Sweeping Torture Under the Rug
By ANDREW ROSENTHAL
In Strasbourg, France, a 17-judge panel of the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously on Thursday
that U.S. intelligence did in fact kidnap a German citizen in
Macedonia. The court said he was locked in a hotel room for 23 days,
then handed over to a C.I.A. rendition team at an airport, where he was
“severely beaten, sodomized, shackled and hooded.” Later he was sent to
Afghanistan and illegally detained for months. The German citizen, Khaled el-Masri,
had no connection to terrorism, unless you count the fact that U.S.
officials were seeking an Al Qaeda operative with a similar name. The
court ordered Macedonia to pay Mr. Masri $78,000 in damages.
Karen Bleier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKhaled el-Masri in 2006.
Meanwhile, in Washington, officials still won’t acknowledge Mr.
Masri’s kidnapping and torture, which was just one example of President
George W. Bush’s “extraordinary rendition program.” He has been refused a
day in American courts on flimsy claims of national secrets (that the
names of the men who broke the law brutalizing him might be revealed).
No official has been held accountable for his illegal detention and torture – or for that matter for the similar beastly treatment of other prisoners.
On Thursday the Senate Intelligence Committee finally approved, by a 9-6 party-line vote, a 6,000-page report on C.I.A. detention and interrogation—but it remains classified. Among other things, the report reviews claims that tortured prisoners provided vital intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden – claims Republicans make to this day to justify the brutality they supported for years, but which virtually everyone else disputes, including those how actually conducted those interrogations.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the intelligence committee, has said that information obtained from torture victims did not play a major role in hunting down Mr. bin Laden, but she did not have much to say yesterday about the report—because it remains classified.
Republicans attacked the report as flawed and incomplete, like they do whenever a report makes their team look bad. Ms. Feinstein, however, said it covered every detainee held by the C.I.A., “the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy or inaccuracy of C.I.A. descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others.”
The report has 35,000 footnotes and covers more than 6 million pages of records, Ms. Feinstein said. Sounds pretty thorough. She said it “uncovers startling details about the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight.”
How many of those startling conclusions will the public see? I’m guessing, not many. No decision was made yesterday about releasing the report and it will not be made until after the committee receives comments from the executive branch, Ms. Feinstein said, a euphemism for allowing the administration a chance to heavily censor the document.
Meanwhile, the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay remains open, an indelible stain on the American justice system. There is no plausible reason to keep the prison open.
In late November, Ms. Feinstein released a study by the Government Accountability Office that said prison facilities in the United States currently hold 373 people convicted of terrorism and could handle the remaining 166 prisoners at Guantanamo. The federal justice system could at least provide them with the fair trial that the military tribunals created by Mr. Bush and slightly improved by Mr. Obama have failed to give them.
There has been no official accounting of the Bush administration’s detention policies, and perhaps there never will be – because in 2009, when he took office, President Obama decided to sweep that whole period of lawlessness and brutality under the rug. Disclosure did not suit his political agenda. He wanted, we were all told ad nauseam, to “look forward and not back.” The torturers, and the men who gave orders to torture, have been absolved of responsibility.
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Karen Bleier/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesKhaled el-Masri in 2006.No official has been held accountable for his illegal detention and torture – or for that matter for the similar beastly treatment of other prisoners.
On Thursday the Senate Intelligence Committee finally approved, by a 9-6 party-line vote, a 6,000-page report on C.I.A. detention and interrogation—but it remains classified. Among other things, the report reviews claims that tortured prisoners provided vital intelligence that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden – claims Republicans make to this day to justify the brutality they supported for years, but which virtually everyone else disputes, including those how actually conducted those interrogations.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the intelligence committee, has said that information obtained from torture victims did not play a major role in hunting down Mr. bin Laden, but she did not have much to say yesterday about the report—because it remains classified.
Republicans attacked the report as flawed and incomplete, like they do whenever a report makes their team look bad. Ms. Feinstein, however, said it covered every detainee held by the C.I.A., “the conditions under which they were detained, how they were interrogated, the intelligence they actually provided and the accuracy or inaccuracy of C.I.A. descriptions about the program to the White House, Department of Justice, Congress and others.”
The report has 35,000 footnotes and covers more than 6 million pages of records, Ms. Feinstein said. Sounds pretty thorough. She said it “uncovers startling details about the C.I.A. detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight.”
How many of those startling conclusions will the public see? I’m guessing, not many. No decision was made yesterday about releasing the report and it will not be made until after the committee receives comments from the executive branch, Ms. Feinstein said, a euphemism for allowing the administration a chance to heavily censor the document.
Meanwhile, the detention camp in Guantanamo Bay remains open, an indelible stain on the American justice system. There is no plausible reason to keep the prison open.
In late November, Ms. Feinstein released a study by the Government Accountability Office that said prison facilities in the United States currently hold 373 people convicted of terrorism and could handle the remaining 166 prisoners at Guantanamo. The federal justice system could at least provide them with the fair trial that the military tribunals created by Mr. Bush and slightly improved by Mr. Obama have failed to give them.
There has been no official accounting of the Bush administration’s detention policies, and perhaps there never will be – because in 2009, when he took office, President Obama decided to sweep that whole period of lawlessness and brutality under the rug. Disclosure did not suit his political agenda. He wanted, we were all told ad nauseam, to “look forward and not back.” The torturers, and the men who gave orders to torture, have been absolved of responsibility.
*******************************************************************************
Role of Torture Revisited in Bin Laden Narrative
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 30, 2012
WASHINGTON — Joining in the latest round of an old dispute, the
Democratic senators who lead the intelligence and armed services
committees took issue on Monday with claims from Bush administration
officials that the Central Intelligence Agency’s coercive interrogation methods produced information that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden a year ago.
Related
-
Bin Laden Death Anniversary Prompts Increased Security (May 1, 2012)
The statement from Senators Dianne Feinstein of California, chairwoman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, and Carl Levin
of Michigan, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, called the
notion that the so-called enhanced interrogation methods helped the
C.I.A. find Bin Laden by identifying his courier “misguided and
misinformed.”
“Instead, the C.I.A. learned of the existence of the courier, his true
name and location through means unrelated to the C.I.A. detention and
interrogation program,” the statement said, without elaborating. The
senators said their conclusions were based on a three-year study of the
agency’s interrogation program by the intelligence committee staff that
is nearing completion but remains secret.
The statement took issue with claims about the value of waterboarding
and other brutal interrogation methods from the former attorney
general, Michael B. Mukasey; the former C.I.A. director, Michael V.
Hayden; and the former director of the agency’s clandestine service,
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. Mr. Rodriguez revived the long-running controversy
with his defense of coercive interrogations in a new memoir, “Hard
Measures,” and an appearance Sunday night on the CBS News program “60
Minutes.”
The dispute over the efficacy, legality and morality of the agency’s use
of physical force in interrogations, mainly between 2002 and 2004, has
grown familiar. It flared again after the raid on Bin Laden’s compound
in Abbottabad, Pakistan,
when intelligence officials told The New York Times that the coercive
methods had played a minor role, if any, in locating Bin Laden.
The issue has taken on a partisan coloring especially since President
Obama condemned waterboarding as torture and banned coercive questioning
in 2009. Some former officials of the Bush administration have sought
to trace Mr. Obama’s biggest counterterrorism success, the Navy SEAL
raid in which Bin Laden was shot to death, to the Bush-era interrogation
program.
The Senate Intelligence Committee’s study of the interrogation program
has divided the committee, with Republicans declining to take part. No
Republican joined the statement on Monday from Ms. Feinstein and Mr.
Levin.
The statement rebutted various claims that critical information about
Bin Laden’s courier came from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of the
Sept. 11 attacks, who was subjected to waterboarding 183 times. Nor did
such information come from another Qaeda figure, Abu Faraj al-Libi, who
received some harsh treatment, though he was not waterboarded, the
statement said.
In addition, the statement rejected claims that tough treatment drew
valuable information about Bin Laden’s courier from a third detainee,
unidentified in the statement. While the third detainee did provide
useful information about the courier, he did so before he was subjected
to the tough C.I.A. methods, the senators said.
For his part, Mr. Rodriguez was not backing down. Asked about the
senators’ criticism, Mr. Rodriguez replied with his own statement
Monday, declaring again that “information obtained from senior Al Qaida
terrorists, who became compliant after receiving enhanced interrogation
techniques, was key to the U.S. government learning of the existence of a
courier who was Bin Laden’s lifeline.”
Mr. Hayden said Monday that when he became C.I.A. director and was first
briefed on the Bin Laden hunt in 2007, “information from C.I.A.
detainees formed an important part of the narrative.”
“Clearly other threads ultimately added to the final outcomes,” he added. “That’s just good intelligence.”
Mr. Mukasey could not be reached for comment. A C.I.A. spokeswoman declined to comment.
Comissão do Senado dos EUA critica uso de tortura
Termos do relatório estão sob sigilo, no entanto
DE WASHINGTON
O debate sobre tortura ganhou fôlego nos EUA com a pressão para a
Comissão de Inteligência do Senado divulgar um recém-aprovado relatório
independente apontando, segundo pessoas com acesso a ele, que o uso de
tortura pela CIA não ajudou na obtenção de informações.
O texto soma quase 6.000 páginas e foi aprovado na quinta por 9 votos a 6
(a republicana Olympia Snowe se uniu à maioria democrata) pela
comissão, que manteve seu conteúdo secreto.
"O relatório revela detalhes impressionantes sobre o programa de
detenção e interrogatório da CIA e levanta questões críticas sobre as
operações de inteligência e sua supervisão", disse a democrata Dianne
Feinstein.
Feinstein se recusou a dar detalhes do texto, que levou três anos para ser produzido.
A investigação começou após o presidente George W. Bush, que aprovou o
uso de técnicas de tortura como a simulação de afogamento, deixar o
poder. A maioria dos republicanos rejeitou as conclusões como
"imprecisas".
Mas o senador John McCain, um veterano de guerra torturado no Vietnã, se
uniu aos que querem a divulgação. Em carta, ele disse esperar que o
país chegue ao consenso para "nunca mais cometer abusos terríveis como
esses".
O diretor interino da CIA, Michael Morell, afirmou se "orgulhar da
coragem" de seus agentes e disse que apresentaria comentários sobre o
texto até 15 de fevereiro.