WASHINGTON — The CIA is decommissioning the secret overseas prisons where top al Qaida suspects were subjected to interrogation methods, including simulated drowning, that Attorney General Eric Holder, allied governments, the Red Cross and numerous other experts consider torture, the agency said Thursday.
In an e-mail to the agency's work force outlining current interrogation and detention policies, CIA Director Leon Panetta also announced that agreements with the private security firms guarding the so-called black sites will be "promptly terminated," and contractors no longer will be used to conduct interrogations.
Panetta, however, said that CIA officers who were involved in interrogations using "enhanced" methods authorized by the Justice Department during the Bush administration "should not be investigated, let alone punished."
That last statement tells you who's really running things.
Somebody must have forgotten to tell the Prime Unit his minions are restless- and chances are with Rahm running the blackberry Obama'll never know what the kids are saying about him now.
And if you tried to tell him, it's (don't say Gitmo 'cause they officially do it anymore) the slammer for you:
...GG: There was an article I think this week or late last week, in The Guardian, the British daily newspaper, detailing the controversy that arose as a result of a letter that you sent to President Obama detailing the torture to which your client was subjected and that letter ended up being heavily redacted, I think in fact redacted in full other than the "from" line.
Can you talk about the circumstances surrounding that letter to the extent that you can consistent with your legal obligations and what happened?
CSS: Well what happened with that was this. I wrote a letter to President Obama and then from the place where all the censorship happens...
GG: What was the purpose of that letter? Why did you decide to write it?
CSS: The purpose is this. The British courts are saying that the British government relied on President Obama's view that this material about torture shouldn't be released to the public. It became clear to us in Britain that actually President Obama had never made that decision and that the British government had somewhat misrepresented his position to the courts. And what I thought was only fair and appropriate was for President Obama to make a decision himself: Do you, President Obama, I voted for you and I think he's a good man, do you really, really tell your officials to cover up evidence of torture committed by US personnel?
And so I wrote him this letter, with a cover letter saying what the situation was, and then we requested that this memorandum, which is a couple of pages which details the factual evidence of torture within these memoranda discussed by the British courts, and we wanted to send that memorandum to the president, to have it reviewed to determine whether he really does want to take this position in the British courts.
Now, all of the evidence of torture as you say was redacted out of the memorandum. In the end, all I was able to send the president was the cover letter, then with this two-page memo totally blacked out from beginning to end.
GG: This is the part I find baffling, and I just want to make sure that I understand it. Obviously, if you want to make public statements, to the media or otherwise, you're required to submit whatever information you want to disclose to this privilege office, that reviews what it is you want to say, and it either gives you permission to say it or tells you it's classified and you're not allowed to. That, I understand.
But here you are, not making a public statement per se, you were writing a letter to the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, who has complete security clearances. You were required even in that case to submit your letter for approval to this privilege agency within the Pentagon?
CSS: Well, yes. There's only two alternatives. They could pass it along to him sealed, as a classified document, which would be fine by us, but they're not willing to do that. So the alternative is that they review it and determine whether we're allowed to send it to him another way. And all I'm trying to illustrate through this process is how the system is absurd in this context. It just doesn't allow for meaningful decisions to be made by the Commander-in-Chief, who, as you say, has a higher security clearance than anybody, so how can it be that this man is not allowed to make the right judgment?
What I really want to do here is bring the issue to his attention so that he instructs the people who are working for him, instruct them to do their jobs differently, and to stop covering up this evidence of torture, because that's the government - we shouldn't be covering up evidence of criminal offenses.
GG: So, you got this letter back, and it was completely blacked out except for your name at the top, "from Clive Stafford Smith," and I think maybe the date. And, what did you do then with that letter?
CSS: I just sent it with my cover letter to the president, in hopes of getting a response from him at some point. They covered this in the British media and the New York Times. So on one level the only way to get our attention, certainly from the Obama administration right now, it's very busy trying to deal with so many political challenges inherited from the Bush administration. But you've got to get their attention somehow on this issue, and I'm afraid at the moment the Obama administration is not paying attention to this very important issue.
GG: So, now, the article in The Guardian reported that, as a result of what you did -- namely, sending a cover letter to President Obama, and attaching the redacted letter -- that you were notified by this agency within the Pentagon that you face some sort of potential disciplinary or even criminal sanction for allegedly having violated the commitments that you made with regard to secrecy at Guantanamo...
What happens at Gitmo is possibly the biggest non-secret the Company has. Of course, they do not do that anymore. In fact, they never did.
Because they said so.
No comments:
Post a Comment