Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
Over a Decade of Fighting the Government, Military, and Intelligence Agencies on Torture
Last edited Sun Dec 14, 2014, 04:34 PM - Edit history (5)
I've been reading some comments here which suggest that some posters' concern and outrage expressed about the Obama administration's tepid response and defenses of the Bush-era torture policies and practices are merely an extension of some campaign against his presidency and disassociated from similar criticism of the Bush administration in the past. What I've discovered, looking back over numerous posts from myself and others (some dating back to 2004), is a progression of concern and outrage expressed here which began with revelations about the Bush administration's renditions; black sites; tortures revealed in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere; and torture and detention legislation which sought and provided retroactive cover for abuses ordered and practiced by Bush administration officials and agents.
What has brought us to this spillover of blame into the Obama administration was a series of events in 2009 when the ACLU sued and successfully forced the new administration to produce documents showing that Bush directly ordered and authorized specific interrogation techniques (which he had denied in 2006 constituted torture and claimed results disproved in this latest release). President Obama, at the time, made a statement claiming to the effect, that the barbarous and inhumane practices had already been 'widely reported,' and that he had 'already ended the techniques described in the memos through an Executive Order;' memos revealing 'facts that have been in the public domain for some time,' he had said.
It wasn't as if President Obama had willingly released the 'memorandums of notification;' he had been ordered to do so by the court after fighting the ACLU to keep them secret. In those memos and the orders contained within, there were/are authorizations which President Obama and his administration and agents use today to carry out covert acts of rendition, detentions and interrogations of U.S.-captured suspects in torture-lenient countries and on vessels in international waters.
from @emptywheel “The Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification
Bob Woodward provides an extensive discussion of what George Tenet (Obama CIA's Brennan's boss at the time) and Cofer Black requested in a critical MON in Bush at War.
Tenet had brought a draft of a presidential intelligence order, called a finding, that would give the CIA power to use the full range of covert instruments, including deadly force. For more than two decades, the CIA had simply modified previous presidential findings to obtain its formal authority for counterterrorism. His new proposal, technically called a Memorandum of Notification, was presented as a modification to the worldwide counterterrorism intelligence finding signed by Ronald Reagan in 1986. As if symbolically erasing the recent past, it superseded five such memoranda signed by President Clinton.
... as Woodward describes it, the MON authorized the CIA to engage in these general activities without having to come back for a new finding. Jane Mayer elaborates what this meant:
To give the President deniability, and to keep him from getting his hands dirty, the finding called for the President to delegate blanket authority to Tenet to decide on a case-by-case basis whom to kill, whom to kidnap, whom to detain and interrogate, and how.
By President Obama's own admission, only 'some' objectionable (and arguably inhumane) interrogation practices, tortures, were outlawed in his Executive order. Other interrogation practices, such as force-feedings and sleep deprivation have continued in his administration, falling outside the President's definition in his EO of what constitutes torture. Those loopholes in his order, in and of themselves, should be enough to question this president's sincerity in eliminating torture from our national security agencies' lexicons. Yet, there is much more in this president's policy and stance to challenge and object to.
from Marcy Wheeler (Some Torture Facts):
(12) Obama’s role in covering up the Bush White House’s role in torture has received far too little attention. But Obama’s White House actually successfully intervened to reverse Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s attempt to release to ACLU a short phrase making it clear torture was done pursuant to a Presidential Finding. So while Obama was happy to have CIA’s role in torture exposed, he went to great lengths, both with that FOIA, with criminal discovery, and with the Torture Report, to hide how deeply implicated the Office of the President was in torture.
The very same strategy for authorization of military and intelligence activity against targets believed associated with al-Qaeda which was engineered by George Tenet, Cofer Black, and Dick Cheney, has been used by President Obama to justify his ordering of drone strikes and renditions. They have a definite basis in the 2001 AUMF, as admitted by Obama's CIA chief nominee Brennan in his 2013 hearing, but the assumed authority is based in memorandums of understanding which are used as 'notifications' of Congress for blanket authority to conduct operations - operations like the drone strikes which increased under the Obama administration.
from the National Journal:
(Chief architect of Obama's counterterrorism policies during his first campaign) Brennan gives one of his most extensive answers (to the Senate committee]) on the explicit question of drone strikes -- when, how, and where the United States can carry them out. Note the last paragraph where he lays out the specific legal justification for conducting strikes in non-theaters of war.
from “The Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification:
Woodward describes other things included in Tenet’s request:
-Providing hundreds of millions to “heavily subsidize Arab liaison services,” effectively “buying” key services in Egypt, Jordan, and Algeria
-Equipping Predator drones with Hellfire missiles for lethal missions to take out top al Qaeda figures
-Working with the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan (in the earlier discussions, Woodward made clear that Rashid Dostum, whose massacre at Dasht-i-Leili we subsequently covered up] was the key figure Black had in mind)
-Conducting covert ops in 80 countries, including the use of breaking and entering, and lethal force (what Jane Mayer, in The Dark Side, refers to as paramilitary death squads)
-Working with Libya and Syria (and also, in the context of Afghanistan, Uzbekistan)
. . .The legal fight between the Administration and the ACLU is fundamentally about whether–given the way Tenet constructed his Interrogation Guidelines–Bush (and now Obama) could sustain that claim of plausible deniability.
Certainly all of those policies can be debated and resolved in some way through making those actions available to the legislature to mitigate and judge. That’s not a course this administration has chosen to take on a number of remnants from Bush’s ‘war on terror;’ like renditions, detentions of suspects in torture-friendly nations, ‘extra-judicial killings, and the like. Authorization on all of these may well be successfully mitigated through Congress, but the President has made a determination to hold back accountability for whatever authority he’s assumed to carry out these policies and actions (to order them).
Those are areas where the Bush-era abuses and the present activities of the Obama CIA collide. Those are the prerogatives of President Obama which he shares with the former administration that he’s fought to obscure and keep secret through many questionable moves.
That obstruction, that collusion with the prerogatives of the Bush administration’s ‘war on terror’ may well have withstood legislative attempts to delve deeper and demand more public accountability, but the Senate was spurred to investigate the CIA activities under Bush because of deliberate, and admitted destruction of key videotaped evidence depicting tortures. Ninety-two interrogation tapes were destroyed. George Tenet was CIA chief when the tapes were made, and Porter Goss headed the agency when the tapes were destroyed.
Confronted about their obstruction by Congress, the agencies involved agreed to provide dual paperwork which they claimed contained the same evidence that had been discarded. That’s where the present investigation took over, first under Jay Rockefeller, then under Sen. Feinstein in 2009.
Consider that there had been no effective challenge of the past administration's actions during Bush's term in office. With the election of Barack Obama, there was a reasonable expectation that, not only would there be a full accounting of the actions of the previous administration, but there would be an effort to hold the principle authors and those who ordered the tortures legally accountable.
Yet, President Obama took the position right from the start that his intention was to look forward and away from prosecutions. Indeed, his Justice Dept. made a half-hearted show of investigating the abuses and closed their inquiry without any charges at all; except for prosecuting and jailing former CIA officer John Kiriakou who had brought many of the abuses to light.
Understand, if you will, that this is a string of events which has sparked outrage for a decade now, only to meet with an attitude of 'been there, done that' from this President. In no way can anyone claim that justice has been served by the mere (albeit, extensive and detailed) summary of accounts of past practices, without some sort of measure of accountability and assignment of legal responsibility.
The American people are being treated like dupes; deemed by the president we elected to hold our government accountable undeserving of the justice we seek; selfish in our expectation that our Congress act to actually outlaw the practices through legislation, or that our courts be enlisted to outlaw the practices through prosecutions.
Worse, President Obama has not been as forthcoming and attentive to our right to be informed about the actions of our government, our military, our intelligence agencies and agents as he postures in these statements made AFTER he is forced past YEARS of repeated objections and defenses to reveal a smidgen of his and the past administration's actions and the authorities they've assumed to carry them out. How can we ignore the foot-dragging and outright refusals to be forthcoming with evidence and justifications - objections made by his Secretary of State Kerry right until the final hour against even releasing this incomplete and redacted summary?
Are we to just brush past the fact that one of President Obama's choice for leading the CIA, John Brennan, was an intelligence official under George Tenet; chosen by Obama early in his presidency to lead the review of intelligence agencies and helped make recommendations to his new administration? Brennan had supported warrantless wiretapping and 'extraordinary rendition' under Bush. It’s understandable that he would seek to stifle and obfuscate from anything he and his former employers might have had a hand in.
In the course of the Senate investigation, there was systematic and blatant interference, obstruction, surveillance, and intimidation of committee staffers by the Brennan/Obama CIA. It was first denied by the director when confronted in March; later admitted by him in July. Added to that, the President put this same interfering and obstructing CIA in charge of editing the ‘executive summary’ of the Senate Intelligence Committee findings which is to be the ONLY public accounting of the actions of the former administration.
Right after the President addressed reporters on the imminent (turned out, delayed) release torture report, it was revealed by Senate committee members that the documents they submitted to the White House, to the President, for approval for release had been heavily redacted and had “eliminated and obscured key information” which supported the report’s conclusions.
That editing process was led by Brennan, who admitted his agency’s role, the agency he oversees, in obstructing those findings. Further, an effort to rebut the report was, reportedly, directly aided by all three former CIA directors under Bush (Tenet, Porter Goss, Hayden) and others who participated in or ordered the activities and abuses in question in the report’s findings.
Are we to ignore the fact that more than 200 CIA employees who were involved in the torture program are still employed at the CIA?
I know that many here who regularly defend criticisms of President Obama by questioning and demeaning the motives of his critics will brush past these facts and revert to the 'Obama knows best' stance which is sickeningly reminiscent of the 'government knows best' defense that characterizes the darkest days of government secrecy and misdeeds practiced before Watergate (and later, Iran-Contra) made investigatory journalism and public accountability the norm. Yet, consider that the pursuit of justice in these acts of torture has spanned a decade, only to be met with the same paternalistic and self-protective roadblocks that we decried before this Democratic administration decided to sign onto the defense of the past republican one.
here are some posts I made over the years tracking the Bush-era abuses:
U.S mercenary running torture chamber in Kabul "worked for Rumsfeld" -2004
Cheney wants to torture prisoners. He said so. He didn't mean a dunk in the pool. -2004
Was Torture at Abu Gharib Like Under Saddam? How Do We Know? -2004
Bush Appeals for Permission to Torture and Railroad Gitmo Prisoners -2006
US backed Iraqi force seen as death squad-linked to secret torture prison -2005
No torture? Then why are we hiding these prisoners from the Red Cross? -2005
Is U.S. using others for abusive interrogations? On Abu Ali and others? -2006
Just because Congress makes a torture law doesn't mean it's constitutional -2006
The U.S. is Helping Pakistan Torture 'Terror' Suspects -2006
Bush Regime Asks Judge To Gag Gitmo Detainees To Prevent Disclosures On CIA Torture Prisons -2006
Gitmo Detainees Challenge Torture And Detention Law -2006
The torture legislation takes away the presumption of innocence -2006
US: Pentagon Spends Billions to Outsource Torture -2006
Inspectors Find More Torture at Iraqi Jails-US isn't protecting prisoners -2006
(including this one from symbolman in which I sound much like DU defenders of Obama today)
Anyone who sanctions torture should be removed from office -2006
more...
ron fullwood @ronfullwood
13 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
