Did CIA/SSCI Revolving Door Lead Feinstein to Suppress Full Torture Report?

Marcy Wheeler at the Emptywheel blog is known for her facility at connecting the dots in relation to government and intelligence matters. An excellent recent example is her most recent posting, which looks at how "vague references to claims that surely were torture derived" were used back in 2004 by now-CIA chief John Brennan in a scare memo to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to substantiate his case for legally justifying a Internet dragnet. (I use the word "substantiate" guardedly.)

I have a tangential interest in this same memo, as it mentions (and not the first time this has been documented) that Tenet spent seven years working for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI), the very same institution that was charged with investigating the torture program under George W. Bush's Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet. For over four of those years with SSCI (November 1988 through January 1993), Tenet was SSCI Staff Director.

After leaving SSCI, Tenet went straight to the White House, where he worked as "Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and Senior Director for Intelligence Programs." In a relatively short time, he was appointed deputy director of the CIA in July 1995. By December 1996, Tenet replaced John Deutch as temporary director of the CIA. Bill Clinton would nominate him as full director the next year. (For more on the CIA scandals that led to the fall of Deutch and Tenet's accession, see this 2009 story.)

In four quick years, Tenet went from SSCI Staff Director to head of the CIA.

While Tenet was SSCI Staff Director, the Minority Staff Director was John H. Moseman. In February 1996, Moseman was appointed Director of Congressional Affairs of the Central Intelligence Agency, demonstrating that the revolving door between the CIA and its Congressional overseers was not a partisan affair.

Moseman went on to become Tenet's Chief of Staff at CIA in 2001, serving until 2005. Today, he is an "Executive Advisor" at Booz Allen Hamilton.

Not everyone went from Congressional cloakroom to Langley. The Chief Clerk for the Senate Intelligence Committee, Kathleen McGhee, has served from Tenet's days at SSCI until January of 2014. In addition, sometimes the revolving door rotated in the opposite direction. When in February 2002, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees announced a joint investigation into the facts behind 9/11, they hired former CIA Inspector General L. Britt Snider to head the unified staff for the joint inquiry.

Another hire from CIA was Charles Battaglia. Battaglia, who had been the Navy's director for psychological operations during the Vietnam War, served as special assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence from 1978 to 1981. He was a senior line manager at the CIA from 1981 to 1985, and then went to work on staff at the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He ultimately became Staff Director, like Tenet, in the mid-1990s.

If this were any other institution, there would be an outcry, or a least some raised eyebrows, over this revolving door between IC regulators and the IC itself. One has to ask whether what we have with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees isn't an instance of what George Stigler called "regulatory capture."

But, you may ask, isn't there a big conflict between the SSCI and the CIA over the former's attempt to regulate the latter, in the sense of holding them accountable for their torture-interrogation program?

In fact, given the amount of worldwide outrage over the revelations surrounding the US/CIA/DOD torture program, the actions of the SSCI appear to be one of helping the CIA with damage control, rather than actually bringing the scofflaws to heel.

The Senate investigation only began years after the revelations about CIA torture were made public. Indeed, scandals over CIA torture and assassination have come and gone over the decades without the SSCI, including the SSCI under Tenet, initiating any major investigation.

Moreover, even now, with some 6000+ pages of report and millions of pages of documentation, the SSCI has indicated that it will only release a few hundred pages of "Executive Summary." This "Summary" will be so carefully controlled by the CIA, i.e., by the very agency the SSCI is supposed to be overseeing, that, as Jason Leopold revealed the other day, it will not even name key personnel in the torture program like James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, despite the fact their identities were revealed by a separate investigation by the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But behind the hullaballoo over the CIA fight with Feinstein and her committee over the Executive Summary is the unassailable fact that the SSCI has suppressed its own report. Feinstein has said there is no planned release of the actual report itself, even though the mainstream press continues to treat the fight over censorship in the Executive Summary as a fight over the report itself. No, there is no fight over the main report. George Tenet's former employers do not threaten the CIA with that.

Another Suppressed Congressional Report on the CIA

This is not the first time Congress has suppressed a report on the CIA. In 1976, Congress voted to suppress the House Select Committee on Intelligence's Pike Report. A sampling of the report's conclusions may help one understand why.

"If this Committee's recent experience is any test," the Pike report concludes, "intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congressional lawmaking are, today, beyond the lawmaker's scrutiny.

These secret agencies have interests that inherently conflict with the open accountability of a political body, and there are many tools and tactics to block and deceive conventional Congressional checks. Added to this are the unique attributes of intelligence -- notably, "national security," in its cloak of secrecy and mystery -- to intimidate Congress and erode fragile support for sensitive inquiries.

Wise and effective legislation cannot proceed in the absence of information respecting conditions to be affected or changed. Nevertheless, under present circumstances, inquiry into intelligence activities faces serious and fundamental shortcomings.

Even limited success in exercising future oversight requires a rethinking of the powers, procedures, and duties of the overseers."

This was said even after the Committee had spent many months gathering a great deal of evidence (some of which today can be accessed here).

The Pike Report was suppressed by Congress after it was completed and after the CIA complained. It was never officially released to the United States citizens who paid for it. The late Daniel Schorr famously released a leaked copy to the Village Voice, which published it to great fanfare. Schorr was castigated, and his career and liberty temporarily threatened.

The history of what was in the Pike Report has mainly been ignored and forgotten, which is what happens when political history is suppressed.

Could the CIA have learned from this that to keep matters under control that one of their own should be well-placed inside the very oversight instruments of Congress itself? Could this have been George Tenet's role from his very first day working for SSCI?

I have no evidence that is the case, but there is sufficient circumstantial evidence to present to at least ask the question.

Here's another question, though no one -- and ponder that "no one" a bit -- no one has asked Senator Feinstein and her committee why they are not releasing the full report. The taxpayers paid for it. The crimes ostensibly investigated therein constitute among the most heinous possible, being torture and murder by torture, ordered by the Chief Executive of the land.

Why is the SSCI acting as an agent of cover-up? If the Congress cannot do their job of oversight, what options are left for civil society?

Appendix: Who was on the SSCI back when Tenet served? Looking at a hearing from April 1992, we see that Democratic Senator David Boren was chairman, while Republican Senator Frank Murkowski was vice-chair. Others serving included Ernest Hollings, Bill Bradley, John Warner, Alfonse D'Amato, Alan Cranston, John Danforth, John Chafee, John Glenn, Dennis Deconcini, Slade Gorton, Howard Metzenbaum, and Bob Kerrey. George Mitchell and Robert Dole served Ex Officio. Sen. Feinstein entered the Senate as Tenet was leaving his post at SSCI to work for the NSC.

Appendix II (9/1/14): Recently, working on other materials, I discovered yet another CIA/SSCI link. In the mid 1980s, the SSCI Staff Director was Bernard F. McMahon (see this PDF file). Earlier, McMahon had served as Executive Director to the Director of the CIA (date documented as 1997 - see link and this 2002 Baltimore Sun article, which notes McMahon served under then CIA Director Stansfield Turner).

Appendix III (July 16, 2019): Some recent reading led me to revisit the issue of the CIA-Congressional intelligence oversight committees revolving door. Two important CIA figures also held prominent positions with the House Select Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HSPSC). The first was Porter Goss, who had been a CIA operative from the late 1950s through the early 1970s. Most famously, he was caught in a January 1963 photo that supposedly showed a collection of figures from CIA's Operation 40 assassination team.

Goss served in Congress as a Republican member from Florida's 14th Congressional district from 1989 to 2004. He was assigned to the HSPSC and served as its chairman from 1997 to 2004. In addition, along with Sen. Graham from the Senate Intelligence Committee, he co-chaired the Congressional Joint 9/11 investigation committee. In 2004, President George W. Bush appointed Goss to be Director of the CIA, where he served from 2004-2006.

Goss's tenure may have been shortened when, according to one news report, he got caught up in "a widening FBI sex and cronyism investigation that's targeted Kyle (Dusty) Foggo, the No.3 official at the CIA, and also touched on Goss himself."

The other prominent HSPSC official I want to touch on here who had connections with the CIA was former CIA case officer John Millis. According to a brief NY Times obituary, Millis worked for the CIA for "nearly 13 years. In that period, he lived in Pakistan, working to provide covert aid to Afghan rebels who were fighting the Soviet army."
 

The Times article also states Millis served as staff director of a special Congressional committee that investigated the Clinton administration's approval of arms shipments from Iran to Muslim forces in Bosnia" from 1996-1997. Later in 1997, he became staff director for the House Intelligence Committee, its top staff position. 

On June 4, 2000, Millis apparently shot himself in a motel room in Fairfax, Virginia. He was reportedly depressed as he was under investigation by the very House intel committee he served as top aide. Millis had also recently helped bring about the fall of former CIA director John Deutsch, who had supposedly taken top secret CIA information home with him on his personal computer.

In fact, Millis had been suspended without pay from the HSPSC only weeks before, according to a August 14, 2000 article by Jamie Dettmer and Paul M. Rodriguez in Insight on the News. Both Goss, who was then panel chairman, and CIA Director George Tenet insisted in public accounts that the suspension did not involve and threats to national security.

"The suicide was a private tragedy and should stay off-limits to the press, they maintained."

 Whether or not it was or not, I certainly can't know. Interested readers can pursue the link just above. However, I'll note that Millis's suicide and his connections with both the CIA and the House intelligence committee was something I came across while reading NYT reporter James Risen's January 3, 2018 Intercept article on his experiences as a national security reporter.

In the Intercept piece, Risen revealed that sometime early in 2000 Millis had leaked to him an internal CIA Inspector General report. The IG erport had "concluded that top CIA officials had impeded an internal investigation into evidence that former CIA Director John Deutch had mishandled large volumes of classified material...."

Risen had long wondered whether the stories he filed stemming from this revelation had led somehow to Millis's death. In the 2018 article, Risen feels that he was reassured by Millis's wife, Linda, telling him that the leak about the Deutsch affair had nothing to do with John's death. Indeed, Dettmer and Rodriguez had reported about marital difficulties the Millis's had suffered, including the rumor that John Millis had had a homosexual affair. Interestingly, Risen never mentions that Linda Millis herself had worked for the CIA (per the article in Insight in the News).

Whatever the labyrinthine politics behind the downfall of Goss and the death of John Millis, the point remains that their work for the Congressional oversight committees, and in Goss's case, for the Congressional 9/11 investigation, remain tainted by their association with the CIA, the very institution the oversight committees were sworn to investigate.

But their cases are not, as we can see above, unique -- nor do I imagine this article, with its later appendices, has definitively listed all the cases of possible conflict of interest between the committees and the various intelligence agencies they supposedly oversee. I add them to this article in order to further complement the thesis of the original work above.

One other example merits mention here: in 1995, Mark Lowenthal served as staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. By 2002, Lowenthal, a PhD in History from Harvard University, had become CIA's Assistant Director of Central Intelligence for Analysis and Production. He played a key role in the CIA analysis that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction just prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of that country.

Finally, while I don't have time to investigate fully the case of Daniel J. Jones, the fact that this primary aide both Senators Rockefeller and Feinstein at SSCI, and later put in charge of the  investigation into CIA torture, later was revealed to have worked as an investigator for the FBI, supposedly on international terrorism operations.

According to a declassified Congressional report, Jones also, as part of his work with "the Penn Quarter Group (PQG), told the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in March of 2017 that he had retained the services of Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to 'continue exposing Russian interference' in the 2016 election. Steele is the former British spy who authored the infamous unverified dossier of allegations against President Donald Trump."

It seems possible that Jones will be yet another case of strange interactions between the House and Senate intelligence committees and the CIA, FBI and other intelligence agencies. Time will tell.

Excerpt from Secret US Gov't Report: "Law Enforcement Turned Law-Breaking"

The following is but one section from the 1976 report of the House Select Committee on Intelligence on the CIA and intelligence agencies, procedures and finances, known to history as The Pike Report. The investigation paralleled the more famous Church Committee investigation undertaken by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Unlike the Church committee report, the Pike Report was suppressed by Congress -- after it was completed (and the CIA complained) -- and never officially released to the United States citizens who paid for it. The late Daniel Schorr famously released a leaked copy to the Village Voice, which published it to great fanfare. Schorr was castigated, and his career and liberty temporarily threatened. But that is an old story now, and readers can follow it at a number of online sites (some of which are linked below).

The staffers working for Congressman Otis Pike were pugnacious and the investigation had a contentious relationship with the CIA. For one thing, the Pike Committee was investigating the financial aspects of the intelligence agencies, and was looking into certain areas the agencies wished to keep secret. Pike famously wrote in the report that the intelligence world had slipped "beyond the lawmaker's scrutiny," and that the CIA and other government agencies were using "national security" secrecy "to intimidate Congress and erode fragile support for sensitive inquiries."

Full Suppressed Pike Report Now Online

In the past I've excerpted portions of the report, but the selection posted below comes from a full, online version of the report, scanned from a 1991 version of the report assembled by Gregory Andrade Diamond and published by McGraw Hill. This version, as well as other versions, including one published in Great Britain in the 1970s by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, have been incredibly difficult to come by, and prohibitively expensive for those who might see a copy for sale. The small portion posted here is within fair use guidelines and for the public good. It is posted without remuneration of any kind.

The Committee's hearings volumes (including the statements of witnesses, charts, correspondence, etc.), along with an unpublished draft report by the committee on NSA electronic surveillance, can be viewed at the Mary Farrell Foundation website, though you must be a member to download the actual documents.

Readers can investigate some of the background of the report's controversies at a selection of Kathryn S. Olmstead's 1996 book, Challenging the Secret Government, posted by Third World Traveler. Another interesting, if necessarily partial, history of the Pike report was written by CIA historian Gerald K. Haines, "The Pike Committee Investigations and the CIA."

Contrariwise, the introduction to the British publication of the report, by former CIA agent Philip Agee, constitutes another crucial discussion of the controversies around the report and its suppression. For one thing, Agee is critical of some aspects of the investigation and subsequent report:

For all the valuable information contained in the Pike Committee's report, one most important area of CIA operations was completely overlooked, possibly because the committee considered the matter too hot to handle. These are the relations between the CIA and foreign intelligence and security services -- commonly known in the Agency as liaison operations. Through these operations the CIA trains, finances and in varying degrees guides the foreign services into operations that will help the CIA. Over the years the CIA has played a major role in the growth and strengthening of many of the world's most dreaded and cruel security services: the South Korean CIA, the Indonesian KOPKAMTIB, the Thieu security services in South Vietnam, the SAVAK in Iran, the OBAN, CODI, DOPS and SNI in Brazil, the DINA in Chile and the Federal Police in Argentina....

Nowhere in the Pike Report can one find an indication that the Select Committee even considered the CIA's role in promoting and supporting such repressive security services.

Ongoing Government Use of Informants & Agents Provocateurs

The following excerpt (from pages 163-165 of the report) is chosen for its particular relevancy to the ways that agencies of the state operate to entrap political opponents by the use of agents provocateurs. This is not merely an historical lesson, but directly pertinent due to recent reports (such as this one at NPR) of such FBI and police activities concerning informants.

Last October, a Mother Jones investigation by Trevor Aaronson, detailed the use of FBI informants "to bust, and sometimes lead, terrorist plots." Back in 2005, a Dan Eggen report at the Washington Post detailed the findings of a Department of Justice investigation that found "in a handful of cases in which the FBI permits informants to commit an act -- such as engaging in conversations about a conspiracy or handling money as part of a controlled drug purchase -- that would otherwise be a crime." But this was certainly a soft-peddling of a much larger problem.

A September 18 article by Petra Bartosiewicz at the Los Angeles Times described the wide-scale use of informants as provocateurs in the Muslim community:

In a case in Chicago last year, for example, the FBI instructed informants to pay a suspect to quit his day job so he could focus on jihad.

To aid them in their efforts, the FBI has deployed paid undercover informants throughout the nation's Muslim community, particularly in mosques. These informants often act as agents provocateur. At a mosque in California in 2007, for example, one such FBI informant, Craig Monteilh, who says he was paid $177,000 for his services, talked so vigorously about jihad that the mosque sought and received a restraining order against him.

In another high-profile case known as the Newburgh Four — four African American Muslim converts convicted last year of attempting to bomb a synagogue and a Jewish community center and to shoot down military planes — an FBI informant promised the defendants, among other enticements, a BMW and $250,000 to carry out the attack. The details of the plot were choreographed in such detail that the presiding judge in the case chastised the government for its "decidedly troubling" tactics and concluded that the defendants would never have committed the attacks on their own.

But these kinds of reports are not really new. The 1970s Church hearings themselves reported on the use of FBI agents provocateurs in the Cointelpro operation used to destroy the Black Panther Party and other supposed "extremist" groups.

Not much was really done to curtail the activities of law enforcement and intelligence operations, though exposure may have slowed their operations for a time. As a result, these same agencies feel free to exercise the same kind of activities now. Political activists need to know about this history and these kinds of spy and provocateur operations in their midst, the better to arm themselves against police/intelligence penetration of their groups.

In the following subsection from the Pike Report, I have not changed spelling or other textual problems with the document, though I did make the subhead bold for greater clarity. The footnotes in the original are at the bottom of each page, but here are formatted entirely at the end of the text selection.

Law Enforcement Turned Law-Breaking

The use of informants, albeit an effective law enforcement tool, is a method of investigation which is particularly subject to abuses of constitutional rights and rights of privacy.

The Committee heard testimony from a former FBI informant named Robert Hardy. Mr. Hardy chronicled for the Committee his role in a 1971 Camden Draft Board break-in. Pursuant to FBI instructions, he infiltrated a peaceful anti-war group in Camden, New Jersey.⁵⁴⁰ He instigated the burglary and supplied the would-be burglars with tools, money, technical assistance and encouragement.⁵⁴¹

In sum, Mr. Hardy acted as an "agent-provocateur." At one point, he attempted to halt the actual burglary, because a conspiracy had been established. His FBI handling-agents insisted that the burglary be committed. ⁵⁴²

The disturbing lesson is that in the FBI system there is virtually no mechanism to control agents in charge of informants. The FBI Manual of Instructions on Informants sets forth specific guidelines for the handling of informants,⁵⁴³ yet the uniqueness and secrecy surrounding each informant's relationship with the handling-agent⁵⁴⁴ impairs the effectiveness of those instructions.

In the Hardy case, the informant-agent relationship was further complicated by political considerations. ⁵⁴⁵ The defendants in a celebrated case in nearby Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, had recently been acquitted of all conspiracy counts. The FBI apparently felt that an overt act such as an actual break-in would be required to insure a conviction, even though the alleged crime of conspiracy, which was the basis of later prosecution, appears to have been completed far in advance of the actual break-in.

It should be noted that Department of Justice attorneys were advised of this situation long before the break-in and did nothing to avert the course of events. ⁵⁴⁶

The Committee investigated another example of lack of control over informants. The FBI used Robert Merritt ⁵⁴⁷ as an informant on New Left activities during the early 1970's. His duties included reporting on activities at the Institute of Policy Studies. Merritt told the Committee that his FBI handling-agents instructed him to conduct break-ins, deliver unopened mail acquired illegally, and solicit and provide information to the FBI regarding homosexual proclivities of politically prominent people and individuals of the new Left. ⁵⁴⁸

The FBI agents who handled Merritt denied these allegations under oath. They stated that Merritt acted on his own. ⁵⁴⁹

The handling-agents stated that they terminated Merritt because they ascertained that he ha provided false information on one occasion and had reason to believe he provided false information at other times in the past.⁵⁵⁰ If this was true, it does not fit with other facts. During the seven months that Merritt was an FBI informant, he provided over 100 reports on at least 25 people. He had, in fact, been categorized as "reliable" in FBI records. ^55l

No effort was ever made to "correct" the Merritt reports, by indicating that the information contained therein might be unreliable. No prosecutive actions were ever recommended as a result of Merritt's allegedly wrong actions. His efforts apparently fit well with intelligence operations. ⁵⁵²

Furthermore, Merritt told staff that he had committed numerous illegal acts at the direction of District of Columbus Metropolitan Police. ⁵⁵³

His FBI handling-agents stated that although they acquired Merritt form [sic] the Metropolitan Police Department, they never inquired as to the nature of his prior activities as a police informant. ⁵⁵⁴ This attitude of "see no evil, hear no evil" appears to violate the seemingly rigid regulations of the FBI Manual, designed to effect the recruitment of responsible and reliable informants.

Conflicting testimony in the Merritt matter reveals the problem itself. Since FBI agents' instructions to their informants are, by necessity, given orally⁵⁵⁵ and without witnesses, it is difficult, if not impossible, to accurately fix responsibility for an informant's actions.

If the FBI agent is at fault, the problem becomes one of administrative command and control. If, however, the informant has gone bad, the problem is more difficult. For example, if an informant successfully instigates others to commit a crime, as in the Hardy matter, his FBI contact agent may overlook the informant's improper actions, because the informant is important to a case for which the FBI agent is likely to receive credit.

The risk that informants may use illegal methods is heightened when one considers the kind of person needed to infiltrate suspected criminal elements. Understating the problem, James Adams, Assistant to the Director of FBI, testified before the Committee on November 18, 1975: "[T]he informants you develop are not recruited from Sunday Schools."⁵⁵⁶ The dubious character of most informants is compounded by the fact that informants are paid cash, and their payment is commensurate with the information they furnish. The more incriminating the information, the more lucrative the reward.
________

540 None of the group's members was known by the FBI to be violence-prone. Comm. Hearings, at, Nov. 18, 1975

541 All of which were paid for with FBI funds. Ibid.

542 The FBI's denial of this allegation appears in their Memorandum of Nov. 28, 1975, Appendix II.

543 FBI Manual of Instructions, "Security Informants and Confidential Sources," Section 107.

544 The FBI considers the confidentiality of the relating between a special agent and his informant to be of paramount importance. Staff briefing, FBI Intelligence Division personnel and J.B.F. Oliphant and R. Vermeire, Aug. 28, 1975, copy on file with Sel. Comm. on Intell.

545 Staff interview, Guy Goodwin, by J.B.F. Oliphant and R. Vcnneirc, Nov. 14, 1975, at 83, copy on file with Sel. Comm. on Intell.

546 Ibid., at 83-84.

547 Staff interview, Robert Merritt, by J.B.F. Oliphant, J. Atkisson, E. Miller. Staff memo on fIle with Sel. comm. on Intell.

548 Ibid.

549 Staff interview, FBI Special Agents Tucker and O'Connor. by l.B.F. Oliphant, J. Atkisson, Nov. 5, 1975, copy on file with Sel. comm. on Intell.

550 Ibid.

55l Ibid., at 33.

552 Merritt interview.

553 Ibid.

554 Tucker-O'Connor Interview.

Congressional Commission to Examine CIA Crimes?

According to a July 15 report at the Newark Star-Ledger, Representative Rush Holt (D-12th Dist.), chairman of the House Select Committee on Intelligence, is pushing for a "comprehensive" Congressional investigation of the activities of the CIA.

Holt said he believes the investigation, which he also called a review, should be as intense and comprehensive as the probe conducted more than 30 years ago -- in the wake of the Watergate scandal -- by a special committee headed by U.S. Sen. Frank Church, an Idaho Democrat.

The Church committee's findings shocked the public and lawmakers with revelations about attempted assassinations of foreign leaders, undermining of foreign governments, domestic spying, and other abuses.

"I think any new investigation will produce revelations that are as jaw-dropping as those that were uncovered by the Church committee," said Holt in an interview.

It certainly seems Rep. Holt is aiming at something similar to the Church and Pike Committee hearings of the early 1970s. These hearings, and others contemporaneous at the time, brought forth a cornucopia of revelations of misdeeds and crimes that are mind-boggling to consider, even at this historical distance.

The investigations covered "Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders," CIA paramilitary operations, domestic spying, the MKULTRA drug and mind control program, torture, the support and organization of foreign coups, infiltration of the press, interference in foreign elections, operating domestic and foreign college student front groups, and more.

Today, the domestic psych ops program that supports the CIA's activities is more powerful than ever. They will work hard to prevent any openness and transparency and derail any investigation before it gets off the ground. When the Pike Committee released its report, whose first half consisted of complaints against CIA obstruction into the investigation, the CIA was able to get the report suppressed and withheld from the American public.

It has long been recognized that secrecy and democracy are counterpoised. Recent revelations of CIA torture of so-called "unlawful enemy combatants" have called into question whether the CIA is not, as so often in its past, a rogue elephant, a law unto itself, and a danger, not a savior, for democracy in this country.

I don't know all the particulars as yet of the Holt proposal. Spencer Ackerman at The Washington Independent quotes the congressman in an 7/27 article that Rep. Holt "did not have a concrete proposal prepared for the creation of such an investigation, and was at the stage of seeing what colleagues and members of the intelligence community made of such a move." Ackerman also notes that many in the intelligence community considered the Church and Pike committees to have been "an apex of progressive congressional attempts to geld the intelligence community." But for all their important work, the main problem with the Church and Pike Committees was that they failed to pursue the logic of their own findings and call for an end to covert action, and a dismantling of the CIA.

This country is a crossroads, where the pursuit of empire and world domination and the continuance of even an ideology -- never mind the flawed reality -- of a democratic republic and protected civil liberties, is at total odds with the kinds of actions a massive, secretive spying bureaucracy undertakes in this world. The recent reports of "fusion" centers, where FBI, military intelligence, and police surveillance join to spy on political dissidents within the U.S. is an ominous example of what we are facing.

I would hope that any investigation by Congress would expand to include the entire intelligence apparatus: CIA, DIA, NSA, Homeland Security, etc. While there are dangers in the world, and it would be utopian to believe there is no need for national security by all nation states, the temptation for misuse of power, for corruption, for devolution of agencies into power-seeking entities is too great. We need oversight and checks and balances that are real. The reforms of the 1970s have proven too weak to control agencies such as the CIA.

It remains to be seen if Congress if even up to Rep. Holt's challenge. The Star-Ledger reports that Holt is close to Nancy Pelosi. Of course, the CIA and Pelosi got into a tangle recently when Speaker of the House Pelosi said the CIA had lied to her during briefings on interrogations and torture.

If there is going to be an investigation, it will be a real battle between the intelligence professionals and bureaucratic apparatus, and those who seek societal openness and transparency, embodied in the elected representatives of the people. I hope Rep. Holt and his supporters are prepared for that. They must call on support from their constituents. If there were ever an important struggle that was not high enough on the public's radar right now, it's the fight for control over the untrammeled operations of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

For news on the Holt proposal, H/T to buhdydharma

UPDATE: Jordan Fabian at The Hill's Blog Reading Room reports that House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), is not supportive of a large-scale investigation into CIA activities.

Holt indicated that he was pushing hard for a broader investigation of the intelligence agency, saying that he doesn't "have, you know, the Congress behind this yet"....

A broader investigation into CIA practices may steal some of the focus from the Obama administration's domestic agenda, which includes healthcare and climate change legislation.

And so it goes. I'm not sure if that last paragraph is Fabian's editorializing, or a surmise of the mood of Reyes and his pals. In any case, Holt obviously has a high hill to climb to convince his colleagues. The difficulty in getting investigations off the ground appear to be due to a successful push by pro-intelligence forces to keep their turf free of Congressional interference. Or one might surmise that the congressmen and women, and the senators of our day are epigones of those flawed heroes of a prior age, who even if they left the job half-done, took up their quest with zeal and courage.

Torture News Roundup: Breaking: al-Libi Found Dead in Libyan Prison

Also posted now at Daily Kos and Antemedius

This just in from Andy Worthington (H/T Barb):

The Arabic media is ablaze with the news that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the emir of an Afghan training camp — whose claim that Saddam Hussein had been involved in training al-Qaeda operatives in the use of chemical and biological weapons was used to justify the invasion of Iraq — has died in a Libyan jail. So far, however, the only English language report is on the Algerian website Ennahar Online, which reported that the Libyan newspaper Oea stated that al-Libi (aka Ali Abdul Hamid al-Fakheri) “was found dead of suicide in his cell,” and noted that the newspaper had reported the story “without specifying the date or method of suicide.”

It was al-Libi who was tortured by the CIA, subjected to mock burial in a box 20 inches high, in order to "confess" to a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, just days after the start of the Iraq War. Al-Libi later recanted. Afterwards, he was disappeared.

This news resolves, in the grimmest way possible, questions that have long been asked about the whereabouts of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, perhaps the most famous of “America’s Disappeared” — prisoners seized in the “War on Terror,” who were rendered not to Guantánamo but to secret prisons run by the CIA or to the custody of governments in third countries — often their own — where, it was presumed, they would never be seen or heard from again.

Top Story

Holder cautious on U.S. interrogations probes

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday vowed to move cautiously and avoid partisan politics in deciding whether any Bush-era officials should be prosecuted for justifying harsh interrogation techniques.

Holder said he had not yet read the draft report from a review by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility conducted during the previous administration of lawyers who wrote the Bush-era interrogation legal opinions.

"I have not reviewed it. It is not in final form yet," Holder said. "It deals, I suspect, not only with the attorneys but the people that they interacted with, so I think we'll gain some insights by reviewing that report."

He said the review could lead to probes of other officials.

See also, Republicans Warn Holder on Torture.

This is an ongoing weekly series with editors Valtin, Meteor Blades and Patriot Daily. If you have not signed the petition for a special prosecutor to investigate Bush, Cheney et al, you’re just one click away!

(Those who read all the way through this diary will be rewarded by a real treat: a long suppressed U.S. document made public here for the first time on the Internet!)

ALSO BREAKING: Memos shed light on CIA use of sleep deprivation

As President Obama prepared last month to release secret memos on the CIA's use of severe interrogation methods, the White House fielded a flurry of last-minute appeals.

One came from former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden, who expressed disbelief that the administration was prepared to expose methods it might later decide it needed....

"Are you telling me that under all conditions of threat, you will never interfere with the sleep cycle of a detainee?" Hayden asked a top White House official, according to sources familiar with the exchange....

A CIA inspector general's report issued in 2004 was more critical of the agency's use of sleep deprivation than it was of any other method besides waterboarding, according to officials familiar with the document, because of how the technique was applied.

The prisoners had their feet shackled to the floor and their hands cuffed close to their chins, according to the Justice Department memos.

Detainees were clad only in diapers and not allowed to feed themselves. A prisoner who started to drift off to sleep would tilt over and be caught by his chains....

When detainees could no longer stand, they could be laid on the prison floor with their limbs "anchored to a far point on the floor in such a manner that the arms cannot be bent or used for balance or comfort," a May 10, 2005, memo said.

"The position is sufficiently uncomfortable to detainees to deprive them of unbroken sleep, while allowing their lower limbs to recover from the effects of standing," it said.

In the Red Cross report, prisoners said they were also subjected to loud music and repetitive noise.

What this L.A. Times story demonstrates is the proclivity of the CIA and other government torturing agencies to twist the meaning of words, and stuff into the nomenclature of one "technique" or procedures a veritable cornucopia of different torture methods. In this "enhanced interrogation" version of sleep deprivation, forced sleep deficit was combined, as we can see, with shackling, forced positions and forced standing, humiliation, manipulation of diet, sensory overload, and possibly other torture procedures.

So this is what the CIA and U.S. government has been selling as "sleep deprivation"! The situation is reminiscent of the Army Field Manual's use of the "Separation" technique in its Appendix M. It, too, is really an omnibus set of procedures, including solitary confinement, restriction of sleep (not using the term "sleep deprivation" here in order to avoid confusion), partial sensory or perceptual deprivation, use of fear, and likely use of sensory overload, and manipulation of environment, among other possible variations.

The Bush Administration Homicides

An important piece by John Sifton at The Daily Beast:

For five years as a researcher for Human Rights Watch and reporter, John Sifton helped investigate homicides resulting from the Bush administration's torture policy. His findings include:

• An estimated 100 detainees have died during interrogations, some who were clearly tortured to death.

• The Bush Justice Department failed to investigate and prosecute alleged murders even when the CIA inspector general referred a case.

• Sifton’s request for specific information on cases was rebuffed by the Bush Justice Department, though it was “familiar with the cases.”

• Attorney General Eric Holder must now decide whether to investigate and prosecute homicides, not just cases of torture.

Cheney tried to revive torture after Hamdan decision
From a New York Times article (H/T indiemcemopants):

The real trouble began on May 7, 2004, the day the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, completed a devastating report. In thousands of pages, it challenged the legality of some interrogation methods, found that interrogators were exceeding the rules imposed by the Justice Department and questioned the effectiveness of the entire program....

Nobody knew it then, but the C.I.A.’s fateful experiment in harsh interrogation was over. The “enhanced” interrogation, already scaled back, would not be used again....

Still, Mr. Cheney and top C.I.A. officials fought to revive the program. Steven G. Bradbury... began drafting another memorandum in late 2006 to restore legal approval for harsh interrogation....

Early drafts of the memorandum, circulated through the White House, the C.I.A. and the State Department, shocked some officials. Just months after the Supreme Court had declared that the Geneva Convention applied to Al Qaeda, the new Bradbury memorandum gave its blessing to almost every technique, except waterboarding, that the C.I.A. had used since 2002.

Meanwhile, Cheney appeared today on CBS Face the Nation, and did not rule out testifying under oath to Congress about the Bush administration use of coercive interrogations (he'd never call it "torture"), or did he simply artfully dodge the question? You be the judge.

Psychologists, the APA, and the Torture Scandal

Psychologists Complicit in Torture, Physicians’ Group Charges

Bill Fisher of Inter Press Service describes how, in 2005, Department of Defense officials monopolized an ethics review by the American Psychological Association (APA) on national security and psychological ethics (PENS). They they were able to do this with connivance of top APA officers.

Nathaniel Raymond, director of PHR's Campaign Against Torture, told us, “The APA’s ethics task force on national security interrogations produced a report that was rushed, secret, and being driven to already-reached conclusions – conclusions that violated the Geneva Convention.”

“The APA made ethics subservient to law by following guidelines set out by the Pentagon. Members of the task force had long-standing ties to the Pentagon, and the task force was stacked with Defense Department and Bush Administration officials. There were clear conflicts of interest,” he said, adding, “The APA needs to explain how that happened. And the Pentagon’s Inspector General needs to look into how this was allowed to happen.”

The scandal over the APA's role in legitimating psychologists participation in torture was explored in an article by Sheri Fink published at both ProPublica and Salon.com. The APA's Psychological Ethics and National Security (PENS) Task Force report "'found it to be "consistent with the APA Ethics Code' for psychologists to consult with interrogators in the interests of national security."

While noting that psychologists do not participate in torture and have a responsibility to report it, and should be committed to the APA ethics code whenever they "encounter conflicts between ethics and law," the task force decided that "if the conflict cannot be resolved ... psychologists may adhere to the requirements of the law."

The controversy over APA and the DoD has simmered for some time, and has erupted again with the publication of the private email listserv (PDF) between the participants at the APA PENS Task Force, including the top military figures involved.

The Coalition for an Ethical Psychology, Psychologists for Social Responsibility, and Physicians for Human Rights, among others, have called for an independent investigation of the ties between the American Psychological Association and the Defense-Intelligence Establishments.

Meanwhile, one psychologist has been doggedly trying to pursue APA members who have been implicated in torture.
Lawsuit seeks board action -- Psychologist demands censure

A Louisiana-licensed psychologist played a key role in harsh Army interrogations at U.S. prisons in Cuba and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, according to a lawsuit filed in state district court in Baton Rouge.

The suit pits Ohio psychologist Trudy Bond against the Louisiana State Board of Examiners of Psychologists and accuses retired Army Col. Larry C. James of professional and ethical violations in his former role as chief psychologist at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib.

Bond, who filed a complaint against James with the Baton Rouge-based LSBEP in February 2008, sued the board in July after it dismissed her complaint and rejected her request for an investigation of James.

Bond wants a 19th Judicial District Court judge to send the case back to the board “for a full and complete investigation and hearing,’’ according to her petition for judicial review of the board’s actions.

James, a former New Orleanian who has been licensed in Louisiana since 1990, became dean of Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology in Dayton, Ohio, on Aug. 1.

Noted bioethicist Steven Miles, author of Oath Betrayed: America's Torture Doctors, discusses implications of the APA/PENS scandal and other aspects of medical complicity with the U.S.'s torture program on Jon Elliott's "This is America" show on Air America (H/T Ms Grin).

Bloggers Against Torture oppose torture and cruel, inhuman & degrading treatment of all persons, whether they be prisoners at Guantanamo, Bagram or CIA black sites; immigrants; civilians, or prisoners in civilian prison systems. Most members support investigation & prosecution of Bush officials for war crimes & torture.

The Pelosi Scandal: Did She or Didn't She?

Records suggest Pelosi, others were told of harsh interrogations

A chart compiled by the CIA indicates that Pelosi (D-San Francisco) was briefed on Sept. 4, 2002, on the agency's interrogation of alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah, and that the session covered "the particular [enhanced interrogation techniques] that had been employed." The chart does not list the specific methods covered during the briefing. But during the preceding month, the CIA had used the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding on Abu Zubaydah at least 83 times, according to a Justice Department memo released last month.

Pelosi has acknowledged being briefed on the CIA's interrogation program, but said she was told only about methods the agency was considering, not about techniques it had actually employed.

As recently as a week ago, Pelosi said, "We were not -- I repeat were not -- told that waterboarding or any of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used."

Marcy Wheeler (Emptywheel) at Firedoglake led a host of bloggers who shot holes in the press story.

We knew that CIA was playing around with its obligation to inform the intelligence committees before it starts any big new projects--like opening torture factories around the world.

But that's the real story of this briefing list--aside from what a bunch right wingers are claiming it says, the actual details of the briefing list notwithstanding. The real story is that the CIA was playing a bunch of games to be able to claim it had informed Congress, even while only informing some of Congress some things.

First, CIA has officially confirmed what I have been saying for weeks. The CIA first briefed Congress on torture on September 4, 2002, 35 days after CIA purportedly began waterboarding and much longer after we know CIA started torturing Abu Zubaydah. Moreover, we have on the record statements from Pelosi and Goss (and I've had even stronger assurances elsewhere) that CIA did not tell Congress they were already in the business of torture.

Meanwhile, Greg Sargent at The Plum Line is reporting that there are more docs to follow:

GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra is upping the stakes of the torture fight in response to Nancy Pelosi’s claims that she wasn’t briefed on the use of waterboarding.

His office tells me that he’s seen documents that will prove this isn’t true.

Meanwhile, EW counters that with the fact that there are discrepancies between the CIA timeline and that found in the recently released Senate Armed Services Committee narrative released last month.

Meanwhile, a new wrinkle from Saturday's Washington Post: Top Pelosi Aide Learned Of Waterboarding in 2003

Pelosi has insisted that she was not directly briefed by Bush administration officials that the practice was being actively employed. But Michael Sheehy, a top Pelosi aide, was present for a classified briefing that included Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.), then the ranking minority member of the House intelligence committee, at which agency officials discussed the use of waterboarding on terrorism suspect Abu Zubaida.

A Democratic source acknowledged yesterday that it is almost certain that Pelosi would have learned about the use of waterboarding from Sheehy. Pelosi herself acknowledged in a December 2007 statement that she was aware that Harman had learned of the waterboarding and had objected in a letter to the CIA's top counsel.

Glenn Greenwald concludes (emphasis in original):

But what's the point of all of this? Secretly telling Nancy Pelosi that you're committing crimes doesn't mean that you have the right to do so. And the profound failures of the other institutions that are supposed to check executive lawbreaking during the Bush era -- principally Congress and the "opposition party" -- is a vital issue that demands serious examination. This dispute over what Pelosi (and Jay Rockefeller and others) knew highlights, rather than negates, the need for a meaningful investigation into what took place.

Torture and the CIA

Two from Jason Leopold, who continues to keep a close eye on developments in the torture scandal. Patriot Daily posted the first one in Friday night's Overnight News Digest:

CIA Refuses to Turn Over Torture Tape Documents to ACLU

The CIA claims the integrity of a special prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes will be compromised if the agency if forced to turn over to the American Civil Liberties Union detailed documents identifying the individuals responsible for destroying the material, the reasons for the purge, and the torturous tactics depicted on the tapes, according to newly released court documents....

Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said the move is “a classic CIA delay tactic.”

In court papers, she said the government is using the criminal investigation “as a pretext for indefinitely postponing” its obligation to produce documents related to the destruction of the videotapes.

Top CIA Officials Were Given Daily Torture Updates of Zubaydah

Leopold's second article looks at how the hunt for records of the CIA's torture as turned up some new evidence.

The first set of indexes contains information about cables sent on Aug. 1, 2002 and ends on Aug. 7, 2002. The second set of indexes begins on Aug. 8, 2002 and ends on Aug. 18, 2002 but does not contain an entry for correspondence sent back to the CIA on Aug. 13, 2002 describing the status of interrogations.

The indexes were turned over as part of a contempt lawsuit filed by the ACLU against the Department of Defense related to 92 interrogation videotapes that were destroyed by the agency in 2005 as public attention began focusing on allegations that the Bush administration had subjected “war on terror” detainees to brutal interrogations that crossed the line into torture....

Amrit Singh, an ACLU staff attorney, said, “it’s disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing to withhold the text of these cables despite the promise of transparency"....

“I think the frequency of the cables showed that CIA headquarters and senior officials had sanctioned interrogation methods that were illegal,” she said. “We see no basis for continuing to withhold this information.”

The OLC Memos on Torture

Another round of scandal and speculation was generated by a New York Times report that an internal Justice Department inquiry into the memos written by John Yoo, Jay Bybee, Stephen Bradley and others to justify Bush administration torture would censure the attorneys but not call for prosecutions.

Interrogation Memos: Inquiry Suggests No Charges

An internal Justice Department inquiry has concluded that Bush administration lawyers committed serious lapses of judgment in writing secret memorandums authorizing brutal interrogations but that they should not be prosecuted, according to government officials briefed on its findings.

The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said.

The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.

According to an Huffington Post report:

The Washington Post reports that former Bush administration officials are "launching a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign" to urge Obama Justice officials to "soften" the ethics report on the torture memo authors.

Israel/Palestine: Facility 1391

UN committee charges Israel with maintaining secret jail

GENEVA, (PIC)-- The UN committee against torture has denounced the Israeli general security apparatus for using a secret detention center for interrogation that could not be visited by the Red Cross, lawyers or relatives of those detainees.

The ten independent experts, members of the committee, said that the installation "1391" was located in an unspecified area in Israel. They added that the committee received complaints on torture, maltreatment and inappropriate detention conditions in this installation....

Such practices include severe beating, forcing detainees to sit in awkward positions for long period, tightening the handcuffs, violently shaking the detainee and turning his head suddenly and violently, the committee elaborated....

It asked Israel on the measures taken in response to the UNHCR call for an immediate end to the siege on Gaza Strip, which deprives one and a half million Palestinians from the simplest human rights.

The committee is expected to hear answers from Israel before issuing its report at the end of its current session on 15th May.

The story was further reported in the Jerusalem Post:

The Jewish state is one of seven countries under period review this year by the committee, which has received reports on Israeli violations of the UN Convention Against Torture from at least eight NGOs, including B'Tselem, Hamoked Center for the Defense of the Individual, Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International.

In a report submitted to the committee in late 2007, Israel said it had made improvements in a number of areas relating to that convention since it last submitted a report in 2001....

The committee also said it was concerned about allegations that the Shin Bet was operating a secret detention and interrogation facility known as Facility 1391, where detainees had no access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

It asked Israel to explain allegations that Palestinian detainees were beaten, bound, denied sleep and placed in odd positions such as crouching in a frog position or bending their backs in a banana position.

Miscellaneous

Binyam Mohamed ruling: Judges will re-consider public disclosure of UK complicity in torture

The High Court has announced that it will re-open its original judgment that details of the torture of former Guantanamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed should remain secret in the interests of national security.

In February the High Court refused the application of Mr Mohamed and a coalition of media organisations seeking public disclosure of details of his ill-treatment at the hands of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence services. The Court had already found that the British Security Services had colluded in his illegal treatment. After the Foreign Secretary informed the Court that US had threatened to down-grade intelligence sharing with the UK if details were made public, the Court judged that it had no choice but to refrain from publishing details....

Mr Miliband is to be given a final opportunity to present evidence to the Court of the true situation if he wishes to continue to seek to suppress the details of Mr Mohamed's treatment. The Court will then reconsider the question of whether it will publish those details. It is anticipated that the issue will finally be determined in June.

Clive Stafford Smith, Director, of Reprieve, said: "It is long past time that this evidence was made public. How can it be that two governments that purport to uphold the rule of law be working together to cover up crimes committed against Binyam Mohamed?"

Royal Sheikh Detained by UAE Over Torture Tape Allegations

A member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, has been "detained" in Abu Dhabi by authorities investigating a chilling videotape that shows him torturing an Afghan grain dealer, according to officials in Washington.

Religious leaders call for a commission of inquiry on torture by U.S.

Fiery Response to Pew's Torture Analysis

A firestorm erupted this week over an analysis from the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life showing that white evangelical Protestants are far more likely than those in other faith traditions to support the use of torture against suspected terrorists....

But the original analysis overlooked a centrally important piece of information: the big dividing line on public support for torture as a tool in terrorism investigations is along partisan lines, not religious ones.

Government Could Destroy Records in Hundreds of Guantanamo Cases

A stockpile of documents about hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees, some written by the prisoners themselves, could be destroyed under a little-known provision of a federal court order the Bush administration obtained in 2004.

Senators Urge Obama to Block Release of New Detainee Abuse Photos (article by William Fisher)

The plea to intervene to stop the expected May 28 release of the photos came in a letter Thursday to President Barack Obama from Senators Joseph Lieberman and Lindsey Graham.

"The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now been clearly prohibited will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country's image, and endanger our men and women in uniform," the Senators wrote.

Release of the photos is expected in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union.

"We urge you in the strongest possible terms to fight the release of these old pictures of detainees in the war on terror, including appealing the decision of the Second Circuit in the ACLU lawsuit to the Supreme Court and pursuing all legal options to prevent the public disclosure of these pictures," the senators wrote.

If Lieberman and Graham aren't the slimiest, most unctuous creatures in Congress, then I don't know who would be.

The Bush Era Torture-Homicides, By Scott Horton

In a recent television appearance, one of the nation’s foremost retired military leaders, General Barry McCaffrey, said: “We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control, detainees. We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the C.I.A.” The fact of dozens of homicides is frankly acknowledged in discussions with military and intelligence experts, but the press seems to regard the subject as taboo.

Why is Condi Rice Joining the Torture Debate?

The NYT's definition of blinding American exceptionalism (Glenn Greenwald -- H/T Stephen Soldz)

Greenwald takes on the hypocrisy of how torture is covered by The Gray Lady, and the press in general, where it's torture if it's done to an American, and "harsh tactics some critics decry as torture" if done by Americans to other people.

Sleight of Hand: Obama's Military Commissions Redux

I don’t think, however, that the resurrection of the military commissions is a manifestation of laziness on Obama’s part. Nor is it a failure of leadership, per se. The Military Commissions are a constituent part of the torture program which, even now, is not dismantled, and continues in somewhat attenuated form as part of the Army Field Manual. It is also part of the cover-up of the previous torture program, allowing for the use of torture evidence without the political explosion that would take place by having to release or acquit “terrorists” (really “accused terrorists,” but who cavils about such things in our modern America anymore?) because the evidence was tainted by torture, and therefore inadmissible.

All signs point to the fact that when it comes to national security and military matters, Obama is compliant to the wishes of the Pentagon, that he has no real policy of his own.

A new Torture Evidence Database, collected by Edger at Antemedius

Andy Worthington on Obama’s First 100 Days: Mixed Messages On Torture

Among other things, Andy reports that Amnesty International (PDF) has picked up the campaign pushed by myself and others to expose the use of abusive interrogation techniques in the Army Field Manual, and that organization's "disappointment that the administration was 'endorsing without qualification' a document 'which permits prolonged sleep deprivation, isolation and manipulation of a detainee’s fears contrary to the international ban on torture.'"

Final Archival Treat: From the Pike Committee Report

The transcribed quote that follows is from the introduction to the suppressed 1975 Pike Committee Report, the product of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. This committee's report on CIA activities was never published by the government, as Congress backed down after the CIA protested any distribution, claiming national security would be harmed. Over 30 years later, I can't imagine why this report has not been made public.

This selection from Part One: The Select Committee's Oversight Experience has never been published in full on the Internet. In the future, I will post more from this extraordinary report, a copy of which I have secured.

If this Committee's recent experience is any test, intelligence agencies that are to be controlled by Congress are, today, beyond the lawmaker's scrutiny.

These secret agencies have interests that inherently conflict with the open accountability of a political body, and there are many tools and tactics to block and deceive conventional Congressional checks. Added to this are the unique attributes of intelligence -- notably, "national security," in its cloak of secrecy and mystery -- to intimidate Congress and erode fragile support for sensitive inquiries.

Wise and effective legislation cannot proceed in the absence of information respecting conditions to be affected or changed. Nevertheless, under present circumstances, inquiry into intelligence activities faces serious and fundamental shortcomings.

Even limited success in exercising future oversight requires a rethinking of the powers, procedures, and duties of the overseers. This Committee's path and policies, its pluses and minuses, may at least indicate where to begin.

Access to Information

The key to exercising oversight is knowledge. In the case of intelligence agencies, this translates into a need for access to information often held by the agencies themselves, about events in distant places.

It is an uncertain approach to gathering facts, given the best of circumstances. The best of circumstances thereby become a minimum condition.

The Select Committee's most important work may well have been its test of those circumstances, testing perhaps for the first time what happens when Congress unilaterally decides what it wants to know and how it wants to know it.

There were numerous public expressions by intelligence agencies and the Executive that full cooperation would be accorded. The credibility of such assurances was important, since almost all the necessary materials were classified and controlled by the executive branch. Despite these public representations, in practice most document access was preceded by lengthy negotiations. Almost without exception, these negotiations yielded something less than complete or timely access.

In short, the words were always words of cooperation; the reality was delay, refusal, missing information, asserted privileges, and on and on.

The Committee began by asserting that Congress alone must decide who, acting in its behalf, has a right to know secret information. This led to a rejection of Executive "clearances" or the "compartmentation" of our staff. The Committee refused, as matter of policy, to sign agreements. It refused to allow intelligence officials to read and review our investigators' notes, and avoided canned briefings in favor of primary source material. The Committee maintained that Congress has a right to all information short of direct communications with the President.

Our ability to abide by these policies has been a mixed record.

On the plus side, an aggressive pursuit of facts and a willingness to back up this pursuit with subpoenas produced some unprecedented results. As an example, never before had either the Executive or Congress put together a ten-year review of covert action projects. By subpoena -- which unfortunately, had to be taken to the brink of contempt enforcement -- the staff of the Committee analyzed all official covert action approvals since 1965, and reported its results to the Committee in a closed hearing. That presentation was one of the most interesting and accurate pictures of U.S. covert policies yet assembled, and was of no small value to our findings. Other examples appear throughout the remainder of this report.

Nevertheless, if that is the positive side, it was offset by the extraordinary efforts that were required, even in a climate favorable to reviewing past Executive conduct, to identify and obtain document.

It is a commentary in itself that subpoenas were necessary.

It is a further commentary that much of the time subpoenas were not enough, and only a determined threat of contempt proceedings brought grudging results.

In the future, I'll post more of this extraordinary document, a part of our history, suppressed by our own government.

Thanks to Patriot Daily, Meteor Blades, and all those cited and uncited, all those hard workers in the cause of justice and against cruelty and inhumanity from whom I gathered these links, and to those who have survived unbelievable pain and mental anguish, I honor all of you.

Bailout Politics: Is the Constitution Now Null and Void?

Article I, Section 9, Clause 7, U.S. Constitution

No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law; and a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public money shall be published from time to time.

A Congressional watchdog program tasked with accounting for the hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to the Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP, reports that it can't get enough information on how the money is being spent.

According to ABC News:

Of the 44 questions the panel presented earlier to the Treasury Department, the department responded to 19. The report suggests that some of the answers the Treasury provided were inadequate.

"While Treasury's letter provided responses to some of the panel's questions and shed some light on Treasury's decision-making process, it did not provide complete answers to several of the questions and failed to address some of the questions at all," the report said.

Harvard Law professor Elizabeth Warren, who heads the congressional panel, says she's "shocked," but that it's up to Congress to do something about it.

Will anyone do something about it? After all, an accounting for government money is a requirement laid down in the Constitution. Does the Constitution mean anything anymore? Can any and all laws be broken now? Or only if you belong to the executive branch of government.

The non-accountability of government funding was established first in 1947, when the National Security Act created the CIA, and placed its budget outside the purview of Congressional oversight. In 1976, a Congressional committee investigating how the CIA spent its money concluded (as reported in the New York Times, emphasis is added):

Washington, Jan. 25 -- The House Select Committee on Intelligence has concluded following a year-long investigation that the Federal intelligence agencies, as they are currently constituted, operate in such secret ways that they are "beyond the scrutiny" of Congress, according to the panel's final report....

The expenditures of [intelligence] funds, the report said, were largely unchecked by Congress and even by the Office of Management and Budget.

This House report was written by what is known today as the Pike Committee. It was contemporaneous with the famous Church Report from the Senate. The CIA protested making the Pike report public, and as a result, it was never officially published, or made available by the government. (Maybe someone could get Obama or Pelosi to finally release it!)

Daniel Schorr (with NPR today) leaked the report and it was published in the Village Voice. However, it is unavailable online, and one would have to go to a library to find it.

We are paying today for the bargain with the devil that blithely canceled out a portion of the Constitution in the name of secrecy. Then it was the Cold War, now it is a financial crisis.

In Justice Joesph Story's famous commentaries on the U.S. Constitution, he wrote:

...in arbitrary governments the prince levies what money he pleases from his subjects, disposes of it as he thinks proper and is beyond responsibility or reproof.... [In a republic] Congress is made the guardian of [the public treasure]; and to make their responsibility complete and perfect, a regular account of the receipts and expenditures is required to be published, that the people may know what money is expended for what purpose and by what authority. (from R. Borosage, "The Central Intelligence Agency: The King's Men and the Constitutional Order", in The CIA File, 1976, p. 134)

The cancer of secret government is spreading from the intelligence and clandestine branches to the very heart of the working government -- the Treasury Department. Congressional will and oversight are flouted and there are no consequences.

The flow of societal authority and legitimacy flows downhill. When there is lawlessness at the top, and the rule of arbitrary authority, the social contract is broken, and the menace of anarchy, fascism, and civil war rises ominously.

The press is too house-broken to take on the reality of the lawlessness by the government. They proved this already when it came to the Iraq War build-up, or on the craven attitude towards the use of torture, even today, when the truth about the abusive torture techniques in the supposedly reformist Army Field Manual is denied or hidden from view. Even the mainstream bloggers -- Glenn Greenwald, Scott Horton, Andrew Sullivan, who have reported so much on the torture issue -- have had nothing to say about the AFM issue. Nor has anyone in the U.S. press even noted that there is a Constitutional requirement that the Treasury Department report to Congress a full accounting of expenditures.

Is Congress ignorant, unable, or totally corrupted by the executive power? Probably some combination of all three. Meanwhile the average American lives in dread of a total economic collapse, or least the loss of a job and lowered wages, with very little to look forward to for the fruits of a life's labors.

Sooner or later, trust in the government will fall like the house of cards that was the bubble economy. Then, the legitimacy of all branches of government will be nil, and their power, so vaunted now, so sure of itself with its courts, and jails, and mighty army and secret police, will be like tinkling brass. But how many will suffer until then? How many generations will live and struggle and die under the rule of a lawless elite?

I'm not sure any rule of law is possible anymore. But we could start with enforcing the U.S. Constitution, including Article I, Section 9, Clause 7. That beginning would find both the U.S. Treasury and the CIA finally giving account for the taxpayers money that flows in billions and billions into their coffers.

NSA Calls for FOIA Reform; CIA Blocks Crucial JFK Docs

Jefferson Morley has an article up at the Washington Monthly asking readers to support the National Security Archive's call for President-elect Barack Obama to "issue a new executive order on FOIA creating a presumption of disclosure and a policy of releasing information without litigation." Sixty organizations have already signed NSA's request, including People for the American Way, Federation of American Scientists, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Association of American Publishers.

Morley, a 15-year editor and staff writer at The Washington Post, and now National Editorial Director at the Center for Independent Media, has his own reasons for wanting access to records. He has been at the forefront of an effort to get the CIA to release records related to the assassination of John Kennedy. In particular, he and others want to see the "17 monthly reports that [George] Joannides was supposed to file about his secret operations in 1962-64," when he was "chief of the agency’s so-called 'psychological warfare' operations [which] aimed to bring about Castro’s overthrow."

The campaign to get the CIA to release the records, which according to the JFK Records Act should have been declassified, has been supported by both pro-conspiracy and pro-Warren Commission experts on the assassination, including Anthony Summers; Gerald Posner; Don DeLillo; the late Norman Mailer; Federal judge John Tunheim, who formerly chaired the Assassination Records Review Board; and former chief counsel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, G. Robert Blakey.

According to an article by Morley at Salon.com a few years back:

According to declassified CIA records corroborated by interviews, Joannides secretly financed exiled Cuban agents who collected intelligence on Lee Harvey Oswald three months before Kennedy was killed. Fifteen years later, Joannides was called out of retirement by the CIA to serve as the agency's liaison to the House committee looking into Kennedy's assassination. While working with the committee, the spy withheld information about his own actions in 1963 from the congressional investigators he was supposed to be assisting. It wasn't until 2001, 38 years after Kennedy's death, that Joannides' support for the Cuban exiles, who clashed with Oswald and monitored him, came to light.

"[Joannides'] behavior was criminal," said Blakey, the former House committee counsel who was deceived by the CIA agent. "He obstructed our investigation."

"The agency is stonewalling," said Posner, whose bestselling book supported the Warren Commission's finding that Oswald, alone and unaided, killed Kennedy. "It's a perfect example of why the public has so little trust in the CIA's willingness to be truthful."

Joannides died in 1990, nine years after receiving the CIA’s Career Intelligence Medal for "exceptional achievement." His story is little known, and neither is the suit against the CIA for the records. Meanwhile, it's been a year since an appellate court demanded the CIA explain why it has not produced the records requested. The CIA has responded with arrogant silence. Another ruling on the case is at least a year away.

For many years, any informed speculation or research into the causes and facts behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy has been relegated to the dustbin of tomfoolery and tinfoil, considered the hobby-horse of conspiracy addicts and general paranoid nut-cases. This unfortunate situation has been furthered by both the population of narcissists and publicity-seekers who irresponsibly spread rumors and legend on the JFK assassination, and by the secrecy that still surrounds important elements of the case. The secrecy serves to undermine serious attempts to get to the truth. This is why Morley's suit against the CIA has been supported by all sides in the assassination "industry."

Anyone who has been knee-jerk resistant to any serious discussion of the JFK assassination has not been following the serious research being done on the case in the last fifteen years or so. One example is the work of a long-time Army intellgence officer and former executive assistant to the director of the National Security Agency (NSA -- yeah, that other NSA), John M. Newman, who wrote Oswald and the CIA, documenting Lee Harvey Oswald's ties to the intelligence community.

Most recently, Morley's book, Our Man in Mexico: Winston Scott and the Hidden History of the CIA, received favorable coverage at the well-known conspiracy rag, Harper's. From the Amazon product description:

Morley reveals the previously unknown scope of the agency's interest in Oswald in late 1963, identifying for the first time the code names of Scott's surveillance programs that monitored Oswald's movements. He shows that CIA headquarters cut Scott out of the loop of the agency's latest reporting on Oswald before Kennedy was killed. He documents why Scott came to reject a key finding of the Warren Report on the assassination and how his disillusionment with the agency came to worry his longtime friend James Jesus Angleton, legendary chief of CIA counterintelligence. Angleton not only covered up the agency's interest in Oswald but also, after Scott died, absconded with the only copies of his unpublished memoir.

The JFK assassination may never be "solved" -- indeed, Morley isn't seeking to solve it, he says -- but the truth about the involvement of the CIA, which was covered up at the time, and still to this day, speaks volumes about the real influence of the CIA in our country's affairs, and the price we pay when any governmental agency is able to run a rogue operation, unaccountable to any governmental agency.

In 1976, the New York Times wrote the following on its front page (no link -- I had to purchase the article -- emphasis is added):

Washington, Jan. 25 -- The House Select Committee on Intelligence has concluded following a year-long investigation that the Federal intelligence agencies, as they are currently constituted, operate in such secret ways that they are "beyond the scrutiny" of Congress, according to the panel's final report....

The expenditures of [intelligence] funds, the report said, were largely unchecked by Congress and even by the Office of Management and Budget.

The year was 1976. The House report was written by what is known today as the Pike Committee. It was contemporaneous with the famous Church Report from the Senate. The CIA protested making the Pike report public, and as a result, it was never officially published, or made available by the government. (Maybe someone could get Obama or Pelosi to finally release it!)

Please support the National Security Archive's call for President-elect Obama to make transparency and openness in government a top priority. From their action page:

The Obama administration can act quickly after taking office in January to reverse the secrecy trend of the last eight years and restore openness in the executive branch, according to a set of new proposals posted online... by the National Security Archive. More than 60 organizations joined the recommendations, which call on President-elect Obama to restore efficiency and openness to the Freedom of Information Act process, reform the classification system to reduce overclassification and facilitate greater declassification, and ensure that presidential records are handled in accordance with the law and Congress’ intent.

Also posted at Progressive Historians