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CIA Torturers Running Scared
For the CIA supervisors and operatives who were responsible for torture, the chickens are coming home to roost. That is, if President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder mean it when they say no one is above the law - and if they have the courage to stand up to brazen intimidation.
Unable to prevent Attorney General Eric Holder from starting an investigation of torture and other war crimes that implicate CIA officials past and present, some of those same CIA officials, together with what in intelligence circles are called "agents of influence" in the media, are pulling out all the stops to quash the Department of Justice's preliminary investigation.
In what should be seen as a bizarre twist, seven CIA directors-including three who are themselves implicated in planning and conducting torture and assassination- have asked the President to call off Holder.
Can someone please tell me how could the whole thing be more transparent?
The most vulnerable of the Gang of Seven, George Tenet, is not the brightest star in the heavens, but even he was able to figure out years ago that he and his accomplices might end up having to pay a heavy price for violating international and U.S. criminal law.
In his memoir, At the Center of the Storm, Tenet notes that what the CIA needed were "the right authorities" and policy determination to do the bidding of President George W. Bush:
"Sure, it was a risky proposition when you looked at it from a policy maker's point of view. We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA had ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act." (p. 178)
Tenet and his masters assumed, correctly, that given the mood of the times and the lack of spine among lawmakers, congressional "overseers" would relax into their accustomed role as congressional overlookers. Unfortunately for him, Tenet seems to have confined his concern at the time to the invertebrates in Congress, not anticipating a rejuvenated Department of Justice that might take its role in enforcing the law seriously.
Taking the Gloves Off
Tenet proudly quotes his former counterterrorism chief, Cofer Black (now a senior official at Blackwater): "As Cofer Black later told Congress, ‘The gloves came off that day.'" That day was September 17, 2001, when "the president approved our recommendations and provided us broad authorities to engage al-Qa'ida." (p. 208)
Presumably, it was not lost on Tenet that no lawmaker dared ask exactly what Cofer Black meant when he said "the gloves came off." Had they thought to ask Richard Clarke, former director of the counterterrorist operation at the White House, he could have told them what he wrote in his book, Against All Enemies.
Clarke describes a meeting in which he took part with President George W. Bush in the White House bunker just minutes after his TV address to the nation on the evening of 9/11. When the subject of international law was raised, Clarke writes that the president responded vehemently: "I don't care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass." (p. 24)
It took Bush and Cheney only six days to grant the CIA the "broad authorities" the agency had recommended. It then took White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer David Addington, and William J. Haynes II, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's lawyer, four more months to advise the president formally that, by fiat, he could ignore the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.
This gang of lawyers so advised at the turn of 2001-2002, beating down objections by William Howard Taft IV, Secretary of State Colin Powell's lawyer. Bush chose to follow the dubious advice of those imaginative lawyers in his and Dick Cheney's employ; namely, that 9/11 ushered in a "new paradigm" rendering the Geneva protections "quaint" and "obsolete."
We Need to Tell You Also...
Addington and Gonzales did take care to warn the president, by memorandum of Jan. 25, 2002, of the risk of criminal prosecution under 18 U.S.C. 2441, the War Crimes Act of 1996. The memo said:
"That statute, enacted in 1996, prohibits the commission of a ‘war crime' by or against a U.S. person, including U.S. officials. ‘War crime'...is defined to include any grave breach of the GPW [Geneva] or any violation of Article 3 thereof (such as outrages against personal dignity)...Punishments for violations of Section 2441 include the death penalty....
"...it is difficult to predict the motives of prosecutors or independent counsels who may in the future decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441. Your determination [that Geneva does not apply] would create a reasonable basis in law that Section 2441 does not apply, which would provide a solid defense to any future prosecution."
With that kind of pre-ordered reassurance, President Bush issued a two-page executive directive [ see http://tinyurl.com/dl6u9s ], in which he states, "I accept the legal conclusion of the Department of Justice and determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al Qaeda or Taliban detainees..."
This is the smoking gun on Bush's key role in the subsequent torture of "war on terror" prisoners. It turns out that he was the "decider" after all, as Dick Cheney has taken pains to make clear (telling Bob Schieffer recently that Bush "signed off" on abusive techniques). The Senate Armed Services Committee issued a report, without dissent, last December stating that that Feb. 7 memorandum "opened the door" to abusive interrogation practices.
Unhappily for Bush and for those who carried out his instructions, on June 29, 2009 the Supreme Court ruled, in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, that Geneva DOES apply to al-Qaeda and Taliban detainees. One senior Bush administration official is reported to have gone quite pale at the time, when Justice Anthony M. Kennedy raised the ante, warning that "violations of Common Article 3 are considered 'war crimes,' punishable as federal offenses."
What about U.S. criminal law? Despite the almost laughable attempts by lawyers like Addington and John Yoo to get around the War Crimes Act by advising that only the kind of pain accompanying major organ failure or death can be considered torture, those involved are now in a cold sweat-the more so, since those dubious opinions have now been made public.
The Justice Dept. Memos and CIA IG Report
In releasing the sordid, torture-approving memoranda written by Department of Justice lawyers and major portions of the CIA's own horse's-mouth Inspector General "Special Review" on interrogation and torture, President Barack Obama and Holder had to face down very strong pressure from those with the most to lose. Again, these include former CIA directors and the functionaries (some of them in senior CIA positions to this very day) who were responsible for seeing to it that "the gloves came off."
Now, out in the public domain is all the evidence needed to show that war crimes were committed-"authorized" as legal by Justice Department Mafia-type lawyers recruited for that express purpose-but war crimes nonetheless. Torture, kidnapping, illegal detention-not to mention blatant violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) outlawing eavesdropping on Americans without a court warrant.
The stakes are high. No wonder the CIA and its "agents of influence" are going all out (see Saturday's lead story in the Washington Post. http://tinyurl.com/mdrjff )
No Surprise, But Sad Nonetheless
It should have come as no surprise that Attorney General Eric Holder would run into a buzz saw when he decided to do his constitutional duty and investigate whether crimes have been committed. Certainly Cheney and Fox News had made that abundantly clear. CIA seniors and functionaries with the most to lose are now pulling out all the stops.
In their Sept. 18 letter to the President, seven former CIA directors asked him to "reverse Attorney General Holder's August 24 decision to re-open the criminal investigation of CIA interrogations that took place following the attacks of September 11."
This is the saddest commentary on CIA covert action operatives' continuing power and their disdain for the law since their predecessor creeps loudly applauded former Director Richard Helms for lying to Congress about the CIA role in the overthrow of Salvador Allende on 9/11/73. The largest CIA cafeteria was bulging with welcoming supporters of Helms, when the court got finished with him. They then took up a collection on the spot to pay the fine the court had imposed after he was allowed to plead nolo contendere.
Among the most transparent parts of the letter from the Gang of Seven is their worry that "there is no reason to expect that the re-opened criminal investigation will remain narrowly focused."
Their concern is well founded. Evidence already on the public record shows that the first three listed, Michael Hayden, Porter Goss, and George Tenet could readily be indicted for crimes under U.S. and international law, including:
--Illegal eavesdropping by the National Security Agency (Hayden was NSA director when he ordered his employees to violate the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires warrants from a special court before electronic eavesdropping is undertaken.)
--Assassination planning without notification to Congress (Goss, whose uncommonly abrupt departure in May 2006 was never looked into by the Fawning Corporate Media [FCM]); and
--Tenet's long list of substantive, as well as operational misdeeds carried out for the President and Cheney. ("Slam-dunk Tenet" turned out to be right about at least one thing-that "things could blow up.")
The Other "Distinguished" Signatories
John Deutch: Arrogant to the point of criminality, Deutch disregarded the most elementary rules governing protection of classified information, and had to be given a last-minute pardon by President Bill Clinton.
R. James Woolsey: the man who outdid himself in trying to tie Saddam Hussein to 9/11, and in pushing into the limelight spurious intelligence from the fabricator known as "Curveball." Remember those fictitious biological weapons labs for which Colin Powell displayed "artist renderings" to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003?
William Webster: Known mostly at Langley for his handsome face and his devotion to his late-afternoon matches with socialite tennis partners. (Folks like Webster should recognize that, once they have reached what my lawyer father used to call "the age of statutory senility," they should be more careful regarding what they let themselves be dragged into.)
James R. Schlesinger: "Big Jim" launched his brief stint as CIA director by warning us all that his instructions were "to ensure that you guys do not screw Richard Nixon." To give substance to this assertion, he told us that the White House had said he was to report to political henchman Bob Haldeman-not Henry Kissinger, the national security advisor. More recently, Schlesinger led one of the see-no-evil Defense Department "investigations" of the abuses of Abu Ghraib.
Quite a group, this Gang of Seven.
Their letter is also distinguished by a condescending tone, instructing the President: "As President you have the authority to make decisions restricting substantive interrogation... But the administration must be mindful that public disclosure about past intelligence operations can only help al-Qaeda elude US intelligence and plan future operations."
The seven then proceed to repeat the canard alleging that such collection "have saved lives and helped protect America from further attacks."
It reads as though Dick Cheney did their first draft. Actually, that would not be all that surprising, given his record of doing quite a lot of CIA's drafting for eight long years.
Holder, hold that line.
Image: "Dont Shoot Me, I'm Just The Piano Player", by Michael Parenti (2009) is used with permission by the artist and is licensed under a Creative Commons License. You can visit Michael Parenti's blog, Artificial Eyes, here.
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27 Comments so far
Show AllThis is one of those rarities -- an article I must save to my computer's hard disk. The chronology is appreciated.
Take a look at the entire letter from the former CIA operatives, with my comments, at
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/18-8#comment-1299754.
There's a problem with the article, however. Why do we have to rely upon the Justice Department? The conflict of interest, and demonstrated cravenness of Holder and Obama in this matter, make such reliance unreasonable. I'm still waiting for someone to explain why, with all the evidence that's come out (including Bush II's expressed disdain toward federal and international law), in a nation with thousands of federal and state prosecutors, grand juries, and law enforcement agencies, only Holder or someone he appoints as special prosecutor can enforce these crucially important laws against Bush administration officials.
I believe in my heart that the only way that the world will ever have a chance to prosecute these criminals is to reestablish our government and bring in the rest of the world for the investigation and trials--something like Nuremberg. There are just too many conspirators embedded in this present regime--Right now there are many people who feel as though this present administration is an off-shoot of the last and can not be trusted--and what rational thinking person can fault them--everything of major importance remains the same. In less than two weeks many Americans will meet in DC to voice their objection to these policies--we the people will have the "Street Floor" at this time we should select neutral representatives to go forth with a new plan that will insure that never again will our nation be under the control of the oligarchy which has had an unhealthy control over the inhabitants of our land in favor of the corporations and special interests groups ie MIC, Israel, Pharmaceutical and medical lobbies, Banks and other financial institutions--We the People are the ones that pay through our blood sweat and monies--WE the People must have control of our destiny.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
2.1 We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
2.2 That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
2.3 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
2.4 But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.
And remember Holder is only "leaning" towards investigating those who went BEYOND the torture memos, not the architects of torture etc.
Now there is a defense for you: "I thought that law did not apply to me, or my subordinates if I said it didn't apply." Does that defense only work for presidents or can it work for secretaries of defense or possibly governors.
What a crock, "I didn't think "person" meant ME!"
A defense that is beyond stupid.
If Mr. Bush had completed his military obligation he might studied the UCMJ as I was required to and if he had not been tucked away in the Texas Air National Guard risking his life sitting on bar stools, he might have faced being shipped overseas. I was an E-1 in the Naval Reserves in 1968 and I had a grey UN Geneva Conventions ID card issued to me and was expected to abide by the code of conduct if captured. The code was tell only Name, Rank and Serial Number, any more however insignificant and potentially dangerous information may be extracted. Commander Bloucher of USS Pueblo, captured and tortured by North Korea was nearly court marshalled for confessing to spying in order to end the torture of himself and his men.
Bush was a bad apple as Guard officer, and as a president, a disgrace to the nation.
Perhaps Mr. Bush never attended sunday school either where the rule "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is often mentioned. By authorizing torture, was Mr. Bush encouraging the same for our people, for you and for me? As long as it is not him or his, I don't think he cares.
It's not stupidity, it's being obtuse.
In a way, it is a good thing that these "lawyers" have so carefuly defined what is allowable under the law.
I bet John Woo will get a great feeling of satisfaction of a job well done when an government investigator crushes his son's testicles in front of him during cross examination...all perfectly moral and legal as defined by Woo himself.
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
i don't think these boys are worried about the toothless and neutered sheeple
they might be worried that their nwo masters may serve them up as a diversion - let's face it - they are no longer useful to anyone - cheney with an apple in his mouth served on a silver platter
that is something they might fear
then while we get distracted for another year or two on that one - they party on...
let's keep in mind that Dick, Bush and his goons Gonzales, Yoo, Condi and CIA appointees were not, despite all media distractions, primarily concerned with the effectiveness of torture per se. the brilliance of the encouraging torture policy was the implication of guilt of Iraqis and Afghans in the 9/11 attacks carried out by Saudis, in the greater plan to occupy Iraq and Afghanistan for commercial objectives. the Pentagon gleaned nothing useful from abusing children in camp delta or Abu Ghraib other than facilitate profitable deals for the likes of Chevron, BP, KBR, General Dynamics, etc.
Powell aide says torture helped build Iraq war case
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/14/iraq.torture/
We tortured to justify war
http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/05/14/cheney/
Torture’s Role in the Rush to War With Iraq
http://original.antiwar.com/prather/2009/05/15/torture-rush-iraq/
The dissident Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galeano, summed up his country's era of record-breaking human rights abuse at the hands of Dan Mitrione and the CIA thusly: "People were in prison so that prices could be free."
The sicko gang of seven should already have a trial date. There is enough evidence to hang them all. Let Bush, Cheney Condisleezy Rice and that bunch watch from a prison cell. Knowing the same ropes will be put around their necks. One wonder how so many slime balls deatroyed our country. We will only regain respect when these nothings are taken out of circulation by hanging.
Yes, but is the Torturer Running Scared on Chain Bridge Road?
I have CNN on in the background. They just reported that the only ones Holder will be going after are the actual individuals who did the torture, and then only the "rogue" ones, the ones that tortured outside the tenets (pun intended) of the torture manuals. No one of any real responsibility will be touched. All members of the club, you understand. Laws are only for the "little" people.
Hitler's lawyers thought they got around the Third Geneva Convention of 1929 by defining Jews as "pig-dogs", not "humans".
How did that work out for them ?
What we have is a bunch of criminals jump ship and claim the other boat is full of criminals.
We are missing the point that it was all a set-up.
This is something to be settled in the International Criminal Court!
You would think that if the Constitution of the U.S. meant for the constitutional power of the Executive to expand beyond the constraints placed in it during a "time of war", it would specifically say that.
precisely.
the constitution nowhere mentions any "implied" powers.
I am sure future administrations will quake in their boots when considering using torture, based on the examples made in this case....NOT
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
I think that an international court will eventually seek a more appropriate justice for all of those involved in torture.
Actions by Holder, "misinformed" higher ups in the torture totem pole, and the individuals that supplied their requested misinformation all fuel the fires of international curiosity about our justice system works. It brings the core values of our country as a whole into scrutiny of a larger community.
Perhaps this curiosity will also fuel awareness of the need of international justice and help motivate to us speak louder about the value of shared truth.
Countries illustrate shared values through ratified treaties. The past leadership of our country violated one of the most important ratified treaties ever facilitated and continues to lie about it.
And they perceive it as an honor to do so.
The obscurantism that oozes from these debris fields of prevarication, concupiscent behavior and ignored values must be breached by justice, the truth and our shared values.
In an article like this, some contact info for Holder or his office would be helpful. Some wqy we can flood his switchboard with opinions. Anyone have any ideas how to get somewhere close to his ear?
Just go to ACLU.org and they have a video to email Holder and send to a gazillion of your friends and your family.
Peace.
Ah, that's what I like to see: names and faces, all laid out nice and pretty.
Go Holder!
Slow, nasty, progressing by half-measures -- but that's victory in such business: small, partial, and incremental.
More!
Release the other documents!
Continue the investigations!
More!
He who takes gloves off, hurts hands.
Ray McGovern's time line is a useful reminder: just six days after 9/11/01 itself, on September 17th, 2001, Cofer Black was ominously and publicly telling Congress that President Bush had already "approved our recommendations and provided us broad authorities to engage Al Qaeda" (citing to page 208 of George Tenet's book).
Who is the "us" who drafted "our recommentations" that Little George so speedily approved?
When did "we" start drafting up these recommendations? Was the WTC rubble still smoldering? Had the mug shots and biogrophical profiles of the swarthy Al Qaeda coconspirators already been published on the front page of the NY Times, grandiosely proclaiming how the crime of the century had been conclusively solved with such breathtaking speed, the plot exposed in such intricate detail?
Was "our" GWOT internal policy formulation process at the CIA running parallel to the drafting work simultaneously underway over at John Ascroft's Justice Department on the Patriot Act - hundreds of pages of extraordinarily complex, technical, and far-reaching encroachment upon the Bill of Rights and the balance of police power accountability within the federal government itself - that magically emerged full blown from the Bush/Cheney White House and sailed through Congress without hearings, amendment or debate only a few weeks later?
Did these "recommendations" George W. Bush so promptly signed off on include the use of torture, and/or warrentless NSA electronic surveillance on American soil?
And precisely what were the "broad authorities..... provided us" by September 17, 2001, that the CIA's counter terrorism spooks, intelligence analysts and black ops boys supposedly lacked in the weeks or months immediately preceding 9/11/01?
Hell, even with their gloves on, our guys from Langley whipped the KGB at their own game and won the whole Cold War.
Maybe everybody in the first nine months of the Bush/Cheney watch was simply too busy dreaming big dreams, and drafting up recommendations and statutes, for anybody to keep their ears and eyes open.
But enough with the history. Let us look forward instead. The real news out of last Friday's orchestrated breaking story about the seven ex-CIA directors sending Barack Obama a letter is the back story neither the mainstream media (nor Ray McGovern here) even mentions.
The President of the United States has no authority in the constitutional order of things to order the Attorney General to investigate and/or prosecute, or to cease investigating and prosecuting, anybody for any crime under the federal criminal Code. Period. Open up that can of snakes, and the poison can spread out of control fast and forever.
If Tenet, Hayden, Woolsey, Goss & Associates want to jump into the waters of partisan politics with both feet like this on behalf of their CIA brethren, they should restrict their lobbying and propaganda efforts to the end of the criminal justice system process like everybody else - where appeals to the President's exclusive executive power to grant pardons or commute sentences comes into play. All other efforts to undermine the exclusive prosecutorial charging discretion of the head of the Department of Justice - by crudely urging Barack Obama to yank Eric Holder's chain - is arguably a form of obstruction of justice.
Thank about it. How would you react if seven retired top police officers in your community sought to pressure your county prosecutor into squelching a probe into investigating police department corruption?
To me, that's what's really newsworthy. Okay, fellas, anybody wanna play a little political hardball now?
Bill from Saginaw
Bill from Saginaw (September 21st, 2009 6:28 pm) -- Interesting comment. Your point about the president's lack of constitutional power to "order the Attorney General to investigate and/or prosecute, or to cease investigating and prosecuting, anybody for any crime under the federal criminal Code" is well taken. The situation reminds me of the "Saturday Night Massacre" by Nixon in 1973, when Nixon ordered his attorney general, Elliot Richardson, to sack Archibald Cox after Cox moved to subpoena Nixon's white house tapes. As some may recall, that was when Robert Bork, the next person in line after resignations by Richardson and his assistant attorney general William Ruckelshaus, fired Cox.
Those actions were widely viewed as an abuse of power by Nixon, and forever stained Bork's reputation. One gets the feeling that the Saturday Night Massacre is between the lines of the letter by the ex-CIA chiefs. As long as Holder is Obama's man, at least some people will think Obama can control what Holder does.
I still say, after getting no responses to my question, that we shouldn't have to depend on Holder, or a special counsel appointed by Holder, to prosecute under the federal and international laws outlawing torture. Is there no one else among the thousands of state and federal law enforcement offices and agencies in the U.S. who could do this?
bill: the patriot act was written prior to 9/11
they knew it would be a useful piece of legislation because they were well into the final planning stage of 9/11 - false flag event and self-inflicted wound
legally, if there ever was a trial - this act of foreknowledge is tantamount to a confession and shows intent - guilty
too bad so many enlightened "progressives" are in denial about 9/11
with the information available to us all - this act of denial is tantamount to abetting after the fact
all the truthers ask is for an investigation - independent and unbiased
they didn't conduct one back in 2001 - and had smeared the arabs on every corporate media outlet before noon of that day
as i say: foreknowledge
simply: its called planning...
Bill from Saginaw September 21st, 2009 6:28 pm
Bill - thanks for the great questions and observations.
I know it looks incredibly bleak getting people higher up the chain of command indicted and incarcerated by the spineless, complicit Eric Holder and his DOJ, but I still am holding out for Spanish Judge Garzon. Has anyone heard or read about the latest on his investigation?
If I was Obama, I'd shoot myself.
Lacking that, I'd blow this investigation open in Summer 2010 as America as a whole came to see Afghanistan as mire. Bang. Indictments. Distractions. Then I would time the epiphanies of foul revelations for Summer 2012. By Fall the Republicans wouldn't even come out of burning buildings.
And no force on Earth could prevent my re-election.
But I'd shoot for option one.