BREAKING: Judge orders hearing on CIA videos
By John Amato Monday Dec 17, 2007 11:48amA federal judge has ordered a hearing on whether the Bush administration violated a court order by destroying CIA interrogation videos of two al-Qaida suspects. U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy rejected calls from the Justice Department to stay out of the matter. He ordered lawyers to appear before him Friday morning.
In June 2005, Kennedy ordered the administration to safeguard "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment, and abuse of detainees now at the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay."
Five months later, the CIA destroyed the interrogation videos. The recordings involved suspected terrorists Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The Justice Department argued that the videos weren't covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
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Good news. Now let's hope something positive actually comes from it.
And frist! ;)
How did they get nixon to resign?
Good news! A judge that cares! The Dumbya Regime weasels will try to get this judge disbarred or some other dirty trick.
What is going to be the answer for the governments claim of national security? I don't have an answer, but until there is some way to slap down that claim nothing will happen. Anything that proves wrongdoing by the government can easily be covered up.
RayC @ 4:
This judge is the one that ordered the White House NOT to destroy evidence, this is about more than national security. This judge isn't very pleased the Dumbya Regime ignored his order, the national security hogwash is just that hogwash and just the same old canard we've heard for years.
wingnut's claim of activist judges in 5... 4... 3... 2...
anyway the rule of law is so pre-911 mindset. didn't this judge get the memo? despotism is all the rage.
it will be interesting to see how far this goes...
I think I can hear Darth Cheney laughing in the distance..
I hope this evil empire is finally imploding. Thanks to this judge, this topic is alive and well. Let's hope he holds those who took this action and condoned it in contempt and their sorry a$$es are hauled off to jail.
That pesky third branch is harassing poor Georgie again. When will he finally just abolish it?
Vic @ 5:
My point is that the government will refuse to co-operate and claim national security. It can go through the courts all the way to the supreme court but the administration will never co-operate. Hogwash yes but nothing will happen unless the administration submits to the courts.
You know... This news item appears to be the first clear-cut admission that the CIA actually IS operating secret prisons overseas. The idea of CIA spooks running around with their own paranoid agenda... Years after the end of the Cold War... Frankly, it's rather chilling and even more disappointing.
Here is something to think about. (Borrowed from another site)
AG Mukasey has a conflict of interest problem already, and should recuse himself and appoint a Special Prosecutor.
Jose Padilla”s lawyers argued before the Florida Federal Court that Abu Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al Qaeda associate. The DOJ dismissed Padilla”s allegations as “meritless,” asserting Padilla”s legal team could not prove that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured. Well, it”s clear now that they certainly COULD have, if the tapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah had been made available!
Now here is where Mukasey”s role comes into question. U.S. District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, was the one who signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002. Court records show the warrant relied in part on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah”s interrogation. So we have a problem Houston.
The Attorney General can only issue a warrant based upon legally obtained evidence, and confessions under torture are certainly not “legally obtained”. So either Mukasey was misrepresented the evidence, and would be liable to be potentially a party in those who were presented with “perjured evidence”; or he knew that torture was used in obtaining the confession and ignored it.
In either case he is unsuitable to run an investigation, as it will, inevitably, involve himself. Thus a Special Prosecutor is necessary… Odds that this will happen? Zero percent.
Could it really be true that within the span of 24 hours a Senator from CT stops FISA in its tracks and then a Federal Judge shafts the administration a second time? Have I died and gone to heaven? Could we really be returning to the rule of law in America? WoW!
So were these tapes made at the same secret CIA prisons that they claim don't exist? Once again, lying out of both sides of their mouth.
Get the rope!
You know, I'm starting to think that the first act of a new Congress and a new President come January 09 should be to make obstruction of justice, criminal contempt of court, criminal contempt of Congress, etc. by government officials punishable by a mandatory sentence of at least 25 years to life. This shit really needs to end.
RayC @ 11:
Read the article, this is about a hearing regarding the violation of a court order not national security, maybe you don't get it. This is something that a claim of national security means absolutely nothing and will NOT be argued as such in court.
RayC @ 11:
Maybe you can see the fact that this is about a violation of an order this judge laid out very clearly, this now goes well beyond the actual tapes. In reality the tapes are just a sidebar regarding the upcoming hearing, there is something called contempt, ever heard of that? This is not something that a claim of national security will be allowed as an excuse.
Hope this judge has his own "undisclosed location" to sleep in at night. Gord knows the wingnutters will be on the warpath until they can discredit or remove him. In the mean time let's hear it for the rule of law and a judge who remembers what that means.
I like the part where they mention he was told to 'stay out of the matter' and he didn't.
"It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas . . ."
The Justice Department argued that the videos weren’t covered by the order because the two men were being held in secret CIA prisons overseas, not at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
Parsing much? Knowingly destroying evidence is obstruction of justice whether there's a court order or not. But to suggest that any reasonable attorney would think the order didn't cover sites other than GITMO is beyond ridiculous.
This is exactly why the administration declared its war on "activist judges" as they knew the only branch of government which could hold them accountable as the judicial.
Good to know there are still a few judges yet sitting who haven't been subverted or corrupted.
I still think that thie destruction of the tapes was part of a broader effort to destroy evidence that could be used against administration members in war crimes tribunals. It won't do them any good. Too many people involved in the crimes, many will eventually come forward and tell it all.
It's sad when our government's excuse is basically, "No, those interrogation tapes from our secret prisons overseas, not our prison camp in Cuba."
Who would have imagined such reasoning would even exist in our government? Now it's commonplace. George Waterboard Bush has changed the US forever.
Actually the tapes were discoverable, and it would be up to the judge to determine their admissibility.
myiq2xu @ 21:
Dontcha mean Walmartmas?
Must be an activist judge.
All kidding aside, law is all about semantics. The DOJ might have a legal point there. The judge said give me all of X and these guys were at y, so they might not count.
I would hate to see the Bushies get off on such a technicality though.
AlphaFactor @ 12:
Well, except when Bush stated on live television last year that they had closed down the last of the secret prisons and moved the people that were held there to Gtmo. That was the first official admission of their existence. (of course, I don't think anyone believes that they actually closed them down)
Here is Judge Kennedy's bio. He's probably very sharp.
We'll have to see how the WH tries to squirm out from under this one.
E in MD @ 27:
"All kidding aside, law is all about semantics. The DOJ might have a legal point there. The judge said give me all of X and these guys were at y, so they might not count."
Actually, the key here is spoliation of evidence. Any judge would tell you that any attorney (or law student) knows better.
This is a SUPER QUICK read - please check it out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence
Hey and after this, lets all get back to bashing the shit out of lawyers, because God knows they do absolutely nothing beyond trying to get guilty people off the hook for stuff!
[unhappy snark]
You know, if only Monica had destroyed that damned blue dress, NONE of this would be happening now.
kudos to judges taking a stand against these pinochet worshipping bedwetters
appt by Clinton, a Princeton undergrad, Harvard Law school.
Obvious, he's under-qualifed, not having attended Pat Robertson
Law School for Theocratic Wing-Nuts!
Cue the Faux news Activist Judge screen crawl....
Yawn...
Wake me when a judge makes a ruling that guarantees a Bush Administration member is going to get real jail time (5 years or more in San Quentin or Leavenworth to start).
Seems to me that the word "now" is quite relevant. Judge Kennedy issued an order in
June 05, wherein he apparently ordered all documents/information of relevance concerning
detainess "now" at Gitmo should be preserved. Since the two detainees who were
tortured were not, to my knowledge, actually at Gitmo as of the "now period", this
is/or will be, the rationale used by DoJ as reason/explanation why the tapes in question
are not applicable to his previous order. I know, sounds weak, but the legal eagles
will play this for all it's worth and delay, delay and stall.
The Political Junkie @ 35:
San Quentin is a state prison.
WashStateBlue @ 34:
Rush and many of the other regressive hate radio assholes are already saying activist judge and so on......
Vic @ 38:
I may be in error, but think not, that Judge Kennedy is same, identical judge who
ruled "for this administration" back in 2002 on the case involving the secret, behind
closed doors meeting of the Energy Task Force chaired by Dickhead Cheney..ruling
that such meetings(and who attended) were NOT subject to public disclosure since
the issue of "national security" was involved. So, for those right wing assholes who
might try and trash Judge Kennedy, the fact of his earlier ruling should be brought to
their attention...
Keep putting pressure on Congress!
Heard about this on the Rachel Maddow show.
CommitteeCaller.com
This site allows one person to target an entire congressional committee over the phone. The web application utilizes the open source Asterisk PBX system to connect you to every senator or house member on a particular committee. No more digging around the 'net entering zip-codes to retrieve phone numbers of representatives. CommitteeCaller.com automates the tedium of finding and dialing your favorite politicians.
Select a committee, enter in your phone number and click "Put me in touch with democracy!" and you'll be called by our system and sequentially patched through to the front office of each member on that committee. You can even rate how each call went; information that will enable us to rank representatives on how accountable and responsive they are to their constituents.
Doggiebobo
You could be right but are you sure you don't mean Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in this case?
He wrote the SC majority report that sent the case back to a lower court.
Then there's this about Judge Henry Kennedy, partway down the page.
So he doesn't sound like a supporter of executive/administrative privilege.
It is about friggin time.
CIA videos: British Ambassador Craig Murray assigned to Kazakhstan ~2002 disclosed in a book evidence GCHQ received from NSA-CIA. Agreement of FDR-Churchill was to share between UK-US all intelligence.
Murry in his book described the shock of learning the UK had recieved information glaned from torture. He descirbed the information as worthless and non-actionable. Murry described various reports he had about the information gleaned from -- his word -- "torture". There are diplomatic cables from him to UK leadership outlining his concerns that the information was gleaned through illegal methods. Murry likely had access to some information related to illegal CIA activities, including transcripts of these interrogations.
- Was Murray ever informed of the type of torture used on the prisoners?
- What copies of the CIA water boarding video/transcripts/DVDs/audio recordings were provided to UK's GCHQ as pat of this intelligence-sharing agreement started with FDR-Churchill?
- Was Murray forced to sign a "confidentiality agreement" to keep evidence related to war crimes a "state secret"; if so, how does the UK justify prosecuting the Nazis who also said the Holocaust was legal; is it the view of the UK government that it will suppress evidence of war crimes?
- What of the principle of "higher good" and 'duty to report" which GCHQ's Gunn asserted as her defense for disclosing evidence the NSA was eaves dropping on communications between states inside the US; and she disclosed memoranda of that activity which GCHQ was alleged to be influence UN votes before Iraq war?
- What is the plan of the US Congress to discuss with Craig Murray his evidence he's disclosed related to the CIA interrogations, and his discussions he's had related to the evidence from those CIA interrogations?
- Was Murray ever given a transcript of any CIA interrogations? ( His blog )
- Was anyone the Council on Europe interviewed in re rendition ever given access to any CIA interrogation tapes?
Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray dsscribed in Dirty Diplomatcy his shock up on learning the UK had recieved info from US torture.
- Has anyone from Congress asked Murray whether he had access to any transcripts of CIA torture?
anney @ 42:
No, I actually was not referring to S/C Judge Kennedy concerning Energy Task Force case being remainded back to lower court. It's very possible that I mis-spoke about
"this" Judge Kennedy being involved; I'll do some Googling and see..
Anney @ 42: Well, I was wrong. It was U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan who
attempted to block the "secrecy" of meetings held by Energy Task Force, but his
ruling was overruled.
Doggiebobo
Well, you remembered more than I did, even if you got the name wrong!
Here's some other interesting information about Judge Henry Kennedy:
ysbaddaden @ 27:
For George Bush...every day is XXXmas.
brian @ 2:
Congress did something to Nixon that no one has done with Bush during his entire term in office: they held Nixon accountable for his actions.
I predict this judge will be renditioned to a secret prison in about two days.
Just hang the stupid boy, Bush.
The message I'm getting from all of this obstruction, is what they did is so heinous if the American people ever saw it a revolution would spontaneously erupt.
Again, why are you all getting your undies in a knot, we all know that the Bush Administration is not held accountable for anything, and this situation will be the same, nothing will get done or be done, and if they do decide to do something, Bush will over ride the decision again. They do whatever they please, and we get to just take it. Bush does not even care what Americans think anymore, it is obvious every time he speaks. I did not vote for him and for those that did, thanks a bunch you brown noser, how far up his hiny are you? 2009 cannot get here soon enough, and I feel sorry for that person, they have a hell of a mess to clean up.
Can't believe that the CIA would be dumb enough to make the tapes in the first place. Glad someone had the sense to destroy them. I would love to see a waterboard tape starring Reid and Pelosi that would be great entertainment!
The question has just gotta be asked: if the two detainees were not interrogated and videotaped at Guantanamo Bay, then WHERE WERE THEY BEING HELD at the time CIA Director Michael Hayden reports that they were questioned ? What I seem to remember, Dumbya and the CIA denied using foreign prison camps to secretly, and illegaly I might add, torture "illegal combatants" [aka prisoners of war].
RS/Grateful to be living abroad.
I was almost giving up on the judicial system. Thank God, there are still some of them that are going to do their jobs and go after these clear violations.
I will stay tuned
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