[Peace-discuss] Bureaucratic lies

[C. G. Estabrook]

[A brilliant evisceration of the official denial of Seymour Hersh's New
Yorker article.  It comes from one of the most interesting bloggers, who
calls himself Billmon.  Now even Newsweek has got into the story of the
Bush administration's responsibility for torture in American prisons
around the world -- a scandal much more serious than Watergate or
Iran-Contra: the first led to impeachment, and the second should have. So
should this. --CGE]

... I wanted to call your attention to the press statement the Pentagon
released yesterday in response to Sy Hersh's story. It's an artful (if
prolix) example of what in the Watergate era would have been called a
"non-denial denial" - that is, a statement carefully constructed so that
it appears to deny a serious allegation, but without actually doing so.
Here it is, in full:

    Statement from DoD Spokesperson Mr. Lawrence Di Rita

    "Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on
Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish,
conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.

    "The abuse evidenced in the videos and photos, and any similar abuse
that may come to light in any of the ongoing half dozen investigations
into this matter, has no basis in any sanctioned program, training manual,
instruction, or order in the Department of Defense.

    "No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any
program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses
as witnessed in the recent photos and videos.

    "To correct one of the many errors in fact, Undersecretary Cambone has
no responsibility, nor has he had any responsibility in the past, for
detainee or interrogation programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else
in the world.

    "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with
little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of
Defense."

Now let's take it a paragraph at a time:

    "Assertions apparently being made in the latest New Yorker article on
Abu Ghraib and the abuse of Iraqi detainees are outlandish,
conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture."

Obviously, assertions can be "outlandish," "conspiratorial" and "anonymous
conjecture" and still be true. What the Pentagon has already admitted
about this scandal certaintly meets those tests. And "filled with error"
is an extremely imprecise term. It could, in theory, refer to misspelled
names, minor mistakes regarding dates or times, confusing one person with
another, etc. Or, as we shall see, it could refer to statements that are
not mistakes at all - except within the context of the Pentagon's own
cover up.

    "The abuse evidenced in the videos and photos, and any similar abuse
that may come to light in any of the ongoing half dozen investigations
into this matter, has no basis in any sanctioned program, training manual,
instruction, or order in the Department of Defense."

The key phrase here is "no basis in" - which again is a fairly vague - but
seemingly carefully chosen - way of wording things. If you read Sy's
story, he makes it pretty clear that the operation - the "special access
program" - was specifically designed to provide the men at the top the
maximum amount of plausible (well, semi-plausible) denial. The operative
principle, Sy quotes one source as saying, was:

    â"The rules are 'Grab whom you must. Do what you want.'"

In other words, if you believe Hersh, the SAP was specifically structured
so that none of the interrogation methods adopted could be traced back to
any "sanctioned program, training manual, instruction, or order."

In any case, the whole point of Sy's story - and the fundamental reason
why the cover was eventually blown off the cover up - is that the program
spiraled out of control once it was expanded from the relatively tight
world of America's secret gulag system and applied in the much different,
and more chaotic, environment of Abu Ghraib. To that extent, the Di Rita
statement may be technically correct - but actually denies nothing.

Moving on:

    "No responsible official of the Department of Defense approved any
program that could conceivably have been intended to result in such abuses
as witnessed in the recent photos and videos.

This appears to be the first half of a tautology designed to shield
Undesecretary for Intelligence Stephen Cambone - according to Hersh, the
key figure in extending special access program "Copper Green" to Abu
Ghraib.

Also note the weasel words: "any program that could conceivably have been
intended to result in such absuses as witnessed in the recent photos and
videos." This statement not only rests an enormous weight on the
subjective adverb "conceivably" - what Larry DiRita might conceive and
what an experienced interrogator taking part in a black op might conceive
are almost certainly two different things - it also leaves open the
possibility that a "program" might allow methods of torment not
specifically captured on film at Abu Ghraib.

Here's the second half of the tautology:

    "To correct one of the many errors in fact, Undersecretary Cambone has
no responsibility, nor has he had any responsibility in the past, for
detainee or interrogation programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, or anywhere else
in the world."

The logic is perfectly circular, leaving an enormous loophole in the
middle. No "responsible" official approved torture, and Stephen Cambone
was not a "responsible" official. This neatly glosses over the possibility
that Cambone (and Rumsfeld, too, for that matter) were "unresponsible"
officials who exceeded their authority out of an arrogant conviction that
the laws don't apply to them, or even to the U.S.govermment. I mean, if
the White House General Counsel can make that argument, why not the guys
who are actually fighting the global war against anybody and everybody who
gets in their way?

The last paragraph is completely meaningnless verbage - about what you
would expect from a snot-nosed Young Republican turned partisan political
mouthpiece:

    "This story seems to reflect the fevered insights of those with
little, if any, connection to the activities in the Department of
Defense."

Blow that smoke, Larry!

The questions that need to be asked, and hopefully will be asked, by
someone, are:

    * Did Secretary Rumsfeld authorize a special access interrogation
program under the code name "Copper Green"?

    * What were the specific instructions given to interrogators involved
in that program? What review procedures did it include for authorizing
interrogation methods that violated the Geneva Conventions?

    * Was Stephen Cambone aware of the existence of a special access
program called Copper Green? Did he at any point communicate in any way
with any military commanders or interrogators regarding Copper Green - or
any other special access interrogation program?

    * Was Gen. Miller aware of the existence of a special access program
called Copper Green, and was he given any specific instructions regarding
the operation of that program - at Guantanamo or in Iraq?

Those will do for starters. And let's see somebody who ranks a little
higher than Larry DiRita blow more smoke at them - under oath.

 Posted by billmon at 02:02 AM