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Torture Was Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

By Marjorie Cohn |

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks that I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003 according to the newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.

President Obama released the four memos in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU. They describe unimaginably brutal techniques and provide “legal” justification for clearly illegal acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the face of monumental pressure from the CIA to keep them secret, Obama demonstrated great courage in deciding to make the grotesque memos public. At the same time, however, in an attempt to pacify the intelligence establishment, Obama said, “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.

“In startlingly clinical and dispassionate terms, the authors of the newly-released torture memos describe and then rationalize why the devastating techniques the CIA sought to employ on human beings do not violate the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. sec. 2340).

The memos justify 10 techniques, including banging heads into walls 30 times in a row, prolonged nudity, repeated slapping, dietary manipulation, and dousing with cold water as low as 41 degrees. They allow shackling in a standing position for 180 hours, sleep deprivation for 11 days, confinement of people in small dark boxes with insects for hours, and waterboarding to create the perception they are drowning. Moreover, the memos permit many of these techniques to be used in combination for a 30-day period. They find that none of these techniques constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Waterboarding, admittedly the most serious of the methods, is designed, according to Jay Bybee, to induce the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic, i.e. the perception of drowning.” But although Bybee finds that “the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death,” he accepts the CIA’s claim that it does “not anticipate that any prolonged mental harm would result from the use of the waterboard.” One of Bradbury’s memos requires that a physician be on duty during waterboarding to perform a tracheotomy in case the victim doesn’t recover after being returned to an upright position.

As psychologist Jeffrey Kaye points out, the CIA and the Justice Department “ignored a wealth of other published information” that indicates dissociative symptoms, changes greater than those in patients undergoing heart surgery, and drops in testosterone to castration levels after acute stress associated with techniques that the memos sanction.

The Torture Statute punishes conduct, or conspiracy to engage in conduct, specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. “Severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from either the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering, or from the threat of imminent death.

Bybee asserts that “if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent.” He makes the novel claim that the presence of personnel with medical training who can stop the interrogation if medically necessary “indicates that it is not your intent to cause severe physical pain.

“Now a federal judge with lifetime appointment, Bybee concludes that waterboarding does not constitute torture under the Torture Statute. However, he writes, “we cannot predict with confidence whether a court would agree with this conclusion.

“Bybee’s memo explains why the 10 techniques could be used on Abu Zubaydah, who was considered to be a top Al Qaeda operative. “Zubaydah does not have any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to suffer prolonged mental harm from [the CIA's] proposed interrogation methods,” the CIA told Bybee. But Zubaydah was a low-ranking Al Qaeda operative, according to leading FBI counter-terrorism expert Dan Coleman, who advised a top FBI official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.” This was reported by Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Doctrine.

The CIA’s request to confine Zubaydah in a cramped box with an insect was granted by Bybee, who told the CIA it could place a harmless insect in the box and tell Zubaydah that it will sting him but it won’t kill him. Even though the CIA knew that Zubaydah had an irrational fear of insects, Bybee found there would be no threat of severe physical pain or suffering if it followed this procedure.

Obama’s intent to immunize those who violated our laws banning torture and cruel treatment violates the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”U.S. law prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and requires that those who subject people to such treatment be prosecuted.

The Convention against Torture compels us to refer all torture cases for prosecution or extradite the suspect to a country that will undertake a criminal investigation.Obama has made a political calculation to seek amnesty for the CIA torturers. However, good faith reliance on superior orders was rejected as a defense at Nuremberg and in Lt. Calley’s Vietnam-era trial for the My Lai Massacre. The Torture Convention provides unequivocally, “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification for torture.”There is evidence that the CIA was using the illegal techniques as early as April 2002, three to four months before the August memo was written. That would eliminate “good faith” reliance on Justice Department advice as a “defense” to prosecution.

The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding in July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.

Obama told AP’s Jennifer Loven in the Oval Office: “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that is going to be more of a decision for the Attorney General within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that.” If Holder continues to carry out Obama’s political agenda by resisting investigations and prosecution, Congress can, and should, authorize the appointment of a special independent prosecutor to do what the law requires.

The President must fulfill his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed. Obama said that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” He is wrong. There is more to gain from upholding the rule of law. It will make future leaders think twice before they authorize the cruel, illegal treatment of other human beings.

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War Criminals Seek Safe Haven With Lib Dems

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

By Craig Murray |

Apparently some of the Blairite right of New Labour are in talks with Paddy Pantsdown over the possibility of defecting to the Lib Dems. As the Blairite right is well to the right of Thatcher, drove the most determined attack on civil liberties since 1818, launched a devastating illegal war on the basis of lies, and reintroduced torture as public policy, one would hope the Lib Dems would tell them where to get off.

The point of immediate dispute - the introduction of a 50p income tax rate on marginal income above £150,000 - is probably the only sensible thing Brown has done.

We have been here before. Remember Dr Death. Dr David Owen is now comfortably ensconsed in the huge Mayfair office of Uzbek billionaire gangster and convicted blackmailer Alisher Usmanov, whose extremely highly paid PR catamite Owen now is.

What has the UK has come to, when its former Foreign Secretary is the paid lapdog of the most criminal of all the Russian oligarchs!

If you were very shortsighted and in a bad light, it was possible not to realise what kind of creature Owen was before he abandoned Labour for the Liberal/Social Democrat alliance. (Although it is often forgotten now that support for Trident missiles was the shameful cause of that realignment). There can be no excuse now for the Lib Dems to ally with the Blairites.

If there are any real Liberals left in the Left Dems, as opposed to nastly little careerists, they should be in revolt over even the mention of the admission of just one Blairite. John Stuart Mill must be spinning in his grave.

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Jordan’s human-rights watchdog reports torture

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

Amman- The 2008 report released Saturday by Jordan’s state- funded National Centre for Human Rights (NCHR) found continued ‘torture’ at Jordanian jails and a retreat in public freedoms.

Anti-torture efforts in Jordan are still ‘modest and hesitant,’ the report said. The document was issued at a press conference by NCHR Trustees Council Chairman Adnan Badran and Commissioner General Mohieddin Touk.

‘There are drawbacks in the national campaign for ensuring the physical safety and preventing torture due to inadequate legislations, which most of the time enable those who commit the crime of torture to escape unpunished,’ the report said.

The NCHR also criticized the law that enables ‘administrative authorities to detain people without allowing them to have contacts with their families and lawyers,’ as well as the state security law that ‘permits the detention of suspects for seven days before referring them to the concerned judicial authorities.’

The centre reported ‘violations’ of human rights of detainees and an increase in riots at prisons.

The report praised the Public Security Directorate for its establishment of new detention centres, ‘which complies with international standards.’

The report was based on information from complaints by citizens and expatriates, regular and sudden field visits to places where violations of human rights are suspected of taking place, and reports by the media, Badran said.

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MP angered by Street View ‘invasion’

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

By Ed O’Mara |

CITY MP Stewart Jackson has accused “creepy” global internet giant Google of an unacceptable invasion of privacy after its Street View cameras arrived in the city.
The US company is in the process of photographing every corner of major cities and towns across Britain for its latest online street mapping application, and this week it was back in Peterborough.

Google Street View, which is similar to Google Maps, but features real street-level images, has attracted controversy since its UK launch in March, with many complaining it breaches people’s rights to privacy if they happen to be captured in the photograph.

Conservative MP Mr Jackson said he was “troubled” at the thought of people’s homes, gardens and property being recorded without permission.

He said: “There is already too much of a Big Brother culture in this country, and I think it is an unacceptable intrusion into people’s privacy when you can go online and potentially be looking into someone’s living room or back garden.

“There must be some private places left in the world and I just find the whole Google mapping thing a bit creepy and slightly 1984.”

The Google camera car – an ordinary hatchback with a huge camera strapped to the top – has been in Peterborough on and off for the past three weeks, and was spotted in the Millfield area on Thursday before The ET caught up with it in Woodston and Orton Longueville yesterday.

Driver John Barrell said he could not understand the controversy being whipped up by Street View, but admitted he had received some “funny looks” while driving through the streets.

The company will not reveal when the Peterborough pictures will go online, but says issues of privacy are taken “enormously seriously”.

Spokeswoman Laura Scott said: “Where faces are identifiable, we use facial recognition software which automatically blurs them out, and the same happens with car registration plates.

“If anyone is uncomfortable about appearing on Street View or having their home or property on there, they can ask to have an image removed, and we will take it off.”

Veteran city councillor Charles Swift said he had not heard of the latest development in mapping technology, but said it gave him cause for concern.

He said: “We seem to be going from one extreme to the other. Soon we shan’t be able to go to the toilet without someone following us there.”

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Secret Black Box Probe Will Monitor Web Activity

Saturday, May 2nd, 2009

SPY chiefs are pressing ahead with secret plans to monitor all internet use and telephone calls in Britain despite an announcement by Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, of a ministerial climbdown over public surveillance.

GCHQ, the government’s eavesdropping centre, is developing classified technology to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone calls to land lines and mobiles.

The £1 billion snooping project — called Mastering the Internet (MTI) — will rely on thousands of “black box” probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure.

The top-secret programme began to be implemented last year, but its existence has been inadvertently disclosed through a GCHQ job advertisement carried in the computer trade press.

Last week, in what appeared to be a concession to privacy campaigners, Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single “big brother” database to store centrally all communications data in Britain.

“The government recognised the privacy implications of the move [and] therefore does not propose to pursue this move,” she said.

Grabbing favourable headlines, Smith announced that up to £2 billion of public money would instead be spent helping private internet and telephone companies to retain information for up to 12 months in separate databases.

However, she failed to mention that substantial additional sums — amounting to more than £1 billion over three years — had already been allocated to GCHQ for its MTI programme.

Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, said Smith’s announcement appeared to be a “smokescreen”.

“We opposed the big brother database because it gave the state direct access to everybody’s communications. But this network of black boxes achieves the same thing via the back door,” Chakrabarti said.

Informed sources have revealed that a £200m contract has been awarded to Lockheed Martin, the American defence giant.

A second contract has been given to Detica, the British IT firm which has close ties to the intelligence agencies.

The sources said Iain Lobban, the GCHQ director, is overseeing the construction of a massive new complex inside the agency’s “doughnut” headquarters on the outskirts of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.

A huge room of super-computers will help the agency to monitor — and record — data passing through black-box probes placed at critical traffic junctions with internet service providers and telephone companies, allowing GCHQ to spy at will.

An industry insider, who has been briefed on GCHQ’s plans, said he could not discuss the programme because he had signed the Official Secrets Act. However, he admitted that the project would mark a step change in the agency’s powers of surveillance.

At the moment the agency is able to use probes to monitor the content of calls and e-mails sent by specific individuals who are the subject of police or security service investigations.

Every interception must be authorised by a warrant signed by the home secretary or a minister of equivalent rank.

The new GCHQ internet-monitoring network will shift the focus of the surveillance state away from a few hundred targeted people to everyone in the UK.

“Although the paper [work] does not say it, its clear implication is that those kinds of probes should be extended to cover the entire population for the purposes of monitoring communications data,” said the industry source.

GCHQ placed an advertisement in the specialist IT press for a head of major contracts to be given “operational responsibility for the ‘Mastering the Internet’ (MTI) contract”. The senior official, to be paid an annual salary of up to £100,000, would lead the procurement of the hardware and the analysis tools needed to build and run the system.

Ministers have said they do not intend to snoop on the actual content of e-mails or telephone calls. The monitoring will instead focus on who an individual is communicating with or which websites and chat rooms they are visiting.

Advocates of the black-box system say it is essential if the authorities are to keep pace with the communications revolution. They say terrorists are stateless, highly mobile and their communications are difficult to detect among the billions of pieces of data passing through the internet.

Last year about 14% of telephone calls were made using voice over internet protocol (Voip) systems such as Skype. A report by a group of privy counsellors predicts that most calls will be made via the internet within five years. GCHQ said it did not want to discuss how the data it gathered would be used.

David Leppard and Chris Williams

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This entry was posted on Saturday, May 2nd, 2009 at 10:23 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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