February 05, 2008
Intel Chiefs Say Waterboarding Used In Interrogations
The intelligence community's annual public report on the threats facing the nation was overtaken during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing today by the politically charged issues of waterboarding and other "coercive" interrogation techniques, extension of the government's eavesdropping authority and the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden said waterboarding was a legal technique that should be available under certain circumstances if authorized by the nation's legal and political leaders. McConnell said, to his knowledge, only the CIA has used it. Hayden told the committee that the CIA has used the painful technique, which many consider a form of torture, only three times in its history. Those times, three years ago, were against "high value" al-Qaida terror suspects who were thought to have information on an imminent threat to the nation.
The intense discussion was triggered by a question from Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., about proposed legislation that would require all U.S. intelligence agencies to use only the interrogation procedures listed in the recently revised Army field manual.
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January 22, 2008
Judge Gives Padilla 17 Years
Jose Padilla, the onetime accused dirty-bomber whom the U.S. government tried to prosecute for five years in an untested legal maze, has been sentenced to 17 years and four months in prison for aiding terrorists abroad.
The charges on which Padilla was convicted last summer are a far cry from the initial accusations against the 37-year-old American citizen. When he was picked up in 2002 at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport, the Justice Department accused him of plotting to detonate radioactive, or dirty, bombs in the U.S.
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January 11, 2008
Abu Ghraib Officer Cleared
The Army has dismissed charges against the only officer court-martialed in the scandal surrounding the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, erasing any criminal responsibility from Lt. Col. Steven Jordan's record. Jordan was convicted in August "of disobeying an order not to discuss the investigation of abuse at the jail" and was issued "a criminal reprimand as penalty," Reuters reports.
Yesterday, the Army reported that commanding officer Maj. Gen. Richard Rowe disapproved of the charges against Jordan. Jordan hasn't been completely excused -- he was still officially found guilty of some of the less-serious charges brought against him at the court-martial -- but he will face only an administrative letter of reprimand and not the dismissal from the Army or five years in prison he could have received.
Jordan ran an interrogation center at the notorious prison, where dramatic photos were taken of U.S. soldiers abusing and humiliating inmates. Jordan denied he had any involvement in the abuse, complained that he did not hold any authority over others at the prison and charged the military with making him a scapegoat when the international uproar about the photos hit.
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December 05, 2007
SCOTUS & Gitmo, Round 3
The Supreme Court Web site has a transcript [PDF] of this morning's oral arguments; C-SPAN has audio (its Web site does not isolate audio links, sorry) (try this link).
On first blush, it looks like this decision comes down to Anthony Kennedy (must be Wednesday). See analysis from Lyle Denniston, Marty Lederman and Orin Kerr for more.
Posted at 5:29 PM
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October 05, 2007
Bush: 'This Government Does Not Torture People'
UPDATED.
The White House today signaled that it will not accede to Congress' demands for transparency on two secret memos on terrorism detainees, insisting it does not engage in torture and that key members had already learned all they needed to know.
"They have been briefed to appropriate members of Congress on the Intelligence Committee. But they are classified for a reason and they are secret," press secretary Dana Perino said during the daily briefing. "One of the reasons they are secret is because they need to be. They need to be cloaked in the classified system so that we can keep that information private so that we're not signaling to our enemies exactly what our techniques are."
Earlier, President Bush gave his first public response to revelations that CIA officers may be using tactics that might qualify as torture in a program secretly endorsed by the Justice Department.
"This government does not torture people. We stick to U.S. law and our international obligations," Bush said in a brief statement to the press this morning.
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October 04, 2007
CIA Interrogations To Take Center Stage In Mukasey Hearings
UPDATED.
Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee are incensed at the revelations in this morning's New York Times report outlining secret legal opinions the Bush administration has used to justify harsh interrogations techniques for terrorism suspects.
"It would be bad enough if this administration had disgraced itself and this country by engaging in cruel and degrading treatment of detainees. It is worse still that it enlisted the Justice Department in the effort to justify and cover up its activities," said Massachusetts Sen. Edward Kennedy, speaking on the floor of the Senate today.
Kennedy is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which yesterday announced that confirmation hearings for attorney general nominee Michael Mukasey would begin as early as two weeks from now. Chairman Patrick Leahy appeared to be signaling that he would not hold up Mukasey's hearings despite an ongoing confrontation with the White House over the NSA surveillance program and U.S. attorney firings scandal. While the revelations about DOJ possibly signing off on torture will probably not affect the hearing timeline, they will almost certainly have a huge impact on Mukasey's confirmation.
A congressional source with close knowledge of the committee said that "a lot of people are really, really angry" about the secret opinions. According to the Times report, the White House took backdoor measures to keep CIA interrogation techniques like "head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures" in play by way of secret DOJ memos asserting their legality -- even as it publicly bowed to demands by Congress and the Supreme Court to outlaw them.
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September 19, 2007
Bring Us The Body... Of Case Law
A bloc of 42 Republicans -- and Joe Lieberman -- have rejected a vote on an amendment that would restore habeas corpus rights to terrorism suspects. (See reports on how the vote went down here, here and here.)
The Senate rejection leaves the question of constitutionality to the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to weigh this matter in the coming term anyway. Several of the justices -- quite possibly a majority -- are disturbed that the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 strips terror suspects of the right to appeal their detention.
This most fundamental of rights may only be suspended during invasion or insurrection, per the U.S. Constitution, no matter if the accused is a foreigner or a citizen. The further we get away from the 9/11 attacks -- the very reason for this shadowy system of justice -- the more uncomfortable the justices seem about the entire military detention process. Several have struggled with the squishy boundaries of what the "war on terror" even means. This may explain the court's unprecedented June reversal of its own decision not to hear the petitions of two prisoners challenging their detentions.
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August 09, 2007
Bush Stays Course On Iraq, Taxes & Torture
President Bush today addressed a varied list of topics -- ranging from the nation's bridges to corporate tax cuts to Iran -- ahead of a retreat to his family's compound in Kennebunkport, Maine.
The deeply unpopular leader kicked off the news conference, broadcast by all the networks along with cable, with one of the few bright spots of his administration: education. His initiatives in this arena have managed to receive bipartisan support, including the America Competes Act, which he will sign today. The bill boosts and expands science, technology, engineering and math education, as well as research and development.
"The American economy is the envy of the world and we need to keep it that way," Bush said in his opening remarks. "The bill I will sign today will help ensure we do remain the most competitive and innovative nation in the world."
As Bush was speaking, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was slip-siding after three days of record gains. French bank BNP Paribas announced this morning that it froze three funds because of concerns about the U.S. subprime lending market, reviving American investors' panic about volatility there.
Protesting that he was not an economist, Bush refused to detail what he thought should be done about the subprime lending problem, but did seem to draw the line at a federal bailout. He also said that because many of the defaulting homeowners "didn't understand what they were signing up for," it would be a "proper role for government to enhance education initiatives," and again pointed to the America Competes Act.
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July 20, 2007
Bush Outlines New Rules For Detainee Interrogations
President Bush has issued an executive order prohibiting the CIA from engaging in "cruel or inhuman treatment" when interrogating terrorism suspects.
AP reports that Bush also outlawed humiliating or degrading treatment of suspects, along with acts that "denigrate" their religious practices.
Bush ordered the CIA to draw up a new, comprehensive policy for the treatment of detainees. It is not clear how the order affects a signing statement Bush attached to a defense appropriations bill in late 2005, in which he reserved the right as head of the "unitary executive branch" to override existing and future legislation pertaining to detainees.
Posted at 4:28 PM
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June 11, 2007
'Enemy Combatant' Held In U.S. Ordered Released
A U.S. appeals court ordered Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri released after finding no evidence to support the Bush administration's assertion that he is an enemy combatant. Al-Marri, a Qatari national and legal U.S. resident when he was arrested in 2001, is the only person being held as an enemy combatant inside the United States.
Noting that al-Marri had never been charged in the nearly four years he was held in a South Carolina naval brig, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Diana Gribbon Motz ruled that the Military Commissions Act did not retroactively apply to al-Marri. "We conclude that we must grant al-Marri habeas relief. Even assuming the truth of the government's allegations, the president lacks power to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain al-Marri."
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