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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
Kidnappings & Torture |
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February 14th,
2009 - DoD, CIA Cooperated in Detainee Abuse |
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DoD, CIA Cooperated in
Detainee Abuse By William Fisher The Public Record February 14, 2009 Three human rights groups
have released documents that they say reveal close cooperation between the
Department of Defense (DOD) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in
rendering terrorism suspects to secret prisons, creating ‘ghost prisoners’ by
concealing their identities from the Red Cross, and delaying their release to
counter negative publicity about their treatment at Guántanamo Bay. Close to a thousand pages of
documents were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought
by Amnesty International USA (AIUSA), the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR), and New York University’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice
(CHRGJ). The suit, dating from 2004, seeks the disclosure of government
documents relating to secret detention, extraordinary rendition, and torture. At a press conference last
week, the groups revealed that the newly released documents confirm the
existence of ‘black site’ prisons at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and in
Iraq; affirm the DOD’s cooperation with the CIA’s “ghost” detention program;
and show one case where the DOD sought to delay the release of Guantánamo
prisoners who were scheduled to be sent home in order to avoid bad press. “These newly released
documents confirm our suspicion that the tentacles of the CIA’s abusive
program reached across agency lines,” said Margaret Satterthwaite, Director
of the CHRGJ. “In fact, it is increasingly obvious that defense officials
engaged in legal gymnastics to find ways to cooperate with the CIA’s
activities. A full accounting of all agencies must now take place to ensure
that future abuses don’t continue under a different guise,” she said. While most of the documents
simply contain news articles, there were several significant disclosures from
the DOD. A February 2006 email to
members of the DOD's Transportation Command discusses how to deal with the
bad press the U.S. was receiving over its detention facilities. It said the
U.S. was “getting creamed” on human rights issues sparked by “coverage of the
United Nations Rapporteur's report on Guantanamo, plus lingering interest in
Abu Ghraib photos.” These developments add up to “the U.S. taking a big hit
on the issues of human rights and respect for the rule of law, the email
said.” It cited criticism of the U.S. in blogs and discussion boards. "America has lost its
prestige," a blogger from Yemen wrote. "Every year the world waits
for the annual U.S. State Department report on human rights. Today, it is
America that awaits the world's opinion of its human rights policy. From
Gitmo, to Abu Ghraib, to secret prisons in Europe, the world accuses America
of not respecting human rights." To temper the bad PR, the
email suggests delaying the release of prisoners at Gitmo" for 45 days
or so until things die down. Otherwise we are likely to have a hero's (sic)
welcome awaiting the detainees when they arrive." The email adds, “It would
probably be preferable if we could deliver these detainees in something
smaller and more discreet than a T tail (a larger aircraft with a T-shaped
tail wing).” “It is astonishing that the
government may have delayed releasing men from Guantánamo in order to avoid
bad press,” said CCR attorney Gitanjali Gutierrez, who represents many of the
men held in Guantánamo and has made 30 trips to the base since 2004.
“Proposing to hold men for a month and a half after they were deemed
releasable is inexcusable. The Obama Administration should avoid repeating
this injustice and release the innocent individuals with all due haste.” In a second document, one
heavily redacted page mentions an "undisclosed detention facility"
at Bagram. Another highlights how the
Geneva Conventions can be interpreted to allow the CIA and the DOD to ‘ghost’
detainees' identities so they can be denied a visit from the International
Committee of the Red Cross. The organizations charged that the document,
entitled “Applicability of Geneva Conventions to ‘Ghost Detainees’ in Iraq”
shows that the DOD interpreted the ‘security internee’ provisions of the
Geneva Conventions to allow for ‘ghosting’ of detainees by prohibiting the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) from visiting. It also shows
that the DOD recognized that indefinitely prohibiting the ICRC from visiting
or failing to notify the ICRC of the existence of detainees was illegal under
the Geneva Conventions, the groups said. A 2005 document labeled a
“Detainee Update” presentation dealt with
“Internment Serial Number Policy (ISN). The organizations said, “It
shows that the DOD did not, as a matter of course, register detainees with
the ICRC until they had been in custody for up to 14 days and that
authorization was sought to hold some individuals for up to 30 days without
ISN/registry with ICRC to ‘maximize intelligence collection’,” even though
“there is some disagreement as to legal basis to go beyond 14 days.” The groups said these
policies “demonstrate the ease with which the CIA could have used DOD
facilities as ‘sorting facilities’ without having to worry about ICRC
oversight or revelation of the ghost detainee program.” Records from a Detainee
Senior Leadership Oversight Council meeting
contain references to a previously unreleased section of the Church
Report and discuss the need for the DOD to develop and enforce guidelines
governing their relationship with ‘Other Government Agencies’, including the
CIA, in order to regulate interrogation and other operations overseas. The organizations claimed
that these documents demonstrate that the DOD and CIA were in an ad hoc
relationship, “apparently unconstrained by formal guidelines.” The lawsuit is based on Freedom
of Information Act (FOIA) requests dating back to 2004. Previous government
releases also included documents largely already in the public record,
including, in one instance, a copy of the Geneva Conventions. This is the
first time the DOD has provided any documents in response. “Out of thousands of pages,
most of what might be of interest was redacted,” said Tom Parker, Policy
Director for Counterterrorism, Terrorism and Human Rights, for AIUSA. “While the sheer number of
pages creates the appearance of transparency, it is clear this is only the
tip of the iceberg and that the government agencies have not complied with
spirit of President Obama’s memo on Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
requests. We call on Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama
administration to put teeth into the memo and work actively to comply with
FOIA requests.” In his first week in office,
President Barack Obama signed an order closing the Guantanamo detention
facility in Cuba within a year and prohibiting CIA secret prisons. However,
the order allows the CIA to detain people temporarily. Obama also pledged
increased openness and transparency during his administration. It is not known whether the
Pentagon or the CIA still holds ‘ghost detainees,’ Satterthwaite said, referring
to people housed at secret facilities. External link: http://www.pubrecord.org/torture/685-dod-cia-cooperated-in-detainee-abuse.html |