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August 25, 2009 MSNBC

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Rachel Maddow talks to Ron Suskind about what was driving the Bush administrations requests for the "harsh interrogation methods" a.k.a. torture to be used on suspected al Qaeda terrorists. It was not to protect the country but instead to justify the invasion of Iraq.

MADDOW: This new Levin report confirms a lot of the reporting that you did for your book in 2006. Is the headline here at last that the torture goes right to the White House?

SUSKIND: Yes. Well, that‘s what I found back in the reporting back in ‘06, you know? It was directed by the president and the vice president. They were involved day to day.

The president was getting briefings. The vice president—what techniques are we using; he was asking, “Are they working, what is the yield?” This came from the very top.

And that‘s the way it filtered down as the Senate report now shows, all the way through the government. That‘s why we now have coherence, if you will, in terms of techniques, in terms of strategy, in terms of goals, and in terms of who really is driving this. It comes from the big white building.

MADDOW: You‘ve done a lot of reporting on the Bush administration‘s efforts to try to create, try to find some sort of link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda—for all the obvious political reasons in 2002 and 2003. How big of a development is it that these interrogation tactics were being used, in some cases, according to the Armed Services Committee report, these techniques were being used specifically to try to find that Iraq link?

SUSKIND: Well, it‘s fascinating. I heard some of that back when I was reporting the book, but I really couldn‘t confirm it and you need, you know, several sources confirming to put it in the book.

And what‘s fascinating here, if you run the timeline side by side, you see, really, for the first time from that report that the key thing being sent down in terms of the request by the policymakers, by the White House, is find a link between Saddam and al Qaeda so that we essentially can link Saddam to the 9/11 attacks and then march into Iraq with the anger of 9/11 behind us. That was the goal and that was being passed down as the directive.

It‘s, you know, it‘s often called the requirement inside the CIA for both agents with their sources and interrogators with their captives. “Here‘s what we‘re interested in, here‘s what we, the duly elected leaders, want to hear about. Tell us what you can find.”

What‘s fascinating, in the Senate report, is finally clear confirmation that that specific thing was driving many of the activities, and mind you, the frustration inside of the White House that was actually driving action. The quote, in fact, inside of the Senate report from a major said that as frustration built inside of the White House, that there was no link that was established—because the CIA told the White House from the very start there is no Saddam/al Qaeda link. We checked it out. We did every which way. Sorry.

The White House simply wouldn‘t take no for an answer and it went with another method. Torture was the method. “Get me a confession, I don‘t care how you do it.” And that bled all the way through the government, both on the CIA side and the Army side. It‘s extraordinary.

Mind you, Rachel, this is important. This is not about an impetus to foil an upcoming potential al Qaeda attacks. The impetus here is largely political diplomatic. The White House had a political diplomatic problem. It wanted it solved in the run-up to the war.

And mind you, and I think the data will show this—after the invasion, when it becomes clear in the summer, just a few months after in 2003, that there are no WMD in Iraq. That‘s the summer of Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame—my goodness, there are no WMD. Now, the White House is being hit with a charge that they took us to war under false pretenses. That‘s when the frustration is acute.

My question, the question for investigators now: Is how many of these interrogations were driven specifically by a desire to come up with the Saddam/al Qaeda link? It‘s essentially rivers coming together.

This gets—the key issue, certainly in criminal cases: intent. What was driving action? What were they looking for? What was the real impetus? And now, I think, you have your first clear answer that affirms some of the things that we‘ve been hearing.

Continue reading »

   Law.com:

At the time of the Supreme Court's landmark decision in Boumediene v. Bush three weeks ago, the Justice Department had four lawyers devoted to handling about 250 Guantanamo Bay habeas cases.

Now that the high court has cleared the way for detainees to challenge their captivity in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Justice is trying to fatten its team to 50 lawyers -- half of whom would be assigned to clean up or augment the government's evidence.

(Acting Assistant Attorney General Gregory) Katsas' letter (calling for 30 more attorneys from outside the DoJ) was sent on the same day that the D.C. Circuit unclassified portions of a decision that criticized the quality of the government's evidence in a detainee case. The letter is the first acknowledgment by the Justice Department that factual returns -- the summaries of the government's allegations and evidence in support of holding the detainees -- may not pass muster in federal court.

The letter is silent on where the 30 outside lawyers will come from, but it states plainly why they are needed: The 100 factual returns already filed in the habeas cases require shoring up, and the Justice Department needs lawyers to produce at least 100 more returns for the remaining cases. The Justice Department's plan to amend the evidence in the habeas cases was first reported by the Associated Press.

The DoJ started asking their 93 US Attorneys office last week to help with their search.  While the DoJ will not say how their search is going, I've spoken to some attorneys who tell me that they're not getting much interest.  In fact, there's some confusion as to what the DoJ needs at all: 

"It seems bizarre that the Justice Department needs to throw a whole bunch of new lawyers at explaining at the most basic level why these people are in prison," says Susan Baker Manning, a partner at Bingham McCutchen

Listen to this rant about the Supreme Court decision on Gitmo detainees and you'll know the state of conservatism in this country He's like so many of them.

Beck: This court has done some frightening. frightening things....If I'm president of the US, I would go on National television and say---'ladies and gentlemen, the Supreme Court said that we don't have Gitmo so that is over. We're going to release all of them, but I want you to know from here on out our policy is to not have prisoners. We're going to shoot them all in the head.'

If we think they are against us, we're going to shoot them and kill them---period because that's the only thing we've got going for us---cause we can put them away and get information. If we can't put them away and they're going to use our court system---kill them.

The Court never said we didn't have Gitmo or couldn't arrest or prosecute them. Maybe Beck could ask Bush why he can't get guilty verdicts with all the resources we spend on the war on Terror. What an example of American thought he represents. Mass killings are only predicated on what we (US Govt) think about them. How nice. It doesn't matter if he said this on TV or on the radio, he should be immediately fired by CNN to start with. What an embarrassment for them.

Here's one CNN contact page.

Leave more contact info in the comment thread. Bush was unhappy too.

Mr. Bush said he strongly disagreed with the decision - the third time the court has repudiated him on the detainees - and suggested he might seek yet another law to keep terror suspects locked up at the prison camp, even as his presidency winds down.....Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said Thursday's decision should not affect war crimes trials. "Military commission trials will therefore continue to go forward," Carr said.

Maybe the press can ask Bush and his PR staff if he'd like to shoot and kill them also.

Download | play    Download | play   (h/t David)

 MSNBC:

The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday (.pdf), handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

"We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority in the 70-page opinion.

He said that Congress had failed to create an adequate alternative for the prisoners held at the U.S. military base in Cuba to contest their detention.

Not surprisingly, Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas were the dissenting opinions. In Scalia's dissent, he wrote:

"...it sets our military commanders the impossible task of proving to a civilian court, under whatever standards this Court devises in the future, that evidence supports the confinement of each and every enemy prisoner. The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today."

Yeah, it's such a hassle to prove you have the right to indefinitely detain someone. People for the American Way:

It’s chilling that the case was decided on a single vote, 5-4. One more Bush Justice on the Court, and the decision would likely have gone the other way. That’s why it’s so important for Americans to realize that in this election year, the Supreme Court is on the ballot. John McCain has already promised the GOP that he would nominate Justices to the Court exactly like those Bush has brought to the bench. This year, we must reverse the tide, and begin to restore a Supreme Court that upholds our individual rights and the laws that keep us free.

The Department of Justice's inspector general has finally released its report (434 pg pdf) on the FBI's involvement in detainee interrogations in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Reuters reports that the "Bush administration's top security officials ignored FBI concerns" and that the "FBI, alarmed by interrogation techniques such as the use of snarling dogs and forced nudity, clashed with the Defense Department and CIA over their use." Please do dig into the document and let us know in the comments any parts that may merit more attention. Emptywheel noticed already that "this report does not and cannot discuss the issues that OLC, Condi Rice, and John Ashcroft apparently faced tells you what we need to know about torture." Hmmm?

Also, David Kurtz notes that:

The IG's report has been delayed in part because the Pentagon slow-rolled its review of the report for classified information.

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified to Congress last month that he had "reached out" to the Pentagon and the Department of Justice "in terms of activity that we were concerned might not be appropriate -- let me put it that way." But it was clear from his testimony that the Justice Department's essentially unilateral legalization of torture had prevented the FBI from investigating the abuses its agents witnessed.

For those interested, here is Chairman Conyers' response (via email, after the jump)

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Yahoo:

LOS ANGELES - An Iraqi man sued two U.S. military contractors, claiming he was repeatedly tortured while being held at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison for more than 10 months.

Emad al-Janabi's federal lawsuit, filed Monday in Los Angeles, claims that employees of CACI International Inc. and L-3 Communications Holdings Inc. punched him, slammed him into walls, hung him from a bed frame and kept him naked and handcuffed in his cell beginning in September 2003.

Also named as a defendant is CACI interrogator Steven Stefanowicz, known as "Big Steve." The suit claims he directed some of the torture tactics.

At one point after passing out, al-Janabi said, he was told by an L-3 translator "welcome to Guantanamo." He said he even asked a cellmate whether he could see the ocean from a window. Read on...

Senator John McCain may look the other way when it comes to torture, but we won't. These atrocities were committed in our name. I hope "Big Steve" and all the rest of these war criminals are punished to the fullest extent -- but we live in Bushworld and it is unlikely any of these thugs will ever be held accountable. Senator Barack Obama has said that if elected he will investigate crimes committed by the Bush regime...we intend to hold him to that.

Download | play Download | play (Warning-Disturbing images. NSFW)

Brought to you by Amnesty International.

Here's what others thought of it:

Atty Gen John Ashcroft: It's about a young man forced by his Principal to attend a high school dance.

Sen Kit Bond: I particularly liked the parts where the guy was swimming freestyle and backstroke.

Gov Mike Huckabee: It seemed sort of like the star of the film was running for office.

SERE Instructor Malcolm Nance: It was a harrowing account of controlled drowning: a slow motion suffocation.

Unite against human rights abuses in the war on terror. Find out how at unsubscribe-me.org

The Situation Room takes a look at the upcoming documentary Standard Operating Procedure by Errol Morris (The Fog of War, The Thin Blue Line) which examines the incidents of abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison.

Download | play Download | play Trailer: Download | play Download | play

More videos from the film via The New Yorker, in which Sy Hersh first broke the story of the US's gulag in Iraq.

I look forward to seeing how complete and honest an account of what went on this film is. It looks promising. I'm sure Janis Karpinski will do her part to make sure they set the record straight. Also, I'm pretty sure I know where the film's title comes from:

Army documents show. After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, U.S. soldiers and intelligence personnel began to use these techniques in Iraq, where they were informally "accepted as SOP [standard operating procedure] by newly arrived interrogators," according to an August 2004 report on Abu Ghraib abuses by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay. By September 2003, Gen. Geoffrey Miller had arrived at Abu Ghraib, allegedly with a mandate to "Gitmo-ize" interrogation procedures at the prison.

In light of the recent revelations that torture techniques were discussed and approved in meetings by the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a group that included Vice President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, John Ashcroft, and that President Bush admits he was fully aware of them, I think the Pentagon spokesman's statement at the end of the CNN report that there was never "any government policy that directed, encouraged, or condoned abuse" is not only demonstrably false, it shows what a sham the military's investigation into the matter was. Janis Karpinski was right all along.

  Everyone, pretty nearly everywhere, has seen the images of abuse at Abu Ghraib. The name of the prison alone has become synonymous with torture and humiliation, and the acts committed by Americans weakened our collective name on the global stage like almost nothing else in recent years.

Oddly enough, reflecting on the events, one of the more notorious players in this disgusting scandal still seems anxious to shift the blame. (via Oliver Willis)

Lynndie England, the public face of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, told a German news magazine that she was sorry for appearing in photographs of detainees in the notorious Iraqi prison, and believes the scenes of torture and humiliation served as a powerful rallying point for anti-American insurgents.

In an interview with the weekly magazine Stern conducted in English and posted on its website Tuesday, England was both remorseful and unrepentant — and conceded that the published photos surely incensed insurgents in Iraq.

“I guess after the picture came out the insurgency picked up and Iraqis attacked the Americans and the British and they attacked in return and they were just killing each other. I felt bad about it … no, I felt pissed off. If the media hadn’t exposed the pictures to that extent, then thousands of lives would have been saved,” she was quoted as saying.

I see. England played a large role in torturing and humiliating Iraqi detainees, many of whom had done nothing wrong, but “thousands of lives would have been saved” if only her crimes had been covered up more effectively. As far as she's concerned, the problem wasn’t her shameful and illegal conduct — she was, as you may recall, seen holding a naked prisoner on a leash — the problem was scrutiny of her shameful and illegal conduct.

The mind reels.

Download | play Download | play (h/t Heather)

So much hackery, so little time. Thursday's edition of Bushed! includes a return visit of Timothy Goeglein, the former White House aide who was fired after it was discovered that he had liberally plagiarized from various publications for op-eds of his own. It turns out no one was safe from Goeglein's sticky fingered grab of prose, not even the late Pope John Paul II. Stealing from the Pope? I'm not a practicing Catholic anymore, but I'm pretty sure that would take a whole bunch of Hail Marys and Our Fathers to atone for.

Then there is KBR, subsidiary of Dick Cheney's Halliburton, and the largest contract holder in Iraq. Turns out that KBR is in a little bit of a tax jam. More than 21,000 employees of KBR are listed as employees of two shell companies --neither of which have an office or phone number--based in the Cayman Islands so that KBR can avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars of Medicare and Social Security taxes. Hmmm....wonder if there'll be any repercussions for KBR on this?

And finally, comes news that Canada, in their prosecution of alleged terrorist cells, have refiled paperwork that has omitted information obtained during US enhanced interrogation torture sessions. I'll let Keith Olbermann take this one on:

There it is in its starkest form. You don’t even have to think about the ethics. You don’t even have to think about whether the tortured suspect tells you the truth or makes it all up. Legally, you can’t use it. All that trouble, all that pain, all that spitting on what America stands for and your tough guy crap only winds up freeing the guys you think are terrorists. Idiots.

Warning: Disturbing content, not safe for work

Wired:

Psychologist Philip Zimbardo has seen good people turn evil, and he thinks he knows why.

Zimbardo will speak Thursday afternoon at the TED conference, where he plans to illustrate his points by showing a three-minute video, obtained by Wired.com, that features many previously unseen photographs from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (disturbing content).

In March 2006, Salon.com published 279 photos and 19 videos from Abu Ghraib, one of the most extensive documentations to date of abuse in the notorious prison. Zimbardo claims, however, that many images in his video -- which he obtained while serving as an expert witness for an Abu Ghraib defendant -- have never before been published.

The Abu Ghraib prison made international headlines in 2004 when photographs of military personnel abusing Iraqi prisoners were published around the world. Seven soldiers were convicted in courts martial and two, including Specialist Lynndie England, were sentenced to prison.

Zimbardo conducted a now-famous experiment at Stanford University in 1971, involving students who posed as prisoners and guards. Five days into the experiment, Zimbardo halted the study when the student guards began abusing the prisoners, forcing them to strip naked and simulate sex acts.

His book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, explores how a "perfect storm" of conditions can make ordinary people commit horrendous acts.

Dr. Zimbardo's interview with Wired and the video may be viewed here. Are these the freedoms--freedom to dehumanize, freedom to debase, freedom to torture and kill--that Muslims supposedly hate us for?

Mother Jones has "The Torture Playlist" (h/t MBH)

Music has been used in American military prisons and on bases to induce sleep deprivation, "prolong capture shock," disorient detainees during interrogations—and also drown out screams.

At the time that we covered the story that the White House had decided to pursue secret trials of six detainees, including Khalid Sheik Mohammed for their roles leading up to 9/11, the comments for those posts were full of accusations of kangaroo courts. Sadly, but not surprisingly, those fears were right, as The Nation has found:

(A)s the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials are rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees in an attempt to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

Continue reading »

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.

WaPo: ‘Cleansing’ the case

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.