Hiding al-Nashiri’s Torture
Less than a month after the NYT first revealed the CIA had destroyed torture tapes, I suggested that Doug Jehl’s November 9, 2005 story may have been the precipitating factor that led the CIA to destroy the torture tapes.
In other words, Helgerson and his staff reviewed the torture tapes sometime between early 2003 and late 2005, quite possibly close to the time of that May 2004 White House briefing.
Which is rather significant, since that earlier period (2003 to 2004) coincides with the period when Helgerson’s office was also investigating the CIA’s interrogation program. Here’s a Doug Jehl story on the report that was published (will coinkydinks never cease?!?!?!) on November 9, 2005, within days of the torture tape destruction and apparently one day after the CIA issued a statement denying they torture (though the statement doesn’t appear in their collection of public statements from the period).
A classified report issued last year by the Central Intelligence Agency’s inspector general warned that interrogation procedures approved by the C.I.A. after the Sept. 11 attacks might violate some provisions of the international Convention Against Torture, current and former intelligence officials say.
[snip]
The report, by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, did not conclude that the techniques constituted torture, which is also prohibited under American law, the officials said. But Mr. Helgerson did find, the officials said, that the techniques appeared to constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the convention.
The agency said in a written statement in March that "all approved interrogation techniques, both past and present, are lawful and do not constitute torture." It reaffirmed that statement on Tuesday, but would not comment on any classified report issued by Mr. Helgerson. The statement in March did not specifically address techniques that could be labeled cruel, inhuman or degrading, and which are not explicitly prohibited in American law.
The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the C.I.A. against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world. They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the C.I.A. since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.
In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability, the officials said. They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to C.I.A. interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.
I’ve seen the report’s publication date as either April or May 2004–but in any case, at almost exactly the same time CIA briefed Addington, Gonzales, and Bellinger on the torture tapes. Which makes Helgerson’s claim that he "reviewed the tapes at issue" during that period particularly interesting. Helgerson’s report–which focuses on the treatment of a number of named detainees–may have relied on those torture tapes to form the judgment that the CIA was engaged in cruel and inhuman treatment. In fact, it’s even possible that the CIA briefing in May 2004 pertained not just to Abu Ghraib (which was, after all, a DOD operation, not a CIA one), but also to the fact that the CIA IG had just declared in a written report that the tactics used (and presumably shown in the tapes) amounted to illegal treatment of detainees.
From Hosenball and Isikoff’s preview of Monday’s IG Report, it sounds like I was right.
Nashiri’s interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him. "The purpose was to scare him into giving [information] up," said one of the sources. A federal law banning the use of torture expressly forbids threatening a detainee with "imminent death."
According to the sources, the report also says that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general’s report alludes to more than one mock execution.
Before leaving office, Bush administration officials confirmed that Nashiri was one of three CIA detainees subjected to waterboarding. They also acknowledged that Nashiri was one of two al Qaeda detainees whose detentions and interrogations were documented at length in CIA videotapes. But senior officials of the agency’s undercover operations branch, the National Clandestine Service, ordered that the tapes be destroyed, an action which has been under investigation for over a year by a federal prosecutor.
Not only did al-Nashiri’s torturers laugh in his face, the wielded a drill and a gun to make him falsely confess that al Qaeda had nukes.
I can see why they couldn’t let tapes of that lie on a shelf.
If the tapes are gone, Helgerson is going to be a very very interesting witness.
By the way EW, here is my favorite excerpt from the Newsweek story:
The bold is mine. Gee, you think threatening a prisoner with a power drill might make us look bad? Ya think it might make people around the world think, “huh, where I have heard of that before… oh, I know… Iraq!”. Yep, we are just like the guys who were so frickin’ evil we had to invade their country to bring them sunshine and light, rainbows and ponies and democracy. Because, once you get to be a democracy, you get to threaten prisoners with murder by power drill carte blanche. Nice gig, if you can get it.
And the best part is, when the shit hits the fan, your buddy the CIA spokesman will tell everyone to move along, ’cause the accountability has “already been done”.
It must be a Friday night in August, ’cause the news dump is particularly rancid. I wonder if the release date for the IG report was timed for President Bipartisan’s vacation on purpose. Wouldn’t want to have anyone suggest he should make a statement that might hint his friends across the aisle have ever put a toe out of line. Nope they are squeaky clean, acting selflessly in the best interests of the country. Not to mention Black and Decker.
Nah. THis thing is coming out Monday sometime. You don’t deliberately Friday night news dump something that you know is coming out for real on Monday.
Either that’s snark and my heat addled brain is slow on the uptake or you’re serious in which case that implies something even more horrific, obscene, and scandalous is coming down the pike on Monday.
Golly, I can’t wait. /s
Don’t know that it’ll be more horrific. But there will be attention paid to what’s in this.
At least here.
mr. ew is defending his Masters thesis on Monday. I told him we’re putting the (hopefully) party on hold for the IG report.
Good luck to Mr. EW. Presumably he’ll be done by beer thirty.
Yup. But I’m guessing I’ll get 5 days worth of work around about beer thirty.
The scheduling is bad all around. Not much way around it. Monday was about the last possible day, and the weekend will be necessary.
We’ll have a bit of an extended beer thirty next weekend.
Wish the Mr. luck from us!
Geez EW, that’s hard core, the Mr. has earned his party : )
I spent most of this week helping one of our own grad students wrap up his written thesis to make his deadline today (he defended a few weeks ago). These guys deserve a little bash-a-roo after all that ; )
Put up a working thread and go play, while the rest of us hold down the fort for a few hours…
Please wish Mr. EW well! And your party priorities are quite in line.
Or maybe to help with flagging poll numbers say similiar to increasing the terrorist threat level at a critical political juncture.
Damn that is some cynicism, and I only started paying attention to politics a few years ago. But in that short span I’ve come to realize most politicians and their sychophants will do anything they can get away with and try to hide, lie, or obfuscate about anything that anyone digs up.
Keep digging EW.
And of course two of the detainees that are not currently charged are Abu Zubaydah and al-Nashiri (though Nashiri was briefly).
And one of the loudest spokespeople for keeping Gitmo open indefinitely is Kirk Lippold, the commander of the Cole (who was probably partly responsible for either covering up his superiors who put the ship in danger or for the bombing).
I wonder who taught who?
Newsweek is reporting on leaks re: the IG report:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/213188 (CIA Conducted Mock Executions on Folks Like Nashiri)
I’m sorry.
But can you read the f-ing post, which is about what you’ve just linked?
I’m telling ya, we gots to do something about Freep. The lack of patrol and control is disturbing.
And did Mr. EW agree to this?? Gonna have to have a word with him. Maybe Gunner can assist….
I’m actually not a Freeper. I’m a human rights lawyer in Idaho. Sorry for intruding. Bye.
Don’t take it personally madelson, sometimes we misunderstand each other. It happens. Welcome : ) Now that you’ve survived the first time, I hope to see you chime in more often…
No need to apologize, and there was no reason to believe that you were. As for my part, I was totally pricking another one of our commenters, and I started that earlier in another post and was literally jonesing for an opportunity to keep the needle in him. No offense intended to you. Listen, lawyers are appreciated here, and especially human rights practitioners. We can use that voice and it is important; stick around. We are really quite cuddly once you get to know us…..
cuddly as a giant saguaro.
Heh, yeah, and thanks for dropping by with that little morsel. I’m going back to my Dangerfield act – ”I’m telling ya I get no respect; no respect”.
I was hoping for a drop of the OIG report so cleared some time. No OIG report, alas, so i’ll pluck your spines and see you monday; with any luck.
Seconding what phred said @20.
rmadelson, your inputs and presence are most welcome here and are certain to be appreciated.
DW
The same sort of thing happened to me years ago when I commented on a post by Emptywheel and Kagro X about Monica Goodling and why she was holding over until she reached the five-year mark for federal employment. They both jumped down my throat as if I was the biggest idiot on earth. It was highly offensive as I doubt either of them has worked for the federal government as an attorney and would have any idea as to the significance of the five-year mark. Anyway, I forgave Emptywheel a long time ago as I am sure you will also. No one is perfect…
Sorry, I just read your post and didn’t click on the Isokoff link. I saw the article at Newsweek’s site and didn’t make the connection. Long time lurker, first real post. I’ll stay away from now on and donate my money elsewhere.
Aw, come on now, if you are a longtime lurker, then you know we are a little loose around here and let rip a little, especially on Friday nights. As Rodney Dangerfield would say “It’s a tough crowd I tell ya”. Stick around and contribute to the discussion.
you are one to talk Bmaz. You went off on faster the other day. Totally out of line.
“Between 2003 and 2004 Helgerson’s office was investigating the CIA’s interrogation program…”
Michael Chertoff was not yet named head of DHS, but he WAS providing input on torture “legalities for the CIA,according to this article.Remember, he co-authored the Patriot Act.
CHERTOFF OKs TORTURE
Bizarre Choice for Homeland Czar Deep in Scandal(February,2005)
By James P. Tucker
Controversy continues to swirl around Michael Chertoff, President George W. Bush�s pick to replace Tom Ridge as chief of the Homeland Security Department. As the Senate began considering Chertoff�s nomination on Feb. 2, news broke that Chertoff had been implicated in advising the CIA on the legality of various means of torturing detainees held in U.S. prison camps in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.
But as per its usual stand in the face of criticism, the White House officially denied that Chertoff did anything wrong or that he even had any part in issuing legal advice on torture techniques.
However, according to The New York Times, one current federal official and two former senior officials say Chertoff told the CIA that certain forms of torture were entirely permissible under the currently existing U.S. anti-torture statute.
Chertoff allegedly issued his advice in his capacity as head of the Justice Department�s criminal division following inquiries from CIA employees who wanted legal counsel as to how far they could go in physically manhandling terror suspects who were being interrogated.
Evidently the conflict in the stories between Chertoff and his accusers arises because the Justice Department does not want to be seen as having issued any standards that could be construed as unconditional approval for the use of torture.
It is alleged that Chertoff left open the possibility of other forms of mistreatment, depending on the condition of the suspect.
OK WITH ME IF OK WITH BYBEE
Chertoff told the CIA that it could use forms of mistreatment if they were in accordance with an August 2002 memorandum from Jay S. Bybee of the Office of Legal Counsel to Presidential Counsel Alberto Gonzales.
Bybee�s memo said that harsh interrogation techniques qualified as torture only if they were enough to cause organ failure or imminent death. This is the same memo that has plagued Gonzales, Bush�s pick to replace Attorney General John Ashcroft.
It has been argued that this memo set the legal justification for the CIA and the Department of Defense to use brutal, inhuman methods on terror suspects as documented in reports by the FBI, the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department.
Legal experts say that the memo, along with Chertoff�s recommendations, violates specific international conventions and the anti-torture statute passed by Congress in 1994, Title 18, Part 1, Chapter 113(c), Sec. 2340(a) and 2340(b) which provides for 20 years in prison or even death for torture.
Chertoff has denied that he made any specific recommendations on torture to the CIA or the Pentagon.__________________2/02/2005 AFP
Not Copyrighted. Readers can reprint and are free to redistribute – as long as full credit is given to American Free Press – 645 Pennsylvania Avenue SE, Suite 100 Washington, D.C. 20003
rmadelson
No one is accusing you of being a Freeper. We have a regular commenter named Freepatriot. Bit of a nut, but a valued member of the community.
I’m sorry if I was short. It is a frustrating hazard of this job to have people pitch stories that I covered several posts ago. But I have never had someone link a story that was the central issue of a post. From my perspective it comes off as someone saying “I’m not actually reading what you write, but here’s some stuff elsewhere.” I don’t think that’s what you’re saying, but it is frustrating.
So whether it’s here or elsewhere, I do hope you at least roll-over links to make sure you’re not pitching links central to the post you’re linking in.
And sorry for any confusion about our Freep, who is quite different from what you probably know as Freepers.
Why Was Rove Editing Intelligence Statements In 2003?
Tonight on Hardball, John Podesta, CEO and President of the Center for American Progress and former Clinton chief of staff, debated Ed Rollins, former Assistant to President Ronald Reagan and Deputy Chief of Staff for Political and Governmental Affairs (a position not all too different from that of Karl Rove’s). Podesta made an excellent point:
PODESTA: This morning, again, in the New York Times, we learned that Karl Rove in the summer of 2003 was editing George Tenet’s statement about the faulty intelligence and the faulty statement that the President made in his State of the Union address to kind of rush us into the war in Iraq. Now Ed served as the political director of the White House. I’m fairly confident that he never edited any statements by Bill Casey at the CIA.
ROLLINS: None whatsoever.
Recall that in 2003 Rove was not yet deputy chief of staff nor was he formally in charge of coordinating with the National Security Council as he is now. He was the senior political director at the White House. Why was he editing intelligence documents?
http://thinkprogress.org/2005/…..tin…___________________
One can only wonder what other intelligence documents and info that Rove was privvy to regarding the CIA and its activities?
Well, for one, that seems to have been a head fake leak, not backed by the notes from those meetings. So you might begin by being skeptical about anonymous claims floated when Rove was at risk for being indicted.
I guess DiIulio really did mean everything.
article
Suskind is a real pleasure to read.Just superb.
I had never seen that article before,and I learned a great deal from it.
Thanks ,prostratedragon.
I had heard the term Mayberry Machiavellians,but I never knew the origin,and, now I do.
hey .. those who engage in “pricking” ?? what would ya call ‘em ??
[yeah .. me too .. :)]
and c’mon madelson .. stick with us here .. as a lurker .. you’re surely aware the members of the FDL bar ass’n could always use another member ..
you’re in idaho eh ?? i’m sorry ’bout that …
I’m a preeping fricker
I now have beer mist spewed all over my monitor. Thnx so much. I really needed that.
So, just where did Freep run to last time he ducked?
O/T–Do you think he can catch a clue? Will Rahm allow it? How would Daschle know?
Obama May Give Up Effort to Reach Health Deal With Republicans
By Edwin Chen
Aug. 21 (Bloomberg) — “President Barack Obama is likely next month to end Democratic efforts to work with Republicans on health-care legislation and push for a party-line vote if the stalemate in the U.S. Senate persists, a person close to the White House said.”
. . .
“In a separate interview, former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said Obama is losing patience with negotiations between three Democrats and three Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, the only congressional panel seeking a bipartisan consensus on a plan to remake the nation’s health-care system.”
More.
The Newsweek story says that the torture produced “usable intelligence.”
But Michael Hayden (who was on a National Press Club panel with Chertoff, Joseph Finder and Jack Devine earlier this week about outsourcing intel i.e. Blackwater) said the IG report will show that the torture did not produce actionable intelligence but did help in terms of understanding how al-Qaeda operated.
I suppose usable intelligence is subject to interpretation.
I retract this comment. I had read the information in this report but after listening to the audio from the press club discussion I did not hear that Hayden said specifically that torture did not prevent attacks (which I am sure it probably didn’t) but just didn’t want to put words in Hayden’s mouth that he didn’t say.
Yeah, usable is pretty slippery. A subject could say “I’ve never been to Afghanistan”. Well that is “usable to compare to discernible outside information to tell if he is being truthful or to gauge the truthfulness of other subjects that have or may make statements on the question. So the statement is “used” but that use didn’t amount to diddly shit. The goal, and the whole premise of undertaking the loathsome torture program was to produce actionable information that leads to substantive and significant results. From the sounds of it, they got little other than corroborative or contradictory bits and pieces of a background nature that may have led to other questions and lines of inquiry with the clear conclusion that none of it can be said to have been particularly substantive or significant for major actions or operations.
In my book that is pretty much a complete failure. Irrespective of your correction, the conclusion is the same. The argument over the value of a dedicated program of human torture authorized and promoted by the highest officials of the US government is going to come down to bickering over what the meaning of “usable” is. Pathetic.
well said bmaz! You are so right. It would be nice if you could say that onCNN and MSNBC to counter Dick Cheney and his daughter who I am sure will be given quite a bit of air time next wee.
By the way, I found the video from the press club discussion with Hayden if you’re interested. The question about whether the IG report indicates if torture produced “usable” intelligence was asked by The Post’s Joby Warrick. It begins at 1:06:36
The link to the video is here
I was going to write something up briefly tomorrow about it.
I think I’ve already posted on the bulk of what it said about usability–which was in the OLC memos. The IG report said it could not be proven to have prevented an attack (I suspect it further said that’s bc a lot of the “attacks” they responded to were bad intell), and that that intell collected by other means from lower level detainees was just as important as what we got from KSM or anyone else.
Keep in mind, though, that the memos DIck Cheney sought will be coming out. They’ll talk about how much intell we got from KSM using torture, which the torture apologiss will then use to claim torture was necessary to get that intell, which of course doesn’t follow and which KSM would refute himself.
You did indeed. I just went back and read your post on it.
Drive by – I guess usable in the sense of using it to gin up a war, using it to justify more torture, using it to get cover under the requisites of the Yoo and Bybee memos (i.e., that in order to justify torture you had to have someone who was high value al-Qaeda with operational info, so you really needed to torture out of SOMEONE the info that the guy you were torturing was, after all, high value al-Qaeda with operational info – I esp like how that worked with al-Libi, al-Faruq and Zubaydah) Usable in the sense that it gave you more paragraphs and pages so you could use it to claim quantity on your reports.
I guess the questions that someone needs to pose to Yoo would include why, under his posits of what is allowed (up to organ failure, oh, and “beyond” as well, as long as the “intent” was to question and not to engage in torture murder) re: torture, why the drill wasn’t used.
Mock executions, torture deaths, and yet the only ones who go to prison are a few soldiers from Abu Ghraib and even they don’t get charged with things that are are too “sensitive” (like sodomy with an object) even if there are pictures.
Hayden sat there in his uniform and allowed those soldiers to be scapegoated to protect him and his pals. And now he and Chertoff want to cash in on their torture entitlements – they degraded the nation and every institution they touched, now they want to be paid for it.
Off topic, the NYT reports that “the military for the first time is notifying the International Committee of the Red Cross of the identities of militants who were being held in secret at a camp in Iraq and another in Afghanistan…”
One last thing before closing out the night. Hayden says that he expects a 2007 torture memo written by Bradbury, which Hayden relied upon, will also be part of the documents released Monday.
OK. I lied. One more note. Here’s the Washington Post’s just published story on the IG report and the two paragraphs that stuck out for me:
So… that would be “beyond the four corners” of the OLC memos, then? Call for Mr. Holder on line 5!…
…Oh wait, I forgot: Eric can’t come to the phone, Mrs. Torrance.
Guess we’ll see.
That stuck out for me because it seems like the source is trying to lay all of the blame on the interrogators/contractors (perhaps to support why there should be a probe limited in scope to the “few bad apples”) and not talking about the Bush administration officials who created the policy and also need to be investigated.
Well that kind of puts the lie to the concept of respondeat superior for officials who set up and ran the program, no? What you want to bet that all those cables and communications where Langley and the “Principals” supposed exercised minute control to insure integrity and performance within guidelines just cannot be found now?
I can’t even begin to imagine how this is going to be spun.
Still wondering how they are going to explain that torture predated the Aug. 02 torture memo.
“Bad apples,” shouldn’t we expect? Total bullshit, but isn’t that what they’ll have to say?
They will haul out the Article II + AUMF inherent authority baloney. Quite frankly, I guess there is an argument that if the program was legal after the memos, it was legal before the memos. OLC memos do not create new law and no new statutes were promulgated, so if it was legal after OLC, it was arguably legal before. Problem is, it wasn’t legal before, during or after OLC, and some self serving ginned up crappy, unsupported, conclusory bunk by Bradbury, Bybee and Yoo doesn’t change that in the least. A high school history student with a modem could find clear examples of the US legal view of waterboarding, physical beating etc. – we consider it criminal and prosecute it, even in war settings.
Well, of course the consistent thing to do would be to go after those men and women on the line who went beyond the (deeply illegal) authorizations, and also go after the policymakers who gave authorizations that they knew or should have known were deeply illegal. But I guess it’s shaping up more like another Abu Ghraib on the first part of that, and I guess I have given up hoping for the second part.
Kinda crappy outlook all ’round, huh?
So… putting this together with the latest Blackwater revelations… if the men and women on the line who went beyond the (deeply illegal) authorizations were Blackwater employees, how (if at all) does their liability exposure differ from that of similarly situated US military, or intelligence agency, persons?
Jeez. I am so sorry. I know I said I was calling it a night.
But this is interesting. So the 2007 memo that Hayden said will likely be released that Bradbury wrote could be some pretty big news in and of itself.
This is the memo that Spencer Ackerman broke the story about back in April.
Maybe the news that this 2007 memo was part of the documents slated for release Monday isn’t news and I just didn’t, er, get the memo.
Has anyone else dropped by the White House to express their concern.
file:///Users/terry/Desktop/Flickr%20Photo%20Download_%20June%2011%20Witness%20057.html Shows you how it’s done.
Rendition>
Torture>
Murder>
Treason
BTW – one thing I bet is out there, but will not be touched on much in the IG report, is what we had other countries do. The mock executions in the next room (although there are a lot of black site detainees unaccounted for with the less than 20 shipped to GITMO) are one thing, but what did we have other countries do to relatives and what did we have other countries do to witnesses and “high value” detainees we handed over? That’s not going to be touched on much and getting rid of al-libi helped seal that one for good – DOJ can be so proud of themselves.
The Higazy case shows how willing we were in even a US setting, where the detainee had counsel, to trot out threats against family member in other countries. And then there was the witness who was telling CIA what they didn’t want to hear – that Zubaydah wasn’t actually al-Qaeda. They disappeared Noor al-Deen pretty permanently. A teenager that they are suprisingly confident was 19, not younger and who had nothing to do with 9/11, permanently disappeared so that nothing inconvenient gets put in the record.
Re: Michael Chertoff
From 2001 to 2003, he headed the criminal division of the Department of Justice, leading the prosecution’s case against terrorist suspect Zacarias Moussaoui…
At the DOJ, he also came under fire as one of the chief architects of the Bush administration’s legal strategies in the War on Terror[citation needed], particularly regarding the detainment of thousands of Middle Eastern immigrants[citation needed].9.
Secretary of Homeland Security
Bush nominated Chertoff to the post in January 2005 citing his experience with post-9/11 terror legislation. He was unanimously approved for the position by the United States Senate on February 15, 2005.[7]In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina most of the criticism was directed toward the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but DHS was criticized as well for its lack of preparation.[8]
A report issued by the Congressional Research Service, the non-partisan research division of the Library of Congress, said that the unchecked delegation of powers to Chertoff was unprecedented:
“After a review of federal law, primarily through electronic database searches and consultations with various CRS experts, we were unable to locate a waiver provision identical to that of §102 of H.R. 418—i.e., a provision that contains ‘notwithstanding language,’ provides a secretary of an executive agency the authority to waive all laws such secretary determines necessary, and directs the secretary to waive such laws.”[13]Wiki________________________________________________
NOTE: HOW does Chertoff “figure” in the scenario ,regarding the years in question?
He was a coauthor of the Patriot Act,and according to an article I posted upthread,he was advising CIA agents about torture when he was with DOJ,prior to the 2005 appointment by Bush,to head DHS.
As Mary said, NOW Chertoff and Hayden are in “business” together.
I have heard little about ANY role Chertoff may have played in these behind the scenes discussions at CIA from 2001-2004.
Seems he had may have had quite a bit of input.
First-ever post (and totally off-topic):
The quality of the postings here is fantastic, but I nonetheless miss looseheadprop from the Plame/Libby era.
Is he/she no longer posting or instead posting under another name?
leveymg’s Journal
Blackwater Director Let 9/11 Hijackers into US, then Killed, Tortured the Remaining Witnesses
Posted by leveymg in General Discussion
Fri Aug 21st 2009, 02:55 PM
We learn today from NYT reporters James Risen and Mark Mazzetti that Blackwater (Xe) started receiving CIA contracts in early 2002 to provide support and security to CIA missions in Afghanistan. See, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/us/21int…
Blackwater Vice Chairman, Cofer Black, former Director of the CIA Counter-Terrorism Center from 1999-2002, again appears at the center of controversial CIA programs to assassinate, kidnap, and torture targeted figures. See, THE CIA OFFICER WHO OVERSAW TORTURE: Cofer Black , December 23, 2007, http://journals.democraticunderground.com/…
After Black’s CIA retirement in May, 2002, he was appointed with Ambassadorial rank and diplomatic immunity to head the State Department’s counter-terrorism programs. The NC-based,Blackwater company was then handed a no-bid contract to manage the Predator program in 2004. Black became Vice-Chairman of Blackwater International several months later.
Black was an early advocate for using drones to carry out targeted killings. (Boston Globe 02/15/2002)
The CIA is permitted to operate the lethal Predator under presidential authority promulgated after the Sept. 11 attacks. Shortly after the attacks, Bush approved a “presidential finding” that allowed the CIA to write a set of highly classified rules describing which individuals could be killed by CIA officers. Such killings were defined as self-defense in a global war against al Qaeda terrorists.
The rules have been vetted by the White House, CIA and State Department lawyers. They allow CIA counterterrorism officials in the field to decide much more quickly when to fire, according to former intelligence officials involved in developing the rules.
(Excerpt,leveymg,democratic underground)
After trolling (no pun intended) through the thread, I still am a bit mystified why you Marcy, got so bent over the reference, by madelson, to a link, central to the post. Seems more than just a bit intolerant, and perhaps arrogant, that only your post could have information germane to the topic at hand. To link a post central to the topic seems to be something beneficial. Hard to understand why that would be discouraged. I thought this was an open-minded forum. There seems to be quite a bit of OT discussion that is NOT being disdained. A bit disingenuous to squelch on topic contributions.
Which is not to say that you don’t do yeoman’s work for us all. I appreciate your prolific posts, and really don’t know how you find the time in a day to produce what you do.
I’m just saying.
Dunno, but it might be because Marcy had the exact same link in her post already?
I don’t think she was perturbed that someone brought in a link that was “central to the post” but that someone brought in a link that she had used in the post which says the commenter didn’t even bother to check the links first.
Point taken. But still a bit harsh. I think madelson’s gone though. Too bad.
Pretty interesting that Chertoff and Hayden get out there on August 20 to do their preemptive damage control,just days before the imminent release, this coming Monday, of the long awaited IG reports.
Here’s a snippet from the National Press Club Wire about their joint appearance:
Two recent top government officials defended the use of contractors in
conducting intelligence work at an Aug. 20 joint Newsmaker and Book &
Author event.
Former CIA Director Michael Hayden and former Homeland Security
Secretary Michael Chertoff explained that it is often necessary for
agencies to bring in outside talent to fill a need for a particular
skill.
They appeared at the Press Club on a day when the intelligence
contractor issue topped the news. The New York Times and The Washington
Post ran front-page stories about the CIA hiring the firm Blackwater USA
in 2004 to help manage an effort to kill Al-Qaeda leaders.
Hayden wouldn’t comment specifically on the 2004 operation, which
occurred prior to his 2006-09 stint at the CIA. But during his tenure,
he reduced the number of contractors working at the CIA by 15 percent.
Contractors currently make up approximately 30 percent of the spy
agency’s workforce.
Sylvia Smith,8/21/09.NPC WIRE,”Chertoff & Hayden defend use of Contractors”.