Confirmed: DoJ Investigators Probing Whether Goodling Fired Lawyer Due to Gay Rumors

Earlier this month, NPR reported that the Justice Department inspector general’s sprawling investigation into politicization at the Department included a probe of whether Monica Goodling had fired an attorney because she’d heard a rumor that the lawyer might be gay.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Arlen Specter (R-PA) earlier this week, the inspector general Glenn Fine confirmed that his office was digging into such accusations.

It’s still anybody’s guess when that investigation, which Fine is conducting along with the Office of Professional Responsibility, will conclude. It launched more than a year ago, during the heat of the U.S. attorney scandal.

Exclusive: Pentagon delays report on FBI role in detainee abuse

WASHINGTON — The release of a report on the FBI’s role in the interrogations of prisoners in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq has been delayed for months because the Pentagon is reviewing how much of it should remain classified, according to the Justice Department’s watchdog.

Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s inspector general, told McClatchy that his office has pressed the Defense Department to finish its review, but officials there haven’t completed the process “in a timely fashion.”

“Why that happened, I don’t know,” Fine said in an interview this week.

“It’s been slower than we would like, and it’s taken a long time. We provided our report to them months ago, and we are pushing hard to conclude this process.”

Fine is investigating whether FBI employees participated in detainee abuse, whether they witnessed or reported incidents of abuse, and how such reports were handled by the bureau.

Fine launched his investigation into the FBI’s role in the interrogations in early 2005 amid disclosures that FBI agents had witnessed and complained about harsh interrogation practices of detainees, including seeing Guantanamo Bay detainees who had defecated and urinated on themselves and who had been chained on the floor for more than 24 hours without food or water in more than 100 degree temperatures.

Government agencies that provide information during inspector generals’ investigations are routinely asked to review drafts of reports for accuracy and to determine what information in the reports should remain classified.

Fine said the Pentagon now appears to be moving on his request.

“My sense is they are working hard on it now, and I believe we’re going to reach a resolution one way or another in the not-too-distant future,” he said.

The Defense Department didn’t immediately respond to questions about the delay.

Fine’s comments are a rare critique of a government agency’s handling of one of his inquiries. His office has conducted a series of probes of the administration’s anti-terrorism tactics, but since he took office, Fine has taken pains to appear impartial and never speaks publicly about the contents of a report before its release.

The delays come as the Bush administration is under fire for its legal justifications of harsh interrogation practices, which critics say equated to an endorsement of torture prohibited by U.S. and international laws.

The allegations that FBI agents witnessed the abuse of prisoners were outlined in internal government documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information lawsuit. The documents raised questions about whether the bureau’s top officials did enough to investigate allegations of detainee abuse by military interrogators and whether military interrogators were impersonating FBI agents to avoid liability against allegations of torture.

Fine has no jurisdiction to investigate the actions of employees of the Defense Department, which has its own inspector general. Fine said his office hasn’t encountered similar problems with the FBI.

“There are issues we are working through regarding the FBI’s comments, but not to the same extent as the delay from the Department of Defense,” he said.

DOJ investigates whether Goodling forced out gay attorney

NPR reports that the Justice Department Inspector General is investigating whether Monica Goodling, a key administration figure in the U.S. Attorney scandal, dismissed a career DOJ attorney “because of rumors that she is a lesbian“:

Justice Department e-mails obtained by NPR show that Gonzales’s senior counsel Monica Goodling had a particular interest in Hagen’s duties. A few months before Hagen was let go, according to one e-mail, Goodling removed part of Hagen’s job portfolio — the part dealing with child exploitation and abuse.

DOJ officials “said they came away with the impression that the Attorney General’s office decided not to renew Leslie Hagen’s contract because of the talk about her sexual orientation,” despite her receiving strong performance reviews.

Former SAS man condemns British role in torture tactics

Hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture, a former SAS soldier said yesterday. Ben Griffin said individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq, including the notorious Abu Ghraib prison, and in Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay.

Griffin, 29, left the British army last year after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the “illegal” tactics of US troops. While ministers had stated their wish that the Guantánamo Bay camp should be closed, they had been silent over prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, he said. He added: “These secretive prisons are part of a global network in which individuals face torture and are held indefinitely without charge. All of this is in direct contravention of the Geneva conventions, international law and the UN convention against torture.”

Referring to the government’s admission last week that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace “pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place”.

He told a Stop the War Coalition press conference in London that since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, UK special forces had operated within a joint US-UK taskforce that had been responsible for the detention of “hundreds if not thousands of individuals in Afghanistan and Iraq”. The primary mission of the taskforce in Iraq was to kill or capture “high-value targets”. However, the taskforce often detained non-combatants.

He said he had not himself witnessed torture or mistreatment. But he added: “I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured.”

He continued: “It is only since I have left the army [and] I have read the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention on Torture, that I realised that we have broken so many of these conventions and treaties in Iraq.”

He said three fellow soldiers had told him on separate occasions that they had witnessed the interrogation of two detainees in Iraq using “partial drowning and an electric cattle prod”. Ministers must have been briefed on the activities of the taskforce and should be charged with breach of conventions protecting individuals from torture, he added.

The Ministry of Defence said yesterday it did not comment on the activities of special forces. However, senior army officers and parliament’s security and intelligence committee have expressed concern about ignorance among British troops about both national and international law covering the treatment of prisoners.

Gitmo defense lawyers: defending a man driven insane.

Today in the Washington Post, Joseph Margulies and George Brent Mickum — defense attorneys for Guantanamo detainee Abu Zubaydah — describe the prisoner’s mental insanity after being held by the United States for years:

Regardless of whether he was “insane” to begin with, he has gone through quite an ordeal since his arrest in Pakistan in March 2002. Shuttled through CIA “black sites” around the world, he was subjected to a sustained course of interrogation designed to instill what a CIA training manual euphemistically calls “debility, dependence and dread.” Zubaydah’s world became freezing rooms alternating with sweltering cells. Screaming noise replaced by endless silence. Blinding light followed by dark, underground chambers. Hours confined in contorted positions. And, as we recently learned, Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding. We do not know what remains of his mind, and we will probably never know what he experienced.

They added that “if we cannot learn the facts and share them with others, the truth is only what the administration reports it to be.” 

Lindsey Graham Says He Would Have Voted Against Waterboarding Ban…Yeah Right!

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), a member of the Air Force JAG Corp., has repeatedly broken with his party’s ranks in the past, condemning waterboarding as “clearly illegal under domestic and international law.”When the Senate brought the Intelligence Authorization Bill — which contained a provision banning waterboarding — to the floor this week, Graham was absent from the vote because he was in Iraq. When contacted by ThinkProgress this week, Graham’s office said the senator would have voted against the anti-waterboarding bill.

Asked to explain Graham’s change of heart, the spokesman said, “He disagrees with applying the Army Field Manual to the CIA. The CIA is a completely different operation.”

In the Congressional Record on Feb. 13, Graham explained his opposition to the bill, claiming the Army Field Manual would limit the CIA’s operations:

I believe in flexibility for the CIA program within the boundaries of current law. The CIA must have the ability to gather intelligence for the war on terror. In this new war, knowledge of the enemy and its plan is vitally important and the Army Field Manual provision will weaken our intelligence gathering operations.

In Oct. 2005, however, Graham was singing the Army Field Manual’s praises when he said it is sufficiently flexible for intelligence gathering:

You can change the Army Field Manual to adapt techniques to the war on terror. There is a classified section of the Army Field Manual. There is nothing about its adoption that limits the ability to aggressively interrogate people to get good intelligence.

It appears that the Graham, as well as Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) are willing to ditch their consciences in favor of backing President Bush’s misguided national security priorities.

Camp 7 and the Torturer’s Shrink

“I am proud to be a member of the American Psychological Association, proud for what APA has stood for in these troubling times, and deeply grateful to the Association for supporting me and my colleagues in our quest to ensure that all in our custody are treated with human decency and respect.”
— Larry C. James,
Colonel, United States Army, June 23, 2007

“This is my second tour at Gitmo, Cuba. I was also the first psychologist at Abu Ghraib. I’m going to repeat what I said earlier. If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to die. If we remove psychologists from these facilities, people are going to get hurt.”
— Larry C. James,
Colonel, United States Army, June 23, 2007
———————————————————————————

Sounds good Colonel James. Great sound bytes. Good enough to convince thousands of psychologists that you’re the real thing, as American as Stealth bombers and pre-emptive war. Who would possibly think that psychologists in the military would engage in torture after listening to you? Good enough that you became the poster child for the American Psychological Association as they pulled out all stops in their attempts to defeat those few psychologists opposed to torture, inhuman conditions and the disappearance of habeas corpus. They brought you all the way from Guantanamo for their song and dance show. Not even most psychologists, those who are supposed to understand human behavior, saw through your charade, as you convinced them that their professional association really IS on the side of truth and goodness.

The APA used you to introduce a different resolution against torture for the second year in a row, in an attempt to deflect the dissenters and detractors. APA’s use of resolutions as a means to stop torture have proven to be simply a sleight of hand to appease the multitudes and the media, but actually signifies nothing.

Perhaps you’ll repeat history, Colonel James. In 2006, Surgeon General Kevin Kiley was used by APA leaders to offer the 2006 “Resolution on Torture.” Remember him? He lost his job a few months after presenting THAT resolution, another military officer who was willing to overlook the inhumane treatment of people that were considered to have no value.

But you blew it this week, Colonel. One might say you fell out of role, and the truth became evident. Though you are in charge of the team of psychologists that assists interrogators at Guantanamo, when the Associated Press reported last week on the just-revealed Camp 7 at Guantanamo where detainees from CIA secret detention facilities are kept, including the detainees who HAVE been water-boarded, including Abu Zubaydah who endured water-boarding with two psychologists present, you stated you just don’t want to know about it.

“I learned a long, long time ago, if I’m going to be successful in the intel community, I’m meticulously — in a very, very dedicated way — going to stay in my lane,” he said. “So if I don’t have a specific need to know about something, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t ask about it.”

You, the military psychologist, who spoke so piously of how much you cared to protect detainees at Gitmo, who so scrupulously defended your character as patriotically humane – didn’t you just sell out the fate of those detainees for the advancement of your career?

You commanded the Guantanamo Behavioral Science Consultation Teams from January 2003 to mid-May 2003, during a time when the International Committee of the Red Cross stated that the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo amounted to torture.

Under your command and supervision, psychologists from the military’s Survival, Evasion Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program were instructed to apply their expertise in abusive interrogation techniques to the interrogations of detainees in Guantanamo, according to a report from the Office of the Inspector General.

According to the Standard Operating Procedure manual at the time that you were the Chief Psychologist at Guantanamo, all incoming detainees were to be held in isolation for the first 30 days “to enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process” and were not entitled to the protections afforded by the Geneva Conventions.

So while you and the American Psychological Association continue to assert that military psychologists are necessary at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram and other detention sites – to build rapport, to “protect” the detainees, to stop other military personnel from harming and killing the detainees – you’re telling reporters that the secret to your success is to look the other way. What else could it mean when you say, “if I’m going to be successful in the intel community . . . I’m meticulously . . . going to stay in my lane . . . I don’t want to know?”

The fact is, for you and our professional organization, it’s all about keeping your job. You toe the military line for your paycheck. And the APA toes the military line to curry the favor of the Department of Defense and the current administration for contracts. All the rest is window dressing, such as the APA’s gratuitous letter to Attorney General Mukasey this week. The letter is a lobbyist’s masterpiece, suggesting that waterboarding is legal torture in one paragraph and then asking the AG to please hurry up and render a legal ruling in the next.

But as you seem not to be motivated by considerations of ethics, Colonel James, perhaps the potential for life in prison might have more impact. At the Nuremberg Trials, it was held that merely following orders will not absolve you from criminal liability. In that rare moment of truthiness, you told us that your guilty knowledge may pose inconveniences for you: “[I]f I don’t have a specific need to know about something, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t ask about it.”

Former Navy airman describes ‘water torture.’

Today in the Washington Post, Richard E. Mezo, who served in the Navy for six years, describes his experience being waterboarded:

Last week, much to my dismay, government officials testified before Congress that the United States has used the interrogation technique known as waterboarding and would like to hold out the option of using it in the future. As someone who has experienced waterboarding, albeit in a controlled setting, I know that the act is indeed torture. I was waterboarded during my training to become a Navy flight crew member. […]

Waterboarding has, unfortunately, become a household word. Back then, we didn’t call it waterboarding — we called it “water torture.” We recognized it as something the United States would never do, whatever the provocation. … Waterboarding is torture, and torture is clearly a crime against humanity.

Former Justice Department official Daniel Levin, who was voluntarily waterboarded in 2004, came to similar conclusions about the procedure. 

Let Us Talk to Sept 11 Planner, U.S. Lawyers Ask

GUANTANAMO BAY U.S. NAVAL BASE, Cuba (Reuters) – Military lawyers defending Osama bin Laden’s former driver on terrorism charges in the U.S. war court at Guantanamo Bay have offered a compromise in their quest to interview September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

They promised not to ask Mohammed about his treatment in U.S. custody or about the CIA’s admission that it subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as “waterboarding” during interrogations.

Bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, was captured in Afghanistan in November 2001 and faces life in prison if convicted in the Guantanamo court of conspiring with al Qaeda and providing material support for terrorism.

The Yemeni man said he never joined al Qaeda, had no advance knowledge of its attacks and became bin Laden’s driver in Afghanistan because he needed the salary of $200 per month.

Hamdan’s lawyers said Mohammed — the highest-ranking al Qaeda leader held at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — can help their defense by telling them what role, if any, Hamdan had in the organization.

They likened it to somebody “on trial for organized crime and you’ve got the opportunity to bring in the godfather.”

The request was still pending when a pretrial hearing ended on Thursday but the military judge suggested he might at least let the lawyers question Mohammed via written notes.

The judge is expected to rule in the next couple of weeks and Hamdan is scheduled to go to trial in May. So far, only one captive — an Australian man — has been convicted by the widely criticized court and that was in a plea bargain.

TOO DANGEROUS

Prosecutors said Mohammed, accused of masterminding the attacks on the United States by al Qaeda militants on September 11, 2001, was too dangerous an enemy in an ongoing war to allow defense lawyers to go on “a fishing expedition.”

“The defense is asking for access to some of the most notorious terrorists the world has ever seen,” said one of the prosecutors, Air Force Lt. Col. William Britt.

There was a risk of endangering U.S. agents if Mohammed revealed to the defense lawyers the sources and methods the government used to get information from him, prosecutors said.

The CIA has acknowledged using waterboarding, which critics say is a form of illegal torture, on Mohammed and two other senior al Qaeda leaders who were later sent to Guantanamo.

The defense lawyers, one of whom has top clearance to view government secrets, said they disapproved of waterboarding but would not ask Mohammed about it or about anything that occurred after the September 11 attacks.

Mohammed is one of 15 “high-value” al Qaeda prisoners held separately from the other 260 non-U.S. captives at Guantanamo in a facility whose location is kept secret even from the officers who run the other detention camps.

Prosecutors also objected to defense requests to question six other high-value prisoners.

“Equally wrapped up in secret tape, eh?” asked the judge, Navy Capt. Keith Allred.

He said the defense had shown adequate need to question Mohammed and suggested they conduct the interview via written questions and answers, which the prosecutors also opposed.

The United States set up the Guantanamo tribunals to try suspected terrorists after the September 11 attacks but so far, none of the handful of prisoners facing charges has been accused of direct involvement in the attacks.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that military prosecutors are in the final phases of preparing the first sweeping case against suspected conspirators in the September 11 attacks, citing people who have been briefed on the case.

The charges, to be filed at Guantanamo, would involve up to six detainees there including Mohammed.

No defense lawyer has been allowed access the high-value group of suspected terrorists facing charges, who were brought to Guantanamo in 2006 after about three years in secret CIA custody.

One of Hamdan’s lawyers, retired Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, said that raised a crucial question about U.S. plans to try those important figures.

“Who is going to represent Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and when will his trial be?” Swift said.

WTF?…O’Reilly On Waterboarding: ‘The Far Left Is Putting Us All In Danger’

Earlier this week, the Bush administration admitted that it has waterboarded at least three al Qaeda detainees since 9/11. Yesterday, CIA Director Michael Hayden added that the tactic may currently be illegal.

On Fox News’ O’Reilly Factor yesterday, Bill O’Reilly gave a full-throated defense of the torture tactic, claiming that the “far left went wild” after the revelations. The left “literally went crazy,” he said. O’Reilly continued his pro-torture rant:

Why are they so insane about this? It’s not fatal. It doesn’t leave a lasting phyiscal injury? Why are they so crazy? … I think the President has to have the authority…in extraordinary circumstances, as these three were. And the far left is putting us all in danger.

By O’Reilly’s logic, military officers and staunch conservatives are also “crazy.” Just yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Michael Maples said the practice is unnecessary. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and members of the Pentagon’s JAG corps also agree. Intelligence experts say it is “ineffective” because the technique “often produces false information.”

Waterboarding, not progressives, puts America in danger. As Colin Powell noted in 2005 when President Bush wanted to loosely define torture, “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”