Category Archives: War on Terrorism

NEWS & ANALYSIS: Pakistan says no (again) to foreign troops; Pakistan’s ethnic faultlines

Pakistan says won’t let in foreign troops
By Zeeshan Haider, Reuters, January 7, 2008

Pakistan will not allow any country to conduct military operations on its territory, officials said on Monday, rejecting a report that said the United States was considering authorising its forces to act in Pakistan.

The New York Times said on Sunday the U.S. government was considering expanding the authority of the CIA and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in Pakistan.

The U.S. officials considering the move were concerned over intelligence reports that al Qaeda and the Taliban were more intent on destabilising Pakistan, the newspaper said.

Pakistani government and military officials dismissed the report and said Pakistan would not permit any such action.

“Pakistan’s position in the war on terror has been very clear — that any action on Pakistani soil will be taken only by Pakistani forces and Pakistani security agencies,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Sadiq.

“No other country will be allowed to carry out operations in Pakistan. This has been conveyed at the highest level,” he said. [complete article]

Waziristan: the hub of al-Qaida operations
By Declan Walsh in Islamabad and Allegra Stratton, The Guardian, January 7, 2008

The killing of eight tribal elders involved in peace negotiations in the Waziristan region of Pakistan is the first flash of violence in the area for about six months.

The bloodshed unfolded in a series of attacks between Sunday night and Monday morning around Wana, the lawless capital which is a hotbed of al-Qaida linked violence.

The Pakistani military reported attacks on two “peace committee” offices in Wana and the nearby Shikai Valley, a rugged mountain retreat where soldiers discovered a network of al-Qaida safehouses in 2005.

The bloodletting underscores the collapse of government authority in Waziristan, where 100,000 troops are deployed, and the perils run by those engaged in controversial efforts to broker peace between the government and well-armed militants. [complete article]

Strains intensify in Pakistan’s ethnic patchwork
By Griff Witte, Washington Post, January 7, 2008

To Khaled Chema, an unemployed 32-year-old living in a sprawling slum of this mega-city by the sea, Benazir Bhutto wasn’t assassinated because she opposed extremism and advocated democracy. She was killed because, like him, she was a Sindhi.

And just as her father did before her, Bhutto died a long way from home — in the back yard of the Punjabi establishment. Her assassination has inflamed long-simmering resentments among ethnic minorities toward the dominant Punjabis.

In Pakistan — a federation of four provinces, each associated with a different ethnic group — the issue of ethnic identity has long been troublesome, imperiling the unity of the state.

In Baluchistan, many people are in open revolt. Pashtuns in North-West Frontier Province have joined their clansmen on the Afghan side of the border in a bloody insurgency against both governments.

Now, Bhutto’s assassination in Rawalpindi, a key city in Punjab province and the home of the military, has endangered the uneasy balance in which Sindhis suppressed their ethnic-nationalist desires because they knew that one of their own was among the most popular politicians in the country. [complete article]

OPINION: Fighting terrorism with terrorists

Fighting terrorism with terrorists
By Joshua Kurlantzick, Los Angeles Times, January 6, 2008

In the fall of 2002, the Indonesian island of Bali, once known for its luscious beaches and vibrant Hindu culture, became synonymous with terror and radicalism. After a massive bombing in Bali’s nightclub district killed more than 200 people, the world suddenly realized what many locals had known for years: Indonesia, the largest Muslim nation on Earth, faced a serious internal terror threat.

Even before the Bali attack, Indonesia had suffered a wave of bombings in the winter of 2000, and earlier that year someone had bombed the Jakarta Stock Exchange. The Al Qaeda affiliate Jemaah Islamiah was actively recruiting across the archipelago, establishing radical schools to train a young generation of jihadis and planning attacks in Indonesia and throughout the region, including in the Philippines and Thailand.

But today, Indonesia has become a far different kind of example. Even as terrorism continues to grow more common in nations from Pakistan to Algeria, Indonesia is heading in the opposite direction, destroying its internal terrorist networks and winning the broader public battle against radicalism. And it has done so not only by cracking heads but by using a softer, innovative plan that employs former jihadis to wean radicals away from terror. [complete article]

NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The new Cambodia?

U.S. considers new covert push within Pakistan
By Steven Lee Myers, David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, New York Times, January 6, 2008

President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — It’s never enough just to know what was said; we need to know who was talking.

This is a report that illustrates well the need for newspapers to limit their use of anonymous sources. The key to unlocking the article’s significance is knowing who was talking to the New York Times. On that basis we could attempt to understand the sources’ motives for making this information public. For instance, if the sources are intelligence officials we’d have reason to think they might be talking to the press in an effort to kill a harebrained plan before it gains momentum. If on the other hand the sources are inside the White House, then we’d have to wonder whether a political agenda was trumping the need for operational security. Myers, Sanger, and Schmitt should know the answer, but of course their sacred duty to protect the confidentiality of their sources prevents them from adding meaning that currently only they are in a position to discern. Still, why call it reporting if the reporter is only willing to tell part of the story?

What’s more important? That the New York Times is able to protect the privilege of its access to those in power, or that it uses all its means to hold those in power accountable to the people they represent?

Since the Grey Lady is so firmly wedded to its institutional authority, what can we do but go back to parsing the Times as though we were reading Pravda.

This is what I’m able to glean. President Bush, who was in the White House on Friday, did not attend the meeting. The key players at the meeting are named in the article and since they didn’t include Bush, it seems reasonable to infer he wasn’t there. Too busy? We do know for sure that Defense Secretary Gates wasn’t there, so it looks like this was Cheney’s meeting.

Midway through the article, our steely reporters toss in an idle piece of speculation about why the discussions in the White House were taking place: “In part, the White House discussions may be driven by a desire for another effort to capture or kill Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri.” Does this mean that the Times was told by its sources, this was the main reason for the discussions, but you can’t attribute that to your sources, or was this just some journalistic day-dreaming? Let’s assume the former. And if that’s the case, this discussion may have more to do with domestic American politics than a desire to bring stability to Pakistan.

Perhaps the most revealing lines in the report are these: “The Bush administration has not formally presented any new proposals to Mr. Musharraf, who gave up his military role last month, or to his successor as the army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who the White House thinks will be more sympathetic to the American position than Mr. Musharraf…. But at the White House and the Pentagon, officials see an opportunity in the changing power structure for the Americans to advocate for the expanded authority [of the CIA] in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country.” In this changing power structure, the administration’s focus remains unchanged: its interest in working more closely with Pakistan’s military than with its civilians. At the same time, the administration appears to want to communicate indirectly with Pakistan’s military by getting its ideas floated in the press. Is this a case of putting the word out to see if it provokes civil unrest?

It’s starting to sound like Cheney might be on the war path again. Iran is off the table, but maybe Pakistan will provide the CIA with an opportunity to help the administration pull its chestnuts out of the fire before November ’08. If they haul in or kill America’s most-wanted men, the presidential race might be nudged back onto national security, and maybe Bush and Cheney won’t go down in history as the men who destroyed the Republican Party.

Could Pakistan go up in flames in the process, al Qaeda’s leaders elude capture and the war in Afghanistan expand into a full-fledged regional war? These are all risks the vice president might be willing to take.

But I digress. The reporters at Pravda — I mean the Times — could do a bit more to enlighten us, couldn’t they?

EDITORIAL: The vanishing facade of democracy

The vanishing facade of democracy
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, January 2, 2008

The undemocratic tendencies of Pervez Musharraf have never deeply offended President Bush. Even after declaring a state of emergency, firing the Supreme Court and jailing most of his political opponents, Bush claimed that, “truly,” Musharraf was “somebody who believes in democracy.” Bush, on the other hand, is somebody who truly believes in loyalty. This is the glue that holds together the edifice of his own power. Musharraf might be Bush’s most dangerous friend but the fear of what might happen if the general feels betrayed indicates why, in the name of democracy, the president has so far only asked his friend to set aside his military uniform but not relinquish the presidency.

According to Bruce Riedel, former CIA officer, National Security Council staff member and now a Brookings fellow, when Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte went to Islamabad in September, “he basically delivered a message to Musharraf that we would stand by him, but he needed a democratic facade on the government, and we thought Benazir was the right choice for that face.”

The message from the Bush administration to Musharraf over the last seven years has been consistent: the appearance of democracy (or at least the promise of democracy) is more important than democracy itself.

Now, after it turns out that democracy will need a new face in Pakistan, we learn from Bhutto’s aides, that there is damning evidence that Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency, have been busy laying the groundwork for rigging the upcoming parliamentary elections. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has prepared a detailed report that Benazir Bhutto herself planned to share with two members of Congress in a meeting due to take place the day she was assassinated. The PPP trusted Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican, and Democratic Congressman Patrick Kennedy, rather than representatives from the Bush administration which they regard as too closely aligned with Musharraf. From The Independent we learn that:

The report compiled by the PPP apparently includes information on an alleged “safehouse” being run by the ISI in a neighbourhood of Islamabad called G-5, from which the rigging operation was run. “It was compiled from sources within the [intelligence] services who were working directly with Benazir Bhutto,” said Mr Lashari [a member of the PPP election monitoring cell].

The report names a recently retired ISI officer who has allegedly been running the rigging unit and claims he worked in tandem with another named senior intelligence officer. It also claims that US aid funds were being used for the projects.

At the heart of the scheme, the report says, was a project in which ballot papers – stamped in favour of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q), which supports Mr Musharraf – were to be produced by the intelligence agencies in about 100 constituencies. Mr Lashari said the effort was directed at constituencies where the result was likely to be decided by a small margin, so it would not be obvious. “They diverted money from aid activities. We had evidence of where they were spending the money,” he added.

Is it possible that the Bush administration already knew of, or had received intimations that Musharaff’s intelligence services had such a scheme in operation? Even before Bhutto’s assassination and while expectations of vote rigging remained high, the administration had no qualms about sending an assistant secretary of state up to Capitol Hill to assert in the face of deep skepticism that, “I do think they can have a good election. They can have a credible election. They can have a transparent election and a fair election.”

The aroma of complicity (which it should be noted necessitates neither foreknowledge, nor support, but simply acquiescence) is perhaps evident in the way Washington responded to Bhutto’s assassination. First came the chorus that this was the dastardly work of al Qaeda, or one of its allies, the Taliban leader, Baitullah Meshud, who is effectively the Amir of South Waziristan. Then some intelligence sources started pulling back from that line and instead suggested that this was the work of al Qaeda infiltrators in the lower echelons of Pakistan’s intelligence services. What no administration official was willing to concede was that the jihadists might in this instance have been acting as minions for high-ranking intelligence officers.

Ever since 9/11, President Bush has been a captive of his own for-us-or-against-us logic when it comes to dealing with Pervez Musharraf. If Musharraf could not be painted as an ally, the risks of turning him into an enemy seemed too daunting to contemplate. In Musharraf’s hands, nuclear deterrence became a principle with new meaning as it served to deter threats to a regime rather than a state.

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal continues to protect Musharraf’s power for as long as Washington is paralyzed by the fear that nuclear material could slip out of his control and fall into the hands of al Qaeda. What Bush wants us to view as the Musharraf nuclear insurance policy is in fact a nuclear protection racket. Fearful of the mayhem that the boss’ removal might unleash, we have funneled billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan’s military, no strings attached, all in the tenuous name of keeping the neighborhood safe.

To those with a firm grasp on power, democracy must always appear risky and threatening. Democracy necessarily entails the dispersal of power and challenges the claims of those who would make themselves the guardians of power. Yet the pledge that all such guardians effectively make with the people they claim to be serving amounts to this: Trust me, because I can’t trust you.

OPINION: The presidency of outlaws

Looking at America
Editorial, New York Times, December 31, 2007

In the years since 9/11, we have seen American soldiers abuse, sexually humiliate, torment and murder prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq. A few have been punished, but their leaders have never been called to account. We have seen mercenaries gun down Iraqi civilians with no fear of prosecution. We have seen the president, sworn to defend the Constitution, turn his powers on his own citizens, authorizing the intelligence agencies to spy on Americans, wiretapping phones and intercepting international e-mail messages without a warrant.

We have read accounts of how the government’s top lawyers huddled in secret after the attacks in New York and Washington and plotted ways to circumvent the Geneva Conventions — and both American and international law — to hold anyone the president chose indefinitely without charges or judicial review.

Those same lawyers then twisted other laws beyond recognition to allow Mr. Bush to turn intelligence agents into torturers, to force doctors to abdicate their professional oaths and responsibilities to prepare prisoners for abuse, and then to monitor the torment to make sure it didn’t go just a bit too far and actually kill them.

The White House used the fear of terrorism and the sense of national unity to ram laws through Congress that gave law-enforcement agencies far more power than they truly needed to respond to the threat — and at the same time fulfilled the imperial fantasies of Vice President Dick Cheney and others determined to use the tragedy of 9/11 to arrogate as much power as they could. [complete article]

Stonewalled by the CIA
By Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, New York Times, January 2, 2008

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

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

There could have been absolutely no doubt in the mind of anyone at the C.I.A. — or the White House — of the commission’s interest in any and all information related to Qaeda detainees involved in the 9/11 plot. Yet no one in the administration ever told the commission of the existence of videotapes of detainee interrogations. [complete article]

Judgement and torture
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 30, 2007

The Administration has launched what Laura Rozen recently termed “Operation Stop Talking,” a program designed to insure that all intelligence officers and former officers maintain complete silence about what transpired with these tapes. This has included some very heavy handed measures, including an FBI investigation targeting John Kiriakou. My own sources tell me that Rozen’s reporting is right on the money about this—the word has been put out that any one allowing further information to slip out, or corroborating Kiriakou’s account, can expect severe retribution. And what is the objective of this extraordinary public relations project? Again, the aspect of Kiriakou’s remarks that gave rise to it was his detailed depiction of the Justice Department’s and the White House’s role in the entire process.

The Bush Administration’s containment strategy for this matter is very clear: it was a CIA affair, start to finish. The decision to make and destroy the tapes came down in the ranks of the CIA. Other agencies and particularly the White House were uninvolved. Yes, there will be a scapegoat offered up. [complete article]

NEWS: The CIA’s tireless effort to protect itself — and others

Tapes by CIA lived and died to save image
By Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 30, 2007

If Abu Zubaydah, a senior operative of Al Qaeda, died in American hands, Central Intelligence Agency officers pursuing the terrorist group knew that much of the world would believe they had killed him.

So in the spring of 2002, even as the intelligence officers flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins Hospital to treat Abu Zubaydah, who had been shot three times during his capture in Pakistan, they set up video cameras to record his every moment: asleep in his cell, having his bandages changed, being interrogated.

In fact, current and former intelligence officials say, the agency’s every action in the prolonged drama of the interrogation videotapes was prompted in part by worry about how its conduct might be perceived — by Congress, by prosecutors, by the American public and by Muslims worldwide.

That worry drove the decision to begin taping interrogations — and to stop taping just months later, after the treatment of prisoners began to include waterboarding. And it fueled the nearly three-year campaign by the agency’s clandestine service for permission to destroy the tapes, culminating in a November 2005 destruction order from the service’s director, Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. [complete article]

NEWS: Refusing to condone torture

Navy JAG resigns over torture issue
McClatchy, December 27, 2007

“It was with sadness that I signed my name this grey morning to a letter resigning my commission in the U.S. Navy,” wrote Gig Harbor, Wash., resident and attorney-at-law Andrew Williams in a letter to The Peninsula Gateway last week. “There was a time when I served with pride … Sadly, no more.”

Williams’ sadness stems from the recent CIA videotape scandal in which tapes showing secret interrogations of two Al Qaeda operatives were destroyed.

The tapes may have contained evidence that the U.S. government used a type of torture known as waterboarding to obtain information from suspected terrorists.

Torture, including water-boarding, is prohibited under the treaties of the Geneva Convention.

It was in the much-publicized interview two weeks ago between Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, who is the chief legal adviser at the Pentagon’s Office of Military Commissions, that led Williams to resign. [complete article]

OPINION: Replacing Bhutto

The dangerous void left behind
By Ahmed Rashid, Washington Post, December 28, 2007

[Benazir Bhutto’s] longest-running battle was not with the extremists but with the army, whose leaders never trusted her. She was too secular, too worldly and perhaps too wise. Bhutto was killed leaving a political rally in Rawalpindi, just two miles from where her father, prime minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, was hanged by another military dictator 30 years ago. The tragedy of the Bhutto family — her brothers also died violently, one poisoned, one shot, and her husband spent seven years in prison — has become part of the saga and struggle by Pakistanis to create a viable democratic, modern state.

Yesterday, her party’s stalwarts were on the streets, accusing Musharraf and the military of perpetrating the latest murder of a Bhutto. That is extremely unlikely, not least because last night the government itself was in despair.

The classic use of a sniper to cut her down as at least one suicide bomber blew up her vehicle bore the hallmarks of a Pakistani suicide squad expertly trained by the al-Qaeda terrorists who are ensconced in northwest Pakistan.

Her death only exacerbates the problems Pakistan has been grappling with for the past few months: how to find a modicum of political stability through a representative government that the army can accept and will not work to undermine, and how to tackle the extremism spreading in the country.

If the elections are canceled, it is imperative that Musharraf drop his single-minded desire for power and establish a national government made up of all the country’s leading politicians and parties. Together, they may agree on how to conduct an orderly election while trying to beat back the specter of extremism that is haunting this benighted land. But Musharraf may not survive the fallout of Bhutto’s death. His actions have not been honorable, and none of the political opposition is willing to sit down with him. It is unlikely that they will accept Musharraf’s continued presidency.

If rioting and political mayhem worsen, if the opposition refuses to cooperate with Musharraf and the United States finally begins to distance itself from him, then the army may be forced to tell Musharraf to call it a day. If that happens, it will be even more imperative that the world supports a national government, elections and a speedy return to civilian rule — and not another military dictatorship. [complete article]

Editor’s note: The following two articles were published a week before Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.

Aitzaz Ahsan replacing Benazir Bhutto in Washington?
By Zaid Hamid, AhmedQuraishi.com, December 20, 2007

The United States is silently patronizing another candidate for the post of Prime Minister or Senate or opposition leader in the next Pakistani parliament.

He is Washington’s ‘back up man’ in Pakistan. He can replace Benazir Bhutto in case she tumbles on the way due to any reason. Aitzaz Ahsan is the next horse Washington and the CIA are betting their future on in Pakistan.

He has so far shown the required defiance to President Musharraf and is well projected within the U.S. administration as well as in the media and liberal society in the country.

Why a ‘back up man’ for Mrs. Bhutto is becoming a necessity for Washington?

The answer is simple.

Mr. Musharraf has scuttled the “conspiracy” to throw him out of power, in which at least the U.S. media played a crucial role. Washington also exerted unbelievable pressures to ease Mr. Musharraf’s supposed replacement, Benazir Bhutto, in power in Islamabad. But that entire plan has been scuttled. And Mr. Musharraf is in fact consolidating his power. He might even end up having enough majority in the next parliament to change the constitution and transform Pakistan into a presidential democracy. From the American standpoint, Musharraf needs to be restrained, since his ouster does not seem possible for the time being.

Mr. Ahsan’s ambitions have extremely offended Mrs. Bhutto and her frustration is so obvious that it is even being noted on the streets. Mr. Ahsan remains part of PPP but the party leader continues to feel seriously threatened by him as he is now the next U.S. candidate to replace her in case she fails to deliver. [complete article]

Can a democrat like Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan answer these questions?
By Ahmed Quraishi, December 20, 2007

Mr. Aitzaz Ahsan, a Pakistani politician turned rights activist, is successfully pandering to an American audience that knows zilch about Pakistan, or about Mr. Ahsan’s own history. He can wow the Americans all he wants, but only we, the ordinary Pakistanis, know Mr. Ahsan’s undemocratic history within his own political party. Welcome again to Pakistan, where the hero-of-the-month is just another feudal politician fighting for his pie. [complete article]

See also, Anti-Bhutto army factions behind murder? (B. Raman), Sharif’s party to boycott elections (AP), and Nawaz Sharif holds Musharraf responsible for Bhutto killing (Indo-Asian News Service).

OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: What can’t be forgotten

Did Bush watch the torture tapes?
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 27, 2007

… the sequence of statements out of the White House is extremely revealing. It started with firm denials, then went silent and then pulled back rather sharply to a “President Bush has no present recollection of having seen the tapes.” This is a formulation frequently used to avoid perjury charges, a sort of way of saying “no” without really saying “no.” In between these statements, two more things unfolded that have a bearing on the question.

The New York Times squarely placed four White House lawyers in the middle of the decision about whether to destroy the tapes—Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, John Bellinger and Harriet Miers. It also reported that at least one of them was strongly advocating destruction. Suspicion immediately fell on the principle mover in support of torture, David Addington.

Second, John Kiriakou clarified his statements about the purpose for which the tapes were made. It was to brief higher ups about the process of the interrogation. Reports persist that one “higher-up” in particular had a special strong interest in knowing the details of the Abu Zubaydah case. His name is George W. Bush.

Are Bush’s denials that he has seen the torture tapes really credible? I don’t think so. [complete article]

See also, Operation stop talking (Laura Rozen).

Editor’s Comment — “I have no recollection” — a non-denial denial — is most likely a lie that could be pried open with just a few questions.

President of the United States is a unique job that includes all sorts of unusual tasks that nevertheless are quite forgettable. “In your daily intelligence briefings, do you remember being warned about imminent attacks by al Qaeda?” How could a president be expected to remember every little detail from every single briefing?

But interrogation videos — images of a man struggling against the sensation of drowning? How much time could George Bush spend watching videos of what amount to mock executions before the routine became something less than memorable? The question isn’t whether Bush remembers seeing videos of suspects being waterboarded; it is whether he believes this is something he could forget.

If the president is less than certain that such a sight is something he would never forget, then he’s apparently a sociopath. If on the other hand he can attest to the fact that, like most normal people, he would find such images unforgettable, then this is one instance where there is no reason for the president to be telling us about the power or frailty of his memory. If the president really has no recollection of seeing videos of waterboarding, he should be able to go one step further and say emphatically that he did not watch the videos. If he can’t deny watching the videos, it’s not because there are limits to his powers of recollection but because he refuses to shine any light on an indelible memory.

“I have no recollection” is not really a non-denial denial. It’s a simple lie.

NEWS: CIA obstructed 9/11 commission inquiry

9/11 panel study finds that CIA withheld tapes
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 22, 2007

A review of classified documents by former members of the Sept. 11 commission shows that the panel made repeated and detailed requests to the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 and 2004 for documents and other information about the interrogation of operatives of Al Qaeda, and were told by a top C.I.A. official that the agency had “produced or made available for review” everything that had been requested.

The review was conducted earlier this month after the disclosure that in November 2005, the C.I.A. destroyed videotapes documenting the interrogations of two Qaeda operatives.

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

In interviews this week, the two chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry. [complete article]

No immediate ruling on judicial inquiry
By David Stout and David Johnston, New York Times, December 22, 2007

A federal judge said Friday that he would not rule immediately on whether to hold a judicial inquiry into the destruction of C.I.A. videotapes that showed the harsh interrogation of two suspected operatives of Al Qaeda. [complete article]

CIA seeks investigation of ex-officer’s claims
By Peter Baker and Joby Warrick, Washington Post, December 21, 2007

The CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate whether a former agency officer illegally disclosed classified information in describing the capture and waterboarding of an al-Qaeda terrorism suspect, officials said yesterday.

In interviews last week with The Washington Post and other news organizations, former CIA officer John Kiriakou discussed details of the capture of Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein alleging that he resisted cooperating with interrogators until he was subjected to waterboarding, which makes a captive believe he is being drowned.

Kiriakou, who participated in the capture of the man commonly known as Abu Zubaida in Pakistan in March 2002, said he did not see the waterboarding but was given details by others who were there. He said waterboarding was effective in Abu Zubaida’s case, though Kiriakou now regards the technique as torture.

Kiriakou’s attorney, Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer whose clients include former CIA employees, said the CIA routinely refers such cases to the Justice Department, though only rarely do the referrals result in criminal charges.

“If they do pursue it, they will open a Pandora’s box that will put the spotlight on whether the interrogations were lawful, and the extent to which they have been fully revealed by federal officials,” Zaid said in an interview. [complete article]

NEWS & OPINION: Pakistan bombing; Qaeda shift; nuclear vulnerabilities

Pakistan bombing toll rises above 50
By Laura King and Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, December 22, 2007

As U.S. officials warned of a renewed focus by Islamic miliants on attacks in Pakistan, the death toll climbed above 50 on Friday in a suicide bombing that could herald a perilous election campaign and a harsh new confrontation between extremists and government forces.

Even at the close of a year that has seen dozens of suicide attacks across the country, Pakistanis were horrified by the circumstances of this one in Charsadda, in North-West Frontier Province. The attacker blew himself up in a mosque, killing and maiming worshipers as they gathered to mark one of the holiest days of the Muslim calendar. [complete article]

Gates warns of Al Qaeda shift
By Julian E. Barnes, Los Angeles Times, December 21, 2007

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today that Al Qaeda insurgents who were launching attacks in Afghanistan have now shifted their emphasis to Pakistan, increasing the threat in that nation.

Gates said the number of Al Qaeda insurgents and other fighters coming into Afghanistan from Pakistan was down about 40% in Regional Command East, the volatile section of the country controlled by U.S. forces.

Al Qaeda, Gates said, maintains its base in the loosely governed tribal areas on Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. But the Al Qaeda fighters, he said, were not focused on attacking Afghanistan from Pakistan. [complete article]

A nuclear site is breached
By Micah Zenko, Washington Post, December 20, 2007

An underreported attack on a South African nuclear facility last month demonstrates the high risk of theft of nuclear materials by terrorists or criminals. Such a crime could have grave national security implications for the United States or any of the dozens of countries where nuclear materials are held in various states of security.

Shortly after midnight on Nov. 8, four armed men broke into the Pelindaba nuclear facility 18 miles west of Pretoria, a site where hundreds of kilograms of weapons-grade uranium are stored. According to the South African Nuclear Energy Corp., the state-owned entity that runs the Pelindaba facility, these four “technically sophisticated criminals” deactivated several layers of security, including a 10,000-volt electrical fence, suggesting insider knowledge of the system. Though their images were captured on closed-circuit television, they were not detected by security officers because nobody was monitoring the cameras at the time.

So, undetected, the four men spent 45 minutes inside one of South Africa’s most heavily guarded “national key points” — defined by the government as “any place or area that is so important that its loss, damage, disruption or immobilization may prejudice the Republic.” [complete article]

NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Torture tapes — Watergate of our times?

CIA to cooperate with House on tapes
By Scott Shane, New York Times, December 20, 2007

The Central Intelligence Agency has agreed to make documents related to the destruction of interrogation videotapes available to the House Intelligence Committee and to allow the agency’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, to testify about the matter, Congressional and intelligence officials said Wednesday.

But it remained unclear whether Jose A. Rodriguez, who as chief of the agency’s clandestine service ordered the tapes destroyed in 2005, would testify. Officials said Mr. Rodriguez’s appearance before the committee might involve complex negotiations over legal immunity at a time when the Justice Department and the intelligence agency were reviewing whether the destruction of the tapes broke any laws.

The agreement marked at least a partial resolution of a standoff between the Bush administration and Congress. [complete article]

Torture tapes are the Watergate of our times
By Brent Budowsky, The Hill, December 19, 2007

In an administration facing an ocean of scandal on multiple and multiplying fronts, this scandal above all will be the Watergate of our times because it involves extremely probable crimes of torture, extremely probable obstructions of justice, and a steady stream of revelations that will only escalate until the inevitable special prosecutor is named. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Starting with the most obvious difference between the torture tapes and the Watergate tapes, the latter were tampered with while the former were destroyed — call it a Watergate lesson-learned. But perhaps more important is the political context. America in the early ’70s had the capacity to be shocked and the willingness to challenge power. Back in those days, the New York Times had the guts to defy the White House by publishing the Pentagon Papers. Now the White House asks them to change a subheading and the paper of record meekly says, OK. As for Congress, is an anemic Democratic “opposition” ready to challenge the administration, no-holds-barred? That really would be shocking.

EDITORIAL: The torture tapes

The torture tapes
By Paul Woodward, War in Context, December 19, 2007

Spooks and crooks have a lot in common. Success in either field depends on not getting caught. And as every criminal and spy knows, success depends in large part on the ability to destroy evidence. No evidence, no crime — thus the criminal logic works. So why would the CIA create an evidentiary trail in the first place? Why document torture?

Documentation is institutional insurance. We’ve long known that CIA interrogators are afraid of being hung out to dry. Their fears are well-based, given that they are working for an administration notorious for the lack of accountability among its top officials. Anyone instructed to engage in torture would obviously want to be sure that a clear record would be maintained showing that they had been following their orders with rigorous discipline and precision. The torture tapes must have been created by CIA officers who wanted to be sure that they wouldn’t be disowned by the chain of command. It thus seems reasonable to ask: have all the tapes actually been destroyed? Were no copies made? Contrary to official statements, the interests of the interrogators would more likely be protected by keeping the tapes than by destroying them.

Indeed, it should come as no surprise that the most eager desire to have the tapes destroyed appears to have come from outside the CIA and straight from the White House. As the New York Times today reports:

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

The lesson from Abu Ghraib was that the worst political damage came not from the abuse itself but from the images. If the photos had never been leaked, the haunting images of abuse would still be locked inside the minds of the torturers and their victims. In America, outside the Pentagon, no one would even have heard the name Abu Ghraib.

The political calculation that was weighed in deciding whether to destroy the torture tapes would thus seem to have been quite simple. Which would exact a higher cost: dealing with questions about the destruction of evidence, or dealing with the repercussions of indisputable evidence that as a matter of policy and practice, the United States Government engages in torture?

George Bush and Dick Cheney don’t want to be remembered as the president and vice-president who undermined American democracy by sanctioning torture. The alternative — to be seen as underhand, duplicitous, and unaccountable — that’s just the dirty world of politics-as-usual.

NEWS & OPINION: The administration of torture

Picture of secret detentions emerges in Pakistan
By Carlotta Gall, New York Times, December 19, 2007

The director of the human rights commission, I. A. Rehman, said the government had set up a nearly invisible detention system. “There are safe houses in Islamabad where people are kept,” he said, citing accounts from the police and freed detainees. “Police have admitted this. Flats are taken on rent; property is seized; people are tortured there.”

In some cases, detainees recounted that they had been interrogated in the presence of English-speaking foreigners, who human rights officials and lawyers suspect are Americans.

A United States Embassy spokeswoman said she could not comment on the allegations and referred all questions to Washington. A spokesman for the Central Intelligence Agency, Mark Mansfield, declined to comment on Mr. Rehman’s accusations, or on any specific detainees.

One detainee, a Jordanian named Marwan Ibrahim, who was arrested in a raid in the city of Lahore, where he had been living for 10 years, said he was sent to a detention center in Afghanistan run by Americans, then to Jordan and Israel, and was finally released in Gaza, according to an account Mr. Ibrahim gave to Human Rights Watch, another independent group.

Another detainee, Majid Khan, 27, a Pakistani computer engineer who disappeared from Karachi four years ago, surfaced April 15 this year before a military tribunal in Guantánamo Bay. His American lawyers say he was subjected to torture in C.I.A. detention in a secret location. Mr. Mansfield, the C.I.A. spokesman, declined to comment, except to say that the “C.I.A.’s terrorist interrogation effort has always been small, carefully run, lawful, and highly productive.” [complete article]

FBI, CIA debate significance of terror suspect
By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus, Washington Post, December 18, 2007

According to Kiriakou’s account, which he said is based on detailed descriptions by fellow team members, Abu Zubaida broke after just 35 seconds of waterboarding, which involved stretching cellophane over his mouth and nose and pouring water on his face to create the sensation of drowning.

But other former and current officials disagreed that Abu Zubaida’s cooperation came quickly under harsh interrogation or that it was the result of a single waterboarding session. Instead, these officials said, harsh tactics used on him at a secret detention facility in Thailand went on for weeks or, depending on the account, even months.

The videotaping of Abu Zubaida in 2002 went on day and night throughout his interrogation, including waterboarding, and while he was sleeping in his cell, intelligence officials said. “Several hundred hours” of videotapes were destroyed in November 2005, a senior intelligence officer said. The CIA has said it ceased waterboarding in 2003. [complete article]

Former U.S. interrogator recounts torture cases in Afghanistan and Iraq
El Mundo (via Informed Comment), December 10, 2007

But Bagram has an underworld in which the CIA tortures the leaders of Al-Qa’idah. “One day I went to an interrogation session and as soon as I arrived I knew that it was not a normal case. There were civilians, among them a doctor and a psychiatrist. The prisoner was called Omar al-Faruq, an Al-Qa’idah leader in Asia who had been brought to the prison by one of those agencies”, recalls Corsetti. “I don’t want to go into details because it could be very negative for my country, but he was brutally beaten – daily. And tortured by other methods. He was a bad man, but he didn’t deserve that”. Al-Faruq escaped from Bagram in action which, according to some, was tolerated by the USA and was killed in April 2006 by the British in the Iraqi city of Basra.

Corsetti says that he never took part in the torture. “My sole job was to sit there and make sure the prisoner didn’t die. But there were several times when I thought they were about to die, when they were interrogated by those people who have no name and who work for no-one in particular. It’s incredible what a human being can take”. A resistance similar to that of the memory of those torture sessions. Because Corsetti, a veteran of two wars, says: “I have seen people die in combat. I shot at people. That is not as bad as seeing someone tortured. Al-Faruq looked at me while they tortured him and I have that look in my head. And the cries, the smells, the sounds, they are with me all the time. It is something I can’t take in. The cries of the prisoners calling for their relatives, their mother. I remember one who called for God, for Allah, all the time. I have those cries here, inside my head”.

“In Abu-Ghurayb and Bagram they were tortured to make them suffer, not to get information out of them”. And the fact is that at times the torture had no other goal that “to punish them for being terrorists. They tortured them and didn’t ask them anything”. That is the case of the practice known as “the submarine”: to simulate the drowning of the prisoner. “They have them hooded and they pour water on them. That makes it very difficult to breath. I think you can’t die with the submarine. I certainly never saw anyone die. However, they do cough like crazy because they are totally submerged in water and that gets on their lungs. Perhaps what it can give you is serious pneumonia”. The civilians who took part in the interrogations used the submarine whenever they wanted. They gave it to them for five or 10 minutes and didn’t ask anything”. [complete article]

The president’s coming-out party
By Scott Horton, Harper’s, December 15, 2007

The Justice Department has announced an “initial probe” into the destruction of the CIA torture tapes. There is no credible basis upon which this can be viewed as anything other than a conscious crime. The tapes were destroyed, even according to sources within the CIA, because of imminent fear that they would constitute evidence in a criminal prosecution of persons involved in the acts of torture. And even beyond this more general concern, they were destroyed so they would not be turned over to a federal judge who was demanding them. They were destroyed to protect a series of false official statements about the way individual prisoners, whose statements would be used in evidence, were in fact being treated.

Remember, in these trials, a defendant can seek to exclude evidence if it was secured through torture. But the defendant has an obligation to prove this contention. The tapes would have provided such proof. Destroying them would therefore help make the evidence admissible.

Note also, no one has ever even raised the possibility that the destruction was inadvertent or accidental.

All that being said, we should ask: why do we need an “initial assessment”? Things couldn’t possibly be more clear. It is as if Julius Caesar was stabbed to death on the floor of the senate with a hundred onlookers, and now the Justice Department wants to weigh carefully whether there is evidence sufficient to justify a homicide investigation. [complete article]

Congress defies Bush on CIA tape probe
By John Cochran, ABC News, December 17, 2007

House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre Reyes told ABC News today that he will ignore the Bush administration’s request to drop its investigation of why CIA interrogation tapes were destroyed.

“This is an administration that frankly does not have a good track record of policing itself,” Reyes said. “We intend to go forward and issue subpoenas next week because we are a whole equal branch of government.”

After telling Congress to get out of the way, the Justice Department took the highly unusual step of telling the same thing to a federal judge.

In 2005, Judge Henry Kennedy ordered the government not to destroy any evidence of mistreatment or torture at the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Administration says that because the destroyed tapes were interrogations of two suspects in secret CIA prisons, not at Guantanamo, the judge should not interfere.

“This is becoming increasingly bizarre,” said Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School. “The Justice Department insists it will essentially investigate itself and then tells the court that because it is investigating itself it won’t turn over evidence of its possible criminal misconduct. It’s so circular, it’s maddening.” [complete article]

NEWS: Big Brother

Wider spying fuels aid plan for telecom industry
By Eric Lichtbalu, James Risen, and Scott Shane, New York Times, December 16, 2007

For months, the Bush administration has waged a high-profile campaign, including personal lobbying by President Bush and closed-door briefings by top officials, to persuade Congress to pass legislation protecting companies from lawsuits for aiding the National Security Agency’s warrantless eavesdropping program.

But the battle is really about something much bigger. At stake is the federal government’s extensive but uneasy partnership with industry to conduct a wide range of secret surveillance operations in fighting terrorism and crime.

The N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before, according to government and industry officials, yet that alliance is strained by legal worries and the fear of public exposure. [complete article]

ANALYSIS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The imprint of torture

CIA agents sense shifting support for methods
By Scott Shane, New York Times, December 13, 2007

For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.

Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Suppose that soon after 9/11, at a time when many Americans were fixated on the question, why do they hate us?, we had been presented with part of an answer to that question:

because we let our allies torture them.

If 9/11 itself had widely been seen as, in part, an act of revenge for torture, would we now be having a debate about the wisdom, morality, or effectiveness of the use of torture?

*

On December 4, 1982, at the opening of the trial of three hundred Egyptian Islamists who had been implicated in the plot to assassinate President Anwar Sadat, the Islamists’ spokesman, Ayman Zawahiri (later to become Osama bin Laden’s deputy), said, “Now we want to speak to the world.”

Clips from his statement have often been televised. The image they portray is of a revolutionary Islamist, intent on toppling governments and imposing Sharia law. But the part of Zawahiri’s message to the world that received less attention than it should — especially in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 — related to torture.

In The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright writes:

[As spokesman for the defendants] Zawahiri calls out the names of several prisoners who, he says, died as a result of torture. “So where is democracy?” he shouts. “Where is freedom? Where is human rights? Where is justice? Where is justice? We will never forget! We will never forget!”

Zawahiri’s allegations of torture were later substantiated by forensic medical reports, which noted six injuries in various places on his body resulting from assaults with “a solid instrument.” Zawahiri later testified in a case brought against Intelligence Unit 75, which had conducted the prison interrogations. He was supported by testimony of one the intelligence officers, who confessed that he witnessed Zawahiri in the prison, “his head shaved, his dignity completely humiliated, undergoing all sorts of torture.” The officer went on to say that he had been in the interrogation room when another prisoner was brought into the chamber, chained hand and foot. The interrogators were trying to get Zawahiri to confess his involvement in the Sadat assassination. When the other prisoner said, “How would you expect him to confess when he knows the penalty is death?” Zawahiri replied, “The death penalty is more merciful than torture.” (pp.64-65)

In the name of supporting Egypt’s “stability” and its peace treaty with Israel, the United States has for decades provided billions of dollars in military and economic aid while most of the time choosing to ignore the violent repression for which Egypt is infamous and that U.S. tax dollars continue to enable. The intimate relationship between the U.S. government and the Egyptian torturers has never been lost on the tortured.

Shouldn’t one of the many lessons of 9/11 have been that torture can produce profound hatred and that those who have been tortured do truly never forget? Only a nation intent on making itself impervious to the past could continue to create so many inerasable memories.

NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: The torture cover-up

CIA efforts to prosecute “whistle-blower” spy stopped
By Brian Ross and Richard Esposito, ABC, December 11, 2007

The former CIA intelligence official who went public on ABC News about the agency’s use of waterboarding in interrogations, John Kiriakou, apparently will not be the subject of a Justice Department investigation, even though some CIA officials believe he revealed classified information about the use of waterboarding.

“They were furious at the CIA this morning, but cooler heads have apparently prevailed for the time being,” a senior Justice Department official told the Blotter on ABCNews.com.

Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, did sent out a classified memo this morning warning all employees “of the importance of protecting classified information,” a CIA spokesperson told ABCNews.com. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — John Kirakou… whistleblower? Give me a break.

Sometimes the best imagery is unavoidably crude and thus I present the dear reader with an image that captures both the sturdiness and frailty of the Bush administration:

It is a pyramid of assholes with the largest one at the top.

Whistleblowers there could have been many; instead, the larger assholes have been protected by the smaller ones since each was possessed by the same preoccupation — covering his own.

Who authorized the CIA to destroy interrogation videos?
By Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, Newsweek, December 11, 2007

The CIA repeatedly asked White House lawyer Harriet Miers over a two-year period for instructions regarding what to do with “very clinical” videotapes depicting the use of “enhanced” interrogation techniques on two top Al Qaeda captives, according to former and current intelligence officials familiar with the communications (who requested anonymity when discussing the controversial issue). The tapes are believed to have included evidence of waterboarding and other interrogation methods that Bush administration critics have described as torture.

Senior officials of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service finally decided on their own authority in late 2005 to destroy the tapes—which were kept at a secret location overseas—after failing to elicit clear instructions from the White House or other senior officials on what to do with them, according to one of the former intelligence officials with direct knowledge of the events in question. An extensive paper—or e-mail—trail exists documenting the contacts between Clandestine Service officials and top agency managers and between the CIA and the White House regarding what to do about the tapes, according to two former intelligence officials. [complete article]

Death squads, disappearances, and torture — from Latin America to Iraq
By Greg Grandin, TomDispatch, December 11, 2007

The world is made up, as Captain Segura in Graham Greene’s 1958 novel Our Man in Havana put it, of two classes: the torturable and the untorturable. “There are people,” Segura explained, “who expect to be tortured and others who would be outraged by the idea.”

Then — so Greene thought — Catholics, particularly Latin American Catholics, were more torturable than Protestants. Now, of course, Muslims hold that distinction, victims of a globalized network of offshore and outsourced imprisonment coordinated by Washington and knitted together by secret flights, concentration camps, and black-site detention centers. The CIA’s deployment of Orwellian “Special Removal Units” to kidnap terror suspects in Europe, Canada, the Middle East, and elsewhere and the whisking of these “ghost prisoners” off to Third World countries to be tortured goes, today, by the term “extraordinary rendition,” a hauntingly apt phrase. “To render” means not just to hand over, but to extract the essence of a thing, as well as to hand out a verdict and “give in return or retribution” — good descriptions of what happens during torture sessions. [complete article]

If the CIA hadn’t destroyed those tapes, what would be different?
By Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick, Slate, December 10, 2007

In the uproar over the destruction by the CIA of taped interrogations of suspected al-Qaida operatives in the aftermath of Sept. 11, we are discovering creative new ways to speculate about past events. The pastime has begun with what should have been done differently—finger-pointing at congressional Democrats who’d been briefed about the tapes and remained silent, or distress over the failure to inform superiors at the CIA or the Bush administration. But here’s a different thought experiment: How would the national debate over torture have changed if we’d known about the CIA tapes all along? How would our big terror trials and Supreme Court cases have played out?

Yes, this is also a speculative enterprise, but it’s critical to understanding the extent of the CIA’s wrongdoing here. And we have a benchmark. When the photos from Abu Ghraib were leaked in 2004, a national uproar ensued. Video of hours of repetitive torture could have had a similarly significant impact—the truism about the power of images holds. If we are right about that—and we think we are—this evidence that has been destroyed would have fundamentally changed the legal and policy backdrop for the war on terror in ways we’ve only begun to figure out. [complete article]

CIA director speaks to Senate committee
By Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston, New York Times, December 12, 2007

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, distanced himself on Tuesday from the decision to record and subsequently destroy hundreds of hours of video taken during the interrogations of senior Qaeda captives.

Speaking in public after delivering classified testimony before a Senate committee, General Hayden said that the decision to record the interrogations in 2002 was made under George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, and that the destruction of those tapes in 2005 came under the watch of Porter J. Goss, who succeeded Mr. Tenet.

“There are other people at the agency who know about this far better than I,” he said after he testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee. He had become the agency director in May 2006, six months after intelligence officials have said the tapes were destroyed. [complete article]

Evidence from waterboarding could be used in military trials
By Josh White, Washington Post, December 12, 2007

The top legal adviser for the military trials of Guantanamo Bay detainees told Congress yesterday that he cannot rule out the use of evidence derived from the CIA’s aggressive interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, a tactic that simulates drowning.

Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, who oversees the prosecutors who will try the detainees at military commissions, said that while “torture” is illegal, he cannot say whether waterboarding violates the law. Nor would he say that such evidence would be barred at trial. [complete article]

NEWS, OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Moral clarity on torture

CIA spy calls waterboarding necessary but torture
By Richard Esposito and Brian Ross, ABC News, December 10, 2007

A leader of the CIA team that captured the first major al Qaeda figure, Abu Zubaydah, says subjecting him to waterboarding was torture but necessary.

In the first public comment by any CIA officer involved in handling high-value al Qaeda targets, John Kiriakou, now retired, said the technique broke Zubaydah in less than 35 seconds.

“The next day, he told his interrogator that Allah had visited him in his cell during the night and told him to cooperate,” said Kiriakou in an interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC News’ “World News With Charles Gibson” and “Nightline.”

“From that day on, he answered every question,” Kiriakou said. “The threat information he provided disrupted a number of attacks, maybe dozens of attacks.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — “Because we’re Americans, and we’re better than that” — it’s a popular line, a curious quasi-ethical principal, and it’s John Kiriakou’s reason for no longer supporting the use of torture.

American ideals might be better than that, but Americans and their ideals are not the same. The American government sanctioned torture and American CIA officers have engaged in torture. Therein lies one of the many gaps between America and its ideals.

But to debate the issue of torture in terms of whether it is or is not un-American is to obscure a moral question that is not as complex as it is being made to appear. The issue should not hinge on whether we accept an idealized conception of what it means to be American. It has nothing to do with national identity. It hinges quite simply on whether we accept or reject the principle that the ends justifies the means.

Any time the phrase “saving American lives” enters the torture debate an ends-justifies-the-means argument is being employed. At the same time, no one actually wants to positively assert this line of reasoning. If the ends really do justifies the means then it shouldn’t make any difference what those means are — pulling out finger nails, raping relatives — why would anything be off limits if it could be shown to be effective in saving American lives?

On the other side is a pragmatic (and seemingly safe) argument: torture shouldn’t be used because it doesn’t work. It yields false confessions and there are much better non-violent means to tease out valuable information. This is also a means-ends argument that merely challenges the assumption that the means will accomplish the aims. (And not only is it a means-ends argument; it’s also rather easy to counter. All you have to do is present a case — as the CIA has just done — where it appears that torture “worked.”)

And then there’s the question of who gets tortured. To cite evidence that Abu Zubaydah may not have been a high-level al Qaeda operative is to imply that the legitimacy of torture is affected by the potential for the victim to cough up some valuable information. In other words, it implies that torture might be justifiable if it can be demonstrated that this particular person is really “worth” torturing. (Again, the CIA — on behalf of Bush-Cheney — presses the case that it has been extremely selective in who gets tortured.)

Ultimately, the only unambiguous moral position to take is to say that a calculated effort to make a human being suffer is immoral – it doesn’t make any difference who that person is or how well-intentioned the torturer might be. That’s moral clarity and that’s the principle that law and policy should embody.

The torture of Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi
By Leonard Fein, The Forward, December 10, 2007

On December 7, 2006, he was among several hundred detainees randomly selected and moved to the newest detention camp at Guantanamo, Camp 6, which was designed to hold the majority of the detainees. According to Amnesty International, and in contravention of international standards, all detainees in Camp 6 are held under conditions of “extreme isolation and sensory deprivation for a minimum of 22 hours a day in individual steel cells with no windows to the outside.”

Their cells reportedly are extremely small. The only source of light is fluorescent lighting that is on 24 hours a day and the only air is air-conditioning, both of which are controlled by the prison guards. The detainees reportedly are allowed two hours of “recreation time” a day to be spent in a metal cage measuring four feet by four feet. (That’s 1/3 the size of a ping-pong table.)

Al-Ghizzawi’s lawyer says that his guards frequently give him his “rec time” in the middle of the night or, sometimes, in the middle of the day when the cage is in the hot sun. Detainees in Camp 6 have no access to radio, television or newspapers. They are given one book a week.

According to his lawyer, Al-Ghizzawi’s eyesight has deteriorated so significantly that he is now unable to read. Thus he now spends his time pacing in his cell. All of the detainees at Guantanamo reportedly are forbidden telephone calls and family visits, and most are not allowed to touch another human being. The detainees are not given any blankets. Their only cover is a plastic sheet.

There is no reason to believe that Al-Ghizzawi’s treatment is exceptional. If his is at all an exceptional case, it is exceptional because he has twice been unanimously declared not to be an enemy combatant. [complete article]

Watching torture
By John Barry, Newsweek, December 10, 2007

The footage was blurry, shot with a handheld 8mm camera in the poor light filtering through the shack’s small windows. There was no sound—which lent merciful distance to what it showed: the interrogation of some unidentified middle-aged man, undergoing falanga, mostly (beatings to pulp the feet), though the session culminated in anal rape with a stick. What remains as a true horror in the memory is less those activities than the demeanor of the inquisitors. A couple of men in shirts were administering the torture. But a pair of interrogators stood off to one side, mostly out of the frame. They came to the victim before and after each bout, evidently asking questions. Then they’d go back out of frame, to let the next round of beatings commence. Two men in neat dark suits, professionals, just doing a job—unpleasant, perhaps, but necessary, as they saw it, for the safety of the state.

That no doubt is the true horror of the tapes the CIA destroyed—worse, even, than the sight of the torture procedures themselves. We assume it shows waterboarding, the near-drowning of someone strapped to a cruciform plank. Memories of that Savak instructional film tell me, indelibly, what the videos would have looked like: the torturers calmly pouring water over the cloth covering the victims’ faces, the frenzied chest-heavings as the bodies went into shock, the gasping and retching as each session ended. More horrifying still would have been the actions, or inactions, of all those standing around. There must have been interrogators, and an interpreter. Certainly a doctor, watching the victims’ vital signs on a monitor to gauge how long each session could last. This being America, there may have even been a lawyer on hand. All professionals, doing something unpleasant, but—you understand—necessary for the safety of the state. And at the end of the day, one assumes, they drove home to their families.

This is where 9/11 has brought us. No wonder Rodriguez destroyed those tapes. [complete article]

Lawyers cleared destroying tapes
By Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, December 11, 2007

Lawyers within the clandestine branch of the Central Intelligence Agency gave written approval in advance to the destruction in 2005 of hundreds of hours of videotapes documenting interrogations of two lieutenants from Al Qaeda, according to a former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the episode.

The involvement of agency lawyers in the decision making would widen the scope of the inquiries into the matter that have now begun in Congress and within the Justice Department. Any written documents are certain to be a focus of government investigators as they try to reconstruct the events leading up to the tapes’ destruction.

The former intelligence official acknowledged that there had been nearly two years of debate among government agencies about what to do with the tapes, and that lawyers within the White House and the Justice Department had in 2003 advised against a plan to destroy them. But the official said that C.I.A. officials had continued to press the White House for a firm decision, and that the C.I.A. was never given a direct order not to destroy the tapes.

“They never told us, ‘Hell, no,’” he said. “If somebody had said, ‘You cannot destroy them,’ we would not have destroyed them.” [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — Any decent mafia boss knows how to avoid implicating himself in a crime.