PRISON News:

- 

• "We got the wrong guys."
• "'I guess you can call it torture'."
• "A school for Jihad."
• "'Due process is legal mumbo-jumbo'."
• "'You are the king of this prison'."
• +"Archive of investigation documents."

"I am appalled by Senator John McCain's reaffirmation of support for the use of warrantless wiretapping on American citizens. Senator McCain has once again chosen to align himself with President George Bush, whose reprehensible spying program on Americans is a grave threat to our Constitutions guarantees of privacy and limited executive power. It is clear that Senator McCain, President Bush, and their Republican allies in Congress will continue to use scare tactics and fear mongering to claim that a president can simply chose to ignore America's laws... Senator McCain opposes a bipartisan House compromise bill that preserves appropriate court review of all surveillance of US citizens and gives judges the discretion to review all the necessary documents related to telecom lawsuits without offering blanket immunity."

[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]
""CENTCOM had originally called for twelve to eighteen months of Phase IV activity with active troop deployments. But then CENTCOM had completely walked away by simply stating that the war was over and Phase IV was not their job."" ... ""That decision set up the United States for a failed first year in Iraq. There is no question about it. And I was supposed to believe that neither the Secretary of Defense nor anybody above him knew anything about it? Impossible! Rumsfeld knew about it. Everybody on the NSC [National Security Council] knew about it, including Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet, and Colin Powell. [Republican] Vice President Cheney knew about it. And [Republican] President Bush knew about it."" ... ""There's not a doubt in my mind that they all embraced this decision to some degree. And if it had not been for the moral courage of [General] Gen. John Abizaid to stand up to them all and reverse Franks's troop drawdown order, there's no telling how much more damage would have been done."" ... ""In the meantime, hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars were unnecessarily spent, and worse yet, too many of our most precious military resource, our American soldiers, were unnecessarily wounded, maimed, and killed as a result. In my mind, this action by the Bush administration amounts to gross incompetence and dereliction of duty.""

[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]
""In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, I watched helplessly as the [Republican President] Bush administration led America into a strategic blunder of historic proportions. It became painfully obvious that the executive branch of our government did not trust its military. It relied instead on a neoconservative ideology developed by men and women with little, if any, military experience. Some senior military leaders did not challenge civilian decision makers at the appropriate times, and the courageous few who did take a stand were subsequently forced out of the service...I saw the cynical use of war for political gains by elected officials and acquiescent military leaders. I learned how the pressure of a round-­the-­clock news cycle could drive crucial decisions. I witnessed those resulting political decisions override military requirements and judgments and, in turn, create conditions that caused unnecessary harm to our soldiers on the ground..."" ... ""Over the fourteen months of my command in Iraq, I witnessed a blatant disregard for the lives of our young soldiers in uniform. It is an issue that constantly eats away at me.["]"

[From retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez's book, "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story:]
"During the last few months of 2002, while the highest levels of the U.S. government were sparring with Saddam Hussein and setting up the case for an invasion of Iraq, there is irrefutable evidence that America was torturing and killing prisoners in Afghanistan...In retrospect, the Bush administration's new policy triggered a sequence of events that led to the use of harsh interrogation tactics against not only al Qaeda prisoners, but also eventually prisoners in Iraq—in spite of our best efforts to restrain such unlawful conduct.""

US - Chinese - Torture- Intelligence - Politics - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Government - Prison - Investigation - Law - "Report: U.S. Soldiers Did 'Dirty Work' for Chinese Interrogators: Alleges Guantanamo Personnel Softened Up Detainees at Request of Chinese Intelligence." ... "U.S. [United States] military personnel at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] allegedly softened up detainees at the request of Chinese intelligence officials who had come to the island facility to interrogate the men -- or they allowed the Chinese to dole out the treatment themselves, according to claims in a new government report." ... "Buried in a Department of Justice report released Tuesday are new allegations about a 2002 arrangement between the United States and China, which allowed Chinese intelligence to visit Guantanamo and interrogate Chinese Uighurs held there." ... "According to the report by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn Fine, an FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] agent reported a detainee belonging to China's ethnic Uighur minority and a Uighur translator told him Uighur detainees were kept awake for long periods, deprived of food and forced to endure cold for hours on end, just prior to questioning by Chinese interrogators." ... "Susan Manning, a lawyer who represents several Uighurs still held at Guantanamo, said Tuesday the allegations are all too familiar." ... "U.S. personnel "are engaging in abusive tactics on behalf of the Chinese," she said Tuesday. When Uighur detainees refused to talk to Chinese interrogators in 2002, U.S. military personnel put them in solitary confinement as punishment, she said." ... ""Why are we doing China's dirty work?" Manning said. "Surely we're better than that." " (1, 2) -By Justin Rood -ABCNEWS.com

---

John McCain - Prison - Labor - Alabama - Police - Politics - 2008 Election - "McCain campaign gets almost 80% off on Homewood gathering space, plus free labor from Homewood Jail inmates." ... "[2008 Election] Republican presidential candidate John McCain got a deal when his campaign rented gathering space from the city of Homewood [Alabama] for a private fundraiser earlier this week." ... "His campaign was given a discount of about 80 percent off the standard booking rate for Rosewood Hall. In September, Jefferson County Democrats rented the same facility and were charged the full rate." ... "The McCain campaign was charged $250 to use two rooms in the hall, which normally would book for $1,200 on a weeknight. The campaign also was given free labor from Homewood City Jail inmates to set up tables and chairs for the event, avoiding a $100 set-up fee, but did pay a standard $50 cleaning fee." ... "Homewood Mayor Barry McCulley said the rental rate was discounted because the event was on Monday, a slow day for business. City Council members say they always vote on such discounts but didn't get a say in this deal. They're upset, as are local Democrats." ... "Homewood police Chief Phil Dodd said city jail inmates had never before set up at Rosewood Hall, but did so at the mayor's request." (1, 2) -By Kim Bryan with contributions by Hannah Wolfson -al.com 

---

Criminal - Torture - Secret - Military - Prison - Censored - Intelligence - Law - Politics - Federal - New York - "CIA Foresaw Interrogation Issues: Agency Considered Investigations 'Virtually Inevitable'." ... "The CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] concluded that criminal, administrative or civil investigations stemming from harsh interrogation tactics were "virtually inevitable," leading the agency to seek legal support from the Justice Department, according to a CIA official's statement in court documents filed yesterday." ... "The CIA said it had identified more than 7,000 pages of classified memos, e-mails and other records relating to its secret prison and interrogation program, but maintained that the materials cannot be released because they relate to, in part, communications between CIA and Justice Department attorneys or discussions with the [Republican President Bush] White House." ... "Nineteen of those documents were withheld from disclosure specifically because the Bush administration decided they are covered by a "presidential communications privilege," according to the filings, made in federal court in Manhattan [New York]. Some were "authored or solicited and received by the President's senior advisors in connection with a decision, or potential decision, to be made by the president."" ... "Although the precise content of the documents is unknown, the agency's statements illustrate the extent to which senior White House officials were involved in decision-making on CIA detentions, interrogations, and renditions, a term for forced transfers of prisoners." -By Dan Eggen with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost 

---

Corporate - Government - Psychological - Military - Intelligence - Television - Radio - Media - Politics - Classified - US - History - Guantánamo - Prison - Cuba - Human Rights - Justice -  - Iraq - Terrorism - Cheney - Gonzales - "Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand." ... "In the summer of 2005, the [Republican President] Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay [US military prison in Cuba]. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure." ... "The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo." ... "To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-[September]Sept. 11 world." ... "Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found." ... "The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air." ... "Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized." ... "Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." ... "Analysts have been wooed in hundreds of private briefings with senior military leaders, including officials with significant influence over contracting and budget matters, records show. They have been taken on tours of Iraq and given access to classified intelligence. They have been briefed by officials from the White House, State Department and Justice Department, including Mr. Cheney, Alberto R. Gonzales and Stephen J. Hadley." ... "In turn, members of this group have echoed administration talking points, sometimes even when they suspected the information was false or inflated. Some analysts acknowledge they suppressed doubts because they feared jeopardizing their access." ... "A few expressed regret for participating in what they regarded as an effort to dupe the American public with propaganda dressed as independent military analysis." ... "Many also shared with Mr. Bush’s national security team a belief that pessimistic war coverage broke the nation’s will to win in Vietnam, and there was a mutual resolve not to let that happen with this war." ... "This was a major theme, for example, with Paul E. Vallely, a Fox News analyst from 2001 to 2007. A retired Army general who had specialized in psychological warfare, Mr. Vallely co-authored a paper in 1980 that accused American news organizations of failing to defend the nation from “enemy” propaganda during Vietnam." ... "“We lost the war — not because we were outfought, but because we were out Psyoped,” he wrote. He urged a radically new approach to psychological operations in future wars — taking aim at not just foreign adversaries but domestic audiences, too. He called his approach “MindWar” — using network TV and radio to “strengthen our national will to victory.”" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, DOCUMENTS) -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

---

WATCH - "How the Pentagon Spread Its Message." ... "David Barstow, an investigative reporter for The Times, examines primary source documents detailing the Pentagon’s response to criticism of then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld by a group of prominent retired generals." -By David Barstow -NYTimes 

---

Investigation - Classified - Military - Intelligence - Torture - Prisons - US - Afghanistan - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - International - "Exclusive: Pentagon delays report on FBI role in detainee abuse." ... "The release of a report on the FBI's [Federal Bureau of Investigation] role in the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] and Iraq has been delayed for months because the Pentagon is reviewing how much of it should remain classified, according to the Justice Department's watchdog." ... "Glenn Fine, the Justice Department's inspector general, told McClatchy that his office has pressed the Defense Department to finish its review, but officials there haven't completed the process "in a timely fashion."" ... "Fine is investigating whether FBI employees participated in detainee abuse, whether they witnessed or reported incidents of abuse, and how such reports were handled by the bureau." ... "Fine launched his investigation into the FBI's role in the interrogations in early 2005 amid disclosures that FBI agents had witnessed and complained about harsh interrogation practices of detainees, including seeing Guantanamo Bay detainees who had defecated and urinated on themselves and who had been chained on the floor for more than 24 hours without food or water in more than 100 degree temperatures." ... "The delays come as the [Republican President] Bush administration is under fire for its legal justifications of harsh interrogation practices, which critics say equated to an endorsement of torture prohibited by U.S. [United States] and international laws." -By Marisa Taylor -McClatchyDC.com

---

Dick Cheney - John Ashcroft - Jay Scott Bybee - Torture - War Crimes - Military - Government - Intelligence - Terrorism - US - International - Law - Secret - Politics - Prisoners - "Sources: Top Bush Advisors Approved 'Enhanced Interrogation': Detailed Discussions Were Held About Techniques to Use on al Qaeda Suspects." ... "In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the [Republican President Bush] White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News." ... "The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques -- using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time -- on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said." ... "Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding." ... "The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic." ... "The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy." ... "At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft." ... "Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture." ... "Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Jan Crawford Greenburg, Howard L. Rosenberg and Ariane de Vogue -ABCNEWS.com 

---

John C Yoo - Torture- War Crimes - Criminal - Military - Intelligence - Law - Language - Politics - Terrorism - Government - Prisoners - Human Rights - California - Indiana - "Permissible Assaults Cited in Graphic Detail." ... "Thirty pages into a memorandum discussing the legal boundaries of military interrogations in 2003, senior [Republican President Bush's deputy Office of Legal Counsel] Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo tackled a question not often asked by American policymakers: Could the president, if he desired, have a prisoner's eyes poked out?" ... "Or, for that matter, could he have "scalding water, corrosive acid or caustic substance" thrown on a prisoner? How about slitting an ear, nose or lip, or disabling a tongue or limb? What about biting?" ... "These assaults are all mentioned in a U.S. [United States] law prohibiting maiming, which Yoo parsed as he clarified the legal outer limits of what could be done to terrorism suspects as detained by U.S. authorities. The specific prohibitions, he said, depended on the circumstances or which "body part the statute specifies."" ... "But none of that matters in a time of war, Yoo also said, because federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes by military interrogators are trumped by the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief." ... "It [Yoo's memorandum] repeats an assertion in another controversial Yoo memo that an interrogation tactic cannot be considered torture unless it would result in "death, organ failure or serious impairment of bodily functions."" ... "Yoo, who is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley [California], also uses footnotes to effectively dismiss the Fourth and Fifth amendments to the Constitution, arguing that protections against unreasonable search and seizure and guarantees of due process either do not apply or are irrelevant in a time of war." ... "Written opinions by the Office of Legal Counsel have the force of law within the government because its staff is assigned to interpret the meaning of statutory or constitutional language. Yoo's 2003 memo has evoked strong criticism from legal academics, human rights advocates and military-law experts, who say that he was wrong on basic matters of constitutional law and went too far in authorizing harsh and coercive interrogation tactics by the Defense Department." ... ""Having 81 pages of legal analysis with its footnotes and respectable-sounding language makes the reader lose sight of what this is all about," said Dawn Johnsen, an OLC chief during the [Democratic President Bill] Clinton administration who is now a law professor at Indiana University [Indiana]. "He is saying that poking people's eyes out and pouring acid on them is beyond Congress's ability to limit a president. It is an unconscionable document."" -By Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost

---

John Yoo - Gonzales - Cheney - Addington - War Crimes - Criminal - Torture - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Political - Law - Secret - Government - History - Civil Liberties - California - US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Iraq - Prisons - "John Yoo's war crimes." ... "As the result of a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] lawsuit the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] filed and then prosecuted for several years, numerous documents relating to the [Republican President] Bush administration's torture regime that have long been baselessly kept secret were released yesterday, including an 81-pagememorandum (.pdf) issued in 2003 by then-Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo (currently a Berkeley [California] Law Professor) which asserted that the President's war powers entitle him to ignore multiple laws which criminalized the use of torture:"

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network. In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

[ Listen to John Yoo interview: "Cassel: If the president deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?" ... "Yoo: No treaty." ... "Cassel: Also no law by Congress -- that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo..." ... "Yoo: I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."]

""[T]he experience of our wars," Winthrop 839, is rife with evidence that establishes beyond any doubt that conspiracy to violate the laws of war is itself an offense cognizable before a law-of-war military commission. . . . . In [World War II], the orders establishing the jurisdiction of military commissions in various theaters of operation provided that conspiracy to violate the laws of war was a cognizable offense. See Letter, General Headquarters, United States Army Forces, Pacific (Sept. 24, 1945), Record in Yamashita v. Styer, O. T. 1945, No. 672, pp. 14, 16 (Exh. F) (Order respecting the "Regulations Governing the Trial of War Criminals" provided that "participation in a common plan or conspiracy to accomplish" various offenses against the law of war was cognizable before military commissions)."

John C Yoo - Criminal - Torture - War Crimes - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Law - Psychology - Drugs - Federal - Secrets - Prison - US - Iraq - Afghanistan - Foreign - Politics - History - "Memo: Laws Didn't Apply to Interrogators: Justice Dept. [Department] Official in 2003 Said President's Wartime Authority Trumped Many Statutes." ... "The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes." ... "The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."" ... "Although the existence of the memo has long been known, its contents had not been previously disclosed." ... "Nine months after it was issued, Justice Department officials told the Defense Department to stop relying on it. But its reasoning provided the legal foundation for the Defense Department's use of aggressive interrogation practices at a crucial time, as captives poured into military jails from Afghanistan and U.S. [United States] forces prepared to invade Iraq." ... "Sent to the Pentagon's general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president's inherent wartime powers." ... ""If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."" ... "Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations -- that it must "shock the conscience" -- that the [Republican President] Bush administration advocated for years." ... ""Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted." ... "Thomas J. Romig, who was then the Army's judge advocate general, said yesterday after reading the memo that it appears to argue there are no rules in a time of war, a concept Romig found "downright offensive."" (1, 2) -By Dan Eggen and Josh White with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

---

Don Siegelman - Karl Rove - Leura Garrett Canary - Alabama - US Attorney - Politics - Investigation - 2002 Election - La - Federal - Prison - "Freed Ex-Governor of Alabama Talks of Abuse of Power." ... "Former [Democratic Governor] Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, released from prison Friday on bond in a bribery and corruption case, said he was as convinced as ever that politics had played a leading role in his prosecution." ... "Speaking by telephone in his first post-prison interview, shortly after he had left the federal penitentiary at Oakdale, La. [Louisiana], Mr. Siegelman said there had been “abuse of power” in his case, and repeatedly cited Karl Rove, the former [Republican President Bush] White House political director." ... "“His fingerprints are smeared all over the case,” Mr. Siegelman said, a day after a federal appeals court ordered him released on bond and said there were legitimate questions about his case. He was sentenced to serve seven years last June after a guilty verdict on bribery and corruption charges a year earlier." ... "The investigation, trial and conviction of Mr. Siegelman, a veteran politician, has become a flash point for broader Democratic contentions that politics has influenced decisions by the Justice Department under [Republican] President Bush, including the firings of several United States attorneys, and other federal prosecutions besides Mr. Siegelman’s." ... "In a sworn statement, a Republican lawyer and political operative, Jill Simpson, told of hearing one of Mr. Rove’s allies here, William Canary, discussing Mr. Siegelman during the 2002 governor’s race, and saying “that he had already gotten it worked out with Karl and Karl had spoken with the Department of Justice and the Department of Justice was already pursuing Don Siegelman.” The United States attorney here, Leura G. Canary, is married to Mr. Canary." -By Adam Nossiter -NYTimes 

---