Tag Archives: FBI

Must Read Essays

Posted on by elizabeth
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On the war in Georgia and the response of the US and other NATO countries, such as mine, see this

And for a great analysis (as always) of the FBI’s disintegrating case against supposed anthrax conspirator Bruce Ivins, who lost his life to the allegations, see this and Tom Englehardt

UPDATE:  And on Russia, Georgia and the US, see Jim Kunstler.  Here’s a bit:

The feeble American response to Russia’s assertion of power in the Caucasus of Central Asia was appropriate, since our claims of influence in that part of the world are laughable. The US had taken advantage of temporary confusion in Russia, during the ten-year-long post-Soviet-collapse interval, and set up a client government in Georgia, complete with military advisors, sales of weapons, and even the promise of club membership in the western alliance known as NATO. These blandishments were all in the service of the Baku-to-Ceyhan oil pipeline, which was designed specifically to drain the oil region around the Caspian Basin with an outlet on the Mediterranean, avoiding unfriendly nations all along the way.

UPDATE II:  I’m into passing you off to other writers tonight.  Check out this piece on the US administrations struggle to muzzle al-Jazeera:

After more than six years as a prisoner of the United States, former TV cameraman Sami al-Hajj is back at work with Al-Jazeera, the largest broadcaster in the Arab world, a thorn in the side of most Arab governments – and, by most indications, a target of deep hostility from the Bush administration.

Al-Hajj, 39, was the longest-held journalist in U.S. custody at the time of his release in May, and the only one ever held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Military authorities repeatedly accused him of being a terrorist in league with al Qaeda, then released him without charges.

His case is emblematic of the poisoned relationship between the U.S. government and a television network with 40 million viewers in the Middle East.

Since 2001, Bush administration officials have regularly denounced Al-Jazeera as an anti-American propaganda organ and a mouthpiece for terrorists, and have periodically urged its chief patron, the emir of Qatar, to rein it in.

The United States even founded a rival Arab-language network, Al Hurra, in 2004, but commentators on the region generally agree it hasn’t made a dent in Al-Jazeera’s popularity.

Al-Jazeera has also been hit twice by U.S. artillery fire. One shelling destroyed its Kabul bureau in November 2001. The second struck a Baghdad office in April 2003, killing correspondent Tareq Ayoub. The U.S. military concluded both shellings were accidents.

According to the Defense Department, al-Hajj was just another suspected terrorist among the 780 who have been held as enemy combatants since January 2002 at Guantanamo. But his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, says al-Hajj’s imprisonment was all about Al-Jazeera.

When I read things like this, about people held for years at Guantanamo without charge and then being released without any charges ever having been laid, I often think I’m living in a whole different world than the one I’ve been used to.  Perhaps that’s because administrations like that of George W. Bush are able to  carry off these anti-democratic, anti-rule of law acts right out in the open with apparently little fear of being held to account.  Ever.  And rightly so it seems.  I mean “rightly” with respect to accountability of course.

Don’t Let Bush Off the Hook

Posted on by elizabeth
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Re: the death by apparent suicide of Bruce E. Irvins, just before he was arrested for perpetrating the anthrax attacks in the US shortly after 9/11, Glenn Greenwald has a great post which reads, in part:

… the same people responsible for perpetrating the attacks were the ones who fed the false reports to the public, through ABC News, that Saddam was behind them. What we know for certain — as a result of the letters accompanying the anthrax — is that whoever perpetrated the attacks wanted the public to believe they were sent by foreign Muslims. Feeding claims to ABC News designed to link Saddam to those attacks would, for obvious reasons, promote the goal of the anthrax attacker(s).

Seven years later, it’s difficult for many people to recall, but, as I’ve amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply — by design — into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country. As but one example: after Ross’ lead report on the October 26, 2001 edition of World News Tonight with Peter Jennings claiming that the Government had found bentonite, this is what Jennings said into the camera:

This news about bentonite as the additive being a trademark of the Iraqi biological weapons program is very significant. Partly because there’s been a lot of pressure on the Bush administration inside and out to go after Saddam Hussein. And some are going to be quick to pick up on this as a smoking gun.

That’s exactly what happened. The Weekly Standard published two lengthy articles attacking the FBI for focusing on a domestic culprit and — relying almost exclusively on the ABC/Ross report — insisted that Saddam was one of the most likely sources for those attacks. In November, 2001, they published an article (via Lexis) which began:

On the critical issue of who sent the anthrax, it’s time to give credit to the ABC website, ABCNews.com, for reporting rings around most other news organizations. Here’s a bit from a comprehensive story filed late last week by Gary Matsumoto, lending further credence to the commonsensical theory (resisted by the White House) that al Qaeda or Iraq — and not some domestic Ted Kaczynski type — is behind the germ warfare.

read the rest

Ahh.  It would be nothing more than sad if it hadn’t all led to death, destruction and apparently sanctioned war crimes.  A good leader would have stepped back from the shock and awe to fully consider the best most constructive response.  Best for the US, best for the world.  That didn’t happen.  Nor were any more than a minority of Americans able to achieve a state of mind sufficiently objective and rational to put the boots to leaders who showed no leadership capability whatsoever and a half.  Nor, it seems, are very many people interested in getting it right now.

This makes me think of Richard Nixon.  After he was forced to resign the Presidency of the US for crimes related to overreaching his executive power, very much like George W. Bush and his merry band of criminals, President Gerald Ford extended a pardon to Nixon for any criminal wrongdoing.  At the time, some people, like me, were horrified that Nixon was to be allowed to escape punishment for the damage he’d done to his country and its best democratic principles.  What hue and cry there was died down though.  Nixon lived quietly for awhile and then set about restoring his public image.

Gerald Ford was later praised for his foresight in pardoning Nixon and allowing the country to “move on” after years of teeth ghashing about Watergate, the Vietnam and other distractions.

I was horrified that Nixon was able to rehabilitate himself.  I was, frankly, horrified at the honours bestowed upon him when he died and wondered just what it was that an American president had to do to warrant having shame heaped upon him rather than sainthood, even if it was a somewhat tarnished halo.  I think my motivation back then had to do with a pretty low but nevertheless human desire to see him suffer, to see him punished in a way that would hurt him forever.

Now I think the failure to bring Nixon to justice was a mistake for other reasons.  Like George W. Bush.  Bush and his confreres have followed a path very similar to and even more destructive than Nixon in their successful bid to concentrate power in the executive branch.  They’ve committed crimes against their own citizens with their illegal wiretapping and abridgement of civil liberties; they’ve drawn the American people into an immoral, illegal war against innocent citizens of other countries, costing American lives, bodies and minds in the process; and hell, all the rest of it.  Perhaps the biggest sin has been making America, whose democratic principles and civil values has offered hope to so many, not just in that country but around the world, the butt of justified criticism, jokes and yes, even hatred.  When democracy fails in America, the significance is profound.

I’m not big on the symbolic significance of law because, most often, the people offered up as symbolic sacrifices are the most poor, the least powerful among us.  But Richard Nixon was rich and powerful and he was the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.  Gerald Ford was wrong to pardon him.  The symbolic significance of putting Nixon on trial before the people of his country and the world is incalculable.  And maybe, just maybe, it would have provided a warning to people like Bush and his ilk.  Their own security and well-being, the place of the Bush in history is quite probably the only thing that politicians like this care about.  It’s possible that the trial of an American president and, hopefully if not probably, his punishment may well have been a symbolic process the result of which may have maximized benefit for the maximum number of people.  And for which America (and the rest of us) has suffered incalculable harm for  not having undertaken.

Holding George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al criminally responsible may yet be the most important thing that America must do in the next years.  Pride in America and her presidents may depend upon it.  The life and safety of Americans and citizens of the world may depend upon it.  The lives, safety and security of future generations may, indeed, depend upon not sidestepping these issues in favour of solving what certainly are critical political, economic and social problems.  Solving those problems may, in fact, depend upon it:

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world, we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hope for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.  And so tonight – to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans – I ask for your support.

Guess who said that.

Torture at Guantanamo

Posted on by elizabeth
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Murat Kurnaz on “60 Minutes” about a month ago.

From The Christian Science Monitor:

In a landmark congressional hearing Tuesday, former Guantánamo detainee Murat Kurnaz described abuses he said he endured while in US custody – among them electric shock, simulated drowning, and days spent chained by his arms to the ceiling of an airplane hangar.

Lawmakers were also provided with recently declassified reports, which show that US and German intelligence agencies had determined as early as 2002 that Mr. Kurnaz had no known links to terrorism. Still, he was held for four more years.

Kurnaz’s testimony to Congress, via videolink, as well as a report released Wednesday showing that FBI agents were troubled by the harsh interrogations at Guantánamo, are the latest signs of growing concerns in the United States about the prison camp, which has become emblematic of what many around the world see as American excess in the war on terrorism.

Nowhere was the disquiet more evident than in lawmakers’ responses. Politicians on both sides of the aisle, who had once accepted Pentagon assurances that those held at Guantánamo were the “worst of the worst,” reacted with outrage and regret to Kurnaz’s statements, which were broadcast from his hometown of Bremen, Germany.

Rep. William Delahunt (D) of Massachusetts, who chaired the hearing, said Kurnaz’s account – denied by Pentagon officials – was something “every patriotic American should find repugnant.”

Even Dana Rohrabacher, a stalwart Republican and defender of the Guantánamo prison system, voiced concern, saying, “It could be after seeing those buildings go down and 3,000 of our people were slaughtered, we moved so quickly that some mistakes were made…. The documents seem to indicate mistakes were made in this case.”

Words in my emphasis for your consideration.

From A Review of the FBI’s Involvement in and Observations of Detainee Interrogations in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, and Iraq (PDF; 6.1 MB)
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Inspector General

Our report found that after FBI agents in GTMO and other military zones were confronted with interrogators from other agencies who used more aggressive interrogation techniques than the techniques that the FBI had successfully employed for many years, the FBI decided that it would not participate in joint interrogations of detainees with other agencies in which techniques not allowed by the FBI were used.

Our review determined that the vast majority of FBI agents complied with FBI interview policies and separated themselves from interrogators who used non-FBI techniques. In a few instances, FBI interrogators used or participated in interrogations during which techniques were used that would not normally be permitted in the United States.

[…]

However, FBI agents continued to witness interrogation techniques by other agencies that caused them concern. Some of these concerns were reported to their supervisors, which sometimes resulted in friction between FBI and the military over the use of these interrogation techniques on detainees. Some FBI agents’ concerned were resolved directly by the agents working with their military counterparts, while other concerns were never reported. Ultimately, however, the DOD made the decisions regarding which interrogation techniques could be used on the detainees in military zones. In our report, we describe the types of techniques that FBI employees reported to their supervisors.