DoJ moves to prevent CIA official from detailing role in Bush-era torture

[Eugene]

Source: The Guardian

Donald Trump’s justice department has indicated it will seek to prevent the new deputy CIA director from telling a court about her role in Bush-era torture.

In a Wednesday filing in a federal court in Washington state, a team of US attorneys and justice department officials said the government “anticipates asserting the state secrets privilege” to prevent Gina Haspel from being deposed by two former CIA contractor psychologists.

The psychologists, James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, are battling a lawsuit by representatives for four men who seek to hold them liable for torture they experienced in secret CIA prisons. Mitchell and Jessen designed for the CIA the so-called “enhanced interrogation” program that three of the men endured and which killed one of them.

As part of their defense, Mitchell and Jessen are seeking depositions from several former CIA officials, in order to claim that their actions ought to be immunized because they were working in service of the US government.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/feb/22/cia-torture-gina-haspel-court-deposition-trump

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Spencer Ackerman in New York
Wednesday 22 February 2017 21.15 GMT

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Reverse transparency

goes along with reverse discrimination.

Flipping society back to the 1920s

[tenorly]

3. And that's no exaggeration.

I've heard a number of older Republicans say the same thing over the years: 'we should go back to the 1920s.'

They seem to forget it didn't turn out very well the last time.

[slumcamper]

2. MONSTERS.

They are now devouring each other in the long, shadow of justice that continues to obscure their little house of horrors.

For the sake of empathy and reason, let the horrors be known in the full light of day, such that they shock and pain those whose indifference and apathy blinded them to the excesses committed in the name of, and beneath the flag of, the USA.

This episode of our history must be written and added to the burgeoning chapter entitled "Deplorable."

[cstanleytech]

4. So whats to prevent them from leaving the country and giving up their citizenship and then

telling all? The court wouldnt have any jurisdiction over them if they did that and did it all from another country would it?

[mr_lebowski]

5. In Other Words ... 'we're hanging you guys out to dry'

Let this be a lesson kids: Remember Nuremburg!

'Following Orders' is not a valid excuse to break the law. And the rats above you making the orders are GOING to scurry when the shit comes down, leaving you holding the proverbial bag.

Esp. when your "Commander-In-Chief" is a mobbed-up dirtbag with a long, long, LONG history of f***ing over the people who work for him.

Of course, you couldn't have known at the time you devised your torture program that one day Drumpf would be POTUS, but then again THAT ... just goes to further the point.

[erronis]

6. CIA Cables Detail Its New Deputy Directors Role in Torture - Feb 22, 2017

https://www.propublica.org/article/cia-cables-detail-its-new-deputy-directors-role-in-torture

CIA Cables Detail Its New Deputy Director’s Role in Torture

Gina Haspel, President Trump’s choice for the CIA’s number two position, was more deeply involved in the torture of Abu Zubaydah than has been publicly understood, according to newly available records and accounts by participants.

In August of 2002, interrogators at a secret CIA-run prison in Thailand set out to break a Palestinian man they believed was one of al-Qaida’s top leaders.

As the CIA’s video cameras rolled, security guards shackled Abu Zubaydah to a gurney and interrogators poured water over his mouth and nose until he began to suffocate. They slammed him against a wall, confined him for hours in a coffin-like box, and deprived him of sleep.

The 31-year-old Zubaydah begged for mercy, saying that he knew nothing about the terror group’s future plans. The CIA official in charge, known in agency lingo as the “chief of base,” mocked his complaints, accusing Zubaydah of faking symptoms of psychological breakdown. The torture continued.

When questions began to swirl about the Bush administration’s use of the “black sites,” and program of “enhanced interrogation,” the chief of base began pushing to have the tapes destroyed. She accomplished her mission years later when she rose to a senior position at CIA headquarters and drafted an order to destroy the evidence, which was still locked in a CIA safe at the American embassy in Thailand. Her boss, the head of the agency’s counterterrorism center, signed the order to feed the 92 tapes into a giant shredder.

By then, it was clear that CIA analysts were wrong when they had identified Zubaydah as the number three or four in al-Qaida after Osama bin Laden. The waterboarding failed to elicit valuable intelligence not because he was holding back, but because he was not a member of al-Qaida, and had no knowledge of any plots against the United States.

The chief of base’s role in this tale of pointless brutality and evidence destruction was a footnote to history — until earlier this month, when President Trump named her deputy director of the CIA.

The choice of Gina Haspel for the second-highest position in the agency has been praised by colleagues but sharply criticized by two senators who have seen the still-classified records of her time in Thailand.

“Her background makes her unsuitable for the position,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., wrote in a letter to Trump. “We are sending a classified letter explaining our position and urge that the information be immediately declassified.”

[mr_lebowski]

8. Despicable as this all is ... and it is NO QUESTION despicable ...

How come we've just had BHO as President for 8 years ... and yet Haspel ... apparently, unless I'm missing something ... has continued to 'have a job' ... all this time?

Cause, you know, it'd sure be NICE if we could point to some, 'Point Of Fact' ... that would excuse Obama for allowing this person to continue to be employed by the CIA for the prior 8 years.

TrumpSplain/HillSplain/ObamaSplain/BushSplain ... take your f***ing pick ... I'll take ANY reasonable explanation.

But, please, do tell. WHY does she still have a job? Let alone be getting pegged for #2 at the CIA because apparently there were ZERO consequences for what she did, for the entire time in the interim ...

WHY?

Just askin' ...

[Historic NY]

7. Going to be pretty hard under oath on the stand.......

when even the CIA admits it didn't work

[Solly Mack]

9. I stand where I've always stood.

All those involved in torture should have been in prison for several years now, from Bush on down.

I give no one a pass. Not for any reason.

[rgbecker]

10. This.

For me, reading about Americans torturing people for information is a form of torture in and of itself.