Did Jay Bybee Accidentally Admit that CIA Experimented on Abu Zubaydah with Sleep Deprivation?
Pages 100-102 of the Jay Bybee Transcript are worth reading closely, not least for the way Jay Bybee tries to shift the focus of discussion on torture from “severe physical or mental pain or suffering” to “prolonged mental harm” to avoid the obvious fact that CIA and DOJ approved extended sleep deprivation without having any clue whether it amounted to torture.
But I’m more interested in the retroactive edit on page 102, which seems to admit that CIA had already subjected Abu Zubaydah to 11 days of sleep deprivation by the time Jay Bybee signed the OLC memos on August 1, 2002. Here’s what Bybee originally said:
The CIA did not indicate that they intended to keep Abu Zubaydah awake for 11 days. They said this is what we have done. Here is the best literature on this.
In notes reflecting Bybee’s requested changes, he asked that “They said this is what we have done” be changed to “They said this is what we know.”
Bybee goes onto make a similar comment (though this one he didn’t try to correct). He repeatedly refers to the CIA’s studies.
Nadler: And if you deprive someone of sleep for a lengthy period of time, could you not be causing severe physical pain, too, without prolonged mental harm?
Bybee: We didn’t have any evidence of that from what the CIA told us, and that was based on their studies.
Nadler: What the CIA told us?
Bybee: Not just based on their studies. I’m sorry, based on the literature that they had surveyed.
But both Jason Leopold and I have pointed to reasons to believe they already had subjected Abu Zubaydah to 11 days of sleep deprivation. In other words, there is evidence to suggest that the CIA did, in fact, say, “this is what we have done,” and that they had done their own studies … with the guy whose sleep deprivation they were trying to get approved.
Oops! Jay Bybee may have accidentally told the truth!
I never respected his ethics.
Now I’m not thinking much of his talent, either.
Gee, that would mean the folks who did that to AZ were operating outside of DoJ guidelines at the time they did it. Isn’t that just the sort of folks that Obama said he would actually prosecute?
Bybee should have had those folks arrested on the spot. Instead, he weasels a way to allow that conduct after the fact.
Boxturtle (We were awfully interested in Yugoslav war crimes, perhaps they could return the favor?
On 116 and following, Nadler gets Bybee to admit that AZ’s “preexisting cognitive impairment” would have affected his assumptions that AZ had no preexisting mental conditions.
I wrote about this issue here.
Oh jeez. Bybee is all confused because Abu Zubaydah’s real name is on the court filing. Hello??
Yeah, wasn’t that nice? Who is this Zeyn Hussein dude I ordered up to be tortured?
Just wanted to capture this bit, because it’s one of my favorites:
Nadler gets Bybee to all but say if Mitchell and Jessen knowingly gamed AZ’s psychological eval, then they could’t rely on the memos.
Keep in mind that Bybee/Yoo supporters like Rotunda are saying NO ONE can rely on the memos anyway – that they are clearly and on their face not reliance memos.
Just a little something I think gets lost.
It’ll be interesting to see if anyone flat out asks Bybee about that in the transcripts – whether he was or was not issuing a reliance memo.
In any event – and while I think the “CIA studies” slip is significant for what Bybee did or didn’t know about whether or not CIA was telling him the truth or telling him everything – let’s look back at what was or was not reasonable for Bybee and Yoo to do with respect to their memos.
On a question that involves ultimate medical findings, no lawyer in their right mind would issue an opinion – a frickin reliance opinion at that – based on the assertion by another lawyer like Rizzo that he or his legal guys looked at literature and decided that it was ok.
Sorry – that just does not give you any kind of factual basis for your opinion whatsoever. You need a medical affidavit at a minimum. Where is it? It’s not like CIA didn’t have doctors and psychologists involved in and cleared into their programs. So where is the doctor, psychiatrist, psychologist, etc. putting down in writing, with their name, under penalty of perjury, the fact assertions that are needed for the memo and its legal conclusions?
There are recognized experts in the field of torture (like Red Cross and victim treatment facilities) that you *might* be able to look to (but of course they wouldn’t be cleared in on the torture regime so you’d have to back into things with them). In general, though, if they are giving a memo with legal conclusions re: torture based on factual assertions of severe physcial and mental pain or prolonged damage and suffering etc. – you need someone with qualifications to give you factual assertions and medical conclusions for you to use for your legal conclusions.
Those can’t come from another lawyer telling you he/she(I’m almost ready to include *it* these days) “looked at” literature, without even any kind of survey of what the dispositive literature would be and what the lawyer’s qualifications were and especially without the literature being based on your fact patterns.
Completely off topic to that point, but I’m wondering if anyone asked Bybee about the other things we know were done (drugging, kidnap under threat of violence, threats to family, anal assault, threats of rape) as part of standard procedures, the “Preliminaries”
And then there is the situation of the military tribunals and Congress and the American public being told, during the Abu Ghraib trials, that the things being done in those pictures were not authorized and were just a few rogue soldiers – – more pointedly, the situation that Bybee, as an officer of the court, had direct and specific knowledge that the military tribunals were being lied to and that the soldiers involved were being deprived of exculpatory evidence and he did NOTHING. He and the whole crew and flotilla of DOJ, CIA, DoD and WH lawyers who had direct and specific knowledge of fraud being perpetrated on the tribunals and of exculpatory evidence not turned over – they did nothing.
And then there is the situation where Bybee had to have begun to come by additional information as to things like the status of Zubaydah (Dan Coleman wasn’t all that close mouthed) and the Preliminaries and the nature and extent of the torture exceeding even his repulsive categorizations – he knows damn well that at some point he had a duty to revise his advice, even if he had left OLC at that point. He had a duty to provide a memo or a letter to the file or something to reflect the impact of the reality and facts as they were unfolding on his advice that had been based on fantasy facts.
I think that the Physicians for Human Rights’ Campaign Against Torture is looking into this question in some detail. Their website advertises a report on this subject that is about to appear (their link was dead when I checked just now.)
Bob in AZ
that’s the report by PHR on human experimentation that came out last month.
Oops– thanks for the correction.
I think there’s more coming out as a follow-up.
Bob in AZ
What PHR has to say is freaking irrelevant. It is not about the doctors, this issue is about the lawyers. They either did or did not acquire and include appropriate and germane medical backup for the conclusions they were drawing and advice and guidance they were giving. In this case, they absolutely did not. What PHR has to say simply does not matter for this issue.
There is more here than meets your eye.
What if persons, perhaps unknown to us, conspired to concoct such germaine medical backup? That would have required physicians, rather than lawyers, no?
You are too quick to dismiss out of hand.
Bob in AZ
Whether they did or not is really somewhat irrelevant. The question in relation to the OPR inquiry is, and was, solely as to the lawyers. The lawyers either either were aware of such medical backup and disregarded it or intentionally did not seek it. Either way, they violated the standard of conduct for creating such legal opinions (at least that I have ever seen in my life). There will be no further inquiry into that because Margolis, Holder and Obama have said so. I take their word for that.
Now it is an interesting question in its own right as to what was or was not out their in terms of medical opinion, but the germane issue as to the OPR report and process really involves the lawyers. I am not too quick at all in dismissing this, I have thought through it fairly deeply. You are viewing this through a different lens, and a much more unfocused one, than I am (or that Mary is, which is where this discussion started). We are talking about the work product of the lawyers, not what some doctor, somewhere, may or may not have done.
You are right in that I was forgetting to focus on the scope of Durham’s inquiry. Within the narrow confines of that scope, Durham can only do so much. However, I am guessing that Durham’s report will not be a whitewash.
Bob in AZ
It is a hole that cannot be filled and therefore is just ignored. It will never be addressed.
I dunno about that.
Bob in AZ
So, what is the remedy for such material misrepresentation and error?
A sternly worded letter!
Boxturtle (Is this a contest? What do I win?)
An all expenses paid 100 year vacation at Gitmo.
I think I covered that here.
“So, what is the remedy for such material misrepresentation and error?”
That would depend. Are you asking in the context of a legal “system” based upon the rule of law, or whatever “it” is that we confront, today?
Bybee is an “architect”, however shoddy his “work”, however menial his role, of the new edifice …
“Looking forward”.
No “remedies” are necessary … merely order and … calm.
DW
thought I would share the comments AZ’s attorney, Brent Mickum, gave me this morning on the Bybee interview.
“Everything I know about our government, everything I know about the CIA, Department of Defense and the DOJ, tells me they cannot be trusted,” Mickum said. “They simply do not tell the truth. When they are caught in a lie they change their story. We do not have a judicial system that will allow us to take a hard look at what been done and we have a Congress that has been asleep at the wheel.”
Mickum added that Bybee’s revelations are not at all surprising.
“Judge Bybee has made clear in his testimony that there were techniques employed that were not approved. I have known that for years,” Mickum said. “What was done to my client was vastly worse than what was approved in the [Bybee] memo. But I can’t talk to you about that because the government hamstrings us by abusing the classification system and prevents me from tell you exactly what was done to [Zubaydah]. My client was tortured before [Bybee’s] memo came out. My client was interrogated in ways that were not approved of by OLC and interrogated in ways that exceeded the OLC memo. I believe my client was tortured months and months before this [August 2002] memorandum ever came out. They knew he was tortured and they set about creating a record to make it appear he had not been tortured.”
Heh, not shockingly, I agree with that 100%.
I knew you would!
“…we do not have a judicial system that will allow us to take a hard look at what has been done …”
“Looking Forward” requires a self-blinded judicial system, led carefully around by a complicit Executive, that a comatose and equally complicit Congress not be disturbed in its slumber.
The question remains; how completely is the legal system, and especially its judicial portion … corrupted?
The clamorous silence of the “profession”, generally, at this time of clear and present Constitutional crisis is … telling.
Thank you, Jason, for sharing the words of one member of the profession who is saying as much as he legally is able. What is alluded is sufficient.
For those capable of humane and rational thought. (Especially attorneys)
DW
What’s Nadler’s next step?
Netroots then summer vacation
It’s clear, btw, that they did some kind of earlier interview w/Bybee (presumably with Elliot Mincburg), which Bybee’s lawyer references on p128.
Starting on PDF 150, Hank Johnson discusses the sudden imposition of a deadline for the Bybee memos.
Jay Bybee on OLC as guardian of powers of the Presidency on PDF 159ff.
It wasn’t Mitchell and Jessen who gamed the eval, thought they may have been the direct purveyors of the lies. I think it’s important to note that it was the CIA, institutionally, and at the direction of the executive branch.
The same problem arises in the Texas complaint against Mitchell. Mitchell certainly deserves sanctions and imprisonment, but the complaint makes him (as the complaint against Maj Leso makes that individual) the people responsible for the entire torture program. There’s the danger of creating a “bad apple” scenario. In the Texas complaint, they have Mitchell approaching the CIA with his ideas. Actually, it was the CIA that first approached Mitchell, as related in the SASC report.
Bybee is all about CYA. And yeah, too bad for him he slipped, and too bad for him he didn’t get the kind of blank redaction he’s used to.
Gotcha.
BTW – when I say, “You need a medical affidavit at a minimum” I’m not talking about some pie in the sky perfect world thing. I’m talking about what you would need at a minimum for you to proceed to legal conclusions based on the necessary factual assertions and medical conclusions. It’s what any competent lawyer or body, like a court, would find requisite.
How much of this was ordered by Bush, per Ron Suskind?
In other torture news, the ACLU says Judge Hellerstein issued a ruling saying the CIA can continue to suppress information about torture tapes and memos.
Here’s the ruling:
http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/AKH_071510.pdf
From page 14 of that Hellerstein ruling:
(My Bold)
thanks for excerpting that MadDog. This adds to AZ’s attorney’s comment: “What was done to my client was vastly worse than what was approved in the [Bybee] memo.”
How can that be? Will that ruling be appealed?
We are truly in Kafka territory now.
Bob in AZ
& prev
It’s confusing bc there are overlapping things going on. I think PHR and other medical groups mental health professional groups etc. are looking at the totality of the involvement of physicians and psychologists and there may (I’m not optimistic these days, but it’s not my field so I’ll defer to Jeff and others) be reprucussions from that.
I was going off on a bit of a tangent involving Bybee and the actual drafting of his OLC memos, since I haven’t read the transcript but I have read the memos and I get aggravated at the huge amounts of things that don’t get addressed when members of congress and the media etc. go into that. My points were primarily the ones that should have been within the OPR mandate and yet were either in redaction or never addressed by OPR- even though they recommended referral.
For that aspect, the memos are supported by what they claim to be supported by and there is no affidavit or medical summary referenced by the memos or relied upon by them. Instead, the memos speak to literature references that OLC says within its memos that CIA gave to OLC as the support for the actions. That’s why I say – from the standpoing of analyzing Bybee and what he did or didn’t do with respect to the memos, he should have been grilled to char over WTH he was using as his factual basis in his damned memos.
As best I can tell, OPR didn’t go there and I don’t know if Nadler or others will have in the transcript, but I’m guessing not. Hopeing so, guessing not.
All the “was it good advice” stuff is something I’ve never been supportive of from an investigation or reprucussions standard. BUT – what I have been supportive of are the things that line up as flat out violations of professional standards, obstruction of justice, etc. The failure to get any medical personnel to provide the factual examination and medical conclusions that were necessary to the legal conclusions is a pretty clear cut violation.
Sitting on exculpatory evidence with respect to all the many cases – not just the Abu Ghraib soldiers but the many other cases in the works – is a pretty clear cut violation.
As Rotunda even admitted in his “defense” of Bybee and Yoo, if they knew about any other aspects of the torture regime and left them out of the memos, that is a clear cut violation (and on that, Comey’s emails nail Bradbury and Gonzales as AG, they absolutely knew about “the Preliminaries” and he makes that very clear – but they ommitted them).
It’s very frustrating to watch all the clear cut things that never get mentioned. For me, it’s a lot like when I finally found a copy of the Gonzales Jan 2002 memo. I’d heard for months guys on the news talking about how it said that the Geneva Conventions where “quaint” and outmoded. Well, that didn’t get me all that bent out of shape. But when I read the damned memo – geezelouise! It flat out said we are committing war crimes under the US War Crimes Act and other administrations are likely to come after us for those war crimes UNLESS we make up this unlawful enemy combatant out and get olc to paper over for us.
I mean – how the HELL do they pull out the “quaint” Geneva Conventions language and make that what it was all about when it has really eye-popping discussions of the Executive branch involvement in war crimes as defined under the War Crimes Act! I couldn’t believe how mis-reported that was. It’s a similar feeling for me watching the discussions of the very limited OPR investigation that doesn’t even bother to ask clear cut questions that were within its scope, much less all the crap that was outside its scope – – or the Durham limited investigation – – or these “hearings” etc.
Questions that tie to flat out violations are just glossed over in favor of things where you can back and forth about whether or not a memo was “well researched” or “well reasoned.” That’s all very interesting in the abstract, but will always be hard to nail someone on, while the things that are screaming “I’m a nail, get a hammer” are ignored by the “proper” investigative authorities. It’s like the continuing silence over KSM’s children. All the dogs that don’t bark.
That is the thing. There either are no inquiries or, alternatively, in the rare instances where there is inquiry, it is so segregated and compartmentalized that it is intentionally ineffective. It is maddening. Even where there is the ability to connect the dots, the game is rigged so that it cannot be done in an effective forum. In spite of all that has been classified and hidden, there is more than enough to damn the lot but for the determination to never do so. I have to admit, I do not currently know how to overcome that.
Love this sentence. Reading about this devolving situation is depressing, but at least Mary can still make us laugh.
It kind of begs the question why Obama went out of his way to say his oath of office twice to get it right, if following the spirit of the Constitution was not so important to him in the end.
as I am so fond of saying….more kafka than kafka.
WTF!?
While I too don’t much like Judge Hellerstein’s ruling, from his viewpoint it seems prior Supreme Court and Appeals Court rulings tie his hands.
And they apparently reference and defer to legislatively-enacted statutes that provide the Director of the CIA (and DNI) total authority to determine what are “sources and methods” and then to keep them classified, even if such “sources and methods” include torture, and are patently illegal under both US and International law.
Our Executive, Legislative, and Judicial institutions are all determined to bury their heads in the sand.
The answer to that one is the Keith Case. There was a little affidavit there, too, where Gov claimed that what it was doing was a national security secret – but the unconstitutionality and illegality of it trumped.
Prior rulings do not tie a judge’s hands where illegal conduct has occurred. In this case, failure to prosecute and investigate crimes, simply because someone was provided with deep cover, and/or spying for the United States, simply make the United States complicit in those crimes, both under International Law, and, frankly, under our own domestic laws. Judges can make all sorts of rulings but those rulings have no legal basis when they are capricious, and simply seek to hide wrong-doers from being prosecuted under the law because a judge agrees with the government policies and positions, irregardless of the actual wording of the laws and/or recognized, legally ratified international treaty obligations. But, as a few others have already pointed out, a ruling like this simply confirms that there is an ugly cancer growing in and about our legal system. It has little to do with fair applications of any respected legal principles.
So, how do we retain an effective ability to petition for redress if they classify the grievances so no one can talk about them?
You know, the Executive branch does not have power of attainder and the Constitution prohibits Congress from giving the Executive such power. So Hellerstein is saying – eh, yeah, but they can exercise that power anyway, then just classify it.
The lack of civic courage and the deference to the DIst Court’s DOJ overlords is really disturbing.
Well said. Totally agree. You raise an incredibly important question. I just don’t know what the answer is.
Mickum, AZ’s attorney, told me earlier today that we know AZ was waterboarded and we know the Bush administration claimed that waterboarding was legal but he is prohibited from discussing AZ’s version of his waterboarding because the DOJ said the info is classified.
the point being that he can’t figure it out either. And the Dist Court Judge in the case, Roberts, is just unwilling to deal with it.
I haven’t sat down and mapped through the arguments, but the ones I have always expected to be made and haven’t seen are the attainder argument and the Keith case argument re: classification authority and unconstitutional acts – but making the Keith Case argument requires knowing a bit more about the case and the affidavits filed by the AG than jumps out in a headnotes search.
I even twisted someone’s arm who was going to have some face time with Chemerinsky (actually – he was hugely nice, no arm twisting involved) to ask about the attainder aspect (and he didn’t shoot it down although he did note that it has primarily been used in a more individualized application -but as the facts have since evolved on the Presidential orders involved in the things being done, they were fairly individualized).
Off to deliver meds for my horse – my blood pressure is glad that EW is the one reading Bybee.
How can the government classify its own illegal behavior so that it is not admissible in a Federal court? What legal basis is there for such a ruling by a judge under historical US legal precedent? Oh, I see, you get some numbskull federal judge to declare that such behavior is legal and, hey, preston, it is!?
The Republic has seen better days…
I think there is another possible (and I think likely) explanation for Bybee’s “slip ups”. I think he saw CIA studies of sleep deprivation. Studies that involved experimentation on human subjects, not necessarily detainees. I think they more likely involved “volunteer” subjects. I use the quote marks because these people may have been CIA recruits or people who didn’t have full knowledge of what they were volunteering for. There were also likely secret (and/or secretly funded) studies by “unaffiliated” researchers.
They probably tested SERE trainees. But we know they also tested AZ. Other prisoners, too? Open up the records for Camp No, and we might find out. Another way of saying, let’s see what OTS at CIA was up to… all of it on interrogations. There should be open hearings on this. Call it Church Committee, Part II.
To further comment on an EW comment from one of her earlier Bybee posts today:
I had a different reaction to Bybee’s effort at correction.
My take was that Bybee explicitly wanted to distance himself from any involvement regarding his memos and some other detainee’s or detainees’ treatments other than Abu Zubaydah.
As if he, Bybee, knew some really bad, illegal, and not authorized by OLC stuff had happened to some other detainee(s), and that he, Bybee, was most desperate not to be criminally linked to it.
Yes, this is my take, too. I wish his interviewers had been more insistent on this point. There was a lot of “IDKs” by Bybee, and some incredulity by the House questioners. But otherwise, Bybee got off, though I don’t think he expected they’d publish the transcript showing exactly what he’d want changed, but probably thought any transcript that surfaced would only be the “corrected” version. I imagine that made Judge Bybee squirm in his seat when he saw that.
While only 1/3 of the way through Bybee’s transcript, I’ve already come to the conclusion that the HJC folks were far too busy asking technical detail-level questions, and unbelievably, never got around to asking the most important questions.
Questions such as:
“How in the fookin’ world could you not call these acts torture?”
Questions such as:
“If pulling one’s fingernails out with a pliers or placing lit splinters of bamboo under one’s fingernails has been considered torture for hundreds of years, and no one argues that it causes pain of the severity approaching death, then how in the fookin’ world could you use that standard of severity as a threshold for torture?”
I could go on. *g*
ooopps. delete comment
Another takeaway question that arise in my mind is that if HJC interviewed Bybee under the circumstances described in this statement from Bybee Interview Documents 1-4 (76 page PDF):
Does this mean that it is also likely that the HJC also recently conducted similar interviews with John Yoo, Jack Goldsmith, and Stephen Bradbury?
And if so, when will the HJC release those transcripts?
And if EW returns to this post, any idea from your HJC sources?
Oh this is great MadDog. Will update my story and link back to you.
Ta!
And if you do, please correct my typo of “publicy” to read “publicly” *g*
corrected!
I have no clue, but Jason reports yes and they are expected for September release.
Wonder what the heck Conyers is talking about when he says “the interview is in furtherance of the committee’s interest in oversight of and of potential legislation regarding the Office of Legal Counsel…”
They still don’t even have someone to head that office.
Also, have you seen the April 27th letter Conyers refers to when he says he and others disagree with Mahoney’s “characterizations”? Looking for that in the other batches of materials.
I’m wondering if Mahoney’s letter with those “characterizations” is the totally blacked out 1st page of Bybee Interview Documents 1-4 (76 page PDF).
And on the potential OLC legislation, I wonder if he’s referring to the oft-introduced “OLC Reporting Act” which hasn’t yet made to the finish line, and which the OLC itself back in November 2008 decided was unconstitutional (6 page PDF).
I think you’re right. I can’t find in any of the other batches of documents. Hoping someone in the committee can clarify that tomorrow. Thanks, yet again, for the reminder on the OLC Reporting Act. Completely forgot about that!
Ah, see, there you go, it was reporting. Honestly, the OLC may be right about even that invading the separation.
I agree, tough call!
There probably is a real substantive separation issue, but from what I’ve read of the OLC Reporting Act, I’d like to think that Congress has a right to OLC opinions where the Executive branch claims its powers negate legislative statutes.
A case in point would be the Bybee Memos and their assertion that the Commander in Chief powers in the conduct of war override the US torture statutes.
Further, the Executive branch (including the OLC) is on weak grounds to claim such power, but keep such opinions justifying their claim hidden away in secret.
If they have a case to make versus the legislative branch, I think it is reasonable that the legislators be duly and fully informed.
That is a very decent argument as to being informed if statutes are being overridden. Also obviously involves the executive classification authority I suppose. And executive privilege. Pretty sticky question. I can’t see the Roberts court signing off on much, if any, of this. A lot to chew on, but don’t think I will waste too much time on it until it gets a lot closer to the front burner.
That is perplexing. Not sure you would want them particularly statutorily constrained as to subject matter and, to some extent, that might would be a separation of powers problem. Now I could see mandating reporting of opinions to the proper Congressional committees or something maybe.
Has anyone taken a look at the supporting documents? The letter Mukasey sent to H. Marshall Jarrett at OPR is included in its entirety in this batch but I don’t recall seeing it before: http://judiciary.house.gov/hearings/pdf/BExhibit17-32.pdf
anyone recall if this was previously released? Some interesting nuggets in there
I seem to remember seeing a Mukasey letter before, but I may be mistaken.
What page is the Mukasey letter on since that PDF is 363 pages long? *g*
starts on document 19 pt 1. Page 25
Yes, twas discussed here when the OPR document dump occurred.
EW has it in her Torture Document Dump timeline as part of the OPR document dump.
Ok thanks for checking on that. Appreciate it!
A curious note regarding the status of the John Durham investigation in tonite’s WaPo acticle on the Bybee interview:
(My Bold)
When hasn’t Durham been in radio silence mode? I will give Durham credit for that at least, he doesn’t run his gig through the press at all, and that is commendable. Now I think Holder could be a tad more forthcoming about what the hell they are doing, but I appreciate Durham keeping his investigation contained as it should be.
And the fact that Conyers has sent the Bybee transcript to DOJ lends itself to a smidgen, just a tiny smidgen, of hope that Durham & Co. won’t be coming up empty.
Of course, I could win the lottery too. *g*
Haven’t read all the comments, so don’t know whether this has already been linked (if so, apologies). But I thought this quote was interesting in that the DOJ does seem to be feeling a bit of heat. Hope that feeling grows.
Lawyer [Bybee]: Some CIA interrogation tactics not OK’d
” . . . CIA spokesman George Little said: “Opinions from the Office of Legal Counsel were the foundation for the CIAs past detention and interrogation practices. That program, now over, has been — and continues to be — the subject of extensive review by the Department of Justice, among others. As the attorney general has said, the focus is to see if anyone involved in the program may have gone beyond the legal guidance Justice provided.”‘
LINK.
Kinda O/T, but related.
U.S. hands over last Iraq jail [Camp Cropper] but keeps 200 inmates
LINK.
Keeps? What are they going to do, send them to Bagram?
Bob in AZ
From that same WaPo story cited by MadDog: “But John A. Rizzo, the CIA’s acting general counsel at the time, said the agency was told shortly after the Aug. 1 memos were written that they could be used as legal backing to question other suspects. “It was a relatively short time after we got the memo that Justice advised us that if the same criteria and standards applied, the techniques are applied in the same way, the conclusions would be the same.” Bybee claimed in the interview it was for AZ only.
“In notes reflecting Bybee’s requested changes, he asked that “They said this is what we have done” be changed to “They said this is what we know.”
oops
OK – I’ve been able to squeeze in a quick look at the firt 100+ pages of the transcript – the Nadler section. It reminded me a bit of the dentist’s waiting room when I was a kid. Up to and including a those games pages in the kids magazines – connect the dots and find the weasel.
This was news to me. Did not realize that Bybee’s attorney, Maureen Mahoney, had been considered as head of OLC before Bybee was selected.
From Main Justice:
I don’t think she’s his direct counsel, but it’s incestuous in DC and enivrons and when something like this comes up, lead counsel is going to collect some well connected butts to sit in the seats too. It is ironic, though.
Often parapraxes [slips of the tongue] do not reveal something unconscious. Instead, the ‘revelation’ is something consciously known. What is ‘unconscious’ is the wish to tell the truth. In this case, Bybee knows the CIA said, “We’ve already gone 11 days. It didn’t hurt him.” And so he included this arbitrary number of days in his memo. Or more likely they said, “He didn’t go zonkers until the twelth day.” Only later did they realize that someone might wonder where that number came from and cook up the story. Bybee wants to tell the truth…
“Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama has treaded softly in regards to the national security community, failing to demand any meaningful accountability for the abuses of the Bush-43 administration.
“But former CIA analyst Melvin A. Goodman believes Obama’s most inexplicable failure may be in not appointing a new inspector general for the CIA:
President Barack Obama has been a major disappointment to a liberal community that rallied to his call for genuine change.
LINK.