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British Ex-Spy Chief Accuses US of Hiding Torture
LONDON - A former head of Britain's domestic spy agency has accused the US of concealing its abuse of terror suspects, stepping up an MI5 fightback over accusations that it colluded in torture.
(AFP/Getty Images/File/Chip Somodevilla) Eliza Manningham-Buller said Tuesday she had not understood why alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed had been willing to talk to American interrogators.
She said she only discovered he had been waterboarded when she read about it after her retirement in 2007.
"The Americans were very keen that people like us did not discover what they were doing," she said in a specially arranged lecture at Britain's upper house of parliament in London.
The US had been "very keen to conceal from us what was happening."
Her comments come as the spy agency hits back at claims it colluded with US counterparts in the torture of terror suspects.
The allegations were sparked by a British court's decision last month to release details of US torture of a former Guantanamo Bay inmate.
Ex-prisoner Binyam Mohamed -- who was born in Ethiopia but is a British resident -- has charged he was asked questions by US interrogators that could only have come from the British intelligence services.
Ministers and current MI5 head Jonathan Evans have strongly denied the accusations of collusion, but there were still question marks over when Britain knew about the US apparently changing its rules on torture following the 9/11 attacks.
Manningham-Buller's remarks could put the intelligence-sharing relationship between Washington and London, already strained by last month's court decision which angered the US, under further pressure.
In her comments Tuesday, she did not mention the recent case, but focused on the treatment by the US of the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people.
She said she had wondered how, in 2002 and 2003, the US had been able to supply Britain with intelligence from Mohammed.
"I said to my staff, 'Why is he talking?' because our experience of Irish prisoners, Irish terrorists, was that they never said anything," she said.
"They said, 'Well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements' when questioned about it.
"It wasn't actually until after I retired that I read that, in fact, he had been waterboarded 160 times."
She said Britain had lodged "protests" with the Americans about its treatment of detainees, but gave no further details.
27 Comments so far
Show AllThis is just one of thousands of stories that will come out over the next several years revealing the depth and breadth of despicable activity underwritten by Bush and Cheney and continued by Obama.
Look for Cheney to annmounce that these revelations are Obama's fault and that they will make the US less safe.
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The dark demons have completely taken over the US of A and they are bent on torture, rape, murder and destruction....these hellish scenarios have been prophesied by every major spiritual tradition and known by all who have a modicum of wisdom! It's far from over as far as they are concerned!
Yes, and maybe there's justice in the perpetrators being reincarnated someday as cockroaches or maggots or victims of the policies they advocate, but it's rather sad that none of the rest of us who have to suffer this pandemonium of outrageous bullsh*t ever see a hint of any justice really being done.
The Brits knew nothing. Yehhhh, right !!!!
Lets not forget, she is a Spy who always tells the truth !!!!
That's not what she - or the aticle - is saying. She says that the Americans tried to hide the facts from the British. She doesn't say that they succeeded - indeed rather the opposite, that the fact that a presumed hardened terrorist talked at all was highly suspicious.
-"They said, 'Well, the Americans say he is very proud of his achievements' when questioned about it.
Yes, the would be defendants in the on again, off again trials of Guantanamo inmates, to be held in New York, we are told by the Democrats, are proud too, and have "admitted" to numerous crimes, some of which, we are told, are not pure fantasy.
I can't imagine why Obama is scared of their seeing the inside of a courtroom after years of solitary confinement and torture.
Jill March 10th, 2010 12:22 pm -- The torture of KSM is the best-known secret in history. I don't think a trial of KSM would be needed to reveal what they did to him, or who did it. What we really need is the will to prosecute the officials who ordered his torture in blatant violation of law.
Getting back to the article, it's notable that the former head of Britain's domestic spy agency,
Eliza Manningham-Buller, seems to think that KSM confessed only because he was tortured. I think it's more likely KSM was actually bragging about accomplishments that he may or may not actually be entitled to take credit for. Eliza Manningham-Buller, I suspect, is trying to peddle the same snake oil as Dick Cheney -- that torture yields valuable intelligence.
Did we not learn from FBI files that Kalid admitted everything before waterboarding,
and the waterboarding after the confession was simlpy CIA pro forma?
-"Did we not learn from FBI files that Kalid admitted everything before waterboarding,
and the waterboarding after the confession was simlpy CIA pro forma?"
Actually US and Pakistani secret agents captured "KSM" in Pakistan. He was not given due proccess and was taken out of the country without any sort of extradition procedure.
when first questioned by CIA/Blackwater (whatever you want to call them) he was refused a lawyer.
Subsequently he "confessed" to, among other things, trying to kill Jimmy Carter, Pope John Paul the second, trying to blow up the Panama canal and NATO headquarters in Brussels. The list is pretty extensive but the CIA has had years with him to keep adding to his accomplishments. Over the course of multiple torture sessions in several different secret sites, KSM made several different "confessions" including roughly thirty admissions that he planned to attack different alleged targets.
But the FBI? yes, I'm sure he was visited once or twice by polite policemen during his stay in the various "black sites", they even wrote a report, complaining about not wanting to get involved too closely with his torture sessions. (bravo FBI!)...why didn't they arrest the torturers?...oops, that would be "looking back".
Currently, we are told, KSM wants to admit everything Obama and the corporate media say he is guilty of. He supposedly, according to official sources, wants to get it over with and die a martyr. Almost every day, over the course of years, US "news" channels have said and continue to repeat that he is guilty and will be executed. KSM is routinely labelled a "terrorist", not "an alleged terrorist" or a terrorist suspect. So what sort of fair trial can he expect to have? He wants his torment to end. He wants the torture to stop.
If America is a country under the rule of law, whatever KSM has or hasn't done, is eclipsed by his being made a victim by the lawless US government. Alternatively, if America is fundamentally lawless, then holding a trial for him, but not his torturers, then that is, of course, a mockery of justice.
locke 1:01 ------
Do not forget Obomber went on USA TV and said Kalid "would be found guilty and executed"
I would say this is reason to make every district in the USA a prejudiced venue.
My Goddess, a Constitutional Scholar who is rabidly anti- rule of law.
jlocke123 March 10th, 2010 1:01 pm -- I've always suspected that there's little or no evidence that KSM is guilty of anything. If he's given a fair trial with defense by competent lawyers, he could be exonerated completely or convicted of minor offenses, like other "terrorists" who've been tried. Next to prosecuting the people who tortured him, that would be the best thing that could happen in the GWOT, because it would put the issue of terrorism in a truer perspective than we've seen so far. The plan to relegate him to a military court and suppress publicity about the evidence suggests that the authorities fear that a fair trial would show he's just a petty crook, not a big-shot warrior in the "war" we supposedly are in.
"Did we not learn from FBI files that Kalid admitted everything before waterboarding,
and the waterboarding after the confession was simlpy CIA pro forma?"
Not true. He only admitted his recent crimes, such as 9/11, before waterboarding. However, there was a long string of terrorist activity that he was engaged in prior to that. It was only AFTER he was waterboarded that he confessed to being the trigger man in the Lincoln and Arch Duke Ferdinand assassinations, and supplying Brutus with the knife used to kill Caesar. Without America's advanced waterboarding technology we would not have been able to get to these important facts.
The wrong people have faced trial, and it should be those who engaged torture and the system which sanctioned it.
AD
RE: Ex-prisoner Binyam Mohamed -- who was born in Ethiopia but is a British resident -- has charged he was asked questions by US interrogators that could only have come from the British intelligence services.
I wonder where I've heard that before! Oh yes, from Maher Arar's own mouth:
"They asked me where I worked and how much money I made. They swore at me, and insulted me. It was very humiliating. They wanted me to answer every question quickly. They were consulting a report while they were questioning me, and the information they had was so private I thought this must be from Canada." ... / ... "Then they pulled out a copy of my rental lease from 1997. I could not believe they had this. I was completely shocked. They pointed out that Abdullah had signed the lease as a witness. I had completely forgotten that he had signed it for me when we moved to Ottawa in 1997, we needed someone to witness our lease, and I phoned Abdullah's brother, and he could not come, so he sent Abdullah."
Whether or not Eliza knew, her boss did. The State's relationship with British intelligence can't be that different from their relationship with Canadian intelligence - especially when the same things seem to happen to both Canadian and British citizens.
I figure that both Canada and the UK also have similar memos - at least at one point. People involved in the same sort of activities also share strategies to later avoid responsibility:
Ottawa anticipated Afghan torture allegations: memo
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/03/08/detainees-afghan-government.html
The phrase for their defense is, "Plausible Deniability". Then it comes down to the old questions from the Watergate hearings from over 35 years ago,"What did they know and when did they know"
They hid the torture, from who? COnservatives like Dick Cheney, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, Karl Rove were bragging that this saves lives. Probably the worst kept secret in the fiasco.
I'd say that stuff, too, if I was in her position.
Better than admitting complicity in crimes against humanity, dontcha think?
There's a terrific reply to the MI5 head's disingenuous drivel:
Tortured logic of intelligence chief
Former MI5 head Eliza Manningham-Buller denies knowing about mistreatment of detainees. Didn't she read the papers?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/10/manningham-buller-torture-mi5-terror
Oh yeah, this all started with Cheney & Bush - but what about the 'Bell Telephone Hour' back when I was in college?
The US has ALWAYS advocated, promoted, and researched newer and nastier methods of torture - there is no 'soul' to lose. The US is the Evil Empire - just like in the Star Wars movies - which so many Americans watched, and rooted for the side of morality and righteous actions, then crawled back into their TVs, movies, and porn. Cowards, traitors, and psychopaths in the REAL 'Axis of Evil' - the US, Zionists, and UK affiliates (including Canada, Australia, and who knows what others, including the stupid Eastern European states that once thought the Russians were bad...).
We need a professional military with high standards that DEFEND 'our' country and the Constitution they swore to uphold - as well as following ONLY lawful orders...
The last two majpor countries that engaged in torture, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, got their rightful punishment.
so should the USA
No, they didn't. Read your history before you make such broad comments. The worst perps got off scott-free for giving up their personal research information to the US authorities - the US military. And don't think their research didn't get used... the whole affair was quite scandalous.
right on
Britain is shocked, shocked that torture was going on in this establishment!
What total and absolute bollocks? The British tortured IRA suspects as was determined by the Europian Court of Human Rights - well actually degrading and inhuman treatment somewhat short of torture assuming the judgements covered everything the British did. It did not bacuase the Irish Government would not coorperate with the case not wanting to upset the British assuming they were not threatned. The British stopped the "troubles" in Ireland by resorting to terrorism by colluding with Loyalist murder squads and the RUC shoot to kill policy so the IRA really surrendered. Look at the numbers of catholics who were being killed in t he last year of the troubles and the figures speak for themselves.
To hear Eliza Manningham-Buller say that they did not know of the torture is unacceptable and completely false.