White House Ordered Not To Delete Emails It Claims It Doesn’t Have

[thoughtone]

source: seattlep.com


Gov't argues for withholding records
By PETE YOST
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- Opening a new front in the Bush administration's battle to keep its records confidential, the Justice Department is contending that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The department's argument is in response to a lawsuit trying to force the office to reveal what it knows about the disappearance of White House e-mails.

The Office of Administration provides administrative services, including information technology support, to the Executive Office of the President. Most of the White House is not subject to the FOIA, but certain components within it handle FOIA requests. Last year the Office of Administration processed 65 FOIA requests.

However, the Justice Department maintained in court papers filed Tuesday that the Office of Administration has no substantial authority independent of President Bush and therefore is not subject to the FOIA's disclosure requirements.

The office has prepared estimates that there are at least 5 million missing White House e-mails from March 2003 to October 2005, according to the lawsuit filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a private advocacy group.

The White House has said it is aware that some e-mails may not have been automatically archived on a computer server for the Executive Office of the President.

The e-mails, the White House has said, may have been preserved on backup tapes.

"The Office of Administration is looking into whether there are e-mails not automatically archived; and once we determine whether or not there is a problem, we'll take the necessary steps to address it," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel.

The first indication of a problem came in early 2006 when special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald raised the possibility that records sought in the CIA leak investigation involving the outing of Valerie Plame could be missing because of an e-mail archiving problem at the White House.

The issue came into focus early this year amid the uproar over the firing of U.S. attorneys. It turned out that aides to Bush improperly used Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts for official business and that an undetermined number of e-mails had been lost in the process.

The Justice Department Web site, which lists all FOIA contacts inside the government, identifies seven units inside the Executive Office of the President as responding to FOIA requests, including the Office of Administration.

The Office of Administration "has certainly acted like an agency in the past," said Meredith Fuchs, general counsel to the National Security Archive, a private group advocating public disclosure of government secrets.

Fuchs' organization filed a request in February 2006 after Fitzgerald revealed that e-mails might be missing. When the Office of Administration finally denied the private group's request in June of this year, the office said it was not an "agency" as defined by the Freedom of Information Act and was therefore not subject to the law's requirements.

The administration has been resisting disclosure of information on an array of fronts.

In September 2006, Vice President Dick Cheney's lawyer instructed the Secret Service that it "shall not retain any copy" of material identifying visitors to the vice president's official residence. The lawyer, Shannen Coffin, wrote the letter as The Washington Post sought copies of Cheney's visitors.

The letter regarding the vice president's residence was in addition to an agreement quietly signed between the White House and the Secret Service when questions were raised about visits to the executive compound by convicted influence peddler Jack Abramoff.

That agreement, which didn't surface publicly until late last year, said White House entry and exit logs were presidential records not subject to disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act.

When the agreement was signed in May 2006, a number of private groups and news organizations had filed FOIA requests with the Secret Service in an effort to identify how many times Abramoff or members of his lobbying team visited the White House.

 

[thoughtone]

Typical among the Conservatives/Republicans and the so called liberal media, where is the outrage. Clinton lied about “not having sex with that women” and he is impeached. Bush circumvents the Constitution and he is a strong leader. Priorities.

source: Associated Press.com

Judge Orders White House to Hold E-Mails
By PETE YOST – 5 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy on Monday directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law.

In response, the White House said it has been taking steps to preserve copies of all e-mails and will continue to do so. The administration is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

The organizations allege the disappearance of 5 million White House e-mails. The court order issued by Kennedy, an appointee of President Clinton, is directed at maintaining backup tapes which contain copies of White House e-mails.

The Federal Records Act details strict standards prohibiting the destruction of government documents including electronic messages, unless first approved by the archivist of the United States.

Justice Department lawyers had urged the courts to accept a proposed White House declaration promising to preserve all backup tapes.

"The judge decided that wasn't enough," said Anne Weismann, an attorney for CREW, which has gone to court over secrecy issues involving the Bush administration and has pursued ethical issues involving Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The judge's order "should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don't know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It's a mystery," said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive.

CREW and the National Security Archive are seeking to force the White House to immediately explain in court what happened to its e-mail, an issue that first surfaced nearly two years ago in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame's CIA identity to reporters.

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald revealed early in 2006 that relevant e-mails could be missing because of an archiving problem at the White House.

The White House has provided little public information about the matter, saying that some e-mails may not have been automatically archived on a computer server for the Executive Office of the President and that the e-mails may have been preserved on backup tapes.

The White House has said that its Office of Administration is looking into whether there are e-mails that were not automatically archived and that if there is a problem, the necessary steps will be taken to address it.

Kennedy issued the order following recommendations to do so by a federal magistrate who held a hearing on the matter.

"We will study the court's order and the magistrate's recommendations," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "However, the Office of Administration has been taking steps to maintain and preserve backup tapes for the official e-mail system. We have provided assurances to the plaintiffs and to the court that these steps were being taken. We will continue preserving the tapes in compliance with the court's order."

 

[thoughtone]

Shades Of Watergate: CIA destroyed terrorism suspect videotapes

Impeachment for this regime is so overdue!

source: MSNBC.com

Director says interrogation tapes were security risk; critics call move illegal

MSNBC staff and news service reports
updated 11:20 p.m. ET, Thurs., Dec. 6, 2007

WASHINGTON - The CIA videotaped its interrogations of two top terrorism suspects in 2002 and destroyed the tapes three years later out of fear they would leak to the public and compromise the identities of U.S. questioners, the director of the agency told employees Thursday.

Officials told NBC News' Robert Windrem that one of the videos included the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, the leader in charge of al-Qaida's training camps.

The disclosure that tapes were destroyed brought immediate condemnation from Capitol Hill and from a human rights group, which said the spy agency’s action amounted to criminal destruction of evidence.

The Senate Intelligence Committee promised a full review of the situation.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said the CIA began taping the interrogations as an internal check on the program after President Bush authorized the use of harsh questioning methods. The methods included waterboarding, which simulates drowning, government officials said.

“The Agency was determined that it proceed in accord with established legal and policy guidelines. So, on its own, CIA began to videotape interrogations,” Hayden said in a written message to CIA employees, obtained by The Associated Press.

The CIA decided to destroy the tapes in “the absence of any legal or internal reason to keep them,” Hayden wrote.

He said the tapes were destroyed only after it was determined “they were no longer of intelligence value and not relevant to any internal, legislative or judicial inquiries.”

“The tapes posed a serious security risk,” Hayden wrote. “Were they ever to leak, they would permit identification of your CIA colleagues who had served in the program, exposing them and their families to retaliation from al-Qaida and its sympathizers.”

The CIA statement said the tapes were destroyed late in 2005, a year marked by increasing pressure from defense attorneys to obtain videotapes of detainee interrogations.

The scandal over harsh treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq had focused public attention on interrogation techniques. The CIA also faced extensive scrutiny over its secret detention program.

CIA explanation called 'disingenuous'
Hayden said House and Senate intelligence committee leaders were informed of the existence of the tapes and the CIA’s intention to destroy them. He also said the CIA’s internal watchdog watched the tapes in 2003 and verified that the interrogation practices were legal.

Rep. Jane Harman of California, then the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and one of only four members of Congress informed of the tapes’ existence, said she objected to the destruction when informed of it in 2003.

“I told the CIA that destroying videotapes of interrogations was a bad idea and urged them in writing not to do it,” Harman said. While key lawmakers were briefed on the CIA’s intention to destroy the tapes, they were not notified two years later when the spy agency went through with the plan. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said the committee only learned of the tapes’ destruction in November 2006.

Jennifer Daskal, senior counsel with Human Rights Watch, said destroying the tapes was illegal. “Basically this is destruction of evidence,” she said, calling Hayden’s explanation that the tapes were destroyed to protect CIA identities “disingenuous.”

9/11 commission members surprised
Members of the Sept. 11 commission expressed to the New York Times that they were surprised the interrogation tapes existed until 2005.

The commission had asked for material of this kind during their investigation that ended in 2004, Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission and later as a senior counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, told the New York Times.

“The commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” he told the New York Times. “No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings.”

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with al-Qaida leaders, warned “it’s a very big deal” if tapes were destroyed, the New York Times reported.

It could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations, Marcus told the New York Times.

CIA taped only two terror suspects
The CIA only taped the interrogation of the first two terror suspects the agency held, one of whom was Zubaydah. Zubaydah, under harsh questioning, told CIA interrogators about alleged 9/11 accomplice Ramzi Binalshibh, Bush said in 2006.

Zubaydah was known as al-Qaida's "dean of students" and had an encyclopedic knowledge of al-Qaida operatives worldwide. He is awaiting trial at the U.S. prison at the Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Binalshibh was captured and interrogated and, with Zubaydah’s information, led to the capture in 2003 of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the purported mastermind of the 9/11 attacks.

Hayden said a secondary reason for the taped interrogations was to have backup documentation of the information gathered.

“The Agency soon determined that its documentary reporting was full and exacting, removing any need for tapes. Indeed, videotaping stopped in 2002,” Hayden said.

Zubaydah was the first of three al-Qaida detainees waterboarded by the agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Windrem reported. The others were Mohammed and Hambali, who was behind the 2002 Bali, Indonesia, bombings.

The Agency has not waterboarded prisoners since 2003, and Hayden banned the use of the procedure in 2006, according to knowledgeable officials.

The disclosure of the tapes’ destruction came on the same day the House and Senate intelligence committees agreed to legislation prohibiting the CIA from using “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The White House Thursday threatened to veto the bill.

Hayden’s message on Friday was an attempt to get ahead of a New York Times story about the videotapes. The New York Times informed the CIA on Wednesday it would publish the article on Friday, the paper reported.

“What matters here is that it was done in line with the law,” Hayden said. “Over the course of its life, the Agency’s interrogation program has been of great value to our country. It has helped disrupt terrorist operations and save lives. It was built on a solid foundation of legal review. It has been conducted with careful supervision. If the story of these tapes is told fairly, it will underscore those facts.”

Tapes central in Moussaoui case
Beginning in 2003, attorneys for al-Qaida conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui began seeking videotapes of interrogations they believed might help them show their client wasn’t a part of the 9/11 attacks. These requests heated up in 2005 as the defense slowly learned the identities of more detainees in U.S. custody.

In May 2005, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ordered the government to disclose whether interrogations were recorded. The government objected to that order, and the judge modified it on Nov. 3, 2005, to ask for confirmation of whether the government “has video or audio tapes of these interrogations” and then named specific ones. Eleven days later, the government denied it had video or audio tapes of those specific interrogations.

Last month, the CIA admitted to Brinkema and a circuit judge that it had failed to hand over tapes of enemy combatant witnesses. Those interrogations were not part of the CIA’s detention program and were not conducted or recorded by the agency, the agency said.

“The CIA did not say to the court in its original filing that it had no terrorist tapes at all. It would be wrong to assert that,” CIA spokesman George Little said.

There is no mention in the letter of the tapes that CIA officials destroyed in 2005, The New York Times reported. Moussaoui was convicted last year and sentenced to life in prison.

John Radsan, who worked as a CIA lawyer from 2002 to 2004 and is now a professor at William Mitchell College of Law, said destroying these tapes could carry legal penalties, The New York Times reported.

“If anybody at the CIA hid anything important from the Justice Department, he or she should be prosecuted under the false statement statute,” he told the New York Times.

 

[muckraker10021]

Re: Shades Of Watergate: CIA destroyed terrorism suspect videotapes

Watch the Video Below
[flash]http://www.youtube.com/v/zaE766EVocc&rel=1[/flash]

Water Torture which has been mislabeled with the deceptive name Water Boarding has been in use since the 1400’s.

Most willfully ignorant Americans, including most members of congress & the senate have not come-to-terms with the reality of how water torture is done.

IT IS NOT as I’ve seen a few RepubliKlan politicians say on television “A Little Water Splashed On Your Face”.

Water Torture is Partial Drowning.

At least 6 Detainees held by the US have died in custody after being subjected to “enhanced interrogation" techniques.

The "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" that the bush junta are utilizing come direct from Hitler's Nazis. Use the link below to see the actual Nazi documents.

Read:
How The Nazis Defended "Enhanced Interrogation" -"Verschärfte Vernehmung"
Bush has more faith in torture than the Gestapo did .

Dreadful pain in the shoulders and wrists were the results of this treatment. Only laboriously the lung could be supplied with the necessary oxygen. The heart worked in a racing speed. From all pores the sweat penetrated.

Yes, this is an account of someone who went through the "enhanced interrogation techniques"
AT DACHAU

The Bushit administration has consistently lied to everyone, saying that “we don’t torture”. Despite such a ridiculously obvious lie, most politicos RepubliKlans and Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi have not challenged “the bush crime family” use of torture. A rare exception has been John McCain.

When a member of the Bushit justice department had himself undergo water torture at a US military base, and came to the obvious conclusion that water torture, is torture, he was fired.

Read:

Bush Administration Blocked Waterboarding Critic
Former DOJ Official Tested the Method Himself, in Effort to Form Torture Policy

Below is a description of Water Torture – ‘The Water Cure’ – as it has been done for centuries. Perhaps attorney general Michael B. Mukasey who told the senate that “He Doesn’t Know If Waterboarding Is Torture” should ask Daniel Levin if water torture is torture. Of course Mukasey couldn’t say under oath that water torture ‘Is Torture’ because water boarding is illegal under current US law.


The Water Cure - year 1486



The accused woman lay naked on an escalera, a ladder tipped so that her head was lower than her feet. The torturer had stretched her out to her full length and bound her tightly. Iron prongs held her jaws open. Her nostrils were stopped, allowing breathing only through her mouth. She struggled, but her bounds permitted little movement, and days of relentless questioning had left her exhausted. The torturer draped a piece of linen loosely over her open mouth. Jugs of water lined a nearby wall.

Three other men stood over the woman in the torture chamber.

A doctor observed her reactions and assessed her general condition. The mandates of the 15th Century Spanish Inquisition required the presence of a physician to monitor the health of the accused. The purpose of torture would be nullified if the accused was physically unable to hear and understand the proceedings. A confession, if it came, had to be a pure act, not the half-conscious ramblings of a mortally wounded sinner.

A clerk sat at a crude wooden table, poised to write down the particulars of the session.

The man in charge of the proceedings, the inquisitor, ignored the woman's panicked squeals and read through the charges levied against her. Witnesses had previously testified that on several successive Saturdays, smoke did not emerge from the woman's chimney, a strong indication that she was secretly a practicing Jew. Judaism forbids manual labor on the Sabbath, and starting a fire was considered manual labor. During questioning the woman had insisted that although she was born a Jew, she was now a converse, a convert to Catholicism. But the telltale signs, which were outlined by the Grand Inquisitor himself, Tomas de Torquemada, indicated that she was in fact a heretic, a practicing Jew pretending to be a Catholic and secretly subverting the Catholic faith.

When the inquisitor finished reviewing the charges, he looked to the doctor who gave him a nod of assent. The inquisitor then pointed to the jugs of water and told the torturer to be ready. The torturer lifted one of the sloshing jugs; each contained one liter of water. The woman's eyes widened in panic. She knew what was coming, and she tried to scream.

The first level of torture employed by the Spanish Inquisition was the "water cure." Water was poured into the accused's open mouth. The linen cloth was washed into the opening of the throat, preventing the accused from spitting the water back out. The overwhelming sensation of drowning forced the accused to swallow the water. The rules of torture as written by Torquemada, a man whom historians have compared to Hitler, stipulated that no more than eight liters of water could be used in a single session.

The torturer held the earthen jug in his arms, ready to follow the inquisitor's orders. The woman cried and struggled for breath, anticipating the worst

 

[thoughtone]

Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA Tapes

At this point, I don’t know who is more sorry, the Bush administration, or the Democrats in the congress and Senate.

source: The Washington Post.com

Congress's Probe of CIA Tapes Resisted

Both Parties Decry Justice Dept. Move

By Dan Eggen and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 15, 2007; A01


The Justice Department moved yesterday to delay congressional inquiries into the CIA's destruction of interrogation videotapes, saying the administration could not provide witnesses or documents sought by lawmakers without jeopardizing its own investigation of the CIA's actions.

Congressional leaders from both parties alleged that Justice is trying to block their investigation and vowed to press ahead with hearings.

A pair of letters from Justice and CIA officials to leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees intensified the conflict between the Bush administration and Congress, which is seeking to force current and former CIA leaders to testify as early as next week. The lawmakers want CIA officials to account for the decision to destroy tapes that depicted the use of harsh interrogation tactics on terrorism suspects.

The growing feud is the first major confrontation with Congress for new Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, who was narrowly confirmed last month amid controversy over his refusal to describe waterboarding -- a severe interrogation tactic that simulates drowning -- as torture.

"We fully appreciate the committee's oversight interest in this matter, but want to advise you of concerns that actions responsive to your request would represent significant risk to our preliminary inquiry," Kenneth L. Wainstein, assistant attorney general for national security, and CIA Inspector General John L. Helgerson wrote in a letter to House intelligence committee leaders.

The top Democrat and Republican on the House intelligence committee issued a joint statement that labels Justice's stance an effort to obstruct the congressional probe.

"We are stunned that the Justice Department would move to block our investigation," Reps. Silvestre Reyes (D-Tex.) and Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) said in the statement. "Parallel investigations occur all of the time, and there is no basis upon which the Attorney General can stand in the way of our work."

They vowed to "use all the tools available to Congress, including subpoenas" to compel the CIA to produce documents and require key officials to testify about the tapes.

The exchange followed a letter earlier in the day from Mukasey that rebuffed congressional demands for details about the joint Justice-CIA inquiry into the tapes' destruction and rejected calls for the appointment of an independent prosecutor. Mukasey said that providing the information to Congress would make it appear that the department is "subject to political influence."

"At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice," Mukasey wrote in a letter to Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), chairman and ranking minority member of the Judiciary Committee.

In recent weeks, lawmakers, primarily Democrats, have showered the Justice Department with demands for investigations or information on topics including baseball's steroids scandal and allegations of rape by a former military contractor employee.

Mukasey replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, who left office in September after the furor over his handling of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and allegations that he misled Congress in sworn testimony.

The CIA disclosed last week that it destroyed videotapes in 2005 depicting interrogation sessions for alleged al-Qaeda operative Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida, and another suspect, later identified by officials as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. Administration officials have said that lawyers at the Justice Department and the White House, including then-counsel Harriet E. Miers, advised the CIA against destroying the tapes but that CIA lawyers ruled their preservation was not required.

CIA officials said the agency's director, Michael V. Hayden, is prepared to cooperate with all investigators.

"Director Hayden has said the Agency will cooperate fully with both the preliminary inquiry conducted by DOJ and CIA's Office of Inspector General, and with the Congress," agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said. "That has been, and certainly still is, the case."

The Justice Department announced Dec. 8 that it had joined the CIA's inspector general in launching a preliminary inquiry into the tape destruction. Prosecutors asked the CIA to preserve any related evidence.

Leahy and Specter asked Mukasey on Dec. 10 for "a complete account of the Justice Department's own knowledge of and involvement with" the tape destruction. The two senators included a list of 16 separate questions, including whether the Justice Department had offered legal advice to the CIA about the tapes or had communicated with the White House about the issue.

Mukasey wrote to the lawmakers that Justice "has a long-standing policy of declining to provide non-public information about pending matters.

"This policy is based in part on our interest in avoiding any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence," Mukasey wrote to lawmakers.

The tape investigation is being led by Wainstein, who held his first substantive meeting on the case Wednesday with the CIA inspector general's office, according to a law enforcement official.

Several Democrats have raised questions about the propriety of an inquiry run by the Justice Department, whose lawyers were involved in offering legal advice about the tapes, and the CIA inspector general, whose office reviewed the tapes before they were destroyed.

Hayden said last week that the inspector general's office examined the tapes in 2003 "as part of its look at the agency's detention and interrogation practices."

Among those whom lawmakers want to testify is the CIA official who made the decision to destroy the tapes, Jose Rodriguez. The former director of clandestine operations has obtained private counsel and is studying his options.

His attorney, Robert Bennett, said: "If I determine that he has a good story, we're going to tell it. But I'm not going to let him be a pi¿ata for people with a political agenda during an election year."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

 

[African Herbsman]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

At this point, I don’t know who is more sorry, the Bush administration, or the Democrats in the congress and Senate.

The American people for letting this shit continue for so long. We already knew the democrats would capitulate. But that doesn't mean the people have to.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T



Secret U.S. Endorsement of Severe Interrogations
http://www.bgol.us/board/showthread.php?t=198927

`

 

[Makkonnen]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

http://www.mfo.ac.uk/Publications/comptesrendus/branche.htm

THE FRENCH ARMY AND TORTURE DURING THE ALGERIAN WAR (1954- 1962)
Raphaëlle Branche, Université de Rennes
Mardi 18 novembre 2004

excerpts

The session began with Martin Conway, the seminar convenor, introducing Raphaëlle Branche. He evoked her thesis and subsequent book published by Gallimard entitled La torture et l'armée pendant la guerre d'Algérie - 1954-62. He underlined the importance of this work, which came in for a great deal of media attention in France due to the uncomfortable questions it raised by describing the centrality of the politics of torture in the Algerian war.

Raphaelle Branche began by evoking the veritable media storm which arose in 2000 around the issue of torture in Algeria. Two days after the visit of the Algerian president, Le Monde published the story of Louisette Ighilahriz, captured in September 1957 at the age of 20 and raped and tortured for three months. The reactions from those involved can be categorised by three attitudes:

• Denial (General Bigeaud)

• Recognition and regret (General Massu)

• Recognition and justification (General Ausarresses).

The media focused in particular on the latter reaction, putting it down either to cynicism or senility. A campaign began to force the state to acknowledge the atrocities and an increasing number of former militaries began to break the silence.


-------


Torture - the facts

Raphaëlle Branche then moved on to summarise the actual facts of torture, claiming that despite the fact that the quest for information was always the ostensible aim for torture, historians shouldn't focus upon the apparent goal. She forwarded the notion that torture is always characterised by the willingness of individuals to use power, explaining that acts of violence were almost always committed by soldiers under the supervision of a superior. Torture would begin with the systematic stripping of victim. Beating was a consistent feature, and combined with any number of the following acts:

• hanging by the feet or hands

• water torture

• torture by electric shock

• rape.

Electric torture was one of the more used forms of torture. Pain levels could be adapted according to the reaction and the use of a machine enabling perpetrators to distance themselves from their acts. Similarly, objects were used for sexual violation. The enemy was being characterised as barbarous and savage, so the use of other means of violence was crucial in establishing a difference between the two.

Torture was theoretically and legally prohibited. However, the reality was more ambiguous: it was in fact both prohibited and authorised. No one was ever brought to trial for acts of torture, and the one trial that did take place for causing death through torture ended in the acquittal of the perpetrators.

Im telling yall who dont know - the war on terror has been directed by France's Algeria experience.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article3115549.ece
Waterboarding is torture - I did it myself, says US advisor
By Leonard Doyle in Washington
Published: 01 November 2007

When the US military trains soldiers to resist interrogation, it uses a torture technique from the Middle Ages, known as "waterboarding". Its use on terror suspects in secret US prisons around the world has come to symbolise the Bush administration's no-nonsense enthusiasm for the harshest questioning techniques.

Although waterboarding has been considered torture for over a century and the US military is banned from using it, controversy over its continuing use by the CIA may be about to derail the appointment of President Bush's candidate for US Attorney-General.

Michael Mukasey, a retired federal judge from New York and a veteran of several al-Qa'ida trials, was questioned by a Senate committee on Tuesday and refused to say whether waterboarding was illegal.

Instead, he called the technique "repugnant to me" and promised to investigate further if he was confirmed in the job. He explained that he could not say yet whether the practice was illegal because he had not been briefed on the secret methods of US interrogators and he did not want to put the CIA officers who used it in "personal legal jeopardy".

Even though Congress banned waterboarding in the US military in 2005, it did not do so for the CIA. As a result, Mr Mukasey told senators, it was uncertain whether this technique or other harsh methods constituted "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment. His answers did not satisfy the Democrats, however, and his approval now hinges on whether he is willing to say the torture method is against US law.

In a further embarrassment for Mr Bush yesterday, Malcolm Nance, an advisor on terrorism to the US departments of Homeland Security, Special Operations and Intelligence, publicly denounced the practice. He revealed that waterboarding is used in training at the US Navy's Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School in San Diego, and claimed to have witnessed and supervised "hundreds" of waterboarding exercises. Although these last only a few minutes and take place under medical supervision, he concluded that "waterboarding is a torture technique – period".

The practice involves strapping the person being interrogated on to a board as pints of water are forced into his lungs through a cloth covering his face while the victim's mouth is forced open. Its effect, according to Mr Nance, is a process of slow-motion suffocation.

Typically, a victim goes into hysterics on the board as water fills his lungs. "How much the victim is to drown," Mr Nance wrote in an article for the Small Wars Journal, "depends on the desired result and the obstinacy of the subject.

"A team doctor watches the quantity of water that is ingested and for the physiological signs which show when the drowning effect goes from painful psychological experience to horrific, suffocating punishment, to the final death spiral. For the uninitiated, it is horrifying to watch."

The CIA director Michael Hayden has tried to defuse the controversy. He claims that, since 2002, aggressive interrogation methods in which a prisoner believes he is about to die have been used on only about 30 of the 100 al-Qai'da suspects being held by the US. Meanwhile, a CIA official told The New York Times waterboarding had only been used three times. The Bush administration has suggested that the interrogation of al-Qai'da's second-in-command, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, was a success thanks to the technique, and used this to justify continued aggressive interrogations of suspects in secret CIA prisons.

While US media reports typically state that waterboarding involves "simulated drowning", Mr Nance explained that "since the lungs are actually filling with water", there is nothing simulated about it. "Waterboarding," he said, "is slow-motion suffocation with enough time to contemplate the inevitability of blackout and expiration. When done right, it is controlled death."

Mr Nance said US troops were trained to withstand waterboarding, watched by a doctor, a psychologist, an interrogator and a backup team. "When performed with even moderate intensity over an extended time on an unsuspecting prisoner – it is torture, without doubt," he added. "Most people cannot stand to watch a high-intensity, kinetic interrogation. One has to overcome basic human decency to endure watching or causing the effects. The brutality would force you into a personal moral dilemma between humanity and hatred. It would leave you to question the meaning of what it is to be an American."

Mr Mukasey's nomination goes before the Senate next week. Three Democratic presidential candidates, including Hillary Clinton, have already said they will not support him. However, the White House said yesterday that it did not believe his nomination was in jeopardy.

'I felt I was drowning and I was in terrible agony'

Henri Alleg, a journalist, was tortured in 1957 by French forces in Algeria. He described the ordeal of water torture in his book The Question. Soldiers strapped him over a plank, wrapped his head in cloth and positioned it beneath a running tap. He recalled: "The rag was soaked rapidly. Water flowed everywhere: in my mouth, in my nose, all over my face. But for a while I could still breathe in some small gulps of air. I tried, by contracting my throat, to take in as little water as possible and to resist suffocation by keeping air in my lungs for as long as I could. But I couldn't hold on for more than a few moments. I had the impression of drowning, and a terrible agony, that of death itself, took possession of me. In spite of myself, all the muscles of my body struggled uselessly to save me from suffocation. In spite of myself, the fingers of both my hands shook uncontrollably. 'That's it! He's going to talk,' said a voice.

The water stopped running and they took away the rag. I was able to breathe. In the gloom, I saw the lieutenants and the captain, who, with a cigarette between his lips, was hitting my stomach with his fist to make me throw out the water I had swallowed."

From: Alleg, Henri, The Question, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln: 2006; original French edition © 1958 by Editions de Minuit

 

[QueEx]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

 

[Makkonnen]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

I wish.

Why do you think Cheney keeps his own super safe in his office and puts everything into it, everyone uses email systems that are outside of the whitehouse IT system and the little document protection problem that had Cheney claiming he was his own branch of government jumped off?

Cheney saw tricky dick get shitcanned* and he has vowed to never make the same mistakes.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

<font size="5"><center>United States Department of Justice
Sets Criminal Inquiry Into C.I.A. Tapes </font size><font size="4"]

FBI Investigating the CIA
Special Prosecutor to Head Investigation</font size></center>


By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: January 2, 2008


WASHINGTON — Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes into a formal criminal investigation to be headed by an outside prosecutor.

The announcement is the first sign that investigators believe C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which depicted the interrogations in 2002 of two Al Qaeda operatives and were destroyed in 2005.

The tapes were never provided to the Sept. 11 commission or to the courts, and the question of whether to destroy them was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Mr. Mukasey assigned an outside investigator, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the criminal inquiry in tandem with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The prosecutor, John H. Durham, is likely empanel a grand jury to hear testimony to determine whether there is enough evidence to bring criminal charges, which could include obstruction of justice.

As an outside prosecutor, Mr. Durham oversaw an investigation into the F.B.I.’s use of mob informants in Boston. He has been lead prosecutor in several successful corruption cases in Connecticut.

The announcement came after a joint inquiry by the Justice Department and the C.I.A.’s inspector general determined that the destruction of the tapes warranted a full criminal investigation. In an announcement on Wednesday, John Helgerson, the inspector general, said he would recuse himself from the investigation to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Mr. Helgerson’s office had reviewed the videotapes, documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, as part of an investigation into the agency ‘s secret detention and interrogation program.

The tapes are thought to portray the use of the technique known as waterboarding, which simulates drowning and which has widely been condemned as torture.

Mr. Helgerson completed his investigation into the program in early 2004.

The newly announced investigation is likely to provide fodder on the presidential campaign trail for critics of administration policies on the detention and interrogation of terror suspects.

The fate of the tapes had been debated by at least four top White House lawyers, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

Those officials said the White House lawyers included Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and later the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales resigned under pressure on Aug. 27, and Mr. Mukasey succeeded him.

Administration critics blamed Mr. Gonzales for carving out positions on detention and interrogation they deemed too permissive. So the actions of Mr. Mukasey, who as a federal judge in New York built a reputation as tough on terrorism, are being closely watched.

It remains unclear how various administration officials argued on the matter of the tapes, though one former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials that the tapes should be destroyed.

White House spokesmen have been scrupulous about not commenting on the matter, citing investigations already begun by the C.I.A. inspector general and Congress.

The C.I.A. said that it would “cooperate fully with this investigation, as it has with others into this matter.”

The House Intelligence Committee has ordered Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former C.I.A. official who has been described by intelligence officials as having authorized the destruction of the tapes, to appear at a hearing on Jan. 16.

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/02/washington/02cnd-intel.html?hp

 

[QueEx]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>For Immediate Release:<br>
National Security Archives
January 8, 2008</strong></font></p>
<p><span class="style23"><font size="4">White House Must Answer Questions About Missing
White House E-mails, Magistrate Judge Rules</font size></span> </p>
<p><span class="style16"><strong>For more information contact:</strong><strong><br>
<strong>Meredith Fuchs/Tom Blanton [National Security Archive] - 202/994-7000</strong><br>
<strong>John B. Williams/Sheila L. Shadmand [Jones Day] - 202/879-3939</strong></strong></span><br>
</p>
<p><span class="style15">Washington DC, <font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>January 8, 2008</strong></font> </span><span class="style11">-</span>In an <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080108/Faccioloa_order_discovery.pdf"><strong>Order issued today</strong></a>, Magistrate Judge Facciola of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia ordered the White House to answer questions about over 5 million missing e-mails generated between 2003-2005. Noting that the need for information on the missing e-mails is &ldquo;time-sensitive&rdquo; because of the risk that stored copies of the e-mails &ldquo;are increasingly likely to be deleted or overridden with the passage of time,&rdquo; the Court demanded answers in a sworn declaration by January 13, 2008 about the location of the missing e-mails.

To date, the White House has evaded answering questions about whether it permanently destroyed over 5 million e-mails about issues such as Hurricane Katrina, the firing of United States Attorneys, and the exposure of Valerie Plame&rsquo;s identity as a CIA agent,&rdquo; commented Meredith Fuchs, the Archive&rsquo;s General Counsel.&nbsp;&ldquo;This <a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080108/Faccioloa_order_discovery.pdf"><strong>Order</strong></a> will force the Executive Office of the President to tell the public whether it really erased key records of the nation&rsquo;s history or whether it has made any effort to preserve the information.

The order issued today come in <em>National Security Archive v. Executive Office of the President (EOP), et al.</em>&nbsp; Previously, Judge Kennedy <strong><a href="http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20071113/index.htm">ordered the preservation of EOP backup tapes</a></strong> and the consolidation of this case (filed September 5, 2007) with <em>Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) v. Executive Office of the President, et al.</em> (filed September 25, 2007).

To date, the White House has had the following to say about the missing e-mails:

<blockquote>
<p class="style16">&quot;I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million emails lost&quot;<br>
- <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070413-1.html" target="_blank">Press Gaggle by Dana Perino</a> (April 13, 2007)</p>
<p class="style16">&quot;[W]e are aware that there could have been some emails that were not automatically archived because of a technical issue.&quot;<br>
- <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/04/20070416-1.html" target="_blank">Press Briefing by Dana Perino</a> (April 16, 2007)

CREW has yet to provide any basis for their assertions -- be it their original assertion, or their new claim. We are aware that some e-mails may not have been automatically archived in the past, but they may be available on backup tapes. Unlike what the liberal group CREW has asserted, we've never been without a backup system. The Office of Administration at the White House has been maintaining and preserving backup tapes for the official email system.&quot;<br>
- <a href="http://citizensforethics.org/node/30704" target="_blank">Scott Stanzel, White House Spokesman</a>
</blockquote>

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20080108/index.htm

 

[QueEx]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

<font size="5"><center>White House Told to Provide E-Mail Info</font size></center>

Associated Press
By PETE YOST
January 8, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal magistrate ordered the White House on Tuesday to reveal whether copies of possibly millions of missing e-mails are stored on computer backup tapes.

The order by U.S. Magistrate Judge John Facciola comes amid an effort by the White House to scuttle two lawsuits that could force the Executive Office of the President to recover any e-mail that has disappeared from computer servers where electronic documents are automatically archived.

Two federal laws require the White House to preserve all records including e-mail.

Facciola gave the White House five business days to report whether computer backup tapes contain e-mails written between 2003 and 2005.

The time period covers the Valerie Plame affair in which at least three presidential aides were found to have leaked Plame's CIA identity to the news media.

"Do the back-ups contain the e-mails said to be missing?" Facciola asked.

In a four-page order, Facciola said he needs to know "if the missing e-mails are not on those back-ups."

Facciola noted the importance of acting quickly since e-mails that might be retrievable from individual computer workstations in the White House "are increasingly likely to be deleted or overwritten with the passage of time."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto declined comment while reviewing the magistrate's order. In the past, the White House has said there could have been some e-mails that were not automatically archived because of a technical issue.

In their lawsuits, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington suggest the e-mails were improperly deleted from White House computer servers. Over 5 million White House e-mails are missing, CREW alleged. Recently, the group said it has been told by reliable sources that the actual figure of missing e-mail is over 10 million.

In asking that the complaints be dismissed, the Bush administration says the president's record keeping practices under the Presidential Records Act are not reviewable by the courts. Also, the Federal Records Act does not allow the far-reaching action the two private groups are demanding, the administration contends.

Two months ago, the two private groups focusing on issues of government secrecy obtained a court order directing the White House to preserve the backup tapes.

The Bush administration had offered to have the government file a sworn declaration stating that the White House is safeguarding all backup materials. Instead, Facciola recommended that the judge in the case, Henry Kennedy, issue a court order because "a declaration is not punishable by contempt. In other words, without such an order, destruction of the backup media would be without consequence." Kennedy did as Facciola suggested.

The subject of missing White House e-mail arose early in 2006 when the prosecutor in the Plame investigation, Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, disclosed that not all electronic message traffic of the EOP and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney "for certain time periods in 2003" was preserved through the normal archiving process.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5hKKWSY_43nHexg55YcW2X9YXNayAD8U1T7U00

 

[nyyyyce]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

Bush/Cheney will run the clock out on this and no Dem will fight. They will get away with this too. I wish that Obama was more left 4real. All exit polls show that Dem's are more than 80% sick of this administration and he, nor any other candidate, will highlight what they will do to hold this administration accountable. They not doing it now while in the Senate. This is F-N frustrating as hell...

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

Bush/Cheney will run the clock out on this and no Dem will fight. They will get away with this too. I wish that Obama was more left 4real. All exit polls show that Dem's are more than 80% sick of this administration and he, nor any other candidate, will highlight what they will do to hold this administration accountable. They not doing it now while in the Senate. This is F-N frustrating as hell...

Well, from what I have read congress can peruse crimes against the constitution even after a president has left office. This is the primary season. Which candidate will answer these questions?

 

[thoughtone]

Cheney's subpoenaed e-mails missing

I guest this is what QueEx means by necessary crimes.

source: MSNBC.com

Vice President's e-mail "lost" for key week in CIA leak probe.

updated 2 hours, 45 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - When Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald wanted to find out what was going on inside Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the prosecutor in the CIA leak probe made a logical move. He dropped a grand jury subpoena on the White House for all the relevant e-mail.

One problem: Even though White House computer technicians hunted high and low, an entire week's worth of e-mail from Cheney's office was missing. The week was Sept. 30, 2003, to Oct. 6, 2003, the opening days of the Justice Department's probe into whether anyone at the White House leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

That episode was part of the picture that unfolded Tuesday on Capitol Hill, where Democrats on a House committee released new information about one of the Bush White House's long-running issues, its problem-plagued e-mail system.

Email recovery
For the first time, a former White House computer technician went public with the details. Steven McDevitt revealed in written statements submitted to Congress how a plan was developed to try to recover the missing e-mail for Fitzgerald.

Ultimately, 250 pages of electronic messages were retrieved from the personal e-mail accounts of officials in Cheney's office, but whether that amounted to all the relevant e-mail is a question that may never be answered.

McDevitt made clear that it was a sensitive issue inside the White House.

"I worked with ... White House Counsel on efforts to provide an explanation to the special prosecutor," McDevitt wrote. "This included providing a briefing to the special prosecutor's staff on this subject."

McDevitt provided no details of the meetings with White House Counsel Harriet Miers and others in the counsel's office in late 2005 and early 2006. The White House refused to comment on those meetings.

White House on defensive
The White House put the best face on a bad hearing Tuesday of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, defending the administration's handling of its electronic messages.

McDevitt said that one estimate from a 2005 analysis was that more than 1,000 days of e-mail were missing from January 2003 to Aug. 10, 2005. McDevitt said "the process by which e-mail was being collected and retained was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high." The "low end" estimate was about 470 days, he added.

The White House says a substantial amount of what had been believed to be missing e-mail had been located.

"We are very energized about getting to the bottom of this" issue, Theresa Payton, chief information officer at the White House Office of Administration, testified to the committee.

"This is a form of sandbagging," replied Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman, D-Calif., who pointed out that by the time the White House fixes its e-mail problems, "you'll be out of office."

Email shortcomings
McDevitt's statements detailed shortcomings that he said have plagued the White House e-mail system for six years. He said:

The White House had no complete inventory of e-mail files.
There was no automatic system to ensure that e-mail was archived and preserved.
Until mid-2005 the e-mail system had serious security flaws, in which "everyone" on the White House computer network had access to e-mail. McDevitt wrote that the "potential impact" of the security flaw was that there was no way to verify that retained data had not been modified.
A new e-mail archiving system that would have addressed the problems was "ready to go live" on Aug. 21, 2006.
Payton told Waxman's committee she canceled the new system in late 2006 because it would have required modifications and additional spending. An alternative system is under way, she said.

Payton's predecessor, Carlos Solari, told the House committee that he was puzzled that the new system had been rejected and that he had "absolutely" believed that the system Payton rejected would be implemented.

When President Bush leaves office, presidential records and federal records at the White House will be turned over to the National Archives. Waxman produced a memo pointing to a lack of cooperation between the White House and the Archives.

"We still know virtually nothing about the status of the alleged missing White House e-mails," the Archives' general counsel, Gary Stern, wrote to his boss last September.

 

[Obadiah Plainman]

Re: Cheney's subpoenaed e-mails missing

What a tangled web we weave........ Bad part is the Bush administration often times just changes the rules half way through. So that their deception is no longer against the law. Its funny too, I keep hearing them makes statements to the effect that 'what we did then is now or will be within the law'.

 

[QueEx]

Re: Newly Democratic Controlled Senate Confirmed Attorney General Won’t Release CIA T

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