Torture First, Justify Afterwards
By Jason Leopold
September 15, 2009 -
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/091509a.htmlThe Bush administration gave its initial clearance for CIA interrogators to brutalize an al-Qaeda “high-value detainee” through verbal guidance and didn’t follow up with a formal legal opinion until “months later,” the CIA’s former inspector general said.
In an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel, ex-CIA Inspector General John Helgerson confirmed what has long been suspected, that the abusive interrogation of al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in 2002 began well before the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel cobbled together a controversial legal opinion justifying acts that are commonly regarded as torture.
Der Spiegel’s reporter posed a question to Helgerson that assumed Zubaydah’s torturous interrogation had predated the Aug. 1, 2002, legal memo from OLC attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee. "Did the lawyer who signed the memorandum simply authorize a technique months after this technique had already been applied?" reporter Britta Sandberg asked Helgerson.
Helgerson told Sandberg that "basically" her assumption was correct and added, "There was some legal advice given orally to the CIA that had then been followed up by memorandums months later."
Though human rights groups had long speculated that the torture of Zubaydah began prior to the Yoo-Bybee memo, some experts were surprised by Helgerson’s use of the word “months,” .........
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Challenging Americans on Torture
By Ray McGovern
September 15, 2009 -
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/091509c.htmlEditor’s Note: Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern will be part of the “Five for Peace” workshops to be held in New Mexico – at Taos, Santa Fe and Albuquerque – on Oct. 9, 10 and 11, arranged by Veterans for Peace. The presenters (Ann Wright, David Swanson, Cindy Sheehan, Elliot Adams and McGovern) were asked to provide background on their workshops, including what a participant could expect to learn and references for further study.
Since McGovern has found that, sadly, very few Americans have taken time to read the damning documents from the Justice Department and the CIA, even after President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder stuck their necks out to make them public, he has made some advance reading a requirement for taking part in the Torture and Intelligence workshop.
Below is a short précis in which McGovern seeks to distill the evidence now available about torture, explain why Americans cannot afford to act like “obedient Germans,” and speculate why the President seems reluctant to let justice take its proper course regarding CIA functionaries and contractors – as well as Bush administration insiders:
The Workshop on Torture and Intelligence
On April 16, President Barack Obama released official memoranda demonstrating serious crimes by the previous administration.
The documents reveal that top CIA officials solicited and obtained from handpicked Department of Justice lawyers legal opinions based on an extraordinary premise; namely, that so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” did not amount to torture unless they caused “pain equivalent to organ failure or death.”
With that very high threshold, the CIA was given free rein to use harsh techniques like waterboarding and sleep deprivation, to name just two of the torture techniques that find antecedents in the Spanish Inquisition.
Several detainees died in CIA custody; the murders appear to qualify as capital offenses under 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act passed into law in 1996 by a Republican-controlled Congress.
The president clearly is conflicted about what to do. That he wants to put this issue on the back burner is clear. Why, is less clear.
What goes without saying — but shouldn’t — is that it is highly risky business to pursue felons who are armed and dangerous and fear many years in prison or even execution, if they are brought to justice.
And yet, Obama has done what he promised in letting Attorney General Eric Holder decide to put a prosecutor on the case. As a result, those responsible for the torture are at more risk than ever. And so, one can argue, is Obama.
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