CIA Training Intelligence Agents for "State Sponsor of Terrorism" Sudan

Originally posted at Firedoglake/The Seminal

The government of Sudan has been miffed that it cannot get off of the U.S. list of states that sponsor terrorism. It could be because of the history of arbitrary arrests, killings and torture by the administration of Sudan President Omar Al Bashir, as documented in a recent report by Amnesty International. Or it could be because the Sudanese government is widely reported to back the Jangaweed militia attacks against citizens of Darfur, a campaign that has killed over 300,000 people and displaced approximately three million more. Or perhaps it is Sudan's political support (and possibly military aid) to Hamas, foe of the U.S., the Israelis and the Palestinian Authority? In any case, the Obama administration has not seen fit to take Sudan off their list of bad guy countries.

So what is one to make of Jeff Stein's report today at his Spy Talk blog at the Washington Post that the CIA has been training and equipping Sudan's notorious National Intelligence and Security Service (NISS)?

“The U.S. government is training the Sudanese intelligence services and conducting bilateral operations with them -- all in the name of the long war,” said a former intelligence officer who served in Sudan....

Another knowledgeable former U.S. intelligence official said the CIA-NISS partnership began even earlier, in the Clinton administration, and called it "incredibly valuable."

While Erik Prince and his Blackwater Worldwide company is being fined for ignoring sanctions against Sudan and trying to "secure lucrative defense business in Southern Sudan," the central government in Khartoum is having its security forces -- one the most brutal in the Arab world -- trained by the CIA.

According to Stein, U.S. officials maintain the operations are limited to counterterrorism. But one wonders how the NISS separates out such training from its general operations of domestic oppression. Earlier this year, NISS arrested six doctors, members of the Doctors Strike Committee, and tortured at least two, before releasing them after being held without charges for almost a month. As recently as June 27, NISS agents were reported to be roaming "hospitals in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, ensuring that the doctors had returned to work."

According to a report by Amnesty International, referenced by Stein in his article, NISS seems to have it in for doctors.

Ahmed Ali Mohamed Osman, a doctor also known as Ahmed Sardop, was arrested by the NISS on March 20, 2009 in Khartoum after criticizing rapes in the Darfur region and the government’s decision to expel humanitarian organizations from Sudan....
"They leaned me over a chair and held me by my arms and feet while others hit me on the back, legs and arms with something similar to an electrical cable," he told Amnesty International. "They kicked me in the testicles repeatedly while they talked about the report on rape in Darfur."

Ahmed Sardop filed a complaint with the police and was examined by a doctor who confirmed his allegations of torture. A few days later, he started receiving telephone death threats: "We will soon find you and we will kill you." He now lives in exile.

But it isn't only doctors, as NISS has targeted journalists, human rights activists, and students. The agents of the NISS operate in an atmosphere of near-impunity, as they "have immunity for all the violations they commit, under the 2010 National Security Act."

Anyone who believes the NISS agents trained by the CIA limit their indelicate actions to "take-downs" of "terrorists" in Sudan knows very little about the omnipresent operations of security forces such as NISS, or the Mukhabarat in Egypt and Jordan, in this part of the world. This kind of training and involvement with some of the world's more notorious secret police is the real face of U.S. foreign policy, more so than the aid programs that other portions of the government may provide in various countries. (It's worth noting here, too, that the Palestinian Authority has received training for its security forces from the CIA.) Whatever aid is provided, the U.S. ensures the rule of governments with domestic terror regimes. Along with U.S. support for the forceable suppression of Palestinians in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, and its campaign of wide-spread assassination throughout the region, this is the actual cause for hatred and attacks against the United States.

Apropos of the U.S. policy of widespread assassinations, today the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights have filed a lawsuit "challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out 'targeted killings' of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone."

The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged – without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists – also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.

A major change in U.S. policy must involve a significant change in the world-view of the U.S. populace, and a wholesale transformation of its political representatives, who remain meekly subservient to whatever military or intelligence policy that the White House demands, no matter how seemingly contradictory or self-defeating, or how costly to those in other countries who suffer under the police rule of their respective states.

For more information on the ACLU/CCR joint lawsuit, visit visit: www.aclu.org/targetedkillings and ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings.

Rights Groups File Challenge to U.S. Assassination Policy

From an important joint press release by the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, announcing an important lawsuit against President Obama, the CIA and the Department of Defense, attempting to block the wide-spread "targeted killing" policy of the U.S. government. As a recent article at AlterNet put it, "mass U.S. assassination on a scale unequaled in world history lies at the heart of America's military strategy in the Muslim world, a policy both illegal and never seriously debated by Congress or the American people."

Rights Groups File Challenge To Targeted Killing By U.S.

CCR And ACLU Charge That Practice Violates The Constitution And International Law

NEW YORK – The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) today filed a lawsuit challenging the government's asserted authority to carry out “targeted killings” of U.S. citizens located far from any armed conflict zone.

The authority contemplated by the Obama administration is far broader than what the Constitution and international law allow, the groups charge. Outside of armed conflict, both the Constitution and international law prohibit targeted killing except as a last resort to protect against concrete, specific, and imminent threats of death or serious physical injury. An extrajudicial killing policy under which names are added to CIA and military “kill lists” through a secret executive process and stay there for months at a time is plainly not limited to imminent threats.

“The United States cannot simply execute people, including its own citizens, anywhere in the world based on its own say-so,” said Vince Warren, Executive Director of CCR. “The law prohibits the government from killing without trial or conviction other than in the face of an imminent threat that leaves no time for deliberation or due process. That the government adds people to kill lists after a bureaucratic process and leaves them on the lists for months at a time flies in the face of the Constitution and international law.”

The groups charge that targeting individuals for execution who are suspected of terrorism but have not been convicted or even charged – without oversight, judicial process or disclosed standards for placement on kill lists – also poses the risk that the government will erroneously target the wrong people. In recent years, the U.S. government has detained many men as terrorists, only for courts or the government itself to discover later that the evidence was wrong or unreliable.

According to today’s legal complaint, the government has not disclosed the standards it uses for authorizing the premeditated and deliberate killing of U.S. citizens located far from any battlefield. The groups argue that the American people are entitled to know the standards being used for these life and death decisions.

“A program that authorizes killing U.S. citizens, without judicial oversight, due process or disclosed standards is unconstitutional, unlawful and un-American,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “We don’t sentence people to prison on the basis of secret criteria, and we certainly shouldn’t sentence them to death that way. It is not enough for the executive branch to say ‘trust us’ – we have seen that backfire in the past and we should learn from those mistakes.”

CCR and the ACLU were retained by Nasser Al-Aulaqi to bring a lawsuit in connection with the government's decision to authorize the targeted killing of his son, U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi, whom the CIA and Defense Department have targeted for death. The complaint asks a court to rule that using lethal force far from any battlefield and without judicial process is illegal in all but the narrowest circumstances and to prohibit the government from carrying out targeted killings except in compliance with these standards. It also asks the court to order the government to disclose the standards it uses to place U.S. citizens on government kill lists.

Today’s lawsuit was filed against the CIA, Defense Department and the president in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Attorneys on the case are Jameel Jaffer, Ben Wizner and Jonathan Manes of the ACLU; Pardiss Kebriaei, Maria LaHood and Bill Quigley of CCR; and Arthur B. Spitzer of the ACLU of the Nation's Capital. Co-counsel in Yemen is Mohammed Allawo of the Allawo Law Firm and the National Organization for Defending Human Rights (HOOD).

For more information on the case, including fact sheets and legal papers, visit: www.aclu.org/targetedkillings and ccrjustice.org/targetedkillings.

See also Glenn Greenwald's article on the lawsuit filing, "Lawsuit challenges Obama's power to kill citizens without due process":

The lawsuit -- captioned Al-Aulaqi v. Obama -- was filed in federal court in the District of Columbia, and names Barack Obama, Leon Panetta and Robert Gates as defendants. Among other relief, the Complaint asks the court to (a) "declare that the Constitution [along with 'treaty and customary international law'] prohibits Defendants from carrying out the targeted killing of U.S. citizens, including Plaintiff’s son, except in circumstances in which they present concrete, specific, and imminent threats to life or physical safety, and there are no means other than lethal force that could reasonably be employed to neutralize the threats"; (b) "enjoin Defendants from intentionally killing U.S. citizen Anwar Al-Aulaqi" unless they demonstrate the applicability of those narrow circumstances; and (c) "order Defendants to disclose the criteria that are used in determining whether the government will carry out the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen" (emphasis added [in original])....

What I've found most disturbing about this controversy from the start is how many Americans are willing to blindly believe the Government's accusations of Terrorism against their fellow citizens -- provided they're Muslims with foreign-sounding names -- without needing to see any evidence at all. All government officials have to do is anonymously leak to the media extremely vague accusations against someone without any evidence presented (Awlaki is involved in multiple plots!!), and a substantial number of people will then immediately run around yelling: Kill that Terrorist!!

It's an authoritarian scene out of some near-future dystopian novel, yet it's exactly what is happening.

Disgust: on the Lonesome Rhodes Trail to Tortureville

Glenn Beck has kept his promise to bring 100,000 plus "teabaggers" and other assorted right-wing and racist reactionaries to Washington, D.C. in a supposed commemoration of the 1963 March on Washington, which culminated in Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous "I have a dream" speech. Grotesquely, King's niece, Alveda King, has joined Beck at the Lincoln Memorial rally to preach her own form of hate against gays (she recently equated gay marriage with "genocide") and abortion rights. King is director of African-American outreach for the pro-life group Priests for Life.

"Something that is beyond man is happening,' [Glenn] Beck told his supporters in DC. Quotes from participants: "Capitalism is what makes this country great." "I don't want this country to turn socialist." "We have to take our country back." "Whenever you hear the words 'social justice', you should leave your church immediately."

Glenn Beck is one dangerous demagogue. He should not be underestimated.



Well, the right-wing can mobilize tens of thousands and bring them to D.C., while the left is mired in electoralism, i.e., concentrate everything on elections, and leave the streets to the demagogues. Nor have the "progressives" anything very much progressive to offer anymore, having accepted the permanent state of immiseration that comes from buying into the "war on terror," having allowed torture and war crimes to have been codified in the Army Field Manual and the Military Commissions Act, respectively. And "liberals" long ago dropped any pretense of reining in the CIA, whose lawlessness is reproduced day by day even as I type these words.

Meanwhile, even as the New York Times puts out mealy-mouthed editorials at least somewhat critical of the current state of affairs (see today's editorial, Legacy of Torture), the Obama administration continues its crusade to institutionalize the notorious Military Commissions, even if that means (to their embarrassment) making their test case a former child soldier who was threatened with institutional rape to coerce a confession. The Gitmo judge said he couldn't see how such a threat would amount to torture or coercion, and there's fairness in America circa 2010 in a nutshell (pun intended).

If I could give homework, I'd assign a view of Elia Kazan's classic film, Face in the Crowd.



But I'm not a schoolteacher, only a part-time blogger (sitting right now in Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans, not pajamas). My disgust with this country won't buy me a meal or put a fiver in a homeless man's pocket. I can only share this feeling with what's left of a nation that has a shred of integrity left, if even living in a country that blithely ignores accountability for the crimes of its leaders -- torture, chemical warfare against civilian populations (Fallujah), running assassination teams, occupying other countries, letting millions get thrown out of their homes and jobs while protecting the fat-cats' bonuses and right to even further exploit the populace -- if even accepting citizenship in such a land doesn't forfeit me the right to anything more than moral exhaustion.

The Age of Disgust. The legacy of the end of communism, with a corpulent, weepy would-be savior as the national emoticon, spewing hate and lies, and stuffing a lot of money into his pockets along the gold-lined way, you betcha. Home of the "suckers" and land of the "stupid idiots." Don't ask me, ask Lonesome Rhodes.

The Psychology of Torture: Culture and Change

From GritTV:

A recent study revealed that physicians with the CIA's Office of Medical Services were more deeply involved in torture than was previously thought--that doctors and psychiatrists actually helped interrogators design "enhanced techniques" that passed the Bush administration's requirements but would keep prisoners alive and without the severe physical injuries that even that regime admitted were torture.

Guest host Esther Armah discusses the results of this study, and the culture around torture, with psychologist Steven Reisner of Physicians for Human Rights and playwright Patricia Davis, whose new play, Alternative Methods, tells the story of a psychologist forced to choose between the humanity of a detainee and risking her own life.

Pat Davis also assisted Sister Dianna Ortiz in the writing of Sr. Ortiz's incredible tale of torture and survival by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan government, The Blindfold's Eyes: My Journey from Torture to Truth.

CJA Challenges NY State Decision Re Jurisdiction on Torture Psychologist

On August 15, I reported that the New York Office of Professional Discipline (NYOP) had rejected a complaint against BSCT psychologist Major John Leso for his participation in the planning and implementation of torture at Guantanamo. Louis J. Catone at NYOP used specious arguments to deny that the agency had any jurisdiction over the Leso case. Today, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) issued a press release in answer to the NYOP decision, and has also asked the American Psychological Association "to expel Dr. Leso from its association and to recommend revocation of his license."

From CJA's press release (bold text in original):

CENTER FOR JUSTICE AND ACCOUNTABILITY STEPS UP EFFORTS TO HOLD GUANTÁNAMO BAY PSYCHOLOGIST ACCOUNTABLE

CJA Responds to the New York Office of Professional Discipline With a Repeat Demand for Investigation of a Guantánamo Bay Psychologist Who Participated in Torture; CJA Also Calls on American Psychological Association to Expel Him From the Organization

San Francisco, CA – This week, the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) stepped up its efforts to hold psychologist Dr. John Francis Leso accountable for his participation in abusive interrogation and torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. In a letter to the New York Office of Professional Discipline (NYOP), CJA reiterated its request for an investigation of Dr. Leso for his clear violations of psychologists’ professional standards. Earlier this month, the NYOP, which is responsible for licensing and regulating the conduct of New York psychologists, denied CJA’s initial request for an investigation of Dr. Leso because it claimed it did not have jurisdiction.

In its letter to NYOP, CJA stated, “This Office is obliged to investigate instances of possible misconduct by New York licensees, and it is the only office authorized to do so. Your authority and responsibility in this case stem not only from the State of New York but also from federal law.... The Complaint details multiple instances in which, in his capacity as a professional psychologist, Dr. Leso crossed the line and committed misconduct.”

CJA filed the original complaint against Dr. Leso on behalf of Dr. Steven Reisner, a psychologist in New York who has been a leader in the campaign to hold health professionals involved in torture accountable. “The Office of the Professions implies that since Dr. Leso’s aim was harm and not help, he was not acting as a psychologist and therefore they don’t have jurisdiction. But when a psychologist uses his professional expertise expressly to destroy the mind instead of to repair it, he is still acting as a psychologist and must be held accountable for his actions. It is the precisely the responsibility of the Office of the Professions to prevent such a person from practicing,” says Dr. Reisner.

Also this week, CJA called for the American Psychological Association (APA), the largest association of psychologists worldwide, to expel Dr. Leso from its association and to recommend revocation of his license. In its letter to the APA, CJA states, “The APA has unequivocally condemned the abusive interrogation tactics that Dr. Leso recommended, including sexual humiliation and exploitation of phobias, tactics that are ‘utterly inconsistent with Ethical Standard 3.04 in the APA Ethics Code, which obligates psychologists to avoid harm.’ Moreover, the APA has recently taken the position that any of its members proven to have committed acts such as sexual humiliation in an interrogation context ‘would be expelled.’ Further still, it would be [the APA’s] expectation that the individual’s state license to practice psychology would be revoked. This evidence warrants Dr. Leso’s sanction, expulsion, and recommendation for de-licensure.”

Dr. Leso, a major in the U.S. Army, led the first team of mental health professionals tasked with supporting interrogation operations at the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. CJA’s original complaint alleges that Dr. Leso violated professional standards for New York psychologists when he recommended a series of escalating physically and psychologically abusive interrogation tactics to be used on detainees, personally supervised interrogations where his tactics were used, and actually participated in the application of these tactics. Many of the techniques and conditions that Dr. Leso helped put in place were applied to men and boys held at Guantánamo and eventually to detainees held in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan. Neither Dr. Leso nor any other U.S. official involved has ever been held accountable for the cruel treatment of detainees at Guantánamo.

“The fight to hold Dr. Leso accountable is far from over,” said Pamela Merchant, Executive Director of the Center for Justice and Accountability. “The facts are clear: Dr. Leso participated in and personally supervised physically and psychologically abusive interrogation tactics on detainees at Guantánamo Bay. These acts are unethical and violate professional standards that obligate psychologists to avoid harm. The State of New York has a responsibility to keep psychologists like Dr. Leso from practicing and we strongly urge them to reconsider their position.”

According to Article 1 of the APA Bylaws, “The objects of the American Psychological Association shall be to advance psychology as a science and profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare … by the establishment and maintenance of the highest standards of professional ethics and conduct of the members of the Association.”

Merchant added, “Dr. Leso’s conduct is clearly in violation of APA standards. The APA has publicly acknowledged that such behavior should result in expulsion. The organization should stand by their statements by expelling him and recommending his de-licensure immediately.”

Well, APA and State of New York, the ball is in your court. Will you do the right thing and demand accountability for professionals in your bailiwick, or will you continue to cover for crimes against humanity? APA recently wrote a letter (PDF) to the Texas State Board of Examiners in the case of CIA contractor-psychologist Dr. James Mitchell, in a case where his own licensure is being challenged. I've written before that I found the APA letter self-serving and false, but here is an opportunity to prove me wrong, if APA now, in a timely way, joins CJA and demands NYOP take action on the Leso case, and expels from APA the man responsible for the psychological component of the torture of Mohammed Al Qahtani.

Racist Article in Spy Journal Calls for Killing 100,000 Muslim “Zealots”

[I had originally posted this article at Firedoglake in August 2009, but just recently realized I failed to crosspost it here at Invictus. With all the racist hullaballoo and anti-Muslim propaganda around the supposed "Ground Zero Mosque" these days, I thought it worth reposting now.]

This story reports on an extraordinary 2004 article by a Harvard lecturer and former Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay, which made the shocking claim that "hard-core zealots" had "brains that are structurally and functionally different from us." Furthermore, the article stated, 100,000 "zealots" within the Muslim body politic would have to be eliminated, the way "malignant [cancer] cells" are removed from a healthy body.

The author of the article, "Terrorism – The Underlying Causes," in the Winter/Spring 2004 issue of the Intelligencer, Journal of U.S. Intelligence Studies (PDF), house organ for the American Federation of Intelligence Officers (AFIO), was William Henry Anderson, M.D. Anderson’s piece received a stinging protest letter to the editor from psychologist and military ethics expert, Jean Maria Arrigo, but I’m not aware of any other complaint regarding this racist, fascistic article in the pages of a major intelligence services journal.

In fact, when, during her stint on the 2005 Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) task force of the American Psychological Association (APA), Dr. Arrigo tried to get the TF membership, stacked with military psychologists from Special Forces, SERE, and the CIA, to discuss the significance of the Anderson article, she was met with indifference and assurances that the matter was of no consequence, since Anderson had by then retired. The record of this can be seen by perusing the PENS listserv, posted by ProPublica a few months back.

The text of Anderson’s article is not online, as Intelligencer does not post its articles on the Internet. However, I have obtained a copy, and can report what I read.

The article starts out as a bloviating howler. Anderson quotes Sun Tzu, recapitulates the Aristotlean causal categories, and fulminates about "credulous enablers" and "useful idiots" that sabotage U.S. efforts to mount an effective defense against its enemies. Anderson regrets that the enablers and idiots will be with us for a long time, as they represent unfortunate but necessary aspects of human nature.
It is only when we get to the "zealots" that we, supposedly, enter new territory. The zealots are "a pathological departure" from "human nature" (emphasis added to quote below).

No, the zealots are another kind of person. They may be thought of as cells of a social body that have undergone malignant change.

Let us consider terrorism with an analogy from medicine — that of terrorism as a cancer. There are about 1.4 billion Muslims in the world. Embedded withing this healthy body are, perhaps, 100,000 people who are eager and active in pursuit of the goal of killing us. Just as successful treatment of cancer requires killing of the malignant cells, we will need to kill this small minority, since we have no evidence that they can be induced to change their minds.

Dr. Anderson is not content with making proclamations. He has an entire section of his article devoted to pseudo-scientific justifications for his claim that the "zealots" minds cannot be literally changed.

My hypothesis is that they, or some of them, at least have brains that are structurally and functionally different than ours. Their single-minded purpose is made possible by an underlying dysregulation of the brain.

Only fair use limitations prevent me from fully deconstructing Anderson’s strange neuroscience, where "overvalued ideas" arise from damage to the brain’s amygdala and frontal cortex. The damage is ostensibly due to hereditary factors (made worse by all those Muslim "consanguineous marriages," don’t you know), poor nutrition and environmental toxins found in Muslim countries, and possible birth injuries.

Anderson’s scientific racism calls to mind the similarly medicalized racism of the Nazis, as psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton described it over 20 years ago. In his book, The Nazi Doctors, Lifton quoted Nazi doctor Fritz Klein, in words not too different from Harvard lecturer and Massachusetts General Hospital Senior Psychiatrist Anderson:

Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind.

Dr. Arrigo caught this whiff of racist ideology in a letter to the Intelligencer published in Winter/Spring 2005. Note: the text at the link is not perfect. I have taken my quote from the original publication, which is not online.

William Henry Anderson’s essay… appears to me invalid and unsuitable for publication in this journal. I write to you as an AFIO member and a social psychologist who studies ethics of intelligence….

… in proposing direct extermination of Middle East terrorist zealots, Anderson adopts the infamous racist metaphor used by the Nazis — "tumors as Jews, Jews as tumors" in the body politic…. Anderson’s argument may be valuable historically as a sample of the thinking of the military authorities at Guantanamo Bay, but publication without editorial reservations appears to make The Intelligencer complicit with Anderson’s unsupported racism.

Dr. Anderson had a rejoinder to Arrigo’s criticism. He unrepentantly claimed "a robust scientific literature" that supposedly supports him, and dismissed Arrigo’s criticisms as "gratuitous name-calling," which failed to understand "the necessity, without delay, to focus on the danger at hand: to eliminate the cancer of terrorism."

Even more incredible was an accompanying editorial note from the Intelligencer editor, who reminded the AFIO audience that the journal is a forum for discussion, "as well as projections of future possibilities and theories." The editor assured the reader the journal will "remain open to a wide range of views," including "provocative views," and then adds:

What sounds politically incorrect today, might be the very thing that ensures our survival, tomorrow.

What is frightening about the Anderson article is that it so clearly represents a respected point of view within the intelligence services. It may not be the majority view, but it clearly has influence. Anderson himself was a featured commentator in the Joint Military Intelligence College 2005 publication, The Sources of Islamic Revolutionary Conduct. The JMIC is part of the Center for Strategic Intelligence Research, itself a component of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

As politicians and the punditry argue over whether or not there will be any accountability for torture or other war crimes committed by the Bush administration, the rot has spread much deeper, as evidenced by the AFIO article and its response. It will take a committed and determined cleansing of the Defense Department and the intelligence agencies to root out the evil that has insinuated itself there. It seems unlikely the current administration and political configuration is up to that immense task. But wishful thinking will not make racist ideologues like Anderson go away.

Digg this article!

Time Magazine for Grown-ups? Meanwhile, U.S. "War on Terror" Looks More Like Imperial Expansion

TIME Announces New Version Of Magazine Aimed At Adults

Glenn Greenwald gets the hat-tip for this very funny piece from The Onion News Network. Imagine, an American weekly newsmagazine written for adults: "Advanced Time".

But Greenwald also has some very serious things to report about the ever-expanding "war on terror," which has most lately picked up steam in Yemen. All the quotes are taken verbatim for the Greenwald article.

Amnesty International, June 7, 2010:

Amnesty International has released images of a US-manufactured cruise missile that carried cluster munitions, apparently taken following an attack on an alleged al-Qa’ida training camp in Yemen that killed 41 local residents, including 14 women and 21 children.

The 17 December 2009 attack on the community of al-Ma'jalah in the Abyan area in the south of Yemen killed 55 people including 14 alleged members of al-Qa’ida.

VOA News, July 30, 2010:

The Convention on Cluster Munitions goes into force Sunday, August 1, with 107 signatories agreeing to ban the use of cluster munitions . . . . Cluster bombs are damaging because they contain hundreds of smaller explosives, or submunitions, that detonate across a wide area. The submunitions that fail to explode on impact can then act as landmines, posing a threat to civilian populations long after a conflict is over.

U.S. President Barack Obama has signed a law banning the export of cluster munitions that do not meet a certain standard. But the United States has not signed the cluster bomb ban. China, Israel, India and Pakistan are among other countries that have not agreed to the treaty. Neither Georgia nor Russia has signed the treaty.

The Washington Post, today:

For the first time since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, CIA analysts see one of al-Qaeda's offshoots -- rather than the core group now based in Pakistan -- as the most urgent threat to U.S. security, officials said.

The sober new assessment of al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen has helped prompt senior Obama administration officials to call for an escalation of U.S. operations there -- including a proposal to add armed CIA drones to a clandestine campaign of U.S. military strikes, the officials said.
"We are looking to draw on all of the capabilities at our disposal," said a senior Obama administration official, who described plans for "a ramp-up over a period of months" . . . .

The CIA has roughly 10 times more people and resources in Pakistan than it does in Yemen. There is no plan to scale back in Pakistan, but officials said the gap is expected to shrink.

Wall St. Journal, today:

U.S. officials believe al Qaeda in Yemen is now collaborating more closely with allies in Pakistan and Somalia to plot attacks against the U.S., spurring the prospect that the administration will mount a more intense targeted killing program in Yemen.

Such a move would give the Central Intelligence Agency a far larger role in what has until now been mainly a secret U.S. military campaign against militant targets in Yemen and across the Horn of Africa. It would likely be modeled after the CIA's covert drone campaign in Pakistan. . . .

Authorizing covert CIA operations would further consolidate control of future strikes in the hands of the White House, which has enthusiastically embraced the agency's covert drone program in Pakistan's tribal areas.

Reuters, yesterday:

Missiles fired from a U.S. pilotless drone aircraft killed 13 militants [sic] and 7 civilians in Pakistan's North Waziristan on Monday, Pakistani intelligence officials said. . . . Four women and three children were among the dead, said the officials.

Al Jazeera, today:

Yemen's government has sacrificed human rights to preserve security in its battle against Shia rebels in the north and al-Qaeda fighters in the south, a new report by Amnesty International has alleged.

Yemen's catalogue of human-rights abuses over the past two years includes unlawful killings, arbitrary arrest, torture, unfair trials and enforced disappearances, Amnesty said.

The report, "Yemen: Cracking Down Under Pressure," says that Yemeni authorities have bowed to pressure from the United States and Saudi Arabia to deal harshly with the twin threats of Yemen's local al-Qaeda branch - al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) - and the Houthi rebels in the north.

What's going on here seems fairly obvious.  The absurdity of escalating a war in Afghanistan by pointing to The Scary Al Qaeda Menace -- when there is virtually no Al Qaeda presence in that country -- is becoming increasingly apparent.  Just yesterday, a Washington Post article documented -- using the WikiLeaks war documents (which, remember, told us absolutely nothing worth knowing) -- that Al Qaeda is virtually non-existent in the war in Afghanistan.  So now, administration officials -- hiding behind the anonymity which these media outlets naturally provided -- fanned out to announce a new, Growing, Scary Al Qaeda Threat in Yemen, which, they boast, now needs its own escalated bombing attacks and CIA operations.  The goal is that the War never ends; the only variable is where it happens to increase on any given day.

• Continue reading

While Greenwald notes that with all the racist and prejudicial agitation against the proposed Park51 community center, misnamed by much of the press the "Mosque at Ground Zero," and the actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan, drone bombings in Pakistan, and covert actions in a number of Muslim countries, your average Middle Eastern citizen could be excused for believing the U.S. is actually waging a war against Islam, statements by President Obama aside.

But this is no war against Islam (though there are some in the military and intelligence circles who may perceive it that way), but an expansion of imperial power in a part of the world that carries great oil and gas reserves, and where nationalist forces, often with an Islamic ideology, are resisting American rule. It is not different in kind from the expansion of the American military presence in Columbia, in the Balkan countries, and saber-rattling on the Korean peninsula, which is aimed at China, ultimately.

The U.S. is failing as a country to stand-up to its overly militaristic and imperialist-minded leadership in both political parties. We must oppose this war drive, carried on under Obama as it was under Bush.

Despite Yoo/Bybee Denials, PTSD "Service Connected" to SERE Torture Techniques

Originally posted at FDL/The Seminal

In the August 2, 2002 memo to John Rizzo at the CIA, "Interrogation of an Al Qaeda Operative," written primarily by John Yoo and signed by Jay Bybee (PDF), a number of statements are made as regards the relative safety of the SERE training program for use on U.S. soldiers. As most readers must know by now, SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, and the program of the same name is used to teach pilots, Special Operations personnel, "code of conduct" behaviors and strategies should they ever be captured by an enemy force. The Resistance component provides an exposure experience, where trainees are subjected to mock torture with the idea that familiarity with possible torture techniques will harden them should they ever be presented with the real thing.
 
It was this mock torture component, as taught in SERE classes SV-83 and SV-91 (the latter class aimed specifically at teaching clandestine "Special Mission Units"), that was reverse-engineered by military psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, and further fine-tuned by CIA officials, and constituted the torture that was used at CIA (and possibly JSOC) black site prisons under the rubric of "enhanced interrogation techniques." Subsequently, physicians and psychologists at the CIA's Office of Medical Services were used to provide "opinions to the agency and [OLC] lawyers whether the techniques used would be expected to cause severe pain or suffering and thus constitute torture."

In a series of recent articles, I've pointed out Yoo, Bybee, and later Office of Legal Counsel attorney Stephen Bradbury, disregarded internal SERE documents related to the safety of waterboarding. Now we can add the suppression of complaints by SERE trainees of having contracted PTSD from participation in SERE training. This directly contradicts the Yoo/Bybee contention in the Aug. 2, 2002 memo to Rizzo, where they wrote, "Through your [i.e., CIA] consultation with various individuals responsible for such training, you have learned that these techniques have been used as elements of a course of conduct without any reported incident of prolonged mental harm."

Yet it shouldn't have taken too long to know, and certainly JPRA officials should have been aware of complaints made by various enlisted personnel such that they had incurred PTSD as a result of their "service connection" to SERE training. One such complaint, made as far back as 1999, received approval of disability status for PTSD by the Veterans Administration in July 2003. The decision regarded an appeal of a 2000 decision against a veteran claiming PTSD. The serviceman, who had retired in 1996, was represented by the American Legion.

After review of the appeal, it was found that "The veteran has a current diagnosis of PTSD associated with experiences he suffered as part of his in-service SERE training."

The veteran's December 1999 claim relates that he attended SERE training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1992. During the training, he was subject to interrogations, stripping down, mockery, assault, and exposure to extreme weather conditions. The veteran's February 2000 statement, as well as the January 2003 testimony at the Travel Board hearing, further describes physical assault and interrogations with emotional abuse he experienced during the SERE course. The Board finds the veteran's hearing testimony to be credible and probative.

The decision has even more power when one considers that there was other evidence indicating that there were other sources of possible traumatic experience, e.g., childhood abuse. But the judge at the Board of Veteran's Appeals found that the PTSD from SERE training was the actionable occurrence. Also, note that the veteran's experience at SERE did not include the waterboard, as only the Navy SERE schools used the waterboard in their training, even as far back as 1992.

The military has a scandalous history of denying PTSD claims. In a 2007 article by Joshua Kors at The Nation, doctors admitted to feeling pressured to not diagnose PTSD, and instead, soldiers with PTSD were receiving diagnoses of personality disorders, or otherwise denied PTSD claims. Last month, the Obama administration loosened VA rules on determination of PTSD, which will not now rely so heavily on proving a specific event caused the condition.

Yoo himself apparently believed that PTSD constituted "prolonged mental harm" of the sort that is labeled torture. He said as much in his March 2003 OLC memo to William Haynes at the Department of Defense on the interrogation methods at DoD (PDF).

"...the development of a mental disorder such as posttraumatic stress disorder, which can last months or even years, or even chronic depression, which also can last for a considerable period of time if untreated, might satisfy the prolonged harm requirement.”

Yoo's 2003 memo closely followed the reasoning of his earlier memos, though later, then-OLC head Jack Goldsmith told Haynes to disregard the Yoo memo in December 2003. It is not clear what DoD relied on for legal advice as regards their interrogation program after that point (for more, see this article by Marcy Wheeler).

Despite the SASC report into "detainee" abuse, released last year, much of the involvement by DoD actors and entities in the torture program remains highly obscure. Jason Leopold and I are working on a major investigative story to be published in the weeks ahead regarding the Bush torture program, and Department of Defense research and experimentation into interrogations and torture.

Doctors of the Dark Side (video)

If the trailer is any indication, writer/director Martha Davis is putting together a stunning documentary about the role of doctors and psychologists in the construction and implementation of the U.S. torture program. The work is supposed to be finished soon, and released this December. -- I should say that I am both supportive of Dr. Davis's work, and have even been interviewed for the film. But this does not weaken my message, it strengthens it. I participated because I believe in the importance of the issue. I recommend making a donation to the filmmakers, who have largely relied on their own pocketbooks to finance this outstanding work.

The following is from the film's website, where you'll also find links to donate, as well as more web-links on the issue of doctors, psychologists and torture.

Doctors of the Dark Side exposes the scandal behind the torture scandal -- how psychologists and physicians devised, supervised and covered up the torture of detainees in U.S. controlled military prisons. Writer/Director Martha Davis (Interrogation Psychologists) spent four years investigating the controversy. Lisa Rinzler (Pollock), award-winning Director of Photography, gives the feature length HD film a dark and haunting quality. Actors demonstrate enhanced interrogation methods and the doctor's role according to declassified CIA and Department of Defense documents. The stories of three detainees and the doctors involved in their torture reveal, both for detainee health care and the integrity of the professions, the cost of putting doctors virtually in charge of detainee interrogations.

Martha Davis, Writer, Director, Producer
Thea Kerman, Executive Producer
Lisa Rinzler, Director of Photography
M. Trevino, Editor

For more information on the film, contact Co-Producer Hermine Muskat at HMuskat@doctorsofthedarkside.com.

Psychological Group Charges APA with Complicity in Bush-era Torture Interrogations

Originally posted at Firedoglake/The Seminal

Coalition for an Ethical Psychology (CEP) has issued a press release on the eve of the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association (APA), currently underway in San Diego, California. CEP announces that it has sent a letter (PDF) to Carol Goodheart, current APA president, charging the APA with "its own complicity in supporting and empowering psychologists" in the development, research, supervision and/or implementation of interrogation torture abuses during the Bush years.

The CEP press release states:

This complicity includes APA involvement in the cases of three psychologists – James Mitchell, John Leso, and Larry James – against whom ethics complaints have recently been filed with state licensing boards. APA complicity goes back to 2002 when the association amended its ethics code in a way that protected psychologists involved in government sponsored torture.

The Coalition is calling for an independent, impartial, outside investigation to study the APA’s collusion in the U.S. torture program. The Coalition also calls upon the APA to write letters in support of state ethics complaints against APA members Larry James and John Leso, and to initiate an APA ethics investigation of Larry James. The Coalition further insists that the association fully implement the member-passed referendum withdrawing psychologists from sites in violation of or outside of international law, specifically including Guantánamo and Bagram Air Base.

APA's Letter in the James Mitchell Complaint

On June 30, the American Psychological Association (APA) wrote a letter (PDF) to the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists. By APA's own account, it was an unusual intervention into a licensing board complaint against former Air Force/SERE psychologist and CIA contractor, James Mitchell, who has been identified as involved in the abusive interrogation and torture of supposed Al Qaeda leader Abu Zubaydah in the spring and summer of 2002. The U.S. government has since dropped its assertion that Mr. Zubaydah was even a member of Al Qaeda, though he remains imprisoned as a "high-value detainee" at Guantanamo Bay.

The complaint against Mitchell was filed on June 16, 2010, and is signed by Texas psychologist Jim L.H. Cox. Attorneys Dicky Grigg and Joseph Margulies are also signatories to the document.

While the APA gives the impression that it is interested about intervening in a licensing complaint against Mitchell -- the Complaint (PDF) cites Mitchell with violations of rules regarding competency, improper sexual conduct, exploitation of authority, research without informed consent, and more -- an examination of APA's letter and the context of their intervention suggests that APA's action is disingenuous at best, and more likely, a continuation of APA's attempt to rewrite the history of their own participation in the torture scandal.

According to their letter, APA was writing to the Texas State Board to describe how "its Ethical Principles for Psychologists and Code of Conduct as well as relevant Association policies, apply to facts set forth in the [Mitchell] Complaint." Even so, the APA states it will not comment on any of the facts submitted in the Complaint, explaining they will limit their "information sharing... to APA policies on torture" only. According to APA, it is the Board's responsibility to adjudicate the matter according to its own procedures, including the responsibility to "consider Dr. Mitchell's explanation."

Meanwhile, APA spokeswoman Rhea Farberman described the letter to an AP reporter as an unprecedented action for APA, which was compelled "to act" by the seriousness of the allegations. The subsequent AP story was widely reported, usually with a headline that explained the APA wanted Mitchell stripped of his license to practice psychology. Yet a close reading of the letter demonstrates that APA was essentially concerned by how "the allegations regarding Dr. Mitchell's conduct... [and] the scope of misperception and harm regarding the public's understanding of the profession of psychology" (emphasis added). In other words, the APA was mostly concerned about the image of professional psychology, and not by the fact the U.S. government had used psychologists to develop and implement experiments into the torture of prisoners.

An APA President on the Board of Mitchell's Company

There are many different ways in which the APA's letter is disingenuous. The CEP letter (PDF) to APA President Goodman goes into some detail on these. Perhaps the most immediately apparent is the way APA disappears the association of one of its own leading members with Mitchell's activities. The letter never mentions, and the AP story by Andrew Welsh-Huggins never alludes to the fact that former APA President Joseph Matarazzo was a "governing member" of James Mitchell's company, Mitchell-Jessen and Associates. Even more, Dr. Matarazzo was reported by New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer to be "on the CIA's professional-standards board at the exact time when psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were developing an interrogation program for the CIA, based on the US military's SERE training program."

When APA was confronted in August 2007 with the evidence surrounding the links between Dr. Matarazzo and Mitchell-Jessen, Rhea Farberman, APA's director of public affairs, released a statement that said Dr. Matarazzo had "no active role in APA governance [since he was APA president 18 years previously] but has been actively involved in the American Psychological Foundation (APF), the charitable giving arm of APA. Dr. Matarazzo currently holds no governance positions in either APA or APF." Farberman also stated that APA member Matarazzo's "professional activities are outside and independent of any role he has played within APA and APF... We have no direct knowledge about the business dealing of Mitchell's and Jessen's company; however, APA's position is clear -- torture or other forms of cruel or inhuman treatment are always unethical."

Despite ample reporting on the activities of Mitchell and his associates at the time, APA had no problem disregarding even the associations of one of its own active members, while once again repeating its mantra that it was on the record as being against torture. At the time, few took APA to task for its hypocrisy.

The Fate of the Leso Complaint

In a final twist of irony regarding the APA's letter on Mitchell, a complaint against registered APA member Major John Leso, filed by the Center for Justice and Accountability (CJA) last month, was dismissed, as announced in a July 28 letter from the Director of the New York Office of Professional Discipline, Louis J. Catone, to Kathy Roberts of CJA. CJA is expected to appeal that decision.

APA has not chimed in on the Leso case, despite the fact Leso is an APA member. He was also a prime figure in the propagation of the highly experimental interrogation "Battle Lab" at Guantanamo. From the CJA complaint:

Dr. Leso led the first Behavioral Science Consultation Team (BSCT) at the United States Naval Station at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba (Guantánamo or GTMO) from June 2002 to January 2003. While at Guantánamo, Dr. Leso co-authored an interrogation policy memorandum that incorporated illegal techniques adapted from methods used by the Chinese and North Korean governments against U.S. prisoners of war. He recommended a series of increasingly psychologically and physically abusive interrogation techniques to be applied against detainees held by the United States. Many of the techniques and conditions that Dr. Leso helped put in place were applied to suspected al-Qaeda member Mohammed al Qahtani under Dr. Leso’s direct supervision, as well as to other men and boys held at Guantánamo.

Despite the self-evident participation as a "behavioral consultant" psychologist at the torture interrogations of al Qahtani -- an interrogation labeled torture by no less than Judge Susan Crawford, the then-Convening Authority at Guantanamo -- Catone, a former Democratic Party District Attorney in upstate New York, uses twisted logic to maintain that "Leso’s conduct did not constitute the practice of psychology," which he only defines as helping people.

I find no basis for investigating your complaint because it does not appear that any of the conduct complained of constitutes the practice of psychology as understood in the State of New York.... If Dr. Leso's conduct did not constitute the practice of psychology, then he cannot be guilty of practicing the profession of psychology with gross negligence, with gross incompetence, etc., and he cannot be guilty of engaging in conduct "in the practice of the profession" evidencing moral unfitness to practice.

Redolent of the pettifogging apologia that DoJ maven David Margolis applied in clearing attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee from criminal misconduct in the writing of the August 2002 torture memos, Catone would have us believe that unless the action of a psychologist fit the category of the profession's activities in New York legal code, then it cannot be misconduct. By this logic, no crime or unethical behavior could be misconduct, since misconduct is not part of the legally defined professional activities. This will be welcome news to psychologists who have been charged with sleeping with their clients, since having sex with patients is patently not part of a psychologist's legally defined practice!

APA has never weighed in on the Leso complaint, and it is silent now in the wake of this immoral action by the New York authorities. The APA remains committed to its program of promoting "national security psychology". Their letter to the Texas Board on the Mitchell complaint may represent some second thoughts among some members of the APA hierarchy about their general position regarding enthusiastic support for the military and intelligence agencies, and their program of being major players in the expansion of national security and military activities in the wake of 9/11. But I wouldn't count on it. Instead, it more likely represents a cynical ploy by APA to cover itself in case there is a possible indictment of James Mitchell coming out of the John Durham DoJ investigation, which many reports have indicated is wrapping up its work.

Correction: In the original version of this article at The Seminal, the letter to APA President Carol Goodheart and the press release for same was originally reported in this story as originating from Psychologists for an Ethical APA. The actual authors, as corrected, are Coalition for an Ethical Psychology. I regret any confusion from this error.

Aug. 22 NYC Panel Discussion on Psychologist Participation in CIA/Pentagon Torture

The following is a press release from Patricia Davis, announcing an important discussion in NYC on torture and the participation of psychologists in its planning and implementation. The discussion will follow the performance of Davis's award-winning play, Alternative Methods. As the show's website explains, "Set in Iraq in 2007, Alternative Methods explores indefinite detention, learned helplessness, and the deep involvement of psychologists in torture." The plot tells the story of an Iraqi doctor who is detained, suspected of treating an Al-Qaeda leader. "With the clock ticking, interrogators must quickly get the doctor to reveal where the safe house is. Susan, a young interrogation psychologist, witnesses severe acts of torture that still yield no intelligence. She takes matters into her own hands."

The event couldn't be more timely, as around the country human rights groups are filing licensing complaints against psychologists who have been identified as involved in torture. These actions will go nowhere without real public support. Already, the complaint against Major John Leso, a military psychologist associated with the torture of Mohammed Al Qahtani, has been turned away by the NY State Office of Professional Discipline because it claimed it lacked jurisdiction. I'll be writing more about this outrageous action quite soon. In the meantime, one can study the complaints filed against the former chief psychologist at Guantanamo, Col. (ret.) Larry James, and former SERE instructor and CIA contract psychologist, James Mitchell.

I hope everyone in New York City will turn out for this important event. It's evident Patricia has done her homework. Her work on torture is well-researched. Her advocacy webpage includes a discussion on Barack Obama's black site prison at Bagram, and the ongoing use of psychological torture, such as solitary confinement, sleep deprivation and more in the Army Field Manual's Appendix M.

From the press release:

Panel Discussion on the Involvement of Psychologists in Torture

A panel discussion on the involvement of psychologists in torture will be held on Sunday, August 22, at 3:00 PM in the Red Room Theater, 85 East 4th Street, NYC. The discussion will follow the 1:00 PM performance of Alternative Methods at the First Floor Theater at La MaMa, 74A East 4th Street. The panel will feature the full cast of Alternative Methods, director Josh Liveright, playwright Patricia Davis, plus three experts on torture: Michael Otterman, human rights consultant and author of American Torture and Erasing Iraq: the Human Costs of Carnage; Steven Reisner, Ph.D, an eminent psychologist who has led his field in opposing the involvement of psychologists in torture and calling for accountability; and, Nathaniel Raymond, director of Physicians for Human Rights’ Campaign Against Torture and the organization’s lead investigator into the role of health professionals in American interrogation policy. Other experts will be announced as they are confirmed.

In addition to the August 22 performance, Alternative Methods will be performed at LaMama as part of the New York International Fringe Festival on: Sunday, August 15 at 8:15; Friday, August 20 at 5:30 PM; Wednesday, August 25 at 8:15 PM; and Saturday, August 28 at 9:45 PM. The play just finished a successful run in Washington, DC, at the Capital Fringe Festival, where the Washington City Paper called it “very well written and performed . . . very successful.“ The DC Theater Scene called the play “interesting and thought-provoking,” commended the “outstanding, all-equity cast,” and selected the play for its Social Consciousness Award.

Written by Patricia Davis and directed by Josh Liveright, “Alternative Methods” features Hend Ayoub, Charlie Kevin, Julie Kline, John Greenleaf, and Alok Tewari. See www.alternativemethodstheplay.com for more information.

Remember, Never Forget or Forgive: Aug. 8, 1945

Petition: “Defend WikiLeaks – End the Secret Wars”

The right wing media are clucking loudly these days, competing over who can be the best sycophant to the President and the Pentagon in the latter’s frenzy over the leaks coming out of Julian Assange’s Wikileaks website. But it’s not just the right wing. Establishment Democrats are lining up to show their pro-military, patriotic fervor, only days after passing a $37 billion dollar defense supplemental to pay for more war in Afghanistan.

Following the release of tens of thousands of documents showing U.S. forces in Afghanistan involved in numerous killings of civilians, in cover-ups, and even running a Special Forces death squad "catch or kill" list, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced that a planned new shield law would have a special provision to ensure it would not apply to "organizations like WikiLeaks."

Schumer joins forces with creepy finks like Adrian Lamo and his mentors at Project Vigilant (PV) in going after Wikileaks, as if they were some criminal outfit. According to an excellent analysis by Glenn Greenwald, PV leader Chet Uber "strongly pressured Lamo to inform" on PFC Brian Manning, held now at Quantico under suspicion of leaking the Afghan war documents. Uber strongly suggested to Lamo that he might be arrested for holding the documents he supposedly got from Manning if he didn’t turn them over to the feds. Lamo apparently hesitated a moment before turning definitively to the dark side. Greenwald makes a good case for seeing the actions by Uber and Project Vigilant (and their Renfield, Lamo) as a sinister example of the new privatization of the intelligence apparatus, aimed at cowing an already submissive public into total political somnolence.

It’s really beyond dispute that one has virtually no privacy from the Government. That’s not just true in theory, but in practice, as the Government seriously escalates the various ways it maintains dossiers on citizens….

Many people are indifferent to the disappearance of privacy — even with regard to government officials — because they don’t perceive any real value to it. The ways in which the loss of privacy destroys a society are somewhat abstract and difficult to articulate, though very real. A society in which people know they are constantly being monitored is one that breeds conformism and submission, and which squashes innovation, deviation, and real dissent.

Wikileaks and its founder, Julian Assange, supply a strong antidote to this nihilistic surrender to a surveillance society. As a result, they have been attacked by the likes of Fox News and Washington Post Cheney-groupie Marc Thiessen. The latter could barely contain himself, reporting on the Pentagon’s request that Wikileaks turn over all their Afghan war logs, and calling the Pentagon’s bluster "a final warning," while fantasizing about the Pentagon launching a black ops or rendition on Assange. While the consensus is the Pentagon can’t really do much about the leaks, nothing is too desperate for the rulers of America, if they see themselves losing. It is imperative that believers in a free press, in transparency in government, in protection for whistleblowers, and for an end to the fruitless and criminal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to stand up in defense of Wikileaks.

Assange and his supporters have put themselves smack in the way of the Pentagon war machine, and the generals and admirals don’t like it one bit. The military has now ordered all personnel that they cannot visit the Wikileaks website. We should remember, too, that it was only last March that Wikileaks revealed a U.S. counterintelligence plan to stop potential whistleblowers from sending documents or videos to them. The SECRET/NOFORN document argued for actions that could "damage or destroy this center of gravity [Wikileaks] and deter others considering similar actions [leaking] from using the WikiLeaks.org Web site."

Tom Hayden has posted a petition calling for the defense of Wikileaks. The title of the petition reads, "Defend WikiLeaks – End the Secret Wars."

Here’s the text, along with a list of prominent endorsers:

Background (Preamble):
We believe that WikiLeaks and those whistleblowers who declassify documents in a time of secret war should be welcomed as defenders of democracy, not demonized as criminals.

We support their First Amendment rights and welcome their continued disobedience in response to a long train of official deception.

Petition:
Our government and its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan have stretched the labels “national security” and “secrecy” beyond all reasonable definitions, because they wish to keep the realities of these wars hidden from the American people. “National security” is becoming the last refuge of scoundrels. Only consider –

- Our government prohibited the media from photographing the returning remains of our dead soldiers, until public pressure forced a change in policy;

- The Abu Ghraib torture scandal only came to public attention when photographs were leaked by an MP;

- The war in Pakistan is shrouded in secrecy because it violates that country’s sovereignty, results in the killing of innocent civilians, and is deeply unpopular;

- According to the new information from WikiLeaks, our Special Operations Task Force 373 operates outside the ISAF mandate to kidnap and kill targeted insurgents in a repeat of the discredited Phoenix program of the Vietnam era.

- Gen. Stanley McChrystal was forced to resign after a Rolling Stone reporter uncovered attitudes hostile to civilian authority;

- The same Rolling Stone article quoted a top official saying if the truth about these wars was known by the American people, they would be even more unpopular.

Given this context of cover-ups, whistleblowers have been a last resort in keeping democracy alive.

We understand the embarrassment of high officials when exposed, but it is Orwellian for the Pentagon to accuse the WikiLeaks of having “blood on their hands.” We are in the tenth year of a war which has claimed over 1,100 American lives, and where Afghan and Pakistan casualties are obscured deliberately. Many of America’s killed and wounded are listed as non-combat, minimizing the actual toll. WikiLeaks has been careful to delete information which might expose individuals to lethal risk. Those who really have blood on their hands are the authors of this war. We stand with those who expose them.

TOM HAYDEN
REV. GEORGE HUNSINGER, Princeton Theology Seminary
ED BACON, All Saints Episcopal
MEDEA BENJAMIN, Co-founder, CODEPINK
TIM CARPENTER, Progressive Democrats of America
REV. JIM CONN
ARIEL DORFMAN, Author
DANIEL ELLSBERG
PETER DALE SCOTT, Author
DONALD SHRIVER, President of Union Theological Seminary in NYC [ret.]
PEGGY SHRIVER, Assistant General Secretary, National Council of Churches [ret.]
JEAN STEIN, Editor/Author

You can sign the petition by clicking here.

A defense website has also been set up for Bradley Manning, and can be accessed here.

Congress OK'ed Naji Deportation, Ex-Gitmo Prisoner Charges Drugging, Torture, Coercion to Spy

Originally posted at Firedoglake/The Seminal

The odyssey of Abdul Aziz Naji has taken many terrible twists and turns since he was seized in Pakistan in May 2002, tortured at Bagram, then sent to Guantanamo, where he was formally cleared of any charges in a review of prisoner status last year. He was forcibly repatriated to Algeria on July 20, despite his fears of being harmed by Islamic forces or the government upon his return. Such forcible repatriation of a prisoner or detainee who fears persecution or worse is a violation of international law. This principle of non-refoulement, or non-return is specifically forbidden in the UN Convention Against Torture and Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

The Obama administration was cleared to effect the deportation against the prisoner's will by no less than the Supreme Court, who rejected a lower court order blocking the action. What hasn't been reported thus far is the role of Congress, who was mandated to have advance notice of the transfer.

According to the 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations, Interior Appropriations, Consolidated Appropriations, and Defense Appropriations Acts, all of which contain similar language on the subject, no funds are to be appropriated for the transfer of a Guantanamo prisoner to another state unless 15 days prior to release the President submit to Congress, "in classified form," a statement regarding any risks to national security or U.S. citizens, the name of the prisoner and country of release, and "the terms of any agreement with the country or freely associated state that has agreed to accept the detainee." (See PDF link.)

Congress Informed of Plan to Flout the Law

Both the offices of Senator Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Senator Dianne Feinstein, chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, confirmed to me that the 15-day notification did take place, meaning that requisite Congressional committees were informed of the deportation and the fact that it was taking place on the basis of non-refoulement, and presumably, as the Obama administration has maintained, with "diplomatic assurances" from the Algerian government the prisoners would not be mistreated. The Washington Post said the administration took this to be good coin "because 10 other detainees have been returned to Algeria without incident." But we know that in a number of these cases, the former Guantanamo prisoners were subsequently imprisoned and put on trial. Moreover, numerous human rights organizations have decried reliance on "diplomatic assurances" of safety as not being reliable.

Human Rights Watch described the problem with such "assurances":

Governments that engage in torture routinely deny it and refuse to investigate allegations of torture. A government that is already violating its international obligation not to torture cannot be trusted to abide by a further "assurance" that it will not torture.

Then, too, there is fear that the government cannot protect returnees against being preyed upon by Islamic radical forces. As the U.S. 2006 State Department report on Algeria explained:

The country’s 1992-2002 civil conflict pitted self-proclaimed radical Muslims belonging to the Armed Islamic Group (GIA) and its later offshoot, the GSPC, against moderate Muslims. During the year [2005] radical Islamic extremists issued public threats against all “infidels” in the country, both foreigners and citizens. The country’s terrorist groups generally did not differentiate between religious and political killings.

A number of remaining Algerian prisoners fear return as well. One of them, Farhi Saeed Bin Mohammed, who won his "freedom" via habeas appeal last year, was one of the prisoners whose deportation block was lifted by the Supreme Court at the same time as Naji. To date, he remains at Guantanamo. Andy Worthington describes the fate of the others, including Djamel Ameziane, a Berber who fled Algeria years ago and lived five years in Canada.

The action, or more properly, inaction of Congress in the face of the illegal return (by international standards and U.S. treaty) of Abdul Aziz Naji to Algeria is inexcusable. When asked to make further explanation on policy regarding non-refoulement in general, or in the case of Mr. Naji, both Sen. Levin and Sen. Feinstein's office declined to comment. We can only be left with the impression that they did not intend to stand in the way of this breaking of international law, and only a widespread outcry has assured, for the moment, that further such deportations have been delayed.

While, after a week's incarceration, and some confusion about his fate, Naji is now reported to be safe at his family's home in Batna, about 300 miles east of Algiers, it's not clear that his safety is assured. Naji had stated that he feared torture, or death, at the hands of either the Algerian government or the Islamic fundamentalist oppositions who have been fighting the government. Over 10,000 have died in this conflict since the early 1990s. As a July 25 New York Times editorial on the Naji deportation noted, U.S. State Department reviews have described the ongoing use of disappearances and the extraction of confessions through torture by the Algerian government.

Andy Worthington has described the case of Mustapha Hamlili, who was arrested with Mr. Naji in Peshawar. He was voluntarily repatriated from Guantanamo to Algeria in July 2008, but then "was subsequently charged with 'membership in a terrorist organization abroad and using forged travel documents.'" He was only cleared of charges and released last February. Others have faced charges against them over a year after the actual repatriation. Naji may be safe now, but as Worthington warns, "I hope that Abdul Aziz Naji is able to stay in contact with his lawyers, and that he can establish contact with representatives of human rights groups, to ensure that his appearance in the Algerian media is indicative of a new openness on the part of the Algerian government, as is not just a PR stunt, and also, hopefully, to avoid the farcical charges and long-winded trials to which all the other returned Algerians have been subjected."

The Hell that is Guantanamo

Naji's own incredible tale of his incarceration at Guantanamo, reported in the Algerian newspaper El Khabar, has not received a U.S. audience. British journalist Andy Worthington describes it, though, in an article late last week. Worthington is a fantastic reporter who also recently updated the U.S. rendition story in an article, "New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania."

According to the July 28 interview with Naji, prisoners were tortured to give false confessions. Even more incredibly, they were forced "to take some medicines for three months to drive them crazy, loosing [sic] memory and committing suicide." Charges of drugging prisoners have been widespread, but have been difficult to verify. An Inspector General investigation on such drugging was initiated in 2008, but nothing further has been heard, save for an indication earlier this year that the investigation was still underway.

Naji also charges that "some detainees had been promised to be granted political asylum opportunity in exchange of [sic] a 'spying role' within the detention camp." Once released, they maintain their spying role, he charged. It is difficult to imagine that the U.S. has not tried to use some prisoners in this way. In fact, the suicide bombing at the CIA's Forward Operating Base Chapman, Afghanistan, which killed seven CIA officers and a Jordanian intelligence official last December, was undertaken by a Jordanian doctor who was supposedly "turned" after a short period of imprisonment (and likely torture or blackmail) by the Jordanians. One is reminded, too, of the attempts of Britain's MI5 to turn British resident and U.S. rendition prisoner Binyam Mohamed into an informer, while he was being tortured in a Moroccan prison in September 2002.

We cannot know for sure, but it may have been Naji's refusal to so turn informant that led him to be considered for forced repatriation by the Obama administration, as in all other cases since January 2009 the government had followed the Bush administration in not undertaking the forced deportation of any Guantanamo prisoner.

Naji's forced repatriation, his story of drugging and torture and coerced confessions at Guantanamo, and tales of deals with prisoners, swapping political asylum for spying, are all very disturbing. They reveal a side of the government's actions in what used to be called the "war on terror" that is rarely even mentioned in the press anymore. When any truth about U.S. military or intelligence activity does leak out, as when Wikileaks released tens of thousands of military reports from Afghanistan a few weeks ago, such attempts to unveil government actions have been met by official condemnation and even calls for extrajudicial action against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, and China-like censorship of the Wikileaks website.

The United States exists today in a state of moral anarchism. The government gives lip service to the rule of law, but repeatedly and consistently shows its disdain for international protocols. As Shahid Buttar of the Bill of Rights Defense Committee pointed out recently, the FBI has been politically spying on Americans for ten years now, and wants the freedom to do even more. BORDC is one of 50 peace, environmental, civil rights, and civil liberties groups seeking "long overdue legislative limits to constrain the FBI" (PDF). Meanwhile, the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights are seeking "a federal court order restraining the Obama administration from killing [the son of Nasser al-Awlaki] without due process of law." The son, Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen, is on a government assassination list.

Cases like that of Abdul Aziz Naji put a human face on the actions of the U.S. government. Organizations as diverse as Wikileaks, BORDC, ACLU, CCR and others are fighting to turn this nation back from its headlong plunge into militarism, torture, and assassination, all the deformations that result from substituting imperialism for democracy. But real democracy will not take place until serious, and far-reaching societal and institutional change takes place. This is the challenge of our generation, a challenge we dare not refuse to answer.

"Just Say Now" to Marijuana Legalization

Jane Hamsher talks at CNN on pot legalization

"Lives in the Balance"

Lives in the Balance, by Jackson Browne

On the radio talk shows and TV
You hear one thing again and again
How the USA stands for freedom
And we come to the the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends-
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can't take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire.

Eight years since the two Bybee memos approving U.S. torture. No accountability. Meanwhile, Congress passes billions for more war. A dark time for America, made worse by the "feel-good" paltry reforms of the Obama administration, issued in part to make people forget their government harbors torturers, wages aggressive war, tortures still, weakens even more protections against basic privacy, and practices assassination abroad.

"... there is blood on the wire."

H/T Barb