Former CIA Director Hayden: We Didn't Lie About Interrogation Program. Torture Report: Yeah, You Did. REPEATEDLY.

from the I-swear-I-thought-you'd-never-find-out! dept

Wed, Dec 10th 2014 8:21am — Tim Cushing

Former CIA director Michael Hayden warned anyone who would listen that the release of the Torture Report would turn our enemies against us… or further against us, or something. He also claimed that he and the CIA had been generally forthright and open about this program over the past several years.

"To say that we relentlessly, over an expanded period of time, lied to everyone about a program that wasn't doing any good, that beggars the imagination," Hayden said on CBS's "Face the Nation."

Well... Prepare to have your imaginations beggared! Here's Michael Hayden's relentless lies, told over an expanded period of time, about a program that wasn't doing any good, as documented in the Senate Committee's report. [pdf link]

Briefings to the full Committee beginning on September 6, 2006, also contained numerous inaccuracies, including inaccurate descriptions of how interrogation techniques were applied and what information was obtained from CIA detainees. The CIA misrepresented the views of members of Congress on a number of occasions. After multiple senators had been critical of the program and written letters expressing concerns to CIA Director Michael Hayden, Director Hayden nonetheless told a meeting of foreign ambassadors to the United States that every Committee member was "fully briefed," and that "[t]his is not CIA's program. This is not the President's program. This is America's program." The CIA also provided inaccurate information describing the views of U.S. senators about the program to the Department of Justice.

---

A February 2007 report from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which the CIA acting general counsel initially stated "actually does not sound that far removed from the reality" was also criticized. CIA officers prepared documents indicating that "critical portions of the Report are patently false or misleading, especially certain key factual claims. CIA Director Hayden testified to the Committee that "numerous false allegations of physical and threatened abuse and faulty legal assumptions and analysis in the [ICRC] report undermine its overall credibility.'"

Hayden's claim of "faulty assumptions" sounds familiar. Here's his opening salvo from a Wall Street Journal editorial in defense of the program.

The committee has given us instead a one-sided study marred by errors of fact and interpretation—essentially a poorly done and partisan attack on the agency that has done the most to protect America after the 9/11 attacks.

Nice touch, the "partisan" thing. Distracts people from the real issue. (See also: the abysmal comment section following the editorial.) Back to Hayden's inaccuracies.

In December 2003, a CIA Station overseeing CIA detention operations in Country [x] informed CIA Headquarters that it had made the "unsettling discovery" that the CIA was "holding a number of detainees about whom" it knew "very little," Nearly five years later, in late 2008, the CIA attempted to determine how many individuals the CIA had detained. At the completion of the review, CIA leaders, including CIA Director Michael Hayden, were informed that the review found that the CIA had detained at least 112 individuals, and possibly more.

CIA Director Hayden typically described the program as holding "fewer than a hundred" detainees. For example, in testimony before the Committee on February 4, 2008, in response to a question from Chairman Rockefeller during an open hearing, Hayden stated, "[i]n the life of the CIA detention program we have held fewer than a hundred people." {See DTS #2008-1140.) Specific references to "98" detainees were included in a May 5, 2006, House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) report on Renditions, Detentions and Interrogations.

To Michael Hayden, this margin of error was acceptable.

According to tlie CIA's June 2013 Response, "Hayden did not view the discrepancy, if it existed, as particularly significant given that, if true, it would increase the total number by just over 10 percent."

Even so, he then directed a CIA officer to alter reality to match his well-worn claim of 98 detainees

According to an email summarizing the meeting, CIA Director Hayden instructed a CIA officer to devise a way to keep the number of CIA detainees at the same number the CIA had previously briefed to Congress. The email, which the briefer sent only to himself, stated:

"I briefed the additional CIA detainees that could be included in RDI numbers. DCIA instructed me to keep the detainee number at 98 ~ pick whatever date i [sic] needed to make that happen but the number is 98."

Moving on...

Contrary to statements later made by CIA Director Michael Hayden and other CIA officials that "[a]ll those involved in the questioning of detainees are carefully chosen and screened for demonstrated professional judgment and maturity, CIA records suggest that the vetting sought by [redacted] did not take place.

---

In testimony on April 12, 2007, CIA Director Michael Hayden referenced medical care of detainees in the context of the ICRC report on CIA detentions. Hayden testified to the Committee; "The medical section of the ICRC report concludes that the association of CIA medical officers with the interrogation program is 'contrary to international standards of medical ethics.' That is just wrong. The role of CIA medical officers in the detainee program is and always has been and always will be to ensure the safety and the well-being of the detainee. The placement of medical officers during the interrogation techniques represents an extra measure of caution. Our medical officers do not recommend the employment or continuation of any procedures or techniques. The allegation in the report that a CIA medical officer threatened a detainee, stating that medical care was conditional on cooperation is blatantly false. Healthcare has always been administered based upon detainee needs. It's neither policy nor practice to link medical care to any other aspect of the detainee program." This testimony was incongruent with CIA records.

---

CIA Director Hayden prepared a statement that relayed, "despite what you have heard or read in a variety of public fora, these [enhanced interrogation] techniques and this program did work." The prepared materials included inaccurate information on the operation and management of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, as well as the same set of examples of the "effectiveness" of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques that the CIA had provided to policymakers over several years. The examples provided were nearly entirely inaccurate.

---

Similarly, CIA Director Michael Hayden represented to the Committee on April 12, 2007, that "KSM also provided the first lead to an operative known as 'Issa al-Hindi,' with other detainees giving additional identifying information." The CIA provided similar inaccurate representations regarding the thwarting of the United Kingdom Urban Targets Plot and the identification and/or arrest of Dhiren Barot, aka Abu Issa al-Hindi, in 17 of the 20 documents provided to policymakers and the Department of Justice between July 2003 and March 2009.

---

The CIA represented that CIA detainee Abu Zubaydah provided "important" and "vital" information by identifying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM) as the mastermind behind the attacks of September 11, 2001 CIA Director Hayden told the Committee on April 12, 2007, that:

"..it was Abu Zubaydah, early in his detention, who identified KSM as the mastermind of 9/11. Until that time, KSM did not even appear in our chart of key al-Qa'ida members and associates."

On at least two prominent occasions, the CIA represented, inaccurately, that Abu Zubaydah provided this information after the use of the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques.

---

On November 16, 2006, CIA Director Hayden briefed the Committee. The briefing included inaccurate information, including on the CIA's use of dietary manipulation and nudity, as well as the effects of sleep deprivation.

---

Director Hayden testified that detainees were never provided fewer than 1,000 calories a day. This is inaccurate. There were no calorie requirements until May 2004, and draft OMS guidelines from March 2003 indicated that "[b]rief periods in which food is withheld(1-2 days), as an adjunct to interrogations are acceptable."

---

Director Hayden testified that detainees were "not paraded [nude] in front of anyone," whereas a CIA interrogator told the inspector general that nude detainees were "kept a center area outside the interrogation room," and were "'walked around' by guards.'"

---

February 14, 2007, during a hearing on CIA renditions, Director Hayden provided inaccurate information to the Committee, to include inaccurate information on the number of detainees held by the CIA.

---

At the April 12, 2007, hearing, Director Hayden verbally provided extensive inaccurate information on, among other topics: (1) the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, (2) the application of Department of Defense survival school practices to the program, (3) detainees' counter-interrogation training, (4) the backgrounds of CIA interrogators, (5) the role of other members of the interrogation teams, (6) the number of CIA detainees and their intelligence production, (7) the role of CIA detainee reporting in the captures of terrorist suspects, (8) the interrogation process, (9) the use of detainee reporting, (10) the purported relationship between Islam and the need to use the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques, (11) threats against detainees' families, (12) the punching and kicking of detainees, (13) detainee hygiene, (14) denial of medical care, (15) dietary manipulation, (16) the use of waterboarding and its effectiveness, and (17) the injury and death of detainees.

---

At the CIA briefing to the Committee on December 11, 2007, Director Hayden testified about: (1) the information provided to the White House regarding the videotapes, (2) what the tapes revealed, (3) what was not on the tapes, (4) the reasons for their destruction, (5) the legal basis for the use of the waterboard, and (6) the effectiveness of the CIA's waterboard interrogation technique. Much of this testimony was inaccurate or incomplete.

This certainly seems like the record of relentless lying over a period of several years, contrary to Hayden's assertions. There are a few ways of viewing this, none of which cast Hayden in a flattering light. Given the comprehensive detailing of his inaccurate statements delivered as the director of the CIA, you have to assume he's either a) a liar or b) incompetent. Even if he lied to (in his mind) protect America, he still lied. Given other statements he's made about the supposed value of the program, the pendulum swings towards "liar."

He lied to protect a program he thought was valuable, even when the CIA's own documents and findings contradicted this belief. The pendulum swings toward "incompetent," but doesn't quite make it that far. There's far too much calculation lying below the obfuscation to believe Hayden didn't know exactly what he was doing when he spent briefing after briefing and hearing after hearing lying to his overseers about the extent of the program and the hideous details he was actively hiding from them.

It would almost seem as though Hayden's concerns about the safety of the country are simply a projection of his concerns about what the report reveals about him. This is the guy who wants the public to believe the CIA was screwed by a partisan hatchet job and that domestic surveillance programs are every bit as necessary as torture when it comes to hunting down terrorists. But his own words and actions show he shouldn't be trusted with an op-ed, much less the safety of American people.

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Filed Under: cia, cia torture, lies, michael hayden, torture report

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TheResidentSkeptic (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:23am

Never attribute to Malice
... that which is sufficiently explained by blazing levels of sheer incompetence.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:46am

So we know he is a fucking liar. BTW why is he not on trial yet?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:48am

If any of us had gotten in front of Congress and lied to them we would be prosecuted. Why isn't he being taken to task for his lies?
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tomczerniawski, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:50am

Yesterday, I found out that our governments are guilty in systematic, industrialized rape, torture and brutal murder of its detainees. The crimes they have committed in our names, were crimes that men were hanged for at Nuremberg, yet today the torturers walk away with millions of dollars in compensation money from the government.

Yesterday, I found out that western doctors, bound by the Hippocratic Oath, contributed to keeping detainees alive longer, so that they could be tormented more effectively. For similar crimes, the Nazi Dr. Mengele of Auschwitz infamy, became a hunted man for the remainder of his life - yet today, our doctors receive bonuses for their instructional advice on extending human agony.

Yesterday, I discovered that our nations' secret intelligence agencies have become little more than a massive Stanford Prison Experiment - that while the CIA's own torturers and interrogators expressed discomfort, objection and outright horror at the acts they were ordered to perform, they performed them nonetheless after pressure from superior officers. These torturers and interrogators will get away with their abhorrent crimes, even though at Nuremberg, "I was just following orders" didn't cut it as an excuse from the hangman's noose.

Yesterday, I watched the troglodytes passing for reporters at Fox News attempting to justify our barbarism against screaming, shackled human beings, by describing them as "less than human." The Nazis had a word for this, too.

(http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/12/09/cia-interrogations-report-feinstein-offers-aid-and-co mfort-to-enemy-stabs/)

Today, I am done studying these dreadful matters. Today, I am commencing study on a new batch of topics. Today, I will learn about interrogation resistance, and how to increase my bodily threshold of tolerance to pain. Today, I will learn about insurgency and counter-insurgency. I will study bombs, and mines, and small arms, and improvised weapons. I may need such knowledge, should my own government decide to attack. This is because today I am absolutely certain of one thing: the fascists are back, the enemy are among us, and while "first, they came for the Muslims," they are coming for us all. I will not make the same mistake my Polish ancestors did when the Nazis came - the mistake of waiting and seeing what happens next, until for many of them, it became too late. Now, I prepare for history to once again repeat itself. Bad times are upon us.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:51am

Re:
Maybe he's a secret agent like James Bond, only he has a license to lie.
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Just Another Anonymous Troll, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:51am

Re: Never attribute to Malice
It's probably about 80% malice and 20% blazing levels of sheer incompetence. No one, not even a high-ranking government employee, could be that dumb.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:54am

as commendable as this piece is, from Hayden up or down, no one will even be charged with any wrong doing, let a lone a crime! as for a 'Crime against Humanity', there's more chance of me living to 200! people like him are fine when they can bully, lie, cheat, do anything and everything they want, when there are no comebacks and no interference from anyone else! if this is the sort of person that is not only in charge of something like the CIA and it's 'interrogation techniques' but the sort who is being raised in the USA, is it any wonder that the country has fallen completely of the list of the most trusted and most desired places on Earth? doing the same things as countries like Tehran while condemning that country for what it is doing, is absolutely disgraceful!!
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Ambrellite, 10 Dec 2014 @ 8:58am

Torturous Bureaucracy
Reading about the mismanagement through the report, I get the impression that the CIA couldn't get experienced officials and managers to agree to break the law and run the program, so they handed the job to whoever was willing, and to junior officers who were under pressure to impress their bosses, but received no guidance. The higher-ups distanced themselves so much that they didn't know much about how the program was managed (and didn't much care-they felt their legal immunity was ironclad). Meanwhile, they manipulated overseers to keep their mismanagement hidden so they could protect their careers. The impact on national security wasn't an apparent concern at all.

All of which raises many, many big questions about systemic mismanagement at CIA, apart from the obvious fact that dozens of high profile officials did not act in good faith.
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Andyroo, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:00am

revolution time
Congress allowed one person to get away with lying to them and now everyone is doing it.
Remember the Roman empire when they collapsed due to corruption and bribery, looks like the U.S is on the same path......i give the US 3 years at most before it collapses in on itself....the terrorists won accept it and at least try to get some of the decency that has been lost back. America home of the corrupt and the wilfully ignorant.
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bdj, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:05am

Repeating pattern...
History shows that the patterns of secrecy and illegal activity will repeat and that they will grow larger and more disgusting with every cycle. If you are expecting great change from this, you will only be disappointed. This level of corruption is beyond reproach.

As an American, I am embarrassed by the actions of my government today.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:06am

Time for an execution for treason.
At what point can the public hang this guy for treason? No trial, no police. If it was ok for him to pull such crooked trash on us, it should be ok for us to return the favor.

In my 40 years, it is only in the last 10 that I realized to never vote along party lines and to never pick a side just because I'm told I should. Nothing has made me more willing to actually study up on what our leaders say and do and vote accordingly than the amount of outright crooked behavior out of all of them from every side.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:06am

Re: revolution time
when you say terrorists, do you mean cops?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:15am

Mike Hayden just hates it when honesty is enforced.
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Derek (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:15am

Re: Liar
Because Congress has shown repeatedly that it doesn't care when important people lie to it.
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the threat to peace is the USA, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:20am

hehe
hi, from us hackers.....

You still don't know it all yet, how bad it actually is.

No worries , we will help you, despite yourselves.

We will show you the nightmare you have become.
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Jerrymiah, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:20am

Re: Michael the Liar Hayden
Hopefgully, the UN will prosecute hin in the Hague along with his co-conspirators.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:21am

Where are Saul & Carrie?
"Homeland" seems so quaint -- almost as idealistic as the original Star Trek -- next to these real CIA bozos.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:30am

Re:
The difference is that at Nuremberg, the trial was conducted by a country other than the one that perpetrated the crimes.

What country is going to try the U.S.? Our country would go to war before it would let another country or international body try and convict our top government personnel.

If Germany had won the war, all the people who hanged at Nuremberg would have been given accolades, money, power, and slaves.
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jupiterkansas (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:33am

Re: revolution time
So optimistic! It took Rome about 300 years to completely collapse.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:33am

On that very point
"Former CIA director Michael Hayden warned anyone who would listen that the release of the Torture Report would turn our enemies against us… or further against us, or something."

There is a GREAT commentary in the Washington Post that addresses this precise claim:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/12/08/the-insane-narrative-you-are-suppos ed-to-believe-about-the-torture-report/?hpid=z8

I'd cut-and-paste the hypothetical dialogue that's the centerpiece of this but it's a bit long and extracting it might cross the bounds of fair use -- so I'll just recommend that you all read it on their site. It's worth it.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:34am

Lovely to see a malicious twat like Hayden damn himself with his own words. Shame your government doesn't have the balls to make the complicit accountable though.
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MarcAnthony (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:35am

Re: Never attribute to Malice
You don’t force others to endure this kind of suffering without being some kind of evil. These CIA torturers and their enablers are either malicious murderers or psychopaths, and it’s up to conscientious citizens to ensure they stand trial for these crimes—otherwise we are complicit in the whole sordid ordeal.
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limbodog (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:36am

Re:
Why would there be a trial when the people who could put him on trial are happy with what he did?
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 9:40am

The CIA is the United States terrorist program.
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seal, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:01am

where was the CIA 9/10/01? where when we lost Iraq&Afg?
where was the CIA 9/10/01? where when we lost Iraq&Afg?
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AnonyBabs, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:02am

Just once I'd like to see an interviewer respond with what I've been yelling at the CIA defenders on TV: "Prove it. Proooooooooove it! Let's see the documents. Because the people who wrote this report saw the documents. Show me the ones that support your assertion that everyone knew everything and there was proper oversight and the interrogators were qualified and blah blah blah, Ginger. Prove it."
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John Fenderson (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:04am

Re: Never attribute to Malice
I actually think that truism is wrong more than it's right. But, really, it's meaningless. In the end, it doesn't matter if a bad thing is done because of incompetence or malice. The bad thing is still done.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:20am

Re: Re: Never attribute to Malice
Really it matters only in how to prevent future ones. Explaining how to prevent it won't help with malice.
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John Fenderson (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:32am

Re: Re: Re: Never attribute to Malice
Nor will it help with incompetence. The solution to both problems is the same: get rid of the malicious/incompetent people.
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:36am

Re: Never attribute to Malice
I used to think this could be true but it has been very clearly demonstrated that Malice is the main motivator in most of these government actions and malice intent on exploiting there own people, this is not the gulf of tonkin that was maybe made up as a somewhat spur of the moment justification, the wars(5) that I can think of(not counting Panama or Grenada), the terror state the dehumanization was planned from at least Reagan, the project for a new American century makes it very clear this was the objective of the elite, and all the bush people where part of it.
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:44am

Re:
Really you learned all that only yesterday, you haven't been paying attention to say the 70's, 80's, 90's, 1890's United fruit mean anything to you?

Or I could point you at Bannanas for a comic(I use the term loosely as it is wood allen) treatment of US policy in south and central America, there has been a US supported full on war going on in Columbia for more than 20 years

http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/countries/americas/colombia/us-policy-in-colombia

Granted it's not Vietnam or Iraq levels but it keeps the place destabilized and in the hands of drug cartels.

And seriously do I have to mention Oilly North and his band of merry coke funded murderers?
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:48am

Re: hehe
So the full report is being released unredacted when, also all of the probably many thousands of incidence of torture committed by the military.

I await a date and a link
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Mason Wheeler (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:51am

Re: Never attribute to Malice
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 10:55am

Re: Media harshness
Sorry, but the real reaction is like FOX AMERICA IS AWESOME.

Prove they didn't know, the CIA and Hayden are being thrown under the bus for the people like Bush, Finstien, Darth sidious, Rumsfeld, and most of the congress and senate, and for the military that committed many more violations of the anti torture laws than the CIA(probably thousands more)
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 11:04am

"entirely innactuate"
"incongruent" (really...)
"incomplete"
"innacurate representations"

They lied their faces off lol. Pants on fire style.
In a way agencies are like children drunk on power, lie about everything and anything and take no responsibility for their actions.

Meanwhile guantanamo marches on, the patriot act marches on, epic nsa spying marches on. Its all illegal no matter what a secret court judge says. Hes wrong its not legal. Secret court judges aren't legal either. Neither is secret law and secret interpretations of law. Not in a democratic environment.
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nasch (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 11:33am

Re: Time for an execution for treason.
At what point can the public hang this guy for treason?

Even if he were prosecuted, it's very unlikely treason would be the charge. Unless you're just talking about a lynch mob, which is also extremely unlikely.
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Michael Donnelly (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 11:36am

Watch it happen in real-time.
Step 1) Make it a partisan issue.

Step 2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility

Step 3) PROFIT!
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 11:43am

If Hayden really wants a more balanced review of the US torture program(s)...
Maybe we should release all files unredacted to the public, so that any party who wants to can mull over them and draw their own conclusions.

Usually I'm all for erring on the side of suspects, but torture is one of those things that defines the decay of a nation from liberty to control. As we Americans (even today) happily condemn the mere janitors and watchmen of German death camps, maybe it's appropriate, then, that we would condemn the entire CIA and administration right up to the presidency for wittingly engaging in such a program.

The torture program was a big step in destroy the integrity of America. From then forward, we lost all moral high ground anywhere.
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nasch (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 11:46am

Re: Re: Media harshness
Prove they didn't know, the CIA and Hayden are being thrown under the bus

What bus? The CIA and Hayden are doing just fine. Has any funding been cut? Anyone been fired? Anybody been charged with a crime?
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nasch (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 11:49am

Lying
This certainly seems like the record of relentless lying over a period of several years, contrary to Hayden's assertions.

Of course - it's not as though he would suddenly start telling the truth after all these years. Perversely, he is better off continuing to lie about it. If he now admitted "yes, I was lying to Congress and the public" he would be crucified. But if he continues lying, he can get away with it.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 12:51pm

Only 98? Doesn't matter, 1 was too damn many to torture.

I wonder if all this fascism is helping you out like you thought it would in government? You're citizens are totally unhappy with the direction the government has taken. You've lost their unquestioned support. Now you've lost your unquestioned "we're the good guys" spot. No, you were never the good guys once you stepped over that line.

The entire government has lied to cover this up, willfully. I am quite sure that our present president will not institute an investigation into war crimes as he is guilty of them himself.
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That One Guy (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 12:53pm

Re: Re: Liar
Doing something about people lying to them would require them to grow a spine, which they currently lack.

Screwing over the public, no problem, it's easy enough to scam the public with one or two good but empty PR moves near election time, but screwing over another government agency, one who might actually be able to do something about it? Oh they are much more cautious there.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 12:58pm

isn't the definition of insanity

having no grasp in reality, thinking whatever you say is actually true
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 12:59pm

Re: Re: Re: Media harshness
No and they will not be, I guess "thrown under the bus" is to harsh a term for people that will never be held accountable, what I mean is that the CIA is being used as a distraction for the criminals that instigated and approved of these war crimes.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 1:02pm

in 5 more years we will have the "flying robot murder" report where we find that obama authorized drone strikes which killed civilians based on totally fabricated and or unreliable intelligence.

'Murica land of the fearful.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 1:02pm

Re:
prepare for war sadly. As few learn that history repeats itself. America is going to go full blown fascist tyranny before long.

Though I doubt they will openly attack their citizens until they successfully ban the right to own firearms from the populace.

They will make do with having the police murder a person here and a person there
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Whoever, 10 Dec 2014 @ 1:02pm

They should be struck off
The placement of medical officers during the interrogation techniques represents an extra measure of caution

If any of these "medical officers" were qualified doctors, they should be struck off. Being present in the interrogations is assisting them. Just because they did not wield the torture items does not remove culpability.
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 1:08pm

Indications of bias...
If the narrative of a a one-sided study marred by errors can, actually, be easily be used to further a push for total transparency regarding the torture programs sponsored by the US.

Not that this will happen. The opacity of our torture program is not about national security, but to protect those responsible, which carries the implication that those people knew it was unjustifiable in the first place.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 1:51pm

Re: They should be struck off
The AMA endorsed torture long before this, those who use violence to dominate others will always support others that do the same.
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 2:38pm

I can't imagine
What would happen if the US owned up, sent Bush et all to the Hague, it reminds me of the cartoon about climate change of: " What if we make a better world for no reason?"

We cannot keep kidding ourselves that we are a bunch of amoral assholes, we are not most of use know what is the right thing to do all of this other bullshit is justification for people that want to harm us, the whole world, we hate north Korea because they harm the people that live there, Iran because they hate women and harm those that live there, let us stop pretending that the United States of America is the good guy and say NO YOU NEED TO BE and that means behaving in a way that is consistent with LOVING FREEDOM, LIFE AND HUMAN BEINGS, complain all you want about being the worlds police, well your police murder your own citizens so until you put your shield between me and your own agents, you can't have any credibility.
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Anonymous Coward, 10 Dec 2014 @ 2:50pm

Director Hayden nonetheless told a meeting of foreign ambassadors ... that "[t]his is not CIA's program. This is not the President's program. This is America's program."
This is one of the most cowardly CYA statements ever made.
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 2:56pm

Re: Cowardly
No one wants this because they are all guilty, all of them(congress, 2 presidents the senate and many national security types in the Alphabet soup) are guilty of crimes against humanity.

Really who wants to be guilty of that? certainly not people.
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John Fenderson (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:05pm

Re: Time for an execution for treason.
"At what point can the public hang this guy for treason?"

Never. As bad as his behavior is, it's not actually treason.
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Techanon, 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:13pm

Re: Re:
Because right now he is in a perfect position for a scapegoat linching?
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Joe Dirt, 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:20pm

Terror Nation
How many (millions?) of folks living in the Middle East (and elsewhere), in the future, will be pushed that extra bit over the margin to kill captured American soldiers and civilians, join terrorist groups, support terrorists in countless small or large ways, and so forth, because America didn't prosecute those responsible for America's shameful and horrific program of global terror?
How many have been pushed already by the years-old revelations of these events?

I realize that many didn't need that extra little push. All decisions are made at the margin -- even by would-be "terrorists." It is just obvious to anyone with any appreciation for the quantitative that the failure to now prosecute the torturers will lead to a loss of more American lives in the future.

Would ISIS be beheading people if it weren't for the torture, Abu Ghraib, etc? Would it even EXIST? And how many "additional" terrorists are even needed to carry out something like another 9/11? Twenty? One?

The torturers are already responsible for a vast number of lives lost including plenty of Americans -- terrorist groups have been using these decade-old long revelations as a recruiting tool for just as long.

If we were to apply Hayden and Company's arguments to them, they'd be tortured to "save American lives in the future." Surely it would appease a lot of marginal, would-be terrorists who would otherwise have taken up jihad against the U.S.

Prosecution of these traitors won't dissuade quite as many from going full jihad, but it'll help.
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ddc, 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:24pm

Who wrote this.
Maybe I'm stupid, but I looked at the online article and did not see a byline.

Who wrote this opinion peice?
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nasch (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:42pm

Re: Re: They should be struck off
The AMA endorsed torture long before this,

When did they do that?
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:43pm

Re: Terror Nation
I said the other month that the IRA had the perfect confluence of folk music, good PR and LIBERTY and we'll who the fuck cares if they made deals with the lybians and whoever, they are freedom fighters.

I see this being true for most of the middle east in the future because the more we know about how much we as the west has fucked around with people there the more justified in in hating us they seem.

Plus will someone say FFS the people that attacked New York where the Saudis, want to know why no invasion? OIL and Bush(all of them are personal friends with the royal family) they have had a guarantee of protection since Churchill and FDR gave it to them in '43
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nasch (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:43pm

Re: Who wrote this.
Tim Cushing - it's to the left of the headline.
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:45pm

Re: Who wrote this.
Tim Cushing you are stupid look to your left
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Uriel-238 (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 3:49pm

All the terrorists.
How many (millions?) of folks living in the Middle East (and elsewhere), in the future, will be pushed that extra bit over the margin to kill captured American soldiers and civilians, join terrorist groups, support terrorists in countless small or large ways, and so forth, because America didn't prosecute those responsible for America's shameful and horrific program of global terror?

I, for one, hope all of them. Our foreign policy, of which our torture program is just a single facet, has been so heinous for years, serving only corporate interests and not the notions of liberty or democracy that we were told, that the United States deserves the barbarians besieging our gates.

The great experiment that was US Democracy hasn't merely failed, but failed in ways beyond imagination. We've become exemplary of how a nation should not conduct itself.

So, frankly, I think it would be fitting to the greater good of mankind if the terror organizations are bolstered immensely by the choices our government has made to torture, to assault civilian targets over military ones, to favor our own economic interests over that of their people.

In the next iteration, maybe they'll remember what became of the United States the way we remember Germany and the Soviet Union. And maybe they'll take better care than we did not to become the monster that we became, and that they became.
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Ashamed of America, 10 Dec 2014 @ 4:37pm

Traitorous Torturers
I suppose America will eventually hand over some low-level dbags to the International Court for prosecution. Same as with Abu Ghraib and so on ad nauseum. High ranking officials will never see a jail cell or a hangman's rope.

Post-America is nothing if not the epitome of hypocrisy.
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ddc, 10 Dec 2014 @ 4:37pm

Who wrote we the wsj opinion peice
Thanks.

When I said the online article, I meant the WSJ article. I couldn't find the byline in the WSJ article.

Again, thanks for the venom.
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Nom du Clavier (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re:
Those weren't lies, those were high precision targeted instances of Enhanced Factual Manipulation.
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nasch (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 4:49pm

Re: Traitorous Torturers
I suppose America will eventually hand over some low-level dbags to the International Court for prosecution.

The US isn't a party to the ICC; nobody will be handed over.
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Aaron (profile), 10 Dec 2014 @ 5:20pm

Lots of incongruencies
A quick text search through the executive summary shows variants of the phrase "incongruent with CIA records" appear forty-two times. That's quite a lot of lies!
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No Name for this Use, 10 Dec 2014 @ 6:19pm

Re: Re: Traitorous Torturers
The US is a party to the convention against torture though.

FTF Wiki

Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person, information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions"

""No exceptional circumstances whatsoever"[6] may be invoked to justify torture, including war, threat of war, internal political instability, public emergency, terrorist acts, violent crime, or any form of armed conflict.[7] Torture cannot be justified as a means to protect public safety or prevent emergencies.[7] Neither can it be justified by orders from superior officers or public officials.[8] The prohibition on torture applies to all territories under a party's effective jurisdiction, and protects all people under its effective control, regardless of citizenship or how that control is exercised"

There is no middle ground here Many Many government officials committed war crimes and violated the convention on torture(which is US law)they may not be extraditable to the ICC but the are prosecutable under US Law, now no one has ever been prosecuted and the punishment is largely undefined, so those with the guns get away with violating every bit of human dignity again and murdering many.

What are you going to do most armed society in existence?
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Pragmatic, 11 Dec 2014 @ 5:34am

Re: All the terrorists.
It all went wrong when Americans began to prefer looking good to being good. It's all about which team you're on and how loyal you are to it. On the right, they're all, "Who cares about the ragheads, nine eleven."

On the left-liberal side there's more variety and plenty of outrage but they're all blaming Bush, et al. The truth is that anyone not actively opposing this program is a part of the problem.

We need to break down the walls that divide us and stop playing partisan games. When we learn to work together we'll be able to get our country back on track.
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Anonymous Coward, 11 Dec 2014 @ 4:11pm

Re: Never attribute to Malice
I can imagine someone on trial for murder trying to use that one:

"Gee, Yer Honor, I didn't mean to hurt no one. You see, I just didn't know that slittin' someone's throat would actually hurt 'em. So, it really wuzn't malice, I just didn't know no better! OK?"

Yah, right.
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