House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers asked Mukasey straight up about the program during an oversight hearing last week.
“Are you ready to start a criminal investigation into whether this confirmed use of waterboarding by United States agents was illegal?” asked Conyers, D-Mich.
「直接質問、およびである私は率直な答えを与える。 いいえ、私はないと」、Mukaseyは言った。
彼のtorturous推論はここにある。
At the time of the waterboarding, it was done “as part of a CIA program” that had been cleared as “permissible under the law as it existed then” by the Department of Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel.
To launch a criminal investigation of a technique used by someone who relied on a Justice Department opinion as legal would put in question not only that opinion “but also any other opinion from the Justice Department,” Mukasey said.
“Essentially, it would tell people: ‘You rely on a Justice Department opinion as part of a program, then you will be subject to criminal investigation when and if the tenure of the person who wrote the position changes or, indeed, the political winds change.’ And that’s not something that I think would be appropriate and it’s not something I will do,” he said.
Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass., a former state attorney general, seemed skeptical of that logic, noting that the “law is the law” and that relying on bad legal opinions to shield oneself from prosecution would be a new legal doctrine.
“You know, this is brand-new legal theory, at least in terms of my own legal scholarship,” he said.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., wasn’t satisfied with Mukasey’s answer either.
“If we don’t establish a bright line, in this country, that we don’t torture, then it makes it very hard for us to argue to other countries that they shouldn’t torture our people, period,” he said.
Mukasey countered that there is a bright line: “We bar the torture.”
Simple? Well, then he adds the legal footnote: “The evaluation of whether a particular practice constitutes torture could be presented to me only in a particular situation, namely, whether it was defined, part of a proposed program, in which case I would pronounce on it one way or the other.”
“That’s a bright line that we can hold up to the rest of the world?” Schiff asked.
“We have and do defend our position before the rest of the world. We have people in the State Department who do a superb job at that. And we will continue to do that,” Mukasey explained.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd issued a statement urging a brighter line than Mukasey’s.
“There is no such thing as ’simulated’ drowning. When a person is strapped to a board and water is poured into their mouth and nose with no way to get air, that is drowning; that is torture,” he said.
Dodd said that President Bush should make clear that “all forms of torture ― including waterboarding ― are always wrong and always illegal.”
l
Speaking of torture
Sen. Joe Lieberman offered some insights into hostilities that afflict moderates from both ends of the political spectrum. Lieberman gets the brunt from liberal Democrats while his conjoined twin John McCain takes it from conservative Republicans.
“I do see some similarities. It is part of what is wrong in American politics today,” Lieberman said. “At the margins of either party there is a significant group of people who seem to really want to be more in a fight than to get things done.”
Lieberman says the majority is in the middle looking for Democrats and Republicans to find common ground for the good of the nation.
“John McCain is a conservative Republican but it is important to say that he is his own man and he will do what he thinks is right. As devoted a Republican as he is, if party interest conflicts with what he thinks is in the national interest he will always go with the national interest.”
(Yes, it seems Lieberman can’t make the connection between getting things done and getting out of Iraq ― something two-thirds of Americans have consistently said they believe is in the nation’s interest.)
The White House is defending the use of the interrogation technique known as waterboarding in certain, rare circumstances when suspects are believed to have knowledge of an imminent threat. VOA’s Paula Wolfson reports the Central Intelligence Agency now admits it used the technique roughly five years ago on three top terror suspects.
Tony Fratto, 04 Jan 2008
White House spokesman Tony Fratto says President Bush personally authorized the disclosure - breaking with the long-standing practice in the administration of refusing comment on specific interrogation techniques.
He says the decision to have Central Intelligence Agency chief Michael Hayden go before a Congressional committee and reveal the use of waterboarding in the past was difficult, because it could provide the enemy with information about the CIA’s program for questioning terror suspects.
“This decision to allow General Hayden to talk about the technique wasn’t taken lightly,” Fratto said. “There was discussion of great concern about starting to talk about something we don’t ordinarily do for reasons that we feel very strongly about.”
Fratto says so much misinformation has been disseminated about the interrogation program, that the White House felt it was time to set the record straight.
Fratto says waterboarding - which simulates drowning - was approved in a few specific instances and with certain safeguards in place.
The CIA banned the practice in 2006. Fratto says interrogators might be able to use it again, but emphasized they would need authorization from the president to do so.
He noted that any CIA request to use the technique would have to be declared legal by the Justice Department before consideration at the White House. He says approval depends on the circumstances, adding one important factor would be the belief that an attack might be imminent.
“Any change to the enhanced interrogation technique that may be used will follow the process that I outlined which includes a legal review and notification of Congress,” he said.
Critics have called waterboarding a form of torture. But Fratto says its use in the past under the conditions approved by the attorney general and the president was legal.
On Capitol Hill, a senior Democrat - Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois - denounced the use of waterboarding under any circumstances. He noted that in its annual human rights report, the U.S. State Department is quick to condemn other nations that use harsh interrogation techniques on prisoners.
“So once a year we stand in judgment of the world, and condemn them for engaging in waterboarding and torture techniques on their prisoners,” he said. “And yet it is clear from the testimony yesterday of General Hayden, that we have engaged in some of those own techniques.”
The U.N.’s torture investigator also responded to the CIA disclosure, calling on the Bush administration to give up its defense of enhanced interrogation methods such as waterboarding. Manfred Nowak told the Associated Press in Geneva that these techniques are totally unacceptable under international law.
Late last week, right after official White House spokesmen made a series of either evasive or completely false statements about the mysterious case of the vanishing, then reappearing, then perhaps no really vanished White House emails, Henry Waxman and his Oversight Committee announced some of the conclusions they had reached.
Dan Eggen and Elizabeth Williamson published an account of it on Friday in the Washington Post:
The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat. The 2005 study ― whose credibility the White House attacked this week ― identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
Waxman said he decided to release the summary after White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday that there is “no evidence” that any White House e-mails from those years are missing. Fratto’s assertion “seems to be an unsubstantiated statement that has no relation to the facts they have shared with us,” Waxman said. The competing claims were the latest salvos in an escalating dispute over whether the Bush Administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records ― including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions ― for history and in case of any future legal demands.
Waxman said he is seeking testimony on the issue at a hearing next month from White House counsel Fred F. Fielding, National Archivist Allen Weinstein and Alan R. Swendiman, the politically appointed director of the Office of Administration, which produced the 2005 study at issue.
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has now posted a series of studies to help us zero in on just what’s missing. It will come as no surprise to most that the big offender is the men at the center of the most virulent scandals, and the missing email traffic relates just to those dates in which a federal prosecutor would have the most interest. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office destroyed its emails, in violation of the requirements of the federal records act and potentially criminal law, for the following days:
September 12, 2003: The day on which the headlines in the New York Times read “federal appeals court in Washington yesterday rejected the Bush Administration’s effort to avoid releasing documents about Vice President Cheney Energy Task Force.”
October 1, 2003: The day on which the Solicitor General argued to the Supreme Court that Vice President Cheney was entitled to keep all the details concerning his meetings with oil executives and their influence in his formulation of national energy policy confidential, including the names of the participants.
October 2, 2003: The day on which senior Congressional Republicans began a rewrite of key energy legislation behind closed doors and without involvement of Democrats―but potentially with the involvement of Vice President Cheney and oil executives involved in his secret energy task force.
October 3, 2003: The Senate approved a requirement that all future contracts to rebuild Iraq be granted on an open and competitive basis after airing open criticism on the closed and controversial process that resulted in multi-billion dollar noncompetitive contract awards to subsidiaries of Halliburton, the company which Vice President Cheney headed before he assumed office, and from which, under a deferred compensation agreement, he continues to receive more compensation than he receives from the Treasury for his services as vice president.
October 5, 2003: Publication of the findings of a task force studying the development of the Iraqi oil industry and its potential for funding the costs of the occupation of Iraq.
January 29, 2004: David A. Kay, the former chief American weapons inspector in Iraq, called for an independent inquiry into pre-war intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs as skepticism about the administration’s claims about Iraqi WMD grows.
January 30, 2004: President Bush opposes an independent investigation of intelligence failures surrounding Saddam Hussein’s alleged weapons of mass destruction stockpiles despite increasing demands for one by some U.S. lawmakers.
January 31, 2004: Press reports focus on building speculation that an independent commission will be created to look into the White House’s basis for claims that Iraq had WMDs, accusations which were consistently led by Vice President Cheney.
February 15, 2005: Citing the threat exemplified by 9/11, President Bush urges Congress to re-authorize the Patriot Act.
February 16, 2005: An appeals court orders that two reporters who have refused to testify about their conversations with confidential sources regarding the leak that exposed the identification of CIA agent Valerie Plame should be held in contempt. It would later be revealed that both had conversations with members of Vice President Cheney’s staff.
May 23, 2005: Calls mount for the resignation of Tom Delay pending the outcome of an investigation into ethical violations. The Congressional and criminal investigation into Jack Abramoff widens to include long-time associate and fellow architect of the Republican takeover of the capital, Grover Norquist. The White House continues to obstruct efforts to identify who Abramoff saw in his hundreds of visits to the White House.
The missing Cheney emails fit a pattern that suggests intentional rather than accidental destruction. They all occur on days on which, considering contemporaneous press reports, the Vice President or his staff members were in the news and would likely have been communicating on the subjects relating to the press coverage. The most persistent themes are the outing of Valerie Plame and Cheney’s secret dealings with a group of oil and gas executives who were directly influencing national energy policy. The Empty Wheel has some excellent analysis of these points.
I keep wondering: have they checked that man-sized safe in Cheney’s office? Maybe he kept some copies there.
And in the meantime, Blimp TV offers a promotional videotape for the administration’s proposed new petroleum-based coinage.
Bush Admin. May Keep Visitor Records Private While Appealing Court Decision To Open Files
AP
A federal judge agreed Friday to let the Bush administration keep secret the lists of visitors to the White House until an appeals court decides whether the documents are public records.
U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth granted the White House request five days after ordering the Secret Service to turn over the records to a liberal watchdog group that sought them under the Freedom of Information Act.
The logs being sought by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington relate to White House visits regarding nine conservative religious commentators, including James Dobson, Gary Bauer and the late Rev. Jerry Falwell.
Visitor records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Bush administration ordered the data be turned over to the White House, where it is treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law.
Lamberth ruled logs from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s residence remain Secret Service documents and are subject to public records requests.
Phyllis Bennis is a Senior Analyst at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C. She is the author of Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11 Crisis and Challenging Empire: How People, Governments, and the U.N. Defy U.S. Power.
A federal judge has taken a significant step in dismantling the wall of secrecy the Bush administration has needlessly built around the White House.
Judge Royce Lamberth ruled that White House visitors logs were public records and that the public had a right to see them.
The logs, maintained by the Secret Service, had been public until 2006, when the Bush administration, which adheres to the principle that its business is nobody’s but its own, declared that the logs were presidential records and thus exempt from the Freedom of Information Act under the doctrine of executive privilege.
Executive privilege is intended to protect the confidentiality and candor of the advice the president receives. The logs say only who visited the White House, when and for how long; they contain nothing about the substance of the visits.
It might shed light, however, on White House political machinations.
The White House says it will appeal, using that as an excuse not to comment on the legal setback. One day, it is to be hoped, Congress and the courts will throw open the doors and windows of the Bush administration and the sun will shine in. Unfortunately, it is likely to be long after it has left office.
The Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians’ military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
Alexis Debat, director of terrorism and national security at the Nixon Center, said last week that US military planners were not preparing for “pinprick strikes” against Iran’s nuclear facilities. “They’re about taking out the entire Iranian military,” he said.
Debat was speaking at a meeting organised by The National Interest, a conservative foreign policy journal. He told The Sunday Times that the US military had concluded: “Whether you go for pinprick strikes or all-out military action, the reaction from the Iranians will be the same.” It was, he added, a “very legitimate strategic calculus”.
President George Bush intensified the rhetoric against Iran last week, accusing Tehran of putting the Middle East “under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust”. He warned that the US and its allies would confront Iran “before it is too late”.
One Washington source said the “temperature was rising” inside the administration. Bush was “sending a message to a number of audiences”, he said to the Iranians and to members of the United Nations security council who are trying to weaken a tough third resolution on sanctions against Iran for flouting a UN ban on uranium enrichment.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) last week reported “significant” cooperation with Iran over its nuclear programme and said that uranium enrichment had slowed. Tehran has promised to answer most questions from the agency by November, but Washington fears it is stalling to prevent further sanctions. Iran continues to maintain it is merely developing civilian nuclear power.
Bush is committed for now to the diplomatic route but thinks Iran is moving towards acquiring a nuclear weapon. According to one well placed source, Washington believes it would be prudent to use rapid, overwhelming force, should military action become necessary.
Israel, which has warned it will not allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, has made its own preparations for airstrikes and is said to be ready to attack if the Americans back down.
Alireza Jafarzadeh, a spokesman for the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which uncovered the existence of Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, said the IAEA was being strung along. “A number of nuclear sites have not even been visited by the IAEA,” he said. “They’re giving a clean bill of health to a regime that is known to have practised deception.”
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, irritated the Bush administration last week by vowing to fill a “power vacuum” in Iraq. But Washington believes Iran is already fighting a proxy war with the Americans in Iraq.
The Institute for the Study of War last week released a report by Kimberly Kagan that explicitly uses the term “proxy war” and claims that with the Sunni insurgency and Al-Qaeda in Iraq “increasingly under control”, Iranian intervention is the “next major problem the coalition must tackle”.
Bush noted that the number of attacks on US bases and troops by Iranian-supplied munitions had increased in recent months “despite pledges by Iran to help stabilise the security situation in Iraq”.
It explains, in part, his lack of faith in diplomacy with the Iranians. But Debat believes the Pentagon’s plans for military action involve the use of so much force that they are unlikely to be used and would seriously stretch resources in Afghanistan and Iraq.
On August 20, the 11th Circuit Appeals Court in Atlanta heard convincing allegations by the legal team defending the five Cuban anti-terrorist fighters imprisoned in the United States.
The defense lawyers submitted that the prosecution committed serious procedural errors and used intimidation to pressure the jury of the initial trial, which took place in Miami in a climate of apparent hostility toward the five heroes.
For the first time eminent foreign legal professionals were present at the hearing of the case of Gerardo Hernández, Fernando González, Ramón Labaniño, Antonio Guerrero and René González, known as the Five in the international campaign for their release.
Alicia Jrapko, a member of the International Free the Five Committee, told the Cuban radio and TV Roundtable program over the phone that the presence of prestigious international lawyers was much larger than before and signified strong backing for the Cuban anti-terrorist fighters.
Juan Guzmán, the Chilean attorney who brought charges against the ex-dictator Augusto Pinochet, was present and informed the Roundtable program (again by phone) that the U.S. government was unable to refute the defense truths, as reflected in the international media.
Guzmán appreciated the questions put by the sitting judges and stated that there is really no evidence to justify the charges of espionage against the prisoners, nor that of “conspiring to commit murder,” brazenly brought against two of them.
It was also abundantly clear that Miami was not an appropriate venue for the original trial, where the Five were handed down sentences ranging from 15 years’ imprisonment to two life terms, because the jury was intimidated, a point firmly established by the defense appeal, Guzmán added.
The Chilean legal professional thought that the defense achieved its main objective: to communicate the poor conduct of the U.S. government and the shortcomings of the jury selected for the Miami trial.
“In line with my legal experience, my impression was that those who have knowledge of this case would have to rule in favor of the five Cubans,” Guzmán affirmed.
The multinational TV networks Telesur and CNN covered aspects of the hearing and antecedents in the case of the Five.
This September the Cuban patriots will have completed nine years of arbitrary detention in the United States after they were sentenced for crimes that they did not commit in a rigged trial in Miami, lacking in procedural guarantees, as confirmed by UN experts and three judges at the Court of Appeals in the first hearing.
The United States pays Cuba $4,085 a month in rent for the controversial Guantanamo naval base, but Cuba has only once cashed a check in almost half a century and then only by mistake, Fidel Castro wrote in an essay published on Friday.
The ailing Cuban leader, who has not appeared in public for more than a year, said he had refused to cash the checks to protest the “illegal” U.S. occupation of the land which he said was now used for “dirty work.”
“The base is needed to humiliate and to do the dirty work that occurs there,” he said of the detention camp where some 355 terrorism suspects are still being held with no legal rights despite international criticism.
Castro, who turned 81 on Monday out of public sight, said the U.S. checks are made out to the “Treasurer General of the Republic,” a position that ceased to exist after Cuba’s 1959 revolution.
He said only one U.S. check was ever cashed ― in 1959 due to “confusion” in the heady early days of the leftist revolution.
Castro’s refusal to cash the checks to protest the “illegal” occupation has been long known. In a television interview years ago, he showed the checks stuffed into a desk drawer in his office.
The final installment of Castro’s long historical essay on Cuba’s hostile relations with the United States ― written for future generations ― was published by the ruling Communist Party newspaper Granma.
The essay entitled “The Empire and the Independent Island” recounted Castro’s view of U.S. efforts to control Cuba since U.S. troops landed on the island in the Spanish-American War that secured Cuban independence from Spain in 1898.
The United States retained 46.8 square miles (121 square kilometers) at the entrance to Guantanamo Bay in eastern Cuba for a naval base, which has been used as a prison camp for Taliban and al Qaeda terrorism suspects since the Afghanistan war following the September 11 attacks in 2001.
The base was initially a coaling station for the U.S. Navy to protect the approaches to the Panama Canal.
Castro said the enclave was “illegally usurped” by the United States, adding that the base no longer had any strategic military purpose in the age of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers packed with fast fighter-bombers.
“If we have to wait for the collapse of the (capitalist) system, we will wait,” Castro wrote. He said Cuba was always on alert to the threat of a U.S. invasion.
Castro handed over power to his brother Raul on July 26 last year after undergoing emergency intestinal surgery. His health is a state secret, but few Cubans expect him to return to office.
The Cuban leader, the last of the major Cold War figures still alive, is seen as a Stalinist tyrant by his enemies but is widely admired in the Third World for standing up to the United States, a David-versus-Goliath role he has relished.
It was the CIA that informed Antonio Veciana Blanch, 10 months ahead of time, of a visit to Chile by the president of Cuba; it proposed he should organize Fidel’s assassination, directed him to carry it out in a press conference and provided his transportation with weapons to Santiago in a U.S. diplomatic vehicle.
This was confirmed to a Miami radio station by Veciana himself who, aged 79, decided to confess some of the crimes he has committed over close to 50 years for the U.S. intelligence services in their dirty war on Cuba.
Founder of Alpha 66, identified as an accomplice in the conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy, this killer trained in Operation 40 was convicted of drug trafficking in New York in 1974.
In an attempt to respond to an interview with General (ret) Fabian Escalante Fonts recently published in Granma International, Veciana gave his version of various acts of terrorism in which he was involved on ‘La noche se mueve’ program on Miami radio.
‘I was in Bolivia working for USAID as advisor to the Central Bank,’ the terrorist chief explained on approaching the issue of the Chile attempt in 1971.
The ‘aid to development’ granted to Bolivia by that official U.S. agency linked from its foundation to intelligence activities, was wide-ranging, he reveals. ‘There was a group of us Cubans. I was a banking advisor in the Central Bank. Rafael Dalmau was in the Mining Bank. Charles Bacon who, despite his American name, was Cuban by birth, was in the Agricultural Bank and the CIA had other people working in the Ministry of the Interior.’
A CIA official told me that Fidel was going to Chile
One day, ‘a CIA official told me that Fidel was going to Chile and asked me if I was prepared to participate in organizing an attempt on his life,’ Veciana related. ‘I had been based in Bolivia for four years. I hadn’t read anything about Castro going to Chile until someone from the CIA called me from Peru.’
The U.S. agency took on coordinating the contact with Chilean police conspiring against the democratic regime of the socialist Salvador Allende.
‘He told me that I could have confidence in the two people who were going to visit me on behalf of the Chilean police.’
At various points in the interview Veciana declined to confirm that one of those individuals was Police Colonel Eduardo Sepúlveda. ‘I cannot confirm to you if it was Sepúlveda or someone else,’ he said enigmatically. Later, he insisted: ‘It could have been Sepúlveda but I didn’t know Sepúlveda. They used false names.’
‘These gentlemen came to see me in La Paz and we had two meetings. Then they informed me that effectively, a visit to Chile by Fidel Castro was planned and would probably be quite extensive. They thought that he would be at least two weeks in Chile and said that they were prepared to cooperate…’
‘I was the organiser’
During the three-hour interview, broadcast by three separate stations. Veciana insisted on attributing the leadership of the operation being planned to himself and cast aside his rival Luis Posada Carriles, who was handling CIA operations from Caracas.
‘I was the organizer,’ he repeated, expressing his dissatisfaction with the Chilean accomplices. ‘I asked them for some support that they never gave. I asked them to give me police uniforms, to give me more facilities. And they told me; we’re just going to give you information.’
Where would Veciana find the support that he needed? In Miami, of course. That city contained the large reserve of killers and conspirators constituted by the CIA years back. And heading up that pack of terrorists were his Alpha 66 buddies, with offices on Flager Street.
‘I sent a coded telegram to Alpha 66…. There are people here still who can back that up… To see if there were any men of action prepared to operate.’
Veciana finally decided to travel to the place that is still the sanctuary of continental terrorism.
‘Andres Nazario (Sargent, then head of Alpha 66) received me… We interviewed various people.’
All the candidates realized that participating in an attempt on the life of Fidel Castro was asking them to commit suicide.
‘They weren’t prepared to give up their lives.’
The ‘killers’: Islander Dominguez and Marco Rodriguez
Veciana returned, disappointed, to Bolivia after four days. However, he recalled, a new coded message from Sargent soon arrived, announcing that two individuals prepared to join the conspiracy had been found.
‘I went back to Miami… The two people belonged to Orlando Bosch’s group.’ They had worked with Poder Cubano (Bosch’s group) and in the CORU; they were Domínguez ‘the Islander,’ I think his name was Antonio, and Marco Rodríguez. I provided them with all the means to get to Venezuela and in Venezuela there were certain Venevisión officials who gave me all the facilities.’
‘The plan was to convert the two killers into Venevisión cameramen to subsequently infiltrate them into a press conference to be given by the Cuban president in Santiago de Chile.
Whose idea was that? The CIA’s, Veciana confirmed. ‘They suggested the camera idea… they suggested taking advantage of the conference where 600 or 700 journalist would be present, for the assassination.’
‘CIA personnel participated in preparations fro the attempt: ‘Afterwards the plot was complemented by getting the people who, as experts, were recommended by them: this can be done, this can’t be done… ‘
‘We had somebody who knew about the workings of Cuban press conferences: possibly the people who attended would have to leave their cameras outside and these would be checked. But by using a small weapon and hiding it in a certain section of the camera, when they began to run, the weapon wouldn’t be detected,’ he confessed.
So Domínguez and Rodríguez ‘were trained as cameramen and I got them Venevisión credentials.
‘The preparation of the two terrorists was meticulous.
‘They had to be trained because they were Cuban, they had to know the Venezuelan language… They were in Caracas for 60 to 90 days training so that they would be undetectable as Cubans, but as Venezuelans,’ he stated.
Veciana was then asked: ‘Did these two people receive training as shooters, as killers, as assassins?’
The 79 year old replied with surprising candor: ‘Well, I would call them assassins.
‘They were action men of Poder Cubano who had worked with Orlando Bosch.’
The two ‘assassins arrived in Santiago de Chile ‘long before Castro was due to arrive; in other words, they were there and began interviewing the Chilean government as if they were Venezuelan journalists.’
At the beginning of the interview, Veciana responded to an initial question on the Santiago attempt: ‘I didn’t go to Chile.’ But, on getting into his story of the events, he suddenly told everything about his stay in that country.
‘Yes, of course, I was in Chile,’ he exclaimed and added a strange revelation.
In a U.S. Diplomatic car… with weapons!
‘I left La Paz for Lima in a diplomatic car from the U.S. embassy with the weapons,’ Veciana suddenly admitted on pointing out that other U.S. agents left Lima for Santiago to join the plot.
‘We had rented the apartment in Huérfanos Street in Santiago where they (Domínguez and Rodríguez) were going to pass themselves off as simple journalists and we met up somewhere on the border of Chile and Peru and went from Arequipa, Tagna to Santiago.
‘While we were there, I had a minimum support base of three people who only knew what was being prepared when I needed a certain movement.’
Going back to the story of the idea to blame the planned assassination on the Soviet Union, Veciana gave his own version.
‘Somebody suggested to me: who’s going to be blamed for Castro’s death… Who’s going to make the public announcement? Let’s put the blame on the Soviet Union… That seemed like a good idea to me.’
‘The ‘Islander’ was told to go to a house just to ask for an address… ‘An alleged Soviet agent was living there.
‘He was a professor at the Central University of Caracas who was also a KGB agent… and there was a photographer who took photos so that if there were deaths on our account, it could be stated that these people had been working with the KGB.’
And what was happening, in the meantime, with Luis Posada Carriles?
‘Posada didn’t have anything to do with it,’ answered Veciana with something of scorn for the current hero of the Miami mafiosi. ‘He boasted a bit of his anti-Castro activity,’ he commented, noting that the CIA taught him to keep himself ‘compartmentalized.’
The Bush administration’s top intelligence official has acknowledged that a controversial domestic surveillance program was only one part of a much broader spying effort, The Washington Post reported in its Wednesday edition.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wrote in a letter that other aspects of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying program remain classified, the Post said.
“That is the only aspect of the NSA activities that can be discussed publicly because it is the only aspect of those various activities whose existence has been officially acknowledged,” McConnell wrote, according to the Post.
Bush acknowledged the existence of a program that monitored domestic phone calls and e-mails without court oversight in December 2005. The administration has not confirmed other secret spying efforts reported by news outlets, such as one that searched millions of telephone records.
Bush signed an executive order that authorized “a number of … intelligence activities” following the hijacking attacks of September 11, 2001, McConnell wrote.
The warrantless wiretapping program was put under court supervision in January but the administration now wants Congress to allow it to do many of the same activities without a court order.
The letter was sent on Tuesday to Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
The letter was written to defend Attorney General Alberto
Gonzales, who has been under attack over his testimony to Congress about the warrantless spying program, the Post said.
After a myriad of stories about people being excluded from events where the President is speaking, now we know that the White House had a policy manual on just how to do so.
So the truth comes out.
After a myriad of stories about people being excluded from events where the President is speaking, now we know that the White House had a policy manual on just how to do so.
Called the “Presidential Advance Manual,” this 103-page document from the Office of Presidential Advance lays out the parameters for how to handle protesters at events.
“Always be prepared for demonstrators,” says the document, which is dated October 2002 and which the ACLU released as part of a new lawsuit.
In a section entitled “Preventing Demonstrators,” the document says: “All Presidential events must be ticketed or accessed by a name list. This is the best method for preventing demonstrators. People who are obviously going to try to disrupt the event can be denied entrance at least to the VIP area between the stage and the main camera platform. … It is important to have your volunteers at a checkpoint before the Magnetometers in order to stop a demonstrator from getting into the event. Look for signs they may be carrying, and if need be, have volunteers check for folded cloth signs that demonstrators may be bringing.”
In another section, entitled “Preparing for Demonstrators,” the document makes clear that the intention is to deprive protesters of the right to be seen or heard by the President: “As always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route.”
The document also recommends drowning out protesters or blocking their signs by using what it calls “rally squads.” It states: “These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators. The rally squad’s task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site.”
The document offered advice on how to recruit members for such squads: “The rally squads can include, but are not limited to, college/young republican organizations, local athletic teams, and fraternities/sororities.”
The document does contain a warning in bold, however: “Remember ― avoid physical contact with demonstrators.” It also advises to make sure that whatever action is taken to drown out the demonstrators does not “cause more negative publicity than if the demonstrators were simply left alone.”
That’s right, we said the “I” word. And you should be saying it too ― to your family, your friends, your neighbors, your pets and the hearty 26% of Americans who somehow still believe the Bush/Cheney team more worthy of sitting in the Oval Office than an undisclosed location stripped of all authority to further damage the country we love.
Dick Cheney has been a malevolent force on the checks and balances of American government for over six years. He has subverted government processes to lead us into this tragedy in Iraq, and is now seeking to do the same with Iran. Two countries, mind you, he did business with while CEO of Halliburton.
We are at an important moment in American history. For if we don’t take action in light of the High Crimes and Misdemeanors committed by one Richard Cheney, we might as well throw the word away. Because there will never be a time when it is more justified.
14 representatives already support H. Res 333, the articles of Impeachment against Dick Cheney. Your signatures will be used to get other House members to to sign on. We are working with a substantial and growing coalition led by Democrats.com and AfterDowningStreet.org.
Let’s make this travesty a turning point in our history. Please join us in restoring democratic principles to our government by IMPEACHING DICK CHENEY.
Flynt Leverett worked as a senior director for Middle East affairs at the National Security Council, the NSC, and he was a CIA analyst.
http://representativepress.blogspot.comThe Bush Administration has committed fraud before. See background information on the fraud committed by the Bush Administration to get us into the Iraq War:
The Problem Was Not “Faulty Intelligence,” the Problem Was Dishonestly Selecting And Omitting Intelligence.
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