One of the little reported details from the latest batch of Wikileaks material are cables showing that the Obama Administration worked hard behind the scenes not only to prevent any investigation of torture in the United States but shutdown efforts abroad to enforce the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. This includes threatening the Spanish that, if they did not derail a judicial investigation, it would have serious consequences in bilateral relations. I discussed these cables on Countdown.
For two years, President Obama has worked to block the investigation of torture under the Bush Administration — even as both Dick Cheney and George Bush publicly admit to ordering waterboarding of suspects.
David Corn in Mother Jones has an interesting posting today on the issue.
A “confidential” April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department discloses how the Administration discarded any respect for the independence of the judiciary in Spain and pressured the government to derail the prosecution of Bush officials. Human rights groups around the world had called for such enforcement in light of Obama promise that no torturers would be prosecuted and Holder’s blocking of any investigation into war crimes.
The Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had filed a demand for prosecution with Spain’s National Court to indict former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon’s former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. It had a compelled factual basis that these men ordered or facilitated war crimes — a record that has only become stronger since this confrontation.
American officials pressured government officials, including prosecutors and judges, not to enforce international law and that this was “a very serious matter for the USG.” It was Obama’s own effort at creating a “Coalition of the Unwilling” — nations unwilling to enforce treaties on torture and war crimes when the alleged culprits are American officials.
Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) joined the embassy’s charge d’affaires in the secret campaign to block the prosection of Judge Baltasar Garzón.
Corn notes that, during an April 14, 2009 White House briefing, he asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from Spain on the investigation and prosecution. Gibbs insisted that this was nothing but “hypotheticals” and did not disclose that in fact the Obama Administration was working diligently to block the Spanish case.
Just as many conservatives abandoned their principles in following George Bush blindly, many liberals have chosen to ignore Obama’s concerted efforts to protect individuals accused of war crimes. Under our treaty obligations, the United States has the primary responsibility to prosecute torture by U.S. citizens. That responsibility rests with the Executive Branch – the prosecuting authority of the United States. What is particularly disgraceful is that Obama would refuse to fulfill this responsibility under our treaties and international law and then demand the same hypocrisy from our allies.
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“I think Senator Leahy’s Truth Commission is the proper course of action. Establish the facts and preserve the evidence (while there is still an opportunity) to brand the (now freely self-confessed) villains with the true extent of their crimes, much of which we only guess at now.” -MarkFey
I would love to see Leahy’s Truth Commission come to fruition, but it needs to have teeth…
Two more… and that’s it… (And Greenwald’s column is a good one today…) Goodnight folks. May tomorrow be a better day for the Constitution and rule of law…
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2011/08/26/the-spy-next-door-comes-from-new-york/
The Spy Next Door Comes from New York
Philip Giraldi
August 26th, 2011
Excerpt:
At a minimum, the NYPD intelligence unit is overwhelmingly targeting one religious community and illegally collecting information on American citizens and residents who are innocent of any crime. They are justifying doing so due to suspicion that someone might be contemplating a crime, which criminalizes thoughts rather than deeds and violates the First Amendment. They are violating their own rules for initiating an investigation as well as the guidelines set down by the FBI and are operating far removed from their jurisdiction in New York City under no legal authority. The CIA, for its part, is clearly engaged in and supporting domestic spying. The Bureau and Agency are also collaborating in illegally using CIA resources, as most of the officers in question seconded to New York were paid out of Langley and were presumably able to tap into sensitive Agency data bases.
I am waiting for Eric Holder to say something. Tell me Eric, will you launch a Justice Department investigation or will you ignore the whole matter, “looking forward” as your boss in the White House has so often recommended? If you choose to ignore it, presumably because you are interested in how New York City votes for 2012, it will be just one more chipping away at the liberties that we Americans used to enjoy. But we have become accustomed to that. (end excerpt)
It is not just Muslims who are being targeted…
====================================
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2011/08/2001_olc_surv.html
Govt Will Not Declassify 2001 Opinion on Surveillance
August 26th, 2011
by Steven Aftergood
The Department of Justice refused this month to declassify a 2001 legal Office of Legal Counsel opinion by John C. Yoo concerning the legality of the Bush Administration’s warrantless surveillance program.
The tradition of peaceful turnover of Administrations in the United States is a precious tradition that is jeopardized with the promise of prosecution of outgoing officials. As much as I would like to see this done to the high officials of the Bush Administration, I am not sanguine about the repercussions.
Because of these conflicting needs (one for justice and the other for civil peace) I think Senator Leahy’s Truth Commission is the proper course of action. Establish the facts and preserve the evidence (while there is still an opportunity) to brand the (now freely self-confessed) villains with the true extent of their crimes, much of which we only guess at now.
Tearing the country apart? I don’t think much of this in this instance, but if there is a similar contemptuous group of people in high office that refuses to leave after an election, what could the results be?
Especially when one of them is the Commander in Chief of the powerful military of the USA. Imagine for a moment the course of events in Libya, but happening in the USA.
anon nurse,
Great links!
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/30/us/30wikileaks.html?hp
WikiLeaks Leaves Names of Diplomatic Sources in Cables
By SCOTT SHANE
Published: August 29, 2011
WASHINGTON — In a shift of tactics that has alarmed American officials, the antisecrecy organization WikiLeaks has published on the Web nearly 134,000 leaked diplomatic cables in recent days, more than six times the total disclosed publicly since the posting of the leaked State Department documents began last November.
A sampling of the documents showed that the newly published cables included the names of some people who had spoken confidentially to American diplomats and whose identities were marked in the cables with the warning “strictly protect.”
State Department officials and human rights activists have been concerned that such diplomatic sources, including activists, journalists and academics in authoritarian countries, could face reprisals, including dismissal from their jobs, prosecution or violence.
Since late 2010, The New York Times and several other news organizations have had access to more than 250,000 State Department cables originally obtained by WikiLeaks, citing them in news articles and publishing a relatively small number of cables deemed newsworthy. But The Times and other publications that had access to the documents removed the names of people judged vulnerable to retaliation.
WikiLeaks published some cables on its own Web site, but until the latest release, the group had also provided versions of the cables that had been edited to protect low-level diplomatic sources.
Government officials and journalists were poring over the newly released cables on Monday to assess whether people named in them might face repercussions. A quick sampling found at least one cable posted on Monday, from the American Embassy in Australia, had a name removed, but several others left in the identities of people whom diplomats had flagged for protection.
Among those named, despite diplomats’ warnings, were a United Nations official in West Africa and a foreign human rights activist working in Cambodia. They had spoken candidly to American Embassy officials on the understanding that they would not be publicly identified.
The new disclosures are likely to reignite a debate over the virtues and perils of making public the confidential views of American diplomats, some of whom have complained that the leaks have made their work more difficult. The disclosures take place as a federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., continues to hear evidence in a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks for disclosing classified information.
WikiLeaks said in a statement on Monday that the acceleration in disclosing the cables was “in accordance with WikiLeaks’s commitment to maximizing impact and making information available to all.” The statement suggested that it was intended to counter the “misperception” that the organization “has been less active in recent months.”
The statement said that “crowdsourcing” the documents by posting them will allow people of different backgrounds and nationalities to interpret the cables. It was unsigned, but WikiLeaks’s founder, Julian Assange, generally drafts or approves the group’s statements.
Even as WikiLeaks made its new postings, a German publication reported that an encrypted file containing all of the 251,287 diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year had been posted months ago on the Web, and that the password was also available on the Internet. It was unclear on Monday whether anyone had cracked the encrypted file described by the publication, Der Freitag, a small Berlin-based, left-leaning weekly, and had made public previously unpublished material.
A State Department spokesman, Michael A. Hammer, said the department would not comment on the authenticity of the documents released. He said the United States “strongly condemns any illegal disclosure of classified information.”
Last year, WikiLeaks was sharply criticized by human rights activists for disclosing the names of Afghan citizens who had provided information on the Taliban to the American military. It was far more cautious in subsequent releases, using software to strip proper names out of Iraq war documents and publishing versions of the cables after they had been edited by The New York Times and other publications.
The publication of cables began slowly last year, with only 2,500 made public by year’s end, often with redactions. As of last week, the total had reached about 20,000.
But the State Department has always acted on the assumption that all quarter-million cables might become public. A department task force worked with American embassies to review all the leaked cables, quietly warning people named in the cables that they might be in jeopardy. Some especially vulnerable people were given help to move, usually outside their home countries.
Steven Aftergood, an expert on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said he had reviewed several dozen cables from the new batch — all among those classified “secret” by the State Department — and found only one redaction. He said the volume of the new release made it unlikely that all the information that might endanger diplomatic sources had been removed.
“If these cables have not been carefully reviewed, it’s likely to be problematic for any number of people named in the cables,” Mr. Aftergood said.
Ravi Somaiya contributed reporting from London.
rafflaw,
An article that you might find interesting:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-22/torture-in-bahrain-becomes-routine-with-help-from-nokia-siemens-networking.html
anon nurse,
You are correct. When you have so much to lose, any step forward is the right direction.
rafflaw,
A loss of privacy is the least of it…. I hardly know what to say anymore…, but we have to start somewhere, right?
anon nurse,
I agree that we must demand transparency or we will lose even more privacy.
“What does that tell the world about us and U.S.? We can make this an issue now. During this political season, ask for accountability now! For us and for the next generation of Americans (our children).” -Steven
There is a domestic program in play that has not yet been made public. Surely it would stop when Obama was elected, I naively thought. Until it is exposed and stopped, the rule of law is just an illusion and the Constitution meaningless, in spite of appearances. If we don’t demand openness, transparency and accountability, I fear for the next generation of Americans.
Many fail to see what most Americans understand subconsciencely, an American President that is willing to protect a past President that openly broke the law may be ready and willing to break the law him or her self and hope the next President will follow his lead. Presidents should be held accountable. We spent millions of dollars chasing Bill Clinton around for having sex and now we don’t mind Presidents who torchure and kill. What does that tell the world about us and U.S.? We can make this an issue now. During this political season, ask for accountability now! For us and for the next generation of Americans (our children).
“millsapian87 1, December 2, 2010 at 1:50 pm
Culheath, The Wife (BA, MA Political Science) informs me that this is Too Big To Prosecute, and that doing so would rip the country in two–more so than it is already, I suppose. She compares it to Ford’s pardon of Nixon in that regard.”
But surely we all agree that Ford’s pardon of Nixon was a huge mistake that emboldened former Nixon administration officials to repeat Nixon’s crimes. Right?
Torture is a war crime. Anyone authorizing it, doing it, or refusing to prosecute it, is a war criminal.
Scroggins, in case you haven’t noticed, we are the terrorists! Aiding and abetting war criminals could make you one too!
I thought when Obama said “we need to look forward and not backward”, he was openly preventing prosecution of war crimes.
Of course, that now makes Obama a war criminal too. Hope he doesn’t want to take a trip to Europe anytime soon!
Perhaps an investment in Paraguay real estate next to the Bushy estate?
Pride comes before the fall…….Just like the Egyptians of antiquity, the Greeks, Romans, etc….
She’s circlin’ the drain folks.
Has anyone stopped to consider that the Geneva Convention applies to warfare between Nations? We are NOT engaged in a war with another nation, we are engaged in a fight with terrrorists, which, by definition, are criminals.
To quote Tom Clancy, “If you’re going to kick a tiger in the ass you’d better have a plan for his teeth.”
Nothing these people do fall under the Rules of Land Warfare so they are NOT protecte by the Geneva Convention.
a better link to the story on Mefloquine, which is what the Raw Story report is based on. This has far more information
http://www.truth-out.org/controversial-drug-given-all-guantanamo-detainees-amounted-pharmacologic-waterboarding6558
Thanks for that link, Bdaman,
from the article:
Wikileaks lawyer Mark Stevens denied that Wikileaks was putting people and facilities at risk.
“I don’t think there’s anything new in that,” he told the BBC.
==========
A few things to come out of my own experiences over the past few years:
Life truly is stranger than fiction.
Things often aren’t what they seem to be. And not everyone is who they seem, or purport, to be.
Great evil is dancing among us.
The greatest threat right now is within our borders — the greatest threat is from homegrown, domestic terrorists some of whom look like fine, upstanding citizens…
Distractions abound and will be our undoing, if we aren’t careful and vigilant.
Violence is being provoked by some within our government. More violence = more fear = more money flowing to law enforcement, etc. = more oppression = a move towards a fascist state…
And, from my perspective, we’ve arrived. We’re there.