Wednesday, November 02, 2005
America Invents It's Own Siberia
“Truth, justice, and the American Way.” Anybody remember when that actually had meaning? Truth. I forget the last time I heard something true out of a government mouth. Justice: Yeah, we’re the land of justice for everyone except certain people. It used to be that if people were arrested for anything, they were charged and brought to trial; they had legal representation; it was all in the light of day.
It doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. The government’s rounded up a lot of people, some of them without even being arrested, and locked them up. After 9/11, many people were arrested and jailed without even their families knowing where they were or maybe even where they went. The circumstances, the government told us, justified emergency police powers. The ends, saving America, justified the means.
That’s an interesting spin, isn’t it? The ends justify the means. Too bad it isn’t true; it never has been and it never will. Good ends cannot come out of evil actions. Arresting and holding people without trial, without charges in some cases, and without lawyers...that’s not just evil: it’s totalitarian. It’s what Stalin and Mao did, Batista and Duarte, Peron and Pinochet, South Africa and Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Idi Amin, Farouk—it’s a long and ugly list. And the U.S. is now part of that list.
Now we do it. And whatever happened to The American Way? Now it seems to be this:
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
By Dana Priest
The Washington Post
Wednesday 02 November 2005
Debate is growing within agency about legality and morality of overseas system set up after 9/11.
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to US and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities - referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents - are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the US government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
***
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other US government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by US military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
***
Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four US government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
***
An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
It doesn’t seem to be that way anymore. The government’s rounded up a lot of people, some of them without even being arrested, and locked them up. After 9/11, many people were arrested and jailed without even their families knowing where they were or maybe even where they went. The circumstances, the government told us, justified emergency police powers. The ends, saving America, justified the means.
That’s an interesting spin, isn’t it? The ends justify the means. Too bad it isn’t true; it never has been and it never will. Good ends cannot come out of evil actions. Arresting and holding people without trial, without charges in some cases, and without lawyers...that’s not just evil: it’s totalitarian. It’s what Stalin and Mao did, Batista and Duarte, Peron and Pinochet, South Africa and Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, Idi Amin, Farouk—it’s a long and ugly list. And the U.S. is now part of that list.
Now we do it. And whatever happened to The American Way? Now it seems to be this:
CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons
By Dana Priest
The Washington Post
Wednesday 02 November 2005
Debate is growing within agency about legality and morality of overseas system set up after 9/11.
The CIA has been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, according to US and foreign officials familiar with the arrangement.
The secret facility is part of a covert prison system set up by the CIA nearly four years ago that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as a small center at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba, according to current and former intelligence officials and diplomats from three continents.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The existence and locations of the facilities - referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents - are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.
While the Defense Department has produced volumes of public reports and testimony about its detention practices and rules after the abuse scandals at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at Guantanamo Bay, the CIA has not even acknowledged the existence of its black sites. To do so, say officials familiar with the program, could open the US government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.
***
It is illegal for the government to hold prisoners in such isolation in secret prisons in the United States, which is why the CIA placed them overseas, according to several former and current intelligence officials and other US government officials. Legal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices also would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.
Host countries have signed the U.N. Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, as has the United States. Yet CIA interrogators in the overseas sites are permitted to use the CIA's approved "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques," some of which are prohibited by the U.N. convention and by US military law. They include tactics such as "waterboarding," in which a prisoner is made to believe he or she is drowning.
Some detainees apprehended by the CIA and transferred to foreign intelligence agencies have alleged after their release that they were tortured, although it is unclear whether CIA personnel played a role in the alleged abuse. Given the secrecy surrounding CIA detentions, such accusations have heightened concerns among foreign governments and human rights groups about CIA detention and interrogation practices.
***
Then came grisly reports, in the winter of 2001, that prisoners kept by allied Afghan generals in cargo containers had died of asphyxiation. The CIA asked Congress for, and was quickly granted, tens of millions of dollars to establish a larger, long-term system in Afghanistan, parts of which would be used for CIA prisoners.
The largest CIA prison in Afghanistan was code-named the Salt Pit. It was also the CIA's substation and was first housed in an old brick factory outside Kabul. In November 2002, an inexperienced CIA case officer allegedly ordered guards to strip naked an uncooperative young detainee, chain him to the concrete floor and leave him there overnight without blankets. He froze to death, according to four US government officials. The CIA officer has not been charged in the death.
***
An estimated $100 million was tucked inside the classified annex of the first supplemental Afghanistan appropriation.
