Will Bogdan's Claims of Insufficient Staffing Cause Al Qaeda to Attack Guantanamo?

Jason Leopold, who has been filing requests for government documents like there is no tomorrow, apparently caught Department of Defense censors with their pants down. The result is a rare look into the kind of political shenanigans DoD uses to justify its policies at Guantanamo.

Leopold had requested a copy of the declaration by JTF-GTMO Detention Group (JDG) chief Colonel John Bogdan filed in the litigation surrounding the controversial groin and genital searches of detainees at Guantanamo. He received a redacted version on August 3. But Leopold noticed that the redactions didn't match those of an earlier release of the document in July.

The practice of the groin and genital searches -- including before and after visits to attorneys, to make family telephone calls, etc. -- was overturned by Judge Royce Lamberth in a stinging ruling last month. But the government appealed that ruling and an appeals court reversed Lamberth's opinion pending a full government appeal. The appeals court relied heavily on declarations made by both Bogdan and his US Southern Command superior officer, Marine General John F. Kelly.

Last month I examined the issues behind Kelly's declaration. But Bogdan's declaration was unaccountably sealed. Three days after the appeals court ruling, Leopold filed suit for Bogdan's declaration.

As Leopold described it in an August 6 article at Al Jazeera (emphasis in original):

In response to the court filing, the government on Friday released a partially redacted version of Bogdan's declaration, and argued that the blacked-out passages in the document should remain secret - because they contained sensitive "operational-security information" about Guantanamo.

But it appears government lawyers were unaware that another version of Bogdan's declaration - one that contained a different set of redactions - was publicly released last month, in documents filed with the federal appeals court when the government asked Lamberth's decision to be put on hold.

Redacted passages that the government says needs to remain secret are unredacted in the earlier version filed on the public record as part of the government's appeal. At the same time, some unredacted passages in the declaration submitted on Friday are redacted in the public version of Bogdan's declaration filed with the appeals court last month.

Leopold's Al Jazeera article examines some of the differing redactions, and in general I agree with Steven Aftergood's comments in the story regarding "the subjective nature of the redaction process." However, a close read of all the redactions turns up a couple of odd new attempts at censorship by DoD of some of Bogdan's statements, one of which in particular deserves a closer look.

Insufficient Staffing for Detainee "Movements"?

In a portion of his declaration explaining to the court why Guantanamo commanders cannot consider allowing attorneys to visit their clients at either Camps 5 or 6 -- they currently meet at Camp Echo, about which more below -- Bogdan made a remarkable claim (emphasis added): "As it currently stands, JTF-GTMO cannot support all daily movements with current staff levels, so movements must be prioritized."

The "movements" concern prisoner movements outside their cell to anywhere else in the prison -- to another cell, to see their attorney, to make a call to their family, to go to the hospital or clinic, etc. For an unspecified period Guantanamo authorities ran a "frequent flyer" program, transferring prisoners from cell to cell multiple times a week "to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation."

A SOUTHCOM report on the death of prisoner Adnan Latif last September revealed that the brain-damaged detainee from Yemen was “moved from camp to camp over 67 times" during his stay at Guantanamo. So the issue of movements is not one only related to camp operations, but to the abuse and maltreatment of prisoners there. Indeed, some of these "movements" are initiated by violent beatings by so-called Emergency Reaction Forces.

Bogdan's declaration regarding insufficient staffing levels at Guantanamo was part of the initial release of his sworn declaration last month, but it was censored in the August 3 release to Leopold. The statement was overlooked after the first release, but the retrospective redaction has brought attention to Bogdan's claim.

In the government's response to Leopold's suit, defending the censorship of portions of Bogdan's unclassified declaration, the government claims the redactions concern "procedures and rationales contained in the declaration [which] constitute sensitive information, the public disclosure of which will threaten the operational security and force protection of the Guantanamo facility."

Indeed, the government goes so far as to claim the recent jail breaks at Abu Ghraib and in Pakistan speak to the dangers of a similar Al Qaeda attack on Guantanamo. While over ten years ago Al Qaeda was allegedly able to pull off the suicide bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, but it is very difficult to see how Al Qeada or anyone could attack or pull off a prison break at Guantanamo.

According to Bogdan, the security has been so tight at the camp that if a detainee had been able to meet with an attorney at Camp 6, such a meeting would be forced to end if the detainee had to go to the bathroom. (The government tried to retrospectively censor this fact, too.)

But that was not the case at Camp Echo, and it's ultimately at Camp Echo where meetings with detainees and their attorneys must take place, according to camp officials. The claims about poor staffing levels are very convenient in pushing all meetings to Camp Echo (a claim that did not pass muster with Judge Lamberth, who said in his ruling that accommodations could be made at Camps 5 and/or 6, and the supposed need for lots of searches ameliorated).

I'd guess the poor staffing argument was not something Guantanamo wished to be public, especially at the same time they are pushing as propaganda the very low probability chance of Al Qaeda somehow invading Guantanamo (as if Guantanamo were somehow located somewhere akin to urban Baghdad).

Camp Echo Set Up for... Eavesdropping

According to Bogdan's declaration:

Camp Echo is specifically set up and designated to facilitate meetings with detainees, including legal visits, in a secure and safe environment. The meeting rooms at Camp Echo are specifically designed for attorney meetings and can accommodate up to five people, including the detainee. For example, Camp Echo meeting rooms have restroom facilities for the detainee, which are not available in the rooms at Camp 6.

But Camp Echo was the focus of a big controversy last Spring, when it was discovered that "smoke detectors" in the attorney-client meeting rooms at Camp Echo were in fact "high-tech audio surveillance and monitoring equipment."

According to a subsequent report by the Center for Policy and Research (CPR) at Seton Hall University School of Law, "Following the public discovery of the listening devices, Army Colonel John Bogdan ordered the use of audio in Echo II to be disconnected, but not dismantled." The rooms in question were the same rooms earlier used by the FBI, CIA and other agencies in the interrogation of the so-called "high-value detainees."

In a meeting on the matter at the military commissions, Bogdan "confirmed that there was one infrared camera mounted on the wall opposite 'from where the detainee would be locked in when there was not a meeting,' and another encased point-tilt-zoom camera mounted in a corner." Moreover, at least one video surveillance camera was so sensitive it was "capable of zooming to read 'very tiny writing' on a document used during an attorney-client discussion."

Can attorneys or detainees trust that such monitoring of privileged meetings isn't still taking place? As CPR pointed out in their report, "written Standard Operating Procedures 'neither permit nor forbid' audio monitoring."

In his declaration, Bogdan said he started to implement the new groin/genital search policy in December 2012. In that same month, according to the CPR report, he authorized an intelligence directorate request for an upgrade of the video surveillance cameras at Camp Echo “from an analog to a digital capacity.” Bogdan's story of what he knew and when about the audio and video surveillance doesn't hold water, but for a detailed examination, check out the Seton Hall report.

In summary, it would appear that DoD is trying to hide its argument about supposed staffing difficulties at Guantanamo -- arguments it surely must make to Congress, by the way -- in order to buttress its claim that the only place detainees can meet with attorneys is at Camp Echo, where, conveniently enough, they have bugged all the meeting rooms. They are holding to their arguments despite the fact a federal judge found them seriously wanting.

DoD believes its ace in the hole is the claim of dangerous attacks from Al Qaeda. It's the same message they are playing in the mainstream press, used to justify more funding for anti-terror programs, the ongoing crackdown on whistleblowers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden, and to hold off any release of prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

Nothing about DoD's arguments make any sense. The SOUTHCOM report on the death of Adnan Latif, used to justify the groin and genital search policy, is riddled with holes. Moreover, as Jason Leopold, the most consistent reporter challenging DoD's spin on Guantanamo, has noted (see here and here), the entire regime at the Cuban-sited prison appears to be in a near shambles: SOPs not followed, personnel not trained, accountability totally absent.

The onerous search policy at Guantanamo appears to be mostly a clumsy bureaucratic maneuver to blame the detainees at Guantanamo for the mistakes and failures of command. Any military officer or soldier should be ashamed of such an action. The nation should be ashamed. Meanwhile, dozens of detainees at the facility remain on hunger strike, many of them still force-fed, despite the condemnations of national and world health organizations and human rights groups.

Only a full, transparent, and wide-ranging investigation into Guantanamo and other U.S. detention and interrogation sites -- including an investigation of actions at this point under the Obama Administration -- will provide the opportunity of knowing the truth behind all the spin and lies coming out of the Pentagon and CIA.

Cross-posted from The Dissenter/FDL

RT Video: NSA Whistleblower Reveals We Are All Under Virtual Surveillance

"RT talks to William Binney, whistleblower and former NSA crypto-mathematician who served in the agency for decades."

According to Binney, there is no such thing as privacy in the surveillance state. The FBI has access to all the emails of everyone in the United States, if you become a target for any reason. The emails are being collected in bulk, without requesting the providers for them. 100 billion emails can be collected every day with just one device.

Binney doesn't think there's a filter, the emails are just stored. If you are targeted, they go into the database and pull out all your emails. Binney assumes he himself is on the target list. "I tell them everything I think of them in my emails, so if they read it they'll understand what I think of them.

In the Obama administration, attacks on privacy are getting worse than under the Bush regime. They are collecting more, and storing more.

We should be concerned, as Binney says, because if the government puts you on an enemies list or targets you, they will have access to all of your email electronic records. This is what happened to former Gen. Petraeus, for instance (though he doesn't know what their reason for targeting Petraeus and those associated with the scandal around him were targeted, as there were no laws broken there, so far as we know).

Binney says "the violations of the Constitution and any number of laws" are what bothered him and caused him to leave the NSA. The NSA was building social networks on who was communicating with whom. "The social networks of every US citizen were being compiled over time."

Per Binney, the intelligence agencies are violating the foundations upon which this country was founded.

See also "NSA Whistleblower Details How The NSA Has Spied On US Citizens Since 9/11" at BusinessInsider.com , and Binney's sworn declaration (PDF) in support of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s case against the National Security Agency (Jewel v. NSA) regarding their illegal domestic surveillance programs.

Wed., Nov. 15: Attend NY Senate Public Hearing to Support Anti-Torture Legislation

Just in, from Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR):

NY Senator Thomas K. Duane, co-sponsor of the Gottfried/Duane NY Anti-Torture Legislation explicitly prohibiting New York State-licensed medical professionals from participating in torture, is holding a Senate Public Forum to discuss the bill. Come hear the testimonies in support of this anti-torture legislation, and show your own support. Learn more about the NY Anti-Torture legislation and what you can do to support it at the CCR website, When Healers Harm.

WHAT: NY Senate Public Forum on Medical Professionals’ Participation in Torture

WHEN: November 15, 2011, 11:00 AM

WHERE: Senate Hearing Room, 19th Floor
250 Broadway, New York, NY

I don't put much faith in having this system roll back torture at this point, but whatever the outcome, we must protest this descent into barbarism, and the untold social costs that lurk just under the government doctor's robes and the torturer's cudgel.

While you're waiting for the hearing to start, check out this page, also from CCR: "How Far Will the Government Go in Collecting and Storing All Our Personal Data?" Answer: if you have to ask, it's too late.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer equated GPS surveillance with the ultra-repressive government monitoring in George Orwell’s 1984 this week during the oral argument in United States v. Jones. The case asks whether the use of a GPS tracking device to monitor an individual’s movements without a warrant violates the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures. But between the potential to monitor all public movements via GPS and the FBI’s ever-expanding Next Generation Identification(NGI) system, which collects and stores all aspects of our personal physical characteristics– our biometric data – Big Brother is already upon us.

NGI is a massive database program that collects and stores personal identifying information such as fingerprints, palm prints, iris scans, scars, marks, tattoos, facial characteristics, and voice recognition. Data can be collected not only from arrested individuals, but also from latent prints (fingerprints left behind at a crime scene or anywhere else) or through handheld “FBI Mobile” biometric scanning devices. Worse than the FBI accessing all your personal data, when NGI becomes fully operational in 2014, other federal agencies will gain access to the bio-data without your knowledge or consent.

Surveillance State Über Alles

Glenn Greenwald spins a marvelous and important article off the latest installment of the Washington Post's "Top Secret America" series. In "Monitoring America," Dana Priest and William M. Arken describe "an alternative geography of the United States, one that has grown so large, unwieldy and secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs or how many programs exist within it."

The Post also supplies a nice database for your state where you can search for "a detailed profile of counterterrorism efforts in your community."

Greenwald describes how "the Post reporters document how surveillance and enforcement methods pioneered in America's foreign wars and occupations are being rapidly imported into domestic surveillance (wireless fingerprint scanners, military-grade infrared cameras, biometric face scanners, drones on the border)."

What we are observing and the Post article documents, is the process whereby the counterterror state sucks up all dissent into its greedy maw, having developed a full-scale sub-world that threatens to rise up and swallow the entire country in its tyrannical grasp. The example du jour: the U.S. campaign against Wikileaks.

It's crystal clear that the Justice Department is engaged in an all-out crusade to figure out how to shut down WikiLeaks and imprison Julian Assange.  It is subjecting Bradley Manning to unbelievably inhumane conditions in order to manipulate him into providing needed testimony to prosecute Assange.  Recall that in 2008 -- long before anyone even knew what WikiLeaks was -- the Pentagon secretly plotted on how to destroy the organization.  On Meet the Press yesterday, Joe Biden was asked whether he agreed more with Mitch McConnell's statement that Assange is a "high-tech terrorist" than with those comparing WikiLeaks to Daniel Ellsberg, and the Vice President replied:  "I would argue that it's closer to being a high tech terrorist. . . ."  "A high-tech terrorist."  And consider this pernicious little essay from Eric Fiterman -- a former FBI special agent and founder of Methodvue, "a consultancy that provides cybersecurity and computer forensics services to the federal government and private businesses" -- that clearly reflects the Government's view of WikiLeaks:

In the WikiLeaks case, a fringe group led primarily by foreign nationals operating abroad is illegally obtaining, reviewing and disseminating American intelligence information with the stated intent of hurting the United States (WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange himself made this declaration). That not only meets the definition of aggressive, hostile and war-like activity, but squarely targets America's diplomatic positions and intelligence interests while inflicting collateral damage against our financial institutions and service providers who cut-off their relationship with WikiLeaks. This, folks, is war.

That's the mindset of the U.S. Government:  everything it does of any significance can and should be shielded from public view; anyone who shines light on what it does is an Enemy who must be destroyed; but nothing you do should be beyond its monitoring and storing eyes.  And what's most remarkable about this -- though, given the full-scale bipartisan consensus over it, not surprising -- is how eagerly submissive much of the citizenry is to this imbalance.  Many Americans plead with their Government in unison:  we demand that you know everything about us but that you keep us ignorant about what you do and punish those who reveal it to us.  Often, this kind of oppressive Surveillance State has to be forcibly imposed on a resistant citizenry, but much of the frightened American citizenry -- led by most transparency-hating media figures -- has been trained with an endless stream of fear-mongering to demand that they be subjected to more and more of it.

This is an awful time in American history, possibly even more dire than in the dark first years of the Bush, Jr. administration. Back then, after an initial post-9/11 stumble, progressives managed to speak out against the worst of what the government was doing, and the beginnings of an opposition were formed. Now, under a Democratic administration, it is being dissembled. Not actually (not yet) because of government repression (at least not directly), but out of political obeisance to the Democratic Party, and maintenance of the status quo.

How long will the virtuous stomach collaborating with those who promote or tolerate war, torture, financial robbery of the commons, and racist attacks on defenseless minorities and immigrants?

The U.S. desperately needs a new political party to challenge the entrenched interests and the power elite. Only a party based on the social power of the mass of working people could stand a chance with that. But that would be socialism, real socialism in action. And that kind of politics is taboo in America. But it's likely not to remain that way. Because at a certain point, it will be the only chance the people will have.

Statement by Committee to Stop FBI Repression

The video presents a statement on behalf of the Committee to Stop FBI Repression, a coalition group formed in response to a series of raids by the FBI against anti-war and international solidarity activists in Chicago and Minneapolis. According to a story by Kevin Gosztola at The Seminal/Firedoglake, Chicago activists Stephanie Weiner (see video above), Joe Iosbaker "and three other activists had been called to testify before a grand jury on October 5th.... Iosbaker reported, 'Nine others who have dates scheduled for later this month have also submitted letters invoking their right not to testify.' And declared, 'Today, we are here to state to the press that we too have nothing to say to a grand jury.'"

None of the fourteen activists asked to testify before a grand jury have been charged with anything, and the coalition is vowing not to testify, refusing to take part in the government's "fishing expedition" against antiwar and other political activists. Weiner makes the point that this kind of governmental repression has a long history, and she vowed she and others would "push back against this attack," and "refuse to be silent" about the government's actions.

The Committee’s statement outlined the U.S. government’s history of using grand juries as tools of repression:

"The grand jury has been used as a tool of political repression against many movements for social change in this country. From the pre-civil war abolitionist movement to the Civil Rights movements, the movement against the war in Vietnam, the American Indian Movement, the Central America solidarity movement, the Puerto Rican Independence movement, animal rights and environmental movements, there have been many targets of political repression and grand jury inquisition."

In a related story by Bill Quigley and Rachel Meeropol at Truthout, Pennsylvania Office of Homeland Security (OHS) authorities have released copies of contracted intelligence briefings from an Israeli-connected company, the Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), which analyzes a number of left and liberal activist groups that ITRR has been monitoring on behalf of Pennsylvania OHS. The list includes "MoveON.org, the Ruckus Society, Immokalee Workers, the new SDS, Jobs with Justice, the Brandywine Peace Community, ANSWER, PETA, Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty, MOVE, The Yes Men, Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign, Climate Ground Zero, the Rainforest Action Network, pro-Palestinian Groups, Puerto Rican nationalists, prisoners' rights organizations, citizen conservation groups and immigration activists opposing Arizona's crazy attempts to criminalize all noncitizens."

Marian Wang at ProPublica broke the story last month, and since then the director of Pennsylvania's OHS has resigned and the state governor has apologized. But while the exposés and the aftermath of the ProPublica reporting is good news, as the FBI raids and subsequent grand jury summonses demonstrate, state repression against political opponents who stand at all outside the mainstream are being targeted in Barack Obama's America.

Please support these activists with words, deeds, and contributions. They are being targeted today, but tomorrow it could be you or me.