, shocked to learn this!

The CIA's harsh interrogation program likely damaged the brain and memory functions of terrorist suspects, diminishing their physical ability to provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a new scientific paper.

The paper scrutinizes the harsh techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology. Researchers concluded that the harsh methods were biologically counterproductive to eliciting quality information because prolonged stress harms the brain's ability to retain and recall information.

Pamela Hess of the AP reports on a new paper by Irish professor and researcher Shane O'Mara.

h/t to bmaz at emptywheel where you may read the short version.

--the BB

I have two new military heroes today

Their names are CHARLES C. KRULAK AND JOSEPH P. HOAR. "Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994."

Their op-ed piece was published Friday in the Miami Herald. Snippets:

But we never imagined that we would feel duty-bound to publicly denounce a vice president of the United States, a man who has served our country for many years. In light of the irresponsible statements recently made by former Vice President Dick Cheney, however, we feel we must repudiate his dangerous ideas -- and his scare tactics.

...

Repeating these assertions doesn't make them true. We now see that the best intelligence, which led to the capture of Saddam Hussein and the elimination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was produced by professional interrogations using non-coercive techniques. When the abuse began, prisoners told interrogators whatever they thought would make it stop.

...

The Bush administration had already degraded the rules of war by authorizing techniques that violated the Geneva Conventions and shocked the conscience of the world. Now Cheney has publicly condoned the abuse that went beyond even those weakened standards, leading us down a slippery slope of lawlessness. Rules about the humane treatment of prisoners exist precisely to deter those in the field from taking matters into their own hands. They protect our nation's honor.

I want to thank these men for standing up and speaking out on behalf of the honor of the United States of America AND for the protection of our troops in the field.

Gentlemen, thank you.

h/t to Digby and Scott Horton for pointing me to this. I recommend the entire article.

--the BB

Epic fail

Ali H. Soufan, FBI special agent involved in many interrogations, writes in the NYT:

It is surprising, as the eighth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, that none of Al Qaeda’s top leadership is in our custody. One damaging consequence of the harsh interrogation program was that the expert interrogators whose skills were deemed unnecessary to the new methods were forced out.

Mr. Mohammed knew the location of most, if not all, of the members of Al Qaeda’s leadership council, and possibly of every covert cell around the world. One can only imagine who else we could have captured, or what attacks we might have disrupted, if Mr. Mohammed had been questioned by the experts who knew the most about him.

I will conclude here with his opening paragraph:

PUBLIC bravado aside, the defenders of the so-called enhanced interrogation techniques are fast running out of classified documents to hide behind. The three that were released recently by the C.I.A. — the 2004 report by the inspector general and two memos from 2004 and 2005 on intelligence gained from detainees — fail to show that the techniques stopped even a single imminent threat of terrorism.

--the BB

Well, since you asked, the answer is YES!

Can you believe that David Broder, the dean of DC twitdom, actually asks the following question?

Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

I believe the answer to Broder's question is:


Broder is so out of touch - with the times, with the American People, and with reality.

Here is the whole paragraph.

Looming beyond the publicized cases of these relatively low-level operatives is the fundamental accountability question: What about those who approved of their actions? If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings. Ultimately, do we want to see Cheney, who backed these actions and still does, standing in the dock?

As for his penultimate sentence here - "If accountability is the standard, then it should apply to the policymakers and not just to the underlings." - I say, "hear, hear!" It SHOULD apply to the policymakers, the principal architect being Dick Cheney. Broder should have stopped there before typing what he - mistakenly - considers a rhetorical question.

Broder boasts precisely where he should be slinking off in shame.

When President Ford pardoned Nixon in 1974, I wrote one of the few columns endorsing his decision, which was made on the basis that it was more important for America to focus on the task of changing the way it would be governed and addressing the current problems. It took a full generation for the decision to be recognized by the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation and others as the act of courage that it had been.

Courage, schmourage, it was one of the greatest mistakes in modern American democracy because it undercut accountability and laid the groundwork for the lawlessness of the GWB gang of thugs. By shifting the focus to "addressing the current problems," the pardoning of Nixon left us vulnerable for the same issues to bite us in the ass, as they have done and are doing. The entire nexus of Bush Administration wrongdoing is integrally related to Dick Cheney's smoldering resentment of any restrictions on an imperial presidency and his determination to restore presidential power to the Nixon days and take it even further. Obama is not moving fast enough to reverse engines on this by any means. I believe many of us despair that he will reverse it and language about "moving forward" is just a means to keep us from dealing with the political cancer we are afraid or unwilling to face and, untreated, may well kill us.

The "high broderism" in the Thursday article stinks so bad it could knock a fly off a shit wagon. Broder thinks Attorney General Holder is wrong. I think Broder is wrong. Again. As usual. I find it amazing that he is still not only published but revered in the Beltway. But the Village looks after its inbred own. Their cocktail circuit mentality is all that exists and all that matters.

--the BB

In case you have never heard of "high broderism" here is an April 2007 post by Atrios:

We normally think of "High Broderism" as the worship of bipartisanship for its own sake, combined with a fake "pox on both their houses" attitude. But in reality this is just the cover Broder uses for his real agenda, the defense of what he perceives to be "the establishment" at all costs. The establishment is the permanent ruling class of Washington, our betters who know better. It is their rough agenda which is sold as "centrism" even when it has no actual relationship with the political center in a meaningful way. Democracy's messy, in Broder's world, and passionate voters are problematic. It is up to the Wise Old Men of Washington to implement the agenda, and the job of the voters to bless them for it. When the establishment fails, the most important issue is not their failure, but that the voters might begin to lose faith in and deference for their betters. Thus, people must always be allowed to save face, no matter what their transgressions, as long as they're a part of his permanent floating tea party.

While this basic attitude isn't unique to Broder, his apparent lack of interest in the actual details of policy makes him a more absurd figure than some. For him it's not about results, but about the right people being in the right places. It is terribly elitist in all the wrong ways. Arguments can be made for certain types of elitism - you do want a brain surgeon conducting brain surgery - but Broder's elites are simply aristocrats. It's their town.

Good fracking question

The Gestapo did not use waterboarding - so their methods of interrogation in this case were not as extreme as Cheney's. Nonetheless, the US-run court ruled that Cheney-style EITs, deployed by the Gestapo with the same justification as Cheney, constituted prosecutable torture:

...
And they were executed for war crimes.

The question Americans have to ask themselves is why they hold the former president and vice-president to lower moral and ethical standards than the United States once held the Gestapo. That's all. And that's everything, isn't it?

--Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic

h/t to Markos

Indeed.

--the BB

There is now some hope

From the NYT:

Justice Dept. Report Advises Pursuing C.I.A. Abuse Cases
By DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON — The Justice Department’s ethics office has recommended reversing the Bush administration and reopening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, potentially exposing Central Intelligence Agency employees and contractors to prosecution for brutal treatment of terrorism suspects, according to a person officially briefed on the matter.

The recommendation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, presented to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. in recent weeks, comes as the Justice Department is about to disclose on Monday voluminous details on prisoner abuse that were gathered in 2004 by the C.I.A.’s inspector general but have never been released.

I am pleased with this indication that laws may be upheld. It is a first step to have this recommendation. Now to actually follow the recommendation, investigate, and prosecute where appropriate.

--the BB

Vile and viler

Ah, torture: the one thing that can still get Dick Cheney hard.

Marcy has more information on the role of Dusty Foggo in torture and black sites. For those who follow this degrading history, she's always a good read (along with mcjoan). She concludes:

So Goss--installed at CIA to be Cheney's mole--fired the people who were trying to prevent him from promoting Foggo. The next year, Foggo was traveling with other high level CIA people to calm the torture site hosts. That same year, the torture tapes were destroyed. Then the following year, Foggo became a problem in the Cunningham aftermath. And Foggo and Goss got fired as a result. And, at the one time Goss had an opportunity to make a statement about his role in all this, he allegedly lied about knowing Foggo and all his problems (and, of course, all the skills that led people to ask him to set up the black sites in the first place).

Interesting. Very very interesting.

Priceless quote:

“It was too sensitive to be handled by headquarters,” he said in an interview. “I was proud to help my nation.”

JimWhite comments:

WTF? Too sensitive for HQ, but fine for an interview with the Times? I realize the sites are known now and shut down, but this stinks of standard misdirection. I read it as “Cheney wanted this done and HQ wouldn’t do it, so I had to.”

As Göran keeps reminding us, we need a new set of Nuremberg trials.


--the BB

It is in the legal record now - updated with link

FishOurofWater reports at Daily Kos:

Major David J.R. Frakt gave a blistering argument, a virtual indictment of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Gonzales for enabling war crimes in his request for pre-trial dismissal in the case of United States v. Mohammed Jawad, the 12 year old child that was tortured by the United States then held in Gitmo indefinitely. The Court has now ordered the release of Jawad.

Sadly, this military commission has no power to do anything to the enablers of torture such as John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Robert Delahunty, Alberto Gonzales, Douglas Feith, David Addington, William Haynes, Vice President Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, for the jurisdiction of military commissions is strictly and carefully limited to foreign war criminals, not the home-grown variety. All you can do is to try to send a message, a clear and unmistakable message that the U.S. really doesn’t torture, and when we do, we own up to it, and we try to make it right.

FishOutofWater concludes:

JAG Fract, by winning this case with this damning evidence has put into the legal record, a basis for trying Yoo, Cheney, Rumsfeld and other high level Bush administration officials as war criminals.

It's past time to appoint a special prosecutor.

However, if American courts don't act there is now a clear case on the record for action in the Hague or other courts to try Cheney, Rumsfeld and other high level Bush administration officials for war crimes.

The petition to the Department of Justice to appoint a special prosecutor may be found here.

--the BB

"not a single significant plot"

Just go read today's article from the Washington Post. It has no gruesome details to churn your stomach though moral nausea is guaranteed. The link is to the print version, so you should have no photographs (beyond an advertisement).

These two paragraphs are nothing new but everyone really needs to be aware of them.

The officials who authorized or participated in harsh interrogations continue to dispute how effective such methods were and whether important information could have been obtained from Abu Zubaida and others without them. In March, The Washington Post reported that former senior government officials said that not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's coerced confessions.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, in a 2007 report made public this year, said the application of harsh interrogation methods, "either singly or in combination, constituted torture."

[Emphasis mine]

The CIA loves them some torture until they have to witness it.

The two men threatened to quit if the waterboarding continued and insisted that officials from Langley come to Thailand to watch the procedure, the former official said.

After a CIA delegation arrived, Abu Zubaida was strapped down one more time. As water poured over his cloth-covered mouth, he gasped for breath. "They all watched, and then they all agreed to stop," the former official said.

A 2005 Justice Department memo released this year confirmed the visit. "These officials," the memo said, "reported that enhanced techniques were no longer needed."

The immediate engineers of torture were under pressure from Langley to come up with something. One cannot help wondering who was putting the pressure on Langley. My vote, of course, would be RBC but there may have been others. THAT is where the war crimes trials need to go.

--the BB

This one is still around too

Again, I turn to Marcy for our update.

A month ago, I argued that the CIA was deploying a waterboarding "shiny object" strategy in its attempt to hide the details of the torture program that they otherwise eliminated by destroying the torture tapes--particularly, that torture started before OLC approved it, and that Abu Zubaydah had cooperated without torture, meaning their entire premise for torture was false.

The gummint submitted a filing yesterday. Marcy sees it as deflective. (Shiny object!)

As a gentle reminder, this litigation is about whether the CIA should be held in contempt because they destroyed the videos showing these activities!! Destruction that a Special Counsel has spent 18 months, thus far, investigating.

But, nonetheless, the CIA insists that there's no bit of evidence that the CIA is trying to hide a crime.

This whole argument is falling apart, and that's even before ACLU picks it apart in their response brief (due in a couple of weeks).

--the BB

What have we become?

Just because we claim not to do it anymore, so long as no one is held accountable we remain a nation of torturers.

The May 10 Techniques memo reveals that, when CIA's IG reviewed the program in 2003 and 2004, the maximum allowable time which a detainee could be subject to sleep deprivation was 264 hours--an amazing 11 days straight.

--emptywheel


--the BB

Oh my

CIA head says Cheney almost wishing US be attacked

That's the headline in this AP article.

Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta comes out and says what we all really know:

Panetta said of Cheney's remarks: "It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics."

I quite agree, Leon.

And why is Dick Cheney still not under arrest for war crimes?

--the BB

The story line we have been led to believe ... is false in every one of its dimensions

Senator Whitehouse delivered a powerful speech in the Senate on June 9. You may read the full text from The Congressional Record here.

An excerpt:

From open source and released information, here are some of the falsehoods that have been already debunked. I will warn you the record is bad, and the presumption of truth that executive officials and agencies should ordinarily enjoy is now hard to justify. We have been misled about nearly every aspect of this program.

Imagine my surprise. Not.

Dan Froomkin discusses all this here.


--the BB