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20071226

Secret - Torture - Terrorism - Government - Detainee - Intelligence - Law - Virginia - Christmas - "Senate meets briefly to block Bush." ... "The House was quiet as a mouse the day after Christmas. But across the Capitol, the [Democratic controlled] Senate was operating in an unusually efficient manner in its ongoing power struggle with [Republican] President Bush." ... "A nine-second session gaveled in and out by [Virginia Democratic Senator] Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va.[Democratic-Virginia], prevented Bush from appointing as an assistant attorney general a nominee roundly rejected by majority Democrats. Without the pro forma session, the Senate would be technically adjourned, allowing the president to install officials without Senate confirmation." ... "Democrats wanted to block one such recess appointment in particular: Steven Bradbury, acting chief of the Justice Department's Office of Legislative Counsel. Bush nominated Bradbury for the job and asked the Senate to remove the "acting" in his title." ... "Democrats would have none of it, complaining Bradbury had signed two secret memos in 2005 saying it was OK for the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] to use harsh interrogation techniques — some call it torture — on terrorism detainees." -By Laurie Kellman -AP via -Yahoo

20071222

Mitt Romney - Political - Corporation - Marketing - History - Gay-Rights - Pro-Choice - Stem Cell - Science - Health - Law - Religious - Salt Lake City - Utah - Massachusetts - New Hampshire - US - Torture - Prison - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - 2008 Election - "Romney should not be the next president." ... "[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt] Romney's main business experience is as a management consultant, a field in which smart, fast-moving specialists often advise corporations on how to reinvent themselves. His memoir is called Turnaround - the story of his successful rescue of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City [Utah] - but the most stunning turnaround he has engineered is his own political career." ... "If you followed only his tenure as governor of Massachusetts, you might imagine Romney as a pragmatic moderate with liberal positions on numerous social issues and an ability to work well with Democrats. If you followed only his campaign for president, you'd swear he was a red-meat conservative, pandering to the religious right, whatever the cost. Pay attention to both, and you're left to wonder if there's anything at all at his core." ... "As a candidate for the U.S. [United States] Senate in 1994, he boasted that he would be a stronger advocate of gay rights than his opponent, [Massachusetts Democratic Senator] Ted Kennedy. These days, he makes a point of his opposition to gay marriage and adoption." ... "There was a time that he said he wanted to make contraception more available - and a time that he vetoed a bill to sell it over-the-counter." ... "The old Romney assured voters he was pro-choice on abortion. "You will not see me wavering on that," he said in 1994, and he cited the tragedy of a relative's botched illegal abortion as the reason to keep abortions safe and legal. These days, he describes himself as pro-life." ... "There was a time that he supported stem-cell research and cited his own wife's multiple sclerosis in explaining his thinking; such research, he reasoned, could help families like his. These days, he largely opposes it. As a candidate for governor, Romney dismissed an anti-tax pledge as a gimmick. In this race, he was the first to sign." ... "In the 2008 campaign for president, there are numerous issues on which Romney has no record, and so voters must take him at his word. On these issues, those words are often chilling. While other candidates of both parties speak of restoring America's moral leadership in the world, Romney has said he'd like to "double" the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba], where inmates have been held for years without formal charge or access to the courts. He dodges the issue of torture - unable to say, simply, that waterboarding is torture and America won't do it." ... "When New Hampshire partisans are asked to defend the state's first-in-the-nation primary, we talk about our ability to see the candidates up close, ask tough questions and see through the baloney. If a candidate is a phony, we assure ourselves and the rest of the world, we'll know it." ... "Mitt Romney is such a candidate. New Hampshire Republicans and independents must vote no." -ConcordMonitor.com

20071221

Mike Huckabee - Prisoners - Guantanamo - Cuba - US - Military - Law - Arkansas - 2008 Election - "Huckabee: Gitmo Is "Too Nice"." ... "Asked about Guantanamo [American military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba], [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Mike Huckabee said he had visited the facility and said it was “disappointing” that military personnel were eating meals that averaged $1.60 while the detainees were eating Halal meals that cost over $4 each." ... "“The inmates there were getting a whole lot better treatment than my prisoners in Arkansas. In fact, we left saying, ‘I hope our guys don’t see this. They’ll all want to be transferred to Guanatanmo. If anything, it’s too nice.”" ... "Huckabee has said Guantanamo is more a “symbolic issue” than anything else since the detainees are treated better than prisoners in the US. Today Huckabee said, “Where they are detained is of less importance to me than that they are detained…until we know they are of no threat to us.”" -By Joy Lin and Mary Hood -CBSNews

20071215

Mike Huckabee - Law - Politics - Money - Arkansas - Prison - 2008 Election - "Huckabee DWI clemency, donations raise questions." ... "Questions are being raised about then-Gov. [former Arkansas Governor and now 2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate Mike] Huckabee's 2004 decision to grant clemency to a repeat Driving While Intoxicated offender in Arkansas named Eugene Fields, despite the objections of a law enforcement official at the time. Documents obtained by NBC News reveal Fields' case was handled differently from any other DWI clemency or pardon granted by Huckabee, and some Republicans are now suggesting significant political contributions may have influenced the governor's decision." ... "In August 2001, Fields, of Van Buren, Ark. [Arkansas], was convicted of his fourth DWI charge, a felony in the state of Arkansas, was sentenced to six years in prison and a $5,000 fine. Fields reported to prison in August of 2003." ... "But prison records obtained by NBC News show that six weeks into that six-year sentence, Fields' application for clemency, a commutation of his sentence the governor could issue to grant Fields an early release from prison, was unanimously supported by the parole board. Within months, Huckabee issued his intent to grant executive clemency to Fields, who was released from prison soon thereafter." ... "Some Arkansas Republicans are also questioning whether Fields' clemency was tied to sizeable political contributions." ... "According to Federal Election Commission records, a month after Fields' appeal was denied, his wife made a $5,000 donation to the State Republican Party in June of 2003. A month later, she made an additional $5,000 donation, again to the Republican Party of Arkansas. The following month, Fields reported to prison and began his clemency application process. He was a free man in less than a year." ... "A former elected official in Arkansas with fundraising experience for the State Republican Party says the timing of Mrs. Fields' donations raises serious questions about their intended purpose." ... "Prior to his wife's donations, Fields had made a $10,000 donation to the Republican Party of Arkansas in October of 2000 under "Fields Investment Company," the name of his business. Both Mrs. Fields' 2003 donations and Mr. Fields' 2000 donation placed them among the largest, individual donors to the Republican Party of Arkansas in those years, on par with donations from members of the Walton family, of the Wal-Mart department store chain." -By Amna Nawaz -MSNBC

20071206

Secret - Porter J Goss - Michael V Hayden - Military - Government - Terrorism - Intelligence - Videotapes - Censorship - Officers - Safety - Prisoner - Torture - War Crimes - Law - Politics - "C.I.A. Destroyed Tapes of Interrogations." ... "The Central Intelligence Agency in 2005 destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Al Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about the C.I.A’s [Central Intelligence Agency] secret detention program, according to current and former government officials." ... "The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terror suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in C.I.A. custody — to severe interrogation techniques. They were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that tapes documenting controversial interrogation methods could expose agency officials to greater risk of legal jeopardy, several officials said." ... "The C.I.A. said today that the decision to destroy the tapes had been made “within the C.I.A. itself,” and they were destroyed to protect the safety of undercover officers and because they no longer had intelligence value. The agency was headed at the time by Porter J. Goss. Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Goss declined this afternoon to comment on the destruction of the tapes." ... "The existence and subsequent destruction of the tapes are likely to reignite the debate over the use of severe interrogation techniques on terror suspects, and their destruction raises questions about whether C.I.A. officials withheld information about aspects of the program from the courts and from the Sept. 11 commission appointed by [Republican] President Bush and Congress. It was not clear who within the C.I.A. authorized the destruction of the tapes, but current and former government officials said it had been approved at the highest levels of the agency." ... "General [CIA Director, General Michael V Hayden] Hayden said in a statement that leaders of Congressional oversight committees were fully briefed on the matter, but some Congressional officials said notification to Congress had not been adequate." (1, 2) -By Mark Mazzetti with contributions by Eric Lichtblau and Scott Shane -NYTimes

20071204

Mike Huckabee - Women - Families - Law - Politics - History - Arkansas - Prison - Missouri - Crime - 2008 Election - "Mothers hold Huckabee partially responsible for daughters' murders." ... "[2008 Election Republican] Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said Tuesday that he is "heartbroken" over the pain suffered by the families of two women murdered in Kansas City [Missouri] more than six years ago." ... "Authorities say the two victims, Carol Shields and Sara Andrasek, were killed by the same man —Wayne DuMond, who was released from an Arkansas prison in 1999, a year before Shields' murder." ... "Their mothers say Huckabee is responsible, at least in part, for DuMond's release." ... ""What a fool," said Lois Davidson, Shields' mother. "Thinking he could rule the country when he couldn't even do a good job as governor of Arkansas."" ... "Janet Williams, Andrasek's mother: "Wayne DuMond should have never been on the streets in Missouri. ... When politics are involved, people get hurt, and Sara and Carol Shields paid the ultimate price with their lives."" ... "A jury sent DuMond to prison in 1985 for the rape of 17-year old Ashley Stevens, a distant relative of then-[Democratic Governor]Gov. Bill Clinton. While awaiting trial on the rape charge, DuMond was castrated — some say by assailants, other say he did the job himself." ... "But his conviction and imprisonment became a rallying point for Clinton critics and some Republicans in Arkansas, who said they believed DuMond was in prison because of the Clinton connection, and that he was actually innocent of the charges." ... "In 1996, then-[Republican Governor]Gov. Huckabee joined the discussion, saying he planned to commute DuMond's sentence to time served, in part because evidence in the case was "questionable."" ... "Some parole board members have since said they made the decision without pressure from Huckabee; others, though, said he had talked with them about his desire that DuMond be released." ... ""He made it obvious that he thought DuMond had gotten a raw deal and wanted us to take another look at it," former board member Charles Chastain said in 2001. "Some board members who were usually very tough about letting people out ... (later) voted in favor of him, and seemed eager to."" -By Dave Helling with contributions by DeAnn Smith -McClatchy

20071109

John McCain - Rudolph Giuliani - Bernard Kerik - US - Iraq - Police - Military - Torture - Prisoner - Law - Politics - 2008 Election - New York - World - Religion - "McCain questions Giuliani's judgment." ... "[2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate John] McCain told reporters he had never approved of [former New York City, New York police commissioner Bernard] Kerik as a candidate for head of the DHS [Department of Homeland Security]." ... ""I went to Baghdad [Iraq's capital] shortly after the initial victory and met in Baghdad with Bremer, Sanchez and Kerik was there,” McCain said referencing former L. Paul Bremmer and [Lieutenant General] Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. “Kerik was supposed to be there to help train the police force. He stayed two months and one day just left.”" ... ""That's why I never would have supported him to be the head of Homeland Security because of his irresponsible act when he was over there in Baghdad to try to help train the police."" ... "McCain also rebuked the [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate Rudolph Giuliani and former] New York mayor for his unwillingness to categorize water boarding as torture." ... ""He doesn't understand. He doesn't have the experience or judgment to lead this nation," McCain, a former prisoner of war, told reporters." ... ""I mean this is a defining issue about America. It means that he clearly does not understand the moral implications of torturing someone and what it does to our standing in the world and what it does to our ability to win this struggle to win radical Islamic extremism," he continued." -By Sareena Dalla -CNN

20071030

Michael B Mukasey - Rudolph W Giuliani - John McCain - Prisoner - Torture - Law - Opinion - Classified - Government- Politics - Intelligence - History - New York - Arizona - "Mukasey Unsure About Legality of Waterboarding." ... "In an effort to quell growing doubts in the Senate about his nomination as [Republican President Bush's] attorney general, Michael B. Mukasey on Tuesday declared that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques “seem over the line or, on a personal basis, repugnant to me” and promised to review the legality of all such techniques if confirmed." ... "But Mr. Mukasey told Senate Democrats he could not offer an opinion on whether waterboarding, which simulates drowning, is illegal torture because he has not been briefed on the details of the classified technique and does not want to suggest that Central Intelligence Agency officers who have used such techniques may be in “personal legal jeopardy.”" ... "Mr. Mukasey noted that Congress had not explicitly banned the use of waterboarding by the Central Intelligence Agency, though the method was outlawed for use by the military in the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005. That left room for interpretation as to whether waterboarding or any other technique is prohibited as “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment, he wrote." ... "All 10 Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote to Mr. Mukasey last week asking that he clarify his position on waterboarding. “Your unwillingness to state that waterboarding is illegal may place Americans at risk of being subject to this abusive technique,” the senators wrote." ... "Last week, after [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, said he wasn’t sure about waterboarding because he thought “the liberal media” might not have described it properly, [2008 Election Republican Presidential Candidate] Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was tortured himself as a prisoner in North Vietnam, shot back." ... "“All I can say is that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition, it was used in Pol Pot’s genocide in Cambodia, and there are reports that it is being used against Buddhist monks today,” Mr. McCain said." -By Scott Shane -NYTimes

20071021

US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Political - Military - Prisoner - Terrorism - Secret - Law - 2008 Election - "Pressure Alleged in Detainees' Hearings: Ex-Prosecutor Says Pentagon Pushing 'Sexy' Cases in '08." ... "Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay [Cuba] said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month." ... "Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the "strategic political value" of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed "sexy" over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go." ... "Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel's command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest." ... ""There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up," Davis said. "People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness."" -By Josh White -WashingtonPost

20071004

Alberto R Gonzales - David S Addington - Dick Cheney - John Yoo - Secret - Torture - War Crimes - Law - Politics - Terrorism - Government - Intelligence - Prison - Psychological - Health - Human Rights - US - World - History - "Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations." ... "When the Justice Department publicly declared torture “abhorrent” in a legal opinion in December 2004, the [Republican President] Bush administration appeared to have abandoned its assertion of nearly unlimited presidential authority to order brutal interrogations." ... "But soon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued another opinion, this one in secret. It was a very different document, according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency." ... "The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." ... "Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it." ... "Later that year, as Congress moved toward outlawing “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment, the Justice Department issued another secret opinion, one most lawmakers did not know existed, current and former officials said. The Justice Department document declared that none of the C.I.A. interrogation methods violated that standard." ... "The classified opinions, never previously disclosed, are a hidden legacy of [Republican] President Bush’s second term and Mr. Gonzales’s tenure at the Justice Department, where he moved quickly to align it with the White House after a 2004 rebellion by staff lawyers that had thrown policies on surveillance and detention into turmoil." ... "Associates at the Justice Department said Mr. Gonzales seldom resisted pressure from [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney and David S. Addington, Mr. Cheney’s counsel, to endorse policies that they saw as effective in safeguarding Americans, even though the practices brought the condemnation of other governments, human rights groups and Democrats in Congress. Critics say Mr. Gonzales turned his agency into an arm of the Bush White House, undermining the department’s independence." ... "The interrogation opinions were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who since 2005 has headed the elite Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department. He has become a frequent public defender of the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program and detention policies at Congressional hearings and press briefings, a role that some legal scholars say is at odds with the office’s tradition of avoiding political advocacy." ... "The Bush administration had entered uncharted legal territory beginning in 2002, holding prisoners outside the scrutiny of the International Red Cross and subjecting them to harrowing pressure tactics. They included slaps to the head; hours held naked in a frigid cell; days and nights without sleep while battered by thundering rock music; long periods manacled in stress positions; or the ultimate, waterboarding." ... "Never in history had the United States authorized such tactics. While President Bush and C.I.A. officials would later insist that the harsh measures produced crucial intelligence, many veteran interrogators, psychologists and other experts say that less coercive methods are equally or more effective." ... "With virtually no experience in interrogations, the C.I.A. had constructed its program in a few harried months by consulting Egyptian and Saudi intelligence officials and copying Soviet interrogation methods long used in training American servicemen to withstand capture. The agency officers questioning prisoners constantly sought advice from lawyers thousands of miles away." ... "“We were getting asked about combinations — ‘Can we do this and this at the same time?’” recalled Paul C. Kelbaugh, a veteran intelligence lawyer who was deputy legal counsel at the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorist Center from 2001 to 2003." ... "Mr. Kelbaugh said the questions were sometimes close calls that required consultation with the Justice Department. But in August 2002, the department provided a sweeping legal justification for even the harshest tactics." ... "That opinion, which would become infamous as “the torture memo” after it was leaked, was written largely by John Yoo, a young Berkeley law professor serving in the Office of Legal Counsel." ... "Mr. Yoo’s memorandum said no interrogation practices were illegal unless they produced pain equivalent to organ failure or “even death.”" (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) -By Scott Shane, David Johnston, and James Risen -NYTimes

20070907

John Edwards - US - International - Terrorism - Intelligence - Police - New York - History - Financial - Immigration - Secret - Torture - Prisons - Spying - Civil Liberties - Law - Safe - 2008 Election - "Edwards proposes international anti-terrorism body." ... "[2008 election] Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards proposed a new international body to fight terrorism on Friday, rejecting the tactics of U.S. [Republican] President George W. Bush as an unnecessary assault on civil liberties." ... "Edwards chose New York City [New York] four days ahead of the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks to unveil his anti-terrorism strategy, starting with a Counterterrorism and Intelligence Treaty Organization, or CITO." ... ""CITO will allow members to voluntarily share financial, police, customs and immigration intelligence. Together, nations will be able to track the way terrorists travel, communicate, recruit, train and finance their operations," Edwards said in a speech at New York's Pace University." ... "In an interview with Reuters, he also vowed to rescind many Bush policies, including the use of secret prisons, warrantless domestic spying and the extraordinary rendition of suspects to third countries, where critics say they may be tortured." ... ""I wouldn't do any of those things," Edwards said. "It's not necessary to violate every basis on which America exists to keep the American people safe. You can protect the rights of Americans and effectively fight terrorism."" -By Daniel Trotta -Reuters

20070814

Government - Military - Intelligence- Terrorism - Psychological - Torture - Prison - Political - History- Criminal - Justice - Human - Rights - War Crimes - Health - Science - New York - SC - "US Gov't broke Padilla through intense isolation, say experts: Despite warnings, officials used 43 months of severe isolation to force Jose Padilla to tell all he knew about Al Qaeda." ... "When suspected Al Qaeda operative Jose Padilla was whisked from the criminal justice system to military custody in June 2002, it was done for a key purpose – to break his will to remain silent." ... "As a US citizen, Mr. Padilla enjoyed a right against forced self-incrimination. But this constitutional guarantee vanished the instant [Republican] President Bush declared him an enemy combatant." ... "For a month, agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been questioning Padilla in New York City [New York] under the rules of the criminal justice system. They wanted to know about his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate a radiological "dirty bomb" in the US. Padilla had nothing to say. Now, military interrogators were about to turn up the heat." ... "Padilla was delivered to the US Naval Consolidated Brig in Charleston, S.C. [South Carolina], where he was held not only in solitary confinement but as the sole detainee in a high-security wing of the prison. Fifteen other cells sat empty around him." ... "The purpose of the extraordinary privacy, according to experts familiar with the technique, was to eliminate the possibility of human contact. No voices in the hallway. No conversations with other prisoners. No tapping out messages on the walls. No ability to maintain a sense of human connection, a sense of place or time." ... "In essence, experts say, the US government was trying to break Padilla's silence by plunging him into a mental twilight zone." ... "Those who haven't experienced solitary confinement can imagine that life locked in a small space would be inconvenient and boring. But according to a broad range of experts who have studied the issue, isolation can be psychologically devastating. Extreme isolation, in concert with other coercive techniques, can literally drive a person insane, these experts say. And that makes it a potential instrument of torture, they add." ... "The new Army Field Manual bars the use of isolation to achieve psychological disorientation through sensory deprivation. "Sensory deprivation is defined as an arranged situation causing significant psychological distress due to a prolonged absence, or significant reduction, of the usual external stimuli and perceptual opportunities," the manual states. "Sensory deprivation may result in extreme anxiety, hallucinations, bizarre thoughts, depression, and anti-social behavior. Detainees will not be subject to sensory deprivation."" ... "Despite the tough words, the field manual offers only a general prohibition. So-called coercive interrogation methods – including isolation – have been specially authorized for certain units in the military and the Central Intelligence Agency." ... "The technique is not new. The Soviets used isolation and sensory deprivation to identify and discredit political dissidents. US prisoners of war confessed to nonexistent war crimes in the Korean War after similar treatment. " (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Warren Richey -CSMonitor

20070811

US - Iraq - Alberto Gonzales - Military - Prisoners - Torture - War Crimes - Politics - "Embattled AG Gonzales visits Baghdad." ... "[Republican President Bush's] Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under fire at home with calls for his resignation, is spending some time in Iraq." ... "The Justice Department said that Gonzales arrived in Baghdad [Iraq's capital] on Saturday for his third trip to Iraq to meet with department officials who have been there to help fashion the country's legal system." ... "Gonzales also was an architect of U.S. policy on the treatment of prisoners abroad and author of a 2002 memo saying the president had the right to waive laws and treaties that protect war prisoners." -AP via -BostonGlobe

20070810

Secret - Canadian - Syrian - Kuwaiti - United States - Terrorism - Prison - Torture- Politics - Immigration - New York - "Deported Canadian Was No Threat, Report Shows." ... "Canadian intelligence officials anticipated that the United States would ship Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian who was detained in New York in 2002 on suspicion of terrorism, to a third country to be tortured, declassified information released on Thursday shows." ... "Mr. Arar was sent by American intelligence officials in October 2002 to Syria, where he was tortured and jailed for a almost a year. Last September, an extensive Canadian inquiry concluded that the terrorism accusations against him were groundless." ... "Portions of the inquiry's report were originally removed for security and diplomatic reasons. But a court ruled last month that much of the editing was not justified." ... "The newly released sections indicate that neither the Syrian government nor the Federal Bureau of Investigation were convinced that Mr. Arar was a significant security threat. They also suggest that the investigation of Mr. Arar was prompted by the coerced confession of Ahmad Abou el-Maati, a Kuwaiti-born Canadian who was also imprisoned and tortured in Syria. And despite claims by the United States government that Mr. Arar s removal to Syria was mainly an immigration matter, the new material suggests that the Central Intelligence Agency led the action." -By Ian Austen -NYTimes

20070809

US - Yemen - Guantánamo - Cuba - Secret - Censored - Military - Prison - Terrorism- Politics - "14 detainees upheld as `enemy combatants'." ... "As a first step to possible military trial, the Pentagon said Thursday that review panels have upheld President Bush's designation of ''enemy combatant'' for 14 so-called ''high value detainees'' at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, who were held and interrogated for years at CIA black sites." ... "They include Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the reputed 9/11 mastermind who, according to a censored Pentagon transcript of his secret hearing in March, confessed to a broad list of global terror plots -- most unrealized." ... "They also include men who allegedly planned the Oct. 12, 2000, suicide bombing of the USS Cole off Aden, Yemen, and the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania." ... "The Pentagon's statement Thursday made no mention of an ongoing controversy over whether the hearings should have been determining whether Guantánamo captives are ''unlawful enemy combatants'' versus run-of-the-mill ``enemy combatants.''" -By Carol Rosenberg-Miami/Herald

20070727

Secret - Government - Law Enforcement - History - Money - Massachusetts - Death Penalty - Prison - "US ordered to pay $101.7m in false murder convictions: FBI withheld evidence in '65 gangland slaying." ... "A federal judge held the FBI "responsible for the framing of four innocent men" in a 1965 gangland murder in a landmark ruling yesterday and ordered the government to pay the men $101.7 million for the decades they spent in prison. The award is believed to be the largest of its kind nationally." ... "In a decision that was as dramatic as it was stern, US District Judge Nancy Gertner said from the bench that the FBI had deliberately withheld evidence that Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo were innocent, and that the bureau helped cover up the injustice for decades as the men grew old behind bars and Tameleo and Greco died." ... ""FBI officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and ruin lives, interrupted only with the occasional burst of applause," said Gertner, berating the FBI for giving commendations and bonuses to the agents who helped send the men to prison for the killing in Chelsea of Edward "Teddy" Deegan, a small-time hoodlum." ... ""Sadly when law enforcement perverts its mission, the criminal justice system does not easily self-correct," Gertner said. "We understand that our system makes mistakes; we have appeals to address them. But this case goes beyond mistakes, beyond unavoidable errors of a fallible system."" ... "She added, "This case is about intentional misconduct, subornation of perjury, conspiracy, the framing of innocent men."" ... "After all four men were convicted July 31, 1968, of Deegan's slaying, Greco, Limone, and Tameleo were sentenced to die in the electric chair. Their sentences were later reduced to life in prison after Massachusetts abolished the death penalty. Salvati was sentenced to life in prison." ... "The discovery of secret FBI files that were never turned over during the men's trial prompted a state judge six years ago to overturn the murder convictions of Limone, who was immediately freed from prison, and Salvati, who was paroled in 1997." -By Shelley Murphy and Brian R. Ballou -Boston/Globe

20070721

US - Guantánamo - Cuba - Government - Military - Terrorism - Detainees - Politics- "Court Tells U.S. to Reveal Data on Detainees at Guantánamo." ... "A federal appeals court ordered the government yesterday to turn over virtually all its information on Guantánamo detainees who are challenging their detention, rejecting an effort by the [Republican President Bush led] Justice Department to limit disclosures and setting the stage for new legal battles over the government’s reasons for holding the men indefinitely." ... "The ruling, which came in one of the main court cases dealing with the fate of the detainees, effectively set the ground rules for scores of cases by detainees challenging the actions of Pentagon tribunals that decide whether terror suspects should be held as enemy combatants." ... "It was the latest of a series of stinging legal challenges to the administration’s detention policies that have amplified pressure on the Bush administration to find some alternative to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where about 360 men are now being held at the United States naval base." ... "A three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Washington unanimously rejected a government effort to limit the information it must turn over to the court and lawyers for the detainees." ... "The court said meaningful review of the military tribunals would not be possible “without seeing all the evidence, any more than one can tell whether a fraction is more or less than half by looking only at the numerator and not the denominator.”" -By William Glaberson -NYTimes

20070720

US - Global - Secret - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Human Rights - Politics - "Bush bars CIA from using torture, but details remain cloudy." ... "[Republican] President Bush signed an executive order Friday barring the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] from using torture, acts of violence and degrading treatment in the interrogation and detention of terrorism suspects, but human rights experts questioned its scope." ... "While Bush's order broadly outlines what the CIA can and cannot do to prisoners, and sets standards for what the agency must provide in terms of food and shelter for detainees, it says nothing about specific controversial interrogation techniques." ... "Some experts in human-rights law said Bush's order contains "loopholes" that would allow the CIA to continue using aggressive interrogation techniques that others would consider torture." ... "The Bush administration received heavy criticism globally over CIA interrogators using "water-boarding," which simulates drowning, and for allowing the CIA to operate secret prisons in Europe." ... "Some military and intelligence officials dispute that harsh interrogations have produced useful intelligence, contending that detainees will say whatever interrogators want to hear to stop their suffering. Moreover, they worry that U.S. military and intelligence officers will be subject to the same procedures if captured." -By William Douglas and Jonathan S. Landay -McClatchyDC.com

20070704

I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Dick Cheney - David H Safavian - Jack Abramoff - J Steven Griles - Government - Military - Law - Prison - Politics - "Libby's sentence not unusually long: Though [Republican President] Bush calls the 30-month prison term 'excessive,' records show defendants convicted of similar crimes served jail time." ... "In commuting the sentence of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, President Bush said that the former [Republican Dick Cheney] vice presidential aide had suffered enough and that the 30-month prison term ordered up by a federal judge was "excessive."" ... "But records show that the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences that are as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby's." ... "Three-fourths of the 198 defendants sentenced in federal court last year for obstruction of justice — one of four crimes Libby was found guilty of in March — got some prison time. According to federal data, the average sentence defendants received for that charge alone was 70 months." ... "Just last week, the Supreme Court upheld a 33-month prison sentence for a decorated Army veteran who was convicted of lying to a federal agent about buying a machine gun. The veteran had a record of public service — fighting in Vietnam and the Gulf War — and no criminal record. But Justice Department lawyers argued his prison term should stand because it fit within the federal sentencing guidelines." ... "Former members of the Bush administration have been sentenced to jail time in circumstances roughly analogous to those of Libby." ... "A former federal procurement official, David H. Safavian, was sentenced to 18 months in October for lying and concealing his dealings with GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Late last month, a federal judge sentenced J. Steven Griles, the former second-ranking official in the Interior Department, to 10 months in prison for obstructing a Senate investigation into his dealings with Abramoff." (1, 2) -By Richard B. Schmitt and David G. Savage -LAtimes

20070703

I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Dick Cheney - Prison - Politics - Intelligence - Law - "Bush wipes away Libby's prison sentence." ... "Just when things looked darkest for I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, when prison seemed all but certain, [Republican] President Bush wiped away the former White House aide's 2 1/2-year sentence in the CIA leak case." ... "Bush's move came Monday, just five hours after a federal appeals panel ruled that Libby could not delay his prison term. His prospects for an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court seemed bleak. The former chief of staff to [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney, Libby was just waiting for a date to surrender." ... ""I respect the jury's verdict," Bush said in a written statement. "But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby's sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison."" ... "Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disputed the president's assertion that the prison term was excessive. Libby was sentenced under the same laws as other criminals, Fitzgerald said. "It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals."" -By Matt Apuzzo with contributions by Ben Feller -AP

20070702

I Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Dick Cheney - US - Iraq- Military - Intelligence - Politics- Law - History - Prison - "Bush commutes Libby's prison sentence." ... "[Republican] President Bush commuted Monday the prison term of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, facing 30 months in prison after a federal court convicted him of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators." ... "A commutation is distinct from a pardon, which is a complete eradication of a conviction record and makes it the same as if the person has never been convicted." ... "The commutation does nothing to prevent Libby from appealing his conviction. And if the appeal fails or is still in process at the end of Bush's term, there is nothing to prevent the president from granting Libby a full pardon before he leaves office." ... "Libby's conviction is linked to the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity." ... "An outraged Joe Wilson, Plame's husband, spoke to CNN shortly after the ruling. Wilson had gone public with allegations that the Bush administration had "twisted" the evidence used to justify the invasion of Iraq, and prosecutors argued that Libby disclosed her employment as part of an effort to discredit him." ... ""I have nothing to say to Scooter Libby," Wilson said. "I don't owe this administration. They owe my wife and my family an apology for having betrayed her. Scooter Libby is a traitor."" ... "Plame had worked in the CIA's counter-proliferation division before the March 2003 invasion. She told a congressional committee in March that her exposure effectively ended her career and endangered "entire networks" of agents overseas." ... "Libby, the former chief of staff to [Republican] Vice President Dick Cheney, is the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair." -CNN

20070625

Torture - Terrorism - Detainees - Human Rights - Law - Education - Teens - "Scholars urge Bush to ban use of torture." ... "[Republican] President Bush was presented with a letter Monday signed by 50 high school seniors in the Presidential Scholars program urging a halt to "violations of the human rights" of terror suspects held by the United States." ... "The handwritten letter said the students "believe we have a responsibility to voice our convictions."" ... ""We do not want America to represent torture. We urge you to do all in your power to stop violations of the human rights of detainees, to cease illegal renditions, and to apply the Geneva Convention to all detainees, including those designated enemy combatants," the letter said." -AP via -SeattlePI

20070608

Secret - US - Poland - Romania - Germany - Italy - Egypt - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Human Rights - Law - Politics - "CIA jails in Europe 'confirmed'." ... "A Council of Europe investigator says he has evidence to prove the CIA ran secret jails in Poland and Romania to interrogate "war on terror" suspects." ... "Dick Marty, a Swiss senator, has been investigating CIA operations on behalf of the European human rights body." ... "In his new report, released on Friday, Mr Marty says secret CIA prisons "did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania"." ... "The governments of both countries have strongly denied any involvement. A spokesman for the CIA told the BBC that "the CIA's counter-terror operations have been lawful, effective, closely reviewed, and of benefit to many people -including Europeans - by disrupting plots and saving lives"." ... "Mr Marty says he drew on multiple sources and used his own intelligence methods to investigate the CIA's "extraordinary renditions", the process under which terror suspects were transported around the world for interrogation." ... ""Some European governments have obstructed the search for the truth and are continuing to do so by invoking the concept of 'state secrets'.... This criticism applies to Germany and Italy, in particular," he said." ... "His report came as the first criminal trial over the CIA "extraordinary renditions" opened in Italy. Twenty-five CIA agents and a US Air Force colonel are on trial in their absence, accused of kidnapping an Egyptian terror suspect and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured." -BBC/News
Secret - US - Poland - Romania - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Law - Airspace - Politics - "Report claims US ran secret prisons in Europe." ... "The CIA ran secret prisons in Poland and Romania from 2003 to 2005 where terrorism suspects could be interrogated free of US legal restraints, a Council of Europe investigation concluded today." ... "It revealed that Abu Zubaydah, believed to be a senior al-Qaida member, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks, were held and interrogated in Poland." ... "None of the prisoners had access to the Red Cross and many were subjected to what [Republican President] George Bush has called the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation, which critics have condemned as torture." ... "The report said that within weeks of the 9/11 attacks, Nato signed an agreement with the US that allowed civilian jets used by the CIA during its so-called extraordinary rendition programme to move across member states' airspace." ... "Dick Marty, a Swiss senator who ran the investigation, said in his report that the "the highest state authorities were aware of the CIA's illegal activities on their territories"." ... "Politicians from Poland and Romania, as well as a spokesman for the CIA, have rejected the findings of the investigation." -By Fred Attewill -Guardian.co.uk

20070518

US - International - Government - Military - Terrorism - Prison - Torture - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Human - Rights - War Crimes - Law - Politics - "'Moral decision' jeopardizes Navy lawyer's career: Officer says he leaked list of terror suspects in the name of justice; now convicted, he could face prison term." [Watch Video interview of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz]

Matt Diaz US Military Lawyer Navy Lt Cmdr Matthew Diaz Military Attorney Lieutenant Commander Matt Diaz interview.

TV: [Watch Video interview of Lt. Cmdr. Matthew Diaz]

"Matt Diaz was a Navy lawyer with 18 years of military experience when duty called at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Six months there broke him." ... "Now, in a case that reflects the fierce dissent within the U.S. government over the war on terrorism, the lieutenant commander faces a court-martial that could send him to prison for at least 14 years. A jury convicted him late Thursday, and the sentencing phase of the case is set to begin Friday." ... "Cmdr. Diaz is on trial because of actions he took after concluding – as many of higher rank have – that the [Republican President] Bush administration's offshore detention camp for terrorism suspects was making a mockery of American justice." ... ""My oath as a commissioned officer is to the Constitution of the United States," Cmdr. Diaz told The Dallas Morning News in his first public comments on the case. "I'm not a criminal."" ... "In early 2005, as he was concluding a six-month tour of duty as a Guantánamo legal adviser, Cmdr. Diaz sent an anonymous note to a New York civil liberties group containing the names of the detainees." ... "The Center for Constitutional Rights earlier had won a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that terrorism suspects had the right to challenge their detention. But the Pentagon was refusing to identify the men, hampering the group's effort to represent them." ... "What is illegal, he [Cmdr. Diaz] said, is the Bush administration's prosecution of the war on terror. He accused officials of violating international law, such as the Geneva Conventions on the humane treatment of war prisoners, and the Constitution's guarantee of due process." ... ""I made a stupid decision, I know, but I felt it was the right decision, the moral decision, the decision that was required by international law," Cmdr. Diaz said. "No matter how the conflict was identified, we were to treat them in accordance with Geneva, and it just wasn't being done."" ... "In his interview with The News, he recalled two prosecutors who "objected to the way the system was set up to guarantee a conviction. I don't believe they lasted long ... they didn't make it to the first hearings."" ... "Bush administration officials have characterized the Guantánamo population overall as "the worst of the worst."" ... "That is one of "two misstatements, or false statements, that occurred about Guantánamo," Cmdr. Diaz said. "The other statement was 'We do not torture.' "" ... "One of his jobs at Guantánamo, he said, was to track and investigate allegations of abuse." ... ""I think a good case could be made for allegations of war crimes, policies that were war crimes," he said. "There was a way to do this properly, and we're not doing it properly." " -By Brooks Egerton

-DallasNews.com

20070517

Noteworthy - Secret - US - World - Military - Torture - Prison - War Crimes - Law - History - Terrorism - Politics - 2008 Election - "It's Our Cage, Too: Torture Betrays Us and Breeds New Enemies." [by "Charles C. Krulak was commandant of the Marine Corps from 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar was commander in chief of U.S. Central Command from 1991 to 1994."] ... "Fear can be a strong motivator. It led Franklin Roosevelt to intern tens of thousands of innocent U.S. citizens during World War II; it led to Joseph McCarthy's witch hunt, which ruined the lives of hundreds of Americans. And it led the United States to adopt a policy at the highest levels that condoned and even authorized torture of prisoners in our custody." ... "Fear is the justification offered for this policy by former CIA director George Tenet as he promotes his new book. Tenet oversaw the secret CIA interrogation program in which torture techniques euphemistically called "waterboarding," "sensory deprivation," "sleep deprivation" and "stress positions" -- conduct we used to call war crimes -- were used. In defending these abuses, Tenet revealed: "Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through: the palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."" ... "The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp. Regrettably, at Tuesday night's presidential debate in South Carolina, several Republican candidates revealed a stunning failure to understand this most basic obligation. Indeed, among the candidates, only John McCain demonstrated that he understands the close connection between our security and our values as a nation." ... "The torture methods that Tenet defends have nurtured the recuperative power of the enemy. This war will be won or lost not on the battlefield but in the minds of potential supporters who have not yet thrown in their lot with the enemy. If we forfeit our values by signaling that they are negotiable in situations of grave or imminent danger, we drive those undecideds into the arms of the enemy. This way lies defeat, and we are well down the road to it." ... "This is not just a lesson for history. Right now, White House lawyers are working up new rules that will govern what CIA interrogators can do to prisoners in secret. Those rules will set the standard not only for the CIA but also for what kind of treatment captured American soldiers can expect from their captors, now and in future wars. Before the president once again approves a policy of official cruelty, he should reflect on that." ... "It is time for us to remember who we are and approach this enemy with energy, judgment and confidence that we will prevail. That is the path to security, and back to ourselves." -By Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar -WashingtonPost

20070514

Religious - Terrorism - Internet - Free Speech - Prison - Police - Politics - Women's - Abortion - Health - Georgia - Alabama - Colo - "Extremist taunts his victims from prison." ... "Victims of Eric Rudolph, the anti-abortion extremist who pulled off a series of bombings across the South, say he is taunting them from deep within the nation's most secure federal prison, and authorities say there is little they can do to stop him." ... "Rudolph, who was captured after a five-year manhunt and pleaded guilty in deadly bombings at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta [Georgia] and a Birmingham [Alabama] abortion clinic, is serving life in prison at the "Supermax" penitentiary in Florence, Colo [Colorado]." ... "Housed in the most secure part of the prison, he has no computer and little contact with the outside world aside from writing letters." ... "But Rudolph's long essays have been posted on the Internet by a supporter who maintains an Army of God website. The Army of God is the same loose-knit group that Rudolph claimed to represent in letters sent after the blasts." ... "Diane Derzis, who owns the Birmingham clinic that was bombed, killing a police officer, said someone should stop Rudolph." ... "Bureau of Prisons regulations give wardens the right to reject correspondence by an inmate for "the protection of the public, or if it might facilitate criminal activity." That includes material "which may lead to the use of physical violence."" -AP via -USATODAY

20070509

Florida - Prisons - Enforcement - Human Rights - "8 Ex-Prison Employees Charged With Abuse: Fired Workers Accused Of Forcing Florida Inmates To Clean Toilets With Tongues." ... "The eight were among 13 prison employees who had already been fired from the 605-inmate medium and minimum security at the Hendry Correctional Institution in the Everglades. The previous warden and an assistant warden resigned, and three other employees were reassigned after an inmate was beaten and choked by guards in March." ... "State prisons chief Jim McDonough said the warrants include charges of battery and failing to report inmate abuse against former guards William Thiessen, Phillip Barger, Randy Hazen, Gabriel Cotilla, Kevin Filipowicz, Ruben Ibarra and Stephen Whitney. Fired guard James Brown was charged with grand theft." ... ""These former employees were involved in a series of dehumanizing and degrading behaviors," McDonough said, noting that some inmates were given choices of eating their food off the floor or providing sexual favors to guards." -AP via -CBSNews

20070222

Secret - Immigrant - Women's - Children - Prisons - Corporation - Texas - Pennsylvania - Human Rights - Law - Politics - "Small Children In Detention Centers: Awaiting, With Their Families, Action On Their Immigration Status." ... "Immigrant families, many with small children, are allegedly being kept in jail-like conditions in Texas and Pennsylvania, according to advocacy groups who say the Texas facility is inhumane and should be shut down." ... "In a report being released Thursday, the groups seek the immediate closing of the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, about 30 miles northeast of Austin. The center, which opened in May, used to be a jail and is operated by Corrections Corporation of America, the nation's largest owner and operator of for-profit prisons and other detention facilities – so many that CCA is in its own right the fifth largest operator of prisons in the U.S., following the federal government and three states." ... "The groups issuing the report - Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services and the Women's Commission for Refugee Women and Children – say their findings are based on their members' visits and interviews with detainees, many of whom cried as they told their stories." ... "At the Hutto site, according to the report, a child secretly passed a visitor a note that read: "Help us and ask us questions."" -AP via -CBSNews

20070216

Italy - US - Egypt - Secret - Torture - Prisons - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence- Politics - "Italy orders CIA kidnapping trial: An Italian judge has ordered 26 US citizens - most of them CIA agents - to stand trial over the kidnap of an Egyptian cleric in Milan in 2003." ... "Osama Mustafa Hassan was allegedly seized by the CIA and flown to Egypt, where he says he was tortured." ... "Five Italians were also indicted by the judge, including Italy's ex-military intelligence chief, Nicolo Pollari." ... "The case would be the first criminal trial over the secret US practice known as "extraordinary rendition"." ... "During rendition, people suspected of involvement in terror activities are taken from one country and flown to another, where many claim they are tortured." ... "Most of the indicted US citizens are believed to have returned home from Italy." ... "The Italian government has yet to decide whether or not it wishes to request their extradition." -BBC /News

20061209

Tom Anderson - Alaska - Texas - Prison - Money - Politician - "Anderson indicted on seven counts: Federal bribery case centers on link to prison firm lobbyist." ... "[Alaska Republican] State Rep. Tom Anderson pleaded not guilty Friday to a series of federal charges accusing him of selling his legislative office for $12,828 in bribes from a lobbyist representing private prison interests." ... "Anderson, a 39-year-old Republican who has represented Muldoon's District 19 since he was elected in 2002, was ordered freed Friday by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Roberts on an unsecured $10,000 bond after his arrest Thursday by FBI agents. Roberts said Anderson could travel to Mexico on a previously scheduled vacation next week with his wife, Republican state Rep. Lesil McGuire, who was elected to the state Senate in November, and their infant son." ... "The 18-page indictment against Anderson said the lobbyist was secretly recorded July 21, 2004, boasting that for a price, Anderson would be "our boy in Juneau [Alaska's capital]."" ... "A week later, the same lobbyist was recorded telling a confidential informant, "If I was a Soviet spy and I was looking for a legislator to recruit, (Anderson) would be the one I'd get." Anderson "needs the money," the lobbyist said." ... "The government didn't charge the lobbyist. He is identified only by the letter "A," but the facts in the case point to Bill Bobrick of Anchorage, who represented Cornell Companies [Inc. of Houston, Texas], a private prison firm Outside." -By Richard Mauer, Lisa Demer, and Tom Kizzia -ADN.com

20061024

Noteworthy - US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - Torture - Terrorism - Prison - Religion - People - War Crimes - Law Enforcement - Politics - "Can the '20th hijacker' of Sept. 11 stand trial? Aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo may prevent his prosecution." ... "Mohammed al-Qahtani, detainee No. 063, was forced to wear a bra. He had a thong placed on his head. He was massaged by a female interrogator who straddled him like a lap dancer. He was told that his mother and sisters were whores. He was told that other detainees knew he was gay. He was forced to dance with a male interrogator. He was strip-searched in front of women. He was led on a leash and forced to perform dog tricks. He was doused with water. He was prevented from praying. He was forced to watch as an interrogator squatted over his Koran." ... "That much is known. These details were among the findings of the U.S. Army's investigation of al-Qahtani's aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." ... "But only now is a picture emerging of how the interrogation policy developed, and the battle that law enforcement agents waged, inside Guantanamo and in the offices of the Pentagon, against harsh treatment of al-Qahtani and other detainees by military intelligence interrogators." ... "In interviews with MSNBC.com - the first time they have spoken publicly -former senior law enforcement agents described their attempts to stop the abusive interrogations. The agents of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, working to build legal cases against suspected terrorists, said they objected to coercive tactics used by a separate team of intelligence interrogators soon after Guantanamo's prison camp opened in early 2002. They ultimately carried their battle up to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who approved the more aggressive techniques to be used on al-Qahtani and others." ... "Although they believed the abusive techniques were probably illegal, the Pentagon cops said their objection was practical. They argued that abusive interrogations were not likely to produce truthful information, either for preventing more al-Qaida attacks or prosecuting terrorists." ... "And they described their disappointment when military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected "20th hijacker" of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial." ... "Defense Department e-mails seen by MSNBC.com show that a delegation visiting Guantanamo on Sept. 25, 2002, included Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now attorney general; David S. Addington, legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, now his chief of staff; Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel; William Haynes III, the Pentagon general counsel; Larry Thompson, then deputy attorney general; Christopher A. Wray, the principal associate deputy attorney general, now head of Criminal Division at the Justice Department; and John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, who reportedly had just helped write an Aug. 1, 2002, "torture memo" to Gonzales, defining torture narrowly as causing pain equivalent to organ failure or death." ... "The visiting VIPs met with Gen. Dunlavey and his staff, but not with any of the law enforcement investigators who opposed the aggressive interrogations." ... "Under the Military Commissions Act signed last week by President Bush, statements made under torture would not be admissible in a military trial." ... "But the law says a military judge could accept statements made under coercion. A court may have to decide which category, torture or coercion, encompasses such techniques as a fake trip to Egypt, sleep deprivation, and being forced to do dog tricks. The new law also extends legal protection from prosecution for war crimes to any U.S. personnel who used coercive tactics, if they believed in good faith that what they were doing was lawful." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Bill Dedman -MSNBC

20061023

US - World - Jordan - Detainee - Torture - Terrorism - Government - Human Rights - "Many nations follow American example on detainee treatment, envoy says." ... "Several governments around the world have tried to rebut criticism of how they handle detainees by claiming that they are only following the U.S. example in the war on terror, the U.N. anti-torture chief said Monday." ... "Manfred Nowak, the U.N. special investigator on torture, said that when he criticizes governments for their questionable treatment of detainees, they respond by telling him that that if the United States does something, it must be all right. He would not name any countries except for Jordan." ... ""The United States has been the pioneer, if you wish, of human rights and is a country that has a high reputation in the world," Nowak told reporters. "Today, many other governments are kind of saying, 'But why are you criticizing us, we are not doing something different than what the United States is doing.'"" -AP via -IHT.com

20061017

Secret - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Legislation - Religious - Civil Liberties - History - Politics - "Bush Signs Terror Interrogation Law." ... "President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a "vital tool" in the war against terrorism." ... "Bush's plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions." ... "A coalition of religious groups staged a protest against the bill outside the White House, shouting "Bush is the terrorist" and "Torture is a crime." About 15 of the protesters, standing in a light rain, refused orders to move. Police arrested them one by one." ... "The law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning - such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment - but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts." ... "Many Democrats opposed the legislation because they said it eliminated rights of defendants considered fundamental to American values, such as a person's ability to go to court to protest their detention and the use of coerced testimony as evidence." ... "The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."" ... ""The president can now, with the approval of Congress, indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero." ... ""Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act," he said." -By Nedra Pickler -AP

20061015

Government - Terrorism - Prisons - Law - Enforcement - Money - Politics - Colorado - "Supermax Staffing Too Low To Be Safe: Arbitrator Finds Problems At Prison That Holds Moussaoui, Unabomber." ... "Staffing at the Supermax prison has gotten so low that job hazards have increased for correctional officers watching over the nation's worst terrorists, an arbitrator has ruled." ... "The arbitrator stopped short of ordering the Bureau of Prisons to hire more staff, but union officials representing Supermax officers said the ruling would bolster their argument to Congress for more prison funding." ... ""If the most maximum security federal penitentiary is indeed understaffed, what is happening across the entire Bureau of Prisons as far as staffing levels?" asked [Colorado Democrat] state Rep. Buffie McFadyen, who testified for the union at an arbitration hearing in May. Her district includes Supermax and 11 other state and federal prisons." -AP via -CBSNews

20061013

Secret - US - World - German - Syrian - Military - Terrorism - Torture - Prisons - Politics - Journalist - Book - "Inside the CIA's Secret Prisons Program: An explosive new book provides a rare glimpse into the full extent of the agency's controversial terror renditions — and the curious coalition of partners who helped the U.S. pull them off." ... "In December of 2001, U.S. agents arranged to have a German citizen flown to a Syrian jail called the Palestine Branch, renowned for its use of torture, and later offered to pass written questions to Syrian interrogators to pose to the prisoner, according to a secret German intelligence report shown to TIME on Wednesday. The report is described in the new book Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program by British investigative journalist Stephen Grey. The complex arrangement was part of the CIA's sprawling practice of extraordinary renditions, the secret transfer of terror suspects to hidden prisons across the world — which has involved the aid of numerous foreign governments and the knowledge of key Western European allies, according to the book, which was shown to TIME by the author. After U.S. officials long refused to confirm the CIA's secret detention of terror suspects abroad, President Bush last month admitted that terror suspects had been transferred abroad to secret CIA facilities, but U.S. officials continue to deny that such prisoners have been tortured, saying that foreign governments assured them that they would be treated fairly." ... "The cooperation between an unlikely coalition of intelligence agencies did not end there. The intelligence report gives a rare glimpse into the favors exchanged between governments during the CIA renditions. One day after Germany learned that the Syrians were holding Zammar, the CIA offered the German foreign-intelligence agency BND the chance to put written questions to their prisoner. The intelligence report doesn't make clear whether CIA interrogators had direct physical access to Zammar. In June 2002, Syrian officials offered German interrogators access to Zammar in prison, according to the 263-page report by the BND, marked "Geheim" (Secret). That same day, the BND chief asked Germany's federal prosecutors to drop their charges against Syrian intelligence agents who had been arrested in Germany for allegedly collecting information on Syrian dissidents." (1, 2) -By Vivienne Walt -TIME.com

20060926

Noteworthy - US - Government - Military- Terrorism - Prisoner - Human Rights - Legislation - "Detainee Measure to Have Fewer Restrictions: White House Reaches Accord With Lawmakers." ... "Republican lawmakers and the White House agreed over the weekend to alter new legislation on military commissions to allow the United States to detain and try a wider range of foreign nationals than an earlier version of the bill permitted, according to government sources." ... "Lawmakers and administration officials announced last week that they had reached accord on the plan for the detention and military trials of suspected terrorists, and it is scheduled for a vote this week. But in recent days the Bush administration and its House allies successfully pressed for a less restrictive description of how the government could designate civilians as "unlawful enemy combatants," the sources said yesterday. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of negotiations over the bill." ... "The government has maintained since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that, based on its reading of the laws of war, anyone it labels an unlawful enemy combatant can be held indefinitely at military or CIA prisons. But Congress has not yet expressed its view on who is an unlawful combatant, and the Supreme Court has not ruled directly on the matter." ... "As a result, human rights experts expressed concern yesterday that the language in the new provision would be a precedent-setting congressional endorsement for the indefinite detention of anyone who, as the bill states, "has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States" or its military allies." ... "The definition applies to foreigners living inside or outside the United States and does not rule out the possibility of designating a U.S. citizen as an unlawful combatant. It is broader than that in last week's version of the bill, which resulted from lengthy, closed-door negotiations between senior administration officials and dissident Republican senators. That version incorporated a definition backed by the Senate dissidents: those "engaged in hostilities against the United States."" ... "Under a separate provision, those held by the CIA or the U.S. military as an unlawful enemy combatant would be barred from challenging their detention or the conditions of their treatment in U.S. courts unless they were first tried, convicted and appealed their conviction." ... "Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) yesterday assailed the provision as an unconstitutional suspension of habeas corpus, which he said was allowable only "in time of rebellion or in time of invasion. And neither is present here."" (1,2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith with contributions by Michael A. Fletcher and Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

20060922

Torture - Secret - Noteworthy - United States - Government - International - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Prisons - Human Rights - War Crimes - Law - Politics - Ariz - SC - VA - "The Abuse Can Continue: Senators won't authorize torture, but they won't prevent it, either." ... "The bad news is that Mr. Bush, as he made clear yesterday, intends to continue using the CIA to secretly detain and abuse certain terrorist suspects. He will do so by issuing his own interpretation of the Geneva Conventions in an executive order and by relying on questionable Justice Department opinions that authorize such practices as exposing prisoners to hypothermia and prolonged sleep deprivation. Under the compromise agreed to yesterday, Congress would recognize his authority to take these steps and prevent prisoners from appealing them to U.S. courts. The bill would also immunize CIA personnel from prosecution for all but the most serious abuses and protect those who in the past violated U.S. law against war crimes." ... "In short, it's hard to credit the statement by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) yesterday that "there's no doubt that the integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva Conventions have been preserved." In effect, the agreement means that U.S. violations of international human rights law can continue as long as Mr. Bush is president, with Congress's tacit assent. If they do, America's standing in the world will continue to suffer, as will the fight against terrorism." ... "In theory, Congress could override Mr. Bush's regulations governing treatment if it judges that they are being used to authorize unacceptable practices." ... "But the senators who have fought to rein in the administration's excesses -- led by Sens. McCain, Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and John W. Warner (R-Va.) -- failed to break Mr. Bush's commitment to "alternative" methods that virtually every senior officer of the U.S. military regards as unreliable, counterproductive and dangerous for Americans who may be captured by hostile governments." ... "Mr. Bush will go down in history for his embrace of torture and bear responsibility for the enormous damage that has caused." -WashingtonPost

20060921

US - Iraq - Military - Prison - Torture - Human Rights - Politics - "Iraq torture 'worse after Saddam'." ... "Torture may be worse now in Iraq than under former leader Saddam Hussein, the UN's chief anti-torture expert says." ... "Manfred Nowak said the situation in Iraq was "out of control", with abuses being committed by security forces, militia groups and anti-US insurgents." ... "Bodies found in the Baghdad morgue "often bear signs of severe torture", said the human rights office of the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq in a report." ... "The UN report says detainees' bodies often show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in heads and genitals, broken legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns." ... "Bodies found at the Baghdad mortuary "often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances"." ... "Many bodies have missing skin, broken bones, back, hands and legs, missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails, the UN report says." ... "Victims come from prisons run by US-led multinational forces as well as by the ministries of interior and defence and private militias, the report said." ... "It concludes that torture threatens "the very fabric of the country" as victims exact their own revenge and fuel further violence." -BBC /News
Secret - Torture - United States - World - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Prisons - Human Rights - Law - Michael Hayden - "CIA Praises Deal; Harsh Techniques Would Continue." ... "The CIA director, General Michael Hayden, praised the deal reached in Congress today that, in effect, would permit CIA interrogators to use harsh techniques critics call torture." ... "President Bush and the CIA have repeatedly maintained the procedures are not torture and have saved American lives." ... "Human rights groups maintain the procedures constitute a form of torture, and the United States military has banned its personnel from using water boarding [which may be allowed under the current Republcan congressional deal]." ... "Today's congressional deal, if signed into law, would allow the CIA to continue the six techniques and to continue to run secret prisons overseas for select terror suspects." -By Brian Ross -ABCNEWS.com

20060914

US - World - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Secret - Police - Prisoner - Human Rights - Legislation - South Carolina - Virginia - Arizona - "Senate Panel, Rebuffing Bush, Approves Terror Tribunal Measure." ... "A Senate committee, in a bipartisan rebuff to President George W. Bush, approved military tribunal legislation that would give more legal protection to suspected terrorists than the administration wants." ... "Four of the 13 Republicans on the panel joined the 11 Democrats to pass their version of the measure, rejecting Bush's proposal to bar defendants from seeing classified evidence prosecutors may want to use in court. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed the Senate approach, warning that the Bush administration is risking the safety of U.S. troops and worldwide opinion by permitting harsh treatment of detainees." ... "Today's Armed Services Committee vote would let suspected terrorists see evidence used against them and would bar statements obtained through torture or inhumane treatment. It also would authorize military judges to fashion declassified summaries of evidence and to dismiss charges if the prosecutors don't consent to the disclosures." ... "[South Carolina Republican Lindsey] Graham joined the panel's chairman, Virginia Republican John Warner, and Arizona Republican John McCain in resisting Bush's demand to redefine the terms ``cruel, inhumane and degrading'' in describing treatment barred by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions." ... "Graham, a former Air Force lawyer, said that if the interpretation of the Geneva Conventions is changed, ``why wouldn't every other country do the same thing, have their secret police tell them to change the treaty obligations?''" -By James Rowley -Bloomberg

20060908

Noteworthy - US - World - Military - Intelligence - Legislation - Secret - Prisons - Human Rights - War Crimes Act - "Interrogation Methods Rejected by Military Win Bush’s Support." ... "Many of the harsh interrogation techniques repudiated by the Pentagon on Wednesday would be made lawful by legislation put forward the same day by the Bush administration. And the courts would be forbidden from intervening." ... "The proposal is in the last 10 pages of an 86-page bill devoted mostly to military commissions, and it is a tangled mix of cross-references and pregnant omissions." ... "But legal experts say it adds up to an apparently unique interpretation of the Geneva Conventions, one that could allow C.I.A. operatives and others to use many of the very techniques disavowed by the Pentagon, including stress positions, sleep deprivation and extreme temperatures." ... "So-called high-value detainees held by the C.I.A. have been subjected to tough interrogation in secret prisons around the world." ... "More run-of-the-mill prisoners held by the Defense Department have, for the most part, faced milder questioning, although human rights groups say there have been widespread abuses." ... "The new bill would continue to give the C.I.A. the substantial freedom it has long enjoyed, while the revisions to the Army Field Manual announced Wednesday would further restrict military interrogators." ... "The legislation would leave open the possibility that the military could revise its own standards to allow the harsher techniques." ... "The intent of the legislation, they [anonymous senior officials] said, is to prevent the prosecution of interrogators under amendments to the War Crimes Act that were passed in the 1990’s." ... "The bill proposed by the White House would also amend the War Crimes Act, which makes violations of Common Article 3 a felony." (1, 2) -By Adam Liptak with contributions by Neil A. Lewis -NYTimes

20060907

Secret - US - Foreign - Military - Terrorism - Prisons - Human Rights - Law - War Crimes Act - Politics - UN - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - "Bush Admits the CIA Runs Secret Prisons: Bush admits CIA runs secret prisons overseas, says interrogations made terrorists reveal plots." ... "President Bush on Wednesday acknowledged for the first time that the CIA runs secret prisons overseas and said tough interrogation forced terrorist leaders to reveal plots to attack the United States and its allies." ... "Bush said 14 suspects _ including the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks and architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania _ had been turned over to the Defense Department and moved to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for trial." ... "Earlier this year, an anti-torture panel at the United Nations recommended the closure of Guantanamo and criticized alleged U.S. use of secret prisons and suspected delivery of prisoners to foreign countries for questioning. Some Democrats and human rights groups argued that the CIA's secret prison system did not allow monitoring for abuses and they hoped that it would be shut down." ... "The Supreme Court ruled that prisoner protections spelled out by the Geneva Conventions should extend to members of al-Qaida. In addition to torture and cruel treatment, the treaties ban "outrages against personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment."" ... "Administration officials said they were concerned the ruling left U.S. personnel vulnerable to be prosecuted under the War Crimes Act because the language under the Geneva Conventions was so vague." -By Deb Riechmann with contributions by Anne Plummer Flaherty -AP via -CBSNews

20060903

US - International - Terrorism - Law Enforcement - Government - Prison - Politics - "Study: Terror Cases Now at Pre-9/11 Rate: U.S. Has Fallen Back to Prosecuting International Terrorists at Pre-9/11 Rate, Study Finds." ... "The federal government has fallen back to prosecuting international terrorists at about the same rate it did before Sept. 11, according to a study based on Justice Department data." ... "The surprising decline followed a sharp increase in such criminal prosecutions in the year after the attacks, according to a study released Sunday by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse [TRAC], a data research group at Syracuse University." ... "The analysis of data from Justice's Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys also found:" ... "In the eight months ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10 terrorism cases sent to them by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies. Nearly 4 in 10 of the rejected cases were scrapped because prosecutors found weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime." ... "Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, only 14 people have been sentenced to 20 years or more in prison in terrorism cases. Of the 1,329 convicted defendants, only 625 received any prison sentence. More than half got no prison time or no more than they had already served awaiting their verdict." (1, 2, 3) -AP via -ABCNEWS.com

-TRAC study.

20060811

US - Guantanamo - Cuba - Afghanistan - Iraq - Political - Law - Enforcement - War Crimes Act - Human Rights - Military - Terrorism- Detainee - History - "Criminal, Immunize Thyself: The Bush administration's get out of jail card for torturers." ... "If the Bush administration is still good at anything, it's this: distracting its opponents and seizing little victories from what might have been big defeats." ... "Take the administration's recent efforts to respond to the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. Hamdan arose from a challenge to the president's authority to create novel military commissions to try Guantanamo [Cuba] detainees. In June, the court found these commissions were unlawful: Among other problems, their procedures were inconsistent with existing statutes and fell short of "fair trial" guarantees in the 1949 Geneva Conventions. (Defendants could, for instance, be convicted based on evidence they would never see.)" ... "The decision was, of course, a major defeat for the Bush administration. Not surprisingly, administration officials went back to Congress this month with legislation that would authorize military commissions to pass Supreme Court muster." ... "But now, as recently reported by the Washington Post, the administration is also trying to use Hamdan to pass legislation that would immunize government personnel for abuses against detainees at Guantanamo, in Afghanistan, and in Iraq, including those abuses it authorized. In other words, in the middle of what should be a post-Hamdan debate about how to provide fair trials for those accused of terrorist activities, the administration is simultaneously trying to decriminalize its own past crimes." -By John Sifton -Slate

20060809

US - Iraq - International - Military - Intelligence - Prisons - Human Rights - War Crimes Act - Enforcement - Politics - "War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution." ... "The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments." ... "Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean." ... "The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking." ... "Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture." (1, 2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith -WashingtonPost
US - International - Military - Intelligence - Detainees - Human Rights - War Crimes Act - Enforcement - Politics - "Retroactive war crime protection proposed." ... "The Bush administration drafted amendments to the War Crimes Act that would retroactively protect policymakers from possible criminal charges for authorizing any humiliating and degrading treatment of detainees, according to lawyers who have seen the proposal." ... "The move by the administration is the latest effort to deal with treatment of those taken into custody in the war on terror." ... "At issue are interrogations carried out by the CIA, and the degree to which harsh tactics such as water-boarding were authorized by administration officials. A separate law, the Uniform Code of Military Justice, applies to the military." ... "One section of the draft would outlaw torture and inhuman or cruel treatment, but it does not contain prohibitions from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment."" -By Pete Yost -AP via -MercuryNews

20060730

Prisons - Psychology - "Study: Sex crimes in prisons underreported." ... "Fewer than three prisoners in every 1,000 report they were sexually abused or harassed, but that probably is not the whole story, a government study says." ... "There may be far more sexual violence in prisons than is reported, the study's authors said, because inmates fear reprisal, adhere to a code of silence, do not trust the staff or are embarrassed." ... "Prison rape isn't a problem limited to prisons, she [Cindy Struckman-Johnson, University of South Dakota social psychology professor] said. "We get reports that people who are raped and abused in prison will rape and abuse others when they leave prison," she said." -By Leslie Miller -AP via -HoustonChronicle.com

20060728

Noteworthy - Secret - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Detainee - Civil Righs - Politics- "Bush Submits New Terror Detainee Bill." ... "U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill." ... "According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all "enemy combatants" until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone "engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute."" ... "Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terror networks like al Qaeda." ... "Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force Judge Advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terror ties would lose access to a civilian court — and all the rights that come with it. Administration officials have said they want to establish a secret court to try enemy combatants that factor in realities of the battlefield and would protect classified information." ... "The administration's proposal, as considered at one point during discussions, would toss out several legal rights common in civilian and military courts, including barring hearsay evidence, guaranteeing "speedy trials" and granting a defendant access to evidence. The proposal also would allow defendants to be barred from their own trial and likely allow the submission of coerced testimony." -By Anne Plummer Flaherty -AP via -SFGate.com
Noteworthy - International - US - Afghanistan - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism- Detainee - Death Penalty - Human Rights - Politics - History - "Detainee Abuse Charges Feared: Shield Sought From '96 War Crimes Act." ... "An obscure law approved by a Republican-controlled Congress a decade ago has made the Bush administration nervous that officials and troops involved in handling detainee matters might be accused of committing war crimes, and prosecuted at some point in U.S. courts." ... "Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996. That law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions governing conduct in war and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment." ... "In light of a recent Supreme Court ruling that the international Conventions apply to the treatment of detainees in the terrorism fight, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need for such "protections," according to someone who heard his remarks last week." ... "Gonzales told the lawmakers that a shield is needed for actions taken by U.S. personnel under a 2002 presidential order, which the Supreme Court declared illegal, and under Justice Department legal opinions that have been withdrawn under fire, the source said." ... "Since the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, hundreds of service members deployed to Iraq have been accused by the Army of mistreating detainees, and at least 35 detainees have died in military or CIA custody, according to a tally kept by Human Rights First. The military has asserted these were all aberrant acts by troops ignoring their orders." ... "Defense attorneys for many of those accused of involvement have alleged that their clients were pursuing policies of rough treatment set by officials in Washington. That claim is amplified in a 53-page Human Rights Watch report this week that quoted interrogators at three bases in Iraq as saying that abuse was part of regular, authorized procedures. But this argument has yet to gain traction in a military court, where U.S. policy requires that active-duty service members be tried for any maltreatment." (1, 2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith with contributions by Julie Tate and Madonna Lebling -WashingtonPost

20060712

US - Iraq - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Prison - Politics - "GOP Senator Criticizes Appeals Court Nominee." ... "A key Senate Republican clashed yesterday with President Bush's pick for a federal appeals court, taking aim at the nominee's past support for harsh interrogation methods at the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." ... "At a Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (S.C. [Republican]) said that Pentagon General Counsel William J. Haynes II had pushed for the tactics over the objections of top uniformed military lawyers who considered the policy process a "sham."" ... "The result, Graham told reporters after the hearing, was "legal confusion" that contributed to the scandal at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison -- and the attendant courts-martial and other career damage for those held responsible." ... "Noting that the U.S. commander in Iraq during Abu Ghraib, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, has seen his career stall, Graham said, "The question is whether enough things went wrong on [Haynes's] watch that he needs to be held accountable."" -By Charles Lane -WashingtonPost

20060705

US - Iraq - Military - Prison - Law - "House Wants Abu Ghraib Whistleblower Info: House Seeks Pentagon Information on GI Who Says He Was Hassled for Blowing Whistle on Abu Ghraib." ... "Lawmakers have issued a subpoena seeking Pentagon information on a soldier who says he suffered retaliation for reporting abuses at Abu Ghraib prison." ... "The subpoena from the House Government Reform Committee seeks all communications relating to information provided by Army Spc. Samuel Provance about the Iraq prison, where U.S. mistreatment of detainees caused an international uproar." -By Pauline Jelinek -AP via -ABCNEWS.com
Italy - US- Egypt - Religion - Intelligence - Military - Terrorism - Prisons - "2 Italians Arrested in Kidnapping of Radical Cleric." ... "Two officials with the Italian secret service were arrested today in connection with the kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric here in 2003. This was the first indication that the Italian government may have helped American intelligence agents detain the imam, who was then sent to Egypt, where his relatives claim he was tortured while being interrogated." ... "Prosecutors also sought the arrest of three operatives of the Central Intelligence Agency and an employee of the American military airbase at Aviano, in addition to 22 other Americans whom Italian prosecutors said last year they were seeking as part of the investigation into the abduction of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar." ... "The practice of "extraordinary rendition" — which involves seizing terrorism suspects and then transferring them to other countries for interrogation — has caused a popular furor in Europe." -By Stephen Grey and Elisabetta Povoledo -NYTimes

20060626

US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Prison - Civil Liberties - "Court Ruling Could Halt Guantanamo Trials: Supreme Court Ruling Could Force Changes, or Even an End, to Guantanamo Trials." ... "A former driver for Osama bin Laden may help decide the fate of dozens of Guantanamo Bay detainees, and perhaps all of them, as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on his legal challenge to the first U.S. war crimes trials since World War II." ... "The court, which is expected to rule as early as Monday, is considering a range of issues in Salim Ahmed Hamdan's case, including whether President Bush had the authority to order military trials for men captured in the war on terror and sent to the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." ... "Bush recently suggested the ruling will help him determine what should be done with all the prisoners at Guantanamo, where the U.S. holds about 450 men on suspicion of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban." ... "Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union said Friday that Bush doesn't need a court decision to close the prison, which has drawn intense international criticism. The case has nothing to do with the prison itself, they said." (1, 2) -AP via -ABCNEWS.com

20060614

US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Prison - Law - Secrecy - "UPDATE: Pentagon Orders U.S. Reporters to Exit Guantanamo." ... "In the aftermath of the three suicides at the controversial Guantanamo prison facility in Cuba last Saturday, reporters with the Los Angeles Times and the Miami Herald were ordered by the office of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to leave the island today." ... "A third reporter and a photographer with the Charlotte Observer were given the option of staying until Saturday but, E&P has learned, were told that their access to the prison camp was now denied. An E&P "Pressing Issues" column on Tuesday covered an eye-opening dispatch by the Observer's Michael Gordon carried widely in other papers. He had listened in, with permission, as the camp commander gave frank instructions to staff on how to respond to the suicides." ... "The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which was representing the three men who committed suicide, released a statement today: "At a time when the administration must be transparent about the deaths at Guantanamo, they are pulling down a wall of secrecy and avoiding public accountability. This crackdown on the free press makes everyone ask what else they are hiding down there. This press crackdown is the administration's latest betrayal of fundamental American values. The Bush Administration is afraid of American reporters, afraid of American attorneys and afraid of American laws."" -By Greg Mitchell and Joe Strupp -EditorAndPublisher.com

20060613

Secret - Military - Prisoner - Human Rights - "Interrogation Tactics Won't Be Secret: Pressured By Congress, Pentagon Drops Bid To Classify Techniques." ... "Under pressure from Congress, the Pentagon has dropped plans to keep some interrogation techniques secret by putting them in a classified section of a military manual, defense officials said Tuesday." ... "Two senior officials said there will not be a classified section in the long-awaited revision of the Army Field Manual. One of the officials said descriptions of interrogation techniques initially planned for the classified section are either being made public or are being eliminated as tactics that can be used against prisoners. The officials requested anonymity because the manual has not been completed." ... "One human rights group hailed the decision." ... "Military leaders have argued that disclosing all the interrogation techniques public would make it easier for enemy prisoners to resist questioning." -AP via -CBSNews

20060607

US - EU - Intelligence - Terrorism - Law Enforcement - Prisons - Transport - Human Rights - Politics - Britain - Germany - Italy - Sweden - Turkey - Spain- Romania - Poland - "Probe of CIA Prisons Implicates EU Nations." ... "Fourteen European nations colluded with U.S. intelligence in a "spider's web" of human rights abuses to help the CIA spirit terror suspects to illegal detention facilities, a European investigator said Wednesday." ... "Swiss senator Dick Marty's report to Europe's top human rights body was thin on evidence but raises the possibility of a cover-up involving both friends and critics of Washington's war on terror. It says European governments "did not seem particularly eager to establish" the facts." ... "He listed 14 European countries - Britain, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Bosnia, Macedonia, Turkey, Spain, Cyprus, Ireland, Greece, Portugal, Romania and Poland - as being complicit in "unlawful interstate transfers" of people." -By Jan Sliva -AP via -Forbes

20060605

US - Iraq- International- Prisoner - Human Rights - Intelligence - Politics - "Army Manual to Skip Geneva Detainee Rule: The Pentagon's move to omit a ban on prisoner humiliation from the basic guide to soldier conduct faces strong State Dept. opposition." ... "The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that explicitly bans "humiliating and degrading treatment," according to knowledgeable military officials, a step that would mark a further, potentially permanent, shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards." ... "The decision could culminate a lengthy debate within the Defense Department but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed. However, the State Department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, the Defense Department officials acknowledged." ... "For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing its policies on detainees, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual on interrogation, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to U.S. soldiers worldwide." ... "President Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by Geneva and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of Iraqi civilians last year in Haditha, allegedly by Marines." ... "But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts contentions that U.S. forces follow the strictest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars." (1, 2) -By Julian E. Barnes -LAtimes

20060529

New Hampshire - 2002 Election - Firefighters - Union - Phone - Corporate - Marketing - Prison - "Convicted phone-jammer helping host GOP candidate workshop." ... "The Republican operative who came up with the idea of jamming Democratic Party and union get-out-the-vote phone lines on Election Day 2002 is back in the political swim." ... "Charles McGee, vice president of political and corporate communications at Spectrum Monthly & Printing Inc., sent out an e-mail recently inviting Republican candidates to a free "GOP Campaign School" hosted by the company, which publishes Republican mailers and fliers, the New Hampshire Union Leader reported." ... "A flier about the class calls it a "nuts and bolts boot camp" to give participants "all the tools you need to win."" ... "Hundreds of hang-up calls placed by a telemarketing firm tied up phone lines set up by the [New Hampshire] state Democratic Party and the Manchester firefighters union for more than an hour the morning of Election Day 2002, when then-U.S. [Republican] Rep. John Sununu defeated Democratic Gov. Jeanne Shaheen in a tight U.S. Senate race." ... "McGee, the former executive director of the state Republican Party, pleaded guilty to conspiracy in the phone-jamming scheme and served seven months in prison." -AP via -BostonGlobe

20060527

Burma - Military - Law - Prison - Aung San Suu Kyi - UN - "Myanmar Extends Suu Kyi's Arrest." ... "The Myanmar government today extended the house arrest of Nobel Peace Prize laureate and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi despite intense international pressure and a personal appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan." ... "Suu Kyi, who advocates peaceful change to bring democracy to the country, has been detained for more than 10 of the last 17 years. She was last arrested three years ago after her motorcade was attacked in an apparent attempt to assassinate her." ... "Her detention had been due to expire today. For many, Suu Kyi embodies the democracy movement in Myanmar, also known as Burma, and the decision of the military regime to detain her for an additional period of at least six months was a major setback for the opposition." -By Richard C. Paddock -LAtimes

20060510

UK - US - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism- Prisoners - Human Rights - "U.K. Attorney General Calls for U.S. to Close Guantanamo Camp." ... "U.K. Attorney General Peter Goldsmith called on the U.S. to close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for terror suspects, saying it is ``unacceptable.''" ... "``There are certain principles on which there can be no compromise,'' Goldsmith said during a speech in London today. ``Fair trial is one of those.''" -By Reed V. Landberg -Bloomberg

20060508

US - Cuba - Guantanamo Bay - UN - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Prisons - Human Rights - "Under fire, U.S. says it will ban controversial interrogation practice." ... "The U.S. Army will prohibit "water-boarding" - the controversial practice of submerging a prisoner's head in water in an effort to make him talk - when it issues its new interrogation manual, the State Department's legal adviser told the U.N. Committee Against Torture on Monday." ... "John B. Bellinger III said banning water-boarding wasn't an admission that American interrogators had used the technique on detainees during the war on terrorism." ... "Water-boarding was among several harsh interrogation techniques reportedly sanctioned by a Justice Department memo written in August 2002. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in December 2002 approved the use of techniques that induced the sensation of drowning among 17 practices implemented at the prison at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." -By Matthew Schofield -KnightRidder via -MercuryNews

20060506

Military - Intelligence - Privacy - Law - Secret - Terrorism - Prisons - "Goss Forced Out as CIA Director; Gen. Hayden Is Likely Successor." ... "Porter J. Goss was forced to step down yesterday as CIA director, ending a turbulent 18-month tenure marked by an exodus of some of the agency's top talent and growing White House dissatisfaction with his leadership during a time of war." ... "The likely successor to Goss is Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy to Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, senior administration officials said. He could be named as soon as Monday." ... "Members of Congress privately predicted that Hayden, who once enjoyed tremendous support on the Hill, would face a contentious confirmation process over the Bush administration's domestic spying program. Other sensitive issues, such as the existence of secret prisons abroad for terrorism suspects, also are likely to arise." (1, 2) -By Dafna Linzer and Walter Pincus with contributions by Dana Priest, Peter Baker, Jim VandeHei, and Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

20060425

Secret - Government - Terrorism - Prisons - Law - Media - Politics- "Dismissed CIA Officer Denies Leak Role: Official Says Agency Is Not Asserting She Told of Secret Prisons." ... "A lawyer representing fired CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy said yesterday that his client did not leak any classified information and did not disclose to Washington Post reporter Dana Priest the existence of secret CIA-run prisons in Eastern Europe for suspected terrorists." ... "The statement by Ty Cobb, a lawyer in the Washington office of Hogan & Hartson who said he was speaking for McCarthy, came on the same day that a senior intelligence official said the agency is not asserting that McCarthy was a key source of Priest's award-winning articles last year disclosing the agency's secret prisons." ... "McCarthy was fired because the CIA concluded that she had undisclosed contacts with journalists, including Priest, in violation of a security agreement. That does not mean she revealed the existence of the prisons to Priest, Cobb said." ... "Having unreported media contacts is not unheard of at the CIA but is a violation of the agency's rules." (1, 2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer with contributions by Dan Eggen -WashingtonPost

20060424

Secret - Government - Terrorism - Prisons - Law - Media - Politics - Arizona - Pat Roberts - Kansas - Michigan - "CIA Cracks Down On Leaks: Central Intelligence Agency employee Mary McCarthy was fired for leaking information about CIA secret prison camps to the Washington Post. Two former CIA intelligence experts discuss the implications of the firing and the future of security at the CIA."

- JIM LEHRER: "..." ... "Some perspective on this now from two career CIA employees. Richard Kerr spent 32 years at the agency. His last position was deputy director of central intelligence under the first President Bush." ... "Ray McGovern was an analyst for 27 years. He retired in 1990. He is now a member of the group Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which has criticized the current administration for politicizing intelligence." ... "Mr. Kerr, should Mary McCarthy have been fired for what she did?"

- RICHARD KERR, Former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence: "Yes, I believe so."

- JIM LEHRER: "Do you agree, Mr. McGovern?"

- RAY MCGOVERN, Former CIA Analyst: "Yes, but that's only part of the story."

- JIM LEHRER: "What's the other part?"

- RAY MCGOVERN: "Well, we need to create a context here."

- JIM LEHRER: "OK. All right."

- RAY MCGOVERN: "We're not talking about petty crimes or misdemeanors; we're talking about war crimes. She was cognizant of war crimes. She needed to do something about that, from a moral and a legal perspective. And she chose this way to do it, because the other ways were blocked for her."

...

- RAY MCGOVERN: "I think, Jim, this was an exceptional case."

- JIM LEHRER: "An exceptional case?"

- RAY MCGOVERN: "Yes, really an exceptional case. Never before, in my experience for 27 years in the agency, was I aware of war crimes. Now, we're talking about serious things here, and her..."

- JIM LEHRER: "And you're talking about, in her case..."

- RAY MCGOVERN: "I'm talking about torture..."

- JIM LEHRER: "... the allegation that she gave the Washington Post information about these so-called prison camps in Eastern Europe?"

- RAY MCGOVERN: "Correct."

- JIM LEHRER: "And if she knew that, and she wanted to do something about it as a CIA professional, her only avenue was, in your..."

- RAY MCGOVERN: "No..."

- JIM LEHRER: "No?"

- RAY MCGOVERN: "... I assume that she went through the proper channels. She was working for the inspector general, but the inspector general, however..."

- JIM LEHRER: "The agency's inspector general, right."

- RAY MCGOVERN: "Yes, he's supposed to be independent, but he's really a creature of the director. And the director marches down with the vice president to try to persuade [Arizona] Senator McCain to create an exception so that the CIA can torture people." ... "And so she's faced with a situation that's real. The director is in favor of torture. And their only other recourse is Congress. And Congress, the oversight committees -- I hate to say this, but it's a joke." ... "She can't get any redress from [Kansas Senator] Pat Roberts. I call him Patsy Roberts, because he's a patsy for the administration. [Michigan Representative] Pete Hoekstra, he criticized..."

- JIM LEHRER: "The House Intelligence Committee chairman."

- RAY MCGOVERN: "... in the House side, yes, he criticized her yesterday. But, you know, that was the height of cynicism, because if he were doing his job it wouldn't be necessary for Mary McCarthy to do these things."

- JIM LEHRER: "So she had no other option then, from your..."

- RAY MCGOVERN: "That's the way I see it. I knew Mary pretty well. She's got a lot of integrity. And, you know, you can argue that she has a moral responsibility and a legal responsibility." ... "In other words, if she's in the chain of command and she sees these kinds of crimes being perpetrated, under Nuremberg and other international law, she is required..."

- JIM LEHRER: "She had to do this?"

- RAY MCGOVERN: "... to do something."

-PBS /NewsHour

Secret- Government - Terrorism - Prisons - Law - Reporter - Politics - "Secrets of the CIA: A former colleague says the fired Mary McCarthy 'categorically denies' being the source of the leak on agency renditions." ... "A former CIA officer who was sacked last week after allegedly confessing to leaking secrets has denied she was the source of a controversial Washington Post story about alleged CIA secret detention operations in Eastern Europe, a friend of the operative told NEWSWEEK." ... "The fired official, Mary O. McCarthy, "categorically denies being the source of the leak," one of McCarthy's friends and former colleagues, Rand Beers, said Monday after speaking to McCarthy." ... "McCarthy's lawyer, Ty Cobb, told NEWSWEEK this afternooon that contrary to public statements by the CIA late last week, McCarthy never confessed to agency interrogators that she had divulged classified information and "didn't even have access to the information" in The Washington Post story in question." ... "A counter-terrorism official acknowledged to NEWSWEEK today that in firing McCarthy, the CIA was not necessarily accusing her of being the principal, original, or sole leaker of any particular story. Intelligence officials privately acknowledge that key news stories about secret agency prison and "rendition" operations have been based, at least in part, upon information available from unclassified sources." (1, 2, 3) -By Mark Hosenball and Michael Isikoff -MSNBC /Newsweek
US - World - Secret - Government - Terrorism - Prisons - Reporter - Politics - "CIA agent fired for 'pattern of behavior': Investigation 'not over yet,' officials say." ... "A U.S. official told CNN on Monday that the CIA officer fired for leaking classified information was accused of a "pattern of behavior," including multiple contacts with more than one reporter." ... "Sources also confirmed to CNN that the officer fired last Thursday is Mary O. McCarthy, who last worked in the CIA inspector general's office." ... "A senior government official said the dismissal was related to a story in The Washington Post about the United States holding terror suspects in secret prisons overseas." ... "Priest spearheaded the reporting on the "black site" prisons and was awarded a Pulitzer Prize earlier this month for beat reporting." -By David Ensor with contributions by Pam Benson -CNN

20060423

Secret - Government - Military - Terrorism - Prisons - Politics - History - Journalist - "CIA Officer's Job Made Any Leaks More Delicate." ... "The rare firing last week of a CIA officer accused of leaking information to the news media stems both from the sensitivity of the subjects she allegedly discussed and the Bush administration's forceful efforts to block national security disclosures that have proved embarrassing or caused operational problems, according to current and former intelligence officials." ... "The use of polygraphs to force out the CIA officer, a historian and Africa specialist named Mary McCarthy who lately has been working for the agency's internal inspector, comes amid long-standing administration suspicions that employees of the spy agency have not sufficiently toed the policy line set by the White House on matters such as the fight against terrorism and the war in Iraq." ... "The CIA said in a statement last week that omitted McCarthy's name that the officer was fired for discussing operational intelligence matters with journalists. Officials have said the journalists included Washington Post correspondent Dana Priest, who last week was awarded a Pulitzer Prize for national security reporting that included the revelation of secret, CIA-run prisons for suspected terrorists in Eastern Europe and elsewhere." (1, 2) -By R. Jeffrey Smith and Dafna Linzer -WashingtonPost
US - Politics - Global - Climate - Energy - Intelligence - Law - Privacy - Military - Prison - Terrorism- "Is U.S. being transformed into a radical republic?" ... "As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: "America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."" ... "In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception." ... "From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin." ... "Unprecedented interpretations of the Constitution that holds the president as commander in chief to be all-powerful and without checks and balances marks the hubris and unparalleled radicalism of this administration." -By Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson -BaltimoreSun.com

20060422

Secret - Government - Military - Intelligence - Terrorism - Prisons - "C.I.A. Fires Senior Officer Over Leaks." ... "The Central Intelligence Agency has dismissed a senior career officer for disclosing classified information to reporters, including material for Pulitzer Prize-winning articles in The Washington Post about the agency's secret overseas prisons for terror suspects, intelligence officials said Friday." ... "The C.I.A. would not identify the officer, but several government officials said it was Mary O. McCarthy, a veteran intelligence analyst who until 2001 was senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, where she served under President Bill Clinton and into the Bush administration." ... "The dismissal of Ms. McCarthy provided fresh evidence of the Bush administration's determined efforts to stanch leaks of classified information. The Justice Department has separately opened preliminary investigations into the disclosure of information to The Post, for its articles about secret prisons, as well as to The New York Times, for articles last fall that disclosed the existence of a program of domestic eavesdropping without warrants supervised by the National Security Agency. Those articles were also recognized this week with a Pulitzer Prize." (1, 2) -By David Johnston and Scott Shane -NYTimes

20060407

US - Iraq - Government - Political - Secrets - Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Telecom - Privacy - Military - Prisons - UN - Media - "Libby testimony shows a White House pattern of intelligence leaks." ... "The revelation that President Bush authorized former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to divulge classified information about Iraq fits a pattern of selective leaks of secret intelligence to further the administration's political agenda." ... "Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other top officials have reacted angrily at unauthorized leaks, such as the exposure of a domestic wiretapping program and a network of secret CIA prisons, both of which are now the subject of far-reaching investigations." ... "But secret information that supports their policies, particularly about the Iraq war, has surfaced everywhere from the U.N. Security Council to major newspapers and magazines. Much of the information that the administration leaked or declassified, however, has proved to be incomplete, exaggerated, incorrect or fabricated." -By Warren P. Strobel and Ron Hutcheson with contributions by James Kuhnhenn -KnightRidder via -MercuryNews

20060330

US - Mexico - US Immigration - Law - Food - Business - Workers - Prisoners - California - Iowa - "'Let The Prisoners Pick The Fruits'." ... "The debate over immigration reform is causing a major split within the Republican Party." ... "On Thursday, House conservatives criticized President Bush, accused the Senate of fouling the air, said prisoners rather than illegal farm workers should pick America's crops and denounced the use of Mexican flags by protesters in a vehement attack on legislation to liberalize U.S. immigration laws." ... ""I say let the prisoners pick the fruits," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, one of more than a dozen Republicans who took turns condemning a Senate bill that offers an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants an opportunity for citizenship." ... ""Anybody that votes for an amnesty bill deserves to be branded with a scarlet letter A," said [Republican] Rep. Steve King of Iowa, referring to a guest worker provision in the Senate measure." (1, 2) -AP -CBSNews
Free Speech - Civil Liberties - Prison - Humor - Iowa - "Man's naughty comment on tickets lands him in front of judge." ... "A Grundy County [Iowa] man's act of civil disobedience almost landed him in jail Monday." ... "Judge Jeffrey Harris ordered him [John Gould] to pay $76.20 in fines, surcharges and court costs. The court turned down Gould's request to pay within six weeks." ... "So Gould wrote a check for the full amount. He added the words "eat (scatological term deleted)" on the memo line." ... "Harris rejected arguments by Gould's attorney, Brandon Adams, that the message was protected free speech under the 1st Amendment to the Constitution." ... "The judge sentenced Gould to five days in jail but gave him the option of purging the decision if Gould apologized to the Clerk of Court and the court." -By Jeff Reinitz -WCFCourier.com

20060329

Jack Abramoff - Business - Politics - Prison - "Abramoff Gets Minimum Sentence: Former Lobbyist to Spend 5 Years, 10 Months in Prison." ... "Jack A. Abramoff, the once-powerful Republican lobbyist at the center of a major corruption scandal, was sentenced Wednesday to five years and 10 months in prison for his role in the fraudulent purchase of a fleet of casino cruise ships. An associate received the same sentence." ... "U.S. District Judge Paul C. Huck sentenced Abramoff, 47, and his former partner, Adam R. Kidan, 41, to the shortest possible prison terms under sentencing guidelines in the case. In pleading for the minimum sentence, lawyers for each defendant laid most of the blame on the other for the scam, in which they faked a $23 million wire transfer to obtain financing for the 2000 purchase of SunCruz Casinos from an owner who was later shot to death in a gangland-style hit." -By Peter Whoriskey and William Branigin -WashingtonPost

20060328

Antonin Scalia - US - Cuba - Guantanamo Bay - Government - Military - Terrorism - Prisons - "Scalia's Recusal Sought in Key Detainee Case: Retired Officers Say Justice's Impartiality Is in Question After Remarks on Combatants." ... "On the eve of oral argument in a key Supreme Court case on the rights of alleged terrorists, a group of retired U.S. generals and admirals has asked Justice Antonin Scalia to recuse himself, arguing that his recent public comments on the subject make it impossible for him to appear impartial." ... "In a letter delivered to the court late yesterday, a lawyer for the retired officers cited news reports of Scalia's March 8 remarks to an audience at the University of Freiburg in Switzerland. Scalia reportedly said it was "crazy" to suggest that combatants captured fighting the United States should receive a "full jury trial," and dismissed suggestions that the Geneva Conventions might apply to detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." ... "The retired officers are Brig. Gen. David M. Brahms, Brig Gen. James P. Cullen, Vice Adm. Lee F. Gunn, Rear Adm. John D. Hutson and Rear Adm. Donald J. Guter. They have filed a friend of the court brief in the case opposing the military commissions, on the grounds that denying Geneva Conventions protections to detainees at Guantanamo Bay could result in their denial to U.S. troops by their captors abroad." -By Charles Lane -WashingtonPost

20060326

Antonin Scalia - US - EU - Switzerland - Guantanamo- Cuba - Military - Prison - Politics - "U.S. high court judge said to slam detainee rights." ... "U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia dismissed the idea that Guantanamo detainees have constitutional rights and called European concerns over the issue hypocritical, Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday." ... "The comments, which Newsweek said were recorded at a private appearance by Scalia in Switzerland on March 8, emerge before a Supreme Court hearing this week on a legal challenge by a Guantanamo [Cuba] prisoner against U.S. military tribunals." ... "Ethics experts said the impression that Scalia had already made up his mind before the hearing should mean that he will voluntarily drop out of the proceedings." -Reuters via -AlertNet.org/Newsdesk

20060305

Media - Intelligence - Government- Law - Law Enforcement - Politics - Secret - Prisons - "White House Trains Efforts on Media Leaks: Sources, Reporters Could Be Prosecuted." ... "The Bush administration, seeking to limit leaks of classified information, has launched initiatives targeting journalists and their possible government sources. The efforts include several FBI probes, a polygraph investigation inside the CIA and a warning from the Justice Department that reporters could be prosecuted under espionage laws." ... "In recent weeks, dozens of employees at the CIA, the National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies have been interviewed by agents from the FBI's Washington field office, who are investigating possible leaks that led to reports about secret CIA prisons and the NSA's warrantless domestic surveillance program, according to law enforcement and intelligence officials familiar with the two cases." ... "Some media watchers, lawyers and editors say that, taken together, the incidents represent perhaps the most extensive and overt campaign against leaks in a generation, and that they have worsened the already-tense relationship between mainstream news organizations and the White House." ... ""There's a tone of gleeful relish in the way they talk about dragging reporters before grand juries, their appetite for withholding information, and the hints that reporters who look too hard into the public's business risk being branded traitors," said New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller, in a statement responding to questions from The Washington Post. "I don't know how far action will follow rhetoric, but some days it sounds like the administration is declaring war at home on the values it professes to be promoting abroad."" (1, 2, 3) -By Dan Eggen with contributions by Charles Lane and Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

20060303

US - Cuba - Guantanamo Bay - Government - Military - Prison - Politics - Ariz. - "U.S. Cites Exception in Torture Ban: McCain Law May Not Apply to Cuba Prison." ... "Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison." ... "In federal court yesterday and in legal filings, Justice Department lawyers contended that a detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, cannot use legislation drafted by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to challenge treatment that the detainee's lawyers described as "systematic torture."" ... "Government lawyers have argued that another portion of that same law, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, removes general access to U.S. courts for all Guantanamo Bay captives." (1, 2) -By Josh White and Carol D. Leonnig -WashingtonPost

20060224

US - Cuba - Guantanamo Bay - Military - Terrorism - Prison - Censorship - Civil Liberties - Law - "FBI warned Guantanamo about interrogations: Aggressive interrogations ineffective, legally risky, agency told military." ... "FBI agents repeatedly warned military interrogators at the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that their aggressive methods were legally risky and also likely to be ineffective, according to FBI memos made public Thursday." ... "A senior officer at the prison for terror suspects also "blatantly misled" his superiors at the Pentagon into thinking the FBI had endorsed the "aggressive and controversial interrogation plan" for one detainee, according to one of the 54 memos released by the American Civil Liberties Union." ... "The memos had been previously released, but in more heavily censored form, as part of an ACLU lawsuit under the federal Freedom of Information Act." -APvia -MSNBC

20060223

US - Cuba - Guantanamo Bay - Government - Military - Prisons - Secrecy - People - Media - "Judge orders Guantanamo captive IDs released: Defense Department announces it will comply with ruling." ... "A federal judge ordered the Pentagon on Thursday to release the identities of hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay to The Associated Press, a move that would force the government to break its secrecy and reveal the most comprehensive list yet of those who have been imprisoned there." ... "Some of the hundreds of detainees in the war on terrorism being held at the U.S. military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have been held as long as four years. Only a handful have been officially identified." -AP via -MSNBC

20060216

United States - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Terrorism - Prison- "U.N. report urges Gitmo shutdown." ... "The United States should shut down the prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay and either release all detainees being held there or bring them to trial, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday." ... "The United States is holding about 500 men at the U.S. naval base on the southeastern tip of Cuba. The detainees are accused of having links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaeda terror group, though only 10 have been charged since the detention camp opened in January 2001." -AP via -USATODAY

20051230

Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - US - Military - Prisons - Food - "Guantanamo Hunger Strike More Than Doubles; 84 Inmates Involved." ... "The number of detainees on a hunger strike at the U.S. naval base at Cuba's Guantanamo Bay has more than doubled in the past week, the U.S. military said." ... "Forty-six detainees joined existing hunger strikers on Dec. 25, to bring the total number of prisoners refusing food to 84, the military said yesterday on the Southern Command's Web site. That's about a sixth of the internment center's inmates." ... "The military said the detainees are trying to put pressure on the U.S. to release them. Detainees' lawyers have said the hunger strikers are protesting their continued detention without trial and conditions at the base." -By Alex Morales -Bloomberg

20051226

Government - Military - Intelligence - Secret- Prisons - Civil Liberties - Privacy - Law - Media - Politics - "Fear destroys what bin Laden could not." ... "One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help." ... "If, back in 2001, anyone had told me that four years after bin Laden's attack our president would admit that he broke U.S. law against domestic spying and ignored the Constitution -- and then expect the American people to congratulate him for it -- I would have presumed the girders of our very Republic had crumbled." ... "Had anyone said our president would invade a country and kill 30,000 of its people claiming a threat that never, in fact, existed, then admit he would have invaded even if he had known there was no threat -- and expect America to be pleased by this -- I would have thought our nation's sensibilities and honor had been eviscerated." ... "If I had been informed that our nation's leaders would embrace torture as a legitimate tool of warfare, hold prisoners for years without charges and operate secret prisons overseas -- and call such procedures necessary for the nation's security -- I would have laughed at the folly of protecting human rights by destroying them." ... "If someone had predicted the president's staff would out a CIA agent as revenge against a critic, defy a law against domestic propaganda by bankrolling supposedly independent journalists and commentators, and ridicule a 37-year Marie Corps veteran for questioning U.S. military policy -- and that the populace would be more interested in whether Angelina is about to make Brad a daddy -- I would have called the prediction an absurd fantasy." -By Robert Steinback -Miami/Herald

20051215

Government - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Prisons - Law - Arizona - "Bush backs down on proposed torture ban." ... "President Bush on Thursday abandoned his opposition to an anti-torture amendment by Sen. John McCain in the face of overwhelming support for the measure in Congress." ... "Bush backed down from a veto threat after being unable to muster support from one-third of either the House or Senate, even though his own Republican Party controls both chambers. The measure by McCain, R-Ariz., is attached to the annual defense spending bill that funds the war on terrorism." ... "The amendment says no one in U.S. government custody, whether prisoner of war or terrorist," shall be subject to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," regardless of where the prisoner is being held." -By John Diamond with contributions by David Jackson -USATODAY
US - World - Prisons -Florida - Georgia - "House Defies Bush and Backs McCain on Detainee Torture." ... "In an unusual bipartisan rebuke to the Bush administration, the House on Wednesday overwhelmingly endorsed Senator John McCain's measure to bar cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners in American custody anywhere in the world." ... "Although the vote was nonbinding, it put the Republican-controlled House on record in support of Mr. McCain's provision for the first time, at the very moment when the senator, a Republican, is at a crucial stage of tense negotiations with the White House, which strongly opposes his measure." ... "Representative C. W. Bill Young of Florida, head of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, was one of 121 Republicans who voted against Mr. McCain's language. One Democrat, Jim Marshall of Georgia, voted against it; 200 Democrats and one independent supported it." -By Eric Schmitt -NYTimes

20051214

Iraq - Prison - "Fatal Torture of Inmates Suspected: Security forces may have physically abused or starved two detainees, the head of an inquiry says. In Ramadi, a Sunni Arab candidate is slain." ... "Detainees told investigators that the two inmates were tortured or starved to death, but prison officials say the pair died of natural causes." ... "U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters Tuesday that in all, at least 120 prisoners had allegedly been abused by Iraqi security forces, more than previously disclosed by the government of Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari. As many as 18 may have died at a Baghdad detention center that was first identified last month in a Los Angeles Times report." -By Borzou Daragahi and Louise Roug with contributions by Richard Boudreaux -LAtimes

20051206

US - Germany - Afghanistan - Secret - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Prisons - Law - Politics - VA - "German citizen held in secret prison sues ex-CIA director." ... "A German citizen whom the CIA abducted from Macedonia and held in a secret prison in Afghanistan for five months sued former CIA Director George Tenet on Tuesday, saying he'd been tortured." ... "[Khaled] Al-Masri's lawsuit, filed by ACLU lawyers in Alexandria, Va. [Virginia], sheds light on the CIA's secret practice of "extraordinary renditions," using special teams to capture suspected terrorists and transport them to countries that practice torture or to one of the agency's reported secret prisons in Eastern Europe or Asia." ... "In the four years since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA has captured about 3,000 people, including some top al-Qaida leaders, according to a Washington Post report. Intelligence committees in Congress have been told that the CIA's inspector general is investigating possible "erroneous renditions."" ... "U.S. officials refuse to confirm or deny the existence of secret prisons." -By Frank Davies and Warren P. Strobel -MercuryNews
Government - Military -Intelligence - Prisons - Telecommunications - Politics - "Government gets 5 "F's," 12 "D's" in last 9/11 report." ... "The federal government received failing and mediocre grades Monday from the former Sept. 11 commission, whose members said in a final report that the Bush administration and Congress have balked at enacting numerous reforms that could save American lives and prevent another terrorist attack on U.S. soil." ... "The group also said there has been little progress in forcing federal agencies to share intelligence and terrorism information and sharply criticized government efforts to secure weapons of mass destruction or establish clear standards for the proper treatment of U.S. detainees." ... "The panel also sharply criticized Congress for failing to enable first responders to communicate easily by setting aside part of the broadcast spectrum for their use. A pending budget bill would open part of the spectrum for first responders in 2009, but the Sept. 11 panel said that date is "too distant given the urgency of the threat."" -By Dan Eggen-WashingtonPostvia -SeattleTimes.NWsource

20051205

US - World - Prison - Terrorism - Intelligence - Law - Arizona - "McCain won't concede on torture ban: Insists on language prohibiting cruel, inhumane treatment." ... "[Arizona Republican] Senator John McCain, a prisoner of war who was tortured in Vietnam, yesterday said he will refuse to yield on his demands that the White House agree with his proposed ban on the use of torture to extract information from suspected terrorists." ... "''I won't," he said on NBC's ''Meet the Press" when asked whether he would compromise with the Bush administration." ... "He is insisting on his language that no person in US custody should be subject to ''cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."" -By Jim Abrams -AP via -BostonGlobe

20051130

US - Iraq - Prison - Politics - "General: Americans Must Stop Iraqi Abusers." ... "The nation's top military man, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, said American troops in Iraq have a duty to intercede and stop abuse of prisoners by Iraqi security personnel." ... "When Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld contradicted Pace, the general stood firm." ... "Rumsfeld told the general he believed Pace meant to say the U.S. soldiers had to report the abuse, not stop it." ... "Pace stuck to his original statement." ... ""If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it," Pace told his civilian boss." -By William C. Mann -AP via -WashingtonPost
US - EU - Secret - Intelligence - Prisons - Terrorism - "U.S. to Respond to EU Questions on Prisons." ... "The European Union has formally requested answers from the Bush administration about reports of secret U.S.-run prisons for terrorism suspects in Europe, and the United States will reply "to the best of our ability," the State Department said Wednesday." ... "It would be illegal for the U.S. government to hold prisoners in isolation and difficult conditions in secret prisons in the United States. It has long been assumed that the CIA operates overseas sites to get around U.S. law and to keep terrorism suspects out of the jurisdiction of U.S. courts." -By Anne Gearan -AP via-WashingtonPost

20051123

Military - Terrorism - Prison - Florida - South Carolina - "Longtime US detainee indicted: Charges make no mention of 'dirty bomb' plot." ... "Jose Padilla, the American citizen held in a military prison for more than three years without charges filed against him, has been indicted for allegedly providing support to Al Qaeda and conspiring to attack US civilians overseas, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced yesterday." ... "The indictment of Padilla and four codefendants by a Miami [Florida] grand jury on Nov. 17 made no reference to his alleged involvement in a plot to detonate a radiological device -- a so-called dirty bomb -- in the United States, the government's original rationale for holding Padilla in a brig on a US Navy base in South Carolina." ... "But the indictment, which transfers Padilla from military to federal custody, removes him from judicial limbo, where he has languished since President Bush designated him an ''enemy combatant," stripping him of his right to a trial in a civilian court." -By Bryan Bender -Boston/Globe

20051118

US - Iraq - GOV - Business - North Carolina - Prison - "Ex-Convict Took Bribes in Iraq, U.S. Says." ... "A North Carolina man who was charged yesterday with accepting kickbacks and bribes as a comptroller and financial officer for the American occupation authority in Iraq was hired despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990's." ... "The job gave the man, Robert J. Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects." ... "Along with a web of other conspirators who have not yet been named, Mr. Stein and his wife received "bribes, kickbacks and gratuities amounting to at least $200,000 per month" to steer lucrative construction contracts to companies run by another American, Philip H. Bloom, an affidavit outlining the criminal complaint says." (1, 2) -By James Glanz -NYTimes

20051116

US - Iraq - Prisons - Military - "U.S. Troops Discover 173 Abused Detainees In Iraq Basement: Sunni Arab prisoners were allegedly tortured by Iraqi captors." ... "The same day that the [US] Senate passed a resolution barring cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in the war on terror, the Iraqi government said Tuesday that it has ordered an investigation into the alleged abuse of 173 detainees discovered by American troops over the weekend in the basement of an Interior Ministry building in the Baghdad suburb of Jadriya." ... "For many Iraqis, the revelation of the secret torture center brought back painful memories of the brutality of the Sunni-dominated Saddam Hussein regime, blamed for killing hundreds of thousands of Shiites and Kurds[.]" ... "American officials were quick to condemn the treatment of the prisoners with the American Embassy and U.S. military command calling the situation "totally unacceptable," agreeing with Iraqi officials that "mistreatment of detainees will not be tolerated."" -By Gil Kaufman -MTV.com /News

20051114

Samuel Alito - Pennsylvania - Prisons - Free Speech - Media -"Alito Dissent Resonates in Supreme Court Case." ... "Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. is having an impact on the Supreme Court even before the Senate takes up his nomination." ... "The justices agreed today to hear a Pennsylvania prison warden's appeal — based on dissent by Alito — that challenges a ruling that said that even the most disruptive and dangerous prison inmates are entitled to receive newspapers and magazines." ... "Alito sided with prison managers last year when he dissented from the ruling that said prisoners, even disruptive inmates who are held in special cells, have a 1st Amendment right to receive newspapers and magazines." -By David G. Savage -LAtimes

20051111

Bill Frist - Secret - Military - Prisons - Law - "Frist concerned more about leaks than secret prisons." ... "Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves." ... "Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is "not concerned about what goes on" behind the prison walls." -AP via -CNN

20051108

Karl Rove - Dick Cheney - Lewis Libby - Law - "White House staff begins ethics classes: 3,000 workers to attend mandatory briefings in wake of CIA leak case." ... "President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not among the first group, although he was expected to attend an ethics class later this week." ... "The ethics course comes after Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted on five counts of obstructing justice, perjury and lying in the two-year investigation into the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity." ... "If convicted, Libby, who resigned from his post in the White House, faces a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison. He has pleaded not guilty." -Reuters via -MSNBC

20051107

Texas- Louisiana - Death Penalty - "US death row escapee recaptured: Police in the United States have recaptured a convicted murderer, three days after he walked out of jail." ... "Death row inmate Charles Victor Thompson fooled at least four prison employees to flee a Texas prison." ... "He was captured on Sunday while using a public telephone in Shreveport in the neighbouring state of Louisiana."-BBC /News
US - World - Dick Cheney - Military - Intelligence - Politics- Law - Arizona - "Cheney Fights for Detainee Policy: As Pressure Mounts to Limit Handling Of Terror Suspects, He Holds Hard Line." ... "Over the past year, Vice President Cheney has waged an intense and largely unpublicized campaign to stop Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department from imposing more restrictive rules on the handling of terrorist suspects, according to defense, state, intelligence and congressional officials." ... "Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz. [Arizona]) that would ban torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern European democracies and other countries where key al Qaeda captives are being kept." (1, 2) -By Dana Priest and Robin Wright with contributions by Charles Babington and Josh White-WashingtonPost

20051104

EU - US - Poland - Romania - Military - Terrorism - Secrets - "EU Accepts Polish, Romanian Denials of Secret Jails (Update1)." ... "The European Union's executive agency said it is satisfied with Poland's and Romania's denials that the U.S. is running secret terrorist jails on their soil, saying there's no proof of human rights violations." ... "The Polish and Romanian governments rebutted reports in the Washington Post and Financial Times, citing U.S.-based Human Rights Watch, that the Central Intelligence Agency has operated covert interrogation centers in those countries." -By John Rega -Bloomberg

20051102

Dick Cheney - Secret - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - Prisons - "Bush adviser says policy forbids torture." ... "President Bush's directive banning the torture of terror suspects applies to all prisoners -even if held in a secret prison reportedly set up by the CIA for its most important al-Qaida captives, a senior administration official [National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley] said Wednesday." ... "Led by Vice President Dick Cheney, the Bush administration is floating a proposal that would allow the president to exempt covert agents outside the Defense Department from a Senate-approved ban on torturing detainees in U.S. custody or weakening the prohibition." -AP via -SeattlePI .NWsource
US - Afghanistan - Thailand - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Secret - Prisons - Law - Noteworthy - "CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons: Debate Is Growing Within Agency About Legality and Morality of Overseas System Set Up After 9/11." ... "The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement." ... "The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents." ... "The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions." ... "It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials." (1, 2, 3, 4) -By Dana Priest with contributions by Julie Tate -WashingtonPost

20051101

US - Afghanistan - Indonesia -Terrorism - Law - "Pentagon: Top al-Qaida operative escaped." ... "A man once considered a top al-Qaida operative escaped from a U.S.-run detention facility in Afghanistan and cannot testify against the soldier who allegedly mistreated him, a defense lawyer involved in a prison abuse case said Tuesday." ... "Omar al-Farouq was one of Osama bin Laden's top lieutenants in Southeast Asia until Indonesian authorities captured him in the summer of 2002 and turned him over to the United States." ... "A Pentagon official in Washington confirmed Tuesday evening that al-Farouq escaped from a U.S. detention facility in Bagram, Afghanistan, on July 10." -By Alicia A. Caldwell with contributions by Katherine Shrader and Robert Burns -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource

20051031

Lewis Libby - Dick Cheney - Political - Secrecy - "The legal case against I. Lewis Libby: how strong? What the judge allows the jury to hear will be critical to the outcome of the case, say legal analysts." ... "When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald began his investigation in December 2003, his instructions were to identify who leaked the name of a CIA agent to columnist Robert Novak and determine whether that action violated any secrecy laws." ... "Nearly two years later, the answer to that question appears to be that no secrecy laws were clearly and intentionally violated. But along the way to attempting to discover the truth about the original leak, Mr. Fitzgerald encountered a senior White House official who he says attempted to obstruct his investigation." ... "Now, with the prospect of a long-drawn-out, and politically charged trial in Washington, a new question emerges:" ... "Why would I. Lewis Libby, who resigned Friday as Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, risk prison to thwart a special counsel's investigation?" -By Warren Richey -CSMonitor

20051026

Uzbekistan - Law - "Concern over jailed Uzbek politician." ... "The leader of an Uzbek opposition party who was arrested over the weekend was visited by his lawyer and found to be naked and in an incoherent state, according to the lawyer and his family. His family said it feared the opposition leader had been drugged." ... "Sanjar Umarov, 49, a businessman and head of the opposition Sunshine Coalition, was held at a pretrial confinement center in Tashkent, the Uzbek capital, his lawyer, Vitaly Krasilovsky, said by telephone." ... "Umarov entered politics this year in Uzbekistan, an authoritarian state with a history of systematic use of torture, and had become one of President Islam Karimov's most public critics, calling for economic and political reform." -By C.J. Chivers -NYTimes via -IHT.com

20051024

US - Iraq - Niger - Military - People - "Cast of characters grows in CIA leak drama." ... "It began with a clumsy forgery, led the president to backtrack on his own State of the Union address, already has sent one person to jail and has ruined another's career as a covert operative." ... "Up until three years ago, Joe and Valerie Wilson looked like just another upscale couple on the Washington scene, juggling serious jobs while keeping up with 2-year-old twins. He was a former ambassador turned international business consultant. She was an analyst for a Boston-based energy company - a working soccer mom, in the view of one of her neighbors." ... "As it turns out, Valerie really was a clandestine CIA agent and an expert on weapons of mass destruction, exactly the threat that Bush held out as the primary justification for going to war in Iraq. And, as it turns out, Joe's experience as an African envoy also made him a player." ... "In a way, the whole Wilson saga can be traced back to Cheney and Bush. It was Cheney's interest in the alleged Iraq-Niger deal that led the CIA to dispatch Wilson to Africa. And it Bush's use of the debunked claim in his State of the Union address that led Wilson to publish his doubts." -By Nancy Benac -AP via -SeattlePI.NWsource

20051019

Tom DeLay - Texas- Political - Business - "Texas Court Issues Warrant for DeLay." ... "A Texas court Wednesday issued a warrant for Rep. Tom DeLay, ordering him to appear at the Fort Bend County jail for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges." ... "Two grand juries have charged DeLay and two political associates in an alleged scheme to violate state election law, by funneling corporate donations to candidates for the Texas Legislature. State law prohibits use of corporate donations to finance state campaigns, although the money can be used for administrative expenses." -By Suzanne Gamboa -AP via -WashingtonPost

20051018

Texas - Police -Gay - Civil Liberties - "Jurors in Texas Reject Prison Rape Lawsuit." ... "Jurors rejected a gay convict's federal lawsuit Tuesday, deciding that six prison officials did not violate his civil rights by ignoring his pleas for protection from inmate rapes, as he claimed." ... "Roderick Keith Johnson, 37, had sought unspecified damages against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials at the Allred Unit near Wichita Falls, where he was housed for 18 months for burglary. He argued that his constitutional right against cruel and unusual punishment was violated." -By Angela K. Brown -APvia -Guardian.co.uk

Sudan - Police - "Chaos Grows in Darfur Conflict as Militias Turn on Government." ... "The outlaws who rode into Geneina [Sudan] on camelback one recent afternoon represent the latest grim chapter in the desert war in western Sudan." ... "Janjaweed militias have focused their wrath on innocent villagers for most of the two and a half years of the conflict in the Darfur region. But on Sept. 18, in a scene that aid workers described as something out of a Hollywood western, the militiamen surrounded the police station along Sudan's border with Chad, roughed up the chief and freed several of their members from jail." ... "The fact that militias trained and armed by the government are now emboldened enough to turn their guns on the government is a sign of trouble. It was government support of the janjaweed at the outset that ignited the fighting in Darfur that killed tens of thousands of people and displaced two million villagers." (1, 2) -By Marc Lacey -NYTimes

20051017

Oregon- Parents - Drugs - "Student suspended for bringing vitamins to school in backpack." ... "Jessica Booth, a senior at Oregon City High School, is on suspension after school officials say she brought vitamins to school without prior notification." ... "Her mother says she thinks the school overreacted to Jessica's over-the-counter supplements, which she says her daughter needs for lactose intolerance." ... "Booth also claims school officials told her that the pills could have led to arrest and jail." ... "Jessica's mother, Michelle Booth, says she thinks the school overreacted to the vitamins, and that threats of arrest, jail time and the five-day suspension are unwarranted." -KATU.com

20051012

Pennsylvania - Louisiana - Michigan - Florida - Parents- People - "Report released on life sentences for kids." ... "There are 2,225 people serving life terms in prison without parole for crimes committed as children, most of them in a handful of states where judges don't have the discretion to impose lighter penalties." ... "Pennsylvania has the most such inmates (332), followed by Louisiana (317), Michigan (306) and Florida (273). All four states have laws making life without parole mandatory for certain crimes and don't allow judges to lighten sentences." -By Hope Yen -AP via -Miami/Herald

20051006

US - Afghanistan - Iraq - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Intelligence - "Senate, bucking White House, backs detainee protections." ... "In a sharp rebuke to the White House, the U.S. Senate agreed Wednesday to regulate the detention, interrogation and treatment of prisoners held by the U.S. military." ... "Over two dozen retired senior military officers - including Colin Powell, and John Shalikashvili, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - endorsed the amendment, which would ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" of anyone in U.S. custody. It would restrict troops to using interrogation techniques outlined in a new U.S. Army field manual but would not cover those used by the CIA." ... "Republicans and Democrats on Wednesday passionately debated the measure, which supporters said would clarify a jumble of conflicting standards and cast a spotlight on the treatment of detainees at U.S. prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba." -By Eric Schmitt with contributions by Carl Hulse -NYTimes via -IHT.com
US - Iraq - Military - Intelligence - Arizona - "Senate sets standards on detainees: Lawmakers defy Bush to overwhelmingly OK McCain bill in response to Abu Ghraib." ... "In a break with the White House, the Republican-controlled Senate overwhelmingly approved a measure Wednesday that would set standards for the military's treatment of detainees, a response to the [Iraq prison] Abu Ghraib scandal and other allegations that U.S. soldiers have abused prisoners." ... "Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. [Arizona], a victim of torture while a prisoner during the Vietnam War, won approval of the measure that would make interrogation techniques outlined in the Army Field Manual the standard for handling detainees in Defense Department custody and prohibit "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of U.S.-held prisoners." -By Richard Simon -LAtimes via -SFGate.com
US - Vietnam - Arizona - South Carolina -Military - Intelligence - "Senate adds ban on torture to bill." ... "The Senate delivered a rebuke to the Bush administration last night, adding language banning U.S. torture of military prisoners to a $440 billion military-spending bill in defiance of a White House threat to veto the whole bill if the anti-torture language were attached." ... "[Arizona Senator John] McCain, who was tortured by his North Vietnamese captors during the Vietnam War, cited a letter written to him recently by Army Capt. Ian Fishback asking Congress to do justice to military personnel." ... ""Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for," Fishback wrote the senator." ... "[South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsey] Graham, a former judge advocate in the Air National Guard, said: "We take this moral high ground to make sure that if our people fall into enemy hands, we'll have the moral force to say, 'You have got to treat them right.' If you don't practice what you preach, nobody listens."" -By Joseph L. Galloway and James Kuhnhenn -Knight Ridder via -SeattleTimes.NWsource
Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - "Senate Approves Detainee Treatment Rules: Senate Bill Would Impose Restrictions on Treatment of Prisoners." ... "The Senate faces a confrontation with the House over a $440 billion military spending bill that, despite White House opposition, would impose restrictions on the treatment of terrorism suspects." ... "Delivering a rare wartime slap at Pentagon authority and President Bush, the GOP-controlled Senate voted 90-9 on Wednesday to back an amendment that would prohibit the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against anyone in U.S. government custody, regardless of where they are held." ... "The House-approved version of it does not include the detainee provision. It is unclear how much support the measure has in the GOP-run House." (1, 2) -By Liz Sidoti -AP via -ABCNEWS.com
US - Iraq - Guantanamo Bay - Cuba - Military - Terrorism - Intelligence - "Senate supports setting interrogation limits: Amendment seeks rules on detainees." ... "The Senate defied the White House yesterday by voting to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody." ... "Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one Independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that US troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Dick Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure." -By Charles Babington and Shailagh Murray -WashingtonPost via -Boston/Globe

20051004

Tom DeLay - Texas - Business - Politics - "DeLay Is Indicted Again; Charges Are Graver: The former House majority leader faces money-laundering counts." ... "Six days after Rep. Tom DeLay's indictment on conspiracy charges, a new Texas grand jury issued another indictment Monday charging him with the far more serious crime of money-laundering — a first-degree felony that could bring a lengthy prison term." ... "Under the internal rules of the Republican Party, the conspiracy indictment had forced the Texas congressman to step down from his position as House majority leader. That charge, a fourth-degree felony punishable by a state prison term of two years, came after a wide-ranging probe into allegations that DeLay and his lieutenants had hijacked Texas elections by illegally funneling corporate money into the bank accounts of Republican state candidates." -By Scott Gold -LAtimes

20050928

Tom DeLay - Texas - Business - Politics - 2002 Election - CA - "House Majority Leader DeLay Indicted for Conspiracy (Update2)." ... "U.S. Representative Tom DeLay, the No. 2 Republican in the House, was indicted by a Texas grand jury on a charge of criminal conspiracy in connection with illegal corporate political donations." ... "DeLay, 58, who faces up to two years in prison, will temporarily step aside as House majority leader, he said in a statement. House Speaker Dennis Hastert said he will recommend that Representative David Dreier of California replace the Texas Republican as leader, the Associated Press reported." ... "The charge stems from an investigation into alleged use of illegal corporate contributions by DeLay's political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, in the 2002 races for the [Texas] state House of Representatives." -By Darrell Preston and Laura Litvan -Bloomberg

20050919

New York - - "Ex-Tyco execs get up to 25 yrs." ... "Dennis Kozlowski and Mark Swartz, former Tyco International Ltd. top executives who were found guilty of stealing more than $150 million from the company, were each sentenced on Monday to up to 25 years in prison." ... "The sentences, were handed down by Judge Michael Obus, who presided over the pair's grand larceny and conspiracy trial in [New York's] Manhattan Supreme Court. They were sentenced to between 8 1/3 years and 25 years." ... "The two were ordered on Monday to pay restitution to the company of around $134 million. Kozlowski was also fined $70 million and Swartz was fined $35 million by the state." -Reuters via -ABCNEWS.com

20050916

Nepal -