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Title: ACLU: New documents show senior officials approved Gitmo abuse
Source:
Raw Story
URL Source: http://rawstory.com/news/2005/ACLU_ ... how_senior_officials_0223.html
Published: Feb 23, 2006
Author: Raw Story
Post Date: 2006-02-23 13:19:26 by Zipporah
Keywords: documents, officials, approved
Views: 46
Comments: 7
“We now possess overwhelming evidence that political and military leaders endorsed interrogation methods that violate both domestic and international law,” Jameel Jaffer, an attorney with the ACLU said in a release. “It is entirely unacceptable that no senior official has been held accountable.” The ACLU's release follows. Included in today’s release is a memorandum prepared by FBI personnel on May 30, 2003, which supplies a detailed discussion of tensions between FBI and Defense Department personnel stationed at Guantk3;namo in late 2002. According to the memo, Defense Department interrogators were encouraged by their superiors to “use aggressive interrogation tactics” that FBI agents believed were “of questionable effectiveness and subject to uncertain interpretation based on law and regulation.” The May 2003 memo specifically names Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who was then Commander of Joint Task Force-Guantk3;namo, as having favored interrogation methods that FBI agents believed “could easily result in the elicitation of unreliable and legally inadmissible information.” The memo states that FBI personnel brought their concerns to the attention of senior Defense Department personnel but that their concerns were brushed aside. Other documents released by the ACLU today provide more evidence that abusive interrogation methods used at Guantk3;namo were endorsed by senior officials. One FBI e-mail, dated May 5, 2004, states that “hooding prisoners, threats of violence, and techniques meant to humiliate detainees” were “approved at high levels w/in DoD.” Another FBI e-mail states that certain techniques alleged to be abusive by some FBI agents were “approved by the Deputy Secretary of Defense.” Today's release comes only days after the release by the New Yorker magazine of a memorandum from Alberto Mora, General Counsel of the United States Navy, describing Mora's unsuccessful efforts in late 2002 and early 2003 to convince the Pentagon to renounce the abuse of prisoners at Guantk3;namo. Collectively, the Mora memorandum and the documents released by the ACLU today show conclusively that Pentagon officials at the highest levels authorized the abuse of prisoners and persisted in their endorsement of unlawful interrogation methods even after FBI and Navy personnel objected to those methods orally and in writing. Still other documents released today by the ACLU provide FBI agents’ descriptions of interrogations they witnessed at Guantk3;namo. One such document states: “Last evening I went to observe an interview of REDACTED with REDACTED. The adjoining room, observable from the monitoring booth, was occupied by 2 DHS investigators showing a detainee homosexual porn movies and using a strobe light in the room. We moved our interview to a different room. We’ve heard that DHS interrogators routinely identify themselves as FBI agents and then interrogate a detainee for 16-18 hours using tactics as described above and others (wrapping in Israeli flag, constant loud music, cranking the A/C down, etc.) The next time a real Agent tries to talk to that guy, you can imagine the result.” While some of the documents indicate that FBI personnel objected to Defense Department interrogation policies at Guantk3;namo, others raise serious questions about the FBI’s own policies – and particularly about the agency’s response to the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. In one e-mail, dated Jan. 24, 2004, the FBI’s on scene commander in Baghdad discusses whether the FBI should investigate the abuse or whether it should leave the task to military investigators. The e-mail, which was sent to senior FBI officials at FBI headquarters, advises that the FBI should decline to investigate. “We need to maintain good will and relations with those operating the prison,” the e-mail states. “Our involvement in the investigation of the alleged abuse might harm our liaison.” The FBI documents released today were previously released to the ACLU on December 15, 2004, with most of their contents redacted. The less-redacted versions released by the ACLU today were made available by the FBI after the ACLU challenged the FBI’s redactions in court. The ACLU’s challenge to other redactions in FBI documents is pending before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. A hearing has been scheduled for April 5. “More than two years after we filed our Freedom of Information Act request, the FBI continues to withhold documents that the public clearly has a right to see,” said Jaffer. “As we’ve been saying from the outset, the public has a right to know what the government’s policies were and who put them in place.” In a related case, the ACLU yesterday filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the appeal of Qassim v. Bush which argues that two detainees who have been cleared of charges by the Guantk3;namo tribunal, whose continued military detention has been declared unlawful by a federal court and who cannot be repatriated, are legally entitled to be released under court supervision. Today’s documents come in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense and Veterans for Peace. The New York Civil Liberties Union is co-counsel in the case. The FOIA lawsuit is being handled by Lawrence Lustberg and Megan Lewis of the New Jersey-based law firm Gibbons, Del Deo, Dolan, Griffinger & Vecchione, P.C. Other attorneys in the case are Jaffer, Amrit Singh, and Judy Rabinovitz of the ACLU; Arthur Eisenberg and Beth Haroules of the NYCLU; and Barbara Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights. To date, more than 90,000 pages of government documents have been released in response to the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has been posting these documents online at http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia The friend-of-the-court brief in Qassim v. Bush is available online at www.aclu.org/intlhumanrights/gen/24248lgl20060223.html The documents released today are available online at http://action.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/022306/
The American Civil Liberties Union released newly obtained documents Thursday showing that senior Defense Department officials approved aggressive interrogation techniques that FBI agents deemed abusive, ineffective and unlawful, RAW STORY has learned. #
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#1. To: Zipporah (#0)
and the orders comes from israheel
I figured this out two years ago. The "few rotten apples" spin about Abu Ghraib was sheer lying horsesh*t. Anyone who knows the military wouldn't believe that that kind of stuff would go on without approval from the chain of command.
You can't win. You can't break even. You can't get out of the game.
Have you ever seen this: KUBARK: PRISONER ABUSE: PATTERNS FROM THE PAST And welcome to 4 Max, glad you've joined us.
Same old BS .. we didnt KNOW.. gawly gee.. it's some whacked out frat boys having some good ol' boy funnin'..
The great fallacy of childhood is the belief that grownups must know what they are doing. There is no evidence for this in the historical record. You would do better by grabbing a government at random from the denizens of a rural high school. Democracy brings us twerps, psychopaths, ambitious ciphers, short men, and well-born drones. They are what they are. They can’t change any more than a leper can change his spots. I need some really strong drugs or someone to hit me on the head with a rubber mallet. Opium is the religion of the masses. Let us pray.
THE MEMO: How an internal effort to ban the abuse and torture of detainees was thwarted.
Thanks for the reminder re this article.. I tried to get it read yesterday but too many interruptions.
ACLU: New documents show senior officials approved Gitmo abuse
#2. To: Zipporah (#0)
ACLU: New documents show senior officials approved Gitmo abuse
#3. To: Max (#1)
#4. To: Peetie Wheatstraw (#2)
I figured this out two years ago. The "few rotten apples" spin about Abu Ghraib was sheer lying horsesh*t. Anyone who knows the military wouldn't believe that that kind of stuff would go on without approval from the chain of command.
#5. To: Zipporah, everyone here (#4)
The last paragraph of Fred's column -
#6. To: Zipporah (#0)
#7. To: aristeides (#6)
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