|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Jonathan Mahler
$15.60
$14
$20
|
|
|
|
AP photo / Haraz N. Ganbari
|
Tapes? Oh, those tapes! CIA officials are justifying their failure to hand over videotapes of “severe interrogation” methods by saying they were not specifically asked for them. The officials were reacting to criticism by former 9/11 Commission members.
|
|
By David Sirota — A recent study found that one-third of Americans “believe in a broad smorgasbord of conspiracy theories,” which really isn’t that surprising considering we have a government that has gone out of its way to undermine the rule of law and public accountability.
|
|
A new report by The New York Times suggests that the White House was a lot closer to those secret CIA torture tapes than has been previously suggested. “At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions ... between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes,” according to the Gray Lady.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — The kidnap and torture program of the Bush administration, with its secret CIA “black site” prisons and “torture taxi” flights on private jets, saw a little light of day this week.
|
dw-world.de
|
U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, who in June 2005 ordered the Bush administration to protect “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees” at Guantanamo Bay, has now ordered the administration to explain why it destroyed two videotapes of such treatment just five months later.
|
usnews.com
|
Newly installed Attorney General Michael Mukasey swiftly shot down requests by House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, as well as other members of Congress, for information about the Justice Department’s investigation of the CIA tape destruction fiasco—because the department would seem “subject to political influence.” Oh.
|
AP photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
|
By Robert Scheer — When the CIA destroyed those prisoner interrogation videotapes, was it also destroying the truth about 9/11? After all, according to the 9/11 Commission Report, the basic narrative of what happened on that day comes from the CIA’s account of what those prisoners told their torturers. And what about those congressional leaders, including Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi, who were briefed on the torture program as early as 2002?
|
|
Former CIA agent John Kiriakou, who witnessed the waterboarding of top al-Qaida operative Abu Zubaida, has said that the practice is indeed torture and “a policy made at the White House, with concurrence from the National Security Council and the Justice Department.” Kiriakou added during an interview with NBC that the destruction of video evidence of the technique was “a terrible mistake.”
|
|
CIA Director General Michael Hayden has been summoned by Congress and will appear Tuesday and Wednesday before the Senate and House Intelligence committees to answer questions about the destruction of secret CIA videotapes that documented the abuse of detainees. The White House counsel, meanwhile, has ordered press secretary Dana Perino to keep quiet on the matter.
|
|
The Justice Department and the CIA inspector general have launched a joint inquiry into the agency’s destruction of video recordings of so-called harsh interrogation techniques. Color us skeptical, since Attorney General Michael Mukasey couldn’t be bothered to take a position on torture—or harsh interrogation techniques, if that’s the term you want to use—during his confirmation.
|
abcnews.com
|
A bipartisan group of top lawmakers, including current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was briefed on the details of waterboarding and other interrogation techniques as early as 2002. According to several U.S. officials, over the course of roughly 30 private briefings only one objection to the practice was raised.
|
washingtonpost.com
|
A day after The New York Times released its explosive report that at least two videotapes showing CIA agents using severe interrogation tactics (that most nefarious of euphemisms) on terror suspects, congressional Democrats are registering their extreme displeasure and calling for an official investigation into what Sen. Edward Kennedy slammed as a “cover-up.”
|
AP photo / J. Scott Applewhite
|
The New York Times has discovered that the CIA destroyed “at least two videotapes” showing agents using severe interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects. Those interrogations were part of the evidence in the official 9/11 investigation, yet the CIA never told the 9/11 Commission of the existence of the tapes or transcripts. The agency cited a “serious security risk” for destroying the evidence.
|
cnn.com
|
Turns out that the current White House press secretary, Dana Perino (pictured), has broached the uncomfortable topic (considering her position) of Scott McClellan’s upcoming book. Unsurprisingly, Perino reported in an off-camera moment during Monday’s White House press briefing that Bush never knowingly misinformed McClellan.
|
defectiveyeti.com
|
There has been no shortage of tell-all books from former Bushies (paging George Tenet), but the latest one, by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, is a real bombshell—primarily because McClellan alleges that the president, the vice president and three other high-ranking officials allowed him to pass “false information” about the Valerie Plame CIA identity leak case to the press.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
For the first time in George W. Bush’s political life, a Bush government is trying not to have someone executed, or so it seems. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has accused the U.S. of stalling the executions of three prominent prisoners, one of whom might have been in cahoots with the CIA during Saddam Hussein’s reign.
|
|
Granted, the Bush administration didn’t invent the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” but, as PBS illustrates in an edition of “Frontline,” the practice has become even more controversial and horrifying in the years since 9/11.
|
cbsnews.com
|
Meet Rafid Ahmed Alwan, otherwise known as “Curve Ball” in intelligence circles. He’s an Iraqi defector who apparently won himself a green card with his fabricated claims about Saddam Hussein’s regime harboring biological weapons, which became the CIA’s (and Colin Powell’s) key justification for the U.S. invasion of Iraq.
|
|
It looks as though Michael Mukasey is one step closer to becoming attorney general, having secured the support of Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Charles Schumer. Judiciary Committee Chairman (and former Truthdigger of the Week) Pat Leahy, on the other hand, plans to vote no, because “No American should need a classified briefing to determine whether waterboarding is torture.”
|
|
Say what you want about the serious news function of satirical shows like “The Daily Show” in today’s treacherous media landscape, but only those, like Jon Stewart, operating in the Comedy Central orbit can get away with asking ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson if her breasts “are still working for the CIA.”
|
|
CIA Chief Michael Hayden has issued a passionate defense of extraordinary rendition, claiming that the practice, which so often involves abduction and torture, is justified by the “irreplaceable” intelligence it produces. Meanwhile, President Bush’s preferred successor to loyal henchman Alberto Gonzales refuses to call torture by its name, though he claims to find it “repugnant.”
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
A former U.S. intelligence officer involved in the execution of Ernesto “Che” Guevara has decided to auction a lock of the icon’s hair for a minimum of $100,000. The officer is unhappy with Guevara’s iconic status, auctioneer Tom Slater says, yet he seems perfectly content to profit from it.
|
|
By Joe Conason — The senator rarely surrenders a juicy quote without a struggle. Yet her familiar preference for caution over candor is gradually changing with each step that she takes toward her party’s presidential nomination.
|
washingtontimes.com
|
In her new memoir, former CIA officer Valerie Plame tells of her shock as the Bush administration presented evidence in 2003 that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction—“I knew key parts of it were wrong,” she says—as well as her take on her outing as a CIA employee.
|
guardian.co.uk
|
The British government’s Foreign Affairs Committee will look into charges by a number of sources, including human rights groups and a retired U.S. general, that sovereign British land has been used as a CIA “black site” prison. The island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, has been leased to the United States and is the site of an American military base but remains British territory.
|
|
By Amy Goodman — John Lennon would have turned 67 years old last week had he not been murdered in 1980 by a mentally disturbed fan. On his birthday, Oct. 9, his widow, peace activist and artist Yoko Ono, realized a dream they shared.
|
|
By Robert Fisk — I’m not at all certain that the CIA did not have a scam drugs heist on board and I am not at all sure that the diminutive Libyan agent Megrahi—ultimately convicted on the evidence of the memory of a Maltese tailor—really arranged to plant the bomb on board Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988.
|
AP photo
|
By Chris Hedges — The Bush administration has called for the respect of human rights in Burma, a pretty safe piece of posturing, but it remains silent as Egypt’s dictator, Gen. Hosni Mubarak, unleashes the largest crackdown on public opposition in over a decade. Our moral indignation over the shooting of monks masks the incestuous and growing alliance we have built in the so-called war on terror with some of the world’s most venal dictatorships.
|
AP photo / Javier Galeano
|
By Robert Scheer — If the CIA thought that executing the guerrilla would kill what he stood for, it mostly assuredly has been proved wrong. Witness the current state of politics in Latin America, not to mention the reverence this week that marked the 40th anniversary of his death.
|
laapush.org
|
German citizen Khaled el-Masri’s quest for justice, following his “extraordinary rendition,” has come to an end. Masri claims he was kidnapped by CIA operatives in late 2003 and tortured for months in an Afghan prison, but his case was closed on Tuesday when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal.
|
AP photo / Javier Galeano
|
Forty years after his death at the hands of CIA operatives and Bolivian troops, Marxist revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara has become a legend and an icon, as evidenced by the familiar image of his face emblazoned on the T-shirts of college students everywhere. To mark the anniversary of his assassination, the BBC interviewed Felix Rodriguez, an ex-CIA agent who received the order to have Guevara shot.
|
|
In 2005, the Justice Department issued two secret opinions on torture that endorsed and protected the administration’s desire to use physically and psychologically traumatizing interrogation techniques. Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey reportedly warned his colleagues that they would be “ashamed” when their work became public.
|
worldisround.com
|
The Iranian parliament has taken the I’m rubber, you’re glue approach to dealing with the U.S., labeling the United States Army and the CIA terrorist organizations, just days after Congress suggested the same designation for Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
|
AP photo / Gerald Herbert
|
By Scott Ritter — If you think the Iraq war is a disaster, just wait until we start bombing Iran. The countdown to another war is both real and terrifying, Ritter argues, and, distasteful though it may seem, it won’t be stopped so long as Iraq holds on to the spotlight.
|
smh.com.au
|
A newly released internal CIA report lays the “ultimate blame” for a lack of strategy to combat al-Qaida before 9/11 on former Director George Tenet, who calls the charge “flat wrong.” Congress ordered the declassification of the scathing document, which was completed in 2005.
|
|
You’ve heard the hype, now see the show—or at least its standout number, if you’re not currently in Edinburgh, Scotland. Here, we present footage of foolhardy star Sorab Wadia as self-styled megalomaniac Hussein Al Mansour, singing “I Wanna Be Like Osama” in “Jihad The Musical,” playing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival until the last week of August.
|
|
A British committee investigating possible UK involvement in extraordinary rendition has found that the U.S. ignored British intelligence caveats and concerns, possibly straining a historically close intelligence relationship. The committee also recommended a ban on cooperation that could lead to secret detention, which it said “is of itself mistreatment.”
|
|
Were the CIA to potentially, maybe, have a detention and interrogation program it would now have to adhere to President Bush’s new executive order prohibiting cruel and inhuman treatment of detainees. It’s still unclear whether water-boarding remains on the menu.
|
AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta
|
On Tuesday, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden made good on his pledge to declassify nearly 700 pages of documents about some of the agency’s dirtiest laundry from the past—its “family jewels”—including details about assassination plots, wiretapping and other alarming activities.
|
gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/
|
The National Security Archive at George Washington University has posted documents on its website that expose ugly activities by the CIA before reforms were made in the 1970s. The secrecy watchdog says the agency violated its charter for 25 years by spying on journalists and political dissidents, in addition to engaging in other nefarious activities.
|
|
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, with the blessing of the White House, will rewrite the Reagan-era executive order that defines the function of the United States’ many spy agencies and prohibits espionage against Americans. While critics concede that the order is out of date, they worry that an administration with a fondness for spying on its own might seize the opportunity to trample on a few civil liberties.
Posted on Jun 12, 2007
READ MORE 
|
|
A new report from the Council of Europe accuses Poland and Romania of housing secret CIA prisons, and also blames Germany and Italy for blocking investigation into the matter. The report’s author says his sources are limited, but “well placed” and even “implicated” in abuses. The CIA said the document was “distorted” but did not categorically deny its accusations.
|
|
George Tenet’s combative interview with “60 Minutes” is as fascinating as it is upsetting. The former CIA director careens between defensive ire and finger-pointing at an administration he says distracted us from the biggest threat to our nation’s security.
|
|
By Joe Conason — While the natural human fascination with gossip and backbiting among our rulers guarantees media coverage and best-seller status for George Tenet’s new memoir, the former CIA director cannot achieve absolution in print or on television.
|
AP Photo / Lawrence Jackson
|
By Robert Scheer — The three short sentences at the beginning of Chapter 17 of former CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, “At the Center of the Storm,” tell it all: “The United States did not go to war in Iraq solely because of WMD. I doubt it was even the principal cause. Yet it was the public face that was put on it.”
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Marching in Chicago: Resisting Rahm Emanuel’s Neoliberal Savagery
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
