Pentagon employee erases mention of homosexuality on dead soldier’s Wikipedia page.

The Washington Blade reports that a computer with a Pentagon-registered IP address removed references of Maj. Alan Rogers’ sexual orientation:

Information that was deleted included Rogers’ sexual orientation; the soldier’s participation in American Veterans for Equal Rights, a group that works to change military policy toward gays; and the fact that Rogers’ death helped bring the U.S. military’s casualty toll in Iraq to 4,000. […]

The IP address attached to the deletion of the details and the posted comments is 141.116.168.135. The address belongs to a computer from the office of the Army Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence (G-2) at the Pentagon. The office is headed by Lt. Gen. John Kimmons, who was present at Rogers’ funeral and presented the flag from Rogers’ coffin to his cousin, Cathy Long.

On March 30, Washington Post Ombudsman Deborah Howell said the paper erred when it excluded references to Rogers’s homosexuality in its original report, noting that “the story would have been richer for it.”

Andrew Sullivan wrote: “I can see why outing someone who is alive and closeted is unethical; inning someone who is dead and was out is a function of utterly misplaced sensitivity, rooted in well-intentioned but incontrovertible homophobia.”

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.

Secret draft of Iraq war dossier to be revealed

The secret first draft of the notorious Iraq dossier that helped to take Britain to war is expected to be released tomorrow, in a victory for freedom of information campaigners.

The early version written by John Williams, then director of communications at the Foreign Office, has been the subject of a three-year legal wrangle amid hopes that it could reveal whether the supposedly intelligence-led dossier was actually based on a press officer’s script – and whether it was subsequently ’sexed up’ by Alastair Campbell.

The draft is understood not to contain the infamous claim that Saddam Hussein could launch a strike with ‘weapons of mass destruction’ within 45 minutes, a claim that was central to the final ‘dodgy dossier’.

Yesterday Williams attacked the decision to withhold the document for so long. ‘If the government withholds a piece of paper, it immediately makes it significant; it almost doesn’t matter what it says,’ he argued. ‘That’s what I said at the time: why are we withholding it?’

A former journalist, who left Whitehall in May, Williams said the row was particularly frustrating as he had never wanted the government to produce a dossier. He had argued, he said, that rather than attempting to prove that Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction, the government should have challenged him to prove he did not: ‘I was against the idea of a dossier because I thought it was wrong.’

The Hutton inquiry into the road to war on Iraq identified the existence of an early draft by Williams, but was told by Campbell that it had become ‘redundant’ when John Scarlett, then chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee linking Downing Street to the security services, took charge of the process. However, an information tribunal last month ruled that the Williams draft should be disclosed. Anti-war campaigners regard it as key evidence of who introduced the most contentious material into the final draft, and whether Scarlett was too heavily influenced by aides with an interest in making a case for war.

Williams said that critics of the war were likely to find significant similarities between his draft and Scarlett’s version, but insisted that should not be surprising since both were working with ‘the same assumptions, the same policy, with much of the same material’.

David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is expected to confirm in a statement to the Commons tomorrow that the government will bow to the information tribunal’s ruling, rather than exercising ministerial powers to veto it or challenge it in court. Ministers had argued that the draft should not be disclosed because it jeopardised the confidentiality – and therefore candour – of advice given to them by civil servants.

The release is in response to pressure by Chris Ames, a former charity worker from Surrey, who began pursuing the document early in 2005.

The government will hope that the publication finally draws a line under the sorry saga of the dossier, which led indirectly to the suicide of scientist David Kelly after he was identified as the apparent source of BBC reports that the dossier had been ‘overspun’ by Campbell.

Poisoned cakes given to Baghdad club

BAGHDAD, Feb. 10 (UPI) — Two Iraqi children died after eating thallium-laced cakes given to an air force club in Baghdad.

The secretary of the club and another official shared the cakes with their families, taking them home, the BBC reported.

Victims of the poisoning were flown to Amman, Jordan, for treatment. Supplies of Prussian blue, an antidote, were being flown from Britain to treat the victims.

Saddam Hussein allegedly used thallium, a heavy metal, to get rid of his enemies. Thallium has no taste, making it easy to mix with food or drink, and the symptoms develop slowly.

Skin exposure to thallium is also dangerous, and the substance is a depilatory. The CIA is supposed to have plotted to put thallium in Cuban President Fidel Castro’s shoes so his hair and beard would fall out.

The club manager told the BBC he thinks the poisoning was done by people with a grudge against the club. He said a former club official brought the cakes to the club.

Mukasey hints at Bush’s permission for torture

Under questioning from a Democratic senator, US attorney general Michael Mukasey today suggested that George Bush might have personally authorised the waterboarding of suspected terrorists.Mukasey immediately corrected himself to say that he was not permitted to discuss past events. But in describing the process by which the CIA could seek legal clearance to resume waterboarding, he appeared to tie the president to the controversial technique.

When Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein asked if the current path to authorising waterboarding – a request from the CIA director, followed by approval from the attorney general, followed by consultation with the president – had applied in the past, Mukasey said yes.

I should take a step back,” he then added. “I’m not authorised to say what happened in the past, but I was told this wasn’t news.”

Feinstein pointed to the Bush administration’s reported admission that the CIA waterboarded at least three senior members of al-Qaida. Given that the outlined process for authorising the tactic would have involved Bush, she repeated, “Did the president approve that?”

Mukasey declined to answer the question. His refusal to state directly whether waterboarding, which is not currently in use by the CIA, is a form of torture nearly prevented Mukasey from taking over the justice department last fall.

During Mukasey’s appearance today before the senate judiciary committee, several Democrats sought to pin him down on his views of the interrogation method. Considered illegal by human rights groups and some in the US military, waterboarding involves simulating the sensation of drowning by dousing a prisoner in water.

Mukasey said he would consider waterboarding to be torture if he were personally subjected to it. But he contended that its application by the US involved a separate balancing test, weighing the cost of the brutal action against the value of the information it could yield.

“I don’t think I’m saying it is simply a relative issue,” Mukasey told Democratic senator Joseph Biden. “There is a statute under which it is a relative issue.”

Mukasey invoked the so-called “shocks the conscience” standard, causing Biden to marvel at the implication that the potential profit from waterboarding could have any role in determining its moral value.

“I find [Mukasey's interpretation] to be fairly unique,” Biden said. “Matter of fact, it shocks my conscience a little bit.”

In addition to its souring of Democratic relations with Mukasey, the debate over waterboarding has fuelled a criminal investigation at the justice department into videotapes trashed by the CIA in 2005.

The tapes, destroyed as Congress moved to pass a ban on inhumane interrogations, show two al-Qaida members being questioned and potentially waterboarded by the CIA on foreign soil.

The justice department has appointed a Connecticut prosecutor to probe whether US intelligence officials broke the law or violated court orders by destroying the tapes.

Mukasey also was asked whether private contractors in the CIA’s employ used harsh interrogation tactics, but said he did not know. The Washington Post reported last year that such contractors comprise about one-third of the spy agency’s workforce.

U.S. used waterboarding: ex-spy chief

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States used waterboarding in terrorism interrogations but no longer does, a former U.S. spy chief said in the Bush administration’s clearest confirmation of the technique’s use.

U.S. officials have been reluctant to acknowledge the CIA’s use of the simulated drowning technique, which human rights groups call an illegal form of torture.

The remarks by former Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte in an interview with National Journal magazine come as senators are expected on Wednesday to grill Attorney General Michael Mukasey on a promised review of the legality of interrogation methods.

Asked by the magazine if debate over U.S. counterterrorism techniques was hampering its effort in a “war of ideas,” Negroponte said, “We’ve taken steps to address the issue of interrogations, for instance, and waterboarding has not been used in years.”

Negroponte served from 2005 to 2007 as the first director of national intelligence, a position created by President George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Negroponte is now deputy secretary of state. He spoke in an interview published in the National Journal’s January 25 issue.

“It (waterboarding) wasn’t used when I was director of national intelligence, nor even a few years before that,” he said. “I get concerned that we’re too retrospective and tend to look in the rearview mirror too often at things that happened four or even six years ago.”

Negroponte’s remarks appear to confirm earlier reports that the CIA discontinued waterboarding in 2003, after using it on three “high-value” detainees. Vice President Dick Cheney once suggested waterboarding was “an important tool” used to interrogate September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Bush has regularly insisted that the United States does not torture but has declined to discuss what interrogation techniques are used. The CIA declined comment on Negroponte’s remarks. 

 Mukasey, who took office in November, promised in his Senate confirmation hearings to review U.S. interrogation methods. But he gave no sign in a meeting with reporters last week that he was ready to discuss the review at Wednesday’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Mukasey said it would focus on the existing interrogation program and the validity of department legal opinions regarding it — a hint that he might not review discontinued practices.

Mukasey made no mention of the review in his prepared testimony to the committee, released by the Justice Department on Monday.

Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, took note of the omission and vowed in a statement to ask Mukasey “whether he agrees that waterboarding is torture and illegal.”

Mukasey was asked last week if he would answer senators’ inevitable questions about the issue, and replied, “I didn’t say that I wouldn’t answer it, I didn’t say that I would.”

Mukasey on January 2 ordered the Justice Department to investigate the CIA’s destruction of videotapes depicting the harsh interrogations of two terrorism suspects in 2002. At least one of the subjects, Abu Zubaydah, was believed to have been subjected to waterboarding.

Mukasey has rejected calls to appoint an independent counsel for the investigation. He has indicated investigators would be free to pursue evidence of illegal interrogation techniques in their probe, but department officials have said the focus remains on the tapes’ destruction.

Blair stabs Hillary Clinton in the back’ after supporting Republicans

Tony Blair is accused of betrayal last night as he waded into the American Presidential campaign to support George Bush’s Republican world view.As the former PM recommended Mr Bush’s policies to 400 millionaire bankers in Las Vegas, former ally Bill Clinton was campaigning in Nevada for his wife Hillary, who hopes to be the Democratic candidate for the White House and is an arch Bush critic.

In a move liable to be interpreted as a stab in the back for Hillary’s campaign, Mr Blair – who was paid 175,000 for his 35-minute speech – said: “George Bush is an amazingly strong and steady President…which is what America and the world needs.”

Last night Labour backbencher Jeremy Corbyn said: “A week ago Mr Blair travelled to France to praise the Right-wing President of France and this week he travels to the USA to support the Republicans.

“Is there no end to the extremes he will go to?” No,  He’ll do anything to hitch the money train of Bushie’s military industrial complex’s…Blood Sucker!

Mr Blair’s office denied that his comments were an attack on Mrs Clinton.

US fails at enforcing prosecution of contractors

The US government has the legal authority to prosecute private contractors for crimes they commit in Iraq but often declines to use it, according to a report released today by a leading human rights group.The findings by Human Rights First come amid renewed uncertainty about whether employees of the US security company Blackwater can be prosecuted for a September shooting in Baghdad that left 17 Iraqis dead.

The Bush administration has warned that inconsistency in federal law may allow the contractors to evade charges, the New York Times reported today.

“The main obstacle to ending the culture of impunity among private security contractors is not shortcomings in the law but rather the lack of will to enforce the law,” today’s report states.

A seven-year-old law called the Military extraterrestrial jurisdiction act, or MEJA, provides the main mechanism to prosecute contractors for crimes committed outside the US.

But many in the capital have questioned whether MEJA’s specific application to Pentagon employees would exempt Blackwater, which was operating under a US state department contract when the September shooting occurred.

The human rights report rejects that argument, citing a congressional expansion of MEJA passed after the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in 2004. That measure allows for prosecution of non-Pentagon employees who were “supporting the mission of the department of defence”.

The behaviour of contractors for Blackwater and other security firms has sparked resentment among Iraqi officials as well as civilians, many of whom consider the private guards unnecessarily violent.

“These violent attacks have created a culture of impunity that angers the local population, undermines the military mission, and promotes more abuse by contractors over time,” the report states.

The report found that since the war in Iraq began, only one US contractor has been charged with a violent crime under MEJA: an employee of KBR, formerly owned by Halliburton, who was accused of stabbing an Indian female colleague.

The House of Representatives already has approved a measure that would directly apply MEJA to Blackwater and its fellow contractors. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has introduced an expansion of MEJA in the Senate, but the bill has yet to see action.

Fallout from Blackwater’s legal and public relations troubles has hit British security companies in recent months.

The chief executive of ArmorGroup, the largest UK security firm operating in Iraq, left his post after reports of the September violence chilled the company’s profits and new contracts.

The human rights report singles out ArmorGroup and Aegis Defence Services, another UK-based contractor, for tracking incidents involving firearms use by their employees, in contrast with US companies that do not routinely keep such records

Congress briefed on Blackwater case obstacles

WASHINGTON: Justice Department officials have told Congress that they face serious legal difficulties in pursuing criminal prosecutions of Blackwater security guards involved in a September shooting that left at least 17 Iraqis dead.

In a private briefing in mid-December, officials from the Justice and State Departments met with aides to the House Judiciary Committee and other congressional staff members and warned them that there were major legal obstacles that might prevent any prosecution. Justice officials were careful not to say whether any decision had been made in the matter, according to two of the congressional staff members who received the briefing.

The staff members, who asked not to be identified, disclosed details of the meeting in interviews this week.

The December briefing took place after a federal grand jury had been convened in the case, suggesting that prosecutors had decided to begin hearing testimony with potential prosecution problems still unresolved.

Justice Department officials said Tuesday that the briefing was principally held to answer questions concerning those problems, one of which arose when State Department investigators granted Blackwater employees a limited form of immunity for what they disclosed. There are also questions about whether federal law applies to the Blackwater contractors.

Justice officials have acknowledged the potential problems, but they have said they were not insurmountable and reiterated that point on Tuesday.

The September shooting, one of the bloodiest involving private security guards in Iraq, set off furious protests from the Iraqi government and has forced a major reassessment in both the Bush administration and Congress over the role of private contractors in the war zone.

Justice Department officials have not publicly discussed the difficulties they face in pursuing prosecutions in the Blackwater case. But according to congressional aides who received the closed briefing, Justice officials told them they were concerned about both the gaps in the law and the immunity deal.

Those officials said in the briefing that federal law that applied to civilians employed by or accompanying the American military overseas might not apply to contractors in Iraq working for the State Department. Blackwater is under contract to the State Department to provide security for American diplomats in Baghdad.

The officials from the Justice and State Departments “didn’t say they weren’t going to prosecute,” said one congressional aide who attended the briefing. “They said there would be a lot of difficulties.”

The Justice officials also said the immunity deals offered to the Blackwater guards by investigators from the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service might make it difficult to prove that evidence gathered by federal prosecutors did not stem from statements made by the guards after they were promised limited immunity. Under those promises, the guards could not be prosecuted for anything they said in their statements, as long as what they said was true. The Justice Department had not been notified of the State Department’s plan to offer the deals.

A Justice Department spokesman declined Tuesday to comment on the briefing.

The signs that Justice officials believe they face significant obstacles in prosecuting the Blackwater guards come as an independent human rights group prepared to criticize the Bush administration for failing to aggressively investigate contractors accused of crimes in Iraq.

In a report to be issued Wednesday, the group, Human Rights First, argues that the laws are sufficient to prosecute contractors, including those working for the State Department, and that the Bush administration has failed to do so because of a lack of political will. The report specifically criticizes the government’s response to the September shooting in Baghdad.

“The U.S. government’s reaction to the shootings,” the report says, “has been characterized by confusion, defensiveness, a multiplicity of uncoordinated ad hoc investigations, and inter-agency finger pointing. These failures underscored the Justice Department’s unwillingness or inability to systematically investigate and prosecute allegations of serious violent crimes.”

Since the September shooting, the State Department and the Pentagon have reached an agreement to put private contractors under greater military control.

TOP SECRET: Detention Criteria GTMO

1. Purpose. To clarify the detention criteria for battlefield detention and long-term detention at GTMO.

2. References. CENTCOM Message (091425ZJAN03), Modification 1 to Implementing Guidance on Detainee Screening and Processing for Transfers of Detainees in Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base (GTMO)

3. The following is the SECDEF criteria for detention (para. 5 of above reference):

          CENTCOM should, as necessary, obtain control over the following Enemy Combatants:

          a. (S) all al Qaeda personnel.

          b. (S) all Taliban leaders (Afghan and non-Afghan).

          c. (S) non-Afghan Taliban personnel (including named individuals as identified by the

          intelligence community; anyone with special skills or education, such as those known

          as “professor” or “engineer”; and anyone who speaks a western language).

          d. (S) any others whom screeners think may pose a threat to us interests, may have

          intelligence value, or may be of law enforcement interest.

4. The definitions applicable to this guidance are:

         a. (S) al Qaeda: Usama bin Laden and his supporters, mostly Arab but including

         many nationalities, fighting against the US and coalition forces.

         b. (S) Afghan Taliban: Afghan officials and fighters of the former regime.

         c. (S) Taliban leaders: political officials of the former regime, or commanders of

         battalion equivalent sized units, normally 05/06.

         d. (S) non-Afghan Taliban: foreign fighters for the former regime (other than al Qaeda).

         e. (S) Enemy Combatant (EC): for purposes of this guidance, any person that US or

         allied forces could properly detain under the laws and customs of war. For purposes of

         this conflict, an EC includes, but is not limited to, a member or agent of al Qaeda, the

         Taliban, or another international terrorist organization against which the United States

         is engaged in armed conflict.

5. This criteria applies to initial detention in the field and for continued long-term

         detention at GTMO. For those in the field, it is essential to understand that US forces

         are not authorized to detain “common criminals” that have no connection to combat

         activity as stated in the criteria.

6. The place of detention (Afghan prison, BCP, or GTMO) of low level ECs (“foot

         soldiers”) who are a threat to US forces, yet have no intelligence value, is a separate

         and distinct issue currently being assessed at the highest levels. This will be addressed

         separately in the near future once a decision is made.