PR Worries Stalled Release of Gitmo Inmates

Staff / Truthdig Feb 13, 2009 A 2006 memo from the State Department to the US Transportation Command suggested holding Guantanamo detainees after they had been cleared in order to avoid bad press "Got it Thank you," was the reply, and indeed, no prisoners flew out of Guantanamo for three months. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Team Obama’s New Transparency Tactic

Staff / Truthdig Dec 6, 2008 If the secret policy wonk in you has always hankered to sit in on those exciting meetings that happen in elite circles of government, you're in luck -- members of the Obama transition team have found another way to use the Web with their new "Seat at the Table" initiative. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

McCain’s Pollster Is Optimistic

Staff / Truthdig Oct 30, 2008 Don't count John McCain out just yet. His personal pollster recently told the campaign that "impressive strides over the last week of tracking" mean the race could "easily be too close to call by next Tuesday." That sounds like obligatory fluff to some politicos, but NBC's Chuck Todd sees it differently. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

McCain Camp Assails Book-Banning Report as a ‘Smear’

Staff / Truthdig Sep 9, 2008 Team McCain has rejected the "vicious smear" that as mayor of Wasilla, Sarah Palin wanted to ban books from the local library, but the campaign's 1,615-word memo on the subject indirectly supports the accusation. As Palin's mayoral predecessor recalls, "She asked the library how she could go about banning books." According to the Anchorage Daily News, she also fired the library director "without warning" for "not fully supporting her efforts to govern." Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Parsing the Clinton Memos

E.J. Dionne Jr. / Truthdig Aug 14, 2008 Will the Party of Clinton ever become the Party of Obama? It has now been more than two months since Barack Obama secured the Democratic presidential nomination, yet here we are, still fascinated with Bill and Hillary Clinton and what they're up to. Why? Dig deeper ( 3 Min. Read )

Justice Torture Memos Say ‘Good Faith’ Is Legal Defense

Staff / Truthdig Jul 25, 2008 Ah, good intentions, with which that famous path was paved: According to Justice Department documents obtained and released by the ACLU on Thursday -- albeit heavily redacted -- CIA interrogators were authorized to use waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques" that they believed "in good faith" would not "have the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Are Republicans Running Scared?

Staff / Truthdig May 16, 2008 The GOP was already bracing for a tough political year, but losses in three special elections prompted Rep. Tom Davis to send a panicked note to Republican leaders: "The political atmosphere facing House Republicans this November is the worst since Watergate and is far more toxic than the fall of 2006 when we lost thirty seats." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Torture’s Poet Laureate

Staff / Truthdig Apr 2, 2008 A recently declassified memo shines the spotlight once again on John "Take Them to the Point of Death" Yoo, a UC Berkeley law professor and once deputy legal counsel in the Justice Department. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )

Justice Investigates Itself Over Waterboarding Approval

Staff / Truthdig Feb 23, 2008 The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating memos and opinions rendered by the department that endorsed the practice of waterboarding, which many consider to be torture. The inquiry is unrelated to the FBI's criminal investigation of the CIA, which destroyed video recordings of the waterboarding of suspects. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

‘From the Desk of Donald Rumsfeld’

Staff / Truthdig Nov 2, 2007 The Washington Post has obtained a number of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's "snowflakes," curt memos fired off at a rate of up to 60 a day. The documents offer rare, unpolished insight into one of the principal architects of the Iraq war, who "argued that Muslims avoid 'physical labor' and wrote of the need to 'keep elevating the threat,' 'link Iraq to Iran' and develop 'bumper sticker statements' to rally public support for an increasingly unpopular war." Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Crocker Sounds Alarm on Iraqi Refugees

Staff / Truthdig Sep 17, 2007 In a terse State Department memo, US Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker admonishes America's acceptance of Iraqi refugees as critically slow Crocker estimates that it would take the U nearly two years to process and admit 10,000 refugees referred for resettlement to the U. Dig deeper ( 1 Min. Read )

Rumsfeld Disowns the War

Staff / Truthdig Sep 11, 2007 The former defense secretary graces the pages of October's GQ (of all places) to make some bold assertions, claiming he was not a driving force behind the Iraq war and that he warned the president of many of the problems that have come to pass. Dig deeper ( 2 Min. Read )