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All the entries posted on November 06, 2007.
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Home > The Secrecy File > Archives > 2007 > November > 06
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Yet, another torture memo?
More trouble for former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales?
Legal documents filed in federal court in New York today reveal that the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued three secret memos in May 2005 related to the use of torture to interrogate detainees in CIA custody.
Until now, the public knew about two memos disclosing excessive interrogation methods. The memos were not publicly released but referred to in government filings as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union seeking records under the Freedom of Information Act.
“These torture memos should never have been written, and it is utterly unacceptable that the administration continues to suppress them while at the same time declaring publicly that it abhors torture,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU’s national security project.
Bush administration officials worked in concert “to evade and violate the laws that prohibit cruelty and torture,” Jaffer said. “Some degree of accountability is long overdue.”
The White House did not have an immediate response.
On Oct. 4, 2007, The New York Times published a front-page article disclosing that Justice officials had authored two memos in 2005 about interrogation methods used by the CIA.
The Times reported that the first was issued “soon after” Gonzales assumed the post of attorney general. The memo explicitly authorized interrogators to use combinations of psychological “enhanced” interrogation practices, including waterboarding, head slapping and stress positions.
The second memo, according to The Times, was dated later that same year. It stated that none of the CIA’s interrogation methods violated a law being considered by Congress that outlawed “cruel, inhuman and degrading” treatment.
The memos should have been identified and processed for the ACLU as part of its Freedom of Information Act lawsuit requesting information on the treatment and interrogation of detainees in U.S. custody.
In response to legal papers filed by the ACLU on Oct. 24 objecting to that omission and requesting the release of the two memos, the government filed papers Monday stating:
“OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) has reviewed its opinions from that time frame and has determined that there were in fact three opinions issued to CIA relating to the interrogation of detainees in CIA custody; Two of the opinions were issued on May 10, 2005…The third was issued on May 30, 2005… OLC has not located any legal opinions issued to CIA from January 31, 2005 through May 9, 2005 that relate to the interrogation of detainees in CIA custody.” “The Justice Department’s failure to identify and disclose these memos is yet another example of its efforts to thwart public inquiry into its authorization of illegal interrogation methods,” said Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s immigrants’ rights project. “The memos must immediately be disclosed, and high ranking officials must be held accountable for authorizing torture.”
A hearing regarding the ACLU’s request for the release of OLC torture memos is scheduled for Nov. 13.
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Reporters Committee: first amendment at stake
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press urged a federal court of appeals in Boston to rule that FBI agents violated the media’s rights by “intimidating and harassing them” last year as they covered a law enforcement raid on a political activist.
Lawyers for the Virginia-based non-profit organization assert in a legal brief filed today that reporters were assaulted when an FBI agent pointed a rifle at them as they reported on the February 2006 raid in Puerto Rico.
The U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico held such acts were protected state action and did not violate the journalists’ First Amendment Rights.
But Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee believes otherwise.
“The video of the attacks by law enforcement officials on the Puerto Rican journalists is shocking,” Dalglish said. It was clear the FBI’s search of the premises was over when the media came onto the property at the invitation of one of the residents, she said.
“There was no justification whatsoever for the attack on the reporters and photographers.” Dalglish said.
In a friend-of-the-court brief supporting the journalists’ appeal to the First Circuit, the committee’s legal team argued that such disregard for the long-recognized right to report news under the First Amendment should not stand.
“When journalists pose no threat to the investigation of a state actor and are merely present to observe and report on public events, such aggressive conduct by a state actor is surely unwarranted and cannot be tolerated,” the lawyers for the committee wrote.
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AT&T whistleblower: say no to telecom immunity
A telecommunications technician who says he witnessed the telecom giant AT&T secretly help the government with its eavesdropping program plans to tell all at a news conference tomorrow on Capitol Hill.
Mark Klein wants the Senate Judiciary committee to reject legislation that offers telecommuncations companies legal protection for participating in President Bush’s surveillance program without a court warrant. The Senate Intelligence Committee recently cleared such legislation. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee will evaluate the measure.
Klein is a witness in a class-action lawsuit brought against AT&T by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group based in San Francisco. The foundation alleges that the telcom company aided the government in illegally spying on Americans outside the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
“My job required me to enable the physical connections between AT&T customers’ internet communications and the National Security Agency’s illegal, wholesale copying machine for domestic emails, internet phone conversations, web surfing and all other Internet traffic,” Klein said in a statement.
“I have first-hand knowledge of the clandestine collaboration between one giant telecommunications company, AT&T, and the NSA to facilitate the most comprehensive illegal domestic spying program in history,”Klein said.
Klein said AT&T built technology to help the government’s domestic warrantless wiretapping program at its main switching facility in San Francisco.
Klein was responsible for connecting high-speed fiber optic cables to sophisticated equipment that intercepted communications from AT&T customers and then copied and routed every single one to a room run by the National Security Agency.
Leahy upset about Mukasey nomination
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., presides today over the presidential nomination of Michael Mukasey to become the next attorney general of the troubled Justice Department.
He clearly is not happy that two Democrats — Sens. Chuck Schumer of New York and Dianne Feinstein of California — plan to join ranks with Republicans to approve the president’s pick for the top Justice Department job.
“Taking a cue from the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, some have sought to find comfort in Judge Mukasey’s personal assurance that he would enforce a future, new law against waterboarding if this Congress were to pass one. Unsaid, of course, is the fact that any such prohibition would have to be enacted over the veto of this president,” Leahy plans to say in his statement obtained by Cox Newspapers in advance of today’s hearing.
“But the real damage of this argument is not its futility,” Leahy said. “The real harm is that it presupposes that we do not already have laws and treaty obligations against waterboarding. In fact, we do. No senator should abet and pamper this administration’s legalistic obfuscations by those such as Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and David Addington by agreeing that the laws on the books do not already make waterboarding illegal. We have been prosecuting water torture for more than 100 years.”
Leahy went to express his dismay that a top State Department official could not say that waterboarding is torture.
When asked at a recent public appearance whether he could imagine any circumstance in which waterboarding could be justified on an American national by a foreign intelligence service, John Bellinger of the State Department said, “one would have to apply the facts to the law” and when pressed he said that he was not willing to include it or exclude it and that he did not want to “get involved in abstract discussions.”
“That is so wrong that it is chilling,” Leahy said.
“When it comes to our core values-the things that make our country great and that define America’s place in the world-it does not depend on the circumstances,” Leahy said.
“What we need most right now is an attorney general who believes and understands that there must be limitations on Executive power,” Leahy said. “America needs to be certain of the bedrock principles in our laws and our values that no president and no American can be authorized to violate.”