Evidence

By Jason Leopold

In early fall 2003, as the scandal over leaking a covert CIA officer’s identity was exploding, President George W. Bush claimed not to know anything about the leak and called on anyone in his administration who had knowledge to come “forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true.”

How disingenuous the President’s appeal was has been underscored again by a new Justice Department court filing sketching out the contents of the 2004 interview between special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Vice President Dick Cheney.

READ THE REST AT CONSORTIUM NEWS.

DOJ did one crappy-ass job of trying to give Emmet Sullivan a better reason they can't turn over Dick Cheney's interview materials than that Jon Stewart would embarrass poor Dick. They trot out the same canard about needing cooperation from high level officials in the future. But there [are] two big problems with their argument. READ THE REST AT EMPTYWHEEL.

Excerpt from David Corn, Mother Jones:

When it comes to the Bush White House's decision to withhold from the public Dick Cheney's interview with FBI agents investigating the CIA leak case, the Obama administration says its predecessor did the right thing. And it's fighting hard to do the same. . . .

Which raises the question again: Is Obama withholding the memos Cheney demands released in order to protect Cheney's lies about what's in them?

Send Evidence of Torture to the DOJ | ACLU

We've uncovered more than 100,000 pages that show both that hundreds of prisoners were tortured in U.S. custody, and that the torture policies were devised and developed at the highest levels of the Bush administration -- yet there remains debate on whether or not the government will hold those who authorized torture accountable.

Make sure Attorney General Holder sees the evidence. Send him a selection from the thousands of pages of government documents that the ACLU has uncovered, and demand that the Justice Department appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate. Read more.

Does this look to you like a nation you would want to live in? (HT Digby).

The Cheating of Don Siegelman, Part I

The Cheating of Don Siegelman, Part II

The Cheating of Don Siegelman, Part III

By David Swanson

Lawless detention is the least of it. State secrets and warrantless spying scrape the surface. Drone attacks and ongoing torture begin to touch it. But central to the power of an emperor, and the catastrophes that come from the existence of an emperor, is the elimination of any other force within the government. Signing statements eliminate congress. Not that congress objects. Asking congress to reclaim its power produces nervous giggles.

Worth reading: PDF.

FBI compounds mystery with secret justification of gag order
The FBI continues its secrecy binge by filing a classified justification of its use of a gag order on an ISP in the ongoing Doe v. Holder battle.
By Jon Stokes | Arstechnica

When the FBI uses a national security letter (NSL) to force the cooperation of an ISP or phone company in the surveillance of a suspect, the agency typically slaps a gag order on the service provider to prevent it from revealing the existence of the NSL. Civil liberties groups have successfully challenged the DOJ on these gag orders in the ongoing Doe v. Holder, and last month the Obama administration decided not to appeal a federal court ruling that the FBI must justify these gag orders by meeting a relatively high First Amendment standard.

The implication of the court's ruling was that the FBI would finally have to justify the gag order that it had placed on the John Doe in the Doe v. Holder case, so that the plaintiff could talk about the NSL. The FBI has now cooperated, and has given the court a justification of the gag order, in secret.

The classified declaration that justifies the gag order can't even be seen by Doe's attorneys at the ACLU. In a statement, the ACLU elaborated on the move: "The government did not even file a redacted version of its secret affidavit or even an unclassified summary of what the secret affidavit says. Basically, the government is asking us just to trust that the gag is justified." Read more.

White House Is Drafting Executive Order to Allow Indefinite Detention; Move Would Bypass Congress

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate suspected terrorists indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

READ THE REST HERE.

By David Swanson

Embedded below is a stunning video. The Bush-Cheney-Rove Justice Department prosecuted 600 elected officials plus 2,500 collateral cases (children, elderly parents, children of defense lawyers, etc), and 85 percent of the officials were Democrats. And -- this is something the filmmaker came to understand after producing this film -- most of the rest were moderate Republicans, not Federalist Society Republicans.

The prosecutions were concentrated in presidential election swing states, as were the U.S. attorney firings.

The cases overwhelmingly -- almost all of them -- went to the small number of judges who had been appointed by George W. Bush.

All the cases that resulted in short prison terms included probation periods until after the next election.

Top fundraisers and staff of presidential candidates Clinton, Edwards, and Obama were indicted.

Reporters find Northrop Grumman data in Ghana market
By Robert McMillan | IT World

A team of journalists investigating the global electronic waste business has unearthed a security problem too. In a Ghana market, they bought a computer hard drive containing sensitive documents belonging to U.S. government contractor Northrop Grumman.

The drive had belonged to a Fairfax, Virginia, employee who still works for the company and contained "hundreds and hundreds of documents about government contracts," said Peter Klein, an associate professor with the University of British Columbia, who led the investigation for the Public Broadcasting Service show Frontline. He would not disclose details of the documents, but he said that they were marked "competitive sensitive" and covered company contracts with the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the Transportation Security Agency.

The data was unencrypted, Klein said in an interview. The cost? US$40.

Northrop Grumman is not sure how the drive ended up in a Ghana market, but apparently the company had hired an outside vendor to dispose of the PC. "Based on the documents we were shown, we believe this hard drive may have been stolen after one of our asset-disposal vendors took possession of the unit," the Northrop Grumman said in a statement. "Despite sophisticated safeguards, no company can inoculate itself completely against crime." Read more.

Lawyer: Spanish prosecution of Bush lawyers will proceed
By Daniel Tencer | Raw Story

The Spanish lawyer working to indict six former Bush administration attorneys for their roles in the US’s torture program says the case will go ahead in Spanish courts.

Gonzalo Boyé, a private lawyer in Spain, is working to indict the so-called “Bush Six” lawyers who gave the Bush administration its rationale for carrying out the systematic torture of terrorist suspects. The six are former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, author of the “torture memos,” Douglas Feith, then a deputy defense secretary, Pentagon lawyer William Haynes II, former assistant attorney general Jay Bybee, and David Addington, a former chief of staff to then-Vice President Dick Cheney.

A recent decision by Spain’s parliament to re-work its “universal jurisdiction” rules (which allow human-rights crimes anywhere in the world to be prosecuted in Spanish courts) won’t stop the prosecution of six Bush administration lawyers, Boyé told Mother Jones magazine in an interview.

“Accountability is the first step toward deterrence,” Boyé told the magazine. "With criminal offenses like this, it is necessary to send a clear message: No one is above the law, no matter their intentions. The security of any country can only exist within the rule of law. The war on terror is no exception." Read more.

Investigating Khobar Towers: How a Saudi Deception Protected bin Laden
A five part series on Inter Press Service

Part 1: Al Qaeda Excluded from the Suspects List
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Jun 22 (IPS) - On Jun. 25, 1996, a massive truck bomb exploded at a building in the Khobar Towers complex in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, which housed U.S. Air Force personnel, killing 19 U.S. airmen and wounding 372.

Immediately after the blast, more than 125 agents from the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) were ordered to the site to sift for clues and begin the investigation of who was responsible. But when two U.S. embassy officers arrived at the scene of the devastation early the next morning, they found a bulldozer beginning to dig up the entire crime scene.

Bush Assails Those Who Offer Terrorists 'Therapy' -- Though His Administration Sent Detainees to Saudi Counseling Center
By Jake Tapper | Political Punch | ABCNews

At a speaking engagement last night, former President George W. Bush defended his administration's counterterrorism policies, including Guantanamo Bay, the Washington Times reports.

"The way I decided to address the problem was twofold: One, use every technique and tool within the law to bring terrorists to justice before they strike again," Mr. Bush said.

Refraining from directly criticizing President Obama, Mr. Bush said, "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind." Read more.

CIA Destroyed Torture Tapes After CIA IG Report Concluded U.S. Violated Laws
Posted by Jason Leopold | My News Junkie

The CIA destroyed videotapes that showed its agents subjecting high-level al-Qaeda detainees to waterboarding and other brutal interrogation methods after the agency’s inspector general issued a classified report in the spring of 2004 that concluded the techniques used on the prisoners “appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture.”

In a little known Jan. 10, 2008 declaration in response to a motion filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to hold the CIA in contempt for destroying the videotapes, the CIA provided insight into CIA Inspector General John Helgerson’s report and revealed that he viewed the torture tapes.

“In January 2003, [Office of Inspector General] OIG initiated a special review of the CIA terrorist detention and interrogation program. This review was intended to evaluate CIA detention and interrogation activities, and was not initiated in response to an allegation of wrongdoing,” the declaration says. “During the course of the special review, OIG was notified of the existence of videotapes of the interrogations of detainees. OIG arranged with the NCS to review the videotapes at the overseas location where they were stored. Read more.

CIA Attempts to Block Release of Torture Report
By Chris George | OMB Watch

The Central Intelligence Agency is attempting to prevent the Obama administration from releasing a May 2004 Inspector General's report describing and evaluating the agency's treatment of detainees and interrogation practices, according to today's Washington Post. A redacted version of about 12 paragraphs of text was released in May 2008 as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit. The Obama administration promised a review of the IG report last month after the ACLU appealed the decision in that case.

Tony Blair knew of secret policy on terror interrogations
Letter reveals former PM was aware of guidance to UK agents
By Ian Cobain | Guardian.co.UK

Tony Blair was aware of the ­existence of a secret interrogation policy which ­effectively led to British citizens, and others, being ­tortured during ­counter-terrorism investigations, the Guardian can reveal.

The policy, devised in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, offered ­guidance to MI5 and MI6 officers ­questioning detainees in Afghanistan whom they knew were being mistreated by the US military.

British intelligence officers were given written instructions that they could not "be seen to condone" torture and that they must not "engage in any activity yourself that involves inhumane or degrading treatment of prisoners".