CIA Videos Predated Bush Legal Memo

[L. Coyote]

Source: consortiumnews.com

by Jason Leopold - April 11, 2009 - http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041109a.html


The CIA began videotaping interrogations of two alleged “high value” terrorist detainees in April 2002, four months before Bush administration attorneys issued a memo clearing the way ... However, In a letter to a federal court judge Thursday, the Justice Department only agreed to provide details on the harshest interrogations of prisoner Abu Zubaydah that occurred in August 2002 – after the Bush administration's lawyers had provided the legal cover for waterboarding and other brutal tactics.

.... Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said the government’s “motivations in confining its (latest) response to the month of August are highly suspect.” .........

Singh, the ACLU attorney, said Friday she could not speculate whether videotapes made prior to August 2002 might have depicted “enhanced” methods such as waterboarding. Those techniques were cleared for use by an Aug. 1, 2002, legal opinion that narrowly defined torture, thus enabling the Bush administration to claim that its harsh tactics didn’t qualify as torture.

Last year, Dick Cheney admitted in several interviews that he “signed off” on the waterboarding of three “high-value” prisoners and personally approved the harsh interrogations of 33 other detainees. .... “There are questions as to who was authorizing what for the CIA before August,” Singh said. “Those facts need to be made public and that’s why we need to have an investigation.”

Read more: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041109a.html

---

This is BIG NEWS because of the chronology of events. First comes torture, then follows the torture memo!

The Torture Tapes debacle is gaining steam with the Torture Report leaked.
This compilation thread has been following the news events since equinox:

CIA Has 3,000 Docs on Torture Tapes
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5303329

=========
MUST READ: Here is the 43 page LEAKED Red Cross Report: = http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22530
Volume 56, Number 6 · April 9, 2009
Mark Danner, US Torture: Voices from the Black Sites
ICRC Report on the Treatment of Fourteen "High Value Detainees" in CIA Custody by the International Committee of the Red Cross

[NOW tense]

1. Hague. n/t

[L. Coyote]

2. Obama and Holder, the nation's #1 and #2 attorneys

This is one to get right, and may take a while, but
facts are facts and the nation's #1 and #2 attorneys today,
Obama and Holder, are certainly contending with more of these facts than we know about.

[NOW tense]

3. I personally think

that given the amounts of drips (leaks) coming out about what happened in our name. The plan is to slowly let info out till a vast majority would have no problem with prosecution.

[Gregorian]

6. You're not alone in this thinking.

Obama is keen enough to play this properly. I don't have words for it, but I play this stunt myself sometimes. It's not really rope-a-dope. It's a very patient, almost fake play.

Watching Fox Noise and their teabag silliness, one has to wonder just how nervous they must be to behave that way. It tells me Obama may be close to achieving what you are saying. Universal outrage. I'm not holding my breath. Nixon almost got off freely.

[KoKo]

14. I would agree with you ...but being here on DU since '01 when we were told "Keep Powder Dry"

by Tom Daschle and other Dem Spokespersons and Think Tanks who "cautioned us to just wait...help was on the way" ...I really tend to SCOFF BIG TIME with this NEW CRAP that's BEING THROWN OUR WAY...by the "same folks who brought you Iraq Invasion, Two Mega Bubbles in Tech and Housing...and then the "Bailouts."

I go back to that..."Fool Me Once Shame on You...Fool me Twice...etc....etc...etc.."

DISGUSTING...Makes me :puke:

[EFerrari]

4. Still, whatever encouragement they get from the international community

is a good thing. There's too much countervailing pressure to "move on".

[aquart]

13. Not from me.

I want prosecution and punishment.

[tekisui]

8. knr!~

Another brick in the wall.

[alfredo]

5. It's good that we are taking our time, building up evidence so strong that

there is no doubt of their guilt, even among conservatives.

[grahamhgreen]

7. If we do not prosecute, we become complicit in the war crimes.

[Torn_Scorned_Ignored]

9. C-SPAN today @7pm

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, VA, hears oral argument in U.S. v. Moussaoui. The Court will decide if convicted 9/11 conspira-
tor Zacarias Moussaoui should have his convic-
tion overturned. If the conviction is overturned, Moussaoui's attorneys will seek to win a new trial.

[EFerrari]

10. Hey -- which CSPAN and which 7pm? Thanks!

[Optical.Catalyst]

11. Convene the Grand Jury, Indite, Charge, Give a fair trial, then Imprison

Bush needs to find out how this Nation's Laws and Judicial System are supposed to work - from the very bottom to the top.

[leveymg]

12. Zubaydah was captured 3/28/02, tortured from moment one. He said too much, then waterboarded

Recall the account of Abu Zubaydah's capture and how he was tricked into revealing the names of several members of the Saudi Royal family and the Pakistani Air Marshal as involved with al-Qaeda? Here's Posner's now forgotten account in TIME magazine: www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,480240,00.html

Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs - an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum - in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, CIA men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.

Yet when Zubaydah was confronted by the false Saudis, writes Posner, "his reaction was not fear, but utter relief." Happy to see them, he reeled off telephone numbers for a senior member of the royal family who would, said Zubaydah, "tell you what to do."The man at the other end would be Prince Ahmed bin Salman bin Abdul Aziz, a Westernized nephew of King Fahd and a publisher better known as a racehorse owner. His horse War Emblem won the Kentucky Derby in 2002). To the amazement of the U.S., the numbers proved valid. When the fake inquisitors accused Zubaydah of lying, he responded with a 10-minute monologue laying out the Saudi-Pakistani-Osama triangle, according to the book.

Zubaydah, writes Posner, said the Saudi connection ran through Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom�s longtime intelligence chief. Zubaydah said bin Laden "personally" told him of a 1991 meeting at which Turki agreed to let bin Laden leave Saudi Arabia and to provide him with secret funds as long as al-Qaeda refrained from promoting jihad in the kingdom. The Pakistani contact, high - ranking air force officer Mushaf Ali Mir, entered the equation, Zubaydah said, at a 1996 meeting in Pakistan also attended by Zubaydah. Bin Laden struck a deal with Mir, then in the military but tied closely to Islamists in Pakistan�s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), to get protection, arms and supplies for al-Qaeda. Zubaydah told interrogators bin Laden said the arrangement was "blessed by the Saudis," according to Posner.

Zubaydah said he attended a third meeting in Kandahar in 1998 with Turki, senior ISI agents and Taliban officials. There Turki promised, writes Posner, that "more Saudi aid would flow to the Taliban, and the Saudis would never ask for bin Laden�s extradition, so long as al-Qaeda kept its long-standing promise to direct fundamentalism away from the kingdom." In Posner�s stark judgment, the Saudis "effectively had (bin Laden) on their payroll since the start of the decade." Abu Zubaydah told the interrogators that the Saudis regularly sent the funds through three royal-prince intermediaries he named, according to the book.

The last eight paragraphs of the book set up a final startling development, McGeary writes. Those three Saudi princes all perished within days of one another. On July 22, 2002, Prince Ahmed was felled by a heart attack at age 43. One day later Prince Sultan bin Faisal bin Turki al-Saud, 41, was killed in what was called a high-speed car accident. The last member of the trio, Prince Fahd bin Turki bin Saud al-Kabir, officially "died of thirst" while traveling east of Riyadh one week later. And seven months after that, Mushaf Ali Mir, by then Pakistan�s Air Marshal, perished in a plane crash in clear weather over the unruly North-West Frontier Province, along with his wife and closest confidants, Posner writes.

Why would the Bush Administration repeatedly waterboard him after he had already revealed the most important facts? Waterboarding damages memory. He simply knew too much. See,

CIA Detainee Torture, Memory Loss, and the Bush Administration's ...ABU ZUBAYDAH: WATERBOARDING AND MEMORY ERASURE .... That is the worst form of memory erasure, of the electorate. leveymg, Dec-13-07 01:21 PM, #4 ...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2462592 - 101k - Cached - Similar pages
More results from www.democraticunderground.com »

Daily Kos: CIA Used Banned Cold War “Brainwashing” Techniques on ...leveymg's diary :: :: CIA Psychologists Used Banned Cold War "Brainwashing" Techniques. Zubaydah was interrogated by a team overseen by James Elmer Mitchell ...
http://www.leveymg.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/12/18/141435/27/213/423878 - 39k - Cached - Similar pages

leveymg's Journal - THE CIA OFFICER WHO OVERSAW TORTURE: Cofer BlackAdvertise on more than 70 progressive blogs! leveymg's Journal .... Abu Zubaydah is said to have been driven mad by waterboarding and sensory driving ...
http://journals.democraticunderground.com/leveymg/337 - 58k - Cached - Similar pages

[Canuckistanian]

15. No WAY

I was looking at the thread title when it hit me.

The "memo defence", pathetic though it may be, has just been rendered moot.

Holder CAN'T ignore this now.

[merh]

16. I posted Horton's column yesterday and it received little attention

In his column, Horton discusses the murder at the hands of the CIA officier that was turned over to the Virginia DOJ for prosecution in 2004. He also points out that 92 of the CIA videos were made between April and December of 2002, before the memos.

Source: Harper's Magazine

April 10, 8:43 AM (2nd entry)

Licensed to Kill

~snip~

Or consider what Congressional Quarterly’s Jeff Stein calls “The Mysterious Case of Mark Swanner.” The Army’s Criminal Investigation Detachment studied the death of Manadel al-Jamadi (photo left), who died in Swanner’s custody, and concluded that he had been murdered. Swanner, a long-time CIA officer, was fingered as the perpetrator, and the case was referred to the U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia for prosecution. That was 2004. So five years later, what has happened? Nothing happened.

Note the contrast: the Bush Administration aggressively prosecutes a bunch of grunts. But the military’s investigation showed that these enlisted personnel and NCOs were actually operating under the direction of a mysterious group of contractors. And it also concluded that a CIA officer was responsible for the one clear-cut homicide to emerge from Abu Ghraib–an individual who was literally tortured to death. The bit players are prosecuted, but the instigators, the individuals who bore real responsibility for what happened? They’re handed over to the crack “fast-lane” prosecutors in Virginia, the most political crew of a highly politicized Justice Department, and nothing happens.

Why? The Bush Administration issued a license to the CIA to torture and kill. The Justice Department itself was smack in the middle of this process, offering assurances that there would be no prosecutions. Moreover, a prosecution, had it been brought, would likely have resulted in disclosure of many uncomfortable details—how Bush cabinet officers approved not only techniques, but even specific torture programs, for instance; how the Justice Department itself connived in the entire process. A prosecution might have brought the truth close to the surface. Can’t have that. Is there any chance that this process will be reversed by the Obama Administration?

So far, every sign runs in the opposite direction. Panetta’s pastoral missive offers absolution: “Officers who act on guidance from the Department of Justice—or acted on such guidance previously—should not be investigated, let alone punished. This is what fairness and wisdom require.” He adopts the “go forth and sin no more” approach.

But start with the fact that much of the worst abuse occurred well before the first of the Justice Department’s torture memoranda, from August 2002. How exactly were CIA agents relying on “guidance from the Department of Justice” that had not yet been issued? They weren’t. Note that the Justice Department’s letter in response to the ACLU’s FOIA request stated that the 92 tapes that the CIA destroyed (in yet another criminal act) were made between April and December 2002. The Justice Department acknowledges that these tapes would have contained evidence of torture. Therefore we know that the CIA was implementing the Bush torture program a half year before John Yoo came in to craft his infamous torture memo. Moreover, Yoo was brought in to write only in response to push-back from CIA officers and others who properly labeled these techniques as unlawful.

http://www.harpers.org/subjects/NoComment

ignored DU thread
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x5428487

[Supersedeas]

17. when will Eric Holder have George Tenet put under oath??

[Solly Mack]

18. David Hicks' timeline bears it out as well

that the memo(s) came after the torture began

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Solly%20Mack/539


Several articles have appeared over the last few years saying as much too.

[L. Coyote]

19. In this context, destroying the tapes amounts to obstruction of justice, writing memos post facto

then also seems part of the same obstruction conspiracy, doesn't it. It goes to pattern, irrespective of sequence. "Oh your honor, only the last obstruction was intended as obstruction, honest....."

[Solly Mack]

20. It sure does, L. Coyote

They knew what was going on and they tried to provide legal cover for the illegal.

Bush bragged about what happened to Abu Zubaydah. Bush knew, obviously. He's guilty. (and not just him)

The CIA knew their actions were criminal. They asked for cover. They're guilty. ....and then they destroyed the evidence of their guilt.

The DOJ lawyers knew what was going on and when asked to provide legal cover they gave it. They're guilty.

And several us have been screaming that for a while now...


They can't use that bullshit "in good faith" argument because the torture came first - so they can't claim they thought it was legal prior to their criminal acts.

They can't claim "I was just following orders" because Nuremberg took care of that BS excuse - and besides, if they were just following orders & there's nothing wrong in that, why did they ask for legal cover after-the-fact?

And if they did nothing wrong, why destroy the evidence? (and evidence of a time-line)

[L. Coyote]

22. Well, the layering of cover-up on cover-up gig is up because they are out

The "change we have all been waiting for" happened when the guilty in charge of Justice were deposed by the election.
This cover-up has seen its last layer, with leaks insuring the public knows what Obama and Holder know.

We are left in the position of still waiting for the "change we have all been waiting for" to really take effect,
as the guilty still are arming the defensive perimeter, obstructing Obama appointments to positions dealing with these crimes.
They can't easily mandate what DoJ prosecutes and does not now, but they still can obstruct in the Senate.

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

21. A twofer. Both torture and wiretapping occurred before rationales.

Torture before memos.
Wiretapping before 9-11.