[Peace-discuss] Fw: The 13 People Who Made Torture Possible

[E. Wayne Johnson]

That ain't all of them, but that's a good start.

On 5/18/2009 10:54 PM, unionyes wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message ----- From: <moderator at PORTSIDE.ORG>
> To: <PORTSIDE at LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG>
> Sent: Monday, May 18, 2009 9:00 PM
> Subject: The 13 People Who Made Torture Possible
>
>
>> The 13 People Who Made Torture Possible
>> The Bush administration's Torture 13.
>>
>> They authorized it, they decided how to implement it,
>> and they crafted the legal fig leaf to justify it.
>>
>> by Marcy Wheeler
>>
>> Published on Monday, May 18, 2009 by Salon.com
>> Distributed by Common Dreams
>> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/18-13
>>
>> On April 16, the Obama administration released four
>> memos that were used to authorize torture in
>> interrogations during the Bush administration. When
>> President Obama released the memos, he said, "It is our
>> intention to assure those who carried out their duties
>> relying in good faith upon legal advice from the
>> Department of Justice that they will not be subject to
>> prosecution."
>>
>> Yet 13 key people in the Bush administration cannot
>> claim they relied on the memos from the DOJ's Office of
>> Legal Counsel. Some of the 13 manipulated the federal
>> bureaucracy and the legal process to "preauthorize"
>> torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement
>> torture, and still others helped write the memos that
>> provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf
>> after torture had already begun.
>>
>> The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to
>> establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they
>> based the enhanced interrogation techniques on
>> techniques used in the U.S. military's Survival,
>> Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. The
>> program -- which subjects volunteers from the armed
>> services to simulated hostile capture situations --
>> trains servicemen and -women to withstand coercion well
>> enough to avoid making false confessions if captured.
>> Two retired SERE psychologists contracted with the
>> government to "reverse-engineer" these techniques to
>> use in detainee interrogations.
>>
>> The Torture 13 also abused the legal review process in
>> the Department of Justice in order to provide
>> permission for torture. The DOJ's Office of Legal
>> Counsel (OLC) played a crucial role. OLC provides
>> interpretations on how laws apply to the executive
>> branch. On issues where the law is unclear, like
>> national security, OLC opinions can set the boundary
>> for "legal" activity for executive branch employees. As
>> Jack Goldsmith, OLC head from 2003 to 2004, explains
>> it, "One consequence of [OLC's] power to interpret the
>> law is the power to bestow on government officials what
>> is effectively an advance pardon for actions taken at
>> the edges of vague criminal statutes." OLC has the
>> power, Goldsmith continues, to dispense
>> "get-out-of-jail-free cards." The Torture 13 exploited
>> this power by collaborating on a series of OLC opinions
>> that repeatedly gave U.S. officials such a
>> "get-out-of-jail-free card" for torturing.
>>
>> Between 9/11 and the end of 2002, the Torture 13
>> decided to torture, then reverse-engineered the
>> techniques, and then crafted the legal cover. Here's
>> who they are and what they did:
>>
>> 1. Dick Cheney, vice president (2001-2009)
>>
>> On the morning of 9/11, after the evacuation of the
>> White House, Dick Cheney summoned his legal counsel,
>> David Addington, to return to work. The two had worked
>> together for years. In the 1980s, when Cheney was a
>> congressman from Wyoming and Addington a staff attorney
>> to another congressman, Cheney and Addington argued
>> that in Iran-Contra, the president could ignore
>> congressional guidance on foreign policy matters.
>> Between 1989 and 1992, when Dick Cheney was the elder
>> George Bush's secretary of defense, Addington served as
>> his counsel. He and Cheney saved the only known copies
>> of abusive interrogation technique manuals taught at
>> the School of the Americas. Now, on the morning of
>> 9/11, they worked together to plot an expansive grab of
>> executive power that they claimed was the correct
>> response to the terrorist threat. Within two weeks,
>> they had gotten a memo asserting almost unlimited power
>> for the president as "the sole organ of the Nation in
>> its foreign relations," to respond to the terrorist
>> attacks. As part of that expansive view of executive
>> power, Cheney and Addington would argue that domestic
>> and international laws prohibiting torture and abuse
>> could not prevent the president from authorizing harsh
>> treatment of detainees in the war against terror.
>>
>> But Cheney and Addington also fought bureaucratically
>> to construct this torture program. Cheney led the way
>> by controlling who got access to President Bush -- and
>> making sure his own views preempted others'. Each time
>> the torture program got into trouble as it spread
>> around the globe, Cheney intervened to ward off legal
>> threats and limits, by badgering the CIA's inspector
>> general when he reported many problems with the
>> interrogation program, and by lobbying Congress to
>> legally protect those who had tortured.
>>
>> Most shockingly, Cheney is reported to have ordered
>> torture himself, even after interrogators believed
>> detainees were cooperative. Since the 2002 OLC memo
>> known as "Bybee Two" that authorizes torture premises
>> its authorization for torture on the assertion that
>> "the interrogation team is certain that" the detainee
>> "has additional information he refuses to divulge,"
>> Cheney appears to have ordered torture that was illegal
>> even under the spurious guidelines of the memo.
>>
>> 2. David Addington, counsel to the vice president
>> (2001-2005), chief of staff to the vice president
>> (2005-2009) David Addington championed the fight to
>> argue that the president -- in his role as commander in
>> chief -- could not be bound by any law, including those
>> prohibiting torture. He did so in two ways. He advised
>> the lawyers drawing up the legal opinions that
>> justified torture. In particular, he ran a "War
>> Council" with Jim Haynes, John Yoo, John Rizzo and
>> Alberto Gonzales (see all four below) and other trusted
>> lawyers, which crafted and executed many of the legal
>> approaches to the war on terror together.
>>
>> In addition, Addington and Cheney wielded bureaucratic
>> carrots and sticks -- notably by giving or withholding
>> promotions for lawyers who supported these illegal
>> policies. When Jack Goldsmith withdrew a number of OLC
>> memos because of the legal problems in them, Addington
>> was the sole administration lawyer who defended them.
>> Addington's close bureaucratic control over the legal
>> analysis process shows he was unwilling to let the
>> lawyers give the administration a "good faith"
>> assessment of the laws prohibiting torture.
>>
>> 3. Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel (2001-2005),
>> and attorney general (2005-2008)
>>
>> As White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales was nominally
>> in charge of representing the president's views on
>> legal issues, including national security issues. In
>> that role, Gonzales wrote and reviewed a number of the
>> legal opinions that attempted to immunize torture. Most
>> important, in a Jan. 25, 2002, opinion reportedly
>> written with David Addington, Gonzales paved the way
>> for exempting al-Qaida detainees from the Geneva
>> Conventions. His memo claimed the "new kind of war"
>> represented by the war against al-Qaida "renders
>> obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of
>> enemy prisoners." In a signal that Gonzales and
>> Addington adopted that position to immunize torture,
>> Gonzales argued that one advantage of not applying the
>> Geneva Convention to al-Qaida would "substantially
>> reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution
>> under the War Crimes Act." The memo even specifically
>> foresaw the possibility of independent counsels'
>> prosecuting acts against detainees.
>>
>> 4. James Mitchell, consultant
>>
>> Even while Addington, Gonzales and the lawyers were
>> beginning to build the legal framework for torture, a
>> couple of military psychologists were laying out the
>> techniques the military would use. James Mitchell, a
>> retired military psychologist, had been a leading
>> expert in the military's SERE program. In December
>> 2001, with his partner, Bruce Jessen, Mitchell
>> reverse-engineered SERE techniques to be used to
>> interrogate detainees. Then, in the spring of 2002,
>> before OLC gave official legal approval to torture,
>> Mitchell oversaw Abu Zubaydah's interrogation. An FBI
>> agent on the scene describes Mitchell overseeing the
>> use of "borderline torture." And after OLC approved
>> waterboarding, Mitchell oversaw its use in ways that
>> exceeded the guidelines in the OLC memo. Under
>> Mitchell's guidance, interrogators used the waterboard
>> with "far greater frequency than initially indicated"
>> -- a total of 183 times in a month for Khalid Sheikh
>> Mohammed and 83 times in a month for Abu Zubaydah.
>>
>> 5. George Tenet, director of Central Intelligence
>> (1997-2004)
>>
>> As director of the CIA during the early years of the
>> war against al-Qaida, Tenet had ultimate management
>> responsibility for the CIA's program of capturing,
>> detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qaida members
>> and briefed top Cabinet members on those techniques.
>> Published reports say Tenet approved every detail of
>> the interrogation plans: "Any change in the plan --
>> even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added
>> -- was signed off on by the Director." It was under
>> Tenet's leadership that Mitchell and Jessen's SERE
>> techniques were applied to the administration's first
>> allegedly high-value al-Qaida prisoner, Abu Zubaydah.
>> After approval of the harsh techniques, CIA
>> headquarters ordered Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded
>> even though onsite interrogators believed Zubaydah was
>> "compliant." Since the Bybee Two memo authorizing
>> torture required that interrogators believe the
>> detainee had further information that could only be
>> gained by using torture, this additional use of the
>> waterboard was clearly illegal according to the memo.
>>
>> 6. Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor
>> (2001-2005), secretary of state (2005-2008)
>>
>> As national security advisor to President Bush, Rice
>> coordinated much of the administration's internal
>> debate over interrogation policies. She approved (she
>> now says she "conveyed the authorization") for the
>> first known officially sanctioned use of torture -- the
>> CIA's interrogation of Abu Zubaydah -- on July 17,
>> 2002. This approval was given after the torture of
>> Zubaydah had begun, and before receiving a legal OK
>> from the OLC. The approval from the OLC was given
>> orally in late July and in written form on Aug. 1,
>> 2002. Rice's approval or "convey[ance] of
>> authorization" led directly to the intensified torture
>> of Zubaydah.
>>
>> 7. John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general, Office
>> of Legal Counsel (2001-2003)
>>
>> As deputy assistant attorney general of OLC focusing on
>> national security for the first year and a half after
>> 9/11, Yoo drafted many of the memos that would
>> establish the torture regime, starting with the opinion
>> claiming virtually unlimited power for the president in
>> times of war. In the early months of 2002, he started
>> working with Addington and others to draft two key
>> memos authorizing torture: Bybee One (providing legal
>> cover for torture) and Bybee Two (describing the
>> techniques that could be used), both dated Aug. 1,
>> 2002. He also helped draft a similar memo approving
>> harsh techniques for the military completed on March
>> 14, 2003, and even a memo eviscerating Fourth Amendment
>> protections in the United States. The Bybee One and DOD
>> memos argue that "necessity" or "self-defense" might be
>> used as defenses against prosecution, even though the
>> United Nations Convention Against Torture explicitly
>> states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever,
>> whether a state of war or a threat or war ... may be
>> invoked as a justification of torture." Bybee Two,
>> listing the techniques the CIA could use in
>> interrogation, was premised on hotly debated
>> assumptions. For example, the memo presumed that Abu
>> Zubaydah was uncooperative, and had actionable
>> intelligence that could only be gotten through harsh
>> techniques. Yet Zubaydah had already cooperated with
>> the FBI. The memo claimed Zubaydah was mentally and
>> physically fit to be waterboarded, even though Zubaydah
>> had had head and recent gunshot injuries. As Jack
>> Goldsmith described Yoo's opinions, they "could be
>> interpreted as if they were designed to confer immunity
>> for bad acts." In all of his torture memos, Yoo ignored
>> key precedents relating both specifically to
>> waterboarding and to separation of powers.
>>
>> 8. Jay Bybee, assistant attorney general, Office of
>> Legal Counsel (2001-2003) As head of the OLC when the
>> first torture memos were approved, Bybee signed the
>> memos named after him that John Yoo drafted. At the
>> time, the White House knew that Bybee wanted an
>> appointment as a Circuit Court judge; after signing his
>> name to memos supporting torture, he received such an
>> appointment. Of particular concern is the timing of
>> Bybee's approval of the torture techniques. He first
>> approved some techniques on July 24, 2002. The next
>> day, Jim Haynes, the Defense Department's general
>> counsel, ordered the SERE unit of DOD to collect
>> information including details on waterboarding. While
>> the record is contradictory on whether Haynes or CIA
>> General Counsel John Rizzo gave that information to
>> OLC, on the day they did so, OLC approved
>> waterboarding. One of the documents in that packet
>> identified these actions as torture, and stated that
>> torture often produced unreliable results.
>>
>> 9. William "Jim" Haynes, Defense Department general
>> counsel (2001-2008) As general counsel of the Defense
>> Department, Jim Haynes oversaw the legal analysis of
>> interrogation techniques to be used with military
>> detainees. Very early on, he worked as a broker between
>> SERE professionals and the CIA. His office first asked
>> for information on "exploiting" detainees in December
>> 2001, which is when James Mitchell is first known to
>> have worked on interrogation plans. And later, in July
>> 2002, when CIA was already using torture with Abu
>> Zubaydah but needed scientific cover before OLC would
>> approve waterboarding, Haynes ordered the SERE team to
>> produce such information immediately.
>>
>> Later Haynes played a key role in making sure some of
>> the techniques were adopted, with little review, by the
>> military. He was thus crucial to the migration of
>> torture to Guantanamo and then Iraq. In September 2002,
>> Haynes participated in a key visit to Guantanamo (along
>> with Addington and other lawyers) that coincided with
>> requests from DOD interrogators there for some of the
>> same techniques used by the CIA.
>>
>> Haynes ignored repeated warnings from within the armed
>> services about the techniques, including statements
>> that the techniques "may violate torture statute" and
>> "cross the line of 'humane' treatment." In October
>> 2002, when the legal counsel for the military's Joint
>> Chiefs of Staff attempted to conduct a thorough legal
>> review of the techniques, Haynes ordered her to stop,
>> because "people were going to see" the objections that
>> some in the military had raised. On Nov. 27, 2002,
>> Haynes recommended that Secretary of Defense Donald
>> Rumsfeld authorize many of the requested techniques,
>> including stress positions, hooding, the removal of
>> clothing, and the use of dogs -- the same techniques
>> that showed up later in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
>>
>> 10. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense (2001-2006)
>>
>> As secretary of defense, Rumsfeld signed off on
>> interrogation methods used in the military, notably for
>> Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo Bay.
>> With this approval, the use of torture would move from
>> the CIA to the military. A recent bipartisan Senate
>> report concluded that "Secretary of Defense Donald
>> Rumsfeld's authorization of interrogation techniques at
>> Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse
>> there." Rumsfeld personally approved techniques
>> including the use of phobias (dogs), forced nudity and
>> stress positions on Dec. 2, 2002, signing a one-page
>> memo prepared for him by Haynes. These techniques were
>> among those deemed torture in the Charles Graner case
>> and the case of "20th hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani.
>> Rumsfeld also personally authorized an interrogation
>> plan for Moahmedou Ould Slahi on Aug. 13, 2003; the
>> plan used many of the same techniques as had been used
>> with al-Qahtani, including sensory deprivation and
>> "sleep adjustment." And through it all, Rumsfeld
>> maintained a disdainful view on these techniques, at
>> one point quipping on a memo approving harsh
>> techniques, "I stand for eight to 10 hours a day. Why
>> is standing limited to four hours?"
>>
>> 11. John Rizzo, CIA deputy general counsel (2002-2004),
>> acting general counsel of the Central Intelligence
>> Agency (2001-2002, 2004-present)
>>
>> As deputy general counsel and then acting general
>> counsel for the CIA, John Rizzo's name appears on all
>> of the known OLC opinions on torture for the CIA. For
>> the Bybee Two memo, Rizzo provided a number of
>> factually contested pieces of information to OLC --
>> notably, that Abu Zubaydah was uncooperative and
>> physically and mentally fit enough to withstand
>> waterboarding and other enhanced techniques. In
>> addition, Rizzo provided a description of waterboarding
>> using one standard, while the OLC opinion described a
>> more moderate standard. Significantly, the description
>> of waterboarding submitted to OLC came from the Defense
>> Department, even though NSC had excluded DOD from
>> discussions on the memo. Along with the description of
>> waterboarding and other techniques, Rizzo also provided
>> a document that called enhanced methods "torture" and
>> deemed them unreliable -- yet even with this warning,
>> Rizzo still advocated for the CIA to get permission to
>> use those techniques.
>>
>> 12. Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant
>> attorney general, OLC (2004), acting assistant attorney
>> general, OLC (2005-2009)
>>
>> In 2004, the CIA's inspector general wrote a report
>> concluding that the CIA's interrogation program might
>> violate the Convention Against Torture. It fell to
>> Acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury to
>> write three memos in May 2005 that would dismiss the
>> concerns the IG Report raised -- in effect, to affirm
>> the OLC's 2002 memos legitimizing torture. Bradbury's
>> memos noted the ways in which prior torture had
>> exceeded the Bybee Two memo: the 183 uses of the
>> waterboard for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in one month, the
>> gallon and a half used in waterboarding, the 20 to 30
>> times a detainee is thrown agains the wall, the 11 days
>> a detainee had been made to stay awake, the extra
>> sessions of waterboarding ordered from CIA headquarters
>> even after local interrogators deemed Abu Zubaydah to
>> be fully compliant. Yet Bradbury does not consider it
>> torture. He notes the CIA's doctors' cautions about the
>> combination of using the waterboard with a physically
>> fatigued detainee, yet in a separate memo approves the
>> use of sleep deprivation and waterboading in tandem. He
>> repeatedly concedes that the CIA's interrogation
>> techniques as actually implemented exceeded the SERE
>> techniques, yet repeatedly points to the connection to
>> SERE to argue the methods must be legal. And as with
>> the Bybee One memo, Bradbury resorts to precisely the
>> kind of appeal to exceptional circumstances -- "used
>> only as necessary to protect against grave threats" --
>> to distinguish U.S. interrogation techniques from the
>> torture it so closely resembles around the world.
>>
>> 13. George W. Bush, president (2001-2009)
>>
>> While President Bush maintained some distance from the
>> torture for years -- Cheney describes him "basically"
>> authorizing it -- he served as the chief propagandist
>> about its efficacy and necessity. Most notably, on
>> Sept. 6, 2006, when Bush first confessed to the
>> program, Bush repeated the claims made to support the
>> Bybee Two memo: that Abu Zubaydah wouldn't talk except
>> by using torture. And in 2006, after the CIA's own
>> inspector general had raised problems with the program,
>> after Steven Bradbury had admitted all the ways that
>> the torture program exceeded guidelines, Bush still
>> claimed it was legal.
>>
>> "[They] were designed to be safe, to comply with our
>> laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The
>> Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods
>> extensively, and determined them to be lawful."
>>
>> With this statement, the deceptions and bureaucratic
>> games all came full circle. After all, it was Bush who,
>> on Feb. 7, 2002, had declared the Geneva Conventions
>> wouldn't apply (a view the Supreme Court ultimately
>> rejected).
>>
>> Bush's inaction in torture is as important as his
>> actions. Bush failed to fulfill legal obligations to
>> notify Congress of the torture program. A Senate
>> Intelligence timeline on the torture program makes
>> clear that Congress was not briefed on the techniques
>> used in the torture program until after Abu Zubaydah
>> had already been waterboarded. And in a 2003 letter,
>> then House Intelligence ranking member Jane Harman
>> shows that she had not yet seen evidence that Bush had
>> signed off on this policy. This suggests President Bush
>> did not provide the legally required notice to
>> Congress, violating National Security Decisions
>> Directive-286. What Bush did not say is as legally
>> important as what he did say.
>>
>> Yet, ultimately, Bush and whatever approval he gave the
>> program is at the center of the administration's
>> embrace of torture. Condoleezza Rice recently said, "By
>> definition, if it was authorized by the president, it
>> did not violate our obligations in the Convention
>> Against Torture." While Rice has tried to reframe her
>> statement, it uses the same logic used by John Yoo and
>> David Addington to justify the program, the shocking
>> claim that international and domestic laws cannot bind
>> the president in times of war. Bush's close allies
>> still insist if he authorized it, it couldn't be
>> torture. (c) 2009 Salon.com
>>
>> Marcy Wheeler writes her blog, emptywheel, for
>> FireDogLake.com
>>
>> _____________________________________________
>>
>> Portside aims to provide material of interest
>> to people on the left that will help them to
>> interpret the world and to change it.
>>
>> Submit via email: moderator at portside.org
>> Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit
>> Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq
>> Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe
>> Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe
>> Account assistance: portside.org/contact
>> Search the archives: portside.org/archive
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> Internal Virus Database is out-of-date.
>> Checked by AVG.
>> Version: 7.5.557 / Virus Database: 270.12.11/2089 - Release Date: 
>> 4/30/2009 5:53 PM
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Peace-discuss mailing list
> Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
> http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/peace-discuss
>
>