New Yorker: "A DEADLY INTERROGATION" - Democratic Underground

understandinglife

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Mon Nov-07-05 12:17 PM
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New Yorker: "A DEADLY INTERROGATION"

Edited on Mon Nov-07-05 12:21 PM by understandinglife

Can the C.I.A. legally kill a prisoner?
by JANE MAYER

Issue of 2005-11-14
Posted 2005-11-07

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The house belongs to Mark Swanner, a forty-six-year-old C.I.A. officer who has performed interrogations and polygraph tests for the agency, which has employed him at least since the nineteen-nineties. (He is not a covert operative.) Two years ago, at Abu Ghraib prison, outside Baghdad, an Iraqi prisoner in Swanner’s custody, Manadel al-Jamadi, died during an interrogation. His head had been covered with a plastic bag, and he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe; according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he asphyxiated. In a subsequent internal investigation, United States government authorities classified Jamadi’s death as a “homicide,” meaning that it resulted from unnatural causes. Swanner has not been charged with a crime and continues to work for the agency.

After September 11th, the Justice Department fashioned secret legal guidelines that appear to indemnify C.I.A. officials who perform aggressive, even violent interrogations outside the United States. Techniques such as waterboarding—the near-drowning of a suspect—have been implicitly authorized by an Administration that feels that such methods may be necessary to win the war on terrorism. (In 2001, Vice-President Dick Cheney, in an interview on “Meet the Press,” said that the government might have to go to “the dark side” in handling terrorist suspects, adding, “It’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal.”) The harsh treatment of Jamadi and other prisoners in C.I.A. custody, however, has inspired an emotional debate in Washington, raising questions about what limits should be placed on agency officials who interrogate foreign terrorist suspects outside U.S. territory.

This fall, in response to the exposure of widespread prisoner abuse at American detention facilities abroad—among them Abu Ghraib; Guantánamo Bay, in Cuba; and Bagram Air Base, in Afghanistan — John McCain, the Republican senator from Arizona, introduced a bill in Congress that would require Americans holding prisoners abroad to follow the same standards of humane treatment required at home by the U.S. Constitution. Prisoners must not be brutalized, the bill states, regardless of their “nationality or physical location.” On October 5th, in a rebuke to President Bush, who strongly opposed McCain’s proposal, the Senate voted 90–9 in favor of it.

Senior Administration officials have led a fierce, and increasingly visible, fight to protect the C.I.A.’s classified interrogation protocol. Late last month, Cheney and Porter Goss, the C.I.A. director, had an unusual forty-five-minute private meeting on Capitol Hill with Senator McCain, who was tortured as a P.O.W. during the Vietnam War. They argued that the C.I.A. sometimes needs the “flexibility” to treat detainees in the war on terrorism in “cruel, inhuman, and degrading” ways. Cheney sought to add an exemption to McCain’s bill, permitting brutal methods when “such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.” A Washington Post editorial decried Cheney’s visit, calling him the “Vice-President for Torture.” In the coming weeks, a conference committee of the House and the Senate will decide whether McCain’s proposal becomes law; three of the nine senators who voted against the measure are on the committee.

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Much more at the link:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/051114fa_fact

Recently, Larry Johnson provided the following insights:

Secret CIA Prisons: Preemptive Strike or Surprise Attack?

by Larry C. Johnson

Dana Priest's Wednesday scoop in the Washington Post that the CIA has several secret prisons holding suspected terrorists in "friendly" nations, including some in the former Soviet Union and East Bloc, has folks legitimately outraged and wanting to ask tough questions. Based on preliminary checks I've made with folks who "know", the story is solid. What fascinates me in light of the Libby indictment, however, is who tipped her off? There are two likely scenarios:

Scenario One -- Priest was tipped by CIA personnel, most likely recently retired, who think Porter Goss is being far too accommodating of President Bush and Don Rumsfeld. The CIA wants to play tough with terrorists, but does not want to stray into the arena where the Agency can be accused of massive human rights violations. CIA officers who I know personally, who have been on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq, are uniformly opposed to torture and alarmed by the push into the twilight zone beyond the Geneva Conventions. Yet, there are some CIA officers who are carrying out these orders without asking too many questions. The few remaining Grey beards who have been through previous scandals (Does the Church Committee ring a bell?) are legitimately worried that the acts committed in the name of fighting the war on terrorism will be used to further discredit what is left of the CIA. In other words, this was a preemptive strike by CIA officers not happy with Goss who want to put the Director on the defensive and stop his ongoing effort to politicize the Directorate of Operations.

Scenario Two -- Priest was tipped by NSC insiders who, angered over the Libby affair and paranoid that the CIA is trying to weaken the Bush Presidency, decided to drive a stake in the heart of the CIA. With the focus on the CIA trying to fend off Congressional investigators there is a chance that the focus on the outing of CIA officer Valerie Wilson will shift to the misdeeds of the CIA clandestine service.

My money is on Scenario One, but that is just an opinion.

More at the link including comments:

http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/11/secret_cia_pris.html

No amount of spin will erase these crimes from the history of America.

What matters, now, is what we do to proscecute based on the fact that we have irrefutable evidence that the Executive Branch and members of the Legislative Branch of our government have authorized and participated in heinous crimes against humanity.

Peace.