CIA Accused Of Spying On Senate Intelligence Committee Staffers

from the biting-the-hand-that-oversees-you dept

While at times, it's appeared that the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Dianne Feinstein, serves more to prop up the intelligence community than to handle oversight, it has actually clashed quite a bit with the CIA. We've discussed a few times how the Committee has been pushing to release a supposedly devastating 6,000 page report about the CIA's torture program, which cost taxpayers an equally astounding $40 million to produce. However, the CIA has been fighting hard to block the release of the report, arguing that it misrepresents the CIA's actions.

However, things are getting even more bizarre, as the NY Times is reporting that the CIA is now accused of spying on the Intelligence Committee and its staffers in its attempt to keep that report from being released.

The details are still a little cloudy, but in December, Senator Mark Udall revealed that the Senate Intelligence Committee had come across an internal CIA study that apparently corroborated the information that is in the big Senate report -- and which directly contradicted claims by the CIA to the Committee about how the report was inaccurate -- suggesting that, on top of everything else, the CIA lied to the Intelligence Committee. Udall quizzed CIA boss John Brennan about that internal report. And according to the NY Times, it appears that CIA folks freaked out that the Intelligence Committee somehow got access to that internal study, and responded the way the CIA knows best: by starting to spy on Intelligence Committee staffers:

The agency’s inspector general began the inquiry partly as a response to complaints from members of Congress that C.I.A. employees were improperly monitoring the work of staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to government officials with knowledge of the investigation.

The committee has spent several years working on a voluminous report about the detention and interrogation program, and according to one official interviewed in recent days, C.I.A. officers went as far as gaining access to computer networks used by the committee to carry out its investigation.

On Tuesday, Udall sent a strongly worded letter to President Obama, pushing for the declassification and release of the big 6,300 page report, but also that internal CIA study, which would highlight how the CIA lied. On top of that, he made an oblique reference to this spying activity by the CIA:

As you are aware, the CIA has recently taken unprecedented action against the Committee in relation to the internal CIA review, and I find these actions to be incredibly troubling for the Committee's oversight responsibilities and for our democracy. It is essential that the Committee be able to do its oversight work -- consistent with our constitutional principle of the separation of powers -- without the CIA posing impediments or obstacles as it is today.

In many ways, the idea that the CIA is directly spying on the Senate Committee charged with its own oversight is a bigger potential scandal than many of the Snowden NSA revelations so far. Even more importantly, it may finally lead to Congress taking action against an out-of-control intelligence community.

Filed Under: cia, dianne feinstein, john brennan, mark udall, senate intelligence committee, spying, torture

Skinny Puppy Invoices US Government After It Played The Band's Music To Torture Gitmo Prisoners [Updated]

from the but-was-it-paid? dept

A few years ago, after stories started appearing about the US military playing loud music to annoy prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay, we were among those who wondered if the government paid royalties on those "public performances." We weren't the only ones, as at least some musicians who were on the playlist wondered out loud if they were getting royalties -- while, actually, being a lot more concerned about the whole situation, both the torture and the idea that their music was used as torture. Now, in a recent issue of the Phoenix New Times, in which they interviewed the band Skinny Puppy about its latest album, the band's founder explains that the name for the new album came from hearing that their music was being played at Gitmo, but also notes that they sent an invoice to the US government:

"We heard through a reliable grapevine that our music was being used in Guantanamo Bay prison camps to musically stun or torture people," founder cEvin Key explains by phone from his Los Angeles home. "We heard that our music was used on at least four occasions. So we thought it would be a good idea to make an invoice to the U.S. government for musical services, thus the concept of the record title, Weapons."

The wording there is a little strange, as it may be that the album is a metaphorical invoice, but it would be fascinating to find out if an actual invoice was ever sent... and if it was paid. Oh, and, no the band wasn't happy about all of this:

"Not too good," Key continues. "We never supported those types of scenarios. ... Because we make unsettling music, we can see it being used in a weird way. But it doesn't sit right with us."

Update: Aha. Via Jason Leopold, here's the actual invoice for $666,000.

Filed Under: copyright, gitmo, guantanamo bay, music, skinny puppy, torture

CIA Still Trying To Block Release Of Senate's $40 Million 'Devastating' Report About CIA's Torture Program

from the it's-going-to-come-out-eventually dept

Back in October, we wrote about how the Senate Intelligence committee was sitting on an apparently devastating report about the CIA's torture program. The report apparently cost an astounding $40 million to put together (I still have trouble understanding how this is even possible...), but the CIA was fighting against ever having it released, arguing that it was inaccurate and painted them in an unfairly bad light. The report is so devastating that even Senator Dianne Feinstein, long seen as the intelligence community's leading apologist, has been at the forefront of arguing for its release.

Foreign Policy magazine is now reporting that, even as the CIA continues to fight against it, some sort of deal has been reached to release at least part of the report.

On Thursday night, Feinstein said the CIA and the Obama administration have agreed that portions of her committee's exhaustive, 6,000-page report should be shared with the public. News of the agreement follows an intense struggle between the CIA and lawmakers that will likely shape how history views one of the most controversial periods in the post-9/11 era, when the CIA used tactics that President Obama and others have condemned as torture in an attempt to elicit information about terrorism.

At a hearing concerning the nomination of Caroline Krass to become the next general counsel for the CIA, Senator Mark Udall demanded that the document be made public, and threatened to block the nomination until the document was released. Senator Feinstein also quizzed Krass about getting access to related documents, concerning the CIA's legal rationale for its torture program and drone strikes -- only to have Krass refuse to commit to providing those documents. According to the Reuters report Krass told the committee she "did not believe members of the Senate panel had the right to see" those documents.

While so much of the focus concerning the intelligence community has been on the NSA these past few months, there is a growing amount of evidence that the CIA is also completely out of control, and views itself as being beyond basic Congressional oversight. It is a reminder that reforms for fixing the intelligence community cannot and should not focus merely on correcting this program or that program, but on a true and comprehensive overhaul of the entire system.

And it should start with releasing this 6,300 page report that American taxpayers paid $40 million to produce.

Filed Under: caroline kass, cia, dianne feinstein, drones, mark udall, torture

The Senate Is Sitting On A Devastating Report About How The CIA Avoided Oversight Of Unnecessary Torture Program

from the congressional-oversight! dept

So much attention concerning the intelligence community lately has been focused on the NSA. There has been a bit of looking at the FBI as well, but for the most part the CIA has been left untouched -- even though when the Washington Post released details of the US's black budget (thanks to Ed Snowden), it surprised many people to discover that the CIA still has a significantly larger budget than the NSA.

Late last week, the New Yorker's Jane Mayer had a fantastic article revealing some details of a still-classified report put together by the Senate Intelligence Committee which apparently rips the CIA to shreds over its torture program, both in how ineffective the program was, but also in how the CIA tried to avoid any real oversight from Congress.

At its core is a bitter disagreement over an apparently devastating, and still secret, report by the Senate Intelligence Committee documenting in detail how the C.I.A.’s brutalization of terror suspects during the Bush years was unnecessary, ineffective, and deceptively sold to Congress, the White House, the Justice Department, and the public. The report threatens to definitively refute former C.I.A. personnel who have defended the program’s integrity. But so far, to the consternation of several members of the Intelligence Committee, the Obama Administration, like Bush’s before it, is keeping the damning details from public view.

The CIA, apparently, has been "defiant and defensive" in response to the massive report (over 6,000 pages, and which apparently cost $40 million to produce). CIA boss John Brennan has apparently been especially aggressive in trying to challenge the report and in blocking it from being declassified.

As Mayer notes, many of the new details came out due to Senator Mark Udall (who, for years, has been a leader in trying to stop the NSA's bad behavior) first blocking the confirmation of Stephen Preston to become General Counsel of the Defense Department (a position formerly held by Jeh Johnson, who was just nominated to run Homeland Security). Preston, prior to this, had been General Counsel for the CIA. Udall used the opportunity to quiz Preston about both the Intelligence Committee's report and the CIA's angry rebuttal, noting that if Preston stood by the rebuttal, he would be very uncomfortable about confirming him for the Pentagon job.

Preston, in his response, appears to distance himself from the CIA's position, agreeing with some of the findings in the Senate report. In particular, he admits that the CIA "fell well short" of keeping Congress informed and allowing Congress to have oversight over the CIA's torture program.

In fact, Preston admits outright that, contrary to the C.I.A.’s insistence that it did not actively impede congressional oversight of its detention and interrogation program, “briefings to the Committees included inaccurate information related to aspects of the program of express interest to Members.”

The contention that the C.I.A. provided inaccurate information to the congressional oversight committees is apparently extensively documented by the report. Udall notes that the report contains a two-hundred-ninety-eight-page section on “C.I.A. Representations on the C.I.A. Interrogation Program and the Effectiveness of the C.I.A.’s Enhanced Interrogation Techniques to Congress.”

Furthermore, the report apparently notes that rather than actually briefing the entire Intelligence Committee on what it was doing, the CIA only briefed the chairman and vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In other words, beyond providing enough misleading information to fill a large book, the CIA also made sure that the Senate Intelligence Committee members (outside of the two top members) weren't even informed of the details of what they did.

There's a lot more in the Mayer piece, going through many of the key revelations that can be parsed out from both Udall's questions and Preston's answers, but it's apparent that (1) the CIA had very little real oversight from Congress concerning its torture program, (2) the Senate Intelligence Committee is pissed off about this, and (3) there's a massive report detailing all of this that will eventually see the light of day. It does sound like many on the Senate Intelligence Committee -- including (much to my surprise) Dianne Feinstein -- are fighting to have the report released (I'm sure with many redactions). Udall is pushing strongly for such a declassification:

“My views of the C.I.A.’s response remain unchanged,” Udall wrote. “As I told John Brennan during his confirmation hearing, acknowledging the flaws of the C.I.A.’s detention and interrogation program is essential for the C.I.A.’s long-term institutional integrity—as well as for the legitimacy of ongoing sensitive programs. At this point, I do not believe the C.I.A. has sufficiently acknowledged the flaws that the committee has meticulously detailed with thirty-five-thousand footnotes in six-thousand-three-hundred pages.”

Udall also reiterated his demand to “declassify as much of the committee’s report as possible.” He added, “Without the right amount of sunshine, some of the problems documented in the study—to include problems that I believe still exist today—will remain uncorrected. The American people have the right to know what the government has done on their behalf.”

Between the lack of any real oversight of the NSA and now, it appears, the CIA as well, once again we're left wondering how the administration can pretend that these agencies are actually under control and not prone to abuse.

Filed Under: cia, enhanced interrogation, jane mayer, john brennan, mark udall, senate intelligence committee, stephen preston, torture

Guy Who Wrote Legal Memos Defending US Torture Defends NSA Because It Takes Too Long To Obey The Constitution

from the a-despicable-human-being dept

John Yoo, of course, is somewhat infamous for being the author of the so-called "Torture Memos," while he was Deputy US Attorney General for President George W. Bush, giving the Bush administration a horrific legal "justification" for torture. It's no surprise, of course, that he's been spewing ignorant and ridiculous claims concerning other issues as well. We recently wrote about his claims that new media properties like Wikileaks have no First Amendment protections because they're "not the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal." Because in Yoo's demented world, only old school newspapers count. He also made factually incorrect claims, stating that Bradley Manning and Julian Assange "communicated regularly" when the record showed that was simply not true.

Not surprisingly, he's now strongly defending the NSA's activities spying on Americans because there appears to be no part of the Constitution that John Yoo won't spit on and pretend he's merely polishing it up. He argues that while the Justice Department should obey the 4th Amendment, it should not apply to military and intelligence agencies like the NSA:

Once we impose those standards [basic 4th Amendment respect for privacy] on the military and intelligence agencies, however, we are either guaranteeing failure or we must accept a certain level of error. If the military and intelligence agencies had to follow law-enforcement standards, their mission would fail because they would not give us any improvement over what the FBI could achieve anyway. If the intelligence community is to detect future terrorist attacks through analyzing electronic communications, we are asking them to search through a vast sea of e-mails and phone-call patterns to find those few which, on the surface, look innocent but are actually covert terrorist messages.

Except, that's not how it works. We have the 4th Amendment specifically to protect against government intrusion. We don't say "oh, it's okay because they need to do it." That's not how it works. There's no "exception" to the 4th Amendment for military and intelligence agencies.

Then he tries to argue that the "mistakes" are no big deal, because, hey, all of law enforcement makes mistakes.

Domestic law enforcement makes these errors too. Police seek warrants for the wrong guy, execute a search in the wrong house, arrest the wrong suspect, and even shoot unarmed suspects. We accept these mistakes because we understand that no law-enforcement system can successfully protect our communities from crime with perfection.

Actually, I'm not sure in what world Yoo lives in, but for the most part we don't accept those mistakes. We find them abhorrent and we work to stop them. And, this isn't "seeking the warrant for the wrong guy," or searching "the wrong house." This is collecting all information on everyone. There's a difference.

Then, there's the bogus "if we don't do this the terrorists will win" argument:

To end the NSA’s efforts to intercept terrorist communications would be to willfully blind ourselves to the most valuable intelligence sources on al-Qaeda (now that the president won’t allow the capture and interrogation of al-Qaeda leaders).

In Yoo's scary world, the ends justify the means. Of course, that way tyranny and dictatorship lie. You can justify anything under Yoo's rationale. If we want "the most valuable intelligence" to stop attacks, why not place cameras and microphones in everyone's house and cars and record it all with voice recognition software. After all, that would provide much more "valuable intelligence sources." There's a reason there are limits on government surveillance, and it appears that Yoo was absent that day at Yale law school when they taught that part. The rationale he gives has no limits, which is why it's not surprising that he's still pushing for torturing people, despite the fact that it's abhorrent and has never been shown to actually be effective.

And then... he explains why it's okay to ignore the Constitution on this one:

Increasing judicial oversight might reduce errors — though I am dubious — but in a way that would seriously slow down the speed of the program, which is all-important if the mission is to stop terrorists.

In other words, obeying the Constitution just takes too much time. What Yoo is missing is that's the whole point. We live in a world where there are risks, but we are supposed to live in a free country, where we don't invade everyone's privacy for the myth of some smidgen of greater protection. Law enforcement's job is supposed to be hard, because if it's not, there is much more abuse for almost no benefit. It's why we live in a country where, we're told, you're innocent until proven guilty. It's because we believe in protecting our rights, even if it means that sometimes someone gets away with a crime. However, in Yoo's world, it would be a hell of a lot more efficient if everyone was guilty until proven innocent, because that's a lot faster. And, as he notes, sure there are some mistakes, but the ratio would probably be reasonable, so what's the big deal?

Filed Under: 4th amendment, john yoo, nsa, nsa surveillance, torture

How Far We've Fallen: Attorney General Eric Holder Promises Russians US Government Won't 'Torture' Or 'Kill' Ed Snowden

from the should-have-gone-without-saying dept

If you had any question about how low this country's reputation has sunk or how we're viewed worldwide for our open-ended detainment and torture of uncharged terrorism suspects, you need look no further than Attorney General Eric Holder's "reassuring" statement to the Russian Minister of Justice about whistleblower Ed Snowden's potential extradition.

Holder's letter pointed out that torture is "unlawful" in the United States and that the government wouldn't seek the death penalty, even if "Mr. Snowden were charged with additional, death penalty-eligible crimes."

William K. Black, writing for New Economic Perspectives, points out just how horrifically bizarre this situation is.

The idea that the Attorney General of the United States of America would send such a letter to the representative of a foreign government, particularly Russia under the leadership of a former KGB official, was so preposterous that I thought the first news report I read about Attorney General Holder’s letter concerning Edward Snowden was satire. The joke, however, was on me. The Obama and Bush administrations have so disgraced the reputation of the United States’ criminal justice system that we are forced to promise KGB alums that we will not torture our own citizens if Russia extradites them for prosecution.

When a nation, especially one considered to be the figurehead of the "free world," has to make promises to a former Cold War rival that it won't torture and kill a whistleblower, there can be little doubt that the country has reached its nadir. The US used to shelter dissidents from the vengeance of their former countries and once considered whistleblowers to be a part of a healthy government.

But now we've come to the point where the nation's lead prosecutor has to openly state that torture and killing are off the table, at least in regards to Ed Snowden. How reassuring. The government hasn't "tortured" and killed its other main antagonist, Bradley Manning, but it did hold him in solitary confinement for over three years and his treatment could easily be defined as "torture." (Although not in the only way that counts: the administration's definition.)

Holder's letter has hints of malevolence below the "cheery" no-torture-or-killing surface.

Holder phrased his explanation in a manner that suggests he was trying to be clever: “Torture is unlawful in the United States.” “Gitmo,” of course, is not “in the United States.” The locations of the many secret prisons the U.S. established in other nations were chosen so that we could torture suspects...

More subtly, note that Holder says that torture is “unlawful” – not “illegal.” An act that is merely “unlawful” cannot be prosecuted as a crime. It may provide the basis for a civil suit. An “illegal” act can be prosecuted.

This isn't very reassuring, but then again, a spokesman for the administration feeling compelled to make loosely worded "promises" about torture and killing isn't exactly reassuring either. As Black says, this should have been a forgone conclusion, and yet, AG Holder felt compelled to state this explicitly.

I always took it for granted that no U.S. attorney general would knowingly allow a criminal suspect in U.S. custody to be the victim of torture, raped, branded, or a host of other forms of brutality.

Our country isn't supposed to torture and kill American citizens (although we have no qualms about doing either to non-Americans, which is troubling in its own way). And yet, there's still enough gray area in this statement to make it technically possible. One way the government could get around the whole "we don't torture and kill American citizens [except when we do]" issue is to do what the UK does when one of its citizens is targeted by the US: strip the suspect of citizenship.

In early February, a leaked white paper from the Obama Justice Department caused a small stir, because it laid out an expansive set of circumstances under which the president could order a citizen killed abroad. In September 2011, the US killed Al Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both US citizens, and a few weeks later a US drone strike in Yemen also killed Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman...

Meanwhile, the UK is stripping people it alleges of having joined militant groups of their citizenship, some of whom have gone on to be killed in US strikes. Stripping people of their citizenship, strips people of whatever protection they theoretically had as citizens under UK law.

The US has already revoked Snowden's passport (although it is offering him a one-time use passport should he choose to return to the welcoming, non-killing, non-torturing arms of the United States). There's no reason it can't revoke his citizenship should it be deemed necessary. All he needs to do is pose an "imminent threat," another one of the War on Terror's endlessly flexible "guidelines."

Of course, something as drastic as stripping Snowden of citizenship (and its attendant protections) is probably the most unlikely outcome. Holder's statement on the US government's intentions for Snowden is worded very specifically, most likely in hopes of preventing Snowden from taking advantage of the additional protection against extradition provided by the United Nations. Back when Snowden was still in Hong Kong, this point was raised by Tim Parker, a local immigration lawyer.

A handover could also be halted if Mr Snowden was believed to be in danger of receiving inhumane treatment in the US, Mr Parker added.

"If Mr Snowden is at risk of being detained under the sort of conditions that Bradley Manning has reportedly been detained, which the UN special rapporteurs have said amounted to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or punishment... then Hong Kong would not be allowed under its law, and could not extradite him to the US."

Making very public statements about torture and killing sounds more like Holder trying to talk loudly enough that the UN will overhear him. If the government isn't going to venture into "cruel" and "inhumane" territory (at least not out loud), Snowden can't reasonably expect to be shielded from extradition by the UN guidelines.

But whatever the administration's rationale for Holder's letter, the fact remains that the US government should never have slid to the disgraceful level where it feels its needs to make public promises about torture and killing. The fact that it has says a lot about the machinations of its anti-terror efforts -- one that turns whistleblowers into criminals and dissenting voices into terrorist sympathizers. If the administration wants to make a small effort towards rebuilding its reputation, it should consider dismissing the charges against Snowden and use the leaked information to open an actual discussion on national security and constitutional rights.

Filed Under: ed snowden, eric holder, nsa surveillance, promises, russia, torture

Politicians Decry Fake Torture, Cover Up Real Torture

from the the-nation-cannot-abide-inaccurate-torture-depictions dept

Even if a lifetime of exposure to the continuous hypocrisy of politicians has turned many of us into jaded, cynical shells of human beings reduced to selecting "None of the Above" when voting, every so often something comes along that breaks through our hardened shells... and carves another slice off our dwindling faith in humanity. This is one of those moments.

Senators John McCain, Dianne Feinstein and Carl Levin have an issue with Zero Dark Thirty, most specifically its uber-controversial torture scene. Taking to the nearest soapbox, they have decried this horrible act of waterboarding storyboarding, calling it "grossly inaccurate and misleading." As Spencer Ackerman at Wired points out, it's a bit rich for these three to be making a bunch of noise about fake torture (and related inaccuracies) when they could be clearing the air about actual, state-ordained torture involving real detainees.

If the problem with Zero Dark Thirty is that it's not an accurate presentation of the utility of torture (and we shudder at the thought that torture ought to be evaluated according to its utility), the senators could make a major push to declassify a massive report put together by Feinstein's committee into what the CIA's torture program did and didn't do.

Feinstein, in particular, should probably keep her comments on fake torture to a minimum, considering she's sitting on a classified report that details years of interrogations performed by the CIA, often involving torture of detainees.

Last week, Feinstein announced that the Senate intelligence committee she chairs finally approved a 6,000-page study into the CIA’s treatment of terrorism detainees in its custody that took almost four years to investigate. By reviewing more than "6 million pages of CIA and other records," Feinstein said, the report details how the detainees were treated, how they were interrogated, and, crucially, "the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of CIA descriptions about the program." Feinstein promised "startling details" and "critical questions" about the program, promising it would "settle the debate once and for all over whether our nation should ever employ coercive interrogation techniques such as those detailed in this report." Small problem: the report is secret, so you can't read it.

"Startling details" and "critical questions" that the average US citizen will likely never see. Feinstein won't declassify the report until the President and other executive branch members review it. At that point, the committee will "consider" declassification. In other words, this has next to no chance of being declassified, at least not during this administration, and very possibly much longer than that. Here's how Ackerman describes the current situation:

So the report that could settle the debate about torture won't settle the debate about torture until the self-interested parties who've stymied accountability for torture decide it's safe to settle the debate about torture.

Despite a promising start, Obama and his team have shown very little interest in the openness and transparency that was promised at the beginning of his first term. In fact, many of the administration's actions have headed in the opposite direction.

After an early and acrimonious decision to partially declassify key Justice Department memos authorizing the torture — for which Obama deserves praise — he's done nothing. A special prosecutor empowered by Attorney General Eric Holder ended up not indicting any CIA official who abused detainees, and didn't even consider investigating the top officials who authorized the torture in the first place. There has been even less official public reckoning with what the torture program entailed, something that would fray Obama's relationship with a CIA that implements his lethal drone program, since a former Bush administration aide described that program as amounting to "war crimes." And it's worth noting that under Obama's watch, the U.S. military placed accused Wikileaker Bradley Manning in conditions that were harsher than those for many Guantanamo Bay detainees.

That's what makes this particular bit of grandstanding especially nauseating. To publicly berate a movie (and its makers) for being "misleading" in its depiction of torture is more reprehensible than decrying the movie for depicting (or "glorifying," as other critics have stated) torture. If the torture actually happened and produced no usable results, shouldn't these three be making some noise about the CIA using horrific tactics to produce questionable results? If, indeed, the torture was "successful" and helped take down Bin Laden, shouldn't those who either explicitly or implicitly justify torture be praising this film for its accuracy?

Since no one's taking up that latter offer, we can assume that government officials that approve of torture have no desire to express that in public. And if these three have information disproving the movie's claims, they should be coming forward with it, rather than keeping it hidden from public view. Unfortunately, this report will stay locked down, as no one in this administration wants to hang out the CIA's dirty laundry. Chances are the report shows that several horrific acts produced negligible results as the link between torture and usable information has always been extremely tenuous. As Nice Guy Eddie said in 'Reservoir Dogs,' "If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it fucking so!"

Instead of transparency, we get self-serving complaints about celluloid torture and more state secrets and classification. It's sad, disgusting and entirely unsurprising.

Filed Under: politics, torture

Bradley Manning Hearing Shows Military Bosses More Concerned About Media Attention Than Manning's Conditions

from the but-of-course dept

Kevin Gosztola has been providing detailed updates on the latest Bradley Manning hearings, focused mainly on the conditions associated with the treatment of Manning after his arrest, and whether or not it amounted to "unlawful pretrial punishment" or involved reasonable precautions by the military. Specifically, as we had discussed, Manning was held in conditions that amounted to torture under key definitions of torture -- held in "intensive solitary confinement" in total isolation, not allowed to have a pillow or sheets for his bed. Over 250 legal experts condemned his treatment and the State Department's spokesperson even lost his job for saying publicly that Manning was being mistreated, and that it wasn't productive.

The legal issue is that if this treatment was seen as punitive then that's a problem. People can be held pre-trial, but they're not supposed to be "punished" as part of the process. The Defense Department has been trying to claim that the treatment of Manning had to do with fears that he would harm himself, and the latest hearings were to figure out which version of the story is really accurate. The details look pretty damning for the Defense Department. For example, it appears that officials were more concerned about the media, not about Manning's condition:

Going through emails, it came out that Lt. Gen. George Flynn, superior officer, was concerned with media and not Bradley Manning’s conditions. For example, when David House and Firedoglake editor-in-chief Jane Hamsher were harassed at the gate of Quantico, Flynn was in on this incident. He was up on what the public affairs planned to say to any questions from media on the incident. But, he was not up on weekly updates coming from officers in the brig.

Later, the same Lt. Gen. Flynn apparently got upset that the NYTimes had information on Manning's mistreatment and he hadn't been forewarned about the media situation:

Lt. Gen. Flynn was upset that he read about Manning standing outside his cell naked in the New York Times. “It would be good to have leadership have heads up on these things before they’re read in the early bird!” Lt. Col Flynn wrote in an email. The “early bird” is a military synopsis of various news stories/press releases.

And then there's the fact that the "psychologist" relied on to assess Manning's mental state... wasn't actually a psychologist but a dentist. Huh?!?

Also, a “forensic psychiatrist” that the Brig was consulting was a Dentist. She didn’t really have qualifications as a psychologist. She was a doctor on staff there and they went to her for assessments on Manning’s condition.

On top of that, evidence was presented of guards joking about taking away Manning's underwear in response to comments Manning had made. It certainly raises significant questions about why they were treating Manning this way and if it actually had anything to do with his own safety... or if they just liked taunting him.

One Quantico Brig officer (female) sent email where he joked about the removal of Manning’s underwear after comments he made on March 2, 2011. Here’s a version the press pool currently believes we heard read in court:

“As Dr. Seuss would say I can wear them in a box, I can wear them with a fox, I can wear them with socks. I can wear them in the day so I say. I can’t wear them at night. My comments gave the staff a fright.”

It is Green Eggs & Ham.

Coombs asked Choike if he believed joking about the underwear was something that an officer should have done. Choike then said something to the effect that he realized this could be brought up by Manning with his attorney and it might become “another media issue.”

Even if you think Manning violated the law, it seems pretty damning to see him treated this way pre-trial.

Separately, prior to the discussion about Manning's conditions, the government officially opposed Manning's attempt to plead guilty to certain lesser charges (as discussed earlier) in the hopes of speeding up the trial and getting potential leniency on some of the more serious charges. This issue more or less got tabled for procedural reasons, as Manning is still arguing that the government failed to provide a speedy trial and the court notes that if it excepts the plea, that would also waive the speedy trial issue. So, the court will handle the issue of whether or not the government failed to offer a speedy trial before taking on the plea issue.

Filed Under: bradley manning, media, solitary confinement, torture, treatment

DOJ Railroads CIA Torture Whistleblower Into Reduced Guilty Plea

from the shameful dept

Back in April, we wrote about how the Obama administration, for the astounding sixth time, had used the Espionage Act -- which is supposed to be used against spies -- to bring criminal charges against a former government employee-turned-whistleblower. All other Presidents prior to Obama put together had used the Espionage Act in this manner three times. Yes, the Obama administration has doubled all previous such uses. Last year, lots of attention was paid to the case of Thomas Drake, which ended in a weak plea bargain, after much of the government's case fell apart. This year, the attention was on this latest case, against former CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on how the CIA tortured people via waterboarding.

In a sane society, such whistleblowing would receive a hero's welcome, and the people involved in torture would be in jail. President Obama has said that waterboarding is torture, as has Attorney General Eric Holder, who runs the DOJ. Given that, combined with Obama's repeated insistence that his administration must encourage whistleblowing, you would think that the administration, led by the DOJ, would celebrate a CIA agent who exposes such practices, and seek to punish those who carried them out.

Instead, we have the reverse. This morning, Kiriakou plead guilty, though to a much lesser charge -- that of "revealing an undercover operative's identity." Similar to the Drake case, they found narrow grounds for a guilty plea. The plea document and the associated "statement of facts" are embedded below for your horror. They tell... uh... a very one-sided view of the story, leaving out all the pesky little details about torture. Kiriakou was more or less forced into taking the deal after a judge had ridiculously ruled that you didn't have to intend to harm the US to be guilty under the Espionage Act. How is it possibly espionage against a country if you don't intend to harm that country?

The whole proceeding (and all of these other cases) have seriously called into question the Obama administration's supposed support of whistleblowers. It's clear that was a horrible joke played on the public when Obama insisted he wanted to encourage whistleblowing. Before these latest events, Bloomberg had an absolutely scathing story and editorial about the administrations abuse of power under the Espionage Act to beat down any whistleblowers.

As the Government Accountability Project notes, the tragedy in all of this is that Kiriakou goes to jail, while the actual torturer, remains free. They note that this plea lets the case be over, and makes sure that Kiriakou will be out of jail in 2.5 years -- and will get to see his children grow up. But the whole claim of "outing" is ridiculous:

"Outing" is quotes because the charge is not that Kiriakou's actions resulted in a public disclosure of the name, but that through a Kevin Bacon-style chain of causation, GITMO torture victims learned the name of one of their possible torturers. Regardless, how does outing a torturer hurt the national security of the U.S.? It's like arguing that outing a Nazi guarding a concentration camp would hurt the national security of Germany.

They further note that the CIA agent "outed," Thomas Fletcher, was widely known to reporters well before Kiriakou mentioned his name to reporters. As GAP notes:

An effectively-forced plea from John Kiriakou will be the tragic bookend to the torture narrative: Kiriakou will be going to jail, while Fletcher happily enjoys retirement in Vienna VA, safe with protection from "the most transparent administration in history."

Oh, and not just that, but:

The only person to be criminal prosecuted, and now likely jailed, as a result of the Bush-era torture regime is John Kiriakou, who refused to participate in torture, helped expose the program, and said on national television that torture was wrong.

Shameful. Oh, and as an aside to folks here who have spent time following the Megaupload case, the guy who headed up this case for the DOJ, Neil MacBride... is the same guy who's heading up the Megaupload prosecution.

Filed Under: barack obama, doj, eric holder, espionage act, john kiriakou, thomas fletcher, torture, waterboarding, whistleblowing

Feds Tried To Destroy All Evidence Of Memo Saying They Were Committing War Crimes With Torture

from the transparency dept

Spencer Ackerman, over at Wired, recently had a fascinating article about how the a former Bush official had written a memo detailing how the CIA had committed war crimes in torturing Al Qaeda suspects, in violation of the Geneva conventions. Wired has the full memo, but here's the first page: No matter what you think of the US's actions in how it treated prisoners and suspects, what struck me about the story is just how hard the feds worked not to release this document. The guy who wrote the memo, Philip Zelikow, revealed the existence of the memo three years ago in a blog post, leading Ackerman to file a Freedom of Information Act request to uncover it. Later, in a Senate hearing, Zelikow explained how higher ups in the administration had decided "the memo was not considered appropriate for further discussion and that copies of my memo should be collected and destroyed." Of course, what wasn't destroyed was some legally questionable arguments in favor of these "enhanced interrogation techniques."

It turns out, however, at least one copy of Zelikow's letter survived -- but even then it took almost three years from the first FOIA request until it was actually released. This was also years after the memos insisting that the activities were legal were released. For a government that keeps wanting to insist that it's being as transparent as possible, and one where political calculus is not supposed to weigh on decisions like this, it seems pretty clear that the feds were quite careful to try to hide internal reports that argue (persuasively, and with great detail) against its legal theory, but happy to reveal the much more questionable documents that support its position. This is not surprising, but it is disappointing. An intellectually honest federal government is willing to openly discuss dissenting viewpoints.

Filed Under: al qaeda, bush administration, cia, geneva convention, spencer ackerman, torture