FBI "Clean Team" Scrubbed Torture Evidence For 9/11 Death Penalty Cases
By Bill W. Monday Feb 11, 2008 3:30pm 
They tried to "un-torture" the 9/11 terror detainees in an attempt to "ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion" so they can seek the death penalty against them.
Prosecutors and top administration officials essentially wanted to cleanse the information so that it could be used in court, a process that federal prosecutors typically follow in U.S. criminal cases with investigative problems or botched interrogations. Officials wanted to go into court without any doubts about the viability of their evidence, and they had serious reservations about the reliability of what the CIA had obtained for intelligence purposes.
"It was the product of a lot of debate at really high levels," one official familiar with the program said. "A lot of people were involved in concluding that it may not be the saving grace, but it would put us on the best footing we could possibly be in. You can't erase what happened in the past, but this was the best alternative." [...]
John D. Hutson, a retired Navy rear admiral and former judge advocate general. "Once you torture someone, it is hard to un-torture them. The general public is going to be concerned about the validity of the testimony." ...(read on)
Nicole has more on why here:
A quick trial under military rules, and a speedy execution, is the only long-shot hope for Bush and Cheney for making the worst of the torture nightmare that they’ve created go away.
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OK, Conyers is going to move to open impeachment hearings, right? :-)
Oh yeah.. This will be a fair secret trial. And tried in a kangaroo court no doubt.
My country makes me so proud.
WE'RE Number 1!!!!! in hypocrisy and bullshit.
Oh no it's the attack of the penisaureses!!!
I'm not blaming America first. I'm blaming the Americans who voted for Bush and his subsequent policies first.
It's the Rob Halford groupies!!!
Another tragic episode of the worst presidency, EVER!
why are wingnut blogs happy about this? only because the far left was defeated?
are they aware that this abuse of power can be used against them too?
oh great, another BushCo inside job...
They sent in the cleaners? Harvey Keitel?
Wasn't Bill Clinton impeached for obstruction of justice? By destroying the tapes and cleaning them up, aren't they doing the same thing. Not to mention destruction of evidence. Is all that legal in a military court? We have a confession from Hayden that waterboarding was used on these defendants. How can they say because the tapes are gone, the event never happened?
I have a feeling that things worse than waterboarding may have been used.
Meanwhile Scalia is being interviewed by BBC. Being a condescending jerk saying "what's torture?!, If Europe had a working democracy it would have the death penalty as well"
Why just screw the economy when you can trash the whole country and its image the world over!
About torture, right-wing neo-cons forget that Presidential candidate John Mcain was tortured as a p.o.w. into disparaging this country and even signing a confession of guilt as a war criminal ("McCain signed an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said he was a "black criminal" and an "air pirate"). I hope McCain gets asked about this trial and the US using torture against detainees to obtain evidence during one of his upcoming debates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_mcain#Prisoner_of_war
If we accept the FACT that torture never provides accurate information.
And if we accept the FACT that the Bush administation MUST know this.
Then we must ask the question: why did they torture these people?
Two answers suggest themselves:
1) BushCo wanted confessions - valid or invalid - to put these guys away. Why? Are they patsies, being framed for a crime committed by others?
2) To invalidate ALL testimony from these guys. Why? What do they know?
I refuse to accept the idea that the Bush Team does not know that torture gives inaccurate information, as I refuse to accept that the "mishandling" of Katrina was an accident.
The Bush Team is neither stupid nor incompetent, and anyone who thinks they are has not been paying attention.
More BS from the masters of BS.
No death penalty. We want them alive for the war crimes tribunal.
Well of course they did. We can't upset the people when were just trying to protect the United States of Gasoline Guzzlers. Have a Triple Big Mac, fries, shake. And don't forget to do your All American duty of tossing the trash out the car.
`You can’t erase what happened in the past, but this was the best alternative.” - straight out of Orwell!
He who controls the past controls the future
►►We Americans, in turn, want to Cleanse Our Government of this Lying, Corrupt Traitorous administration led by bush.
13 MountainMan23 Says
1) BushCo wanted confessions - valid or invalid - to put these guys away. Why? Are they patsies, being framed for a crime committed by others?
I think this would make a very interesting subject.
L.A. Confidential @ 16:
nailed it.
ltfcrazy @ 4:
And maybe they didn't and we were told they did. Prove any of the vote totals,waiting, waitin,waiti,wait,..........
McCain should make a loud and public statement against torture right now. This would be a good place to draw the line between himself and bush....that is if he wants to draw a line between the worst president ever and himself.
Who is going to stop them?
Corporate Congress or the corrupt AG.
Please, these guys are history.
John @ 18:
No one really controls anything. It's out of control. And that why we now live in such dangerous times.
another "in-your-face" from the busch crime family
When evidence is scrubbed it means DoJ OLC most likely knew the evidence was tainted, and that the DOJ AG and others inside DOJ knew or should have known the basis for the prosecutions was weak.
This is stunning to learn of the FBI involvement with this "scrubbing". The DOJ AG has said that he will not enforce the laws of war prohibiting abuse. Sadly, the FBI -- his investigators -- appear complicit with removing evidence the public, grand juries, and Congress have been seeking. It raises substantial questions when the FBI is involved with this scrubbing:
- Who knew the evidence was tainted, and ordered the scrubbing;
- Who thought that evidence could be "scrubbed" yet still used
- How often are US citizens similarly prosecuted with "scrubbed evidence"
- Have legal counsel for the defendants been able to properly assess the impact of this "scrubbing" on whether the prosecutions are or are not lawful
The US system of justice is in doubt. The idea of the law is to enforce standards of civility. Injustice occurs when evidence is fabricated, gleaned illegally. The US government said it would not focus on prosecutions after 9-11, but preferred the combat option in Afghanistan. It remains to be seen, in light of the setbacks in Afghanistan, how much the US government compromised the "lesser prosecutions" and for what purpose.
The scrubbing efforts appear to be an effort to salvage convictions which would otherwise not continue. The President's bungled Afghanistan. He's also bungling the prosecutions. Congress needs to provide him assistance. It's called oversight.
As I said in an Earlier thread:
"In the sight of most of the world America has already lost it’s Moral Compass. It is a ship in rough waters, with storms approaching and a fool at the helm. Eleven months of this type of sailing (as any sailor knows) will take this Ship of State to either a rocky shoal or right to the bottom of the Sea of World opinion, where it will lay as a rotting hulk of a once great ship."
bush may think he is “King of the World” but he is driving the Titanic.
And this is why the video was destroyed.
It's hard to see how re-questioning a prisoner who has been admittedly tortured can attenuate the taint of the original torture for purposes of rendering the later confessions admissible. Once you've tortured someone, under what conditions can a torture victim be considered to be free from duress? How much distance mentally, physically and temporally, from the original torture is enough? Can a torture victim -- in perpetual and unbroken confinement by his torturers -- ever reach a state where he or she feels safe enough to be able to intelligently and voluntarily cooperate with his questioners? I think the answer has to be no.
Also, I doubt this government would ever let a court become privy to the complete circumstances of the interrogation and confinement so that a court could even fairly consider the question. There would be the ever present claim that to do so would endanger national security, the shield behind which the lawbreakers hide claiming they must do so to preserve the very laws they now distort.
The silver lining on this is that the attempt to "clean" the original interrogations is itself a tacit admission by the government that the original statements are inadmissible and worthless.
what a horror this new century of American history has become...
at least we could hold our heads up for the great progress and
hope we worked so hard to build and the distinction of honoring
our promises to the citizens of America and the World.
bush has managed in his two terms to take a democracy and
bastardized it into a fascist state. he has made America
a third rate country not to be trusted. his delusional legacy
will continue to further drag this country into the mire long
after he is gone.
Fruit from the poison tree seems to rear it's head here. You can't use evidence that was obtained illegally in most cases. Have they made an exception here?
Bangkok Bob @ 21:
And I forgot . . . good, now go find and beat up some fairy boys for country. Then go have another Triple Mac, make it two. Stuff yourself. Come on eat! Put some meat on those bones and hair on that chest.
Between this and the FISA immunity bullshit, I'm so pissed off at American right now.
Our anger comes from the confusion of what used to be expected and what we can expect today. There has been such a change in this country. We used to question ourselves when outcomes were different than we wanted or expected. Today we hope and constantly get slapped down by situations we could never have expected in the days gone by.
I don't think there are any safe havens from the reptiles and lizards of capitalism and greed for the time being.
pissed off patricia @ 35:
Pre 2000 America is gone. Burned Down.
the military shouldnt be allowed to dispense justice... that's simply a mockery of democracy...
Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil. I'm ready to be fitted for a home guard uniform. No terrorist will get by me when I'm on duty.
/snark
pissed off patricia @ 32:
That only applies when you're granting people rights under the law.
I think our country has figured it out.
They are voting in massive numbers for change.
Bush Administration = Criminals
Close the CIA loophole
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPC...
I'm not a criminal attorney, but...
I believe if evidence is obtained illegally (i.e. without a warrant) even if that evidence leads to oher evidence, that subsequent evidence is then inadmissable- "the fruit of the poisoned tree". If the FBI used facts obtained through torture as part of their non-torturous interviews, shouldn't what was then obtained be inadmissable as well?
Don't get me wrong- I am not against the death penalty, BUT- I believe that death penalty cases must be held to a much higher standard of evidence. Look how many eyewitness-based cases put someone on death row, only to be overturned by DNA. How will we be seen by the civilized world when we rush to execute people on questionable, torture-obtained evidence? Not to mention creating martyrs to a cause. Wouldn't it be better to put them in a Supermax prison for life???
L.A. Confidential @ 37:
And that makes sad as hell....when I'm not being mad as hell. Remember when President Clinton told us we were building a bridge to the 21st century? He didn't know that bridge was going to be destroyed from both ends leaving us fall downward for what seems like forever.
pissed off patricia @ 35:
But what to do about it?
How can we put our congressmen on notice that we are watching them, and expecting them to do our bidding? We voted them in, they should be working for us, not the lobbyists.
Term limits didn't work for congressmen (unless you count that it was a way to get good statesmen out and put in loser party repug hacks who stood no chance otherwise of getting elected!) Can we put term limits on the lobbyists?
Screw impeachment, where are my feathers and tar?
Maybe that's why the price of oil is so high - they're trying to make tar prohibitively expensive...
Thats the most ridiculous thing. Its right out of Mad magazine. My heads exploding.
Foo @ 40:
These guys have no rights under the law? If that's the case, why are they getting a trial? Maybe my brain is mush today, but I'm trying to get this all clear in my head.
BobD @ 44:
I don't know what we do about it but doing everything we can to get a Democratic President seems like a good first step
Of course all this info wasn't available before the Tech Lizards put PC's in our homes either.
So I can only assume that anyone who has learned anything from all this information that is available to the common Honest Abe are going to be on the hit list also.
Volum, at 29,
The destruction of the videotape is another legal impediment to the admission of any statements made by these guys. Here you have a record of the original interrogation to which, under any reasonable definition of due process, the defense (and the court) are entitled which has been destroyed by the government.
In a real trial, the sanction for destruction of the discoverable material would usually be the suppression of the related evidence, unless the prosecution cans how that the defense is not unduly prejudiced by the government's failure to produce the material.
It also raises the question, if government officials were so interested in following some procedure (e.g., the "cleansing" of the statements) in order to make the statements admissible -- in other words, concerned that some of its actions would make prosecution difficult or impossible -- why would they also take actions which would further hinder the possibility of prosecution (destroying the videotapes)?
And let's not forget that statements obtained through the use of torture are unreliable.
To sum up the government playbook: First, torture the statements out of the defendants by illegal means, without regard to whether the statements you obtain will have any value, either for purposes of intelligence, national security, or future prosecution. Two: Protect the government officials from prosecution by destroying the evidence of wrongdoing. Three: Cobble a flawed legal system together (go outside of our real one) and make some irrelevant overtures to fairness in the hope that you can still put on a show prosecution for political purposes.
These are exactly the kinds of games that paragons of justice such as Hitler's "People's Courts" or Stalin's show trial courts did. I know, they set the bar pretty high, but I'm sure our guys will rise to the challenge. After all, this has nothing to do with justice or the rule of law. Anything for the Die Vaterland, what?
Isn't tampering with evidence a felony? I know that under the UCMJ, false official statement will destroy your career and get you put behind bars. Oh well, if you're going to join the club and step up the the war crimes bell, you may as well give it a damn good ring or two.
Call it like it is..
Dont let criminal Rove set the talking points.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/02/05/winquiry...
When are they going to let these Americans be heard?
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com
Bush Administration = Coverup
Bush Administration = War Criminals
Sieg Heil America!
Tom Burka, I used to visit your site all the time and loved it. I'm so glad to reconnect with you.
I was reading your comment #50 and thinking who is this guy, he knows his stuff. Then I clicked on the link your name provides and I was nicely surprised at what I found.
But I thought that we're all entitled to a speedy execution?!?
BobD @ 44:
Blue Lensman @ 54:
A speedy tazing is a guarantee.
drdave39 @ 42:
Yes.
This shouldn't even be defined as a trial, but instead fodder for bush's legacy. He's trying to make his legacy that of a man who saved the country. Why even bother with this so-called trial, just lie about it as he has everything else.
The Bush Administration is Covering Up Criminal Activities and trying to silence Whistleblowers
Dont let Rove and the right wing media set the talking points.
Urgent: Letter from Intelligence, Military, Diplomatic, and Law Enforcement Professionals
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2007/11/05/urgent-letter-from-intelligence-...
Two FBI Whistleblowers Confirm Illegal Wiretapping of Government Officials and Misuse of FISA
http://www.nswbc.org/Press%20Releases/PressRelease-March5-07.htm
Dont let Perino the coverup artist and the right wing media set the talking points.
WH Briefing 2/12 - Perino Evades Helen Thomas Query re Wiretapping BEFORE 9/11
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4WlDZSsuIw
Truth B Told @ 9:
...So pretty please, with sugar on top, shoot the fucking detainees."
Bangkok Bob @ 21:
Don't forget. American Idol is on tonight.
Torture is illegal and a war crime. The fact that there aren't loud cries of disgust from the democratic side of government says a lot. There is no one that will stop this.
I've been reading William Shirer's 'Berlin Diary', describing his time as a foreign correspondent in Berlin in the late 30's and early part of the war.
The parallels between Hitler's brutal gangster regime and the Bush criminal cabal are astonishing. The lies, the torture, the detention, the use of fake stories to deflect attention.
No prizes for guessing where the Bushies got their ideas from.
Feels like the same "rush to the gallows" they gave Saddam.
Ozguy @ 64:
May I suggest EVERYONE read:
George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography
especially:
Chapter 2 - The Hitler Project
about the roles the George Herbert Walker and his son-in-law Prescott Bush played in Hitler's rise to power.
They didn't "get the ideas" from these guys - they ARE these guys.
They PUT Hitler in power, in an attempt to create a Global Fascist State.
And since World War Two they have continued their work unabated, with the US as their headquarters and the US military and covert operatives at their beck and call.
All at the US taxpayers' expense.
BobD @ 11:
What he said really shocked me. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7239748.stm
The contradiction in the prosecution of Guantanamo prisoners is pointed out here.
http://www.sebimeyer.com/2008/02/11/death-penalty-for-6-guantanamo-inmat...
Want a War Criminal in Charge of Europe?
--> Petition against the nomination of Tony Blair as "President of the European Union"
http://www.stopblair.eu
Correct me if my thinking is wrong, but what the FBI has done, while seeming noble is very dangerous. They claim the "clean" and law abiding interrogations from the FBI yielded the same results and confirmed what was said by the detainees while tortured. Won't this justify the use of torture to those who support it? They might say, "See, we were right and we got the info in a fraction of the time it took the FBI."
Even if that were true, that can't ever be accepted. The whole concept of "counter" terrorism is asking for failure. It's "terrorism in reaction to or retaliation for some previous act of terrorism." What we need is preventive measures. Solve poverty and other causes of terrorism. This current approach of countering terrorism is only creating more and I fear if these detainees are sent to death there will be violent revenge all over the world.
Why believe any of this?
Impeach. Indict. Imprison.
...
You can bet your ass there was a dripping faucet in the background.
pissed off patricia @ 59:
BushCo is not trying to make a "legacy" as you put it, they are eliminating the witnesses.
You don't get a Lawyer.
You can't make a phone call.
You don't get to meet your accuser face to face.
You don't get to hear the charges against you.
You don't have enough time to build a case for defense.
Then, one day, you sit down in front of a panel of judges... they say, "GUILTY!"
The next day the lights go out... and your heart stops beating.
Welcome to the NEW AMERICAN SYSTEM of MILITARY JUSTICE.
Cardinal Cheneyleau? Vice Pres. Cheney wants the CIA to be exempt from a ban on torture. I don’t know why he even bothers to ask. These things keep occurring, being exposed, denied, evidence destroyed, etc. Perhaps asking for it officially is the most honest course of action. Can we handle that much truth? I once read the Dumas book, The Three Musketeers. Somewhere in that story is a part where the Cardinal Richelieu writes and signs a letter of consent that is so vague that no matter what the bearer of the letter has done, he can claim it was authorized. Since it was so vague, the Cardinal would not be held responsible either. It may seem a silly approach to such a serious subject, but you tell me. Isn’t that what this is really all about? Getting results without accountability? Copasetic Coma time! http://copaseticcoma.blogspot.com/
This stain will not go away. The ACLU has documented nearly 100 cases of individuals dying while in custody. The military autopsies for many give homicide as the cause of death. We are beating to death people in custody.
WE ARE A NATION OF WAR CRIMINALS.
And for the fucking jerks who want to bring up hypothetical "ticking bomb" scenarios, go explain that rationale to Maher Awar, the Canadien software engineer who was kidnapped by the U.S., sent to Syria, and tortured for 10 months before being released as a case of mistaken identity.
WE ARE A NATION OF WAR CRIMINALS.
I imagine they will get the Sadam treatment after the ahem, "fair trial". Executed before they can tell the full story.
CowboyBob in Austin @ 74:
you forgot to add the years of torture, sleep deprivation, strip searching, intimidation, forced postures, sensory deprivation, mock executions, waterboarding...
Yea, it's all Americas fault.
I agree - exterminate 80%
You go first then k?
jackass
Gee, YA THINK???
God damb those christian preachers who took money from Government, too spew lies. We will get your names one way or another you are traiters and you will never preach again.
Dead men tell no tales. Just ask Saddam.
Well, I'm all for a "quick trial under military rules" for Bush and Cheney, but the "speedy execution" part is a little harsh.
Oh, wait -- you were talking about Bush and Cheney's victims.
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