Groups Wrangle With CIA Over ‘Ghost Prisoners’
NEW YORK — The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has refused to release more than 7,000 documents related to its programs of secret detentions, renditions, and torture, and is asking a federal judge to dismiss a Freedom of Information lawsuit demanding disclosure.
The refusal came last week in the CIA’s response to a lawsuit brought by three human rights groups, Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the International Human Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law (NYU IHRC).
The CIA filed a motion with the court for a summary judgment to end the lawsuit and avoid turning over more than 7,000 documents related to its secret “ghost” detention and extraordinary rendition programs.
The CIA claimed that it did not have to release the documents because many consist of correspondence with the White House or top George W. Bush administration officials, or because they are between parties seeking legal advice on the programs, including guidance on the legality of certain interrogation procedures. The CIA confirmed that it requested — and received — legal advice from attorneys at the Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel concerning these procedures.
The case is significant for a number of reasons. Among them, said CCR Executive Director Vincent Warren, it marks the first time the CIA “has acknowledged that it has well over 7,000 documents that relate to the torture and disappearance of men”.
And Curt Goering, AIUSA senior deputy executive director, said, “Given what we already know about documents written by Bush administration officials trying to justify torture and other human rights crimes, one does not need a fertile imagination to conclude that the real reason for refusing to disclose these documents has more to do with avoiding disclosure of criminal activity than national security.”
He called on the CIA to “stop stonewalling congressional oversight committees and release vital documents related to the program of secret detentions, renditions, and torture.”
The three human rights organizations will file their response brief in court next month.
The groups filed their Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests last June with several U.S. government agencies, including the CIA. These requests sought information about individuals who are — or have been — held by the U.S. government or detained with U.S. involvement, and about whom there is no public record.
The requests also sought information about the government’s legal justifications for its secret detention and extraordinary rendition programme. Comprehensive information about the identities and locations of prisoners in CIA custody — as well as the conditions of their detention and the specific interrogation methods used against them — has never been publicly revealed.
Emi MacLean, a CCR attorney, told IPS, “The CIA has been running a program of enforced disappearance and torture. What we are asking for is fundamental to a democratic society — some essential transparency and accountability. We need to know what is being done in our name. Indeed, the documents withheld by the government demonstrate that this basic accountability is what they have been worried about from the very beginning.”
“The CIA has employed illegal techniques such as torture, enforced disappearances, and extraordinary rendition,” said Meg Satterthwaite, director of the NYU IHRC. “It cannot use FOIA exemptions as a shield to hide its violations of U.S. and international law.”
In its legal filings, the CIA acknowledged that this program “will continue”. Some prisoners have been transferred to prisons in other countries for proxy detention where they face the risk of torture and where they continue to be held secretly, without charge or trial. Human rights reports indicate that the fate and whereabouts of at least 30 people believed to have been held in secret U.S. custody remain unknown.
In September 2006, President Bush publicly acknowledged the existence of CIA-operated secret prisons. At the same time, 14 detainees from these facilities were transferred to Guantánamo and several more have arrived since. The administration has admitted to using so-called “alternative interrogation procedures” on those held in the CIA program, including waterboarding. The international community and the United States, in other contexts, have unequivocally deemed these techniques torture.
One of the detainees of particular interest in this case is a CCR client, Majid Khan. Khan emigrated from his native Pakistan to the U.S. in 1996 and is a legal U.S. resident. On a trip to Pakistan to visit his wife, Khan was abducted by Pakistani officials and transferred to one of the CIA’s secret prisons. Among those transferred to Guantanamo Bay to be tried before a Military Commission, he was the first of the so-called “high value” detainees to have legal representation.
Congress has also been unable to obtain CIA records. The few documents released in the human rights groups’ lawsuit demonstrate a pattern of withholding information from Congress.
In a pointed 2003 bipartisan letter, then-Chair and Ranking Member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence requested that the then CIA Director George Tenet provide senior level briefings on the treatment of, and information obtained by, three men known to be held in secret CIA detention.” He told the CIA that their committee was “frustrated with the quality of the information” provided in past briefings.
The CIA appears to have avoided answering detailed requests for specific information, responding instead with form letters and references to briefings. In 2005, these practices led to a forceful letter from Michigan Democratic Senator Carl Levin, now the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who was attempting to investigate CIA involvement in detainee deaths. In his letter, Levin noted that “The lack of CIA cooperation with the investigations to date has left significant omissions in the record.”
The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) was signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966. It allows for the full or partial disclosure of previously unreleased information and documents controlled by the U.S. Government. The Act defines agency records subject to disclosure, outlines mandatory disclosure procedures, but grants a number of exemptions to Federal agencies.
Copyright © 2008 IPS-Inter Press Service
Truth is patriotic. Many thanks to,
Amnesty International USA,
The Center for Constitutional Rights, and
The International Human Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law.
May you prevail on behalf of all people.
A side issue: the Danish gov’t, shortly after 911, gave the US (ie CIA) unrestricted permission to use Danish (read especially, Greenland) airspace and airstrips in the “War Against Terror”.
The agreement was secret. Thus when private people began documenting that secret prisoners were being flown through Danish airspace, even making landings on Danish territory (this was documented on the TV, no less) the gov’t feigned surprise and expressed denial.
Only last week, telegrams surfaced (don’t ask me how) and a red-faced Transport Minister had to hurry up and tell the Danish Parliament that what she, until recently, adamantly maintained up to then was, as they say here, in conflict with the facts (that’s how they admit when they have benn lying here…)
Truth is not only patriotic, it is absolutely necessary to meet the colapse of criminality that has begun. Careerists who have gone along to get along (or ahead) can no doubt see the environment to which they have been contributing. People of conscience have stepped aside publicly. This door has been opened and it would be only healthy for this movement to continue.
What should a human expect from the greatest terror organization the world has ever seen? Surely not truth and transparency, only turmoil and torture.
” whatfools April 27th, 2008 2:28 pm
What should a human expect from the greatest terror organization the world has ever seen? Surely not truth and transparency, only turmoil and torture.”
Totalitarianism, corporatism, imperialism, … slavery, and a clearly brutal kind to this day, ongoingly. Some are quasi-indentured, while most aren’t, but still are unable to get out of their circumstances due to softer non-indentured slavery due to economic and other social and political injustices, as well as flagrant crimes.
The U.S. govt, et al, applies all of the above.
The CIA refusing to hand over the documents; now that sounds, to me anyway, like it should be illegal and therefore criminal.
But totalitarianism says that the U.S. Justice Dept, the Supreme Court, can’t rule according to law except when it suits the interests of the ruling elites. The Bush administration has proven this more than enough times over the past nearly eight years, I believe.
To paraphrase a famous quote in ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre’:
“I ain’t got to show you no stinkink documents!!”
Fascism at its finest.
American CIA = Bushco Gestapo.
I am 66 and I can’t remember once when the CIA gave secret documents to the courts congress or anyone…They even sometimes hide bad stuff from a president.
Did the congress expect that they would comply when Bush is their boss?
It is like Pelosi still expects them do obey the law.
They are all scared to Impeach…. maybe they know why.
In War Fear rules, never the truth.
The CIA may not have, in the past, given documents to anyone due to national security concerns. The documents being discussed here concern renditions, etc. and are evidence of world class criminal intent and then execution of torture, secret detentions, and renditions. We are talking not only of civil and federal crimes but world crimes against humanity.
Yes, this administration does not want any of that becoming public knowledge because then it will be available to the World Court in the Hague. At that point this administration, a goodly number of our government employees, many members of the military and our many members of Congress (both House and Snate) will become available by their acts of comission and omission for trial as war criminals.
In my opinion all people involved in setting up the situation for the war in Iraq, perpetuating the myth of terrorism striking the United States, etc, etc., etc. should be treated exactly as the war criminals were in Nazi Germany. The deaths of 100s of 1000s of civilians in the Middle East, the death of our young men and women in Iraq in an illegal war and then the renditions, etc. for people not given a chance to speak is enough to justify the hanging of all of the perpetrators.
Our country’s administration is disgustingly self serving…the reason Pelosi won’t bring impeachment to the table is because she is just as guilty as those who should be impeached. She is disgusting as a leader and I hope she is voted out.
However, I have not a hope that anyone of the criminals will come to justice.
I don’t understand the surprise. It’s like bread, folks.
First, you take the granting of personage rights to a corporation. Twist that into a presumption of personhood to any organization. Then sprinkle a little bit of executive privilege and then (because if a little is good, a lot must be better, right?) dump the whole bottle of imperial exemption on top. Stir, knead, twist and stretch, and then just before the yeast (ok, in reality that should be interpreted as “rot and fungus” to be fair to genuine artisans of the baker’s profession) gets going and makes the vile concoction expand to every corner of society’s breadpan, you drag out the “courts” and the “law” (appropriately placed in the quotation marks of sarcasm, given the DoJ’s air of impudence) and let the nation marvel at what fermentation (as opposed to reasoned discussion) has wrought.
And then slide the whole mess into the crucible of the military-industrial inferno-of-morals, and after a measured period of time, out comes the blackened, hardened crust of necessary intervention encapsulating a tasteless and distasteful core of hole-filled half-truths and grainy interpretations of right and wrong.
My advice? Lather, rinse, repeat.
(this metaphor-laden treatise has been brought to you by Johnny Walker, Dunhill, ex-patriatism, and a healthy dose of empirical skepticism)
We need a Senate Investigating Committee, here. And one with enough muscle to give the CIA the boot in the pants they’ve been needing for a while now! CIA needs to be taken down a few pegs! The hard way!
If they keep getting away with this (secret prisons)and everything else,(secret)were all f-ck-d. sounds like the nazi boots are marching down on our freedoms,and most of us are watching it happen instead of standing up to the government. our constitution is supposed to protect us from our government not the other way around. time to wake up,join we the people,and help keep us FREE.
JFK was probably killed because he was thinking of reining in or dismantling the CIA. Oswald, bin Laden, 14 of the 9/11 hijackers (just as a sampling) had some connection to the CIA that we know of - coincidence? CIA types like to say we hear about their failures but not their successes, but who defines success? Overthrowing a democratically-elected president in South America? Assassinating a dissident in the Middle East? Paying a double agent for tainted information in Russia? This secret agency with little accountability and less true intelligence has no place in a free and open society. It mere existance tells us we are neither.