New York Times
Thursday 03 November 2005
Ultimately the whole truth will come out and historians will have their say, and Americans will look in the mirror and be ashamed.
Abraham Lincoln spoke of the "better angels" of our nature. George W. Bush will have none of that. He's set his sights much, much lower.
The latest story from the Dante-esque depths of this administration was front-page news in The Washington Post yesterday. The reporter, Dana Priest, gave us the best glimpse yet of the extent of the secret network of prisons in which the CIA has been hiding and interrogating terror suspects. The network includes a facility at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.
"The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism," wrote Ms. Priest. "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."
The individuals held in these prisons have been deprived of all rights. They don't even have the basic minimum safeguards of prisoners of war. If they are being tortured or otherwise abused, there is no way for the outside world to know about it. If some mistake has been made and they are, in fact, innocent of wrongdoing - too bad.
As Ms. Priest wrote, "Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long."
This is the border along which democracy bleeds into tyranny.
Some of the prisoners being held by the CIA are no doubt murderous individuals who, given the opportunity, would do tremendous harm. There are others, however, whose links to terrorist activities are dubious at best, and perhaps nonexistent.
The CIA's original plan was to hide and interrogate maybe two or three dozen top leaders of Al Qaeda who were directly involved in the Sept. 11 attacks or were believed to pose an imminent threat. It turned out that many more people were corralled by the CIA for one reason or another. Their terror ties and intelligence value were less certain. But they were thrown into the secret prisons, nevertheless.
A number of current and former officials told The Washington Post that "the original standard for consigning suspects to the invisible universe was lowered or ignored."
The secret CIA prisons are just one link in the long chain of abominations that the Bush administration has unrolled in its so-called fight against terrorism. Rendition, the outsourcing of torture to places like Egypt, Jordan and Syria, is another. And then there are the thousands upon thousands of detainees being held at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. There is little, if any, legal oversight of these detainees, or effective monitoring of the conditions in which they are being held.
Terrible instances of torture and other forms of abuse of detainees have come to light. The Pentagon has listed the deaths of at least 27 prisoners in American custody as confirmed or suspected criminal homicides.
None of this has given the administration pause. It continues to go out of its way to block a legislative effort by Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican, to ban the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of any prisoner in US custody.
I had a conversation yesterday with Michael Posner, executive director of Human Rights First, about the secret CIA prisons. "We're a nation founded on laws and rules that say you treat people humanely," he said, "and among the safeguards is that people in detention should be formally recognized; they should have access, at a minimum, to the Red Cross; and somebody should be accountable for their treatment.
"What we've done is essentially to throw away the rule book and say that there are some people who are beyond the law, beyond scrutiny, and that the people doing the detentions and interrogations are totally unaccountable. It's a secret process that almost inevitably leads to abuse."
Worse stories are still to come - stories of murder, torture and abuse. We'll watch them unfold the way people watch the aftermath of terrible accidents. And then we'll ask, "How could this have happened?"
The Prison Puzzle
The New York Times | Editorial
Thursday 03 November 2005
It's maddening. Why does the Bush administration keep forcing policies on the United States military that endanger Americans wearing the nation's uniform - policies that the military does not want, that do not work and that violate standards upheld by the civilized world for decades?
When the Bush administration rewrote the rules for dealing with prisoners after 9/11, needlessly scrapping the Geneva Conventions and American law, it ignored the objections of lawyers for the armed services. Now, heedless of the lessons of Abu Ghraib, the civilians are once again running over the people in uniform. Tim Golden and Eric Schmitt reported yesterday in The Times that the administration is blocking the Pentagon from adopting the language of the Geneva Conventions to set rules for handling prisoners in the so-called war on terror.
Senior military lawyers want these standards, as do some Defense and State Department officials outside the inner circle. They say the abuse and torture of prisoners has reduced America's standing with its allies and taken away its moral high ground with the rest of the world. They also know that it endangers any American soldiers who are captured.
The rigid ideologues blocking this reform say the Geneva Conventions banning inhumane treatment are too vague. Which part of no murder, torture, mutilation, cruelty or humiliation do they not understand? The restrictions are a problem only if you want to do such abhorrent things and pretend they are legal. That is why the Bush administration tossed out the rules after 9/11.
It's a terrifying thing when the people who devote their lives to protecting our national security feel that the civilians who oversee their operations are out of control. Dana Priest reports in The Washington Post that even the Central Intelligence Agency's clandestine operators are getting nervous about the network of secret prisons they have around the world - including, of all places, at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe.
We're not naïve enough to believe that if the CIA nabs a Qaeda operative who knows where a ticking bomb is hidden, that terrorist will emerge un-bruised from his interrogation. Extraordinary circumstances are different from general policies that allow foot soldiers and even innocent bystanders to be swept up in messy, uncontrolled and probably fruitless detentions. Ms. Priest reports that of the more than 100 prisoners sent by the CIA to its "black site" camps, only 30 are considered major terrorism suspects, and some have presumably been kept so long that their information is out of date. The rest have limited intelligence value, according to The Post, and many of them have been subjected to the odious United States practice of shipping prisoners to countries like Egypt, Jordan and Morocco and pretending that they won't be tortured.
Like so many of the most distressing stories these days - the outing of Valerie Wilson and questions about the intelligence on Iraq also come to mind - this one circles right back to Vice President Dick Cheney's office.
Mr. Cheney, a prime mover behind the attempts to legalize torture, is now leading a back-room fight to block a measure passed by the Senate, 90 to 9, that would impose international standards and American laws on the treatment of prisoners. Mr. Cheney wants a different version, one that would make the CIA's camps legal, although still hidden, and authorize the use of torture by intelligence agents. Mr. Bush is threatening to veto the entire military budget over this issue.
When his right-hand man, Lewis Libby, resigned after being indicted on charges relating to team Cheney's counterattack against Joseph Wilson, Mr. Cheney replaced him with David Addington, who helped draft the infamous legalized-torture memo of 2002. Mr. Addington is now blocking or weakening proposed changes to the prison policies. The Times said he had berated a Pentagon aide who had briefed him and Mr. Libby recently on the draft of the new military standards for handling prisoners. (The indictment of Mr. Libby said he had done the same thing to a CIA briefer in 2003 when agency officials questioned the intelligence on Iraq.)
The Times reports that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, favor changing the detention policies. So we can only conclude that President Bush has decided to expend the minimal clout remaining to his beleaguered administration in a fight to put the full faith and credit of the United States behind the concept of torture. After all, the sign on Dick Cheney's door says he is the vice president.
Policies on Terrorism Suspects Come Under Fire
By Dana Priest and Josh White
The Washington Post
Thursday 03 November 2005
Democrats say CIA's covert prisons hurt US image; UN Official on Torture to conduct inquiry.
The Bush administration's policies for holding and detaining suspected terrorists came under sharp scrutiny and criticism yesterday after disclosure that the CIA had set up covert prisons in several Eastern European democracies and other countries.
The UN special rapporteur on torture said he would seek more information about the covert prisons, referred to in classified documents as "black sites." Congressional Democrats and human rights groups warned that the secret system would damage the US image overseas.
House Democrats said they plan to introduce a motion as early as today to endorse language in the defense spending package written by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), which would bar cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners in US custody, including those in CIA hands. The motion would instruct House conferees to accept McCain's precise measure.
Rep. John P. Murtha (Pa.), ranking Democrat on the Appropriations defense subcommittee, urged the United States to adopt a doctrine of "no torture, no excuses," and said Congress needs to speak on the issue. "The United States of America and the values we reflect abhor human rights violators and uphold human rights," Murtha said in a statement.
McCain's amendment was endorsed last month by the Senate, 90 to 9, over the objections of the White House, which said it would restrict the president's ability to protect the country. The House Democrats said they already have 15 GOP supporters for their motion, and Republicans have told the White House they expect it to pass, an Appropriations Committee spokesman said.
The CIA and the White House are seeking language that would exempt prisoners held by the agency, which would include the 30 or so al Qaeda figures that sources said are being held in the black sites. Neither the White House nor the CIA will officially comment on the secret prison system, but intelligence officials have said in interviews that the arrangement is essential to gaining information about possible terrorist activities.
The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the CIA's covert detention system has at times established facilities in eight countries, including, among others, Thailand, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Those facilities are now closed. The Post did not publish the names of Eastern European countries involved in the program, at the request of senior US officials. They argued that doing so could damage counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere, and could lead to retaliation by terrorists.
The governments of Russia and Bulgaria issued statements saying no such facility existed in their countries, Reuters reported. Thailand also denied hosting such a facility.
Yesterday, administration officials were buffeted by questions about the black sites.
"The fact that they are secret, assuming there are such sites, does not mean" torture would be tolerated there, national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley told reporters.
"Some people say that the test of your principles [is] what you do when no one's looking," he said. "And the president has insisted that whether it is in the public or it is in the private, the same principles will apply and the same principles will be respected. And to the extent people do not meet up, measure up to those principles, there will be accountability and responsibility."
State Department spokesman Sean McCormack also declined to talk specifically about the sites, saying, "These are difficult issues. And we have ongoing discussions on a variety of different fronts with countries around the world about these issues, because the threat from terrorism . . . is a common threat to democracies and peace-loving nations."
Human rights groups said the al Qaeda prisoners should be brought to trial, rather than held indefinitely in covert prisons in which they have no recognized legal rights. "We think these people should be prosecuted and punished fully for the murders of thousands of people," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "What is really clear is that this is a dead-end policy and they are close to the dead end."
John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has been pushing for more than a year to conduct a review of the CIA's interrogation and detention practices. Yesterday, he lashed out at the administration for not being more forthcoming.
"They have made it clear that anyone who suggests that oversight is needed should be labeled as unpatriotic," he said.
Manfred Nowak, the UN special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, said he had heard allegations of secret detention facilities sponsored by the United States, but had not heard of any in Eastern Europe before yesterday.
"Every secret place of detention is usually a higher risk for ill treatment, that's the danger of secrecy," Nowak said in a telephone interview from Austria, adding that he wants to pursue access to all US detention facilities outside its territory.
Nowak and his predecessor have been trying to gain access to the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay since it opened in early 2002.
Last week, the Bush administration invited UN experts to Guantanamo but offered a one-day visit with no ability to talk to detainees. Nowak said he would not accept because a "guided tour" would not allow him to probe allegations of abuse.
"I have many allegations that detainees have been abused while in Guantanamo," he said. "If I didn't have plenty of allegations, I wouldn't bother the United States government with trying to visit."
A senior US official, speaking anonymously yesterday, said the administration is unlikely to budge: "The offer they have is the final offer. We are not prepared to open Guantanamo up to just anyone who wants to come in and talk to detainees."
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