May 11

McClatchy - Amid accusations that Air Force Major Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann had not provided adequate resources to defense attorneys, a military judge ordered Hartmann barred from any involvement in the case against Osama bin Laden's driver. The decision is a rebuke of the Pentagon's push for speeding up trials at Guantanamo, with just seven months left in the Bush administration.

New York | May 8

Reuters - A U.S. judge ordered the Central Intelligence Agency on Thursday to submit to the court a 2002 memo said to specify harsh interrogation methods used on suspected terrorists held abroad.

The American Civil Liberties Union said the memo was written by the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel and sent to the CIA in August 2002. The ACLU described the memo as "one of the most important torture documents still being withheld by the Bush administration."

In a copy of the order posted on the ACLU's Web site, Judge Alvin Hellerstein told the government to produce the memo so he can determine whether it should be made public as part of a lawsuit the ACLU and other organizations filed in June 2004 requesting records concerning the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad.

Hellerstein has scheduled a review of the document for Monday.

"This memo authorized the CIA to use specific torture techniques -- including waterboarding," Jameel Jaffer, ACLU's national security project director, said in a statement.

PHILIP SHENON | PORTLAND, Ore. | April 28

NYT - Although the administration says it has shut down the security agency’s wiretapping program, lawyers involved in the Oregon case say they believe communication with their clients — and among themselves — is still being monitored.

Thomas Nelson, an Oregon lawyer, has lived in a state of perpetual jet lag for the last two years. Every few weeks, he boards a plane in Portland and flies to the Middle East to meet with a high-profile Saudi client who cannot enter the United States because he faces charges here of financing terrorism.

Mr. Nelson says he does not dare to phone this client or send him e-mail messages because of what many prominent criminal defense lawyers say is a well-founded fear that all of their contacts are being monitored by the United States government.

Because he is constantly shifting time zones to see his client face to face, “I just don’t sleep normally anymore,” Mr. Nelson said. “But I don’t have a choice. It’s very clear to me that anything I say to my client or to other lawyers in this case is being recorded.”

Mark Mazzetti | Washington | April 27

NYT - The Justice Department has told Congress that American intelligence operatives attempting to thwart terrorist attacks can legally use interrogation methods that might otherwise be prohibited under international law.

The legal interpretation, outlined in recent letters, sheds new light on the still-secret rules for interrogations by the Central Intelligence Agency. It shows that the administration is arguing that the boundaries for interrogations should be subject to some latitude, even under an executive order issued last summer that President Bush said meant that the C.I.A. would comply with international strictures against harsh treatment of detainees.

WIlliam Glaberson | April 26

IHT - Next month, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was once a driver for Osama bin Laden, could become the first detainee to be tried for war crimes in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. By now, he should be busily working on his defense.

But his lawyers say he cannot. They say Hamdan, already the subject of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling, has essentially been driven insane by solitary confinement in a tiny cell where he spends at least 22 hours a day, goes to the bathroom and eats all his meals. His defense team says he is suicidal, hears voices, has flashbacks, talks to himself and says the restrictions of Guantánamo "boil his mind.""He will shout at us," said his military defense lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Brian Mizer. "He will bang his fists on the table."

His lawyers have asked a military judge to stop his case until Hamdan is placed in less restrictive conditions at Guantánamo, saying he cannot get a fair trial if he cannot focus on defending himself. Critics have long asserted that Guantánamo's climate-controlled isolation is a breeding ground for insanity. But turning that into a legal claim marks a new stage for the military commissions at Guantánamo.

Jim Lobe | Washington DC | April 25

IPS - Are the latest accusations and tough language leveled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea evidence of a resurgence by the remaining hawks in the administration of President George W. Bush hoping for a final confrontation against one or more members of the revised "axis of evil" before his term next January?

That's the big question here this week, particularly following Thursday's long-awaited intelligence briefings to Congress about alleged North Korean involvement in the construction of a "covert nuclear reactor" in Syria that was destroyed in a raid by Israeli warplanes in September last year.

Randall Mikkelsen | Washington | April 23

Reuters - Crime groups operating as "mobsters without borders" have gained significant footholds in global markets and provide logistic support to terrorists, the United States said on Wednesday.

Launching a campaign against such international criminals, Attorney General Michael Mukasey said they were more adaptable and sophisticated than La Cosa Nostra and other syndicates the U.S. government set out to defeat half a century ago.

"These international criminals pose real national security threats to this country," Mukasey said in a speech to the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank. He cited recent cases, many with links to the former Soviet bloc.

April 23

BBC - A military engineer has appeared in court in the US on charges of passing classified information to Israel.

Ben-Ami Kadish is alleged to have given secrets involving information about nuclear weapons, fighter jets and missiles to Israel in the 1980s.

He was charged with four counts of conspiracy, including disclosing documents relating to national defence and acting as an agent of Israel.

He declined to comment on leaving the Manhattan courthouse.

"I'm not saying anything. I have no comment," said Mr Kadish, 84, who worked at the US army's Armament Research, Development and Engineering Centre in New Jersey from 1979 to 1985.

As an Internet Organizer for Progressive Future, I've been busily spreading the otherwise buried reports of the atrocities and abuses committed by military contractors in Iraq. As outraged as they made me, I had to wonder why these stories failed to reach the mainstream American public. Now I know why.

In an extensive article on the front page of Sunday's New York Times, David Bartow exposes how the Pentagon recruited, groomed, prepped and, one may go so far as to say, bribed a team of "military analysts." This team consisted of retired military men, defense lobbyists and private contractor representatives, who were then unleashed upon the mainstream media to deliver manipulated testimony on the war. Highlights of the detailed investigation of the Pentagon's highly strategized manipulation of war reporting are as follows:

John Yoo's legal opinions and questions about culpability and timing.

By Scott Horton
April 21, 2008

LAT - John C. Yoo likes the limelight, but it's causing him some grief. Of the half a dozen lawyers who played important roles in a Bush administration decision to legalize the use of highly coercive interrogation techniques, only Yoo has emerged as the public face -- and target -- related to the policy.

In 2002 and 2003, Yoo was second in command at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel and wrote two memos, one for Alberto R. Gonzales and one for the Pentagon, that provided broad legal authority for the use of extreme measures in the questioning of wartime detainees. In one famous phrase, the memo to Gonzales concluded that only techniques "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function or even death," could be considered torture. The 81-page Pentagon memo, declassified April 1, contained similar language and added fuel to the fire over torture and the White House. Through it all, Yoo has defended his position in the media.

Yoo is now a tenured professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall. Recently, the National Lawyers Guild launched a campaign to have him fired because of his role in the torture issue. This move has touched off a controversy, especially among legal academics concerned about tenure and academic freedom. Boalt Hall Dean Christopher Edley Jr. posted a response on the school's website in which he criticized the torture memos but defended Yoo: He was merely a "legal advisor"; real culpability rested with those who directed or implemented the administration's program, not with Yoo. Edley saw no basis on which Yoo could be charged with a crime. He quoted university guidelines under which the "commission of a criminal act which has led to conviction in a court of law" provides the basis for dismissal of a tenured professor.

Richard Norton-Taylor|April 18 | The Guardian

The US's most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques for terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, the Guardian can reveal.

The development led to the US military abandoning its age-old ban on the cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners.

General Richard Myers, the chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, wrongly believed that inmates at Guantánamo and other prisons were protected by the Geneva conventions and from abuse tantamount to torture.

The way he was duped by senior officials in Washington - who believed the Geneva conventions and other traditional safeguards were out of date - is disclosed in a devastating account of their role, extracts from which will be published in tomorrow's Guardian.

Ken Silverstein | April 17, 2008

Harper's - 1. How did you come across Winston Scott and what prompted you to write an entire book about his career?

3. Oswald’s visit to Mexico City has long been grist for the JFK conspiracy mills. Did you uncover new information about what Oswald was doing there?

5. The CIA’s destruction of the Oswald tape can’t help but bring to mind the recent story of the agency’s destruction of a videotape of the torture of Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubayda…

6. You report that Scott had three Mexican presidents on the CIA payroll. Does the CIA still maintain significant influence in Mexico?

  h/t Laura Rozen

Carol Rosenberg | April 14

Miami Herald - Detainees denounce the war-crimes court as a ''sham'' and refuse military lawyers. The attorneys consult their bars, worried that their licenses might be revoked for defending clients who fired them. And the Pentagon presses on its push for speedy trials.

This drama played out here in recent weeks as a succession of alleged al Qaeda foot soldiers came up for arraignment ahead of the government's plan to stage its showcase trial of six men charged in the Sept. 11, 2001, conspiracy.

One case went like this last week: Rather than consult with his lawyer, Ibrahim Qosi of Sudan, 47, jammed his fingers in his ears. Then the man who allegedly served as Osama bin Laden's bodyguard was led into his military commission, defiant.

''Do whatever you wish to do,'' he told the judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, declaring the trials ''a legal sham'' that ``move at the pace of a turtle in order to gain some time and keep us in these boxes without any human or legal rights.''

''The rules provide for the process to move forward whether or not the accused chooses to participate,'' Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann said, declaring the military trials ''extraordinarily fair by any norm,'' and providing ``substantial protections.''

Countered Miami defense attorney Neal Sonnett, a war-court critic who monitors commissions for the American Bar Association: ``If all these cases are going to proceed with empty chairs, what has already been called a kangaroo court will just be highlighted as really a kangaroo court.''

Jordon Robertson | San Francisco

AP - Federal cybersecurity officials are trying to develop an early warning system that alerts authorities to incoming computer attacks targeting critical U.S. infrastructure, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said Tuesday.

Chertoff's keynote speech at the RSA security conference, however, was light on details about this and other initiatives, many of which he said were classified.

Some security experts said the idea of an early warning system seemed far-fetched.

Robert Graham, chief executive of Atlanta-based Errata Security and an expert on computer-intrusion prevention, said current technology can only detect when a hack has already occurred -- and even then the breaches usually happen too fast for an early warning.

"Technologically, all we can do is a post-warning system -- you've been hacked," he said. "It's instantaneous. It's not like a hurricane or missile coming at you that you can track coming toward you. It's just there."

William Fisher | New York | April 9

IPS - Jordan, often described in the mainstream press as the most moderate country in the Arab Middle East, was the first to receive prisoners "as a true proxy jailer for the CIA" and has received more victims of "extraordinary rendition" than any other country in the world, according to a new report by Human Rights Watch (HRW).

The report charges that U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, were aware that "Jordan was already notorious for torturing security detainees" because the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) "already had a history of close relations" with Jordan's General Intelligence Department (GID).

HRW charges that "Torture and cruel or inhuman treatment seems to have been systematically used" against most of the detainees rendered by the CIA to Jordan. "Detainees claim they were threatened, beaten, insulted, deprived of sleep, and subjected to falaqa -- a form of torture in which the soles of the feet are beaten with an object," HRW says.

The report claims that rendered prisoners were "hidden whenever the International Committee of the Red Cross visited".

The report:“Double Jeopardy: CIA Renditions to Jordan

April 7

The Hill - Senate Republicans blocked a Democratic attempt to revive a controversial wiretapping law for 30 days on Monday night, leading to a mini-squabble on the chamber floor over the Bush administration’s program.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had asked for unanimous consent for the month-long extension to allow more time for House-Senate negotiations.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) objected, saying the temporary fix was inadequate. The objection essentially blocks Reid’s extension request.

As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war-crimes charges.

by Phillippe Sands | May 2008 | Vanity Fair

The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense. At the heart of the matter stand several political appointees—lawyers—who, it can be argued, broke their ethical codes of conduct and took themselves into a zone of international criminality, where formal investigation is now a very real option. This is the story of how the torture at Guantánamo began, and how it spread. ...

Via Laura Rozen, who has posted some responses by Marty Lederman, Thomas J. Romig, former Army's judge advocate general, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Yoo Torture Memo, Part 1 (.pdf)

Yoo Torture Memo, Part 2 (.pdf)

JoAnne Allen | Washington | April 2

Reuters - The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday released a declassified 2003 memo justifying the use of harsh interrogation methods for suspected terrorists held abroad.

A subsequent decision overruled the memo which said that President George W. Bush's authority as commander-in-chief superseded international law regarding wartime interrogations.

The Pentagon, unlike the intelligence community, specifically prohibited its interrogators from using certain harsh methods, including a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding. That prohibition was outlined in an update to the Army field manual released in 2006.

The 81-page memo, dated March 14, 2003, was written before that field manual release by then Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo to Pentagon General Counsel William Hayes.

Yoo wrote: "We concluded that different canons of construction indicate that generally applicable criminal laws do not apply to the milliary interrogation of alien unlawful combatants held abroad.

"Were it otherwise, the application of these statutes to the interrogation of enemy combatants undertaken by military personnel would conflict with the president's commander-in-chief power."

Memo(PDF) Part One and Part Two via Oliphant

larry Neumeister | New York | April 2

AP - The military is using the FBI to skirt legal restrictions on domestic surveillance to obtain private records of Americans' Internet service providers, financial institutions and telephone companies, the ACLU said Tuesday.

The American Civil Liberties Union based its conclusion on a review of more than 1,000 documents turned over by the Defense Department after it sued the agency last year for documents related to national security letters. The lawsuit was filed in Manhattan federal court.

The letters are investigative tools used to compel businesses to turn over customer information without a judge's order or grand jury subpoena.

ACLU lawyer Melissa Goodman said the documents the civil rights group studied ``make us incredibly concerned that the FBI and DoD might be collaborating to evade limits put on the DoD's use of NSLs.''

It would be understandable if the military relied on help from the FBI on joint investigations, but not when the FBI was not involved in a probe, she said.

ERIC LICHTBLAU | WASHINGTON | March 30

NYT - This article is adapted from the book “Bush’s Law: The Remaking of American Justice,” by Eric Lichtblau, which is being released Tuesday by Pantheon Books.

The National Security Agency’s eavesdropping program sparked heated legal concerns and silent protests inside the Bush administration within hours of its adoption in October 2001, according to current and former government officials.

In making its case to Congress for broadened spy powers, the White House has emphasized the firm legal foundations of the program conducted after the Sept. 11 attacks. It has even taken the unusual step of giving lawmakers access to classified presidential orders from 2001 and early legal opinions to try to show that the program was on sound legal footing from the start.

But many of the tensions that were roiling the administration at the start of the program have never become public.

In one previously undisclosed episode, Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson refused to sign off on any of the secret wiretapping requests that grew out of the program because of the secrecy and legal uncertainties surrounding it, the officials said. With the veil of secrecy around the program, Mr. Thompson was not given access to details of the N.S.A. operation, and he was so uncomfortable with the idea of approving this new breed of wiretap applications that he had a top adviser write a memorandum assessing the legal ramifications. The adviser warned him not to sign the warrant applications because it was unclear where the wiretaps were coming from.

By Dr. Michael Parenti

Global Research, November 18, 2007

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7355

Michael Parenti Politcal Archive - 2007-01-02

Expanded and Updated Version

I. For Lords and Lamas

Along with the blood drenched landscape of religious conflict there is the experience of inner peace and solace that every religion promises, none more so than Buddhism. Standing in marked contrast to the intolerant savagery of other religions, Buddhism is neither fanatical nor dogmatic--so say its adherents. For many of them Buddhism is less a theology and more a meditative and investigative discipline intended to promote an inner harmony and enlightenment while directing us to a path of right living. Generally, the spiritual focus is not only on oneself but on the welfare of others. One tries to put aside egoistic pursuits and gain a deeper understanding of one’s connection to all people and things. “Socially engaged Buddhism” tries to blend individual liberation with responsible social action in order to build an enlightened society.

Excuse me if I offend anyone in this article, but I would like to know what happened to the Democratic Party? I always thought of Democrats as those that supported Unions, workers, the middle-class, civil liberties and silly things like that. One thing I was also taught to do was to follow the money when it comes to whom really is supporting who in things such as criminal enterprises and of course, politics. I have been around for a while now, and I believe that I’m just as aware of what’s happening in my own country as anyone else. In fact, I believe that I’m really more aware of what’s happening than most. I am a voracious reader and I have a lot of time on my hands and I actually try to dig behind the rhetoric I hear. What I have found amazes me.

Pauline Jelinek | Washington | March 14

AP - Authorities have captured a high-level al-Qaida figure who helped Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan in 2001, the Pentagon announced Friday.

Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to say when or where Mohammad Rahim was captured — or by whom — announcing only that he was handed over by the CIA to the Pentagon earlier this week and is being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But in a memo obtained by The Associated Press, CIA Director Michael Hayden told agency employees that Rahim was detained last summer, and he suggested Rahim was not captured by American authorities.

"Rahim's detention in the summer of 2007 was a blow to more than one terrorist network," Hayden said of the Afghani. "He gave aid to al-Qaida, the Taliban, and other anti-coalition militants."

Hayden said "Rahim was eventually moved into US custody — and-given his past and the continuing threat he presented to American interests — placed in CIA's interrogation program."

** Defense Department Takes Custody Of A High-Value Detainee

Michael Melia | Guantanamo Bay | March 13

AP - An Afghan detainee who was captured as a teenager railed in court against the U.S. military's tribunal system and said he will boycott his trial, telling the judge: "Don't bother me anymore."

The attorney for Mohammed Jawad said his client's outbursts at his arraignment Wednesday reflect the effects of his imprisonment from a young age at Guantanamo Bay, where he is being prosecuted for allegedly throwing a grenade that wounded two U.S. soldiers in 2002.

"This is a direct result of taking a 16-year-old or 17-year-old boy and putting him in confinement for over five years, having absolutely no contact with the outside world," said the defense attorney, Army Col. James Sawyers. "This was a boy who had, at best, a seventh-grade religious education."

Jawad is one of two men facing trial at Guantanamo who were captured as teenagers. Lawyers for him and Omar Khadr, a 21-year-old Canadian citizen, both argue their clients were inappropriately jailed with adults at this U.S. Navy base in southeast Cuba and deserve more lenient treatment.