We previously discussed how CIA officials were accused of trying to intimidate Senate staffers working on an investigation into allegations of torture and lies by the agency officials. Now the details of that still classified report have been leaked to the media. For the Senate Intelligence Committee (long accused of being a rubber stamp for intelligence agencies), the report is quite damning. The Senate found a pattern of misinformation knowingly released by the CIA to convince the public that its torture program yielded valuable intelligence — and new forms of torture that have never been previously confirmed. What is most striking however is what is not in the report: a recommendation for criminal prosecution. Indeed, consistent with its past approach to intelligence abuses, the Committee does not recommend any action be taken against a single CIA official.
The investigation reportedly details how the CIA knowingly and methodically misled the government and the public about intelligence derived from torture. This was part of a concerted effort by CIA officials and Bush officials to claim that the killing of Osama Bin Laden and other intelligence victories only occurred due to the use of torture. Indeed, the movie “Zero Dark Thirty” was a disturbing revisionist film that directly linked torture derived information with the killing of Bin Laden despite an absence of any support for such a claim. The very persons who could have been prosecuted for the torture program have given countless interviews assuring the public that the torture was beneficial. Putting aside the question of why benefits from a torture program would accuse the crime, this report further confirms that these claims were untrue.
Notably, the report details how the CIA ordered the torture of cooperating captives and overruled officials who denounced the torture as immoral and ineffective. In one case, even CIA employees walked out of a torture session in Thailand in protest of the disgusting measures used by their government. These include new torture methods like the repeated dunking of a terrorism suspect in tanks of ice water at a detention site in Afghanistan while being beaten by a club and having his head slammed against the tank. The FBI repeatedly objected to the torture as unlawful and ineffectual. Indeed, former FBI agent Ali Soufan interrogated Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, the suspected al-Qaeda operative known as Abu Zubaida, after his capture in Pakistan in 2002. He said that Soufan was cooperating, gave valuable information, but the CIA insisted on torturing him anyway. The CIA later mixed the pre-torture evidence with the minor torture-derived evidence to suggest that torture was the reason for the intelligence.
The CIA is also accused of misrepresenting the value of prisoners to allow for torture when the prisoners were really minor captives. Thus, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri was identified as the “mastermind” the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen when he was a minor captive.
In direct contradiction to the film, the report also conclusively states that torture did not produce the information that led to the location of Osama Bin Laden. Instead, the detainee had already volunteered the information before his torture. The torture produced nothing of value. Yet, for many years to come, movie viewers will watch this film and conclude that torture paid off for the United States. That is truly a dark legacy for director Kathryn Bigelow and screenwriter by Mark Boal, who were celebrated by Hollywood at the time of the movie.
Former CIA interrogator named Charlie Wise is identified (as he has before) of being one of those responsible for the most egregious forms of torture. He was forced to retire in 2003. However, he was never prosecuted under our binding obligations under treaties. The penalty for torturing people was early retirement – not exactly what is called for under our treaties and international law. Wise later died of a heart attack. His protection from prosecution can be traced directly to President Obama. Since Obama ran on a civil liberties platform, many expected an independent torture investigation as soon as he took office. After all, waterboarding is one of the oldest forms of torture, pre-dating the Spanish Inquisition (when it was called tortura del agua). It has long been defined as torture by both U.S. and international law, and by Obama himself. Torture, in turn, has long been defined as a war crime, and the United States is under treaty obligation to investigate and prosecute such crimes.
However, such a principle did not make for good politics. Accordingly, as soon as he was elected, Obama set out to dampen talk of prosecution. Various intelligence officials and politicians went public with accounts of the Obama administration making promises to protect Bush officials and CIA employees from prosecution.
Though the White House denied the stories, Obama later gave his controversial speech at the CIA headquarters and did precisely that. In the speech, he effectively embraced the defense of befehl ist befehl (“an order is an order”) and, in so doing, eviscerated one of the most important of the Nuremburg principles. Obama assured the CIA that employees would not be prosecuted for carrying out orders by superiors. This was later affirmed by Holder’s Justice Department, which decided that employees carrying out torture were protected because they followed orders.
Even this Senate report continues that policy in not demanding the prosecution of officials who carried out this torture program and then lied to the public and Congress. Previously, the Justice Department even refused to prosecute CIA officials who admitted to destroying tapes of torture to avoid their use against them in any criminal prosecution.
As surprising as it is for the Senate Intelligence Committee to reach any negative findings against the intelligence agencies under Chairperson Dianne Feinstein, it is the absence of the recommendations to how officials accountable that may ultimately send the strongest message to the intelligence ranks. The report suggests that even the commission of acts considered war crimes will not result in prosecution in the United States. It is further evidence of the corruption of our moral and legal values after 9-11. It has destroyed the credibility of this country in discussing human rights violations in other countries and contributed to various studies now identifying the United States as a menace rather than an advocate of civil liberties.
Source: Washington Post
The Damning New Torture Report Shows The CIA Doing What It’s Always Done
By Charles P. Pierce
April 1, 2014
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_Torture_Report
Excerpt:
I am sure it was just an oversight.
Or, perhaps, a complete lack thereof.
“The report, built around detailed chronologies of dozens of CIA detainees, documents a long-standing pattern of unsubstantiated claims as agency officials sought permission to use – and later tried to defend – excruciating interrogation methods that yielded little, if any, significant intelligence, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed the document. ‘The CIA described [its program] repeatedly both to the Department of Justice and eventually to Congress as getting unique, otherwise unobtainable intelligence that helped disrupt terrorist plots and save thousands of lives,’ said one U.S. official briefed on the report. ‘Was that actually true? The answer is no.’ Current and former U.S. officials who described the report spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue and because the document remains classified. The 6,300-page report includes what officials described as damning new disclosures about a sprawling network of secret detention facilities, or ‘black sites,’ that was dismantled by President Obama in 2009.”
Surely this can’t be the work of the all-too-human, but mysteriously error-prone, heroes of our surveillance state? Surely this must be the result of the fact that Glenn Greenwald is a big dork, and, besides, Amazon has your information, so what do you care if the government does, anyway? Surely this can’t be the result of how we, as a nation, allowed the surveillance state to metastasize to the point at which it has corrupted almost every inch of our democracy. It will be easy to dismiss this, and the revelations about the NSA, as two different horses of two different colors, but the fact is, it is all of a piece. Once you accept one massive and ongoing violation of the Constitution in the name of security, whether or not it is obscured by a figleaf of legality provided by the government’s pet lawyers, you will find it difficult to get outraged about another one. Once you have allowed the surveillance state to grow, it will operate on its own imperatives, outside democratic norms.
“To understand the CIA’s torture program, you have to understand what these bureaucratic maneuvers were meant to cover.
Now we know they were intended to authorize controlled drowning of men in ice water.”
http://www.emptywheel.net/2014/03/31/cias-self-authorization-for-ice-drowning-human-beings/
If America does nothing about the crime of TORTURE… She should at least issue a pardon to the Japanese for their atrocities of water torture and show the world where She stands on moral grounds of law.
Of course the world will double over from all the laughter…
Saddam torture bad…
… US Torture good.
Two legs good…
… Four legs better!
The ONLY person to spend time behind bars because he knew a torturer’s name…
… Spending time behind bars for knowing the name of a torturer, and telling a reporter.
Sad… truth can’t come out in America. I agree with Kiriakou, “America is better than this.”
Too bad the President doesn’t agree…
(interview from last year)
Richard B(ionic Heart) Cheney once again this past weekend was quoted,
“… [torture] I’d do it again.”
Dear Eric Holder,
What does admission of guilt mean?
Whereas some find torture against the law…
… Others excuse it and attribute information gathered from it.
Legal or illegal?
That is the question, NO?
No accountability, the new American way!
Why is the executive branch allowed to dictate what crimes the judicial branch pursues?
Everyone acts as if all of this is such news. In Jane Mayer wrote most of these truths in “The Dark Side” and everyone thought trials would be on the agenda. But no, not a single one. And so it goes…
This may sound simplistic but it appears OBL achieved his objectives.
Why are we not talking about this?
The Obama administration in 2013 released nearly 68,000 undocumented immigrants who had criminal records – many of them in New York and New Jersey, according to a new review of immigration data.
The shocking numbers came from a report released Monday by the Center for Immigration Studies, a conservative think tank that studies immigration patterns.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement data showed that New York’s ICE office released 5,391 – about 71 percent of the 7,571 criminal undocumented immigrants it encountered, a rate second only to San Antonio, which released 79 percent.
The Newark office came in fourth, releasing 2,149 about 60 percent of 3,581, right behind third-place Washington DC, which released 64 percent.
Nationally, the 67,879 criminals released represented about 35 percent of all undocumented immigrants with convictions ICE encountered, according to the report, titled “Catch and Release.”
Since June 2011, when the first of the administration’s “prosecutorial discretion” policies went into effect, ICE arrests have declined by 40 percent, the report said.
“These figures suggest that despite claims of a focus on public safety, the administration’s prosecutorial discretion criteria are allowing factors such as family relationships, political considerations, or attention from advocacy groups to trump criminal convictions as a factor leading to deportation,” said the report, written by CIS director of policy studies Jessica Vaughan.
An ICE spokeswoman defended the feds efforts to get undocumented criminals out of the country.
“ICE is focused on the removal of criminal aliens. In Fiscal Year 2013 the agency removed 216,000 convicted criminals. The percentage of criminals removed continues to rise,” said ICE rep Dani Bennett.
“Nearly 60 percent of ICE’s total removals had been previously convicted of a criminal offense, and that number rises to 82 percent for individuals removed from the interior of the US. The removal of criminal individuals is and will remain ICE’s highest priority.”
Jonathan,
You didn’t properly credit that ZDT poster image, FYI. See what I did in the original place it was used: http://jonathanturley.org/2013/01/13/propaganda-102-supplemental-holly-would-zero-dark-thirty/
According to our own constitution and the various international treaties we are party to (and no dumb dumbs, that’s not international law or foreign law that we are not bound to. Once Congress/POTUS ratifies a treaty it is our law) both Bush and Obama and many members of congress (and some now part of the federal judiciary) and many members of our intelligence community and military are war criminals. Period. They have admitted their behavior, hidden other behavior, and protected each other legally by refusing to enforce our own laws against torture. A better PR department and a funny appearance with Zach Galifianakis doesn’t mean Obama is excused from continuing the mess Bush began. This gentlemen’s’ agreement to let everyone off the hook, and allow the executive branch limited power is the beginning of our fascist nation.
It is really hard to know who to believe in government. Is the Senate Report the real scoop, or is it more anti-Bush politics? I’ve seen interviews of military personnel who claimed valuable information was obtained. So who is lying? How can we know?
War and liberty do not mix well.
Look back:
During the Civil War, Lincoln issued numerous executive orders and military regulations without the initial sanction of Congress. He declared martial law far from combat zones, seized property, suppressed newspapers, and suspended habeas corpus. Congress would often agree with him after the deed was done and the Supreme Court was reluctant to disagree during the War.
The same basic events occurred in the subsequent major conflicts World War I and II. Seizures of factories, mines, railroads, price restrictions as well as wartime restrictions on speech occurred. The order by Roosevelt, Executive Order # 9066, which cleared the way for the deportation of Japanese Americans to internment camps resulted in the now famous Supreme Court case Korematsu v. United States. The Court held that is was legal to do so.
We look back now aghast but it was really par for the course. Roosevelt at one moment of conflict with Congress said “In the event Congress should fail to act I shall accept responsibility and I will act.” Sound familiar?
When you look at events since 9-11 that continue to this day including the above piece by Turley you see more.
In previous conflicts there was a relatively short span of war. With an open ended conflict presently where just the threat of attack is sufficent to eviscerate our morals and liberties how long can the republic withstand the assault?
CIA officials all the way to therop should be prosecuted. We didn’t buy the “I was only following orders”defense after WW II and we should not buy it now. I don’t care what Mr. Obama said!
For recreation Romans used to enjoy watching slaves being fed to the lions. Why should we expect Americans to be any different?
Further evidence that our government does not represent American values.
Obama assured the CIA that employees would not be prosecuted for carrying out orders by superiors. This was later affirmed by Holder’s Justice Department, which decided that employees carrying out torture were protected because they followed orders. http://qr.net/rNqM