CIA Abuses story in WSJ, Mike Portnoy moonlighting as Arab terrorist Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri?
LIBERATOR
to dupe the citizenry, Christina Aguilera who is his mother (?)
scripted the whole scam?
http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-AZ959_CIA4_G_20090824170115.jpg
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125111559865553571.html
AUGUST 25, 2009.Special Prosecutor to Probe CIA Handling of Terror
Suspects
New Details Emerge On Interrogations; Agency Morale Low.
The Central Intelligence Agency logo in the lobby of the agency's
headquarters in Langley, Va.
.WASHINGTON -- The Justice Department on Monday appointed a special
prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA mistreatment of terror suspects,
a move representing a sharp break from the president's early
determination to move beyond Bush-era controversies.
Hundreds of documents detailing harsh interrogation techniques
including water-boarding were made public.
CIA Faulted for Conduct at Prisons
Attorney General Eric Holder named longtime Connecticut prosecutor
John Durham to lead the investigation.
Mr. Durham is already examining the destruction of 92 videotapes that
recorded certain Central Intelligence Agency interrogations of
detainees, part of an investigation launched in early 2008 under the
Bush administration. He will now also be probing whether CIA officers
or contractors broke any laws with their use of harsh tactics.
President Barack Obama will also establish an elite unit to
interrogate high-value detainees, creating a team of trained
interrogators drawn from law enforcement, intelligence and military
agencies.
The announcements came as the Justice Department released a heavily
redacted report from the CIA's inspector general, as well as several
hundred pages of additional documents on the CIA's interrogation
program.
The 2004 report detailed fresh instances of alleged abuse. It says one
interrogator threatened to kill the children of one 9/11 suspect,
while another threatened a detainee's mother. Other interrogators held
a power drill to a prisoner's head, while others temporarily choked
off the flow of blood to the brain before another detainee was
revived.
"As a result of my analysis of all of this material, I have concluded
that the information...warrants opening a preliminary review into
whether federal laws were violated in connection with the
interrogation of specific detainees at overseas locations," Mr. Holder
said in a statement. He added that the preliminary review doesn't mean
charges will necessarily be filed.
"It is clear to me that this review is the only responsible course of
action for me to take," Mr. Holder said.
CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a memo to agency employees Monday
that the allegations in the report are "in many ways an old story." He
said past Justice Department probes of the material were exhaustive.
Mr. Panetta said the CIA had forwarded allegations of abuse to the
Justice Department so the department could decide whether to
prosecute. "They worked carefully and thoroughly, sometimes taking
years to decide if prosecution was warranted or not," Mr. Panetta
wrote, in reference to the criminal prosecutors from the Justice
Department.
At the agency, the decision to open an investigation has already "had
a very dramatic impact" on morale, said former CIA Director Michael
Hayden, based on communications with his former agency.
In a careful balancing act, Mr. Panetta's memo aimed to support agency
officers without supporting the interrogation program, which he
opposed. "Whether this was the only way to obtain that information
will remain a legitimate area of dispute, with Americans holding a
range of views on the methods used," Mr. Panetta said.
CIA and Justice Department lawyers met prior to the decision, and Mr.
Panetta spoke with Mr. Holder Monday, said one official familiar with
the matter.
The official described the CIA's position as "the president wants us
to look forward not backward. A backwards-looking inquiry is
inconsistent with that vision." The official added that CIA officials
made that view "abundantly clear."
CIA officials have stated repeatedly that while some interrogators may
have been out of bounds the program produced useful intelligence.
However the report raises significant questions as to whether some of
the most controversial, approved interrogation techniques,
particularly waterboarding, were actually effective in eliciting
useful intelligence, and whether they were applied in a legal manner.
Mr. Durham, a career federal prosecutor in Connecticut since 1982, is
highly regarded in the Justice Department. In 1999, Clinton
administration Attorney General Janet Reno appointed him to lead a
special team that investigated alleged criminal misconduct by Federal
Bureau of Investigation agents and other law-enforcement corruption in
Boston.
Unless the probe unearths new evidence, findings contrary to earlier
decisions by the Justice Department will likely come under attack by
lawyers defending the subjects of the probe as well as by critics of
the Obama administration.
In assembling the report, which reviewed more than 38,000 documents
and interviewed more than 100 individuals, Inspector General John
Helgerson's team also traveled to the secret detention sites and
reviewed the 92 interrogation videotapes that were later destroyed.
In a statement Monday, Mr. Helgerson, who retired from the agency
earlier this year, said his team's work on interrogation issues
"helped lead to clarification of the law, to strengthened management
controls and operational procedures, and to more judicious use of
interrogation techniques, including the abandonment of waterboarding."
He said he was disappointed that the agency withheld all of the
report's recommendations—which were redacted by the CIA.
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Getty Images
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at a conference in Washington.
.Even before the announcement of the new inquiry, the White House
sought to distance itself from the politically fraught decision. "The
president thinks that Eric Holder, who he appointed as a very
independent attorney general, should make those decisions," said White
House spokesman Bill Burton.
The inquiry contains previously unreported interrogation techniques
that investigators determined were either "unauthorized" or
"undocumented."
Among the more sensational incidents occurred in July 2002, when an
interrogator, identified only as an "operation officer," used "both
hands on the detainee's neck [and] manipulated his fingers to restrict
the detainee's carotid artery." The report said the interrogator, who
used the technique three times in a row on a single shackled detainee,
would continue holding the neck until the detainee "would nod and
start to pass out," at which point the detainee was shaken awake.
Waterboarding, or simulated drowning, which many equate with torture,
was employed in a manner differently from what had been authorized,
the report found. An interrogator continuously applied large volumes
of water to a cloth that covered the detainee's mouth and nose instead
of applying a small amount of water in a controlled manner.
The report describes the threat of the use of a handgun and power
drill on the alleged architect of U.S.S. Cole bombing, Abd al-Rahim al-
Nashiri. The debriefer took an unloaded semiautomatic handgun and
simulated a bullet being chambered twice near Mr. Nashiri's head.
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Associated Press
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
.That debriefer also helped stage a "mock execution," in which a gun
was fired outside an interrogation room and a guard, dressed up to
look like a hooded detainee, posed motionless on the ground when the
real detainee passed to "appear as if he had been shot to death."
Mr. Nashiri was also held in "potentially injurious stress positions"
that hadn't been specifically authorized that could have dislocated
his arms from his shoulders. Interrogators also used "a stiff brush
that was intended to induce pain" on Mr. Nashiri, and they stood on
his shackles, which resulted in cuts and bruises on his ankles.
Other "unauthorized" techniques included a detainee who was "left in a
cold room, shackled and naked, until he demonstrated cooperation" and
cases of "water dousing," where detainees lay on plastic sheets while
water was poured over them for 10 to 15 minutes at a time.
The report found that overall, the interrogation program used by the
CIA enabled the agency to capture terrorists and warn of plots planned
against the U.S. and around the world. But the inspector general said
it was far more difficult to determine whether the "enhanced
interrogation techniques" were effective and gives conflicting
evidence as to their usefulness in eliciting information.
Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri
.For example, the inquiry said it couldn't say for certain if the
waterboarding of alleged al Qaeda commander Abu Zubaydah 83 times had
led to increased cooperation. On the other hand, the treatment of Mr.
Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003, was viewed as
having been far more effective.
The report questions whether these repeated waterboardings were
outside the legal guidance provided by the Justice Department—a
determination that could open the interrogators to prosecution under
Mr. Holder's review.
Mr. Helgerson said Monday that "the very large number of applications
to which some detainees were subjected led to the inescapable
conclusion that the agency was abusing this technique."
New revelations are also included in other, previously undisclosed
documents released late Monday, including memos between the Justice
Department and CIA dating to June and July 2004.
They show then-attorney general John Ashcroft trying to get George
Tenet, who was the CIA director, to request changes in the CIA
inspector general's final investigative report on harsh tactics. Mr.
Ashcroft, according to a memo from one of his deputies, wanted the CIA
to "clarify ambiguities or correct mistaken characterizations"
regarding the attorney general's own actions and those of his agency.
The memos show Mr. Tenet passed on the request, but that the CIA's
inspector general quickly rejected it. The inspector general did
promise to forward a Justice Department memo on the requested changes
to the House and Senate intelligence committees.