Kerry On CIA Leaks...

[Annie]

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash6.htm

KERRY: 'IF YOU'RE LEAKING TO TELL THE TRUTH...'
Sun Apr 23 2006 09:58:06 ET

Former presidential candidate John Kerry has come to the defense of a fired CIA officer accused of disclosing classified information to the press.

"I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law,' Kerry explained to ABC THIS WEEK.

MORE

ABC 'THIS WEEK' HOST GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: On another -- on another front, excuse me, CIA official Mary McCarthy lost her job this week for disclosing classified information according to the CIA probably about a WASHINGTON POST story which reveal revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe. A lot of different views. Senator Pat Roberts praised action but some former CIA officers described Mary McCarthy as a sacrificial lamb acting in the finest American tradition by revealing human rights violations. What's your view?

SEN. KERRY: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not so it's hard to have a view on it. Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the white house for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, DC Here.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's one issue of hypocrisy but should a CIA officer be able to make decisions on his or her --

KERRY: ... Of course not. Of course, not. A CIA agent has the obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I don't like leaking. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here. You know, classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was eloquent and forceful in always talking about how we needed to, you know, end this endless declassification that takes place in this city, and it has become a tool to hide the truth from Americans.

STEPHANOPOULOS: These --

SEN. KERRY: So I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously -- if she did it, if she did it, suffer the consequences of breaking the law.

END

but no questions, answers about her monetary contributions to his campaign, reported yesterday, for the tech challenged, have to follow the links. Links at site:

http://newsbusters.org/node/5040

Stephanopoulos Doesn’t Ask Kerry About CIA Leaker’s Contributions to His Campaign
Posted by Noel Sheppard on April 23, 2006 - 11:00.

Dontcha just love it when a high-profile Democrat goes on ABC’s “This Week” largely to get softball questions thrown at him or her by one of President Clinton’s former advisers? Well, this Sunday, it wasn’t just a function of softballs. Instead, it was the obvious question that George Stephanopoulos chose to not ask Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) that was so confounding and disturbing (video link to follow).

Stephanopoulos addressed recent revelations of a CIA agent named Mary McCarthy who was fired this week for leaking information about secret terrorist detention centers to The Washington Post’s Dana Priest. When Kerry seemingly praised McCarthy for doing what she did – “So I'm glad she told the truth” – Stephanopoulos didn’t bother asking the senator whether his feelings on this matter related to yesterday’s revelations by The New York Times that “Public records show that Ms. McCarthy contributed $2,000 in 2004 to the presidential campaign of John Kerry.” (In reality, donations to Kerry and other Democrats by McCarthy and a man believed to be her husband likely totaled $7,500 in 2004 as described by NewsBuster Christopher Fotos and the JustOneMinute blog.) Yet, for some reason, Stephanopoulos never broached this possible conflict with Kerry during his interview.

Why not, George? Wasn’t it indeed news that this leaker gave a large amount of money likely relative to her salary to Democrat causes in 2004, including to your guest?

Apparently not.

What follows is a transcript of this segment along with a video link courtesy of Ian Schwartz and Expose the Left.

Stephanopoulos: On another -- on another front, excuse me, a CIA official Mary McCarthy lost her job this week for disclosing classified information according to the CIA probably about a "Washington Post" story which revealed the existence of secret prisons in Europe. A lot of different views on this. Your colleague Senator Pat Roberts has praised the action. But some former CIA officers have described Mary McCarthy as a sacrificial lamb who is acting in the finest American tradition by revealing human rights violations. What's your view?

Kerry: Well, I read that. I don't know whether she did it or not. So, I mean it's hard to have a view on that. But here's my fundamental view about this: that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, D.C. here.

Stephanopoulos: That's one issue of hypocrisy but should the CIA officer be able to make decisions on his or her own...

Kerry: Of course not. Of course, not. Look the CIA agent has an obligation to uphold the law and clearly leaking is against the law, and nobody should leak. I abhor leaking. I don't like it. But if you're leaking to tell the truth, Americans are going to look at that, at least mitigate or think about what are the consequences that you, you know, put on that person. Obviously they're not going to keep their job, but there are other larger issues here. You know, classification in Washington is a tool that is used to hide the truth from the American people. Daniel Patrick Moynihan was eloquent and forceful in always talking about how we needed to, you know, end this endless declassification that takes place in this state, and it has become a tool to hide the truth from Americans.

Stephanopoulos: These --

Kerry: So I'm glad she told the truth but she's going to obviously have to -- if she did it, if she did it -- suffer the consequences of breaking the law.

Video Link

Noel Sheppard's blog

 

[Annie]

Links at site:


http://justoneminute.typepad.com/main/2006/04/mccarthys_contr.html

McCarthy's Contributions - Still An Impenetrable Mystery At The Times

What might have been motivating the fired CIA officer? The Times noted her $2,000 campaign contribution to John Kerry in their Friday coverage, but overlooked another $5,000 contribution that she had made to the Ohio DNC; they also overlooked her husband's max contribution to John Kerry (OK, per the FEC database they have the same last name and same address - we are guessing "husband").

David Cloud follows up for the Times on Saturday, and still scores an "incomplete", twice, in his coverage:

Others said it was possible that Ms. McCarthy — who made a contribution to Senator John Kerry's presidential campaign in 2004 — had grown increasingly disenchanted with the methods adopted by the Bush administration for handling Qaeda prisoners.
​

And a bit later:

Several associates of Ms. McCarthy said she returned to the C.I.A. in 2004, taking a job in the inspector general's office. That year, public records show, she contributed $2,000 to Mr. Kerry's presidential campaign, identifying herself as a "government analyst."
​

This is simply not this difficult.

For what it's worth, as the Times struggles to discern her motivation to leak and connect the dots and , let's pull out a few:

When President Bush took office in 2001, Ms. McCarthy's career seemed to stall. A former Bush administration official who worked with her said that although Ms. McCarthy was a career C.I.A. employee, as a holdover from the Clinton administration she was regarded with suspicion and was gradually eased out of her job as senior director for intelligence programs. She left several months into Mr. Bush's first term.​

And:

Rand Beers, who at the time was Mr. Clinton's senior intelligence aide on the National Security Council, said he had hired Ms. McCarthy to be his deputy.

"Anybody who works for Charlie Allen and then replaces him has got to be good," said Mr. Beers, who went on to serve as an adviser to Mr. Kerry's campaign in 2004. Ms. McCarthy took over from Mr. Beers as the senior director for intelligence programs in 1998.​

I'm stretching here, but let's see - her CIA career had stalled under Bush; her old boss was a senior advisor to Kerry. Dum de dum, in 2004 might she have been rooting for Kerry specifically, and Democrats generally? And there's is nothing wrong with that!

However - one might wonder whether she was part of the White House - CIA war that preceded the 2004 election. And the Times might be more inclined to wonder that as well, if they would even get the basic facts about her campaign contributions lined up in front of themselves.

Well, the truth is out there - here are Jonah Goldberg and Andrew McCarthy of the NRO.

HELP: I saw some lovely trouncings of the Times hagiography of McCarthy. If folks could recommend their faves, that would be great. Or, put in a plug for the other side - bring it on.

Posted by Tom Maguire on April 23, 2006 |

 

[Stephanie]

Unfit for Command

Once again John Kerry sides with the enemy.

Did I say enemy? Yes. Anyone, like Mary McCarthy, who uses her public trust to undermine the war on terrorism is the enemy. The Washington Post can wrap itself and its source in civil liberties, but the public rightly won't buy it. These prisons in Europe reportedly exist to interrogate and house al Qaeda terrorists. While people may disagree over the war in Iraq, almost nobody disagrees that al-Qaeda must be destroyed.

The Democrat party is clearly lining up behind McCarthy now. The talking points have already been issued. Yesterday, Robert Menendez said this:

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., called on President Bush to hold accountable those in his administration who leaked information about the Iraq intelligence in the run-up to the war and outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame. "Apparently, President Bush doesn't believe what's good for the CIA is good for the White House," Menendez said.
More here.

Today, John Kerry said this, in part:



… Here's my fundamental view of this, that you have somebody being fired from the CIA for allegedly telling the truth, and you have no one fired from the White House for revealing a CIA agent in order to support a lie. That underscores what's really wrong in Washington, DC here. …


Not that the truth matters to propagandists, but Plame was not a “CIA agent” and a federal prosecutor has not charged anyone at the White House with leaking her name. Moreover, revealing her name would not have been a crime because, as is now clear, Plame was not undercover. But Kerry continues to repeat this lie because he and his ilk seek to divert attention from the very serious national-security breach committed by his contributor, Mary McCarthy.

Kerry also asserts that McCarthy was telling the truth when she leaked national-security information and that, somehow, she deserves some kind of special dispensation as a result. If we were grading his comprehension, he’d get a D. Do we know all she leaked? We know she revealed the existence of supposed CIA prisons in Europe. But we don’t know if the information she provided Dana Priest was truthful or accurate. And we don’t know what else she may have leaked in her many contacts with the media. And Kerry doesn’t seem the least bit curious about it, either. Moreover, it most cases I would think it is far more damaging to our nation’s security if high officials are leaking truthful information about our war activities.

Kerry has demonstrated, once again, why he’s unfit for command.
http://levin.nationalreview.com/

 

[Annie]

http://www.nationalreview.com/mccarthy/mccarthy200604231348.asp

April 23, 2006, 1:48 p.m.
Why Isn’t She in Cuffs?
Andrew C. McCarthy

The Justice Department needs to be aggressive in the case of the CIA leaker.

There are countless questions that arise out of the CIA's dismissal of a prominent intelligence officer, Mary O. McCarthy (no relation), for leaking classified information to the media. But one in particular springs to mind right now: Why isn't she in handcuffs?

The CIA's announcement of the dismissal did not refer to McCarthy by name. But its description of the officer's conduct was unambiguous. According to the New York Times,

A C.I.A. officer has been fired for unauthorized contact with the media and for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information," said a C.I.A. spokesman, Paul Gimigliano. "This is a violation of the secrecy agreement that is the condition of employment with C.I.A. The officer has acknowledged the contact and the disclosures.

The Times further reports, according to unnamed officials, that McCarthy "was given a polygraph examination, confronted about answers given to the polygraph examiner and confessed."

The case against McCarthy, moreover, is said to involve not just a single illegal disclosure of the Nation's secrets, but several. One prominent instance is reported to involve alerting the press that the CIA had arrangements with overseas intelligence services for the detention of high-level al Qaeda detainees captured in the war on terror — from whom the culling of intelligence is critical to the safety of Americans.

The so-called "black site" prisons were later publicized by Dana Priest of the Washington Post, jeopardizing not only the detainee intelligence stream but, just as importantly, America's relationship with the cooperating governments — on whom we rely because of our global dearth of intelligence assets, and who are now incentivized to cut-off information exchanges because they believe (with some obvious justification) that our intelligence community is not trustworthy.

As a result of all this, McCarthy was fired, stripped of her security clearance, and escorted from the CIA's premises last Thursday. Yet, she has not been arrested.

More alarmingly, according to government officials who spoke to the Washington Post, she may not even be the subject of a criminal investigation. Indeed, unnamed Justice Department lawyers reportedly told the Times that McCarthy's "termination could mean she would be spared criminal prosecution."

This is hard to fathom. Federal law, specifically, Section 793(d) of Title 18, United States Code, clearly makes it an offense, punishable by up to ten years' imprisonment, for anyone who lawfully has access to national defense information — including information which "the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation" — to willfully communicate that information to any person not entitled to have it.

McCarthy had access to classified information about our wartime national defense activities by virtue of her official position at the CIA. The compromise of that information appears to have been devastating to U.S. intelligence efforts — in wartime, no less. CIA Director Porter Goss testified before the Senate Intelligence Committee in February that the "damage" from leaks "has been very severe to our capabilities to carry out our mission." The unauthorized disclosures were also, patently, a boon to several foreign nations, which have used it to put immense pressure — under the guise of international law — on countries that heretofore have been willing to run the risk of helping the United States battle terrorists.

In other words, this seems like a straightforward case. The Times suggests that "the C.I.A.'s reliance on the polygraph in Ms. McCarthy's case could make it more difficult for the government to prosecute her." That seems farfetched. Yes, lie-detector-test results — i.e., the actual findings about whether or not a person was truthful during a polygraph examination — are inadmissible in federal court. But so what? That has nothing to do with the underlying evidence of conduct. Nor should it render problematic any admissions the person makes — including any confession, such as the one McCarthy is reported to have given.

The only way a polygraph could complicate a prosecution would be if McCarthy was given immunity of some kind in exchange for submitting to it. That, however, is highly unlikely. In her sensitive job, McCarthy could no doubt be polygraphed as a condition of her employment — the government should not have needed to trade away any rights to get her to take the test.

Evidence aside, it is essential for policy reasons that this case be prosecuted aggressively. The intelligence community's leaking of information to the media since 9/11 has been breathtaking. The Bush Justice Department's response has not been inspiring.

Sandy Berger, the former national-security adviser who filched classified information from the national archives and then lied about it to investigators was, appallingly, given the sweetheart deal of the century: a guilty plea to a mere misdemeanor, no jail time, and even the prospect of getting his security clearance back after three years. In stark contrast, non-government persons, like the two AIPAC lobbyists scheduled to start trial shortly, face the possibility of years of imprisonment for passing information they were given by a former Defense Department official to a friendly government. (To be fair, the Defense Department official was prosecuted, although that is a long story for another day.) The public needs to know that there are not two standards of justice, and, worse, the kind of double-standard in which government coddles its own high officials while slamming ordinary citizens.

We can argue forever — and we probably will — about whether media people should be prosecuted for publishing secrets they are well aware will harm the nation and the war effort. Public officials, to the contrary, should not be a close call — they are in violation of both the law and a solemn oath.

An additional, compelling policy consideration is also at issue here. Mary McCarthy's position — the post from which she is likely to have learned the most sensitive information at the heart of the leak controversy — was inside the CIA's inspector general's office. This is the unit that investigates internal misconduct. This is the unit to which government employees are encouraged to report government abuse or illegality so it can be investigated, potentially reported to Congress, and prosecuted if appropriate.

That is, it is the legal alternative to leaking national secrets to the media.

It is, therefore, the process that has to be protected if our intelligence community is to have credibility with the public and with the foreign intelligence services on which we are so dependent. If it becomes just another Washington sieve — a place where people who comply with their oaths and exercise professional discretion may nevertheless expect to find the information they confide trumpeted on Page One of the Washington Post — we are guaranteed to have much more leaking. And much less security.

Cleaning government's own house in such weighty matters is one of the principal reasons why we have federal law enforcement.

 

[Annie]

Links at site, read and think about this:


http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2006/04/is_the_priest_s.html

Is The 2005 Priest Story A Fraud?

Update: In 2002 the WaPo called the International detention (prison) story vital - in 2005 they quote another official calling it a burden. In 2002 they informed people that Clinton initiated the practice of extraordinary rendition. In 2005, they made it look like a creation of George Bush.

What changed? And what did Dana Priest know and when did she know it? Evidently, not a terribly great deal changed from 2002 to 2005, given that many details of the program the WaPo broke in 2005 were actually published through a group reported piece in the WaPo in 2002.

And the most significant change over the years was the spin around the story. None of the balance, or support for the program reported in 2002 appears in the 2005 version. What was once a very pro-America, pro-GWOT story was spun around into a damning critique of the Bush administration. Apparently that gets more buzz and wins Pulitzers while simply reporting the news in 2002 went mostly un-noticed.

Also keep in mind that many countries and the EU have investigated this and claim there were no such international facilities. Whether that is true or not is debatable. But the WaPo entirely ignored, not only their own 2002 story but any subsequent criticism and denial, as well. The Thai PM also called for a retraction in late 2005, which went largely unnoticed by the MSM in the US.

He said news stories run by foreign media were not always accurate and it was possible that some were published with a hidden agenda.

Some excerpts comparing the two stories:

2002 Unarchived Headline: Torture Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas

2005 Pulitzer Headline: CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons

Unarchived in 2002: sits a cluster of metal shipping containers protected by a triple layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism

Pulitzer in 2005: The agency shoved its highest-value prisoners into metal shipping containers set up on a corner of the Bagram Air Base, which was surrounded with a triple perimeter of concertina-wire fencing.

Unarchived in 2002: In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services — notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco — with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

Pulitzer in 2005: A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition."

Unarchived in 2002: In the multifaceted global war on terrorism waged by the Bush administration, one of the most opaque — yet vital — fronts is the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. U.S. officials have said little publicly about the captives' names, numbers or whereabouts, and virtually nothing about interrogation methods.

Pulitzer in 2005: The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

Unarchived in 2002: U.S. officials who defend the renditions say the prisoners are sent to these third countries not because of their coercive questioning techniques, but because of their cultural affinity with the captives. Besides being illegal, they said, torture produces unreliable information from people who are desperate to stop the pain.

Pulitzer in 2005: It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other U.S. government officials.

Perhaps timing is everything, as they say. You need to read this whole thing if you are following the Mary O. McCarthy story. Someone was talking to Priest as early as 2002. Actually, everyone was talking in 2002 and the international detention issue was viewed to some degree as a positive part of the Bush administrations GWOT. I wonder if we've been had by Dana Priest and the Washington Post.

Full initial text of this posting below.

I thought if I traced the much cited Dana Priest secret prison story out a bit, perhaps some consistent line of inquiry in her reporting over multiple stories might reveal something as regards any possible sources with which she had been working. Journalists often hang with the same sources, even over different stories. As I said in an earlier post on the issue: let's go back to the start.

The start being Dana Priest's Page 1 Washington Post secret prison story published on November 2, 2005. Or so I thought. Keep in mind Priest just won a Pulitzer Prize for the story. But was the 2005 story original reporting, in the strictest sense of the word? Um ... perhaps not.

The story now has everyone's attention due to the Mary O. McCarthy story. It blasted out the headline: CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons!

The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to U.S. and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.

The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.

Compelling stuff for sure. So, why then was it not so compelling when Priest and several WaPo writers combined to publish, in large part, the very same story a day after Christmas in 2002?

Torture Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects Held in Secret Overseas

Dana Priest and Barton Gellman | Washington Post | December 26, 2002

"Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights — subject to what are known as 'stress and duress' techniques."

Contrast these two excerpts below published three years apart. The second won a Pulitzer. The first isn't even archived on line.

2002: In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services — notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco — with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

2005: A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction.

Notice the quotation marks around rendition above in 2005? A new and extraordinary term? Hardly. They left out this bit below from the 2002 story for the 2005 version. I wonder why?

The Clinton administration pioneered the use of extraordinary rendition after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998.

And just as a matter of curiosity, why is it that the above article is no longer available at the Washington Post on line? Archiving, most likely. At least I hope so. Fortunately, a web site archived the article, as did others - just not the Washington Post. Is it possible the story didn't get the traction and cause the hearings some might have thought before the 2004 election?

I realize it's foolish to speculate, but why simply wait for passions around the GWOT to fade a bit before bringing the story back up, unless there was an agenda of some kind for any anticipated impact of the story? And why no reference to the earlier story at all?

The full text is below, similarities as regards sources and details are there. And the older story actually refers to a higher number of prisoners disappeared into the CIA's black hole.

Granted, there are new suggestions as to known locations in Europe in the new story, but that's about it. And the prison story was handled like major breaking news. It simply wasn't. What has changed as regards the first and second stories three years apart is the focus and the narrative.

In 2002 the focus was on the torture and the story had several references with quotes about how productive the system had been in ferreting out al-Qaida operatives around the world. Actually, the story comes off looking rather pro-government as it prosecuted the war on terror. And forget sources, people were at least alluding to the program on the record with a wink and a nod.

Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, spoke cryptically about the agency's new forms of "operational flexibility" in dealing with suspected terrorists. "This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off."

Sadly, what has really changed is the climate. Some might argue Dana Priest and the Washington Post, to some extent, filled out and re-cycled an old story three years later to take advantage of the climate and given the Bush administration yet another black eye for no reason. One that it obviously didn't need, especially over a program everyone seemed to be rather pleased with three years before.

Read it below. Then you tell me, what was the big Pulitzer worthy scoop in 2005? except for some details and country locations which, ironically, aren't even included, but simply referred to as known but not revealed. Everyone who read the WaPo at the time had the prison story as far back as 2002.

Read below and compare. Yes, some details were fleshed out and it won a Pulitzer Prize for news. Unfortunately, the story was far from new. I guess timing is everything after all.

"Deep inside the forbidden zone at the U.S.-occupied Bagram air base in Afghanistan, around the corner from the detention center and beyond the segregated clandestine military units, sits a cluster of metal shipping containers protected by a triple layer of concertina wire. The containers hold the most valuable prizes in the war on terrorism — captured al Qaeda operatives and Taliban commanders.

Those who refuse to cooperate inside this secret CIA interrogation center are sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles, according to intelligence specialists familiar with CIA interrogation methods. At times they are held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights — subject to what are known as "stress and duress" techniques.

Those who cooperate are rewarded with creature comforts, interrogators whose methods include feigned friendship, respect, cultural sensitivity and, in some cases, money. Some who do not cooperate are turned over — "rendered," in official parlance — to foreign intelligence services whose practice of torture has been documented by the U.S. government and human rights organizations.

In the multifaceted global war on terrorism waged by the Bush administration, one of the most opaque — yet vital — fronts is the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects. U.S. officials have said little publicly about the captives' names, numbers or whereabouts, and virtually nothing about interrogation methods. But interviews with several former intelligence officials and 10 current U.S. national security officials — including several people who witnessed the handling of prisoners — provide insight into how the U.S. government is prosecuting this part of the war.

The picture that emerges is of a brass-knuckled quest for information, often in concert with allies of dubious human rights reputation, in which the traditional lines between right and wrong, legal and inhumane, are evolving and blurred.

con't on pg 2...

 

[Annie]

are you thinking?

While the U.S. government publicly denounces the use of torture, each of the current national security officials interviewed for this article defended the use of violence against captives as just and necessary. They expressed confidence that the American public would back their view. The CIA, which has primary responsibility for interrogations, declined to comment.

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

The off-limits patch of ground at Bagram is one of a number of secret detention centers overseas where U.S. due process does not apply, according to several U.S. and European national security officials, where the CIA undertakes or manages the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Another is Diego Garcia, a somewhat horseshoe-shaped island in the Indian Ocean that the United States leases from Britain.

Some sources cited as U.S. and foreign officials in 2002.

U.S. officials oversee most of the interrogations, especially those of the most senior captives. In some cases, highly trained CIA officers question captives through interpreters. In others, the intelligence agency undertakes a "false flag" operation using fake decor and disguises meant to deceive a captive into thinking he is imprisoned in a country with a reputation for brutality, when, in reality, he is still in CIA hands. Sometimes, female officers conduct interrogations, a psychologically jarring experience for men reared in a conservative Muslim culture where women are never in control.

In other cases, usually involving lower-level captives, the CIA hands them to foreign intelligence services — notably those of Jordan, Egypt and Morocco — with a list of questions the agency wants answered. These "extraordinary renditions" are done without resort to legal process and usually involve countries with security services known for using brutal means.

According to U.S. officials, nearly 3,000 suspected al Qaeda members and their supporters have been detained worldwide since Sept. 11, 2001. About 625 are at the U.S. military's confinement facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Some officials estimated that fewer than 100 captives have been rendered to third countries. Thousands have been arrested and held with U.S. assistance in countries known for brutal treatment of prisoners, the officials said.

The above makes it quite clear that there were a large number of detainees off the radar in 2002 - far more than alleged in the 2005 article.

At a Sept. 26 joint hearing of the House and Senate intelligence committees, Cofer Black, then head of the CIA Counterterrorist Center, spoke cryptically about the agency's new forms of "operational flexibility" in dealing with suspected terrorists. "This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off."

According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them." Some countries are known to use mind-altering drugs such as sodium pentathol, said other officials involved in the process.

Abu Zubaida, who is believed to be the most important al Qaeda member in detention, was shot in the groin during his apprehension in Pakistan in March. National security officials suggested that Zubaida's painkillers were used selectively in the beginning of his captivity. He is now said to be cooperating, and his information has led to the apprehension of other al Qaeda members.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack declined to comment earlier this week on CIA or intelligence-related matters. But, he said: "The United States is treating enemy combatants in U.S. government control, wherever held, humanely and in a manner consistent with the principles of the Third Geneva Convention of 1949."

The convention outlined the standards for treatment of prisoners of war. Suspected terrorists in CIA hands have not been accorded POW status.

Other U.S. government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that interrogators deprive some captives of sleep, a practice with ambiguous status in international law.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, the authoritative interpreter of the international Convention Against Torture, has ruled that lengthy interrogation may incidentally and legitimately cost a prisoner sleep. But when employed for the purpose of breaking a prisoner's will, sleep deprivation "may in some cases constitute torture."

The State Department's annual human rights report routinely denounces sleep deprivation as an interrogation method. In its 2001 report on Turkey, Israel and Jordan, all U.S. allies, the department listed sleep deprivation among often-used alleged torture techniques.

U.S. officials who defend the renditions say the prisoners are sent to these third countries not because of their coercive questioning techniques, but because of their cultural affinity with the captives. Besides being illegal, they said, torture produces unreliable information from people who are desperate to stop the pain. They look to foreign allies more because their intelligence services can develop a culture of intimacy that Americans cannot. They may use interrogators who speak the captive's Arabic dialect and often use the prospects of shame and the reputation of the captive's family to goad the captive into talking.

'Very Clever Guys'

In a speech on Dec. 11, CIA director George J. Tenet said that interrogations overseas have yielded significant returns recently. He calculated that worldwide efforts to capture or kill terrorists had eliminated about one-third of the al Qaeda leadership. "Almost half of our successes against senior al Qaeda members has come in recent months," he said.

Many of these successes have come as a result of information gained during interrogations. The capture of al Qaeda leaders Ramzi Binalshibh in Pakistan, Omar al-Faruq in Indonesia, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri in Kuwait and Muhammad al Darbi in Yemen were all partly the result of information gained during interrogations, according to U.S. intelligence and national security officials. All four remain under CIA control.

Time, rather than technique, has produced the most helpful information, several national security and intelligence officials said. Using its global computer database, the CIA is able to quickly check leads from captives in one country with information divulged by captives in another.

"We know so much more about them now than we did a year ago — the personalities, how the networks are established, what they think are important targets, how they think we will react," said retired Army general Wayne Downing, the Bush administration's deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism until he resigned in June.

"The interrogations of Abu Zubaida drove me nuts at times," Downing said. "He and some of the others are very clever guys. At times I felt we were in a classic counter-interrogation class: They were telling us what they think we already knew. Then, what they thought we wanted to know. As they did that, they fabricated and weaved in threads that went nowhere. But, even with these ploys, we still get valuable information and they are off the street, unable to plot and coordinate future attacks."

In contrast to the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, where military lawyers, news reporters and the Red Cross received occasional access to monitor prisoner conditions and treatment, the CIA's overseas interrogation facilities are off-limits to outsiders, and often even to other government agencies. In addition to Bagram and Diego Garcia, the CIA has other secret detention centers overseas, and often uses the facilities of foreign intelligence services.

Free from the scrutiny of military lawyers steeped in the international laws of war, the CIA and its intelligence service allies have the leeway to exert physically and psychologically aggressive techniques, said national security officials and U.S. and European intelligence officers.

Although no direct evidence of mistreatment of prisoners in U.S. custody has come to light, the prisoners are denied access to lawyers or organizations, such as the Red Cross, that could independently assess their treatment. Even their names are secret.

This month, the U.S. military announced that it had begun a criminal investigation into the handling of two prisoners who died in U.S. custody at the Bagram base. A base spokesman said autopsies found one of the detainees died of a pulmonary embolism, the other of a heart attack.

Al Qaeda suspects are seldom taken without force, and some suspects have been wounded during their capture. After apprehending suspects, U.S. take-down teams — a mix of military special forces, FBI agents, CIA case officers and local allies — aim to disorient and intimidate them on the way to detention facilities.

According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. The tone of intimidation and fear is the beginning, they said, of a process of piercing a prisoner's resistance.

The take-down teams often "package" prisoners for transport, fitting them with hoods and gags, and binding them to stretchers with duct tape.

Bush administration appointees and career national security officials acknowledged that, as one of them put it, "our guys may kick them around a little bit in the adrenaline of the immediate aftermath." Another said U.S. personnel are scrupulous in providing medical care to captives, adding in a deadpan voice, that "pain control [in wounded patients] is a very subjective thing."

'We're Not Aware'

The CIA's participation in the interrogation of rendered terrorist suspects varies from country to country.

"In some cases [involving interrogations in Saudi Arabia], we're able to observe through one-way mirrors the live investigations," said a senior U.S. official involved in Middle East security issues. "In others, we usually get summaries. We will feed questions to their investigators. They're still very much in control."

The official added: "We're not aware of any torture or even physical abuse."

Tenet acknowledged the Saudis' role in his Dec. 11 speech. "The Saudis are proving increasingly important support to our counterterrorism efforts — from making arrests to sharing debriefing results," he said.

But Saudi Arabia is also said to withhold information that might lead the U.S. government to conclusions or policies that the Saudi royal family fears. U.S. teams, for that reason, have sometimes sent Saudi nationals to Egypt instead.

Jordan is a favored country for renditions, several U.S. officials said. The Jordanians are considered "highly professional" interrogators, which some officials said meant that they do not use torture. But the State Department's 2001 human rights report criticized Jordan and its General Intelligence Directorate for arbitrary and unlawful detentions and abuse.

"The most frequently alleged methods of torture include sleep deprivation, beatings on the soles of the feet, prolonged suspension with ropes in contorted positions and extended solitary confinement," the 2001 report noted. Jordan also is known to use prisoners' family members to induce suspects to talk.

Another significant destination for rendered suspects is Morocco, whose general intelligence service has sharply stepped up cooperation with the United States. Morocco has a documented history of torture, as well as longstanding ties to the CIA.

Morocco is also named in the 2005 story.

The State Department's human rights report says Moroccan law "prohibits torture, and the government claims that the use of torture has been discontinued; however, some members of the security forces still tortured or otherwise abused detainees."

In at least one case, U.S. operatives led the capture and transfer of an al Qaeda suspect to Syria, which for years has been near the top of U.S. lists of human rights violators and sponsors of terrorism. The German government strongly protested the move. The suspect, Mohammed Haydar Zammar, holds joint German and Syrian citizenship. It could not be learned how much of Zammar's interrogation record Syria has provided the CIA.

The Bush administration maintains a legal distance from any mistreatment that occurs overseas, officials said, by denying that torture is the intended result of its rendition policy. American teams, officials said, do no more than assist in the transfer of suspects who are wanted on criminal charges by friendly countries. But five officials acknowledged, as one of them put it, "that sometimes a friendly country can be invited to 'want' someone we grab." Then, other officials said, the foreign government will charge him with a crime of some sort.

One official who has had direct involvement in renditions said he knew they were likely to be tortured. "I ... do it with my eyes open," he said.

According to present and former officials with firsthand knowledge, the CIA's authoritative Directorate of Operations instructions, drafted in cooperation with the general counsel, tells case officers in the field that they may not engage in, provide advice about or encourage the use of torture by cooperating intelligence services from other countries.

"Based largely on the Central American human rights experience," said Fred Hitz, former CIA inspector general, "we don't do torture, and we can't countenance torture in terms of we can't know of it." But if a country offers information gleaned from interrogations, "we can use the fruits of it."

Bush administration officials said the CIA, in practice, is using a narrow definition of what counts as "knowing" that a suspect has been tortured. "If we're not there in the room, who is to say?" said one official conversant with recent reports of renditions.

The Clinton administration pioneered the use of extraordinary rendition after the bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. But it also pressed allied intelligence services to respect lawful boundaries in interrogations.

After years of fruitless talks in Egypt, President Bill Clinton cut off funding and cooperation with the directorate of Egypt's general intelligence service, whose torture of suspects has been a perennial theme in State Department human rights reports.

"You can be sure," one Bush administration official said, "that we are not spending a lot of time on that now."

Staff writers Bob Woodward, Susan Schmidt and Douglas Farah, and correspondent Peter Finn in Berlin, contributed to this report.

Wednesday, April 26, 2006 at 10:04 PM

 

[archangel]

should go on a fact finding mission to these terrorist prisons...he should be allowed into a inclosed area with the lights out and interview these 'nice gentlemen' If he survives he can then advise us of their concerns and wants...then again maybe his head couldn't talk if not attached to his body! :chains: