Volume 56, Number 15 · October 8, 2009
The Torture Memos: The Case Against the LawyersBy David Cole
1.
On Monday, August 24, as President Obama began his vacation on Martha's Vineyard, his administration released a previously classified 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general that strongly criticized the techniques employed to interrogate "high-value" al-Qaeda suspects at the CIA's secret prisons.(1) The report revealed that
CIA agents and contractors, in addition to using such "authorized" and previously reported tactics as waterboarding, wall-slamming, forced nudity, stress positions, and extended sleep deprivation,
also employed a variety of "unauthorized, improvised, inhumane and undocumented" methods. These included threatening suspects with a revolver and a power drill; repeatedly applying pressure to a detainee's carotid artery until he began to pass out; staging a mock execution; threatening to sexually abuse a suspect's mother; and warning a detainee that if another attack occurred in the United States, "We're going to kill your children."
The inspector general also reported,
contrary to former Vice President Dick Cheney's claims, that "it is not possible to say" that any of these abusive tactics— authorized or unauthorized—elicited valuable information that could not have been obtained through lawful, nonviolent means. While some of the CIA's detainees provided useful information, the inspector general concluded that the effectiveness of the coercive methods in particular—as opposed to more traditional and lawful tactics that were also used—"cannot be so easily measured." CIA officials, he wrote, often lacked any objective basis for concluding that detainees were withholding information and therefore should be subjected to the "enhanced" techniques. The inspector general further found no evidence that any imminent terrorist attacks had been averted by virtue of information obtained from the CIA's detainees. In other words, there were no "ticking time bombs."
.................
Most astoundingly, the memo argued —in a footnote—that the president could avoid all of Common Article 3's requirements simply by declaring that they do not apply—even though the Supreme Court had ruled exactly the opposite one year earlier. In the OLC's view, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 gave the president the power to overrule the Supreme Court on this matter. Congress never said anything of the kind. The memo concluded with the advice that the president act somewhat less dramatically, and simply issue a regulation that "defined" Common Article 3 in a way that would allow the CIA to do what it wanted. President Bush subsequently did just that.
..............
Moreover, this is
not just a matter of what's right from the standpoint of morality, history, or foreign relations. The United States is legally bound by the Convention Against Torture to submit any case alleging torture by a person within its jurisdiction "to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution." President Obama and Attorney General Holder have both stated that waterboarding is torture. Accordingly, the United States is legally obligated to investigate not merely those CIA interrogators who went beyond waterboarding, but the lawyers and Cabinet officers who authorized waterboarding and other torture tactics in the first place.
more:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23114....................
also of interest from emptywheel:
The CIA has released some new Vaughn Declaration documents in the ACLU's torture FOIA. These documents relate to its communication with the OLC;
* David Barron declaration
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/41089lgl20090921.html * Wendy Hilton declaration
http://www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/41091lgl20090921.html * Vaughn Index
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/22/cias-latest-vaughn-declarations-working-thread/http://static1.firedoglake.com/28/files//2009/09/20070302-aclu-3rd-mpsj-olc-vaughn-181-docs.pdfUpdate: Here's the Vaughn Index from 2007 that Barron discusses in his declaration.
Barron declaration page 17 of 18, paragraphs 40 and 41:
“Presidential Communicatipons Privilege
40. Document 174 was released on August 24, 2009 with certain redactions, including the
redaction of a sentence (on page 2 and repeated on page 3 of the document) that summarizes a pre-decisional deliberative communication between presidential advisers relating to a possible presidential decision. OLC continues to assert Exemption Five with respect to that redacted sentence, which is protected by the deliberative process and presidential communications privilege.
41.
The presidential communications privilege protects confidential communications that relate to possible presidential decisionmaking ad that involve the President or his senior advisers.
It is not limited to exchanges directly involving the President ; it protects communications between presidential advisers made in the course of formulating advice or recommendations for the President. The privilege protects such communications in order to ensure that the president’s advisers may fully explore options and provide appropriate advice to the President without concerns about compelled disclosure.”
First bold, what does that twice-redacted sentence say?
Second bold, is this
cover for the OVP?http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/22/cias-latest-vaughn-declarations-working-thread/#comment-190964.........................
Is it possible that someone actually got access to a particular man-sized safe? Wouldn’t Cheney spend 3X as much paper on CIA than DoD since he had many more of his minions inside DoD?
popcorn? kpete
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