CIA Scandals

WMD Sources Ignored By the Bush Administration

Jonathan Schwarz — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 08:24:31 -0400

According to former CIA head George Tenet, "There were many Iraqi officials who said both publicly and privately that Iraq had no WMD."

Tenet's statement is accurate. Moreover, there were high level CIA officials who believed Iraq possessed no WMD. In addition, foreign governments stated there was no hard evidence Iraq had WMD, as did the heads of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).

All were ignored by the Bush administration. Neither of the two main government investigations of the WMD issue, by the Senate Intelligence Committee and the WMD Commission, investigated how or why this occurred. Indeed, almost no references to the below information appear in either report.

Iraqi government sources

Tahir Jalil Habbush al Takriti:
Habbush was head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service from 1999 until the U.S. invasion, and thus one of the top officials in the Saddam regime.

According to Ron Suskind's book The Way of the World, Habbush met with intelligence agents from Britain's MI6 in Jordan in the run up to war. Habbush told MI6 that Iraq possessed no WMD or WMD programs. Richard Dearlove, head of MI6, flew to Washington in late January, 2003 to deliver this information directly to George Tenet. Soon afterward Tenet briefed the highest levels of the Bush administration, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, on Dearlove's report. Bush responded: "Why don't they ask him to give us something we can use to help make our case?"

After the publication of The Way of the World, Tenet acknowledged that Habbush had indeed told MI6 that Iraq had no WMD, but claimed Habbush "offered no evidence to back up his assertion."

Naji Sabri Ahmad Al-Hadithi:
Sabri was Foreign Minister of Iraq from 2001 until the U.S. invasion. While in New York in September, 2002, he communicated to the CIA that—according to Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's then-head of covert operations in Europe—"[Iraq] had no active weapons of mass destruction program." Bush was briefed on this on September 18, 2002. Drumheller states: "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested...And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

Hussein Kamel Hassan al-Majid:
Kamel was Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, and head of all Iraqi WMD programs during the 1980s. After defecting to Jordan in 1995, Kamel told the UN, CIA and MI6 that Iraq had not possessed any WMD since 1991. (This was exactly what Habbush would say eight years later, and what the CIA eventually determined to be the truth in its 2004 WMD report.) Kamel was lured back to Iraq in 1996 and assassinated by the Saddam regime.

What Kamel had said in 1995 was not publicly known until late February, 2003, when Newsweek published an article based partly on the notes from his debriefing by the UN. Soon afterward CIA spokesman Bill Harlow stated the article "incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue." Harlow later served as ghostwriter for George Tenet's book At the Center of the Storm.

Before the Newsweek article was published, Kamel was mentioned by Bush, Cheney and Powell as having supported US claims on WMD. Footnote 429 of the WMD Commission Report indicates that in January, 2002, the White House requested a CIA report on Kamel's 1995 statements.

U.S. government sources

Alan Foley:
Foley was head of the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). WINPAC bore primary responsibility for the CIA's evaluation of the Iraq WMD issue.

The Italian Letter by Peter Eiser and Knut Royce states:

One day in December 2002, Foley called his senior production managers to his office. He had a clear message for the men and women who controlled the output of the center's analysts: "If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so."...

Several days after Bush's State of the Union speech [in January, 2003], Foley briefed student officers at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, DC. After the briefing, Melvin Goodman, who had retired from the CIA and was then on the university's faculty, brought Foley into the secure communications area of the Fort McNair compound. Goodman thanked Foley for addressing the students and asked him what weapons of mass destruction he believed would be found after the invasion. "Not much, if anything," Goodman recalled that Foley responded.

International and foreign government sources

IAEA:
On January 27, 2003, IAEA Director General Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei reported to the UN Security Council:

[W]e have to date found no evidence that Iraq has revived its nuclear weapons programme since the elimination of the programme in the 1990s...we should be able within the next few months to provide credible assurance that Iraq has no nuclear weapons programme. These few months would be a valuable investment in peace...

On March 7, 2003, ElBaradei stated that:

After three months of intrusive inspections, we have to date found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons programme in Iraq...

The detailed knowledge of Iraq's capabilities that IAEA experts have accumulated since 1991 - combined with the extended rights provided by resolution 1441, the active commitment by all States to help us fulfil our mandate, and the recently increased level of Iraqi co-operation - should enable us in the near future to provide the Security Council with an objective and thorough assessment of Iraq's nuclear-related capabilities.

UNMOVIC:
On March 7, 2003, UNMOVIC director Hans Blix reported to the Security Council that any remaining uncertainties about the WMD issue could likely be clarified with several more months of inspections:

How much time would it take to resolve the key remaining disarmament tasks? While cooperation can and is to be immediate, disarmament and at any rate the verification of it cannot be instant. Even with a proactive Iraqi attitude, induced by continued outside pressure, it would still take some time to verify sites and items, analyse documents, interview relevant persons, and draw conclusions. It would not take years, nor weeks, but months.

Russian government:
On October 11, 2002, Russian president Vladimir Putin stated that his government had seen no evidence that Iraq possessed WMD. At the same time, British prime minister Tony Blair explicitly acknowledged that Russia disagreed with the U.S. and U.K. WMD claims:

With a tense Mr Blair alongside him at his dacha near Moscow, the Russian president took the unusual step of citing this week's sceptical CIA report on the Iraqi military threat to assert: "Fears are one thing, hard facts are another"...

After confirming his foreign ministry's assessment that No 10's Iraqi dossier "could be seen as a propagandistic step" to sway public opinion, he made it plain.

"Russia does not have in its possession any trustworthy data that supports the existence of nuclear weapons or any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and we have not received any such information from our partners as yet. This fact has also been supported by the information sent by the CIA to the US Congress."...

"There may be a difference of perspective about weapons of mass destruction, there is one certain way to find out and that is to let the inspectors back in to do their job. That is the key point on which we are both agreed," Mr Blair said.

French government:
News reports from September, 2002 stated the French intelligence service did not believe Iraq possessed a nuclear weapons program:

According to secret agents at the DGSE, Saddam's Iraq does not represent any kind of nuclear threat at this time…It [the French assessment] contradicts the CIA's analysis...French spies said that the Iraqi nuclear threat claimed by the United States was a "phony threat."

Did Cheney Support Destruction of CIA Torture Tapes?

Bob Fertik — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 18:14:41 -0500

When CIA Director Michael Hayden admitted on 12/7/07 that the CIA destroyed torture tapes in 2005, anonymous sources blamed the head of the CIA’s clandestine service, Jose Rodriguez. But today the New York Times says four top White House lawyers debated the decision: Harriet Miers, John Bellinger, Alberto Gonzales and David Addington. (If you find it hard to keep track of the details, bookmark the outstanding detailed timeline on the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes by Cooperative Research.)

Did these lawyers discuss the issue with their bosses? Miers worked for Karl Rove, Bellinger for Stephen Hadley, Gonzales for Bush, and Addington for Cheney. At least two of these bosses wanted the tapes destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.

As we know from all previous White House stories, Dick Cheney always takes the hardest line, so it's an excellent bet that he led the charge for destroying the tapes.

And since a federal judge ordered all torture-related documents preserved, this contempt of court and obstruction of justice would be yet more impeachable offenses against Cheney.

Was Cunningham Briber Brent Wilkes Running "Torture Air"?

Bob Fertik — Mon, 14 May 2007 00:11:10 -0400

Former Rep. Duke Cunningham (R-CA) is serving jail time for $2 million in bribes he received from defense contractor Brent Wilkes. Last week, Wilkes was indicted for "conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and unlawful monetary transactions to Cunningham in return for government contracts."

While Wilkes was bribing Cunningham, he was also bribing the #3 guy at the CIA, his old pal Dusty Foggo. Back in February, Wilkes was indicted on "11 counts of the same charges in connection with a $1.7 million water-supply contract Foggo allegedly helped win for one of Wilkes' companies while he was working as a logistics coordinator at a CIA supply hub overseas."

But last week, the February indictment of Wilkes and Foggo was superseded by a new indictment with "30 wide-ranging counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering."

According to the new indictment, Foggo provided Wilkes with "sensitive, internal information related to our national security," including classified information, to help him prepare proposals for providing undercover flights for the CIA under the guise of a civil aviation company and armored vehicles for agency operations. Foggo allegedly then pushed his CIA colleagues to hire Wilkes' companies without disclosing their longstanding friendship.

What was the nature of the flights that Wilkes' company provided to the CIA? Did they include flying "suspected terrorists" to torture centers operated by the CIA in Poland and elsewhere? Did they include flying "suspected terrorists" to countries like Syria and Egypt that tortured prisoners for the U.S.?

In other words, was Wilkes running "Torture Air"?

Exposed! Raw Story Identifies CIA Torture Facility in Poland

Bob Fertik — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 13:18:11 -0500

Remember the CIA's secret torture prisons in Eastern Europe? They haven't gotten much coverage in the U.S. because the CIA denied their existence and no one really knew where they were. Now we do, thanks to Larisa Alexandrovna and David Dastych of RawStory.com.

Soviet-era compound in northern Poland was site of secret CIA interrogation, detentions

POLAND -- The CIA operated an interrogation and short-term detention facility for suspected terrorists within a Polish intelligence training school with the explicit approval of British and US authorities, according to British and Polish intelligence officials familiar with the arrangements.

Intelligence officials identify the site as a component of a Polish intelligence training school outside the northern Polish village of Stare Kiejkuty. While previously suspected, the facility has never been conclusively identified as being part of the CIA's secret rendition and detention program.

Only the Polish prime minister and top Polish intelligence brass were told of the plan, in which agents of the United States quietly shuttled detainees from other holding facilities around the globe for stopovers and short-term interrogation in Poland between late 2002 and 2004.

According to a confidential British intelligence memo shown to RAW STORY, Prime Minister Tony Blair told Poland's then-Prime Minister Leszek Miller to keep the information secret, even from his own government.

“Miller was asked to keep it as tight as possible,” the memo said.

The complex at Stare Kiejkuty, a Soviet-era compound once used by German intelligence in World War II, is best known as having been the only Russian intelligence training school to operate outside the Soviet Union. Its prominence in the Soviet era suggests that it may have been the facility first identified – but never named – when the Washington Post’s Dana Priest revealed the existence of the CIA’s secret prison network in November 2005.

Read the whole story. And let the war crimes investigations begin.

Italian Court Indicts 26 CIA Operatives For Kidnapping

CactusPat — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 20:33:07 -0500

Milan Court Indicts 26 Americans In Abduction - CIA Operatives May Be Tried in Absentia
ROME, Feb. 16 -- An Italian judge gave approval Friday for what will be the first overseas criminal trial of CIA officers involved in a covert counterterrorism operation, as a court in Milan indicted more than two dozen Americans on charges of kidnapping a radical Muslim cleric four years ago. (more)

After a judicial hearing that lasted two months, the court handed down indictments against 25 CIA operatives, a U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and five Italian spies who are accused of grabbing an imam, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, off the street and stuffing him into a white van as he walked to noonday prayers Feb. 17, 2003. Nasr was taken from Milan to his native Egypt, where he claims he was tortured in prison for more than three years.

The trial is scheduled to open June 8 and will challenge the legality of a long-standing CIA practice known as "extraordinary rendition," in which terrorism suspects are secretly abducted and taken to other countries for interrogation. None of the American defendants is in custody, nor are they expected to appear in court. Prosecutors said they will be tried in absentia.

Arrest warrants against the CIA operatives were obtained in 2005. A judge approved the indictments Friday after the judicial hearing and a lengthy criminal investigation that retraced in minute detail how the CIA put together the kidnapping plot.

The CIA and the State Department declined to comment on the indictments. "This is an issue that is before the judiciary in Italy," State Department spokesman Tom Casey said.

It is the second case in which criminal charges have been filed against CIA officers for illegally abducting a terrorism suspect. German prosecutors in Munich issued arrest warrants last month for 13 CIA operatives suspected of kidnapping a Lebanese German man, Khaled el-Masri, in the Balkans in December 2003 and taking him to Afghanistan. He was released five months later after the CIA realized they had grabbed the wrong man.

In addition, the Swiss government announced this week that it had approved a criminal investigation into the use of Switzerland's airspace to fly Nasr from Italy to a U.S. military base in Germany after his abduction.

He was put on another CIA-chartered plane to Cairo soon afterward.

The Milan prosecution team, headed by investigating magistrate Armando Spataro, has asked the Italian government to file a request with the U.S. Justice Department for extradition of the 26 American defendants. The request has already been refused once, by Roberto Castelli, then Italy's justice minister. But it is being reconsidered by a new Italian government that came to power last year.

The indictment publishes the names of the 25 CIA operatives, including the CIA's former Rome station chief Jeffrey Castelli and former Milan substation chief Robert Seldon Lady, who are accused of conspiring with the Italian military intelligence agency, known as Sismi.

Most of the CIA operatives named in the indictments had been using undercover aliases; prosecutors said they do not know the operatives' true identities and acknowledged that it is unlikely they will be found or brought to Italy to stand trial.

A former Sismi director, Gen. Nicolo Pollari, has also been charged.

Arianna Barbazza, a Milan lawyer who has been appointed to represent several of the U.S. defendants, said she and other defense attorneys in the case had been unable to contact their clients. She said it was highly unlikely that the United States would respond to an extradition request, even if the Italian government decided to make one.

Barbazza said the trial will probably reveal more about the Italian spies and their agency, "because it will attempt to verify whether Sismi was aware beforehand of the kidnapping."

Matilde Sansalone, who represents the CIA's former Rome station chief and two other Americans, said the apparent decision by the CIA operatives not to hire their own lawyers "demonstrates a specific choice to not participate in the proceedings."

Sansalone said she and other defense lawyers would not contest Nasr's abduction but would argue that there is insufficient evidence to find individual defendants guilty.

Nasr was released this week by an Egyptian court after spending nearly four years in prison. He is staying with his family in Alexandria, Egypt, and is considering filing a civil lawsuit against the Italian and U.S. governments, according to a Cairo lawyer, Montasser al-Zayat, who has worked on his behalf.

Attorneys involved in the case said it was unlikely Nasr would return to Milan to testify in the trial; he faces arrest in Italy on terrorism-related charges that were filed after his abduction. Sansalone said the outcome of the trial could change if Nasr does testify, however.

This week the Italian government also asked the country's constitutional court to determine whether investigators overstepped their legal authority by ordering wiretaps of the Italian spies' telephone calls. A ruling in the government's favor could be a setback to the prosecutor's case.

By Sarah Delaney and Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, February 17, 2007; A01
Whitlock reported from Berlin.

Also see "Switzerland Approves Probe of CIA Flight".... looks like Switzerland's getting into the act.

US Backed Terrorist Group Explode Car Bomb In Iran Killing 11 Iranian Soldiers, 31 Wounded

Chris Elliott — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 00:30:31 -0500

A War On Terrorism or a War Of Terrorism?

Reports as usual vary wildly and small wonder that some news sources are trying to pin this on yet another subsidiary of "Al Qaeda". But this wasn't a suicide attack.

The terrorists drove a car, packed with explosives, up to a bus carrying soldiers of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. Some reports say that they forced the bus to stop by firing on it with automatic weapons, others that they blocked the road with the car while pretending to have broken down. Either way, they quickly escaped on motorbikes before detonating the car bomb by remote control.

Reports claim so far 11 soldiers killed and up to 31 wounded. A terrorist attack on this scale against Iran's elite forces, in broad daylight is unprecedented.

The official Iranian news agency announced that five arrests have been made including the ring leader and a major investigation has been launched to determine who else is involved in the attack.

It also claims to have evidence that the terrorist group was backed by the United States.

Explosion kills 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards

Iranian News Agency

A car bomb killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday in the deadliest attack in years near the Pakistani border, and Iran accused the United States of backing militants to destabilize the country.

A Sunni Muslim militant group called Jundallah, or God's Brigade, which has been blamed for past attacks on Iranian troops, claimed responsibility for the bombing. The blast represented a sharp flare-up of violence in the remote southeast corner of Iran, near Pakistan and Afghanistan, that has long been plagued by lawlessness.

The area is a key crossing point for opium from Afghanistan and often sees clashes between police and drug gangs. At the same time, Jundallah has waged a low-level insurgency in the area, led by Abdulmalak Rigi, a member of Iran's ethnic Baluchi minority, a community that is Sunni Muslim and is present in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rigi has said his group is fighting for the rights of impoverished Sunnis under Iran's Shiite government.

An al-Qaida-linked group of the same name has carried out attacks in Pakistan, but Pakistani officials say it is not connected to the Iranian militants. Iranian officials blamed "insurgents" and "terrorists" for Wednesday's bombing -- and accused the United States of backing them to sow instability in Iran.

The London Times

February 15, 2007

The official Iranian news agency quoted an unnamed official as saying evidence suggested that the bus attackers had support from the United States.

Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie, Iran's Intelligence Minister, claimed last week that Tehran had identified 100 spies working for the United States and Israel in the border areas.

The attack follows sporadic violence in Iran's oil-rich south-western province of Khuzestan, which has a minority Arab population, and borders southern Iraq, where British troops are based.

Explosions killed more than 20 people in Khuzestan's capital, Ahvaz, in 2005 and early 2006. London has denied as "ludicrous" Iranian accusations that Britain has fomented instability in Khuzestan.

BBC News

Correspondents say an attack of this size and nature is unprecedented in Iran - hitting an elite force in daylight in an open street. Reports say suspects behind the bombing have been arrested.

The city of Zahedan lies in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan, which borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan. It has been hit by a string of attacks and kidnappings blamed on the hardline Sunni group called Jundallah.

Iranian officials have accused Britain and the United States of supporting ethnic minority rebels operating in the Islamic republic's sensitive border areas.

Tehran Times

Five suspects have been arrested, an official of the Sistan-Baluchestan Governor General’s Office announced.

“The detained individuals entered the province from another country and according to their confessions, they committed the terrorist act based on a plan to incite division between Shias and Sunnis and provoke ethnic strife,” Soltan-Ali Mir told the Mehr News Agency.

The ringleader of the bombing is among the five, he added. “Some of the arrested terrorists entered Iran two days ago,” Mir stated.

Sunni ulema in Sistan-Baluchestan Province have condemned the bombing, he added. A major operation is underway to identify and arrest all the others involved in the act.

Gerald Ford - Selected, not elected. Sound familiar?

CactusPat — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 18:02:20 -0500

We interrupt the Corporatist State Media's Saint Gerald Ford Memorial Beautification Propagandafest for this report from the reality-based community... All right, I've had up to here with this Canonization of Ford by the Corporatist State media. Can we all take a deep breath and contemplate Gerald Ford as a politician, and how his actions belied his bumblin' "regular guy" persona? Well, perhaps a two-by-four up side your head is necessitated... Selected, not elected. Sound familiar?

Heal the nation? I think not. More like the ultimate enabler. Thanks to Gerald Ford's pardon of Nixon, the seed of Criminal Republican Rule was thereby fostered and allowed to grow and flourish in a direct timeline from Nixon's criminal enterprise to the present criminal and illegitimate rule of Dear Misleader. Personified by the likes of Nixon WH war criminal Henry Kissinger, and "youngsters" Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld... (more)

"Nice guy" or not, Gerald Ford compiled arguably a reactionary right-wing voting record in Congress during his 1949-1973 tenure. From the era of McCarthyism through Cold War militarism, to supporting the Vietnam War, to opposing Civil Rights, and from opposing as a congress-critter, to ultimately, vetoes of much Progressive social legislation once installed as Chief Executive. How else you think he rose to the rank of Repugnant minority leader and selection as VEEP/POTUS?

So he was a healer, not a divider? GMAFB!

To recite a short litany of Ford's ills (or evils, if you will) -

There's his broken promise not to run for Prez in '76.

His complicity in the whitewash of JFK's murder as a member of the Warren Commission.

His obstruction of the Church Committee investigations of an out of control state security apparatus.

His naming, then commissioning, CIA director Poppy Bush to hype the Soviet Military threat (later used by RayGun to to obscenely inflate our military budget).

His participation in the failed attempt to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas.

And lastly Ford and Kissinger's green-lighting of Indonesia's occupation and genocide in East Timor in 1975 that left over 200,000 people dead.

Amy Goodman covered much of this in Wednesday's DemocracyNow show with interviews with several folks in the know, including Brad Simpson of the National Security Archives and journalist Alan Nairn on the Ford/Kissinger green-light of East Timor invasion, Journalist Robert Parry on Ford's legacy and the Bush MisAdministration's roots in the Ford WH, and Nation magazine publisher emeritus Victor Navasky on the possibility of an Alexander Haig brokered deal to pardon Nixon.

Victor Navasky: Let's see, in August of 1974, which was about a week before Nixon resigned, General Hague took Gerry Ford for a walk in the rose garden, and told him that Nixon was going bonkers and they had to get him out of there, and there were four possible ways to do that. The first three turned out to not realistic. But the fourth, he said, was if you would promise to pardon him after you become president, I think he would agree to resign.

Now, some years later Ford wrote about this in his memoir. And, someone, and his memoirs were being kept secret as they had sold publication rights and he had signed a contract saying he wouldn't talk about it until the book came out. And someone who had access to it asked me if I wanted to read it. And, I said not particularly, but I would, and it turned out that there was this one chapter that dealt with this conversation. And, the way Ford told the story, he put a gloss of innocence on it...

...After Hague took Ford for a walk in the rose garden, Ford writes in his memoir that he came back to his office, and he mentioned this to an aide of his named, Bob Hartman, and the aide said, and then what did you say after you heard that? And, Ford said well, I didn't say anything. And, the aide said, gee, that's not good, silence implies assent. Because Ford had asked Hague well, is it possible to pardon someone before he is indicted? And Hague said yes, we checked it out with our lawyers and it is. So Ford says, he then went to sleep and he didn't say anything to Betty about it and the next morning he got up and he mentioned it to another aide, a fellow named Jack Marsh. And Marsh said, and then what did you say? And, Ford said, I didn’t say anything, and this aide said, gee, that could be a time bomb.

So, Ford then writes, that he then went and called General Hague and read him a statement, which he reprints in his book, and the statement said, nothing I did or didn't say yesterday should be taken to mean that I did or didn't agree to pardon or not to pardon Richard Nixon. And, he writes it as a kind of proforma thing, and the way I read it was it was a an attempt to put a gloss of innocence on a deal they had made. And this is a possible obstruction of justice, and that it’s something that he shouldn’t have done and against the law, and possibly, after he got nominated and confirmed, an impeachable offense, even....

I thanks my lucky stars each and every day for Amy Goodman.

Gerald Ford R.I.P., I won't be missin' ya....

h/t to T.P.S.M. for some excellent links....

Rice: Euro Nations Knew About Renditions, Secret Prisons

Chip — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 16:35:44 -0500

Reuters reports that a draft European Parliament report shows that at least some European nations knew about the secret off-shore US jails and obstructed investigations into the prisoners' transport, called "renditions" (the practice of extradicting prisoners to third countries to avoid breaking US law and subjecting prisoners to constitutional protections) and the illegal detentions at so-called "black sites."

The head of the Italian intelligence service, SIMSI, "concealed the truth" when he told the European Parliament that Italian intelligence agents weren't involved in the CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric.

The report also shows that records from a confidential source involved in a European Union and NATO meeting with Condoleezza Rice confirmed "member states had knowledge of the (U.S.) program of extraordinary rendition and secret prisons."

The European detention facilities allowed the administration to circumvent American law. The facilities' existence has been known for a year, though the administration insisted that it was not bound by international restrictions on treatment of detainees. Rice denied that prisoners are moved for the purpose of torture and insisted that the US doesn't transport them to any country where the US thinks they might be tortured. The distinction may not have much meaning. According to a US Congressional Research Service report, "While the Bush Administration has not disputed charges that persons have been rendered to foreign States believed to practice torture, officials have denied rendering persons to States for the purpose of torture."

After 18 months of investigation and study, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights issued a report calling on the US to release or try all prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. According to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan “one cannot detain individuals in perpetuity and…charges have to be brought against them and be given a chance to explain themselves, and be prosecuted, charged or released.”

Did the CIA Kill Bobby Kennedy?

CactusPat — Fri, 24 Nov 2006 02:26:06 -0500

New evidence revealed in a BBC report puts three known anti-Castro CIA operatives at the scene of the assasination...

Update 12-04-06: YouTube has yanked the video, Google Video substituted...

Google video

BBC - CIA role claim in Kennedy killing - New video and photographic evidence that puts three senior CIA operatives at the scene of Robert Kennedy's assassination has been brought to light.

It reveals that the operatives and four unidentified associates were at the Ambassador Hotel, Los Angeles in the moments before and after the shooting on 5 June, 1968. The CIA had no domestic jurisdiction and some of the officers were based in South-East Asia at the time, with no reason to be in Los Angeles.

Kennedy had just won the California Democratic primary on an anti-War ticket and was set to challenge Nixon for the White House when he was shot in a kitchen pantry. A 24-year-old Palestinian, Sirhan Sirhan, was arrested as the lone assassin and notebooks at his house seemed to incriminate him. However, even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember the shooting and defence psychiatrists concluded he was in a trance at the time. Witnesses placed Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy but the autopsy showed the fatal shot came from one inch behind... full article

More background from the Guardian UK

Did the CIA kill Bobby Kennedy?

At first, it seems an open-and-shut case. On June 5 1968, Robert Kennedy wins the California Democratic primary and is set to challenge Richard Nixon for the White House. After midnight, he finishes his victory speech at the Ambassador hotel in Los Angeles and is shaking hands with kitchen staff in a crowded pantry when 24-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan steps down from a tray-stacker with a "sick, villainous smile" on his face and starts firing at Kennedy with an eight-shot revolver.

As Kennedy lies dying on the pantry floor, Sirhan is arrested as the lone assassin. He carries the motive in his shirt-pocket (a clipping about Kennedy's plans to sell bombers to Israel) and notebooks at his house seem to incriminate him. But the autopsy report suggests Sirhan could not have fired the shots that killed Kennedy. Witnesses place Sirhan's gun several feet in front of Kennedy, but the fatal bullet is fired from one inch behind. And more bullet-holes are found in the pantry than Sirhan's gun can hold, suggesting a second gunman is involved. Sirhan's notebooks show a bizarre series of "automatic writing" - "RFK must die RFK must be killed - Robert F Kennedy must be assassinated before 5 June 68" - and even under hypnosis, he has never been able to remember shooting Kennedy. (full report)

h/t CCNWON blog

Rumsfeld and the Rest of Bush's Torture-Mongers Charged With War-Crimes

CactusPat — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 07:04:24 -0500

Amy Goodman interviews Center for Constitutional Rights president Michael Ratner, former Gen. Janis Karpinski, and CCR lawyer Gita Gutierrez about the lawsuit filed in Germany Tues. against Rumsfeld and the rest of Bush's Torture-Mongers. What I find most interesting is that all of them are named, with the glaring exception of Bush and Cheney themselves (due to defacto immunity of sitting heads of state). The list includes Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, AG Alberto Gonzales, Under SecDef for Intell Stephen Cambone, former asst. AG Jay Bybee, former deputy asst. AG John Yoo, Gen. Counsel of the DoD William James Haynes II, David S. Addington - Cheney's chief of staff, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez - former top Army official in Iraq, Gen. Geoffrey Miller - former commander at Guantanamo, Major Gen. Walter Wojdakowski - senior Iraq commander, and Col. Thomas Pappas - the former head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib. 'Bout time the whole bunch of torturin' bastages had their names listed together in one place...

War Crimes Suit Filed in Germany Against Rumsfeld, Other Top U.S. Officials Over Prisoner Torture - Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights filed a war crimes lawsuit today in Germany against outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and other high-ranking U.S. officials, for their role in the torture of prisoners in Iraq and Guantanamo... (more)

AMY GOODMAN: We go first to Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, joining us now from Berlin. Democracy Now! welcomes you, Michael. Can you explain the lawsuit and the major news conference that you held today? The world, for the first time, really, picking up this story.

MICHAEL RATNER: I think that's right, Amy. This is the first time they're really picking it up. The press conference was well attended. This is news all over the world. I mean, one of the things we noticed wbout this lawsuit was the number of groups willing to join. The Center for Constitutional Rights, we have a major group of human rights organizations under the title FIDH, the International Federation of Human Rights, which has 140 branches. We have Theo Van Boven, the former rapporteur for the United Nations on torture has joined the suit, Nobel Prize winners and others. It's really -- it’s taken off. I think people are tired, really tired and angry over what the United States has perpetrated in the name of fighting the so-called war on terror.

What we did today was file a 220-page complaint -- we've been working on this for quite a while -- against 14 high-level US officials, Rumsfeld being the lead one, but, of course, General Sanchez being in there, Tenet, the former head of the CIA, and a number of the lawyers who wrote some of the so-called torture memos, particularly lawyers Yoo and Bybee. The procedure here you is file that complaint with the prosecutor, and the prosecutor then decides whether or not to begin an investigation.

As you said, we did file a case -- a similar case in 2004. The prosecutor in 2004 dismissed the case. He dismissed it really for legal reasons on the face of it, but for political reasons, as well. The legal reasons, he said, were the United States, it appeared to him, was still investigating up the chain of command and was making an effort to look into who was responsible for the war crimes and the torture that went from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib. We thought that was a wrong ruling then. We didn't think there was any evidence the US was looking up the chain of command.

But here, we're now even in a different situation that makes that excuse really irrelevant and not possible again. Two things have happened. One is, a year and a half has passed since we filed the last case, and, of course, nothing has been done to go after Donald Rumsfeld or Tenet or Sanchez or any of the other people we've named. So, that alone says a lot about what the US is doing. But as you also mentioned in your opening, that the US has also immunized these people from war crimes. In the Military Commissions Act, which was signed by the President on October 17th, he amends the statute that makes violations of the Geneva Conventions criminal. That's called the War Crimes Act. He amends it, not just going forward, but he amends it going backwards, back to 9/11/2001, essentially immunizing these officials in the United States from any prosecutions for war crimes.

So now that we're in Germany, which is really a court of last resort -- we can't go to the United States courts, we can't go to the international courts. They have no jurisdiction. You have to go to national courts. We’re in Germany, in part because it has the best law on universal jurisdiction and in part because certainly in the past, and as far as we know today, some of the perpetrators are actually at military bases in Germany. Germany can no longer say, well, the US is seriously investigating, because the US has essentially immunized these defendants.... (read the rest and/or stream the audio-video)

Torture Suit Star Witness, Fmr. Abu Ghraib Head Janis Karpinski Points to Signed Rumsfeld Memo Listing Harsh Interrogation Techniques - A group of lawyers filed a lawsuit today calling on German prosecutors to investigate outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for allegedly sanctioning torture. We go to Berlin to speak with former Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, who served as the commanding officer at Abu Ghraib. She is the highest-ranking US military officer reprimanded over the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal....

Plaintiff in Suit Against Rumsfeld Subjected to Sexual, Religious Humiliation at Guantanamo - Guantanamo prisoner Mohammedal-Qahtani is among the plaintiffs named in a war crimes lawsuit filed in Germany today against outgoing Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Attorneys with the Center for Constitutional Rights accuse Rumsfeld of being directly involved in the brutal interrogation of al-Qahtani. We speak with al-Qahtani's attorney, Gita Gutierrez.

Other than DemocracyNow the story was picked up by ABC's BlotterBlog and Time Mag...

Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse
Just days after his resignation, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is about to face more repercussions for his involvement in the troubled wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New legal documents, to be filed next week with Germany's top prosecutor, will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld, along with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet and other senior U.S. civilian and military officers, for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The plaintiffs in the case include 11 Iraqis who were prisoners at Abu Ghraib, as well as Mohammad al-Qahtani, a Saudi held at Guantanamo, whom the U.S. has identified as the so-called "20th hijacker" and a would-be participant in the 9/11 hijackings. As TIME first reported in June 2005, Qahtani underwent a "special interrogation plan," personally approved by Rumsfeld, which the U.S. says produced valuable intelligence. But to obtain it, according to the log of his interrogation and government reports, Qahtani was subjected to forced nudity, sexual humiliation, religious humiliation, prolonged stress positions, sleep deprivation and other controversial interrogation techniques.... (the rest)