Steven Bradbury: Breaking His Own Rules Even as He Writes Them
I'm working on a big post on the May 2005 Bradbury Memos. But I wanted to point out this tidbit about them in the interim.
As you might recall, the Jim Comey emails (probably leaked by the torture apologists last summer) provide a few clues…
Random Friday Afternoon Links
I've had a frazzled few days (dealing with stuff like dodgy cars) and I'm about to bury myself deep in the weeds. So I thought I'd throw up a few links to keep you all occupied so as to ensure there's still something left in the likker cabinet…
The Anonymous Coward Calling Holder Weak
Time has another one of those Rahm v. Holder profiles. It is notable from the slew of other ones for two reasons.
The anonymous source calling Holder a coward
First, the story features several main sources for this story: Lindsey Graham, speaking…
Bybee's Circuit: Ashcroft Can Be Sued for Wrongful Detention
The 9th Circuit has ruled that John Ashcroft can be sued for wrongful detention of an American citizen. From an ACLU press release:
The American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit charging that former Attorney General John Ashcroft is personally…
When Lawyers Equate Law with PR
Jack Goldsmith and Ben Wittes have an op-ed up in which, claiming that the PR value to military commissions is minimal, Obama should just not give KSM a trial of any sort. They make a clever move in which they first cursorily dismiss the value…
The Request for Reaffirmation of Torture
This is going to be another weedy post...
I wanted to put two totally bureaucratic pages (PDF 23-24) from the recent FOIA dump into the context of the other known documents in the chronology. The first page is an "Executive Correspondence Routing…
Obama's Intelligence Leaders: For GAO Oversight Before They Were Against It
Yesterday, we talked about how Rahm Emanuel opposed indefinite detention before he started working for it with Lindsey Graham.
Today, Steven Aftergood shows that Obama's two intelligence heads, Leon Panetta and Dennis Blair, supported GAO oversight…
Kiriakou: CIA IG Report Confirmed They Waterboarded Before Getting Approval (?)
I believe Jon Kiriakou is still engaging in disinformation, so while I suppose I'll read his book, I won't accept anything in it without corroboration.
Take this weird tidbit in his appearance on Tweety (just after 2:05). The statement is…
Did Addington Oppose 9/11 Commission Questions to Avoid Independent Evaluation of Torture Program?
Shortly after news broke that CIA destroyed the torture tapes, the 9/11 Commission issued a letter complaining that they had not been told of--much less been allowed to review--the torture tapes.
The commission’s mandate was sweeping and it…
In 2007, Rahm Opposed Indefinite Detention
On June 29, 2007, Congressman Norm Dicks sent George Bush an eloquent letter urging him to close Gitmo. It said, among other things,
Since the time that captured "enemy combatants" were first brought to Guantanamo Bay in 2002, the detainment…
CIA Has No Idea What It Briefed Congress on Torture
The CIA documents released in the latest FOIA batch prove that all the claims that CIA (and Crazy Pete Hoekstra) have made about briefings Congress received on torture are, at best, reconstructions based on years old memories, if not outright…
More Torture Documents
Anyone feel like they drowning under the weight of a really horrible bureaucracy yet.
DOJ IG Documents (1)
DOJ IG Documents (2)
CIA Documents
DOD Documents
OLC Documents
Consider this a working thread.
Jeff Kaye--see the first document…
Would Obama Issue First Veto to Protect Anthrax Whitewash?
Bloomberg is reporting that Office of Management and Budget head Peter Orszag has told the intelligence committees Obama will veto the intelligence authorization because--among other reasons--it calls for re-examining the FBI's conspiracy theory-as-investigation…
Rendering Opinions on Rendering Detainees out of Iraq
This is going to be a really weedy post trying to explore what was going on with just about the only named opinion that Jack Goldsmith wrote at OLC that has gotten focused attention--a March 19, 2004 one cataloging the protected status of different…
Contract Killers as PsyOp Warriors
Several things stuck out for me in the NYT's big story about DOD's PsyOp contractors-as-assassination-flunkies. First, the degree to which DOD allegedly hid its assassination program inside a PsyOp venture. As the story reports, Michael Furlong,…
The Torture Apologists Ratchet Up the Attack
You know how the Moonie Times let go almost all of its "journalists" last year? Well, apparently they haven't let go of their CIA mouthpiece (not a surprise, I guess, since MT has always been one big disinfo campaign), Bill Gertz. And he's out…
A Catalog of the Destroyed Torture Evidence
I just re-read Philippe Sands' Torture Team and, given the news of disappearing emails and documents, this passage struck me anew:
[Mike Dunlavey, who was in charge of Gitmo as they put together the torture plan for Mohammed al-Qahtani] would…
Off-Season Trash: Who Will Be the First Corrupt Leader to be Ousted?
I'm starting a pool: Who will be the first top leader to be ousted for his role in a corruption scandal?
Will it be A, Pope Ratzinger, for sending a pedophile priest for the "gay cure" then back to working with children rather than to prison…
Dan Coats' Hypocritical Lobbying: Floorplans, Not Cars
Eric Kleefield uncovers a heap of hypocrisy in IN Senate candidate Dan Coats' lobbying record, but he misunderstands what it means.
Former Sen. Dan Coats (R-IN) is running for his old Senate seat, apparently on a platform of opposing government…
Were the Torturers Bypassing OLC in July 2004?
Update, March 13, 2015: The Torture Report clarify this. First, CIA had not yet rendered the detainee, who was indeed Janat Gul. At the meeting, CIA did ask for a memo, as well as permission to torture Gul because (we now know) a fabricator…