2008 June 17

By David Maddox | CANNABIS should be legalised and taxed, an influential Scottish think tank recommended yesterday, just weeks after the Government hardened its attitude towards the drug, reclassifying it as a class B substance.

The Scottish Futures Forum yesterday published a report on drugs and alcohol in Scotland, saying one way to tackle the problem of addiction to harder drugs was to tax and regulate cannabis.

Forum chairman Frank Pignatelli said studies of San Francisco, where cannabis is illegal, and the Netherlands, where it is decriminalised, showed that the idea is worth considering because it breaks the link with class A drugs. In the Netherlands, only 17 per cent of cannabis sellers were also selling drugs such as crack, cocaine and heroin, while in San Francisco it was more than 50 per cent.

The idea was one of several aimed at halving drug addiction in Scotland by 2025.

This included introducing shooting galleries, where heroin addicts can go and take drugs in supervised surroundings, as revealed in yesterday’s Scotsman.

The forum’s vice-chairman, Tom Wood, former deputy chief constable of Lothian and Borders, said that there are “no easy options” and insisted that a different and sometimes uncomfortable approach was needed to tackle Scotland’s drug problems.

He said: “Where we are now is living in a country where there is one of the highest prevalences for drugs.

“We’re living in a country where we have the highest drug death rate, we’re living in a country which has one of the highest hep C rates in Europe. So we’re hardly in a good place now. A lot of the things we’ve done in the past clearly have not worked and so we have to move, and I think we are moving in the right direction, but we have to move quite radically.”

Just last month the Home Office announced it was reclassifying cannabis to class B, reversing a decision in 2004 to lower it to class C.

The decision was made because stronger forms of cannabis such as skunk are becoming more readily available and there is new evidence linking the drug to psychiatric problems.

Both the Home Office and the Scottish Government have made it clear that they do not support the idea of legalisation.

The community safety minister Fergus Ewing, who last week unveiled a new drugs strategy, welcomed upgrading cannabis to class B.

There were two failed efforts to open cannabis cafés in Edinburgh. Scottish Socialist Party member Kevin Williamson almost bankrupted himself trying to open one in Haymarket and Paul Stewart was forced to quit for Amsterdam after being fined for selling cannabis at his café Purple Haze in Leith.

The forum’s suggestion has been welcomed by the Legalise Cannabis Alliance UK, which claimed Scotland is leading the way on the issue.

Don Barnard, a spokesman, said: “The Scots seem to have been taking a more mature view and I hope the recommendation is taken seriously.”

The idea has also been backed by the Greens. Patrick Harvie, MSP, said: “The current approach to criminalising drug users has been one of the most obvious failures of social policy over the last 50 years, and the Futures Forum should be thanked for their efforts to move the debate on. We broadly welcome their report.”

But the Scottish Tory leader Annabel Goldie, who persuaded the SNP to produce a drugs strategy as part of a deal on supporting its budget, described the forum’s report as “flawed”.

She added: “The taxing and regulation of cannabis is akin to legalisation. This will not decrease use of this extremely harmful substance. Fortunately the long-term consequences of cannabis usage are now universally acknowledged and there is a consensus at Westminster that the damaging downgrading of cannabis to a class C substance should be reversed.”

Hacker Appeals To House Of Lords

By Christopher Nickson | A British hacker accused to accessing US military and Nasa computers has taken his case against extradition to the House of Lords, arguing it would breach his human rights. Gary McKinnon, known as Solo, has never denied that he hacked into 97 US military and Nasa computers from his London home in 2002. It was called the “biggest military computer hack of all time” and McKinnon was arrest – but never charged in the UK. He always claimed he did it because he was curious, and it was only due to the lax security that he was able to infiltrate the networks.

Now he’s taking his case against extradition to the final court of appeal – the House of Lords – claiming having to face trial in the US would breach his human rights.

In the High Court, McKinnon’s solicitors unsuccessfully argued that he’d face a lengthy pre-trial detention with no prospect of bail, and that his sentence could amount to over 45 years, and that he wouldn’t be allowed to serve any of it in the UK, but judges weren’t moved.

In this appeal, the Law Lords will examine supposed threats to McKinnon from US authorities, including one by a New Jersey prosecutor who reportedly told him he would “fry.” They also allege that the former FBI legal attache and a legal representative of the US government attempted to coerce him into waiving his extradition rights during 2003.
McKinnon’s solicitor, David Pannick, told the court:

“The US had attempted to secure [McKinnon's] voluntary surrender and guilty pleas by plea bargain tactics that were coercive and involved threats regarding the duration of his sentence of imprisonment.”
In the US he’s wanted for five counts of “fraud and related activity on government computers”, as well as one other indictment, ZDNet reports.

FBI interviews of Bush, Cheney subpoenaed

McClatchy-Tribune | A House committee subpoenaed yesterday records of the FBI’s interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney during the investigation into the leak of a covert CIA officer’s name.

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform demanded the documents from Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey days before former White House press secretary Scott McClellan is expected to testify about Cheney’s role in leaking CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity to the news media in 2003.

Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat, asked for the transcripts late last year and renewed his request earlier this month after the committee received an unedited transcript of grand jury testimony in which former Cheney aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby was quoted as saying it was “possible” that Cheney had told him to leak Plame’s name.

Waxman said that McClellan’s book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, also raised questions about whether Cheney had directed McClellan to “mislead the public.”

Waxman also wants the unredacted transcripts of FBI interviews with McClellan, former White House political adviser Karl Rove, Libby and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said the department was reviewing the subpoena to determine how to respond. The committee set a deadline of noon Monday.

Plame’s husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, has accused high-level White House officials of leaking his wife’s identity to retaliate for his criticism of the Iraq war.

After a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, Libby was indicted and convicted in connection with the leak on charges of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI. After Bush commuted Libby’s 2 1/2 -year sentence and Fitzgerald acknowledged that he didn’t anticipate indicting Rove, the investigation was seen as essentially over.

McClellan, who’s expected to testify Friday before the House Judiciary Committee, renewed questions about the leak with his book. He wrote that Bush and Cheney directed him to “exonerate” Libby in his daily news briefings and that Cheney may have been among the senior White House officials who knew the truth but encouraged the former spokesman “to repeat a lie.” McClellan also contended that Bush told him he had authorized the leak of Plame’s name.

Bush said in a 2004 news briefing: “If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.”

Last week, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Keith Nelson turned down the committee’s request for the FBI reports on Bush and Cheney, saying that the committee’s request “raises serious separation of powers” and confidentiality concerns.

But Waxman said there were “no sound reasons” that the Justice Department couldn’t release the documents. He has accused the Justice Department of blocking Fitzgerald from turning over the documents.

Tougher terror laws actually enhance freedoms, claims Brown

By James Kirkup | The Prime Minister used a speech in London to defend his Government’s record on civil liberties in the light of last week’s Labour rebellion over the detention of terror suspects and the high-profile challenge being mounted by David Davis, the former Tory front bencher.

Some 36 Labour MPs last week voted against the Government’s plans to hold terror suspects without trial for up to 42 days, with Mr Davis subsequently announcing that he would resign and fight a by-election on the issue.

Mr Brown began his premiership last year promising to extend legal freedoms, but has faced growing criticism over his actions in office.

Today, he attempted to answer those criticisms, insisting he remains committed the cause of freedom and arguing that he has taken some of his most controversial decisions because of a “fundamental responsibility - to take the actions that are necessary.”

Critics including Mr Davis have said that the 42-day plan is a fundamental violation of the right to be free of arbitrary state power.

Mr Brown today partly answered that charge by pointing to the judicial and parliamentary scrutiny of detention powers, but mainly by arguing that they are necessary to protect the majority from attack.

“The challenge is how to match a change in our laws with stronger safeguards, so we protect both the civil liberties of the individual and the security needs of all individuals,” the Prime Minister said.

Pointing to changes in technology, travel and communication systems, Mr Brown suggested that notions of liberty and security must be updated.

He said: “New challenges require new means of addressing them. But at all times the enduring responsibility remains the same - both protecting the security of all and safeguarding the individual’s right to be free.”

He cited plans for a national ID card as an example, claiming that the system will actually enhance basic rights by protecting individuals from fraud and theft.

“Opponents of the identity card scheme like to suggest that its sole motivation is to enhance the power of the state - but in fact it starts from a recognition of the importance of something which is fundamental to the rights of the individual: the right to have your identity protected and secure.”

Speaking to the Institute for Public Policy Research, Mr Brown pointed out that MI5 is monitoring 2,000 terror suspects in the UK, in 200 networks with 30 current plots.

Mr Brown said: “The modern security challenge is defined by new and unprecedented threats - terrorism, global organised crime, organised drug trafficking, people trafficking, to name but some.

“This is the new world in which government must work out how it best discharges its duty to protect people.

“New technology is giving us modern means by which we can discharge these duties, but just as we need to employ these modern means to protect people from new threats, we must at the same time do more to guarantee our liberties.

“Facing these modern challenges, it is our duty to write a new chapter in our country’s story - one in which we both protect and promote our security and our liberty, two equally proud traditions.”

Read the Government Report On Slavery and Iraq

Irregular Times | There is a report that was released by the U.S. State Department just at the end of last week, and it’s something that every American ought to take at least a short look at: It’s the Trafficking in Persons Report for 2008, a document that summarizes the problem of slavery around the world.

Sadly, there are many, many nations where trafficking in slaves is a problem. Even the Bahamas is under suspicion as a place through which slaves are transported.

In terms of U.S. foreign policy, there’s one country in particular that ought to receive special scrutiny when it comes to the slave trade: Iraq. Like Colin Powell said years ago, we broke it, and now we own it.

George W. Bush, John McCain and their Republican colleagues say that it’s still possible to make Iraq into a shiny, happy place that will make all the death and mayhem there resulting from their war worthwhile. That’s not the image of Iraq that’s given by the Trafficking in Persons Report, however. The report says of Iraq,

This is the diagnosis from the Bush Administration itself: “Iraq did not take any meaningful action” to stop the slave trade going on within its borders.

This Iraqi government is what American soldiers are fighting and dying to protect. This Iraqi government is what we are spending trillions of dollars to prop up.

The American-supported government in Iraq is not lifting a finger to stop the slave trade going on right under its nose. Even when little boys and girls are being sold as slaves, into sexual servitude, the government of Iraq is doing nothing to stop it.

Is this haven for slavery what John McCain insists the United States needs to keep fighting to protect?

U.S. School District to Begin Microchipping Students

By David Gutierrez | A Rhode Island school district has announced a pilot program to monitor student movements by means of radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted in their schoolbags.

The Middletown School District, in partnership with MAP Information Technology Corp., has launched a pilot program to implant RFID chips into the schoolbags of 80 children at the Aquidneck School. Each chip would be programmed with a student identification number, and would be read by an external device installed in one of two school buses. The buses would also be fitted with global positioning system (GPS) devices.

Parents or school officials could log onto a school web site to see whether and when specific children had entered or exited which bus, and to look up the bus’s current location as provided by the GPS device.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has criticized the plan as an invasion of children’s privacy and a potential risk to their safety.

“There’s absolutely no need to be tagging children,” said Stephen Brown, executive director of the ACLU’s Rhode Island chapter. According to Brown, the school district should already know where its students are.

The school district says that its current plan is no different than other programs already in place for parents to monitor their children’s school experience. For example, parents can already check on their children’s attendance records and what they have for lunch, said district Superintendent Rosemary Kraeger.

Brown disputed this argument. The school is perfectly entitled to track its buses, he said, but “it’s a quantitative leap to monitor children themselves.” He raised the question of whether unauthorized individuals could use easily available RFID readers to find out students’ private information and monitor their movements.

Because the pilot program is being provided to the school district at no cost, it did not require approval from the Rhode Island ethics commission.

Why Are Corporate Journalists So Afraid of Questioning Authority?

By Scott Ritter | “I think the questions were asked. I think we pushed. I think we prodded. I think we challenged the president. I think not only those of us in the White House press corps did that, but others in the rest of the landscape of the media did that. The right questions were asked. I think there’s a lot of critics — and I guess we can count Scott McClellan as one — who think that, if we did not debate the president, debate the policy in our role as journalists, if we did not stand up and say, ‘This is bogus,’ and ‘You’re a liar,’ and ‘Why are you doing this?’ that we didn’t do our job. And I respectfully disagree. It’s not our role.”

That was NBC correspondent David Gregory, appearing on MSNBC’s “Hardball With Chris Matthews.” He was responding to former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s new book, “What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.” McClellan has challenged the role of the U.S. media in investigating and reporting U.S. policy in times of conflict, especially when it comes to covering the government itself.

As a critic of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, especially when unsubstantiated allegations of weapons of mass destruction are used to sell a war, I am no stranger to the concept of questioning authority, especially in times of war. I am from the Teddy Roosevelt school of American citizenship, adhering to the principle that “to announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but it is morally treasonable to the American public.”

Some may point out that Roosevelt made that statement in criticism of Woodrow Wilson’s foot dragging when it came to getting America into World War I, and that it is odd for one opposed to American involvement in Iraq to quote a former president who so enthusiastically embraced military intervention. But principle can cut both ways on any given issue. The principle inherent in the concept of the moral responsibility of the American people to question their leadership at all times, but especially when matters of war are at stake, is as valid for the pro as it is the con.

The validity of this principle is not judged on the level of militancy of the presidential action in question, but rather its viability as judged by the values and ideals of the American people. While the diversity of the United States dictates that there will be a divergence of consensus when it comes to individual values and ideals, the collective ought to agree that the foundation upon which all American values and ideals should be judged is the U.S. Constitution, setting forth as it does a framework of law which unites us all. To hold the Constitution up as a basis upon which to criticize the actions of any given president is perhaps the most patriotic act an American can engage in. As Theodore Roosevelt himself noted, “No man is above the law and no man is below it; nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.”

Now David Gregory, and others who populate that curious slice of Americana known as “the media,” may hold that they, as journalists, operate on a different level than the average American citizen. As Mr. Gregory notes, it is not their “role” to question or debate policy set forth by the president. This is curious, coming from a leading member of a news team that prides itself on the “investigative” quality of its reporting. If we take Gregory at face value, it seems his only job (or “role”) is to simply parrot the policy formulations put forward by administration officials, that the integrity of journalism precludes the reporter from taking sides, and that any aggressive questioning concerning the veracity, or morality, or legality of any given policy would, in its own right, constitute opposition to said policy, and as such would be “taking sides.”

This, of course, is journalism in its most puritanical form, the ideal that the reporter simply reports, and keeps his or her personal opinion segregated from the “facts” as they are being presented. While it would be a farcical stretch for David Gregory, or any other mainstream reporter or correspondent, to realistically claim ownership of such a noble mantle, it appears that is exactly what Gregory did when he set forth the parameters of what his “role” was, and is, in reporting on stories such as the issue of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and the Bush administration’s case for war. For this to be valid, however, the issue of journalistic integrity would need to apply not only to the individual reporter or correspondent, but also to the entire system to which the given reporter or correspondent belonged. In the case of Gregory, therefore, we must not only bring into the mix his own individual performance, but also that of NBC News and its parent organization, General Electric.

As a weapons inspector, I was very much driven by what the facts said, not what the rhetoric implied. I maintain this standard to this day in assessing and evaluating American policy in the Middle East. It was the core approach which governed my own personal questioning of the Bush administration’s case for confronting Iraq in the lead-up to the war in 2002 and 2003. I am saddened at the vindication of my position in the aftermath of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, not because of what I did, but rather what the transcripts of every media interview I conducted at the time demonstrates: The media were not interested in reporting the facts, but rather furthering a fiction. Time after time, I backed my opposition to the Bush administration’s “case” for war on Iraq with hard facts, citing evidence that could be readily checked by these erstwhile journalists had they been so inclined. Instead, my integrity and character were impugned by these simple recorders of “fact”, further enabling the fiction pushed by the administration into the mainstream, unchallenged and unquestioned, to be digested by the American public as truth.

Scott McClellan is correct to point out the complicity of the media in facilitating the rush to war. David Gregory is disingenuous in his denial that this was indeed the case. Jeff Cohen, a former producer at MSNBC, has written about the pressures placed on him and Phil Donahue leading to the cancellation of the latter’s top-rated television show just before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. Katie Couric, the former co-host of NBC’s “Today Show” (and current news anchor for CBS News), has tacitly acknowledged “pressure” from above when it came to framing interviews in a manner that was detrimental to the Bush administration’s case for war. Jessica Yellin, who before the war in Iraq worked for MSNBC, put it best: “I think the press corps dropped the ball at the beginning,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “When the lead-up to the war began, the press corps was under enormous pressure from corporate executives, frankly, to make sure that this was a war that was presented in a way that was consistent with the patriotic fever in the nation and the president’s high approval ratings.”

Now, one would think that a journalist with the self-proclaimed integrity of Gregory would jump at the opportunity to take the bull by the horns, so to speak, and focus on this story line, if for no other reason than to prove it wrong and thereby clear his name (guilty by association, at the very least) and the name of the organization he represents. The matter is simple, on the surface: NBC network executives either did, or didn’t, pressure their producers and reporters when it came to covering and framing stories. Surely an investigative reporter of Gregory’s talent can get to the bottom of this one?

While Gregory certainly does not need help from someone of such humble journalistic credentials as myself, perhaps my experience as a former weapons inspector in tracking down the lies and inconsistencies of the Iraqi government could be of some assistance. The first thing I would do is to frame the scope of the problem. The issue of Iraq as a target worthy of war really didn’t hit the mainstream until the summer of 2002, so I would start there. I would be interested in defining the potential sources of “pressure” that could be placed on NBC as an organization when it came to reporting on Iraq.

We do know, courtesy of the Pentagon, that throughout the summer and fall of 2002, NBC News, via its Pentagon bureau chief and other contacts, worked closely with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Public Affairs, on the issue of media access in any potential future conflict with Iraq. We also know that these meetings were an outgrowth of a meeting held on Sept. 28, 2001, when the Pentagon and bureau chiefs, including representatives from NBC News, discussed how to balance the needs of the media to do their job while protecting national security and the safety of military personnel. The issue of embedding media personnel with the military was raised, with the Pentagon emphasizing that “security at the source” was the principle means for which to ensure no security breach occurred. This meant that if journalists were so embedded, they would have to be responsible about what they reported.

This concept of self-censorship is not a new one, nor is it particularly controversial. Ernie Pyle and Joe Rosenthal, two famous journalists from World War II, were able to establish stellar reputations while operating under the conditions of wartime censorship. So were thousands of other journalists, in several wars. In this manner, journalists covering D-Day knew of the invasion long before the American public, or even members of Congress. Were they bad journalists for not reporting what they knew beforehand? Were their parent organizations corrupted by agreeing to censorship as a prerequisite for access? The answer in both cases is clearly “no.”

However, in the interest of establishing a foundation of fact upon which to further any investigation into the possibility of pressure being exerted on NBC reporters and/or correspondents covering a war between the United States and Iraq, an intrepid investigator would want access to documents and records from those early meetings between the Pentagon and NBC News. What were the specific terms spelled out in those meetings? What derivative internal documents were generated inside NBC News, and its corporate master, General Electric, based upon those meetings, and what did those documents discuss? Unlike the situation faced by journalists during World War II, America and Iraq were not yet at war, so did NBC News establish policies on how to balance the operational security needs of the military while reporting on a war which, in the summer and fall of 2002, the Bush administration said wasn’t being planned?

Formal planning for “Operation Iraqi Liberation” (only later renamed “Operation Iraqi Freedom”) commenced early on in 2002. The U.S. Army began working on a public affairs plan early in 2002 and, in June of that year, briefed U.S. Central Command on a concept for large-scale media embedding for ground forces. U.S. Central Command expanded the Army’s plan to include the other services, and by September 2002 had prepared a draft public affairs annex to the overall war plan. Formal public affairs planning for U.S. Central Command was initiated in October 2002, when a planning cell was established. In its first meeting, from Oct. 2-7, the Pentagon reviewed past media operations in time of war, and recommended a break with the past practice of a media pool, and instead suggested a formal embedded media program. These and other media-related issues were consolidated into Annex F (Public Affairs) of the formal “Operation Iraqi Liberation” war plan. It is curious that the Pentagon acknowledges a formal war plan in existence at a time when senior Bush administration officials were telling members of Congress that there were no plans to attack Iraq and that the Bush administration was focusing its efforts on diplomacy.

The embedded media program was formally endorsed by the Pentagon in November 2002. On Nov. 14, 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, together with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sent a message to all military commanders discussing public affairs, and in particular the embedded media program. In it, Rumsfeld addressed how potential future operations [i.e., war with Iraq] could shape public perception of the national security environment, and recognized the need to facilitate access to national and international media to “tell the factual story — good or bad — before others seed the media with disinformation and distortions as they most certainly will continue to do. Our people in the field need to tell the story.”

When did NBC News become aware of this Rumsfeld memo? Were there any reactions to the concept of embedded journalists being targeted by the military as being facilitators for disseminating a pro-Pentagon point of view? The Pentagon states that while no formal meetings about draft public affairs annex content were conducted with bureau chiefs, “informal discussions were held with some key individuals in the media, who provided input for consideration.” The Pentagon also acknowledges that changes to the public affairs annex were made “based on a bureau chief’s recommendation.” Was NBC News part of the “informal discussions” with the Pentagon? Did NBC News provide any recommendations to the Pentagon’s public affairs office based on such meetings? If so, what were the recommendations, who made them, and how was this staffed within the NBC/GE corporate structure?

These are important questions, since balancing the need to maintain secrecy of potential military operations would appear to conflict with any effort undertaken by NBC News to probe Bush administration claims on not only the justification for confronting Iraq, but whether or not there was any plan to attack Iraq to begin with. How did NBC News compartmentalize its knowledge of the Bush administration’s plans to attack Iraq? Was there any crossover in terms of management? Did the same personnel who managed Pentagon relations also manage the reporters whose task it was to press the Bush administration on the veracity of its case for war against Iraq? Did such crossover ever manifest itself in a case of conflict of interest? What is the documentary record of internal discussions within NBC in this regard? Were any policies established on the control of information that touched upon sensitive military activities?

It might appear as if I am on a fishing expedition, so to speak, probing for documents for which there is no evidence that they even exist. Again, I’ll do my best to help focus David Gregory on his investigation. Much has been made of the fact that parent company GE makes a great deal of money from the machinery of war. It is useful, however, to examine a specific case, an instance where the news operation, the corporate parent and the military were all too intertwined.

In November 2002, the Pentagon established formal rules that specifically forbade any journalist to “self-embed” with a given military unit, noting that all requests for embedding would be handled via the Pentagon’s public affairs office. At the same time, in Kuwait, the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division brigade and battalion commanders were experimenting with embedding journalists during short (three to five days) training exercises. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team in particular pushed the embedding concept, getting journalists embedded at the battalion level. From this experience, the 2nd Brigade was able to establish embedding tactics, techniques and procedures that worked for both the media and the commanders. According to the U.S. Army, “The embeds realized they needed to work with their equipment and develop procedures for filing reports. They identified problems with the durability of their equipment and its ability to withstand the elements and a need for power sources for extended periods.”

One of these embeds was NBC News correspondent David Bloom. It should be noted that Bloom tragically died while covering the Iraq war. Bloom was a rising star at NBC, with an eye for a developing story. “Early on,” NBC News President Neal Shapiro said shortly after Bloom’s death, “he said, ‘I want a piece of this war.’ ” Shapiro isn’t specific about the date Bloom made that statement, but since Bloom was dispatched to Kuwait in November 2002, we can assume it was on or about that time. Bloom was one of the embeds who worked closely with the U.S. Army during that time, developing the “tactics, techniques and procedures” for embedded media. In December 2002, Bloom called NBC News from Kuwait, where he had just covered the largest U.S. military live-fire exercise since the first Gulf War. Bloom told his NBC News bosses that he had been given permission to embed with the 3rd Infantry Division, even though official Pentagon policy in place at the time specifically forbade any such action. Bloom already exhibited a familiarity with the war plans of the 3rd Infantry Division, bragging that they were the “tip of the spear.” Not only would Bloom and his cameraman be able to ride with the 3rd Infantry Division, they would be able to broadcast live while doing so. Clearly, Bloom and his 3rd Infantry Division colleagues had perfected their embed “tactics, techniques and procedures.”

The 2nd Brigade Combat Team had offered Bloom the use of a large M-88A1 tank recovery vehicle. Bloom had worked with the Army to mount a camera and a mobile satellite transmission unit on the M-88. The images taken from the camera would be sent back, while the M-88 was traveling at speeds of up to 50 miles per hour, to a radically modified Ford F-450 SuperDuty truck that carried specialized satellite communication equipment built by Maritime Telecommunications Network, and a gyro-stabilizing transmission dish mounted underneath a protective dome on the rear body. This truck would trail the leading elements of the 3rd Infantry’s spearhead at distances of up to two miles. The M-88 carrying Bloom broadcast microwave signals back to the Ford F-450 truck, which in turn transmitted these signals via satellite uplink back to NBC News headquarters.

Bloom was able to provide the specifications of his idea to his NBC bosses, and in just 40 days, engineers from Maritime Telecommunications Network and NBC were able to modify a Ford F-450 to not only withstand the rigors of the Iraqi desert, but also to accommodate the electronics and satellite dish. Four weeks before the start of the war, the vehicle was tested, only to have the signal drop every time the vehicle turned. The engineers worked frantically to fix the problem, and the modified F-450, nicknamed the “Bloommobile,” was airlifted to Kuwait, arriving just days before the start of the invasion.

The cost of the Bloommobile has not been formally revealed, but is thought to run into seven figures. This vehicle would never have been made without the support of GE, which underwrote the cost of its construction. GE also fronted for NBC in negotiating special clearances with the Pentagon and State Department on exceptions to policy and import-export control. The Pentagon’s official policy while the Bloommobile was being built was for embeds to ride in vehicles provided by their respective unit, and that the media were not to provide their own transportation. Clearly, the Bloommobile represented a stark exception to that rule.

Keep in mind that the entire time GE/NBC was investing millions of dollars into building the Bloommobile so they could get crystal-clear live video transmitted from the “tip of the spear,” the Bush administration was playing coy on the subject of war with Iraq. With GE/NBC News so heavily invested in exploiting a war, was there any pressure placed on NBC reporters/correspondents concerning how they dealt with the Bush administration’s case for war? It is a fair question, and one that could best be dealt with through an examination of the internal GE/NBC documents concerning the Bloommobile. Who in GE/NBC served as the project manager for the Bloommobile? Certainly Bloom, the brain trust, was away in Kuwait. Who oversaw the project back in the United States? What did the Bloommobile cost? What was the internal debate within GE/NBC concerning the merits/faults of the Bloommobile? An organization like GE/NBC does not allocate millions of dollars on a whim. There had to be some sort of oversight that was documented. Who in GE/NBC fronted for the Bloommobile with the U.S. government? What is the record of communication between GE/NBC and the U.S. government concerning the vehicle? Did GE/NBC have to provide the U.S. government with any guarantees concerning the use of the Bloommobile?

In investing in the vehicle, GE/NBC News was investing in the war. There are quid pro quo arrangements made every day, and the link between the U.S. government granting NBC News so many exceptions in the creation and fielding of the Bloommobile, and the crackdown within the GE-controlled NBC/MSNBC family on anti-war and anti-administration sentiment, cannot be dismissed as simply circumstantial. But a review of the available documents would clarify this issue.

David Gregory has vociferously defended the role he and NBC News played in the lead-up to the Iraq war. Scott McClellan’s new book, combined with testimony from other sources, including those from within the NBC News family, has called into question the integrity of the operation Gregory serves. An allegation from a credible source has been made, and any denial must therefore be backed with verifiable, documented information. To paraphrase former Secretary of State Colin Powell when talking about Iraq before the invasion, the burden is on NBC to prove that it wasn’t complicit with the Bush administration concerning its reporting on Iraq and administration policies, and not on NBC’s critics to prove that it was.

The old proverb notes that “a fish stinks from its head,” something that aptly describes the GE/NBC News team when discussing the issue of Iraq. I challenge David Gregory to demonstrate otherwise.

The Boys in the Bubble

Via Blair Watch | Oh, the Good old Westminster bubble, the small enclosed world of Britain’s political class. We noticed that, almost unanimously they pronounced David Davis as a wild nutcase off on a farcical flight of fancy. Indeed it was remarkable at just how slow to react the major parties were.

Then the polls came in. The Great British Public seemed to take a different view. This is a problem for democracy as the ‘opinion leaders’ and ‘policy formers’ as they like to style themselves have frequently found themselves on the wrong side of public opinion. now sometimes this is no bad thing, but when it happens so often, one must wonder if those providing ‘informed comment’ really are informed about anything beyond the bubble.

For politicians to reach out beyond the bubble is vital to keep democracy alive.

This is a general political problem that seems to be some kind on natural phenomenon. In Brussels it is magnified, and so is the problem.

It’s glaring, embarrassingly so. I love Brussels, it’s a vibrant, quirky, multicultural city - frankly underrated in most tourist guides, but the ‘EU Quarter is something very different.

It’s almost entirely white. As I wander around the parliament and various Commission buildings, practically the only non-caucasians I see are the cleaners and the dogbodies moving furniture.

I photograph a lot of conferences and I’m faced with a sea of pleasant, intelligent white men in suits. Not a photographers dream. Frankly the EU bubble is about as diverse as a Ku Klux Klan rally. Secondly, almost everyone involved is taking the EU Shilling in one way or another.

I want to make it plain that I am pro-Europe, but I believe fundamental reform, not just of treaties but of the bubble is the only way forward.

How many innocent people are going out of their minds today?

By George Monbiot | We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that George Bush dined with a group of historians on Sunday night. The president has spent much of his second term pleading with history. But however hard he lobbies the gatekeepers of memory, he will surely be judged the worst president the United States has ever had.

Even if historians were somehow to forget the illegal war, the mangling of international law, the trashing of the environment and social welfare, the banking crisis, and the transfer of wealth from rich to poor, one image is stamped indelibly on this presidency: the trussed automatons in orange jumpsuits. It portrays a superpower prepared to dehumanise its prisoners, to wrap, blind and deafen them, to reduce them to mannequins, in a place as stark and industrial as a chicken-packing plant. Worse, the government was proud of what it had done. It was parading its impunity. It wanted us to know that nothing would stand in its way: its power was both sovereign and unaccountable.

Three days before Bush arrived in Britain, the US supreme court ruled that the inmates at Guantánamo Bay were entitled to contest their detention in the civilian courts. This is the third time the supreme court has ruled against the prison camp, but on this occasion Bush cannot change the law: the court has ruled that the prisoners’ rights are constitutional.

Symbolically the decision could scarcely be more important. Practically it could scarcely be less. The department of defence can transfer its prisoners to an oubliette in another country, where the constitution’s writ does not run. The public atrocity of Guantánamo Bay has provided a useful distraction from something even worse: the sprawling system of secret detention camps the US runs around the world.

We don’t, of course, know much about this programme. Bush first acknowledged it in September 2006. “Of the thousands of terrorists captured across the world, only about 770 have ever been sent to Guantánamo.” Other suspects, he said, were being “held secretly” by the CIA. “Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged.” He went on to claim that all the secret prisoners had now been transferred to Guantánamo Bay.

Several lines of evidence suggest that this claim was false. The CIA appears to have overseen or controlled, and in some cases appears still to be running, black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and, possibly, Diego Garcia. The US appears to be using ships as secret prisons. In just two years the CIA ran 283 flights – which the Council of Europe believes were used for transporting secret prisoners – out of Germany alone. It admits that it possesses 7,000 documents about its ghost detention programme. Are we to believe all this was done for the 14 men transferred to Guantánamo Bay? In Iraq, the US now admits to holding 22,000 prisoners without charge in its own facilities, some of whom are known to be kept away from the Red Cross and other visitors.

Apart from those moved to Cuba, hardly anyone, so far, has come out of this system. At the end of last year salon.com interviewed Muhammad Bashmilah, who was arrested and tortured by Jordanian police, handed to the Americans, flown to an unknown country in autumn 2003, and held secretly by the CIA until he was transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005. He reports that he was kept in a cell about the size of a transit van throughout the 19 months of his confinement, without any human contact except during interrogation. The lights and a source of white noise were left on permanently. Driven mad by isolation and sensory deprivation, he tried to kill himself several times. Eventually, when it became obvious even to the CIA that he had nothing to do with terrorism, he was handed over to the Yemeni government, who held him for another year until he was released without charge.

Lawyers for some of the men transferred to Guantánamo Bay claim that, while in secret detention, their clients were left hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beaten with electric cables, yanked around on a dog’s leash, chained naked in a freezing cell, and doused with cold water. “The CIA worked people day and night for months,” one prisoner reports. “Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.”

Could it be worse than this? Yes. In 2003, a US official admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that the CIA was detaining and interrogating children. Discussing two boys aged seven and nine held in secret detention by the CIA, the official explained: “We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.” According to another prisoner, the boys had already been tortured by Pakistani guards. A former CIA official told the New Yorker that “every single plan [in the secret detention programme] is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level – meaning the director of the CIA. Any change in the plan – even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added – was signed off by the CIA director.”

Never mind detention without trial; this is detention without acknowledgement. When men and women disappear into this system, neither they nor their families know where they are. The Red Cross cannot reach them; they are beyond the scope of the law. They have been disappeared in the Latin American sense of that word.

Do I need to explain that this treatment breaks just about every article in the Geneva conventions? Do I need to tell you that – without charges, trials, lawyers, scrutiny or even recognition – it is just as likely to net the innocent as the guilty? In 2006 George Bush maintained that “these aren’t common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield – we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantánamo Bay belong at Guantánamo”. But a new and detailed investigation by the McClatchy newspaper group has found that many of them were indeed either common criminals or bystanders, or men sold to the authorities in order to settle a feud. Who knows how many innocent people are going out of their minds in the CIA’s secret prisons today?

Along with its innocent victims, the US government has locked itself into this system. As the justice department has argued, these prisoners cannot be released in case they describe the “alternative interrogation methods” (the euphemism it uses for torture) the CIA used on them, which could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage”. Like almost everything Bush has done, this programme promises to backfire. George Bush will be remembered not only for the lives he has broken, but also for smashing everything he claimed to defend.

Ex-Pentagon Lawyers Face Inquiry on Interrogation Role

By MARK MAZZETTI | Senior Pentagon lawyers played a more active role than previously known in developing the aggressive interrogation techniques approved for use in 2002 at the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to officials familiar with a Senate investigation.Investigators with the Senate Armed Services Committee have found documents from July 2002 showing that Pentagon lawyers working for William J. Haynes II, then the Defense Department general counsel, gathered information about a program used to train American pilots to withstand captivity, according to the officials.

Some of the techniques used in the program were later approved for use on prisoners in American military custody.

It has been known for some time that Mr. Haynes played a role in recommending that Donald H. Rumsfeld, who was then the defense secretary, approve interrogation techniques beyond what military interrogators were normally authorized to use, which Mr. Rumsfeld did in December 2002.

But the timing of the Pentagon requests for information earlier that year suggest that senior Pentagon lawyers played an active role in developing the aggressive interrogation program.

The military was never authorized to carry out interrogations as aggressive as those approved for use by the C.I.A., which until the end of 2003 included water boarding. The harshest techniques that Mr. Rumsfeld approved in December 2002 were rescinded by him a month later, but Pentagon investigations have found that some were later used without authorization in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It is unclear why Mr. Haynes and his staff sought information from officers who ran the pilots’ training program.

But Richard Schiffrin, a former Pentagon lawyer who will testify Tuesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Monday in an interview that Mr. Haynes and other Pentagon lawyers at the time expressed “great frustration” that the military was not effectively obtaining information from prisoners. “The intelligence being obtained from detainees was deemed insufficient,” he said.

Mr. Schiffrin said that he had requested interrogation information from the senior officers who administered the pilots’ program, based at Fort Belvoir, Va. He said that much of the information he received involved psychological studies about the effects of interrogation, and some studies of how North Korean officers tried mind-control experiments on American prisoners during the Korean War. “It was real ‘Manchurian Candidate’ stuff,” he said.

Mr. Haynes is also scheduled to testify at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday. The committee is planning to issue a report this summer on the military’s development of harsh interrogation practices.

Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is the committee’s chairman, said in a statement that the deliberations on interrogation techniques conducted by senior Bush administration lawyers in 2002 laid the groundwork for the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq a year later.

“Senior officials in the United States government sought out information on aggressive techniques, twisted the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees,” Mr. Levin said.

Bush threatens Iran with military action

By Colin Brown | George Bush has warned Iran that military action is still “on the table” if it fails to respond to tightening diplomatic pressure to abandon its nuclear weapons programme. The EU is planning to announce the freezing of all overseas assets of the main bank in Iran. Sanctions are also to be tightened on gas and oil exports by Iran.

But the US President’s remarks on the last leg of his “farewell tour” of Europe raised fears at Westminster that Mr Bush is determined to take action against Iran before he leaves office in January if the sanctions fail to force Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons ambitions.

Standing alongside the President after more than an hour of talks in Downing Street, Gordon Brown surprised EU council officials by announcing that the EU intends to intensify its sanctions on Iran, including freezing the billions of euros in overseas assets of the Melli Bank of Iran.

But Mr Bush left no doubt that the US is holding military action in reserve. Thanking Mr Brown for keeping together the European alliance “so that we can solve this problem diplomatically”, Mr Bush said: “That is my first choice. The Iranians must understand that all options are on the table, however.”

The EU foreign policy chief Xavier Solana delivered a more generous offer to the Iranian regime at the weekend and is now awaiting its reply. It includes help in developing civil nuclear power and extending economic assistance if Iran stops enriching uranium to produce weapons-grade plutonium. Ali Larijani, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, promised to “carefully study the package”.

EU council officials said tougher sanctions were not on the agenda when Mr Solana briefed his officials but Downing Street insisted sanctions were being prepared. It is likely they will be implemented next week.

Mr Brown said: “Our message to the Iranian people is you do not have to choose the path of confrontation. The latest round of talks with the Iranians took place over the weekend. We put our enhanced offer on the table including political and economic partnership including nuclear technology for civilian use.

“We await the Iranian response and will do everything to maintain the dialogue but we are also clear that if Iran continues to ignore UN resolutions and our offer of partnership, we have no choice but to intensify sanctions.”

A spokesman for the Stop the War Coalition, which protested against Mr Bush’s arrival at Downing Street on Sunday, said: “Bush has been travelling round Europe trying to secure support for sanctions and a possible future attack on Iran.”

Mr Brown also announced that Britain is sending more troops to Afghanistan as the bodies of five soldiers killed in action last week were brought home. About 400 support staff are being withdrawn, but 630 more troops are being flown out.

Mr Brown is due to announce troop withdrawals from Basra before the summer recess of Parliament at the end of next month.

Democrats to back down on Iraq war conditions

By Richard Cowan | Democrats in the Congress, who came to power last year on a call to end the combat in Iraq, will soon give President George W. Bush the last war-funding bill of his presidency without any of the conditions they sought for withdrawing U.S. troops, congressional aides said on Monday.

Lawmakers are arranging to send Bush $165 billion in new money for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, enough to last for about a year and well beyond when Bush leaves office on January 20.

“It’ll be the lump sum of money, veterans (funding) and that’s it,” said one House aide familiar with the negotiations on the legislation.

The aide was referring to the funding for the unpopular Iraq war, now in its sixth year, and a measure being attached to expand education benefits for combat veterans.

A House of Representatives vote on the war-funding bill was expected this week. Anything the House passes would have to be approved by the Senate before the legislation is sent to Bush.

With the Pentagon running out of money to continue fighting the two wars, Congress is trying to approve new funds before its July 4 holiday recess.

With this bill, Congress will have written checks for more than $800 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, with most of the money going to Iraq.

Since January, 2007, when Democrats took majority control of the House and Senate, they have tried to force Bush to change course in Iraq, mostly through troop withdrawal timetables and requirements that U.S. soldiers be more thoroughly trained, equipped and rested before returning to combat.

And while various versions have passed each chamber since then, there have not been enough votes in Congress to enact the war conditions over Bush’s objections.

The result is that the 110th Congress will wrap up most of its work this fall, before November’s congressional and presidential elections, without forcing any changes to Bush’s open-ended war policy, the defining issue of his presidency.

Anti-war Democrats instead are looking to Bush’s successor, hoping it is fellow-Democrat Barack Obama, to bring at least some of the 147,000 U.S. troops home from Iraq.

Speaking to reporters in Michigan where he was campaigning, Obama said he was “encouraged” by the reduction in violence in Iraq, but underlined the importance of beginning “the process of withdrawing U.S. troops.”

John McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has backed Bush’s opposition to Congress setting timetables.

Democrats enter this campaign season poised to expand their House and Senate majorities.

Instead of Iraq being the dominant issue this campaign season, it has been the U.S. economy, jolted by skyrocketing energy prices and mounting home foreclosures, that has gotten most of the attention.

The war-spending bill has been the staging ground for a Democratic initiative to expand domestic unemployment benefits, in addition to the added veterans benefits.

Wrongly jailed detainees found militancy at Guantanamo

By Tom Lasseter | GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Mohammed Naim Farouq was a thug in the lawless Zormat district of eastern Afghanistan. He ran a kidnapping and extortion racket, and he controlled his turf with a band of gunmen who rode around in trucks with AK-47 rifles.

U.S. troops detained him in 2002, although he had no clear ties to the Taliban or al Qaida. By the time Farouq was released from Guantanamo the next year, however — after more than 12 months of what he described as abuse and humiliation at the hands of American soldiers — he’d made connections to high-level militants.

In fact, he’d become a Taliban leader. When the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency released a stack of 20 “most wanted” playing cards in 2006 identifying militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with Osama bin Laden at the top — Farouq was 16 cards into the deck.

A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam — thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them — and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists.

Soldiers, guards or interrogators at the U.S. bases at Bagram or Kandahar in Afghanistan had abused many of the detainees, and they arrived at Guantanamo enraged at America.

The Taliban and al Qaida leaders in the cells around them were ready to preach their firebrand interpretation of Islam and the need to wage jihad, Islamic holy war, against the West. Guantanamo became a school for jihad, complete with a council of elders who issued fatwas, binding religious instructions, to the other detainees.

Rear Adm. Mark H. Buzby, until recently the commanding officer at Guantanamo, acknowledged that senior militant leaders gained influence and control in his prison.

“We have that full range of (Taliban and al Qaida) leadership here, why would they not continue to be functional as an organization?” he said in a telephone interview. “I must make the assumption that there’s a fully functional al Qaida cell here at Guantanamo.”

Afghan and Pakistani officials also said they were aware that Guantanamo was churning out new militant leaders.

In a classified 2005 review of 35 detainees released from Guantanamo, Pakistani police intelligence concluded that the men — the majority of whom had been subjected to “severe mental and physical torture,” according to the report — had “extreme feelings of resentment and hatred against USA.”

The report warned that unless steps were taken to rehabilitate the men, they had the potential of “becoming another Abdullah Mehsud,” a former Guantanamo detainee who became a high-ranking Taliban commander in the Pakistani tribal areas bordering Afghanistan. Mehsud killed himself with a grenade last July to avoid being taken prisoner by Pakistani troops.

“A lot of our friends are working against the Americans now, because if you torture someone without any reason, what do you expect?” Issa Khan, a Pakistani former detainee, said in an interview in Islamabad. “Many people who were in Guantanamo are now working with the Taliban.”

According to Afghan authorities, Mohammed Naim Farouq was a rural gangster, not a terrorist.

“He was with a group that was kidnapping people. It was a criminal group. It did a lot of extortion,” said Attorney General Abdul Jabar Sabit, who interviewed Farouq in Guantanamo.

But, Sabit found, Farouq wasn’t linked to the Taliban or al Qaida when the Americans arrested him.

No more. Since Farouq was released from Guantanamo, the Defense Intelligence Agency said, he’s had a relationship with al Qaida and the Taliban and heads a group of Taliban militiamen.

“Naim was a very, very small guy before, but now that he’s been released, he’s a very big problem,” said Taj Mohammed Wardak, a former Afghan interior minister who also served as the governor of Farouq’s province. “It has a really bad effect when these men return to their communities.”

“Why did the Americans treat me this way?” he said during an interview with McClatchy in Gardez. “I wanted to keep my district peaceful.”

In interviews, former U.S. Defense Department officials acknowledged the problem, but none of them would speak about it openly because of its implications: U.S. officials mistakenly sent a lot of men who weren’t hardened terrorists to Guantanamo, but by the time they were released, some of them had become just that.

Requests for comment from senior Defense Department officials went unanswered. The Pentagon official in charge of detainee affairs, Sandra Hodgkinson, declined interview requests even after she was given a list of questions.

However, dozens of former detainees, many of whom were reluctant to talk for fear of being branded as spies by the militants, described a network — at times fragmented, and at times startling in its sophistication — that allowed Islamist radicals to gain power inside Guantanamo:

* Militants recruited new detainees by offering to help them memorize the Quran and study Arabic. They conducted the lessons, infused with firebrand theology, between the mesh walls of cells, from the other side of a fence during exercise time or, in lower-security blocks, during group meetings.

* Taliban and al Qaida leaders appointed cellblock leaders. When there was a problem with the guards, such as allegations of Quran abuse or rough searches of detainees, these “local” leaders reported up their chains of command whether the men in their block had fought back with hunger strikes or by throwing cups of urine and feces at guards. The senior leaders then decided whether to call for large-scale hunger strikes or other protests.

* Al Qaida and Taliban leaders at Guantanamo issued rulings that governed detainees’ behavior. Shaking hands with female guards was haram — forbidden — men should pray five times a day and talking with American soldiers should be kept to a minimum.

* The recruiting and organizing don’t end at Guantanamo. After detainees are released, they’re visited by militants who try to cement the relationships formed in prison.

“When I was released, they (Taliban officials) told me to come join them, to fight,” said Alif Khan, an Afghan former detainee whom McClatchy interviewed in Kabul. “They told me I should move to Waziristan,” a Taliban hotbed in Pakistan.

Most of the 66 former Guantanamo detainees whom McClatchy interviewed were hesitant to talk about their religious and political transformations in prison.

Ilkham Batayev, a Kazakh, described his stay at Guantanamo in bitter, angry terms. “I learned the traditions of many people,” he said. “Of course it changed me inside, but this is something private.” He said that Arab detainees spent a lot of time teaching him Arabic and giving him lessons about the Quran.

Taj Mohammed, an Afghan detainee, said that the time he spent at Guantanamo studying the Quran and discussing Islam with radicals helped him see the world more clearly.

“There were detainees who did not pray or who spoke with female soldiers,” Mohammed said. “We stopped speaking with these men. Sometimes we beat them.”

The U.S. government accused Mohammed of being a member of two insurgent groups in Afghanistan’s Konar province and taking part in an attack on a U.S. military base.

Mohammed maintained that he was a shepherd. Mohammed Roze, an official with the Afghan government’s peace commission in Konar province, said Mohammed was set up by a cousin with whom he was feuding.

American officials tried to stop detainees from turning Guantanamo into what some former U.S. officials have since called an “American madrassa” — an Islamic religious school — but some of their efforts backfired.

The original Guantanamo camp, Camp X-Ray, was little more than a collection of wire mesh cells in which detainees were grouped together without much concern for their backgrounds.

In April 2002, U.S. officials shifted the detainees to Camp Delta, which grew to include a series of camps organized by security level.

* Camp One was for better-behaved detainees, who were given toiletry items such as toothpaste and shampoo and more time for outdoor exercise.

* Camp Two was set up for cooperative detainees — especially those who helped interrogators — who still posed a high security threat to guards. They were given time in exercise areas, but were watched carefully.

* Camp Three was a high-security facility where detainees spent most of their time in cells with steel mesh walls and little more than mattresses and copies of the Quran.

* Camp Four was for the best-behaved detainees, and featured communal living spaces, librarian visits and lawns for soccer.

* Camp Five resembled a U.S. maximum-security prison, with automatic sliding cell doors and a central guard station.

The idea was that detainees who presented graver threats and were uncooperative would be separated from those with looser ties to international terrorism.

What the plan overlooked — according to several detainees and a former U.S. defense official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the subject — is that even midlevel al Qaida members had been trained in resistance techniques, and that one of them was to avoid calling attention to yourself. An angry cabdriver from Kabul, in other words, may have been more likely to attack a guard and end up in Camp Three than an al Qaida militant was.

As a result, some senior radicals ended up in Camp Four, free to preach their message of international jihad to petty criminals, Taliban conscripts and detainees who had little or no previous affiliation with Islamic militancy.

At times, detainee leaders would order other men to break camp rules so that the guards would send them to higher-security blocks, where they could carry messages from their leaders, said Charles “Cully” Stimson, who was the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs from January 2006 to February 2007.

“The communications network there is like the communications network in any jail,” Stimson said. “When Americans are in captivity, they respect rank. … I suspect it’s no different down there.”

Buzby, the Guantanamo commander, said that he, too, suspected that information flowed freely between militant leaders and their men at Guantanamo’s camps.

“It would be foolish to not believe that there is a hierarchy of information being passed up and down the chain of command,” Buzby said.

Abdul Zuhoor, an Afghan detainee who spent time in Camp Four, said that radical detainees used the system to their full advantage.

Zuhoor said he remembered watching groups of senior Taliban and Arab detainees meet in the exercise yard.

“They considered themselves the elders of Guantanamo,” Zuhoor said in an interview in the Afghan town of Charikar. “They met as a shura (religious) council.”

The group, Zuhoor said, acted in concert with others across Guantanamo to issue fatwas, which then were disseminated by detainees who were being moved to other areas for medical checkups, interrogations or transfers to higher-security blocks.

An attorney for one Arab detainee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared implicating his client, said his client told him at one point that he couldn’t meet with his legal team anymore.

“He said there were five or six detainees who had assumed positions of leadership in the camp, and that he had to deal with them,” the attorney said. “And they said that he would need a fatwa to continue speaking with us, to continue speaking with Americans.”

The fatwa, the shura council told the attorney’s client, couldn’t come from just any imam; it had to be from a senior cleric in Saudi Arabia, a hotbed of fundamentalist Sunni Islam.

In June 2006, Zuhoor said, a Taliban member at Guantanamo bragged to him that there soon would be three “martyrs.”

“The Arabs and some Taliban sat together and issued a verdict,” Zuhoor said. “Three of the men volunteered to kill themselves to get more freedom for the other detainees.”

The next morning, Zuhoor said, the news spread across Guantanamo: Three Arabs had committed suicide.

The Guantanamo commander at the time, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, called the suicides acts of “asymmetric warfare.”

LAW SCHOOL TO ORGANIZE BUSH WAR CRIMES TRIAL

By Sherwood Ross | A conference to plan the prosecution of President Bush and other high administration officials for war crimes will be held September 13-14 at the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover .

“This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred,” said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. “It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.”

“We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice,” Velvel said. “And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s.”

Velvel said past practice has been to allow U.S. officials responsible for war crimes in Viet Nam and elsewhere to enjoy immunity from prosecution upon leaving office. “President Johnson retired to his Texas ranch and his Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was named to head the World Bank; Richard Nixon retired to San Clemente and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was allowed to grow richer and richer,” Velvel said.

He noted in the years since the prosecution and punishment of German and Japanese leaders after World War Two those nation’s leaders changed their countries’ aggressor cultures. One cannot discount contributory cause and effect here, he said.

“For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders,” Velvel said.

The conference will take up such issues as the nature of domestic and international crimes committed; which high-level Bush officials, including Federal judges and Members of Congress, are chargeable with war crimes; which foreign and domestic tribunals can be used to prosecute them; and the setting up of an umbrella coordinating committee with representatives of legal groups concerned about the war crimes such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, ACLU, National Lawyers Guild, among others.

The Massachusetts School of Law at Andover was established in 1988 to provide an affordable, quality legal education to minorities, immigrants and students from low-income households that might otherwise be denied the opportunity to obtain a legal education and practice law. Its founder, Dean Velvel, has been honored by the National Law Journal and cited in various publications for his contributions to the reform of legal education.