Update 2:CJR has republished their story of the al-Jazeera journalist held for six years without charge, here. Six years without charge and all the United States ever asked him about was his work with al-Jazeera and the networks methods of news gathering.
Amy Davidson writes in the New Yorker, here.
And Digby notes the mainstream media’s take on the publication on the GITMO files:
Meanwhile, members of CNN’s best political team on television, the conservative Dana Loesch and liberal Cornell Belcher agreed that Wikileaks’ release of these documents was terrible (no word on the newspapers that published them) and that they show that the prisoners were very dangerous people who deserved to be there. NPR is reporting that Obama released the worst of the worst. So I assume that’s that.
Nothing to see here, move along. Clap louder. And Reese Witherspoon has gained weight.
I don’t have anything to add on GITMO than what I’ve already said. But there is big news, as Wikileaks has published files on all the prisoners. The Wikileaks files can be found here.
From the BBC: Many at Guantanamo ‘not dangerous’
On why we kept a 15 year old prisoner: U.S. kept Khadr at Gitmo to grill him
Emptywheel on Abu Zubaydah: The Gitmo Files: Abu Zubaydah’s File
And the New York Times: Classified Files Offer New Insights Into Detainees
From The Atlantic Wire: What We’ve Learned So Far from the WikiLeaks Guantanamo Files
Happy reading.
Update: Glennzilla is scorching today:
The idea of trusting the government to imprison people for life based on secret, untested evidence never reviewed by a court should repel any decent or minimally rational person, but these newly released files demonstrate how warped is this indefinite detention policy specifically.
And Emptywheel has more.
Dafna Linzer here: In Gitmo Opinion, Two Versions of Reality
And the WaPo on why Obama failed to close GITMO: Guantanamo Bay: Why Obama hasn’t fulfilled his promise to close the facility
Along with the reason he was picked up and held for so long: Bush/Cheney believed Al J was aligned with Al Qaeda and wanted to know about Al J’s training, how it worked, etc.
Sheesh.
Guardian article on Sami al-Hajj.
Covered on Democracy Now! this morning, along with other aspects of the Gitmo and the purely stupid reasons for sending people to Gitmo..
in the 10s if not 100s of thousands in DC for a few days/weeks on end, this is not going to change. They simply don’t care about public opinion on this one and are banking on the people not caring enough to make a stink out of it. So far, they have been mostly correct. It doesn’t matter how bad Wikileaks makes them look, they know as long as the program (Gitmo) is up and running it will suck all the air out of the room. Meaning there is no serious effort afoot to levy war crimes against those that ran this ‘prison’ as long as the prison is still absorbing the fire.
Why should Americans care anyway? It’s just truth, justice, and our legal/moral system at jeopardy here; not like $5 gas at the pump or a 1% change in your tax bracket. Priorities baby, priorities!
How much are six years worth, if one had to sue the US government? I just don’t know…
Worth reading his file: http://wikileaks.ch/gitmo/pdf/su/us9su-000345dp.pdf
Let us overthrow the totems, break the taboos. Or better, let us consider them cancelled. Coldly, let us be intelligent. ~ Pierre Trudeau
Salon.com, By Glenn Greenwald, April 27
In the wake of a massive disclosure of Guantanamo files by WikiLeaks, the FBI yesterday served a Grand Jury subpoena in Boston on a Cambridge resident, compelling his appearance to testify in Alexandria, Virgina. Alexandria is where a Grand Jury has been convened to criminally investigate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange and determine whether an indictment against them is warranted. The individual served has been publicly linked to the WikiLeaks case, and it is highly likely that the Subpoena was issued in connection with that investigation.
Notably, the Subopena explicitly indicates that the Grand Jury is investigating possible violations of the Espionage Act (18 U.S.C. 793), a draconian 1917 law under which no non-government-employee has ever been convicted for disclosing classified information. The most strident anti-WikiLeaks politicians — such as Dianne Feinstein and Newt Gingrich — have called for the prosecution of the whistle-blowing group under this law, and it appears that the Obama DOJ is at least strongly considering that possibility.
The investigation appears also to focus on Manning, as the Subpoena indicates the Grand Jury is investigating parties for “knowingly accessing a computer without authorization” — something that seems to refer to Manning — though it also cites the conspiracy statute, 18 U.S.C. 371, as well as the conspiracy provision of the Espionage Act (subsection (g)), suggesting that they are investigating those who may have helped Manning obtain access. The New York Times previously reported that the DOJ hoped to build a criminal case against WikiLeaks and Assange by proving they conspired with Manning ahead of time (rather than merely passively received his leaked documents). Also cited is 18 U.S.C. 641, which makes it a crime to “embezzle, steal, purloin, or knowingly convert . . any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States.”
The serving of this Subpoena strongly suggests that the DOJ criminal investigation into WikiLeaks and Assange continues in a serious way; perhaps it was accelerated as a result of this latest leak, though that’s just speculation. It also appears clear that the DOJ is strongly considering an indictment under the Espionage Act — an act that would be radical indeed for non-government-employees doing nothing other than what American newspapers do on a daily basis (and have repeatedly done in partnership with WikiLeaks). The Subpoena is here; the two page letter accompanying the Subpoena are below (click on images to enlarge):
One owes respect to the living. To the dead, one owes only the truth.