The Finger Wags And Moves On

I'm afraid that, when all is said and done, I don't understand blog reactions and what makes something a big story on blogs and in the traditional media. And no, I'm not complaining about the response to my eight pieces about the federal death penalty or how many people signed the petition. This isn't about me. Not at all.

It's about something astonishing. Now appearing on the recommended list of docuDharma is a piece by Valtin, US-UK Torture Cover-up, While Conditions Worsen at Guantanamo (Updated). It's about the rendition and imprisonment and yes, torture, of Binyam Mohamed and the suppression of information in his UK legal case. It's extremely important to read the entire essay.

In the essay, I find alarming items about torture:

The 25 lines edited out of the court papers contained details of how Mr Mohamed's genitals were sliced with a scalpel and other torture methods so extreme that waterboarding, the controversial technique of simulated drowning, "is very far down the list of things they did," the official said.

This statement was in the original essay before it was updated and it remains there. When the essay was cross-posted at at GOS, I wrote as a comment in response to the quote:

How in the world can you have this line in a diary and have the diary receive as of this writing 21 comments and 27 recommendations? I don't get it. Why isn't this story all over dKos? Why isn't there a ruckus about it?

Maybe somebody can enlighten me.

The GOS diary ultimately received a total of 34 comments and 47 recommendations. It should have been on the recommended list and it should have had 1,000 indignant comments and recommendation. But, alas, it didn't.

I cannot understand or accept that.

When the diary was updated here at dd, it contained further information from Reprieve, a UK human rights group, about the torture of Binyam Mohamed:

On 21 July 2002, Binyam was rendered to Morocco on a CIA plane. He was held there for 18 months in appalling conditions. To ensure his confession, his Moroccan captors tortured him, stripping him naked and cutting him with a scalpel on his chest and penis. ...snip

Binyam's ordeal in Morocco continued for about 18 months until January 2004, when he was transferred to the 'Dark Prison' near Kabul, Afghanistan, a secret prison run by the CIA, which resembled a medieval dungeon with the addition of extremely loud 24-hour music and noise.

Speaking of his time in the 'Dark Prison', Binyam said:

"It was pitch black, no lights on in the rooms for most of the time. They hung me up for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb. There was loud music, Slim Shady [by Eminem] and Dr. Dre for 20 days. Then they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds. At one point, I was chained to the rails for a fortnight. The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night. Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off."

From there he was taken to the US military prison at Bagram airbase, and finally, in September 2004, to Guantánamo Bay, where he remains.

This is a report of horrific, brutal, barbaric, illegal treatment. There cannot be any debate about whether this is or is not torture. It's torture plain and simple.

Yet, I don't see the ruckus about it. I don't see it breaking through in the traditional media. I don't see a serious response of outrage on the blogs. If you google "binyam mohamed," you see that virtually no US media are discussing this case. I simply cannot understand or accept that.

I may be sorely out of step with others on this. So be it. As I've said before, I'd rather be out of formation than off course. I just don't understand how this kind of torture can be exposed, and how the US can suppress information about it in UK courts, and why we, that's you and I, aren't up in arms about this and pushing the story into the sunlight.

Gitmo: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

This morning's New York Times reports that Spain will investigate whether a previous government permitted Spanish territory to be used in transporting prisoners to Gitmo. One thing is obvious. Yes, Spain permitted its territory to be used to transport prisoners.

According to The Times

Spain will investigate whether a previous government allowed Spanish territory to be used to transport captured terrorism suspects to Guantanamo Bay, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

The ministry said in a statement it had not been informed whether the government of Jose Maria Aznar, in power from 1996 to 2004, allowed CIA flights carrying captured foreigners to use Spanish air space or runways.

The newspaper El Pais said in a report Sunday that it had obtained a government document showing that a U.S. official asked the Foreign Ministry for such access in January 2002. El Pais published the document -- labeled MUY SECRETO, or top secret -- in its paper and Web site editions.

The request was communicated to Josep Pique, who was foreign minister, hours before a CIA flight landed at Moron air base in southwest Spain, the El Pais report said.

The story in El Pais is here (en Espanol), and the documents are here: part 1 (pdf) and part 2 (pdf). All are in Spanish.

The important part (my translation from the El Pais story, for which I apologize in advance):

The USA is going very soon to initiate flights to transfer Taliban and Al Qaeda prisoners from Afghanistan to the Guantánamo, Cuba base", Aguirre de Cárcer wrote. "These flights will be carried out with long distance airplanes and, consequently, without stop overs," it continued. "Nevertheless, if for unanticipated reasons, like the necessity of a forced landing, the Government of the USA wants to obtain authorization from the Spanish Government to use some airport in our country". "The Government of the USA," he emphasized, "Assures that these stop overs would be for the time minimum essential to transfer to another airplane at the airport to continue the flight and that, to this end, the US would have prepared airplanes in reserve in the region to move immediately if necessary. At any moment, the USA would be responsible for the security of the transported people".

So this is how it's done. The US serves up at the last possible minute a fait accompli with some seriously misleading terms and voila! the flight can land in Spain. Among the seriously misleading parts are who the prisoners are, where they might be from, where they're going, and on and on, the entire litany of black holes, extraordinary renditions, illegal extraditions, kidnappings, torture. None of that is disclosed.

Is it any wonder that there is no trust of the present Administration across the world.

A first step to remedy some of this? Close Gitmo. Find out who's there. Try those that can be tried in federal courts. Release everybody else. Put a period at the end of this ugly chapter from our national story. Prosecute those who are responsible.

Where In The World Is Diego Garcia?

A Map

Today UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband apologized to parliament. He admitted that US "special rendition" illegal extradition flights had landed on British soil despite earlier assurances that they hadn't.

Miliband said that on two occasions in 2002 US flights carrying "terrorist suspects" stopped to refuel at the airbase on the British Indian Ocean territory of Diego Garcia. Diego Garcia? You've got to be kidding. Look at the map. Why in heaven's name would a flight between any two points ever stop in Diego Garcia? Were the people being transported from or to Indonesia? Unfortunately, you cannot be told that, even though the flights were 6 years ago, if you were told, you'd have to be silenced.

The balance of the story from The Independent:

He said his concern about the case was shared by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

"We both agree that the mistakes made in these two cases are not acceptable and she shares my deep regret that this information has only just come to light," he said.

Mr Miliband told MPs that he was "very sorry indeed" to have to correct previous statements made by then prime minister Tony Blair and foreign secretary Jack Straw that rendition flights had not used British bases.

In other words, the previous statements by Blair and Straw and Rice and heaven knows who else were false. Regardless, the details about the two admitted flights are extremely limited:

Mr Miliband said that in each of the two cases, the aircraft involved had been carrying a single detainee - neither of them British - who did not leave the plane while it was on the ground at Diego Garcia.

One of those detainees has since been released but the other is still being held by the Americans at Guantanamo Bay.

Mr Miliband said the Americans had given an assurance that no detainees had been held on Diego Garcia and that US records showed no record of any other rendition through Diego Garcia or any other UK territory.

Oh thank heavens that the two souls being illegally extradcited or kidnapped weren't British. That makes this so much more palatable. Not.

Of course, the US version of the story is more detailed. It seems that CIA Director Michael Hayden told agency employees that information previously provided to the British "turned out to be wrong." Hayden told AP AP:

One of the two prisoners is now jailed at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and the other was released to his home country, where he has since been freed by that government, the U.S. intelligence official said.

The CIA didn't interrogate or imprison either man, according to the official. In this case, the CIA only moved the two men from one country to another.

The CIA has held and interrogated fewer than 100 prisoners in its detention program, using "enhanced" or harsh interrogation techniques on about a third of them, Hayden has told Congress.

The rendition program secretly transfers alleged terrorists from one country to another without formal extradition proceedings. It can involve moving prisoners to the custody of governments where harsh interrogation techniques, including torture, are known to be used. The U.S. government insists it does not move prisoners to third countries without assurances that torture will not be used.

Does this make sense to anyone? In fact, it raises more questions than it answers.

* The CIA allegedly didn't imprison either of the two people who were flown through Diego Garcia. They obviously were not free to leave the plane. Is keeping someone on a plane traveling between two countries who wish to or have imprisoned the person being transported something other than "imprisonment?"

* Is the CIA now some kind of secure, worldwide prison taxi service carrying prisoners from one country to another? How is it that the CIA has that particular job? And between what countries does the US ferry prisoners? Does the CIA direct or participate in deciding where prisoners should be imprisoned?

* What are the admitted "harsh interrogation techniques" in the sending and/or recipient countries and what standard is being used, if any, to determine that they do not amount to "torture?" Or put another way, when the US receives an assurance that "torture will not be used" what is the definition of torture?

* Why are third party countries and not the US imprisoning and using "harsh interrogation techniques" on these prisoners?

May we have answers to these questions? Of course not. If we were told the answers we'd imperil the safety of the free world. We'd give the terrists information we don't want them to have. We'd be aiding the enemy. We'd be thwarting the GWOT^TM. How very silly of you to ask. Did you think this was the US and that the Government would answer these questions? How very silly of you.

Outsourcing Torture? It Depends

Torture At Abu Ghraib

It depends on what you mean by "outsourcing." If, like me, you've been assuming that "interrogations" of detainees prisoners at Guantanamo and the "black sites" were all being conducted only by CIA employees or uniformed armed forces personnel or at the very least US government employees, you're probably making a mistake. The facts seem to be that "interrogations" have frequently been conducted by "contractors" and not by government employees. That's right. Arguments about what the CIA's employees can and cannot do don't directly address what contractors can do any more than US law determines how prisoners are to be interrogated after they are extraordinarily renditioned illegally extradited to other countries.

In November, 2007, the WaPo reported that a suit by 200 Iraqis against abuses by contractor "interrogators" at Abu Ghraib in 2003 could continue:

A federal judge in Washington ruled yesterday that a civil lawsuit alleging abuse and torture at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can go forward against a U.S. military contractor, setting the stage for what could be the first case in a U.S. civilian court to weigh accountability for the notorious abuses in 2003.

U.S. District Judge James Robertson denied CACI International's motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit on behalf of more than 200 Iraqis who at one time were detained at the Abu Ghraib prison. The Iraqis allege that the contracted CACI interrogators took part in abuses and that the company should be held liable for the harm inflicted on the detainees.

Attorneys for the Arlington-based CACI have argued the company should be immune from such a lawsuit because it worked at the behest of the U.S. military, but Robertson said he believes a jury should hear the case, in part because CACI had its own chain of command and might not have answered directly to the military. /snip

Susan L. Burke, a lawyer representing the Iraqi detainees along with the Center for Constitutional Rights, alleges that CACI interrogators were responsible for numerous abuses. Burke also filed a similar lawsuit against Blackwater for wrongful death over the Sept. 16 incident in Baghdad. /snip

Military investigations of the Abu Ghraib abuse linked CACI interrogators to alleged abuses such as the use of dogs in interrogations and putting detainees in painful "stress positions."

The lawsuit, which remains pending and is apparently unique in getting so far toward a trial, makes the point that the "interrogations" weren't conducted solely by CIA or by army personnel. No. Not at all. In Abu Ghraib, the claim is that contractors were abusive. Contractors, as opposed to US employees, have been accused of abuse torture. Is Abu Ghraib an isolated venue for contractor use? Apparently it is not. Is Abu Ghraib an isolated venue for abuse? Apparently it is not. Evidently, the CIA uses contractors in a host of situations and in various locations to conduct their "enhanced interrogations."

In February 5, 2008 testimony before the Senate Select Intelligence Committee, CIA Director Mike Hayden admitted to using contractors for "enhanced interrogation" at the CIA's secret prisons, the so-called "black sites." The Q&A:

FEINSTEIN: I'd like to ask this question: Who carries out these [enhanced interrogation] techniques? Are they government employees or contractors?

HAYDEN: At our facilities during this, we have a mix of both government employees and contractors. Everything is done under, as we've talked before, ma'am, under my authority and the authority of the agency. But the people at the locations are frequently a mix of both -- we call them blue badgers and green badgers.

FEINSTEIN: And where do you use only contractors?

HAYDEN: I'm not aware of any facility in which there were only contractors. And this came up...

FEINSTEIN: Any facility anywhere in the world?

HAYDEN: Oh, I mean, I'm talking about our detention facilities. I want to make something very clear, because I don't think it was quite crystal clear in the discussion you had with Attorney General Mukasey.

As Hayden pointed out, "In many instances, the individual best suited for the task may be a contractor." And you'll note the waffling around about "detention facilities" as compared to some other kind of "facility."

What's this blue badge green badge talk? "Green badges" are contractors and there are two kinds: individuals, who are contracted by the CIA, and those who work for a corporation under contract with the CIA. For quite some time, the CIA has directly hired its former employees and other experts individually as contractors. Since 9/11 there has been an increase of corporate contractors without whom the CIA probably could not function. Put another way, some of the CIA's important functions have been "privatized."

Because of this, Hayden was asked about whether "enhanced interrogations" had been "outsourced." He denied it:

HAYDEN: This is not where we would turn to Firm X, Y or Z, and say, This is what we would like you to accomplish. Go achieve that for us and come back when you're done. That is not what this is.

This is a governmental activity under governmental direction and control, in which the participants may be both government employees and contractors, but it's not outsourced.

FEINSTEIN: I understand that.

HAYDEN: OK. Good.

FEINSTEIN: Is not the person that carries out the actual interrogation, not the doctor or the psychologist or supervisor or anybody else, but the person that carries out the actual interrogation a contractor?

HAYDEN: Again, there are times when the individuals involved are contractors, and there are times when the individuals involved have been government employees. It's been a mix, ma'am.

In other words, the "governmental function" of "enhanced interrogations" is not necessarily carried out by government employees. Oh no. In Bushco's America in some cases it's carried out by private contractors. This evidently is not new news. The issue has been around for some time.

In 2004, the Baltimore Sun reported that contractors were acting as interrogators:

The U.S. military's use of private contractors for the sensitive task of wartime interrogation marks a sharp shift from traditional practices and is raising difficult issues of accountability as authorities investigate the alleged role civilian workers played in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners. /snip

But critics say that reliance on nonmilitary personnel undermines a key safeguard - the threat of punishment. While U.S. soldiers allegedly involved in the acts face a military court-martial or other sanctions, the legal status and possible penalties for private workers are far less certain.

Two federal laws adopted in the past decade - each intended to protect Americans abroad - could be used to pursue charges against private military workers overseas, legal scholars and military experts said yesterday. Neither statute has been tested in any situation like the Iraqi prison abuse.

"The whole status of private contractors is murky," said law professor Scott L. Silliman, executive director of Duke University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. The growth in the use of private contractors to fill even the most sensitive military roles has in some ways outpaced U.S. law, he said: "It is an area of great concern."

In other words, the privatization of enhanced interrogation torture not only pays private corporations and individuals for performing governmental functions, it also intolerably undermines legal accountability for abuse and for torture. Criminal legal accountability under the two available, federal statutes requires prosecutions by US Attorneys. To the extent that no such prosecutions have been commenced, the "privatization", the "outsourcing" shields torture crimes from all accountability.