Purpose redacted

Among the documents that the ACLU forced the government to release is this CIA guide to its use of abusive rendition and interrogation techniques from late 2004 (PDF). It acknowledges that the goal of these processes is systematically to condition the prisoners into a state of "learned helplessness and dependence". And this in a document faxed to the Justice Department. By summarizing these abusive techniques in clinical fashion, the CIA has fashioned a deeply horrifying record of what it became under George W. Bush, one that in the past we might have associated with the Stasi's files.

Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this repulsive document is one of the many redactions. In the second (?) paragraph, the CIA describes the purposes of its interrogations of terrorist suspects at "Black Sites" (its term). At least one of those purposes is redacted. In other words, the purpose remains classified! This is one with the evolving series of justifications that the CIA has offered over the years for the interrogation program. It cannot decide quite what it wants the rest of us to believe was the ultimate rationale for treating prisoners in ways that plainly are unAmerican.

Here is what remains unredacted of the CIA's rationale for the abusive interrogation program:

The purpose of interrogation is to persuade High-Value Detainees (HVD) to provide threat information and terrorist intelligence in a timely manner, to allow the US Government to identify and disrupt terrorist plots [... redacted line]
[...] and to collect critical intelligence on al-Qa'ida [... 4 lines redacted]

[...] In support of information previously sent to the Department of Justice, this paper provides additional background on how interrogation techniques are used ...

Thus at least one of the stated purposes has been redacted here. That is a silent demonstration of what many have suspected all along, that under George Bush and Dick Cheney abusive interrogations were a policy in search of a rationale. Were they about obtaining intelligence from captives while it was still most current? Disrupting as many plots around the world as possible? Learning about Al Qaeda? Or some of the other reasons that have been proffered in the past? Identifying and arresting further terrorists? Building cases for prosecuting terrorist suspects? Fear of an imminent attack upon the US? Or just showing that the US was determined to 'take the gloves off', in Cheney's phrase? Even at this late date, the CIA can't bring itself to say.

As the ACLU's Alexander Abdo said to Greg Sargent, "This is the most detailed description provided by the CIA of its rendition program to date... It confirms accounts provided by victims of rendition.”

Those prisoner accounts of their experiences during extraordinary rendition flights and flights to Guantanamo prison, as I've remarked here repeatedly, go back to the beginning of 2002. Hence the earliest accounts predate by several months the attempts by the Bush administration lawyers to generate torture memos to justify retrospectively all manner of mistreatment of terrorist suspects, from "conditioning" to "coercion", that were already in common use around the globe. As the prisoner accounts show, the mistreatment had been systematized from the outset – very much in the manner described in this CIA memo (which has a section describing methods to be used in the capture and transfer of prisoners on rendition flights).

This fact leaves a great many Bush administration officials, including the authors of those egregious memos, exposed to prosecution for ordering or abetting torture and abuse of prisoners. They had relied upon legal memos to function as 'get out of jail free' cards, under the pretense that everybody from the White House down to the actual interrogator were just following the advice of the administration's lawyers. But much evidence has accumulated that that advice was cooked, with administration officials soliciting exactly the opinions they wanted and playing footsie with lawyers until the desired advice was forthcoming.

The Bush Administration claimed that Justice gave legal advice to the CIA and that the CIA followed and applied it. But the IG report reveals a strikingly different relationship. As the OLC memos were written, there was a sort of waltz between CIA and Justice lawyers in which different hypotheticals were offered up in solicitation of opinions—something on the order of “If we told you we did x, what would you say about it?” This suggests the OLC memos were effectively negotiated. It also appears that CIA requested a number of after-the-fact variations to protect practices that clearly exceeded guidance. Why does this matter? It undermines the ability of CIA employees and contractors to “rely in good faith” on the OLC memos, because it shows that OLC wasn’t really giving legal advice. Instead it was issuing “get out of jail free” cards. A good example comes with waterboarding: “With respect to two detainees at those sites, the use and frequency of one EIT, the waterboard, went beyond the projected use of the technique as originally described to DoJ. The Agency, on 29 July 2003, secured oral DoJ concurrence that certain deviations are not significant for the purposes of DoJ’s legal opinions.”

Now it is even clearer that the advice was several months too late to justify practices that had already been worked out, systematized, and put into practice. That reinforces the interpretation that the legal opinions were cooked, and thus that those implicated in the prisoner abuse cannot now claim that they were relying upon legal advice that they assumed in good faith to be reliable.

In fact, the 2004 CIA Inspector General's report on terrorist interrogations shows conclusively that many within the CIA did not believe that the official policies were legal. It reports that CIA officers feared and indeed assumed that they would be subject to investigation and prosecution for engaging in torture and abuse. Some CIA officials took a strong stance against the program on the grounds of its illegality.

The Inspector General’s review was launched by complaints coming from valued senior employees who felt that the Bush Program (as John Yoo has dubbed it) was wrong. One of them actually expresses his worry that those involved will be hauled before the World Court at some point because of [and that’s redacted!] This makes clear that good employees of the agency opposed the Bush Program, were vocal in their opposition, and focused concern on the program’s illegality. The OLC memos were intended to silence these complaints, but they only accentuated the agency’s morale problems by enmeshing it in obviously illegal and immoral conduct. By contrast, the number of CIA personnel involved in pushing it through and supporting it is tiny—probably not many more than two dozen—though their voices are heard very loudly.

crossposted at unbossed.com

Plead guilty, it's easier, quicker, and cheaper for everyone

In 2004 the CIA Inspector General produced a damning report on the Agency's abusive interrogations of terrorist suspects under inhumane conditions of confinement abroad. Due of a FOIA request, that report will be made public on Monday. In advance of its release, Newsweek and the Washington Post report that CIA interrogators threatened at least one prisoner with a gun and with an electric drill. They also staged several mock executions to terrorize terrorist suspects. Under the UN Convention against torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment as well as under federal law, it is a crime to threaten a prisoner with injury or death.


The CIA also reportedly charged prisoners a small fee to keep visits from friends and relatives down to a minimum.

Guard: Don't fight it, son... confess quickly... Before they get into the expensive procedures. If you hold out too long you could jeopardise your credit rating.

The CIA's black sites are back

Today's New York Times reveals that there have been even more Bush administration torture memos than the notorious 2002 torture-brief written by John Yoo. The new memos (which I'm tempted to call Yoo Two) have received plenty of attention. What hasn't been widely noted is the explicit statement in the NYT that the infamous and semi-secret "black sites" are back in use around the globe.

Torture Inc. was just off on vacation, as many of us suspected all along.

Here's what the Times has to say:

But in July [of 2007], after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas.

"Black sites" are the hell-holes in which the CIA had been torturing prisoners until George Bush ordered them closed last year, and the prisoners transferred to Guantanamo. At least, that's what Bush appeared to say that he had done. Here's the BBC's interpretation of Bush's Sept. 6, 2006 speech, which was typical of how journalists interpreted Bush's statements:

Mr Bush said there were now no terrorist suspects under the CIA programme.

Mr Bush said he was making a limited disclosure of the CIA programme because interrogation of the men it held was now complete and because a US Supreme Court decision had stopped the use of military commissions for trials...

All suspects will now be treated under new guidelines issued by the Pentagon on Wednesday, which bring all military detainees under the protection of the Geneva Convention.

All suspects? Forever into the future? Here is what Bush actually said:

I'm announcing today that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, and 11 other terrorists in CIA custody have been transferred to the United States Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay. They are being held in the custody of the Department of Defense. As soon as Congress acts to authorize the military commissions I have proposed, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the deaths of nearly 3,000 Americans on September the 11th, 2001, can face justice...

As we prosecute suspected terrorist leaders and operatives who have now been transferred to Guantanamo, we'll continue searching for those who have stepped forward to take their places. This nation is going to stay on the offense to protect the American people. We will continue to bring the world's most dangerous terrorists to justice -- and we will continue working to collect the vital intelligence we need to protect our country. The current transfers mean that there are now no terrorists in the CIA program. But as more high-ranking terrorists are captured, the need to obtain intelligence from them will remain critical -- and having a CIA program for questioning terrorists will continue to be crucial to getting life-saving information.

Some may ask: Why are you acknowledging this program now? There are two reasons why I'm making these limited disclosures today. First, we have largely completed our questioning of the men -- and to start the process for bringing them to trial, we must bring them into the open. Second, the Supreme Court's recent decision has impaired our ability to prosecute terrorists through military commissions, and has put in question the future of the CIA program. In its ruling on military commissions, the Court determined that a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as "Common Article Three" applies to our war with al Qaeda. This article includes provisions that prohibit "outrages upon personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment." The problem is that these and other provisions of Common Article Three are vague and undefined, and each could be interpreted in different ways by American or foreign judges. And some believe our military and intelligence personnel involved in capturing and questioning terrorists could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act -- simply for doing their jobs in a thorough and professional way.

This is unacceptable.

The speech seemed to me to be tip-toeing around the very thing that reporters were happy to assume: That in the future the military would take charge of holding and interrogating all terrorist suspects captured overseas. That inference had no basis in the speech, as far as I could see, aside that is from the fact that the military had just taken custody of a small group of CIA prisoners, whom Bush identified.

The part of the speech that I put into bold (above), in particular, seemed to suggest that the CIA very likely would be back into the torture racket soon enough, whenever new suspects had been seized somewhere.

In August 2007, Jane Mayer published a good history of the CIA black sites in the New Yorker. She surmised, among other things, that the wording of a new Executive Order from Bush suggested that Torture Inc. was not in fact out of business, as so many had assumed.

The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel.

The C.I.A.’s director, General Michael Hayden, has said that the program, which is designed to extract intelligence from suspects quickly, is an “irreplaceable” tool for combatting terrorism. And President Bush has said that “this program has given us information that has saved innocent lives, by helping us stop new attacks.”

It came as little surprise today, then, to see the NYT report that the black sites are back in the business of cruelly treating, degrading, and torturing prisoners.

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The rest of the Times' story is highly important as well. It chronicles how the Justice Department secretly reversed its public disavowal (in late 2004) of John Yoo's torture memo. Shortly after Alberto Gonzales was appointed Attorney General in Feb. 2005, he endorsed another (heretofore secret) memo written by the new head of the OLC, Steven Bradbury.

It appears that Bradbury was brought in to the job specifically to put down the revolt by top Justice Department's lawyers (led by Deputy AG James Comey) against some of the national-security excesses being committed by the Bush administration. He quickly produced a memo that authorized a variety of vicious CIA interrogation techniques, including waterboarding and hypothermia. Later in 2005, while Congress was considering legislation to prohibit "cruel, inhuman, and degrading" treatment of prisoners, Bradbury issued another secret brief declaring that none of the CIA's methods were cruel, inhuman, or degrading.

The Times states that "most lawmakers" did not know the latter memo even existed. I'd like to know which lawmakers did know. That knowledge would seem to make them a party to crimes against international law.

crossposted from unbossed.com