Category Archives: US government

NEWS: Torture and forced confessions

Second court ruling redacts information about interrogation
By Dan Eggen, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The FBI interviewer allegedly gave Abdallah Higazy a choice: Admit to having a special pilot’s radio in a hotel room near the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, or the security service in his native Egypt would give his family “hell.” Higazy responded by confessing to a crime he didn’t commit.

“I knew I couldn’t prove my innocence, and I knew my family was in danger,” Higazy said later. “. . . If I say this device is mine, I’m screwed and my family is going to be safe. If I say this device is not mine, I’m screwed and my family’s in danger. And Agent [Michael] Templeton made it quite clear that ‘cooperate’ had to mean saying something else other than this device is not mine.”

The new details about the FBI’s allegedly aggressive tactics in the Higazy case were included in a ruling briefly issued last week by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit [PDF], which reinstated a civil lawsuit brought by Higazy against the FBI and Templeton. In an unusual move, however, the appeals court withdrew the first opinion within minutes on Thursday and issued a second opinion Friday, with the details of Higazy’s allegations removed.

“This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are under seal,” the new ruling reads. “For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton did not contest that Higazy’s statements were coerced.” Such redactions are imperfect in the Web age, and the original document remains accessible through links on sites and blogs devoted to appellate-court and legal issues.

Higazy was jailed for a month as a suspected accomplice to the World Trade Center attack, until a pilot showed up and asked for his radio back. The fresh details about his interrogation in December 2001 illustrate how an innocent man can be persuaded to confess to a crime that he did not commit, and the lengths to which the FBI was willing to go in its terrorism-related investigations after the Sept. 11 attacks. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — As this report says, the ruling was briefly issued, but much as the US government might wish otherwise, once something goes out onto the Web, it’s too late to redact the embarrasing details. They can all be read here: Higazy v. Millenium Hotel [PDF]

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NEWS: The terrorists under the bed

Terror watch list swells to more than 755,000
By Mimi Hall, USA Today, October 24, 2007

The government’s terrorist watch list has swelled to more than 755,000 names, according to a new government report that has raised worries about the list’s effectiveness.

The size of the list, typically used to check people entering the country through land border crossings, airports and sea ports, has been growing by 200,000 names a year since 2004. Some lawmakers, security experts and civil rights advocates warn that it will become useless if it includes too many people.

“It undermines the authority of the list,” says Lisa Graves of the Center for National Security Studies. “There’s just no rational, reasonable estimate that there’s anywhere close to that many suspected terrorists.”

The exact number of people on the list, compiled after 9/11 to help government agents keep terrorists out of the country, is unclear, according to the report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). Some people may be on the list more than once because they are listed under multiple spellings. [complete article]

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NEWS: The biggest spender since LBJ

Bush is the biggest spender since LBJ
By David Lightman, McClatchy, October 24, 2007

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he’s arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

The numbers are clear, credible and conclusive, added David Keating, the executive director of the Club for Growth, a budget-watchdog group.

“He’s a big spender,” Keating said. “No question about it.”

Take almost any yardstick and Bush generally exceeds the spending of his predecessors. [complete article]

Wars may cost $2.4 trillion over decade
AP, October 24, 2007

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could cost as much as $2.4 trillion through the next decade, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said Wednesday. The White House brushed off the analysis as “speculation.”

The estimate was the most comprehensive and far-reaching one to date. It factored in costs previously not counted and assumed that large number of forces would remain in the regions.

According to analysis, the U.S. has spent about $604 billion on the wars, including $39 billion in diplomatic operations and foreign aid.

If the U.S. were to reduce the number of troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to 75,000 six years from now, it would cost the U.S. $1 trillion more for military and diplomatic operations and $705 billion in interest payments to pay for the wars through 2017. [complete article]

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NEWS: Waxman’s on the job

White House feels Waxman’s oversight gaze
By Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

For months, Rep. Henry A. Waxman, chairman of the House oversight committee, has been threatening, subpoenaing and just plain badgering Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to come before his panel to answer questions about the run-up to the Iraq war, corruption and State Department contracting.

Today, Rice will finally appear. But Waxman (D-Calif.) has not spent the week on a victory lap. He has found time to produce evidence accusing State Department security contractor Blackwater Worldwide of tax evasion, to fire off a letter to Rice demanding information about alleged mismanagement of a $1 billion contract to train Iraqi police, and to hold a hearing on uranium poisoning on Navajo land.

Waxman has become the Bush administration’s worst nightmare: a Democrat in the majority with subpoena power and the inclination to overturn rocks. But in Waxman the White House also faces an indefatigable capital veteran — with a staff renowned for its depth and experience — who has been waiting for this for 14 years. [complete article]

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NEWS: Blackwater fallout

State Dept. ousts its chief of security
By Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, October 25, 2007

The State Department’s security chief was forced to resign yesterday after a critical review found that his office had failed to adequately supervise private contractors protecting U.S. diplomats in Iraq.

Richard J. Griffin, a former Secret Service agent who was once in charge of presidential protection, was told by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, John D. Negroponte, to leave office by Nov. 1. Griffin’s chief deputy, Gregory B. Starr, will become acting assistant secretary for diplomatic security.

Griffin is the first senior official to lose his job over the widening private-contractor scandal. Under fire from Congress, the U.S. military and the Iraqi government after the Sept. 16 contractor killing of 17 Iraqi civilians, Rice on Tuesday ordered extensive changes in diplomatic security arrangements in Iraq and pledged stronger oversight. A high-level panel she appointed to review the Iraq operation recommended Griffin’s departure along with the other changes, according to State Department sources. [complete article]

Under siege, Blackwater takes on air of bunker
By Paul von Zielbauer and James Glanz, New York Times, October 25, 2007

The Blackwater USA compound here is a fortress within a fortress. Surrounded by a 25-foot-high wall of concrete topped by a chain-link fence and razor wire, the compound sits deep inside the heavily defended Green Zone, its two points of entry guarded by Colombian Army veterans carrying shotguns and automatic rifles.

In the mazelike interior, Blackwater employees live in trailers stacked one on top of the other in surroundings that one employee likens to a “minimum-security prison.”

Since Sept. 16, when Blackwater guards opened fire in a crowded Baghdad square, the compound has begun to feel more like a prison, too. On that day, employees of Blackwater, a private security firm hired to protect American diplomats, responded to what they called a threat and killed as many as 17 people and wounded 24. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The ambiguous missile threat

Administration diverges on missile defense
By Michael Abramowitz and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, October 24, 2007

President Bush said yesterday that a missile defense system is urgently needed in Europe to guard against a possible attack on U.S. allies by Iran, while Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested that the United States could delay activating such a system until there is “definitive proof” of such a threat.

The seemingly contrasting messages came as the Bush administration grappled with continuing Russian protests over Washington’s plan to deploy elements of a missile defense system in Eastern Europe. The Kremlin considers the program a potential threat to its own nuclear deterrent and has sought to play down any threat from Iran. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s always struck me as odd and transparently contradictory for the Bush administration to push the line that missile defense is essential for protection against Iran and at the same time to assert that Iran will never be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. But it now sounds like Gates is trying to inject an element of rationality into the equation — no doubt Bush and Cheney will regard his suggestion — that their policies should be commanded by reason — as an act of subordination.

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NEWS: Use of contractors by State Dept. has soared

Use of contractors by State Dept. has soared
By John M. Broder and David Rohde, New York Times, October 24, 2007

Over the past four years, the amount of money the State Department pays to private security and law enforcement contractors has soared to nearly $4 billion a year from $1 billion, administration officials said Tuesday, but they said that the department had added few new officials to oversee the contracts.

It was the first time that the administration had outlined the ballooning scope of the contracts, and it provided a new indication of how the State Department’s efforts to monitor private companies had not kept pace. Auditors and outside exerts say the results have been vast cost overruns, poor contract performance and, in some cases, violence that has so far gone unpunished.

A vast majority of the money goes to companies like DynCorp International and Blackwater USA to protect diplomats overseas, train foreign police forces and assist in drug eradication programs. There are only 17 contract compliance officers at the State Department’s management bureau overseeing spending of the billions of dollars on these programs, officials said. [complete article]

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NEWS: U.S. tax dollars at work

2 reports assail State Dept. role in Iraq security
By Eric Schmitt and David Rodhe, New York Times, October 23, 2007

A pair of new reports have delivered sharply critical judgments about the State Department’s performance in overseeing work done by the private companies that the government relies on increasingly in Iraq and Afghanistan to carry out delicate security work and other missions.

A State Department review of its own security practices in Iraq assails the department for poor coordination, communication, oversight and accountability involving armed security companies like Blackwater USA, according to people who have been briefed on the report. In addition to Blackwater, the State Department’s two other security contractors in Iraq are DynCorp International and Triple Canopy.

At the same time, a government audit expected to be released Tuesday says that records documenting the work of DynCorp, the State Department’s largest contractor, are in such disarray that the department cannot say “specifically what it received” for most of the $1.2 billion it has paid the company since 2004 to train the police officers in Iraq. [complete article]

Bush’s request for wars increases to $196 billion
By Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, October 23, 2007

President Bush asked Congress on Monday to approve $196 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and other national security programs, setting the stage for a new confrontation with Democrats over the administration’s handling of Iraq.

Mr. Bush’s request increased the amount of the proposed spending by $46 billion over the $150 billion already requested this year. Much of the added spending would pay for new armored vehicles designed to withstand attacks by mines and roadside bombs, and a rise in operational costs because of the increase in the force in Iraq, now at more than 160,000 troops. [complete article]

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NEWS: Mukasey faces tough questions on torture

Mukasey faces tough questions on torture
By Philip Shenon, New York Times, October 19, 2007

President Bush’s nominee for attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey, declined today to say if he considered harsh interrogation techniques like waterboarding, which simulates drowning, to constitute torture or to be illegal if used on terrorism suspects.

On the second day of confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mr. Mukasey went further than he had the day before in arguing that the White House had constitutional authority to act beyond the limits of laws passed by Congress, especially when it came to questions of national defense.

He suggested that both the Bush administration’s eavesdropping program and its use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects, including waterboarding, may be acceptable under the Constitution even if they go beyond what the law technically allows. Mr. Mukasey said the president’s authority as commander in chief may allow him to supersede laws written by Congress. [complete article]

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NEWS: Secret CIA jail for terror suspects on British island

Claims of secret CIA jail for terror suspects on British island to be investigated
By Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, October 19, 2007

Allegations that the CIA held al-Qaida suspects for interrogation at a secret prison on sovereign British territory are to be investigated by MPs, the Guardian has learned. The all-party foreign affairs committee is to examine long-standing suspicions that the agency has operated one of its so-called “black site” prisons on Diego Garcia, the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean that is home to a large US military base.

Lawyers from Reprieve, a legal charity that represents a number of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, including several former British residents, are calling on the committee to question US and British officials about the allegations. According to the organisation’s submission to the committee, the UK government is “potentially systematically complicit in the most serious crimes against humanity of disappearance, torture and prolonged incommunicado detention”.

Clive Stafford Smith, the charity’s legal director, said he was “absolutely and categorically certain” that prisoners have been held on the island. “If the foreign affairs committee approaches this thoroughly, they will get to the bottom of it,” he said. [complete article]

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NEWS: How the Bush administration is soft on crime

Justice Dept.’s focus has shifted
By Dan Eggen and John Solomon, Washington Post, October 17, 2007

From 2000 to 2006… there were large drops in the number of defendants related to environmental offenses (down 12 percent), organized crime (38 percent), white-collar crime (10 percent), bank robbery (18 percent) and bankruptcy fraud (46 percent), according to Justice Department statistics provided this week to The Washington Post. Money-laundering prosecutions related to drugs were also down nearly 25 percent, while the number of drug cases overall was stagnant.

There were simultaneous jumps in prosecutions related to immigration (up 36 percent), weapons cases (87 percent), official corruption (15 percent), and, most dramatically, terrorism and national security cases (876 percent). Indeed, Justice Department funds devoted to counterterrorism programs in Washington have tripled since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Department officials say the surge in resources for national security and terrorism probes, in particular, reflects the intense administration efforts to prevent another attack. But the number of terrorism-related defendants has been relatively small: Prosecutions peaked at 818 in 2003 and fell to 635 by 2006, and most of these were not for terrorist acts or plans. [complete article]

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OPINION: The U.S. has reached its limit

The real Iraq we knew
By 12 former Army captains, Washington Post, October 16, 2007

Today marks five years since the authorization of military force in Iraq, setting Operation Iraqi Freedom in motion. Five years on, the Iraq war is as undermanned and under-resourced as it was from the start. And, five years on, Iraq is in shambles.

As Army captains who served in Baghdad and beyond, we’ve seen the corruption and the sectarian division. We understand what it’s like to be stretched too thin. And we know when it’s time to get out. [complete article]

‘Many in the US military think Bush and Cheney are out of control’
An interview with Gabriel Kolko, Der Spiegel, October 15, 2007

Many in the American military have learned the fundamental dilemma of modern warfare: More money and better weapons don’t mean that you win. IEDs, which cost so little to make, are defeating a military which spends billions of dollars per month. IEDS are so adaptable that each new strategy developed by the United States to counter them is answered by the Iraqi insurgents. The Israelis were also never quite able to counter IEDs. One report quotes an Israeli military engineer who said the Israeli answer to IEDs was frequently the use of armored bulldozers to effectively rip away the top 18 inches of pavement and earth where explosive devices might be hidden. This is fantastic, as the cost of winning means destroying roads, which form the basis of a modern economy.[complete article]

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NEWS: Turkish-U.S. ties threatened

Turkish general warns of irreversible damage to U.S. ties if genocide resolution passes
AP, October 14, 2007

Turkey’s top general warned that ties with the U.S., already strained by attacks from rebels hiding in Iraq, will be irreversibly damaged if Congress passes a resolution that labels the World War I-era killings of Armenians a genocide.

Turkey, which is a major cargo hub for U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, has recalled its ambassador to Washington for consultations and warned that there might be a cut in the logistical support to the U.S. over the issue. [complete article]

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FEATURE: The Pentagon plans for a new hundred years’ war

Slum fights
By Nick Turse, Tom Dispatch, October 11, 2007

Duane Schattle doesn’t mince words. “The cities are the problem,” he says. A retired Marine infantry lieutenant colonel who worked on urban warfare issues at the Pentagon in the late 1990s, he now serves as director of the Joint Urban Operations Office at U.S. Joint Forces Command. He sees the war in the streets of Iraq’s cities as the prototype for tomorrow’s battlespace. “This is the next fight,” he warns. “The future of warfare is what we see now.”

He isn’t alone. “We think urban is the future,” says James Lasswell, a retired colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. “Everything worth fighting for is in the urban environment.” And Wayne Michael Hall, a retired Army brigadier general and the senior intelligence advisor in Schattle’s operation, has a similar assessment, “We will be fighting in urban terrain for the next hundred years.”

Last month, in a hotel nestled behind a medical complex in Washington, D.C., Schattle, Lasswell, and Hall, along with Pentagon power-brokers, active duty and retired U.S. military personnel, foreign coalition partners, representatives of big and small defense contractors, and academics who support their work gathered for a “Joint Urban Operations, 2007” conference. Some had served in Iraq or Afghanistan; others were involved in designing strategy, tactics, and concepts, or in creating new weaponry and equipment, for the urban wars in those countries. And here, in this hotel conference center, they’re talking about military technologies of a sort you’ve only seen in James Cameron’s 2000-2002 television series Dark Angel. [complete article]

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Is the CIA trying to cover its tracks or avoid a set up?

CIA internal inquiry troubling, lawmaker says
By Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, New York Times, October 12, 2007

The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee said today he was troubled by reports that the director of the Central Intelligence Agency has ordered an unusual internal inquiry into the work of the agency’s inspector general, whose aggressive investigations of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation programs and other matters have created resentment among agency operatives.

Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, noted in a statement that the law guarantees the independence of the inspector general. “It is this independence that Congress established and will very aggressively preserve,” Mr. Reyes said. “The initiation of this investigation, if accurately reported, is troubling.”

Mr. Reyes was reacting to reports that a small team working for the C.I.A. director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, was looking into the conduct of the agency’s watchdog office, which is led by Inspector General John L. Helgerson. Current and former government officials said the review had caused anxiety and anger in Mr. Helgerson’s office and aroused concern on Capitol Hill that it posed a conflict of interest.

The review is particularly focused on complaints that Mr. Helgerson’s office has not acted as a fair and impartial judge of agency operations but instead has begun a crusade against those who have participated in controversial detention programs. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Sounds like there are grounds for suspicion on all sides here. Undermining the IG’s independence stinks, but at the same time, a purported crusade against the CIA’s torturers could instead actually be a preemptive move initiated by the White House to line up some scapegoats-in-waiting to save Bush and Cheney from being charged with war crimes. Call it a search for the CIA’s Lynndie England and Charles Graner, even if the agency will have a much harder time portraying its interogators as witless subordinates.

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NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Beware the principles of Congress

Worried Iraqi officials urge calm as Turkish-Kurdish conflict escalates
By Joshua Partlow, Washington Post, October 11, 2007

Turkish armed forces’ escalation of bombing and shelling in northern Iraq, along with threats of a broad ground incursion across the border, has alarmed and surprised Iraqi officials, who say the problems Turkey faces from rebel groups can be solved peacefully through diplomacy.

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said officials in his government are preparing to get parliamentary approval for a cross-border military operation aimed at disrupting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, a guerrilla group that operates on both sides of the border. [complete article]

Righteousness before realism
By Simon Tisdall, The Guardian, October 11, 2007

Imperial delusions die hard – and once again the US Congress is trying to legislate for the world. As most Turks see it, this week’s committee vote in the House of Representatives accusing Turkey of genocide against the Armenians in 1915-17 is an insulting, gratuitous interference in their sovereign affairs. As the 27 Democrats and Republicans who backed the bill see it, it is a matter of putting the world to rights, according to America’s lights.

Congress has a long history of extraterritorial meddling. It regularly slaps unilateral sanctions on “rogue” governments, and orders foreign businesses and individuals to obey its strictures, regardless of nationality. Its attempts to direct US foreign policy are resisted by the executive branch to varying degrees. On Cuba, Venezuela, Iran and Israel, White House and legislature mostly agree. On Turkey, like Iraq, they are at noisy loggerheads.

“We oppose the bill. We think it is a bad idea that will do nothing to improve Turkish-Armenian relations. It will not do anything to advance American interests,” Daniel Fried, assistant secretary for Eurasian affairs, told Turkish television this week. President Bush, the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and defence secretary, Robert Gates, all chimed in. They even mobilised all former living US secretaries of state in joint opposition, but to no avail. It was a measure of the lame-duck president’s chronic weakness. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s often said that politics is all about timing. Some members of Congress might think this is a perfect time to win a few Armenian-American votes. But really, in 2007 the United States Congress decides it’s time to recognize the Armenian genocide from 1915-17?

Turkey has just recalled its ambassador in protest, a billion dollars worth of Boeing defense contracts now hang in the balance, and while the US asks Turkey not to invade Iraq who in Ankara is now likely to listen?

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Accounting for Blackwater

Blackwater case highlights legal uncertainties
By Alissa J. Rubin and Paul von Zielbauer, New York Times, October 11, 2007

Roughly 100,000 American contractors are working in Iraq, but there has yet to be a prosecution for a single incident of violence, according to Scott Horton, a specialist in the law of armed conflict who teaches at Columbia University.

“Imagine a town of 100,000 people, and there hasn’t been a prosecution in three years,” Mr. Horton said. “How do you justify the fact that you aren’t addressing this?”

One remedy is not being discussed: the State Department can waive immunity for contractors and let the case be tried in the Iraqi courts under Order 17, which is the section of the Transitional Administrative Law approved in 2004 that gives contractors immunity.

L. Paul Bremer III, who supervised the drafting of the immunity order as administrator of the United States occupation authority, said: “The immunity is not absolute. The order requires contractors to respect all Iraqi laws, so it’s not a blanket immunity.” [complete article]

See also, State Dept. may phase out Blackwater (AP).

Editor’s Comment — While the moral, legal, and political dimensions of the Blackwater story have been given most attention, the other part to which there are merely allusions is Blackwater as an expression of American culture. Yet the fantasies being lived out by that these “GI Joe-looking guys” — “They think they’re bloody Rambo!” — are not simply products of youthful imagination. Blackwater’s Iraqi rampage has been inspired as much, if not more, by Hollywood as by 9/11 and a Pentagon addicted to outsourcing.

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ANALYSIS: Selling death and destruction

Arms sales: How the U.S. is not winning friends
By Zia Mian, Asia Times, October 12, 2007

The United States sells death and destruction as a fundamental instrument of its foreign policy. It sees arms sales as a way of making and keeping strategic friends and tying countries more directly to US military planning and operations.

At its simplest, as Lt Gen Jeffrey B Kohler, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, told the New York Times in 2006, the United States likes arms deals because “it gives us access and influence and builds friendships”. South Asia has been an important arena for this effort, and it teaches some lessons the United States should not ignore.

A recent Congressional Research Service report on international arms sales records that last year the United States delivered nearly $8 billion worth of weapons to Third World countries. This was about 40% of all such arms transfers. The US also signed agreements to sell over $10 billion worth of weapons, one-third of all arms deals with Third World countries. [complete article]

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