ACLU: DOJ Report Reveals Senior Government Officials Knew Early on of Interrogation Abuse...

[babylonsister]

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0520-21.htm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 20, 2008
3:11 PM


CONTACT: ACLU
Rachel Myers, [phone] or 2666; [e-mail]
Matt Allee, [phone]; [e-mail]

Justice Department Report Reveals Senior Government Officials Knew Early on of Interrogation Abuse But Did Not Stop It
First Government Report to Identify Rice As Receiving Interrogation Complaints


NEW YORK - May 20 - The results of an internal Justice Department investigation released today reveal that officials at the highest level of government – including the White House - received reports on the abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody overseas as early as 2002. Congress called on the department’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conduct the investigation after documents made public through an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed FBI agents at Guantánamo had raised concerns about methods used by military interrogators. Today’s government report is the first to identify that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice received complaints of torture.

“Today’s OIG report reveals that top government officials in the Defense Department, CIA and even as high as the White House turned a blind eye to torture and abuse and failed to act aggressively to end it,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “Moreover, the country’s top law enforcement agency – the FBI – did not take measures to enforce the law but only belatedly reported on the law’s violations. It’s troubling that the government seems to have been more concerned with obscuring the facts than with enforcing the law and stopping the torture and abuse of detainees. Had the government taken action in 2002, perhaps the disgrace of Abu Ghraib and other abuses could have been avoided.”

According to the OIG report, which was initiated in December 2004 and took three and a half years to complete, senior administration officials failed to stop torture and abuse even after being made aware of it.

The report reveals the White House had knowledge of reports that originated with individual FBI agents, including concerns about the unlawful nature of interrogation tactics. Some of these discussions involved effectiveness, while others involved legality, the effect of abuse on the admissibility of evidence, and damage to the rule of law.

“Attorney General Michael Mukasey recently testified to Congress that he cannot prosecute anyone for anything approved by Justice Department opinions that authorized detainee abuse. But no one gets immunity for acts they should have known were illegal,” said Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. “The filtering up of information from FBI agents to high government officials makes claims of immunity even more incredulous.”

The report confirms that senior FBI officials knew as early as 2002 that other agencies including the CIA were using abusive interrogation methods. However, the FBI didn’t advise its agents to report incidents of abuse until 2004, after the publication of photographs revealing abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.

The report also reveals that the CIA hampered the OIG investigation by blocking an OIG interview with a detainee who was the subject of aggressive interrogation techniques including waterboarding. According to the report, the Defense Department had granted the OIG permission to interview several detainees including Zayn Abidin Muhammed Hussein Abu Zubaydah stating the interviews would not interfere with their attempts to obtain intelligence from the detainees. However, the CIA acting general counsel objected to the OIG team interviewing Zubaydah. The OIG was also denied access to classified information about CIA-controlled facilities, what occurred there, and what legal authorities governed their operations.

“We are deeply troubled by the CIA's efforts to frustrate the Inspector General's investigation by denying the inspector general access to critical information and a key prisoner,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The report only underscores the pressing need for an independent and comprehensive investigation of prisoner abuse. It's unacceptable that, four years after the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs, no senior official has been held accountable. Most of those who ought to have been held accountable have been nominated and confirmed to higher posts instead.”

“This new report should become exhibit A at the next congressional hearing on the Bush administration’s use of torture,” said Christopher Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel to the ACLU. “The House Judiciary Committee is in the middle of the first thorough congressional review of the development and implementation of the torture policies at the top levels of government. The questions are who did what and what crimes were committed. This Justice Department report helps answer both questions.”

In October 2003, the ACLU and the New York Civil Liberties Union – along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace – filed a FOIA request for records concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. To date, more than 100,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the FOIA request – including the Bush administration’s 2003 “torture memo” written by John Yoo when he was a deputy at the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The ACLU filed another FOIA request in April 2008 demanding the release of the OIG report after media reports that the investigation had been completed for months. Today’s report confirms that the Defense Department used its classification review to delay the release of the report.

The OIG report is available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/35402lgl20080520.html

The documents received in the ACLU’s FOIA are available online at www.aclu.org/torturefoia

In addition, the documents relating to FBI involvement in abusive interrogation techniques are discussed on pages 10 through 20 of a recently published book by ACLU attorneys Jaffer and Amrit Singh, “Administration of Torture.” More information is available online at: www.aclu.org/administrationoftorture

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[chill_wind]

1. Kick and rec for that steadfast commitment of the ACLU.

eom

[enough]

2. Yes. Time to renew that membership.

[The Stranger]

3. Hey, what's the old Nancy Disaster doing these days with her table?

[warren pease]

6. Probably hiding under it...

Remember when she became an accomplice to BushCo's war crimes?

All the way back in September 2002, accord to this December 2007 Washington Post story. It seems Pelosi got a "virtual tour" back in 2002 of some of the CIA's offshore black sites, at which time CIA briefers revealed the use of waterboarding as a standard interrogation method.

A couple of excerpts from that article:

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.

With one known exception (Harman), no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

Individual lawmakers' recollections of the early briefings varied dramatically, but officials present during the meetings described the reaction as mostly quiet acquiescence, if not outright support. "Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full understanding of what the CIA was doing," said Goss, who chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the room was not just approval, but encouragement."

At that point, the Bushies owned her ass for as long as they wanted it. Virtually speaking, of course.

By not immediately going public and condemning the CIA's routine use of torture, and specifically waterboarding, she tacitly agreed to ignore gross violations of the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment. This made her an accessory after the fact to BushCo's war crimes.

By her silence, Pelosi's also remains complicit in BushCo's daily violations of worldwide bans on torture, another violation of the Eighth Amendment and a breach of Article VI of the Constitution that requires the US to comply with international treaties it's a party to. Chalk up another series of war crimes for Madam Squeaker.

All the above puts her right in the administration's deepest pocket and completely eliminates her as a political threat.

Of course she doesn't want a Congressional investigation into torture. Of course she doesn't want impeachment.

Hearings on those subjects, and many more, would inevitably lead to the old "what did she know and when did she know it" line of questioning. So she'll continue to kill all efforts to nail the Bushies for anything that might lead to revelations about her own criminal complicity.

And she's still the House leader because...? She should have been gone at least 15 months ago. The fact that she can't deliver any votes for legislation that might help promote a democratic agenda -- assuming there is one except running and hiding -- is bad enough.

The fact that she won't pursue the thieves and mass murderers who stole two elections and are indictable on so many counts that they won't fit on a single page -- that's well beyond incompetence. That's enabling, conniving, aiding and abetting. And that ought to at least earn her a federal prison cell, if not a place in the dock before an international war crimes tribunal.

I just hope the courageous, honest and forthright Ms. Golub kicks Pelosi's Vichy ass from the Cow Palace to the Golden Gate. And I hope it hurts a lot.

One other point of interest: Harman is the mother of the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007" (H.R. 1955/S. 1959). The one the DHS calls "Endgame."

The one that empowers agencies of the US national security apparatus to make judgment calls about things like intent and preemption, then act on those fantasies as if they were proven facts rather than wild speculation.

This requires precognition or unlawful surveillance. One is unlikely and the other is illegal -- or used to be. And it's certainly immoral and against the letter and spirit of the Constitution. Not that it matters much any more.


wp

[L. Coyote]

4. REC. War Crimes VIDEO links here:

Will Bush Junta WAR CRIMES Lead to Impeachment, Imprisonment?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x3305996

This issue is the HAMMER!

[seemslikeadream]

5. Yes it is

[chill_wind]

7. kicking and Bookmarking....

eom

[L. Coyote]

8. Support the ACLU kick!