Reply #2: Scott Horton and others: A few things about Appendix M.

[chill_wind]

DIA and the Black Jail at Bagram (Harper's)
By Scott Horton May 17


Ambinder also reports that the rough interrogation techniques used at the prison are taken from the notorious Appendix M to the Army Field Manual, which the Pentagon itself acknowledges is not compliant with the Geneva Conventions standards for prisoners of war.

So the jail is not a JSOC operation? It’s not so simple as that. Task Force 714 was headed by two successive JSOC commanders, Stanley McChrystal and then William McRaven, and it has often been tied to the blackest of the JSOC black ops. Here’s what Spencer Ackerman had to say about it in a piece posted last year:

McRaven runs a secretive detachment of Special Forces known as Task Force 714 — once commanded by McChrystal himself — that the NSC staffer described as “direct-action” units conducting “high-intensity hits.” In an email, Sholtis said that because Task Force 714 was a “special ops organization” he “can’t go into much detail on authorities, etc.” But the NSC staffer — who called McRaven “McChrystal Squared” — said Task Force 714 was organized into “small groups of Rangers going wherever the hell they want to go” in Afghanistan and operating under legal authority granted at the end of the Bush Administration that President Obama has not revoked.

It’s true that JSOC relies on other branches of the vast Defense Department intelligence community for support, and I don’t doubt Ambinder’s reporting, but I still believe based on everything I have heard that this is, at its heart, a JSOC operation. Regardless, it’s time to ask Secretary Gates why he’s decided to put DIA in charge of a prison operation that looks almost identical to the one that President Obama outlawed back on January 22, 2009, and why he’s giving them free rein to employ the non-Geneva compliant techniques found in Appendix M.

more: http://harpers.org/archive/2010/05/hbc-90007044

How the U.S. Army's Field Manual Codified Torture -- and Still Does
Buried in Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, the Guantanamo virus is spreading, and eradicating it will require all of us to spread the word.
January 7, 2009 |

In early September 2006, the U.S. Department of Defense, reeling from at least a dozen investigations into detainee abuse by interrogators, released Directive 2310.01E. This directive was advertised as an overhaul and improvement on earlier detainee operations and included a newly rewritten Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations (FM-2-22-3). This guidebook for interrogators was meant to set a humane standard for U.S. interrogators worldwide, a standard that was respectful of the Geneva Conventions and other U.S. and international laws concerning treatment of prisoners.

While George W. Bush was signing a presidential directive allowing the CIA to conduct other, secret "enhanced interrogation techniques," which may or may not have included waterboarding, the new AFM was sold to the public as a return to civilized norms, in regards to interrogation.

Before long, opponents of U.S. torture policy were championing the new AFM as an appropriate "single-standard" model of detainee treatment. Support for implementing the revised AFM, as a replacement for the hated "enhanced" techniques earlier championed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the CIA, began to appear in legislation out of Congress, in the literature of human-rights organizations and in newspaper editorials. Some rights groups have felt the new AFM offered some improvements by banning repellent interrogation tactics, such as waterboarding, use of nudity, military dogs and stress positions. It was believed the AFM cemented the concept of command responsibility for infractions of the law.

There was only one problem: the AFM did not eliminate torture. Despite what it said, it did not adhere to the Geneva Conventions. Even worse, it took the standard operating procedure of Camp Delta at Guantanamo Bay and threatened to expand it all over the world.

(...)

This program is nothing less than the one established in researcher Albert Biderman's Chart of Coercion, which, as revealed by the recent Senate Armed Services Committee investigation into detainee abuse, was the blueprint used by SERE instructors at Guantanamo in late 2002 to teach abusive interrogation techniques. (SERE stands for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape and is the military program to "inoculate" certain military personnel against torture or abusive treatment by an enemy that doesn't recognize Geneva protocol.)

(...)
One last example should suffice to demonstrate the perfidy upon which the Army Field Manual was rewritten. (The revamping of the AFM was supervised by Stephen Cambone, Rumsfeld's undersecretary of defense for intelligence, also notoriously in charge of the Pentagon's secretive sabotage and assassination teams, code-named Grey Fox.)

more: http://www.alternet.org/rights/117807/how_the_u.s._army%27s_field_manual_codified_torture_--_and_still_does/?page=entire

Bagram: What Appendix M Says About Interrogation

May 14 2010,
Marc Ambinder

Several readers have asked me to provide more information on the Army Field Manual's Appendix M, which sanctions a "restricted" interrogation technique, but which the D.I.A.'s interrogators are using, under secret orders, to employ harsher techniques. The Appendix is not classified. It applies to a category of detainees -- "unlawful combatants" -- that isn't terribly well-defined in current law. In theory, the Appendix's technique can only be applied to "specific unlawful enemy combatants for whom proper approvals have been granted in accordance with this appendix." But it appears as if this approval has been granted a priori and in secret.

And that's an issue, because detainees' official statuses aren't usually determined until AFTER they've passed through the D.I.A. facility.

That means that, so far as the D.I.A's interrogators and intelligence collectors are concerned, a lot of detainees can be given the Appendix M treatment

more: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/05/bagram-what-appendix-m-says-about-interrogation/56772/

Who Runs The Secret 'Black Jail' at Bagram?
Jeremy Scahill
May 14, 2010

This week the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed the existence of a secret prison facility within the larger Bagram prison complex in Afghanistan. This followed in-depth reports by the BBC and detailing specific allegations of abuse at the facility that some prisoners referred to as the "Black Jail." There has been speculation and reporting indicating that the prison was run by the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite of the elite of US special forces.

Today Marc Ambinder has a big scoop over at The Atlantic. According to defense and administration sources, Ambinder reports, the "classified interrogation facility for high-value detainees" is actually run by the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Counterintelligence and Human Intelligence Center (DCHC). "They perform interrogations for a sub-unit of Task Force 714, an elite counter-terrorism brigade," Ambinder writes. "Intelligence gleaned from these interrogations has often led to some of the military's highest profile captures. Usually, captives are first detained at one of at least six classified Field Interrogation Sites in Afghanistan, and then dropped off at the DIA facility -- and, when the interrogators are finished, transferred to the main prison population at the Bagram Theater Internment Facility."

(...)

"When interrogators are using Appendix M measures, the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Gen.James Clapper (Ret.) is the man on the hook. Detainees designated as prisoners of war cannot be subjected to Appendix M measures."
***
Ambinder reports that the White House is "kept appraised of the methods used by interrogators at the site." Ambinder's whole post is here. You can also follow him on Twitter: @marcambinder

more: http://www.thenation.com/blog/who-runs-secret-black-jail-bagram

Republicans won't give a rat's arse, but I hope there's a line of questioning from some Dems at least for Clapper about Bagram and Appendix M.