Burn after Reading redux? Word comes down that George Clooney is set to star in Grant Heslov’s The Men Who Stare at Goats with Ewan MacGregor, Kevin Spacey, and Jeff Bridges. “Based on true events described in Jon Ronson’s 2004 book of the same title, ‘Goats’ involves a down-on-his-luck reporter (McGregor) who gets more than he bargains for when he meets a special forces agent (Clooney) who reveals the existence of a secret, psychic military unit whose goal is to use paranormal powers to end war as we know it.” Look, if we’re talking a psychic stare-down between Jeff Bridges and a goat, my money’s on Bridges.
Tag: CIA
I don’t agree with that…do I?
In case you missed it last night — I’ll concede, I’d forgotten about the presser and was watching the NBA playoffs — President Obama was finally asked about his troubling continuation of Dubya’s state secrets policy during his “100 Days” press conference last night. [Full transcript.] And his answer — basically, the justice department turns like a battleship, but we’re on the case — is somewhat heartening, I guess, in that the president seems to concede anew that the privilege has been abused of late, even under his own administration. But, as Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald reminds us today, the Obama/Holder JD has done a good bit more than just “stay the course” on states’ secrets since coming into office, and last night’s excuse — well, despite our actions over 100 days, this isn’t *really* our policy — isn’t going to hold water for much longer.
Also last night, while sort of pressed into it by ABC News’ Jake Tapper, President Obama said in no uncertain terms both that waterboarding is torture (correct) and that, as we all know, his predecessor’s administration sanctioned it: “I believe that waterboarding was torture. And I think that the — whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.” Now, it isn’t the president’s call to move forward on an investigation and possible prosecutions at this point — that task falls to Attorney General Holder. Still, if what the president said last night is true, and it obviously is, then AG Holder has only one choice moving forward. It’s time to get to the bottom of this.
U.S. History for Dummies.
As many readers here well know, I’ve spent a good bit of time over the past decade studying US history. (In fact, over the past few years, I’ve occasionally helped my advisor keep a textbook up to date that recently drew the ire of right-wing blowhard Bill O’Reilly. Apparently, those damn pesky facts were somehow mitigating O’Reilly’s ability to spew forth the usual idiotic blather.)
Anyway, over that period of time, I believe I have in fact learned me a few things. So, as a public service of sorts, and because, after this morning’s revelations, I’ve reached the limit of craven and/or patently stupid falsehoods that I can feasibly ingest over so short a time, some “U.S. History for Dummies.” I expect most everyone who comes by this site with any frequency knows all this, but ya never know. Apologies for the didacticism in advance — if this were this a Coors Light commercial, this would be where i vent. (And thanks to Lia for the timely visual tax lesson, above.)
At any rate, as most people remember from high school, the original 1773 Tea Party was not a protest against high taxes or high prices at all. (In fact, legally imported tea — i.e. that of the East India Company, which was both suffering serious setbacks over in India and losing market share to smuggled Dutch tea at the time — was actually cheaper in the colonies after the Tea Act, since it was now exempt from the usual obligations.)
In small part a reaction of the East India’s commercial rivals to this sweetheart deal, the Boston Tea Party was mainly held to uphold the principle of No taxation without representation. Which I don’t think I need to explain. So, with the minor exception of DC-area conservatives who attended the tea gathering in Washington (without crossing over from Virginia or Maryland), the, uh, “teabaggers” don’t really have a leg to stand on here. This is particularly true after you consider that both ruthless gerrymandering and the vagaries of the Electoral College (I’m looking at you, Wyoming) actually tend to lead to over-representation of conservative Republicans in our halls of governance, even despite heavy losses for the “Grand Old Party” in 2006 and 2008.
Well, in fact, no state in the Union has any legal right to secede. (Not even Texas.) The existence of such a right was posited and debated quite often in the early years of the republic: by Jefferson and Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, by the members of the Hartford Convention, by South Carolina’s philosopher-politician John C. Calhoun, and countless others.
But the illegality of secession was eventually confirmed — in blood — when eleven states attempted to pull out of the Union in 1861, due mainly to differing opinions on the institution of slavery and its expansion into the western territories. As a result of this insurrection by the southern states, a violent conflict broke out, which we call the Civil War. It lasted four years, and it was kind of a big deal.
Prior to the war, the states of the Confederacy believed secession to be their natural right, while those remaining in the Union believed it to be tantamount to an act of treason. With the Union victory in that conflict, and the subsequent readmittance of southern states in such a manner that reaffirmed that no right of secession exists, the question was settled. So it remains to this day.
Another argument we’ve heard lately — today Sen. McCain made it with his usual comrades-in-arms, Sens. Lieberman and Graham, while trying to protect Dubya’s lawyers — is that the CIA officials who actually conducted these recent acts of torture should be exempt from prosecution, because they were following the legal dictates of those higher-up in the administration. (To follow the reasoning around the circle, the torturers should be exempt because they were listening to the lawyers, and the lawyers should be exempt because they didn’t do the actual torturing. Cute.)
Anyway, whatever you think of the merits of this argument, this is usually referred to as the Nuremberg defense, and it is in fact no defense at all. Argues Principle IV of the Nuremberg Principles, devised by the Allies after WWII to determine what constituted a war crime: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.” Insert “CIA interrogator” for person in that last sentence and you can pretty much see the problem.
America is not a Christian nation. This will be patently obvious to anyone who’s ever heard the phrase “separation of church and state.” Unlike, say, England, America does not have and has never had an official, established church. This is very much by design. For proof of this not-very-radical claim, see the very first clause of the very first amendment to the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
If that doesn’t do it for you, see George Washington’s famous 1790 letter to the Jewish residents of Newport, Rhode Island. “May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.“
Or consider that Thomas Jefferson skipped his presidency on his tombstone to make room for his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: “Be it enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinion in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.” (We could also make mention of the Jefferson Bible, but let’s start slow.)
Is the reasoning here too circuitous for Rove, Gingrich, et al to follow? Ok, then, here’s the cheat sheet: the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli, passed by a Congress of our Founders without declaim and signed into law by President John Adams. It begins: “As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion…” Did y’all catch it this time? Good, let’s move on.
After the picture was taken, conservatives went predictably livid, with Matt Drudge headlining the offending photograph with the usual red text, Dick Cheney deeming Obama “a weak president” on FOX News, and Gingrich arguing that it made Obama look “weak like Carter.” “We didn’t rush over, smile and greet Russian dictators,” said Newt, and he wasn’t the only potential 2012’er aghast at Obama’s behavior. Sen. John Ensign of Nevada called the president “irresponsible” and the consistently shameless Mitt Romney painted Obama a “timid advocate for freedom”.
Um, ok. Well, let’s see here…
I could go on. With regards to that last one — Reagan yukking it up with Mikhail Gorbachev, then of “the evil Empire” — it didn’t take long before (surprise) Newt was caught in a contradiction. Apparently, Gingrich had previously argued on his website that Ronald Reagan’s good humor with Gorby was a sign of strength, not weakness.
Speaking of which, as Lawrence O’Donnell noted on MSNBC the other day, saintly old Ronald Reagan didn’t just smile and shake hands with America’s enemies. His administration sold them weapons under the table. So, please, assorted puddin’-heads of the GOP talkocracy, spare me your warmed-over tripe about poor diplomacy and weak leadership. As with everything else above, I’ve swallowed enough of your swill over the past few weeks to last me a lifetime.
But Wait, It Gets Worse.
|
‘How many fingers, Winston?’
‘Four. I suppose there are four. I would see five if I could. I am trying to see five.’ ‘Which do you wish: to persuade me that you see five, or really to see them?’ ‘Really to see them.’ ‘Again,’ said O’Brien. Perhaps the needle was eighty — ninety. Winston could not intermittently remember why the pain was happening. Behind his screwed-up eyelids a forest of fingers seemed to be moving in a sort of dance, weaving in and out, disappearing behind one another and reappearing again. He was trying to count them, he could not remember why. He knew only that it was impossible to count them, and that this was somehow due to the mysterious identity between five and four. The pain died down again. When he opened his eyes it was to find that he was still seeing the same thing. Innumerable fingers, like moving trees, were still streaming past in either direction, crossing and recrossing. He shut his eyes again. ‘How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?’ ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. You will kill me if you do that again. Four, five, six — in all honesty I don’t know.’ ‘Better,’ said O’Brien. |
Hard to believe, but, this morning, the recent grisly revelations of Dubya-era torture practices became even more horrifying. As we’ve gleaned more info over the past few days, certain obvious and troubling questions kept popping up. Why, as indicated here, would higher-ups insist on additional waterboarding sessions for Zubadayah, even after the CIA agents at hand thought the suspect “had given up all the information he had“? Also: Mind you, even one session of torture is reprehensible — and illegal — enough. But what more did the powers-that-be think they were going to get out of these suspects after ten waterboardings? Twenty? One hundred?
Well, now we know. Not only did Dubya apparachiks conceive a torture regime well before it was approved (and before they had any prisoners on hand — see also the new and unredacted Armed Services Committee report), but they tortured their suspects into the ground because they were trying to prove a false positive, i.e. that there was some serious operational link between Iraq and Al Qaeda that could be used to sell the second Gulf War. (See also the forged Habbush letter.)
“‘There were two reasons why these interrogations were so persistent, and why extreme methods were used,’ the former senior intelligence official said on condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity. ‘The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there.‘”
So, in short, it would seem the suspects held by the CIA were tortured over and over again because they would not concede that two plus two equals five.
Really, how much lower can these assholes sink? What could they possibly do that would cause more violence to our ideals, or that would make our cherished role as a beacon of freedom seem any more ridiculous in the eyes of the world, than what they’ve already done?
Once again, I’m reminded of Lincoln’s famous remark to the Indiana 14th: “‘Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.‘” At the very least, somebody, or somebodies, better go to jail for a loooong time for this. Anything less is simply unacceptable.
Harman on the Hook.
“‘It’s the deepest kind of corruption,’ said a recently retired longtime national security official who was closely involved in the AIPAC investigation, ‘which was years in the making. It’s a story about the corruption of government — not legal corruption necessarily, but ethical corruption.” In a fascinating (and depressing) must-read, Congressional Quarterly‘s Jeff Stein lays bare a byzantine corruption scandal involving AIPAC, the Dubya WH, and Jane Harman, former Democratic chair of the House Intelligence Committee and, some grumbling aside, basically a “team player” for Dubya during the illegal and warrantless wiretaps episode. (Irony of ironies, it appears Harman’s misdeeds were caught on — a court-approved — wiretap.)
Talking Points Memo offers a handy timeline of the case here. Basically, on one level it’s your basic political quid-pro-quo. Harman told an unnamed suspected Israeli agent that she would “waddle into” a federal espionage case then extant against two members of AIPAC and gum up the works somehow. In return, “the suspected Israeli agent pledged to help lobby Nancy Pelosi…to appoint Harman chair of the Intelligence Committee after the 2006 elections.” (It didn’t take: Pelosi instead chose Silvestre Reyes.) “Seemingly wary of what she had just agreed to, according to an official who read the NSA transcript, Harman hung up after saying, ‘This conversation doesn’t exist.’“
Sordid enough. But what’s a mid-oughts scandal without the Dubya angle? After she had been caught on said wiretap, a federal investigation into Harman was approved…for awhile. But it seems Attorney General Alberto Gonzales now knew he had Harman in his pocket, and took advantage accordingly. “According to two officials privy to the events, Gonzales said he ‘needed Jane’ to help support the administration’s warrantless wiretapping program, which was about to be exposed by the New York Times. Harman, he told [CIA Director Porter] Goss, had helped persuade the newspaper to hold the wiretap story before, on the eve of the 2004 elections. And although it was too late to stop the Times from publishing now, she could be counted on again to help defend the program. He was right. On Dec. 21, 2005, in the midst of a firestorm of criticism about the wiretaps, Harman issued a statement defending the operation and slamming the Times, saying, ‘I believe it essential to U.S. national security, and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.’“
Not that I need to remind anyone here, but Dubya’s use of illegal and warrantless wiretaps would, in more cases, be recognized as an impeachable offense. As it was, the Senate GOP (then in the catbird seat) held firm against hearings, and many of our congressional Dems — Feingold, Leahy, and a few other lonely souls notwithstanding — folded like a house of cards. Now, at least in the case of Harman, we know why.
Update: The NYT weighs in with their side, and it’s TLDR’ed by TPM. And Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald has a good bit of snarky fun with Harman’s recent “road to Damascus” moment regarding wiretaps.
Pouring Water on a Drowning Man.
“The Times article, based on information from former intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Abu Zubaydah had revealed a great deal of information before harsh methods were used and after his captors stripped him of clothes, kept him in a cold cell and kept him awake at night. The article said interrogators at the secret prison in Thailand believed he had given up all the information he had, but officials at headquarters ordered them to use waterboarding.” Perusing last week’s sordid torture memos, eagle-eyed blogger Marcy Wheeler discovered an unsettling statistic: two suspects — Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Shaikh Mohammed — were waterboarded by the CIA 266 times. Zubaydah “revealed no new information after being waterboarded, the article said, a conclusion that appears to be supported by a footnote to a 2005 Justice Department memo saying the use of the harshest methods appeared to have been ‘unnecessary’ in his case.“
Meanwhile, as right-wing stooges like former CIA director Michael Hayden and Mike Allen’s anonymous friend excoriate the president for breaking tradition and revealing the illegalities of the Dubya era, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel ventured onto the Sunday shows to tamp down talk of any prosecutions, even for the higher-ups. “[P]eople in good faith were operating with the guidance they were provided. They shouldn’t be prosecuted…those who devised policy, he [Obama] believes that they were — should not be prosecuted either, and that’s not the place that we go — as he said in that letter.“
Wrong answer, Rahm. And, unless President Obama were to grant full pardons to the architects of Dubya-era torture, it’s not even his call whether or not they should be prosecuted. In fact, choosing not to prosecute them would constitute a violation of international law.
Update: The White House doesn’t necessarily agree with Rahm. “[A]dministration officials said Monday that Mr. Emanuel had meant the officials who ordered the policies carried out, not the lawyers who provided the legal rationale. Three Bush administration lawyers who signed memos, John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury, are the subjects of a coming report by the Justice Department’s ethics office that officials say is sharply critical of their work. The ethics office has the power to recommend disbarment or other professional penalties or, less likely, to refer cases for criminal prosecution.“
Update 2: “With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general within the parameters of various laws, and I don’t want to prejudge that.” President Obama opens the door further for prosecution.
Inside our Room 101.
| “You asked me once,” said O’Brien, “what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world.”
The door opened again. A guard came in, carrying something made of wire, a box or basket of some kind. He set it down on the further table. Because of the position in which O’Brien was standing, Winston could not see what the thing was. “The worst thing in the world,” said O’Brien, “varies from individual to individual. It may be burial alive, or death by fire, or by drowning, or by implement, or fifty other deaths. There are cases where it is some quite trivial thing, not even fatal…In your case,” said O’Brien, “the worst thing in the world happens to be rats.” |
And, sometimes, here in our own Room 101, it’s insects. As breaking everywhere this afternoon, the President authorizes the release of four long-awaited CIA memos that detail the rationalizing and application of Bush-era torture policies. [No. 1 | No. 2, No. 3a/3b | 4a/4b.] And, as Salon‘s Glenn Greenwald notes, they seem to suggest that even the parties-that-be knew what they were doing constituted torture. (“Each year, in the State Department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, the United States condemns coercive interrogation techniques and other practices employed by other countries. Certain of the techniques the United States has condemned appear to bear resemblance to some of the CIA interrogation techniques…The State Department’s inclusion of nudity, water dousing, sleep deprivation, and food deprivation among the conduct it condemns is significant and provides some indication of an executive foreign relations tradition condemning the use of these techniques.“) But, they approved these already-condemned practices as legal anyway, with the caveat that they “cannot predict with confidence whether a court would agree with this conclusion.” Yeah, you think?
Well, let’s hope the courts get a chance to decide either way. While releasing these documents today, Pres. Obama and Attorney General Holder also made clear that the CIA interrogators involved will not be prosecuted for these acts. “‘It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department,’ he said in a statement.” Um, I’m of the opinion that it would be unfair to get strung up in a, cough, “stress position” by a bunch of Cheney-authorized CIA yahoos and then see no legal recourse for it. (And, hey, “just following orders” — what a novel legal defense. Who were the ad wizards that came up with that one?)
On the other hand, as the WP points out: “Today’s carefully worded statement left open the possibility, however, that agents and higher-level officials who may have ventured beyond the strategies approved by Bush lawyers could face legal jeopardy for their actions.” That still closes too many legal doors, imho. The strategies approved by Bush lawyers are horrible — and illegal — enough. But, at least we can still hold out the minute possibility that the real, top-level architects of Dubya-era torture policy will face some sort of prosecution for their crimes, above and beyond their inevitable condemnation in the history books. (President Obama may argue that “[t]his is a time for reflection, not retribution,” but, the law is the law. And, as he should know, pardoning Nixon didn’t do Gerald Ford any favors.)
Either way, let’s be clear: These memos prove beyond a shadow of a doubt — as if there were any doubt left — that it was the stated and directed policy of the Dubya-era CIA to engage in acts they knew to be torture. That is unacceptable, completely antithetical to our ideals, and exceedingly worthy of a criminal investigation. If, in the name of national unity or CIA morale or whatever, the president wants to give a pass to the flunkies who actually held the victims down as they flailed, choked, or writhed in agony…well, that just means somebody else higher-up has to pay. Fine. But, if the rule of law means anything anymore, and I believe it does, the people responsible must be held to account.
Tortured Reasoning…Again.
“Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same.” Meet the new boss, same as the old boss? The Obama administration and Holder Justice Dept. uphold Dubya’s dubious use of a “state secrets” privilege to put the kibosh on a lawsuit put forward by five men “extraordinarily rendered” by the CIA.
See also a livid Glenn Greenwald for the details: “The entire claim of ‘state secrets’ in this case is based on two sworn Declarations from CIA Director Michael Hayden — one public and one filed secretly with the court. In them, Hayden argues that courts cannot adjudicate this case because to do so would be to disclose and thus degrade key CIA programs of rendition and interrogation — the very policies which Obama, in his first week in office, ordered shall no longer exist. How, then, could continuation of this case possibly jeopardize national security when the rendition and interrogation practices which gave rise to these lawsuits are the very ones that the U.S. Government, under the new administration, claims to have banned?“
Update: Sensing the likely blowback, one presumes, the Justice Dept. announces it’ll be reviewing Dubya’s “state secrets” claims in due course. “It’s vital that we protect information that if released could jeopardize national security, but the Justice Department will ensure the privilege is not invoked to hide from the American people information about their government’s actions that they have a right to know.” So apparently, the ugly details of our now-defunct(?) extraordinary rendition policy aren’t among the actions we should have any clue about. Ugh…this one definitely goes in the Carcetti file.
Good Riddance, Gitmo.
“[T]he orders [also] bring to an end a Central Intelligence Agency program that kept terrorism suspects in secret custody for months or years, a practice that has brought fierce criticism from foreign governments and human rights activists. They will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects, government officials said.“
And there was much rejoicing! We can all breathe a little easier and stand a little taller now that America is actually starting to act like America again. (And, trust me, I won’t shed any tears over dropping the gulag and torture news category here at GitM.)
Btw, the “new sheriff in town” pic above is via The Big Picture’s very worthwhile inaugural collection, as seen at Webgoddess.
Priority #1: Gutting the Gitmo Gulag.
“Announcing the closure of the controversial detention facility would be among the most potent signals the incoming administration could send of its sharp break with the Bush era, according to the advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are not authorized to speak for the president-elect. They believe the move would create a global wave of diplomatic and popular goodwill that could accelerate the transfer of some detainees to other countries.” In the WP today, unnamed Obama advisors make the case for the president-elect closing the Gitmo gulag next-to-immediately. (The ACLU has echoed similarly, and the UN Human Rights Commission suggested thus back in 2006.)
Nevertheless, while agreeing Gitmo is a catastrophic mistake that needs to be rectified pronto, Slate‘s Jonathan Mahler and Newsweek‘s Dan Ephron sense some implementation problems ahead. “[T]he prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen in November 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and resourcefulness to clean up…[T]he controversial facility will probably still be open for business a year from now.“
However the national embarrassment at Guantanamo is handled by the new administration, it seems a safe bet that some of the intelligence officials that have carried water for Dubya on Gitmo, torture, warrantless wiretaps, and other issues will soon be sent packing, namely Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA head Michael Hayden. “McConnell and Hayden, both career intelligence professionals, interpret the Obama team not reaching out to them as a sign that they will not be kept on, intelligence officials said.” But, hey, heck of a job, Mikeys.