The Torture Queen Revises Her Story

How many times has she previously denied that the U.S. tortures, knowing all the while that she was directly responsible as a member of the team who authorized it?

Now that more information connecting her to those authorizations keeps surfacing, suddenly, it’s "We did, but we don’t any more."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday defended tough interrogation techniques for terrorism suspects approved by the Bush administration in the wake of 9/11, saying they were necessary to protect America from new attacks.

[...]

But she acknowledged that those rules had since changed and that the United States was a "different place" then, adding that the administration's top priority at the time had been preventing new attacks and not necessarily observing fine legal points

  Newsweek

”Fine legal points.”

Before we were against torture, we were for it..

It's the "we torture when we need to, but not any other time" policy.

Say It Isn't So, Condi. Say It Isn't So.

Justice Department Report Reveals Senior Government Officials Knew Early On Of Interrogation Abuse But Did Not Stop It
(5/20/2008)

[...]

NEW YORK - The results of an internal Justice Department investigation released today reveal that officials at the highest level of government — including the White House — received reports on the abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody overseas as early as 2002. Congress called on the department's Office of the Inspector General (OIG) to conduct the investigation after documents made public through an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request revealed FBI agents at Guantánamo had raised concerns about methods used by military interrogators. Today's government report is the first to identify that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice received complaints of torture.

[...]

The report confirms that senior FBI officials knew as early as 2002 that other agencies including the CIA were using abusive interrogation methods. However, the FBI didn't advise its agents to report incidents of abuse until 2004, after the publication of photographs revealing abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison.

[...]

"The report only underscores the pressing need for an independent and comprehensive investigation of prisoner abuse. It's unacceptable that, four years after the publication of the Abu Ghraib photographs, no senior official has been held accountable. Most of those who ought to have been held accountable have been nominated and confirmed to higher posts instead."

  Invictus

It’s the Bush Administration way.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

FBI Agents Barred From "Harsh Interrogations"

A Justice Department audit of terror interrogations at three military bases overseas concluded Tuesday that FBI agents refused to participate when detainees were questioned under harsh and potentially illegal methods.

The FBI clashed with the Pentagon and the CIA over how at least two top al-Qaida operatives were interviewed, Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found during a three-year investigation.

In part, that led to an August 2002 order by FBI Director Robert Mueller for agents to withdraw from interrogations during which coercive or extreme methods were used to get information from detainees, the audit concluded.

"The FBI agents observed the CIA use classified techniques that undoubtedly would not be permitted under FBI interview policies," according to a summary of the nearly 400-page audit.

  TPM

But the CIA is special.

Speaking of Subpoenas

John Yoo says he'll testify before Congress without a subpoena. I'm sure he won't lie or obfuscate or duck any questions.

And then there's Cheney's Cheney.

By a voice vote, the House Judiciary Committee voted Tuesday morning to compel Vice President Cheney's chief of staff David Addington to testify about his role in approving harsh interrogation tactics at the US Guantanamo Bay prison.

The vote empowers House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers (D-MI) to subpoena Addington at his discretion.

  Raw Story

Yeah, that'll work, as it has done so well in the past.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

"Harsh interrogations."

CIA Finds Itself Innocent

[The CIA] destroyed interrogation videotapes in November 2005, months after a federal judge issued an order for the government to preserve all evidence relevant to the trial of Hani Saleh Rashid Abdullah, a Yemeni challenging his detention at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

But in a court filing on Wednesday, Robert L. Deitz, a top agency official, said that a search of several thousand pages of documents had found no evidence indicating “intentional, accidental, or negligent destruction of records” falling under that order.

  NYTimes

And I was just sure they’d find themselves guilty.

The court filings do not explain how the C.I.A. reached its conclusion, or by what standard it judged whether documents were covered by the order.

Hmmm. I suppose we’ll just have to guess.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

What's All the Fuss?

The United Nations' torture investigator [Manfred Nowak] criticized the White House Wednesday for defending the use of waterboarding and urged the U.S. to give up its defense of "unjustifiable" interrogation methods.

  Houston Chronicle

You know, we permit the UN to operate on our land. They better just watch it. We don’t need no steenkeen UN.

[C]ourt documents made public on Wednesday […] in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui appear to contradict a statement last December by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, that when [interrogation] tapes were destroyed in November 2005 they had no relevance to any court proceeding, including Mr. Moussaoui’s criminal trial.

It was already known that the judge in the case, Leonie M. Brinkema, had not been told about the existence or destruction of the videos. But the newly disclosed court documents, which had been classified as secret, showed the judge had still been actively seeking information about Mr. Zubaydah’s interrogation as late as Nov. 29, 2005.

[...]

General Hayden said he understood that the tapes were destroyed “only after it was determined they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries — including the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui.”

  NYT

So what’s the problem? When a court orders me to produce evidence, am I not allowed to determine which are relevant to the case and destroy the rest?

Geez, people, 9/11 changed everything.

Judge Won't Look into CIA Tape Destruction

Lawyers for terror suspects wanted a federal judge to look into the CIA's destruction of "interrogation" tapes as part of their lawsuits. But the judge refused.

[U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy]refused on Wednesday to delve into the destruction of CIA interrogation videos, saying there was no evidence the Bush administration violated a court order and the Justice Department deserved time to conduct its own investigation.

[...]

"There is no reason to disregard the Department of Justice's assurances," Kennedy said.

  AP via Google

Because we know how independent the Justice Department is.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Torture Tapes

Josh Marshall has a running post on the appointment of counsel to investigate the CIA destruction of interrogation tapes.

Update: Jonathan Turley breaks it down.

Attorney General Mukasey has appointed a U.S. Attorney General to handle the investigation — a disappointing decision not to appoint someone outside the Administration.

[...]

John Durham, the U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, is not viewed as political but he remains within the Justice Department and under Mukasey’s supervision.

[...]

[P] reliminary investigation now shows that the highest ranking members of the Administration were involved as were Justice officials. The conflict of interest is open and obvious.

[...]

The Justice Department is the very party accused of contempt and obstruction. It is the institution that told judges like Judge Brinkema in Virginia that no such tapes existed when they did. More importantly, in a contempt circumstance, it is the duty of the court to make an independent inquiry. If this were a private party, it would be odd for the court to say that it wants the accused party to first investigate itself. Instead, a court issues a show cause order that tells the party that it wants to know why it should not be held in contempt. The party is then given time to muster its facts and filings. This would have been the better course for the court. Instead, the court is practically leaving a judicial matter (contempt) in the hands [of the] executive branch, which is investigating itself.

And so it goes.

Torture Tapes & More

Now the CIA has asked the DoJ to investigate possible criminal charges against a CIA agent who discussed the waterboarding of a prisoner.

On a Roll

Reyes has now subpoenaed the CIA official purportedly responsible for destroying the "interrogation" tapes, Jose Rodriguez. Maybe the "change of mind" the CIA had about turning over documents under threat of subpoena has bolstered his confidence that he can get cooperation for testimony, too. Strike while the iron's hot, anyway.

They Changed Their Minds

The Central Intelligence Agency has agreed to make documents related to the destruction of interrogation videotapes available to the House Intelligence Committee and to allow the agency’s top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, to testify about the matter, Congressional and intelligence officials said Wednesday.

[...]

“The Department of Justice has changed their minds, and today we have reason to believe that we will be getting the documents,” [House Intelligence Committee chairman Silvestre] Reyes told reporters on Wednesday.

  NYT

Changed their minds. Is it coincidental that the the NYT just reported that four White House lawyers were involved?

There may also be audio tapes.

I wondered what has become of the Italian attempt to bring to justice the CIA agents who kidnapped Abu Omar, so I poked around a bit. There is supposed to be a decision on January 29 on whether a state document can be revealed in public court (although it already appeared in the press).

The CIA agents charged, who can be arrested if they go back to Europe, are not likely to make an appearance in Italian court.

The conviction [in absentia] of the Americans is a virtual certainty, say legal observers.

[...]

Omar, now wanted in Milan on terrorist charges, would be eligible to collect damages from U.S. and Italian officials in the event of a guilty verdict.

  CQ Politics

And good luck collecting on that U.S. award.

His critics, [Italian prosecutor Armando] Spataro says, “see a trial in absentia of the Americans as an obstacle to fighting terrorism,” meaning that it wrongly targets the CIA, one of the very agencies leading the fight against the terrorists.

“But we,” he stresses, “see following the law as central to the fight against terrorism.”

How novel.

Surprise, Surprise

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

  NYT

But! How could that be? George himself just found out about those tapes being destroyed a few weeks ago! He said so himself.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

[...]

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

[...]

The current and former officials also provided new details about the role played in November 2005 by Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine branch, who ultimately ordered the destruction of the tapes.

The officials said that before he issued a secret cable directing that the tapes be destroyed, Mr. Rodriguez received legal guidance from two C.I.A. lawyers, Steven Hermes and Robert Eatinger.

[...]

On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Dana Perino, issued a statement saying “The New York Times’ inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling.”

You think maybe this girl who didn’t know what the Cuban Missile Crisis was is in over her head?

The White House has kicked back against the Times on various other front-page reports in recent years but today it has asked for something specific: a "correction" of the [NYT] headline's deck.

The Hill, the Washington, D.C. newspapers, reports, "Catherine Mathis, senior vice president of corporate communications for the newspaper, stated that the sub-headline has been changed, adding that a correction would be printed. However, Mathis also pointed out that the White House did not challenge the contents of the article."

  Editor & Publisher

Yeah, sure. But they know their supporters don’t read past the headlines. The subheadline that the Times “corrected” read: "White House Role Was Wider Than It Said.” They pulled it. Pansies.

Attorney Jonathan Turley comments on the tapes fiasco:

First, the Bush Administration tell Congress and courts that no such evidence exists. Second, while members of Congress, judges, and defense attorneys are demanding the evidence, the Bush Administration methodically gathers every copy and destroys the evidence. Third, while people uniformly demand a special prosecutor, the Justice Department insists that it will investigate itself. Fourth, almost immediately upon rejecting a special prosecutor, the Justice Department then claims its own investigation of its own misconduct as an excuse not to turn over any evidence of its misconduct to courts.

[...]

I have seen more reputable conduct from mob attorneys.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Hey! More Subpoenas!

In a direct challenge to President Bush, a House panel said Wednesday it has prepared subpoenas to force CIA officials to testify about the agency's secret destruction of interrogation videotapes.

  Yahoo

And that was a waste of time, wasn't it?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Bring on the Scapegoat

[Condi] Rice is willing to publicly state that she had no knowledge of the [CIA interrogation] tapes’ destruction in 2005, but won’t do the same on the 2002 interrogations.

In addition to Rice, at least five high-ranking administration officials and former officials have disavowed any knowledge of the tapes’ destruction. They have instead placed the blame on Jose Rodriguez, then the CIA’s head of the clandestine division.

  Think Progress

The White House is denying that anybody but one CIA official knew anything about the destruction of the interrogation tapes.

The full blame for the destruction of the tapes has fallen on Jose Rodriguez, then the CIA’s head of the clandestine division. Rodriguez reportedly undertook the destruction of the tapes in a unilateral manner, without receiving any instructions from his bosses or giving them advance notice of his actions.

  Think Progress

Suuuuuuuure he did.

In an interview last night with ABC News, John Kiriakou — the CIA official who headed the team that interrogated al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah — said that Zubaydah was waterboarded

This isn’t something done willy nilly. It’s not something that an agency officer just wakes up in the morning and decides he’s going to carry out an enhanced technique on a prisoner. This was a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and Justice Department.

  Think Progress

Uh-huh.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

CIA Torture Evidence

Lawyers for a British resident who the US government refuses to release from Guantanamo Bay have identified the existence of photographs taken by CIA agents that they say show their client suffered horrific injuries under torture.

[...]

In a letter sent to the Foreign Secretary David Miliband, Britain is urged to ask the US to stop the CIA destroying the pictures.

Clive Stafford-Smith, the legal director of Reprieve representing Mr [Binyam Mohammed], said that he also knows the identity of the agents who were present when his client was allegedly beaten and tortured. Writing to Mr Miliband, he said: "Given the opportunity, we can prove that the evidence was the fruit of torture. Indeed, we can prove that a photographic record was made of this by the CIA. Through diligent investigation we know when the CIA took pictures of Mr Mohammed's brutalised genitalia, we know the identity of the CIA agents who were present including the person who took the pictures (we know both their false identities and their true names), and we know what those pictures show."

He added: "I have been privy to materials that allegedly support the finding that Mr Mohammed should be held, and while I cannot discuss some here (due to classification rules), I can state unequivocally that I have seen no evidence of any kind against Mr Mohammed that is not the bitter fruit of torture."

Reprieve says it will be pressing for criminal prosecutions against the CIA agents alleged to have carried out the torture.

[...]

Mr Stafford-Smith added in his letter: "As you know, the only purported basis for the US holding Mr Mohammed is an allegation that he is an ('illegal') enemy combatant. Five-and-a-half years after his initial seizure, he is not currently charged in a military commission, and he has never been offered a fair trial. As you are aware, Mr Mohammed was rendered to Morocco by the CIA and tortured for 18 months in a way that was medieval.

"There can be no rational dispute that this is true. We have the CIA flight records which precisely match Mr Mohammed's version of events. He has nothing to do with Morocco, and he was not taken there by the CIA for a Club Med vacation."

  UK Independent

Where's That Moral Compass?

[L]ong before "waterboarding" entered the public discourse, the CIA gave key legislative overseers about 30 private briefings, some of which included descriptions of that technique and other harsh interrogation methods, according to interviews with multiple U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge.

[...]

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.

[...]

The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

[...]

Congressional officials say the groups' ability to challenge the practices was hampered by strict rules of secrecy that prohibited them from being able to take notes or consult legal experts or members of their own staffs.

  WaPo

Because you have to consult with a member of your staff or a legal expert to know torture when you see it.

Graham said he has no memory of ever being told about waterboarding or other harsh tactics.

Maybe there are records of those meetings that can jog his poor memory?

Pelosi declined to comment directly on her reaction to the classified briefings.

[...]

Roberts declined to comment on his participation in the briefings. Rockefeller also declined to talk about the briefings, but the West Virginia Democrat's public statements show him leading the push in 2005 for expanded congressional oversight and an investigation of CIA interrogation practices.

[...]

Harman, who replaced Pelosi as the committee's top Democrat in January 2003, disclosed Friday that she filed a classified letter to the CIA in February of that year as an official protest about the interrogation program. Harman said she had been prevented from publicly discussing the letter or the CIA's program because of strict rules of secrecy.

"When you serve on intelligence committee you sign a second oath -- one of secrecy," she said. "I was briefed, but the information was closely held to just the Gang of Four. I was not free to disclose anything."

”I was just doing my job.”

Honor among thieves.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update: While researching information for another post, I came across this election campaign snippet from a JFK speech:

But if the time should ever come — and I do not concede any conflict to be even remotely possible — when my office would require me to either violate my conscience or violate the national interest, then I would resign the office; and I hope any conscientious public servant would do the same.

If still living, he would no doubt have long since abandoned hope.

Out of the Loop, Poor Memory

Poor George. He didn't know anything about the NIE on Iran's nuclear capabilities until it was sprung to the public. And now he doesn't recall being told about the CIA destroying video tapes of "harsh interrogations", either.

How convenient.

Update: Are we really to believe that Congressional Dems knew about the video tapes, but Bush didn't?

About as likely as him not being given the NIE information.

"In other words": bullshit.

Executive Order Alert

President Bush signed an executive order Friday prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment, including humiliation or denigration of religious beliefs, in the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects.

  TPM

Why do I suspect there is a "signing statement" to go along with that?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update: Next day's post