Dear ACLU Supporter,

A few days ago, we alerted you to Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s demand that Congress issue a new declaration of war. This would make the entire globe -- including the United States itself -- a “battlefield” where the president gets to decide who is an “enemy combatant” and lock that person up forever.

The Bush/Mukasey plan also includes a congressionally-approved subversion of the Constitution and a cover-up of the Bush administration’s systemic torture and abuse of detainees.

At the same time, an ACLU lawsuit has uncovered new evidence that the torture and abuse Mukasey wants Congress to cover up was authorized by -- you guessed it -- the Justice Department. One of the documents obtained by the ACLU is a redacted version of a previously undisclosed 2002 Justice Department opinion that authorizes the CIA to use specific interrogation methods, including waterboarding.

Now, Mukasey -- as head of the Justice Department -- wants Congress to cover up torture committed under the watch of his predecessor, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. It’s outrageous!

Don’t let it happen. Read the alert I’ve attached below and take action now at: http://action.aclu.org/coverup


Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
ACLU

		Dear ACLU Supporter, Here they go again. On July 21st, Bush’s Attorney General, Michael Mukasey, called on Congress to take dramatic steps to subvert the Constitution. Mukasey is demanding that Congress issue a new declaration of war that would make the entire globe -- including the United States itself -- a “battlefield” where the president decides who will be locked up forever. Instead of ending the Bush system of injustice, he wants Congress to make it permanent. Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution. Not only has Bush’s Attorney General called on Congress to issue a new declaration of war, but he is also asking Congress to: 1. Gut habeas corpus -- the freedom that protects people from being thrown in prison illegally -- with no help, no end in sight and no due process. 2. Cover up the Bush administration’s systemic torture and abuse of detainees. Judges would not be allowed to see evidence of torture and abuse and would instead simply have to trust that a president is holding the right people as ”enemy combatants.” With only five weeks left in the congressional schedule and only six months left in the Bush presidency, Mukasey’s power grab should be laughed out of town. But, given this Congress’ track record, the Mukasey proposal is no laughing matter. Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution. Too many times, we’ve seen Congress cave in to the most outrageous Bush demands for out-of-control powers: The Patriot Act. National Security Letters. The Military Commissions Act. The Protect America Act. And, most recently, the congressional sell-out on FISA. Four times the Supreme Court has rejected the Bush administration’s efforts to design a war on terror system of injustice that defies the Constitution and mocks the rule of law. In the past, the administration has responded, not by respecting the Constitution, but by counting on Congress to legitimize its indefensible conduct. There is no way we can let that happen this time. Even as the House Judiciary Committee investigates whether high-level Bush White House officials may have committed crimes of torture and abuse, the Bush administration has the arrogance to ask Congress to give it the power to detain people without trial and hide torture and abuse from the courts. Tell Congress to reject the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the Constitution. We can’t take for granted that Congress will reject the Bush/Mukasey plan. We have to meet this outrageous proposal with an immediate wall of protest that says to Congress: “Don’t you dare.” I urge you to join defenders of freedom all across the country in raising your voice against Attorney General Mukasey’s dangerous proposal. Thanks for speaking out, Caroline Fredrickson, Director ACLU Washington Legislative Office P.S. You can read a blog post from Christopher Anders, ACLU Seinor Legislative Counsel, on the Bush/Mukasey plan to subvert the constitution here.

The pampered terrorists

Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/07/2008

Q.What's the best way to stop terrorism? a) Political intervention b) Torture c) Pampering. The Saudi government believes it's found the answer. Anthony Horowitz reports from Riyadh. Photographs by Ziyah Gafic

Ahmed al-Shyea, aged 24, is a suicide bomber - not that that's what he would call himself, even though he admits that, on Christmas Day 2004, he drove an oil tanker loaded with explosives into the Jordanian embassy in Baghdad. Nine people died and 60 more were injured in the blast. And al-Shyea escaped with horrific injuries - his face was described as looking like boiled tar.

Ahmed al-Shyea at the Hayar care centre, Riyadh. Once he is released and gets married, he’ll receive $33,000

I met him recently in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia - a small, rather delicate and softly spoken man. He has very few fingers. Those that remain are gnarled and fused together. Part of his nose has melted. He has a crooked smile because one side is narrower than the other. And yet, for all this, he is surprisingly, even amazingly, handsome. He speaks to me with good-natured patience.

As I take notes, there are two thoughts in my head. Why is this man sitting in a pleasant, palm-sheltered courtyard, drinking tea with me when he really ought to be in jail? And should I believe a single word he says?

I came to Riyadh to visit a unique prison for young terrorists which stands a few miles outside the city. But be warned. The words 'prison' and 'terrorist' may not mean what you think. It is part of a rehabilitation programme, costing $30million a year, aimed at using sport, culture, psychology and education to turn angry young men into model citizens… positive brainwashing, as they are happy to admit. The programme has drawn admiration from around the world. Our own Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, was there earlier this year and sounds enthusiastic enough on his blog… although somehow I can't see him trying to export their methods to the UK.

Riyadh is not an attractive place. It's a sprawling, concrete mess where the traffic is permanently jammed… although where it's heading is anyone's guess. The only place I'd want to go is away. Its most spectacular building, the Faisaliah (built by that nice bin Laden corporation), towers over the city, a golden sphere trapped in a silver pyramid and the work of an architect who may have been slightly deranged. Down the road, the Kingdom Tower is straight out of Tolkien's Mordor. There's just one reason the beleaguered British motorist might want to live here: petrol is 5p a litre.

The city has seen more than its fair share of terrorism and the signs are everywhere. Whoever has the franchise in razor wire and concrete defences must be a rich man. Metal detectors surround every doorway. The various ministries all look like low-rise prisons, walled off, with few windows presenting themselves as targets to the street. Four hundred soldiers patrol the Riyadh oil refinery, a wasteland of shimmering steel, machine guns and 40-degree heat.

I am invited to the HQ of the Special Forces for Counter Terrorism where, in a huge, dusty compound, I watch men in body armour and black balaclavas leap off towers, storm mock-up houses, hurl grenades and wrestle each other into the sand. 'The strategy of fighting terror is pre-emptive action,' their colonel tells me, adding that his soldiers have prevented 182 al-Qa'eda operations in the past five years. And across the road, just opposite the main gate, is a reminder of the ever-present danger. I am shown a building blown apart two years ago by a group of men waiting with a car bomb. In that incident, only the terrorists were killed.

Saudi Arabia is not just a target. It is also a fertile recruiting ground for international terror. Osama bin Laden was born there. Fifteen of the 19 terrorists who attacked the Twin Towers on 9/11 came from there. It has supplied more foreign fighters in Iraq than any other nation. And although just about everyone within the kingdom speaks out against violence, it's all too easy to glimpse the skull beneath the skin.

I spent an evening at an English class at the British Council in Riyadh, talking to a group of Saudis, some of them as young as 16. These were intelligent, well-educated people who made all the right noises about peace and friendship. And yet sympathy for bin Laden was palpable - not one person was prepared to denounce him, or al-Qa'eda, as evil.

Take the case of a young man who told me that 19 of his relatives had been killed by al-Qa'eda at a wedding in Jordan. And yet, chillingly, he was quite happy to dismiss his dead family with these words:

'What is more important? A few relatives or one-and-a-half million people in Gaza?'

He was referring, of course, to the Palestinians trapped there - but that's the most tacit apology for terrorism that I've ever heard. And it got worse. One person in the room was adamant that bin Laden didn't exist, that he had been invented by the Americans as an excuse to attack Afghanistan. Three of them recounted, with straight faces, that old chestnut about 9/11 being an American conspiracy.

Admittedly, this was a small, random sample of Saudi youth. But if you're going to hear these views at this level, how will it be if you talk to the poor and the uneducated? The Saudi authorities repeatedly tell the world that they are waging a battle of hearts and minds against terrorism. They may be having some success with the minds but it seems clear that they're still a long way from the hearts.

This is the background against which the prison and the rehabilitation programme have been built.

The prison is in Hayar, on the edge of Riyadh, just a few minutes from the main highway. From the very start, it doesn't look like a prison. Even the razor wire and the truck, with its mounted 7.9mm machine gun, manage to be discreet. The unarmed security guards are indistinguishable from the young people they're guarding - indeed, the two groups often play football together. The five compounds, strictly segregated, have relatively low walls and were not purpose-built. They are in fact privately owned and house around 30 'beneficiaries', which is what the inmates are called.

They certainly benefit from accommodation which, if not quite luxurious, would certainly raise no complaint from, say, a backpacking student. There's a lawn (patchy, but still impressive in this desert setting), a ping-pong table and table football. One door opens unexpectedly onto a decent-sized indoor swimming pool.

The bedrooms have neither locks nor bars. There is a comfortable television room, although the choice of programmes is limited to sport, news and religion. In the kitchen, one fridge is loaded with Holsten - not beer, of course, but strawberry fizz. The other is well stocked with Twix, Kit-Kats and Mars bars. The beneficiaries can help themselves.

They don't cook for themselves. A full-time chef prepares three meals a day and says that he's had no complaints. 'The beneficiaries are our guests and we have to be hospitable and feed them well.' He's certainly doing a good job. The lunch that I shared with them consisted of roast quail with rice, stuffed peppers, an assortment of salads, delicious chilled fruit and mint tea. Not quite the sort of fare that the inmates of Belmarsh or Feltham might expect.

And what, you might be asking, do you have to do to get admitted to this wonderful place?

Another 'guest' relaxes by the pool

Mohammad and Yousef are both 23, slender and immature with beards that don't quite do the job. They were caught trying to enter Iraq from Syria to fight the Americans, and it is quite possible that they, too, might have ended up behind the wheel of a truck packed with explosives, although they both deny it. 'I wanted to help innocent people, not kill them,' Yousef says, speaking through a translator.

Both of them were radicalised by images of Iraq on television; it is impossible to overstate the impact that the invasion had on young Saudi minds. 'I tell you, this Bush will burn in hell, he has caused so much pain to people,' says Khaled al-Maeena, the influential editor of Arab News. Referring to these would-be jihadists, he continues: 'Most of them are young people who are misguided. They are recruited by Mr Bush's PR programme.'

Mohammad and Yousef were 21 when they were caught and, like everyone at the rehabilitation centre, they spent time in a Saudi prison - three years and eight months - before they were seen by an assessment panel and transferred. More than 100 of the beneficiaries have arrived here after time at Guantanamo Bay. 'Here they treat me like a father treats his son,' Yousef tells me. 'Their motive is to correct me, not to punish me.' They are words I will hear over and over again.

A typical day at Hayar starts at 4am with Fajr, morning prayer. It continues with meals, resting and more prayer until later afternoon when the heat subsides and activities begin. Sport and culture are high on the agenda. There are two classrooms and a range of studies - from art therapy and anger management to the correct interpretation of jihad. It's a shame that Mohammad Sidique Khan and his friends never attended. They would have learnt, for a start, that jihad demands permission from both parent and government… and the 7 July bombings in London were therefore directly against the laws of Islam.

Mohammad al-Fawzan certainly knows where he went wrong. A former security guard in the Ministry of Transport, he is a graduate of the programme and now lectures other young Saudis on his mistakes. He also saw images of Iraq on television and rushed off to join the conflict.'I used to be a normal, healthy young person,' he tells me. 'The pictures shocked me so much, I had to act.'

His anger was fuelled by material on the internet, which has become a major recruiting agent for al-Qa'eda, and he made his way to the border where, fortunately, he was arrested by the American soldiers he had gone to kill. He spent three years in prison before he was sent to Hayar. 'It was like being reborn,' he says. 'Now, when I see pictures from Iraq, I have the knowledge to control myself. I have to be angry… yes. I feel guilty about my Muslim brothers being killed. But I know it's not my job.'

Al-Fawzan is a big bear of a man in his mid-thirties with round, startled eyes that always seem to be saying, 'What's going on here, then?' He watches DVDs and television soaps to relax and when I ask him what is his favourite film, he snaps back, 'Scary Movie 1, 2 and 3.' It seems an appropriate choice.

I had tea with al-Fawzan in his pleasant, spacious one-bedroom flat which he was given - yes, given - when he completed the programme. He showed me his lavishly decorated bedroom with its pink and gold walls and a bed that would most certainly be suitable for 1001 Arabian nights. He hopes his wife will be as beautiful as the room, he jokes. For al-Fawzan is about to get married - his wife has been chosen for him. And when that happy day arrives, the Saudi government will pay him a dowry of $33,000. The car parked outside was also provided by them. 'I deserve it,' he insists. 'It's not to reward me for what I did. It's to reward me for changing my mind.'

Young Yousef, who is still at the centre, says much the same thing when I challenge him. Is he, in effect, being paid off? 'First of all, my ideas changed before I learnt about the money. But even if they didn't help me, I'd still say the same. It's normal for the government to help people in Saudi Arabia. But they are not buying me.'

Even so, it is hard to accept that convicted criminals, would-be terrorists, should receive such largesse. Ahmed al-Shayea will also receive $33,000 when he marries soon. Of course, the Saudis can afford it. Oil revenue is currently bringing in one billion dollars a day. So every time you fill your car, you pamper a terrorist. That's what it feels like.

But it does make a certain sense… at least, at a pragmatic level. Major General Yousef al-Mansour is a large, avuncular man ('Call me Papa Yousef') with a neat moustache and a manner that is reasonableness itself. He is the supervisor of the care centre and explains it to me as if he has already been asked the question a thousand times; which, undoubtedly, he has.

'Let's take it step by step,' he says. 'A boy goes to Afghanistan for jihad and it's a bad mistake. He's arrested and goes to Guantanamo for several years. Now he's got to start his life all over again. I want to put him back on the right track. Our psychiatrists say, if you don't help him, if you just send him out, next time he'll be more dangerous. Beware of him. Bad people will surround him. They are waiting for him.' The Saudis see young, impressionable minds - like the kids I met at the British Council - as al-Qa'eda's primary target. 'These people must be helped. If you leave them, they will be easy prey for al-Qa'eda… We can't leave them without money or someone else will come…What we're trying to do is to make sure they can protect themselves.'

Khaled al-Maeena, who describes himself as religiously conservative but politically liberal, is in no doubt. 'I think [these payments] can be justified in the larger scheme of things in this part of the world where magnanimity, forgiveness and mercy will quell the hatred and desire of any person to seek revenge. If you wear a Western hat, you say, ''My God! What is this? It's too crazy!" But it goes a long way towards preventing people taking certain steps.'

It's a question of context. The money - buying your way out of trouble, perhaps - is simply not British. But then the Saudis also pay their students to go to university. When a man is sent to prison, his family is given special payments. They have a whole tradition of Taubah, which translates as 'a chance to return to the rightful place'. As Major General al-Mansour puts it, talking about his charges: 'The government is the father. They are the sons. That is the Islamic point of view.'

And the truth is, the programme does seem to be working. It's early days, only a year-and-a-half, but so far no one has re-offended. Beneficiaries are occasionally sent home while they are still serving their sentences - the programme places huge emphasis on bringing families back together - and not one has absconded. And when I ask about punishments within the compound, one of the teachers tells me: 'Thank God, we never need them. Sometimes we sit down, man-to-man. And some of the beneficiaries may be on anti-depressants for a time… but they stop soon after they come here.'

It's also true that despite all the security arrangements in Riyadh, there hasn't been an attempted terrorist incident for 17 months. The place actually feels completely safe. Of course, there are many reasons for this. Al-Qa'eda is said to be weaker than ever, its finances strangled, its organisation dismantled. But above all, the Saudis believe they are winning the war of ideas.

Even so, I left the rehabilitation centre with certain misgivings. My problem was that nobody was prepared to take responsibility for their actions - and without responsibility, how can there be true redemption? 'We are not terrorists. We went to help our brothers in Iraq,' Yousef told me, echoing the protestations of al-Fawzan: 'If I hadn't seen the film [of Iraq], it would never have happened. The media were responsible. The guy who made the film was responsible.'

But more unsettling than either of these is the man I began with, Ahmed al-Shayea. The way he tells his story, he wasn't a suicide bomber at all: 'I was tricked,' he says. He admits that he went to Iraq to fight jihad but claims that he had no knowledge that he was carrying a bomb. He says he was instructed to deliver a truck to some unnamed al-Qa'eda supporters, even though he had never driven an HGV, and that he was puzzled when his two colleagues sprang out and ran away. He didn't notice that he was outside an embassy. And for reasons that he can't explain, he continued driving anyway.

Perhaps I'm wrong to doubt him. To be fair, he has been examined by both the American and Saudi authorities and after 20 months in prison, he was rehabilitated and is now learning English and continuing his college education. But when I ask him about the nine people who were killed and the 60 people who were injured, he stops me in a way that is a little too clever by half. 'There were 61 people injured,' he says. 'I was one of them.' And a little later, he elaborates: 'I always confirm that I was one of the victims. I was manipulated.'

Well, yes. But nine families lost husbands, wives, children. As far as I know, none of them were ever given money or cars. And isn't the whole victim mentality the very cornerstone of international terrorism? 'You think we are the aggressors. That is the number one misunderstanding. We are not. We are the victims.' Those are the words of Dr Abdul Aziz Rantisi, one of the founders of Hamas. 'The truth is, the whole Muslim world is the victim of international terrorism, engineered by America.' There speaks Osama bin Laden himself.

I would be more sceptical even now but for one encounter I had on my last day in Saudi Arabia that put everything else into perspective. Juma Mohammad al-Dossari is 34, but could be five years younger, and when I first met him he looked more American than Arabic, in baggy shorts, polo shirt and baseball cap. His English is excellent. He was actually working in Bloomington, Indiana, on the day of 9/11 but tells me that he had to flee the country soon afterwards, fearing for his life. He clearly didn't look American enough.

Juma spent four months at the rehabilitation centre after he returned from Guantanamo Bay. And how long had he been there? 'Not too long,' he smiles. 'Six years.' He was arrested leaving Afghanistan in January 2002 when the Taliban was in retreat from US forces. He claims he had been sent there to photograph mosques and orphanages for an imam. He is not a terrorist. He is another victim.

Why should I believe him any more than I believed Ahmed al-Shayea? First of all, he is very measured. He inspires confidence. He has driven 600 kilometres to meet me ('I think I should tell my story to everyone. I want to tell people… keep your heart clean.'). All of which might mean nothing. But there is one indisputable fact. After six years of imprisonment and torture as well as over 1,500 interrogations, he was never actually charged with anything.

I spoke to Juma's attorney in New York. Joshua Colangelo says that he is 'horrified' by what has happened to him and deeply frustrated that under US law, there can be no legal redress. He corroborates every point of Juma's story, which has also been confirmed by the Pentagon, by the FBI and by former soldiers from Guantanamo.

Juma himself won't talk about the torture. 'You take me back to dark days that I don't want to remember.' His voice fades. 'I don't feel well talking about this.' But when we meet a second time, for coffee at the Faisaliah (this time he is in formal Arab dress), a few more details slip out. He tells me that he spent three-and-a-half years of his time at Guantanamo in solitary confinement. For 61 days, he was kept strapped to a bed. He was in a tiny, dimly lit cell and was kept close to freezing with no mattress or blankets. His father's death was sprung on him as a surprise - 'Hey, 261, your father's dead!' Very slowly, he adds more to this grim picture. He mentions electrocution. He admits to 14 suicide attempts. For the last one, he cut his femoral artery in the shower. He was punished by being given more solitary.

The rehabilitation centre confirms that on his return, Juma was in a very bad way. He was emaciated, unable to cope with stress and stayed in bed for days on end. In terms of his mental and physical health, they have certainly worked wonders on him. But it's his attitude that really astonishes me. He maintains that his only crime was to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I ask him how he can possibly explain or excuse what was done to him.

'I think it was an overreaction after 9/11. A great country [America] should not be like this. They should control themselves. But that tragedy changed the whole world. It made the wise man lose his brain.' Does he really feel no anger at all? 'If I try to take revenge, I will just torture myself. I have to focus on my life. The past is the past. We can't live there.'

The Saudis went to great lengths to prepare my visit to their rehabilitation centre. They're proud of it and they're doubtless using it for propaganda purposes. I know that I was only shown a small part of it, and it was only what they wanted me to see. But meeting Juma Mohammad al-Dossari, who clearly feels less angry about Guantanamo than I do, I cannot doubt the effectiveness of what they are doing. Even Ahmed al-Shayea is trying to do his best, by his own standards. 'Let me say this. Allah saved me from dying to send a message, to show the real face of al-Qa'eda. I am that message. I am proof that al-Qa'eda is wrong.'

'Nothing is easier than to denounce the evil-doer. Nothing is more difficult than to understand him,' wrote Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Possessed. When we look at the largely vindictive (and ineffective) prison system in the UK, a generation that seems to be out of control and a series of repressive laws that have only undermined our own democracy, it's clear that we have nothing to crow about. The Saudi rehabilitation programme may not be the answer but it is, undoubtedly, an answer and it would surely be wrong to dismiss it out of hand.

And it raises an interesting moral question. If four months in relative comfort followed by a car and a flat and a cash payment could have stopped Mohammad Sidique Khan and saved 56 lives in London, would we have decided it was too revolting, or would we simply have gone along with it? That, it seems to me, is the unenviable choice that the Saudis have made.

.pdf on Omar Khadr's interrogations (HORRIFYING !!)

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/v5/content/pdf/KhadrDocuments.pdf

Mind Games - Remembering Brainwashing NYT

NYT: Remembering Brainwashing

In the early 1950s, American troops were being killed and captured by the thousands in Korea. Panic spread that China’s Communists had learned how to penetrate and control the minds of American prisoners of war.

The technique was called “brainwashing.” And suddenly it’s worth recalling what brainwashing was about. Because now we know, from an article in The New York Times last week, that in a new time of anxiety America’s own interrogators drew lessons from China’s treatment of American prisoners of war for their treatment of prisoners in the war on terror.

The concept of brainwashing was the brainchild of Edward Hunter, a newspaperman born in 1902, who had covered the rise of fascism in Europe before joining the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency, during World War II. The Korean War had just begun in 1950 when The Miami News published his article, “ ‘Brain-Washing’ Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party.”

He determined that “the Reds have specialists available on their brainwashing panels,” experts in the use of “drugs and hypnotism,” as he later told the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Their ultimate goal was conquering America.

“The United States is the main battlefield,” he testified, “the people and the soil and the resources of the United States.” He warned that brainwashing would make Americans “subjects of a ‘new world order’ for the benefit of a mad little knot of despots in the Kremlin.”

The idea that a totalitarian state could control people like Pavlov’s dogs had appeared in 1940s novels, notably Arthur Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon” and George Orwell’s “1984.” It took Mao’s China — and the forced “confessions” of some American prisoners of war during the Korean conflict — to make brainwashing a centerpiece of 1950s culture.

After the war, thousands of American P.O.W.’s returned under suspicion of having collaborated with the enemy while in captivity. A handful, on orders from their captors, had, in fact, falsely accused the United States of conducting germ warfare against North Korea. Congress was transfixed by “the fear that the soldiers could have been brainwashed by the Chinese and still be spying for them,” Col. Elspeth Cameron Ritchie wrote in the journal Military Medicine. Dread that the Chinese Communists had created zombie sleeper agents spread quickly and ran deep.

A Dutch psychologist, Joost A. M. Meerloo, caught the apocalyptic tone in a New York Times Magazine article in 1954: “The totalitarians have misused the knowledge of how the mind works for their own purposes. They have applied the Pavlovian technique — in a far more complex and subtle way, of course — to produce the reflex of mental and political submission of the humans in their power.”

Orwell’s hero in “1984,” Winston Smith, holds out hope against Big Brother and his minions: “With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking.”

But the threat that they could riveted Americans — and the C.I.A.

Finding out what others are thinking was (and is) the job of spies. The Korean experience spurred the C.I.A.’s search for mind-control techniques to grill suspected double agents. The agency took on a task described in its documents as “overseas interrogations.”

Clandestine prisons were created in occupied Germany, occupied Japan and the Panama Canal Zone. “Like Guantánamo,” said a charter member of the C.I.A., Thomas Polgar. “It was anything goes.” In these cells, the agency conducted experiments in drug-induced brainwashing and other “special techniques” for interrogations. These continued inside and outside the United States, sometimes on unsuspecting human guinea pigs, long after the Korean War ended in 1953.

“There was deep concern over the issue of brainwashing,” Richard Helms, the former director of central intelligence, told the journalist David Frost 25 years later. “We felt that it was our responsibility not to lag behind the Russians or the Chinese in this field, and the only way to find out what the risks were was to test things such as L.S.D. and other drugs that could be used to control human behavior. These experiments went on for many years.”

While the government chased after truth serum, fiction raced behind reality. The theory of a robot-like Manchurian Candidate was posited by the C.I.A. in 1953, six years before Richard Condon published the novel of that name, nine years before the book became a movie. William Burroughs, in “Naked Lunch” (1959), created a drug-addled mad scientist, Dr. Benway, “an expert on all phases of interrogation, brainwashing and control.”

In the 1960s, brainwashing began to fade as a nightmare, though it was revived when captured soldiers and pilots released by North Vietnam made antiwar statements. In 1967, a Republican presidential contender, Gov. George Romney of Michigan (Mitt’s dad), was ridiculed when he said he had been brainwashed by American generals about how well the war in Vietnam was going.

Flash forward to 2002. American military and intelligence officers, looking for better ways to interrogate prisoners in the war on terror, went combing through government files. They found that the best institutional memory lay in the interrogation experiences of American P.O.W.’s in Korea. They reprinted a 1957 chart describing death threats, degradation, sleep deprivation — and worse — inflicted by Chinese captors. And they made it part of a new handbook for interrogators at Guantánamo.

The irony is that the original author of that chart, Albert D. Biderman, a social scientist who had distilled interviews with 235 Air Force P.O.W.’s, wrote that the Communists’ techniques mainly served to “extort false confessions.” And they were the same methods that “inquisitors had employed for centuries.” They had done nothing that “was not common practice to police and intelligence interrogators of other times and nations.”

Brainwashing was bunk: no secret weapon to control the human mind existed, America’s best experts concluded in the 1960s. Yes, the Communists used time-honored and terrifying interrogation tactics during the cold war. Some, like waterboarding, had been perfected during the Spanish Inquisition. But Mr. Biderman concluded that “inflicting physical pain is not a necessary nor particularly effective method” to persuade prisoners of war.

Some veterans of the war on terror say that lesson should have been relearned, despite the urgent need to uncover whatever possible about terrorist planning — the administration’s principal justification of its harsh interrogation policies.

Alberto J. Mora, the Navy’s general counsel from 2001 to 2006, told a recent Congressional hearing, where the Biderman chart resurfaced:

“Our nation’s policy decision to use so-called ‘harsh’ interrogation techniques during the war on terror was a mistake of massive proportions.”

By Tim Weiner, Author of “Legacy of Ashes: A History of the C.I.A.”

ONE MORE REASON FOR AN international WAR CRIMES Tribunal !!

Now HERE is one worth the entire read. It's designed to make you furious.

Lynndie England was treated with total contempt and her superiors got off SCOT FREE - well, for the time being.

I'm putting on the first part, but please, take the time to read the entire article ..

Virginia

A Soldier's Tale

It's mid-afternoon. In a playful mood, England lifts her son in the air. Carter, a husky toddler with the same chin as his father, Spc. Charles A. Graner, Jr., rips the prisoner badge from his mother's uniform and hurls it toward the wall. England stares at it, lying on the floor. Her mother and sister stare, too, trying to figure out what to do. Picking up the badge is against the rules. In fact, if England touches anything her family has handled, she'll be subjected to a full-body cavity search. As it is, she goes through a strip search after each of our four visits: "If you have your period, and you have a visitor, they make you take your tampon out afterward and squat and cough," she says. "You think those are mirrors?" England asks me, pointing to a row of reflective glass panes on the side of the room. "Those aren't mirrors. There are people on the other side, watching us the whole time."

Not surprisingly, rules are strict: Inmates have to rise at 5 a.m.; they have no choice in what they eat (tonight, macaroni and cheese); and they must perform chores like mowing the lawn, tending vegetable gardens, and folding the American flag. England, however, isn't allowed to take the flag down at the end of the day, "because I'm high-profile," she says. "Somebody might be on the golf course [nearby] and see me touching it" — and maybe even snap a picture. She illustrates, clicking an invisible camera in the air.

Prisoners who break the rules — "push buttons," England calls it — are sent to "DeSeg." (Button-pushing includes such things as engaging in sexual activity with another prisoner.) "In DeSeg, they make you sit in isolation in a windowless room. You can't watch TV or read," she explains. "You have to sit at a desk. You can't sleep from reveille to nighttime." Sleep deprivation — it sounds like one of the methods used on prisoners in Abu Ghraib. "Like a time-out," I add lightly, sensing England's tension. "You have no idea," she says, giving me a stony look.

And what about Graner? Make that "Shithead." That's what England calls him. She met him while processing his paperwork for the 372nd Military Police Company after he arrived in Cresaptown, MD, in November 2002. He was 15 years older. He used to follow her out to the smoking area. Graner didn't smoke, though; he just wanted to see her. "He was funny, the jokester," she says. "Was he too old for me? I didn't think about it at the time. He acted like he was 3 years old." He was loud, raunchy, and bad to the bone. "An outlaw," she calls him. Their affair started in March 2003, while they were stationed in Fort Lee.

"When Lynndie joined the army and was working at the reserve center in the U.S., she didn't know anybody. She was a really quiet girl," says former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib during England's stint. "Enter Charles Graner. Their paths cross for the first time. He's much older, and he's full of himself. He's just got that kind of personality."

"She was blown away," Karpinski continues. "She felt like someone was finally talking to her. Paying attention. He seemed far more experienced and worldly than anyone she knew. It only took a few short conversations. She was enamored with him."

"Graner was the total opposite of Jamie [Fike, England's husband]," says Jessie. "Lynndie told me, 'He's real open. He likes to do stuff. Wild things.'" England didn't know about his past. According to court documents, Graner beat his former wife, Staci Morris, and dragged her by the hair across a room. A former civilian prison guard, he'd also been accused in a federal lawsuit of assaulting an inmate at Pennsylvania's State Correctional Institution-Greene in 1998 and putting a razor blade in the inmate's mashed potatoes.

England brought Graner home with her to Fort Ashby in early 2003. With a foul mouth and pierced nipples (they saw those later), he didn't make a good impression. That day, recalls Terrie, he stood in their living room and slowly looked around.

"Charles, you're more than welcome to sit down," she told him.

He remained standing.

"He couldn't wait to get out of there," says Terrie. "I don't know if he thought we were nothing or what. I said, 'You're nothing but trying to get into my daughter's pants.'
He said, 'No, ma'am, my intentions are honorable.'
He was blowing smoke up her ass.

I said, 'Here's the door and don't let it hit you on the way out,'" she recalls.

"We were just like, 'There is something wrong with this guy,'" says Jessie. "I don't know what. Maybe when he was born, something fell out of his ear that was supposed to be attached to his brain."

But England refused to give him up. In March 2003, she went with Graner and another soldier to Virginia Beach. During the trip, Graner took pictures of himself having anal sex with England. He also photographed her placing her nipple in the ear of the other soldier, who was passed out in a hotel room. Soon, it became their new game: Whenever Graner asked her to, England would strike a pose.

"Everything they did, he took a picture of," says Hardy, her lawyer. "I asked Lynndie why she let him. She said, 'Guys like that. I just wanted to make him happy.' She was like a little plaything for him. The sexual stuff, the way he put her in those positions, that was his way of saying, 'Let's see what I can make you do.'"

After the Virginia Beach expedition, England and Graner rented a car and drove to eastern Kentucky, where her parents and grandfather were turkey hunting in Daniel Boone National Forest. Sitting between Graner and her parents at a picnic table, England asked Graner to share some scenic pictures from their trip to Virginia Beach. Graner handed an envelope to England's father, who opened it and scanned the images, then handed them to Terrie. They showed nudity and sexual scenes. Apparently, Graner had given them the wrong vacation shots. "I was really bent out of shape," Terrie says.

The rest is here.

Torturegate Evidence grows of drug use on Detainees

Evidence Grows of Drug Use on Detainees

By Jeff Stein, CQ National Security Editor

There can be little doubt now that the government has used drugs on terrorist suspects that are designed to weaken their resistance to interrogation. All that’s missing is the syringes and videotapes.

Another window opened on the practice last week with the declassification of John Yoo’s instantly infamous 2003 memo approving harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects.

Yoo advised top Bush administration officials that interrogators could employ mind-altering drugs if they did not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.”

Yoo had first rationalized the use of drugs in a 2002 memo for top Bush administration officials.

But this latest revelation shows Yoo reiterating conditions on the use of drugs a year later, despite the rising resistance to harsh interrogation techniques by military lawyers and the FBI.

“The new Yoo memo, along with other White House legal memoranda, shows clearly that the policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs was being laid,” says Stephen Miles, a University of Minnesota bioethicist and author of “Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror.” “The recent memo on mood-altering drugs does not extend previous work on this area,” he said. “The use of these drugs was anticipated and discussed in the memos of January and February 2002 by DoD, DoJ, and White House counsel using the same language and rationale. The executive branch memos laid a comprehensive and reiterated policy foundation for the use of interrogational drugs.”

“Yes, I believe they have been used,” Jeffrey S. Kaye, a clinical psychologist who works with torture victims at Survivors International in San Francisco, told me.

“I came across some evidence that they were using mind-altering drugs, to regress the prisoners, to ascertain if they were using deception techniques, to break them down,” said Kaye.

Yet the situation remains unclear.

No ‘Truth Serums’

The Pentagon’s use of sedatives to help calm shackled and hooded prisoners during long “rendition” flights from the Middle East to Guantanamo has been widely reported,

But hard evidence that U.S. interrogators today are employing hallucinogens, like the LSD the CIA tested on unwitting subjects for at least 20 years beginning in the 1940s, has yet to surface.

Michael Caruso, the chief federal defender appointed to represent al Qaeda suspect Jose Padilla, asserted in a motion last year that his client “was given drugs against his will, believed to be some form of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) or phencyclidine (PCP), to act as a sort of truth serum during his interrogations.”

But he could offer no proof.

It could have been a placebo. A 1963 CIA interrogation manual, code-named KUBARK, advocated the use of placebos, as well as the real thing, on prisoners.

But Michael Gellers, a psychologist with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service at Guantanamo, who had objected to harsh interrogation methods, told me “he never saw anything related to drugs.”

“I never saw that raised as an issue,” he said.

In any case, hallucinogens don’t make subjects “tell the truth.”

“Their function is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation,” the KUBARK manual explains.

Yet there is tantalizing evidence that the use of such drugs since 9/11 has been, at a minimum, seriously contemplated, if not implemented.

On July 17-18, 2003, for example, the CIA, the RAND Corp. and the American Psychological Association hosted a workshop entitled the “Science of Deception: Integration of Practice and Theory.”

One session focused on the question, “What pharmacological agents are known to affect apparent truth-telling behavior?”
Desperados

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, top Bush administration officials pushed military commanders for intelligence about any other impending attacks, as Philippe Sands, an international lawyer at the firm Matrix Chambers and a professor at University College London, details in a forthcoming piece in Vanity Fair.

Sands demonstrates that the offending interrogations weren’t conducted by a few bad apples, as the White House and Pentagon have long maintained.

They were reacting to pressure from above, to go to “the dark side” and “take the gloves off,” as Vice President Cheney put it.

But they didn’t know how, a December 2006 study by the Intelligence Science Board, a wing of the National Defense Intelligence College in Washington, D.C., suggested.

Under pressure, interrogators started to “‘make it up’ on the fly,” the study said.

“This shortfall in advanced, research-based interrogation methods,” it said, “at a time of intense pressure from operational commanders to produce actionable intelligence from high-value targets may have contributed significantly to the unfortunate cases of abuse that have recently come to light.”

U.S. Army Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, the staff judge advocate at Guantanamo, who tried to throttle the excesses, told Vanity Fair that prison officials and interrogation managers drew inspiration from Jack Bauer, the fictional action-hero of FOX’s counterterror drama, “24,” who uses torture and drugs on terrorists.

“It was hugely popular,” Beaver said. Jack Bauer “gave people lots of ideas.”

Beaver makes no mention of drugs in the piece.

She may not have seen or heard about their use, says Ewe Jacobs, the director of Survivors International, which specializes in the psychological and medical treatment of torture survivors.

“The Guantanamo camps were isolated from one another,” he says.

FBI interrogators and naval investigators, fearing involvement in illegal acts, were told to leave the island.

Professor Miles says, “I suspect that most of the use of interrogational drugs was by CIA and Special Ops interrogators, and thus still remains classified.”

We just don’t know — yet.

The CIA kept its MKULTRA, a mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, and other drug-testing programs secret for more than 20 years.

In the early 1970s, when then-CIA Director Richard Helms got wind of congressional investigators sniffing around, he ordered its records destroyed — a precursor of the agency’s recent destruction of interrogation videotapes.

But it turned out that Helms missed a box.

A disenchanted State Department official, John D. Marks, who had resigned over Vietnam, got hold of the remaining files and produced an astonishing book, “The Search for the Manchurian Candidate: The CIA and Mind Control.”

Many more books, some by persons who said they were victims of the mind-altering experiments, were produced.

Few believed them. Their tales sounded looney absent patient records (which Helms had ordered destroyed) of the drug experiments (many carried out in a secret wing of Georgetown University Hospital). {dah, and also here in CANADA!!}

Likewise, few believe Padilla. Even fewer will believe the other prisoners, a number of whom are deranged from prolonged interrogation — if they ever get out.

We may never know the truth.

Jeff Stein can be reached at jstein@cq.com.

Taxi to the Dark Side of Afghanistan

Taxi to the Dark Side of Afghanistan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tWsJOeNoDJU

Documentary highlights detainee abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan

Nick Langewis and David Edwards


Documentary highlights detainee abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan'

"'Soldiers are dying. Get the information.' That's all you're told: Get the information."
--Pfc. Damien Corsetti

Oscar-nominated documentary "Taxi to the Dark Side" highlights what prisoners of war in Iraq and Afghanistan endure as it tells the story of Dilawar, a 22-year-old Afghan cab driver who was killed while in American custody.

Dilawar and his passengers had been stopped near Bagram Air Base and detained under suspicion of involvement in a rocket attack against US forces. Dilawar's prompt death was ruled a homicide due to evidence of blunt force trauma inflicted while he was in custody at Bagram.

Dilawar's three passengers would be deemed no threat to American forces... after fifteen months at Guantanamo Bay.

"This is a kid who'd never spent...a night away from home in his life," says writer/director Alex Gibney, "until he was taken forcibly from his taxicab, thrown into Bagram Prison, and five days later he was dead."

"We were also told they were nothing but dogs,"

says Sgt. Ken Davis, stationed at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "

Then, all of a sudden, you start looking at these people as less than human, and you start doing things to them you would never dream of."

The White House had no comment on the documentary.

IMPEACHMENT TOOLKIT: update 1/30/2007 Does NUREMBERG apply??

TPM MUCKRACKER COVERAGE

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/005180.php

Anonymous wrote on January 30, 2008 7:05 PM:

I find the DoJ AG response troubling for several reasons. One of them TPMM cited: The Nuremberg defense.

Second, the AG appers to have a conflict: As a Judge, he appears to have had a requirement to have reviewed whether the FISA-captured information was used as a pretext for this abuse.

Third, the AG appears focused, as does Congress on the irrelevant issue of "torture": Geneva prohibits _abuse_: whether waterboarding is or is't "torture" is the wrong track. Self-evidently, waterboarding is abuse. AG's insistentce that this was "authorized" amounts to a slap against Geneva; and the absurd notion the President -- or someone else -- "authorized" war crimes. That isn't a defense, but _evidence_. AG needs to disclosed, as a witness, _who_ authorized the war crimes. AG needs to recuse himself.

Fourth, going back to Nuremberg, civilian policy makers were prosecuted for war crimes, and judges were indicted at the Justice Trial. AG's responses today suggest that a war crimes investigaiton needs to be opened.

Fifth, the purpose of having prosecutors is to enforce the law under the Exeuctive Branch. When the Executive Branch will not enforce the law, the Framers intended the legilsature -- through impeachment -- to have a tool to remove agents the President refused to remove. Taking impeachment "off the table" and the decision to "not impeach" leaves us back where the Nuremberg Justice Trial was: A country that refuses to either impeach or prosecute war crimes is not civilized. AG's assertions about the rule of law, investigations, and duty are meaningless when the basice premise of Nuremberg is thrown out the window.

I would prefer Congress open an investigation into the AG's response. Given the Congress' lack of interest in enforcing the law, and the DOJ AG's assertion that he will not enforce the law on this narrow issue as well -- through investigations -- I would ask that the State Attorney GEnerals be immediately contacted for purposes of drafting indictments gaainst the AG and Members of Congress for their joint decision to not enforce Geneva. If the State AGs are not going to do this, then we need to broaden the list of prosecutions/indictments to include the State AGs over alleged breaches of their oath of office, and their decision to "not protect" the Constitution against domestic enemies.

Either these people in the DOJ, Congress, and the State level enforce the law; or they are subject to prosecution for refusing to fully assert their oath. Either or. Time to stop the legislative hearings, and get on with the war crimes indictments: Either investigate to defend the Constitution and Geneva obligations as the SUpreme Law; or those who refuse, but have a duty to act, could become targets for that prosecution effort. Let's stop pretending there are legitimate excuses for inaction on these issues of Geneva: If the US refuses to enforce the law, other nations may take similarly situated persons and treat them the same: Waterboard them without trial, access to evidence, or ability to have access to legal counsel. If that's what the US goernment officials want, then that is evidence of a mental reservation, not a legitimate defense for malfeasance or inaction.

Please contact your State AG's and share with them the above. Time for the States and local citizens to do what the US Congress and AG refuse to do: Fully defend the US Constitution.
Anonymous wrote on January 30, 2008 7:37 PM:

This is non-sense: "All of that depends on whether certification was given, whether permission was given and whether it was permissibly relied on."

AG is acting as if this is speculative: Whether "certification" was or wasn't given; whether "permission" was or wasn't given; and whether "permissibly relied on" did or didn't occur. If this is "uncertain" why is there no AG plan to find out the answers? He appears to be using the "lack of infofmration" about these issues to assert, in my view incorrectly, that "no investigation" is needed.

That's, in my personal opinion, idiotic: It acts that we not _start_ an investigation until those things are known; yet, wet have the _certain_ outcome: A tape of alleged illegal abuse.

Whether certification, permission, or reliance existed is _not_ to be decided as a _preliminary_ matter _before_ starting the investigatin; but the _conclusions_ for the _court_ to make on whether to adjudicate guilt or innocense.

I would respectuflly ask the Congress to reconsider the AG's responses and ask if he's fully removed his Judicial hat; and ask that he reconsider his role: His role, is to accept that there was a a tape; there were interrogations; and the _questions that need to be investigated_ include before presenting the facts to the Court:

A. Was there evidence on the tape;
B. Was the tape destroyed to hide that evidence from the court;
C. Who provided "permission" to conduct prisoner abuse
D. Who relied on "permissions" to implement the abuse
E. Who raised the issue of "certification" -- was this _before_ or _after_ the alleged abuse was imposed on the prisoner;
F. The question of "permissibly relied upon" isn't the question, but whether the _defendant_ as a _defense_ can say that _they_ reasonably relied upon.

I'm concerned that the AG is acting as a defense counsel in re F. abuse, as it is the obligation of the _defense_ to prove that the orders were reasonable; that they defendant _did_ reasonably rely on orders; and that there was _no_ hint that the direction, orders, and guidance was illegal. This is a burden the defendant needs to provide at trial as a defense, and not an issue for the AG to consider as to whether to _investigate_.

It cannot be seriously argued by _defense_ counsel that permission, certificaction, or legality of orders existed when Geneva bars _all abuse_. It appears the AG is pretending, out of convenience as are the alleged defendants, that there is "confusion" about whether waterboarding is or isn't torture as a _preliminary_ issue, as a bar to all investigations. Non-sense. The reverse is true: Geneva, in barring all abuse, would put the burden on the defendant to prove at trial the orders were reasonable. Yet, tape destruction is evidence that is contrary to intersts: The tape was destroyed _after_ the court ordered it be retained; adverse inferences in cases of spoliation are relevant: The tape was destroyed to hide relevant evidence to answer the questions of certification, permissions, and defenses -- the act itself is evidence the certification was not lawful; the permissions were contrary to Geneva; and the reliance was not reasonable.

*snip*

Anonymous wrote on January 30, 2008 7:41 PM:

The fundamental qustion is: Has the President or anyone "authorized" the CIA to commit Geneva violations?

If they're waterboarding, yes.

Anonymous wrote on January 30, 2008 8:00 PM:

I'm surprised to hear of the uncertainty, given the Geneva issues: " But as Mukasey made clear, that may or may not happen." How can it be _unclear_ whether they need to _investigate_ to determine whether the _conduct on the tape_ was or wasn't illegal? If there's lack of clarity, then an investigation needs to occur to _determine_ that answer. Or what method does the AG's staff divine to arrive at a clear answer outside an investigation?

Anonymous wrote on January 30, 2008 8:10 PM:

LarryB wrote on January 30, 2008 7:37 PM

"The CIA was explicitly authorized to torture "Al Queda" detanees by their chain of command. No one is suggesting that they were operating as rogue agents."

This starts with a false permise: That the basis for the analysis is "torture". Incorrect, the issue under _Geneva_ is whether there was or wasn't _abuse_. How can anyone say that the CIA was _lawfully_ "authorized" to commit war crimes, and impose abuse? That's absurd.

The way the CIA operates overseas: They violte the law all the time. But the issues of war crimes, when not resolved, has a boomerang effect: Each time the US government agent commits a war crime, but the US refuses to prosecute, other nations may through the principle of reciprocity and retalation commit _like_ abuses against similarly situated prisoners.

The problem: The US, by detaining and abusing non-combatant civilians, held them without access to lawyers, and on accusation alone without evidence, is that other nations' fighters may do the same to US persons accused, without getting access to lawyers or evidence of being illegal combatants. Any American could be charged as being an illegal combatant, and abused.

People who "authorize the CIA to commit Geneva violations" are issuing illegal orders; it's the burden of the CIA agent _at trial_ to show that the order was reasonable; that they rasonably relied on that order; and that the order was lawful. Yet, when tapes are destroyed, it suggests the opposite: That they knew the orders were "authorizing" illegal abuse; that they could not reasonably rely on the defense of "legality" and "reasonableness" to justify following direction to violate Geneva; and that they knew, or should have known, the expectation that the evidence of that abuse would be hidden/destroyed was not reasonable as "clearance" to proceed with the abuse.

It appears the CIA agents believed that they thought the tape would never see the light of day; that someone working with the tapes made some sort of certification that they would not disclose the content of the tapes; and that the CIA agents believed that they could rely on this certification of non-disclosure as a shield to further discovery. Once we're moving outside the narrow lane of covert operations, but expanding to the broader umbrella of war crimes, simple agreements bewteen CIA agents and other contractors are not arguably enforceable.

If the AG will not investigate the tape's destruction or the contents of the tape, then he needs to answer the opposite issue: Whether he will investigate the _disclosure_ of the tape, and the fact that the tape was destroyed. If there was "no crime" in destroying the tape, and the tapes' contents were "not a problem," then the issue turns on its head: Who has allegedly "disclosed" the exitence of the tape? That question won't get answered as the disclosure of alleged war crimes evidence is not, in theory, actionable. The opposite is true: There is likely a statute the DoD-DoJ-CIA personnel were relying on to justify disclosing the existence of the tape.

*snip*

Anonymous wrote on January 31, 2008 12:54 AM:

I hope the public can see the absurdity of this: "Whitehouse to Mukasey: Why Not Investigate Torture?": This, from a Congress that refuses to investigate the President. Public to Congress, "Why, before asking the AG to investigate, are you not investigating?"

There is nothing stopping the Senators asking these questions of the AG from communicating to the House: "We would like for you to investigate the President." Inter-branch communications are not binding; but they are possible. The Senate needs to go on the record: They've asked the AG why he's not investigating; they need to do the same with the House: "Why is there no investigation of this President's impeachable offenses?" Indeed, the Senate committees do have the power to, independent of the House, to review the illegal activity. But rather than conduct fact finding, they're pleading with a separate branch of government. That is not a check, that is assent and subservience by the Senate to the AG. Enough!

Indeed, when Congress refuses to investigate the President's impeachable offenses, why should the AG bother responding to questions about why the AG is or isn't investigating. This Congress, rightly or wrongly, has said with its words and actions: "We are not going to investigate; but we are going to waste time asking why the AG isn't investigating what we refuse to independently investigate." Hypocrisy!

The Congress is a separate and co-equal branch of government: It does not report to the AG's timelines. Yet, this appears lost on these Members of Congress despite their oath to enforce the Constitution against domestic enemies.

The public is not well served by a Congress that, with the promise of elections, does not deliver. There is no need for the Congress to "discuss with the AG whether or not to investigate": There are standing committees in Congress that can independently investigate, but refuse.

The pattern of abuses aren't telling us new information: It's from the same criminal element recklessly running this nation's governance into the ground. How dare the Senate lazily inquire as to whether the AG is or isn't doing something, _while_ the Congress continues to vote for war funding to export a system of governance that even the US Congress doesn't take seriously.

The Congress well knows the importance of investigations, but refuses. Inaction, on top of an oath compelling a defense of the Constitution and Geneva Conventions, is not a defense but evidence of alleged malfeasance in re war crimes.

Some may believe the public is stuck with this charade of governance. We're not. There are ways to punish lawfully the Members of Congress: Grand Jury indictments can be issued against Members of Congress for their alleged malfeasance. Time for the public to move lawfully outside Congress, the Executive Branch, and courts, and work directly with the grand juries to organize evidence related to Member of Congress alleged complicity with these war crimes.

Nuremberg established that new laws can codify retroactively things that people should know are illegal. Before Nuremberg there were no explicit laws binding Geneva as a legal obligation to the specific jurists. Similarly, in the wake of this disaster, other laws can be retroactively codified that will fully promulgate the legal responsibilities of the legislature: Things that they should have known to do, but refused.

Arguably, any agreement to not investigate is not one that the courts or Congress or the President will dare to examine seriously: They view inaction as a higher calling. This charade needs to end: Inaction is evidence of not fully meeting one's 5 USC 3331 oath of office obligations. The public needs to openly discuss gathering evidence of Member of Congress alleged 5 USC 3331 violations; prepare indictments; and remind the Members of Congress: Either you do what you are expecting of the AG -- to lead an investigation; or you're facing the prospect of jail time where you can think about what you should have done, but refused.

We could go on and on about how the Secret Service daily protects the Magna Carta; how the sworn officers faithfully defend the Constitution each night as it descends into the bowels of the capitol. The sworn officers of the Capitol Police, Secret Service, and other uniformed officers need to examine their oath: Are they fully defending the Constitution and the Supreme Law against all domestic enemies in all the branches? The case can be made that they know full well there's a problem; and are not -- as they could -- securing search warrants to prosecute the President, Members of Congress, and lawyers for their alleged complicity for these war crimes.

The law isn't something people take into their own hands. It is something that should daily be asserted as a starting point; not as a questionable, debatable, possibility. This Congress and AG appear to have it backwards: The oath binds them to certainty; and this late in the game -- 2008, seven years after this non-sense started -- it's not credible that the Senate and AG are still debating whether or not there should be an investigation. This late in the game, the reasonable grand jury would conclude: The prosecutions of Members of Congress and this second AG are long overdue.

Then let's have that. Let's see some leadership by the unformed officers of the Secret Service; and let's see some real discussion within the Senate and House Sergeant at Arms office: How much longer are you going to let this arrogance, reckless disregard for law compel you to remain silent, not take action, and refuse to serve search warrants upon all three branches of government? Daily, American citizens -- on accusation alone -- are forced to assent to this abusive intrusion _without warrants_. Surely, the law enforcement professionals policing the nation's capital could discuss and secure warrants to defend this Constitution against the domestic enemies wandering, confused in the District of Columbia.

It is time to stop shirking, and not fear whether we are offending anyone. This leadership has offended its oath, the rule of law, and its good name: As a Republic. But we the People are above this. As _the_ sovereign, We the People can work with the grand juries, guide them, and well communicate that we fully support grand jury indictments against the Members of Congress who know enough to challenge the AG on investigations, but feign confusion over whether investigations should or shouldn't occur against the President. We don't have to wait for the 2008 election, because this process isn't linked with the voters: It's linked with We the People and oversight. If it takes one week, or four years is irrelevant: It needs to start now. Not maybe, not perhaps, not "when we feel like it", but now.

Anonymous wrote on January 31, 2008 1:06 AM:

I have trouble with this assertion: "Please don't be led astray by the red herring of worrying about the agents. In spite of their Nuremberg defense for their actions, I can't see how it benefits anyone to prosecute them, when the real criminals are those who gave the orders."

There's nothing before us -- as a public, outside the investigation -- to know whether the agents are or are not red herrings; or that they should be given preference to go after "bigger fish." That asks that we ignore the current decisions to not go after the big fish.

The above approach would ask that we ignore the agents as "red herrings"; but pretend that the real trail is somewhere else. Indeed, Congress and the AG refuse to follow the real trail. Getting them to awaken using a red herring appears to be a good start. If they're going in the wrong direction, they might adjust; but if they're still asleep, their idea of adjusting is to roll over.

Anonymous wrote on January 31, 2008 1:33 AM:

The Senate debate on telecom immunity fails to consider the alternative: That, without immunity, there must be an investigation into criminal activity. Time for the telecom immunity-debate to discuss also the AG's refusal to investigate all alleged illegal activity in re the contents of the CIA tape.

These are not separate incidents, but part of the same pattern of abuses which warrant an impeachment investigation.

Mukasey to begin Criminal Inquiry into destroyed CIA tapes ..

Mukasey to begin Criminal Inquiry in to destroyed CIA tapes: UPDATED: Kean & Hamilton’s NY Times Op-ed

By: John Amato @ 12:52 PM - PST

OK, let’s see what happens now…

The U.S. Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, and Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that he appointed an outside prosecutor to oversee the case.

The CIA acknowledged last month that it destroyed videos of officers using tough interrogation methods while questioning two al-Qaida suspects. The acknowledgment sparked a congressional inquiry and a preliminary investigation by Justice.

“The Department’s National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation,” Mukasey said in a statement released Wednesday.

Mukasey named John Durham, a federal prosecutor, to oversee the case. Durham has a reputation as one of the most relentless U.S. prosecutors…read on

And we know how much Republicans like “outside prosecutors.” Or is that special prosecutors? I mean this in the Patrick Fitzgerald kinda way. We’ll be talking about this a whole lot more as time goes on…

UPDATED: CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin just said that this case is going to take a fairly long time to complete and there will be tons of subpoenas being thrown around

Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton wrote an op-ed for the NY Times: “Stonewalled by the C.I.A.“

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the “facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001” — and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president’s chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation…read on

Bush lawyers discussed fate of CIA tapes

By Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

WASHINGTON: At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet Miers, who succeeded Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been "vigorous sentiment" among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. (or becuz they have real information on 9/11??)

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

The destruction of the tapes is being investigated by the Justice Department, and the officials would not agree to be quoted by name while that inquiry is under way.

Spokesmen for the White House, the vice president's office and the CIA declined to comment for this article, also citing the inquiry.

The new information came to light as a federal judge on Tuesday ordered a hearing into whether the tapes' destruction violated an order to preserve evidence in a lawsuit brought on behalf of 16 prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The tapes documented harsh interrogation methods used in 2002 on Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, two Qaeda suspects in CIA custody.

The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency's clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes.

The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Rodriguez received legal guidance from two CIA lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger. The officials said that those lawyers gave written guidance to Rodriguez that he had the authority to destroy the tapes and that the destruction would violate no laws.

The agency did not make either Hermes or Eatinger available for comment.

Current and former officials said the two lawyers informed the CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo, about the legal advice they had provided. But officials said Rodriguez did not inform either Rizzo or Porter Goss, the CIA director, before he sent the cable to destroy the tapes.

"There was an expectation on the part of those providing legal guidance that additional bases would be touched," said one government official with knowledge of the matter. "That didn't happen."

Robert Bennett, a lawyer for Rodriguez, insisted that his client had done nothing wrong and suggested that Rodriguez had been authorized to order the destruction of the tapes. "He had a green light to destroy them," Bennett said.

Until their destruction, the tapes were stored in a safe in the CIA station in the country where the interrogations took place, current and former officials said. According to one former senior intelligence official, the tapes were never sent back to CIA headquarters, despite what the official described as concern about keeping such highly classified material overseas.

Top officials of the C.I.A's clandestine service had pressed repeatedly beginning in 2003 for the tapes' destruction, out of concern that they could leak and put operatives in both legal and physical jeopardy.

The only White House official previously reported to have taken part in the discussions was Miers, who served as a deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush until early 2005, when she took over as White House counsel. While one official had said previously that Miers's involvement began in 2003, other current and former officials said they did not believe she joined the discussions until 2005.

Besides the Justice Department inquiry, the congressional intelligence committees have begun investigations into the destruction of the tapes, and are looking into the role that officials at the White House and Justice Department might have played in discussions about them. The CIA never provided the tapes to federal prosecutors or to the Sept. 11 commission, and some lawmakers have suggested that their destruction may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

Newsweek reported this week that John Negroponte, who was director of national intelligence at the time the tapes were destroyed, sent a memorandum in the summer of 2005 to Goss, the CIA director, advising him against destroying the tapes. Negroponte left the job this year to become deputy secretary of state, and a spokesman for the director of national intelligence declined to comment on the Newsweek article.

The court hearing in the Guantánamo case, set for Friday in Washington by District Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr. over the government's objections, will be the first public forum in which officials submit to questioning about the tapes' destruction.

There is no publicly known connection between the 16 plaintiffs — 14 Yemenis, an Algerian and a Pakistani — and the CIA videotapes. But lawyers in several Guantánamo cases contend that the government may have used information from the CIA interrogations to identify their clients as "unlawful combatants" and hold them at Guantánamo for as long as six years.

"We hope to establish a procedure to review the government's handling of evidence in our case," said David Remes, a lawyer representing the 16 detainees.

Jonathan Hafetz, who represents a Qatari prisoner at Guantánamo and filed a motion on Tuesday seeking a separate hearing, said the videotapes could well be relevant.

"If the government is relying on the statement of a witness under harsh interrogation, a videotape of the interrogation would be very relevant,"

said Hafetz, of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University law school.

In addition to the Guantánamo court filings, the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to hold the CIA in contempt of court for destroying the tapes. The ACLU says the destruction violated orders in a Freedom of Information Act case brought by several advocacy groups seeking materials related to detention and interrogation.

House rePUGs vote down bill to restrict CIA interrogation methods

By PAMELA HESS – 25 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans blocked a bill Friday that would restrict the interrogation methods the CIA can use against terrorism suspects.

The legislation, part of a measure authorizing the government's intelligence activities for 2008, had been approved a day earlier by the House and sent to the Senate for what was supposed to be final action. The bill would require the CIA to adhere to the Army's field manual on interrogation, which bans waterboarding, mock executions and other harsh interrogation techniques.

Senate opponents of that provision, however, discovered a potentially fatal parliamentary flaw: The ban on harsh questioning tactics had not been in the original versions of the intelligence bill passed by the House and Senate. Instead, it was a last-minute addition during negotiations between the two sides to write a compromise bill, a move that could violate Senate rules. The rule is intended to protect legislation from last-minute amendments that neither house of Congress has had time to fully consider.

Although it's not unheard of for new language to be added in House-Senate negotiations, the rules allow such a move to be challenged and the language stripped from the bill.

Sen. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., placed a hold on the intelligence bill, preventing the Senate from voting on it while the 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.

If the Senate were to approve a stripped-down authorization bill next week, it would then have to go back to the House for another vote.

The field manual amendment was pushed by Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California and backed by two Senate Republicans, Olympia Snowe of Maine and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Feinstein defended the provision and said the Senate should debate it. "

The Army Field Manual has been an effective guide for the military,"

she said.

"It was very carefully written and reviewed. It has not come under criticism, unlike the constant criticism in the CIA arena .... It is my belief that America is not well served by torture."

The White House threatened to veto the bill this week over the interrogation restrictions and a list of other issues. The CIA denies that it tortures detainees.

The Army field manual, adopted in 2006, prohibits forcing detainees to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner; placing hoods or sacks over detainees' heads or duct tape over their eyes; beating, shocking, or burning detainees; threatening them with military dogs; exposing them to extreme heat or cold; conducting mock executions; depriving them of food, water, or medical care; and waterboarding.

Waterboarding is a particularly harsh form of interrogation that involves strapping down a prisoner, covering his mouth with plastic or cloth and pouring water over his face. The prisoner quickly begins to inhale water, causing the sensation of drowning.

The CIA is known to have waterboarded three prisoners but has not used the technique since 2003, according to a government official familiar with the program who spoke on condition of anonymity because the information is classified. CIA Director Michael Hayden prohibited waterboarding in 2006.

The White House gave the CIA special latitude to conduct harsh or "enhanced" interrogations in 2002 to break down recalcitrant terror suspects.

(and to create a way to cover their 9/11 tracks!)