He Said He Tortures, She Said He Tortures

I've said in the past that the moment we start having a debate about torture, the moment we allow it into civilized conversation and the "he said/she said" format of contemporary politics, we've lost that debate. Nevertheless, we can look at the polls and divine that a slim majority would like to see investigations of Bush-era torture practices. It would have been higher if they actually used the word torture instead of "harsh interrogation technqiues", or described the techniques in a legitimate fashion. And of course, this is why the fact of the debate distorts the debate. Dick Cheney blustered and talked about how effective it was to waterboard prisoners and avoided the word torture, and the polls are taken with an eye toward that and an effort to be "fair." But there's nothing to be fair about, no reason to neuter the language. As Will Bunch puts it, torture is not about "winning the afternoon."

I know this must be hard for the editors at the Politico to fathom, but there are actually some stories that come down the pike that are more important, and more complicated, than "winning the morning" or "winning the afternoon." The growing drumbeat of revelations about the torture of prisoners in American custody -- in a scheme that was cooked up and then rationalized at the highest levels of our government -- is nothing less than a moral test of who we are as a nation and where we want go from here. It doesn't lend itself to cute little "up" and "down" arrows, to dueling cable shouters "on the right" and "on the left," to all the little devices we in the media use to equate American politics on the soundbite level of sports' "Pardon the Interruption." [...]

Almost every flaw of our craft has been on display in the last week or two -- the pleading for a middle-of-the-road answer to a problem where there is no middle ground, the phony "he said, she said" journalism that gives a 50 percent voice to the advocates of American-bred torture, the use of unnecessary anonymous quotes to defend the indefensible, the need for an elite inside-the-Beltway clique to circle the wagons, to insist that aggressive prosecution is only for the crimes that "regular people" commit.

What a shame. Although it is tragic that we must be talking about something like torture in the United States of America in 2009, this issue does offer modern journalism a chance to do something we have not done in at least a generation -- and that is to provide this nation, our readers and viewers, with moral clarity and leadership. There is still time to show that we've learned something from the fiasco of pre-Iraq war journalism, when a lack of aggressive reporting and a kowtowing to authority made us a co-conspirator in one major step into the abyss, when we launched a "pre-emptive war" against a nation not capable of attacking us. Now, there is no reason why every journalistic voice in this country can say it as simply as Fox News Channel's Shepherd Smith, that "we are America, we do not (expletive deleted) torture." Why not? I don't know any journalist who thinks there are two sides to freedom of the press, so why should freedom from torture be any different?

Perhaps the biggest failure in the torture "debate" occurred over a year ago, when ABC debased themselves by taking the views of a CIA agent at face value, statements that have now been utterly debunked. Good for the New York Times to dredge it up.

In late 2007, there was the first crack of daylight into the government’s use of waterboarding during interrogations of Al Qaeda detainees. On Dec. 10, John Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. officer who had participated in the capture of the suspected terrorist Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in 2002, appeared on ABC News to say that while he considered waterboarding a form of torture, the technique worked and yielded results very quickly.

Mr. Zubaydah started to cooperate after being waterboarded for “probably 30, 35 seconds,” Mr. Kiriakou told the ABC reporter Brian Ross. “From that day on he answered every question.”

His claims — unverified at the time, but repeated by dozens of broadcasts, blogs and newspapers — have been sharply contradicted by a newly declassified Justice Department memo that said waterboarding had been used on Mr. Zubaydah “at least 83 times.”

Some critics say that the now-discredited information shared by Mr. Kiriakou and other sources heightened the public perception of waterboarding as an effective interrogation technique. “I think it was sanitized by the way it was described” in press accounts, said John Sifton, a former lawyer for Human Rights Watch, an advocacy group.

There's no question about it. Kiriakou came out of central casting, a Jack Bauer-lite telling conservatives what they wanted to hear. He never carried out waterboarding, he never set foot in a secret CIA prison. But he became the poster boy, and Brian Ross never thought to challenge him on his statements. Kiriakou later ended up working for ABC. And Ross literally says in this story, "I didn’t give enough credit to the fiendishness of the C.I.A.”

As Glennzilla notes, Kiriakou and Ross' lies zinged around conservative media, despite the lack of evidence. And that shaped the "debate". A debate we should never be having. A debate based on falsehoods and false premises. A debate which is hurting our standing in the world.

More fallout from the torture "debate" - you get moronic polemicists criticizing the media for doing their job.



Scarborough has since apologized. But that doesn't matter. It's out there now.

Evidence, Remixed

So that's it then. The FBI has laid out what they've got, and they say Bruce Ivins was the anthrax killer, hand down. No question about it. It was him. Definitely. Case closed. You can read the documents yourself!

Except there's the whole massive amounts of holes in the evidence thing. Other than that, rock solid.

1. Ivins had just been immunized against anthrax. He was required to have yearly immunizations, and some anthrax scientists have chosen to be vaccinated every six months for safety, since the vaccine's efficacy is weak--and Ivins had proven its weakness in several animal models. In his career he had probably received about 33 separate anthrax vaccinations.

2. Earlier, we heard the envelopes came from the specific post office he frequented. Today the affidavit states it is "reasonable to conclude" they were purchased in Maryland or Virginia.

3. Choosing a strain that would direct suspicion at Ivins. The perpetrator(s) were tremendously careful to leave no clues vis a vis the envelopes. For example, block lettering was used, which is the hardest to identify with handwriting analysis. Second, stamped envelopes were chosen to avoid using saliva. Third, there were no fingerprints on anything.

Why would the person(s) who took such care select an anthrax strain that would focus suspicion on himself? In 2001, strain analysis was possible. It had been discussed many times as a forensic tool for biowarfare, including in a paper I wrote in 1992, which Ivins had read, and in which I thanked him for his contributions.

4. Ivins was the "sole custodian" of the strain. But the strain was grown in 1997, and many people had access to it over that four year period. Having received a sample, or obtained it surreptitiously, they would be "custodians" of it too.

And most important, being at the actual scene of the crime:

13. The anthrax attacker MUST be able to be placed at the scene of the mailboxes, at the times the letters were mailed. Surely the FBI sought information on these dates and places from everyone with anthrax access in the US and probably abroad, shortly after the letter attacks. Either Ivins had an alibi or he didn't. Put up or shut up: this is the most critical evidence in this case. If Ivins cannot be placed in New Jersey on those dates, he is not the attacker, or he did not act alone.

Furthermore, there were other letters. Some contained other powders. Some were said to contain some anthrax in contemporaneous news reports. Some were warnings. These were mailed from other places, on other dates. The FBI has sat on this collateral evidence. If these envelopes, ink or block print were the same, the attacker would have to be placed at the scene when those letters were mailed. What happened to this evidence? Pony up.

You can give me all the lurid tales to paint this guy as a wacko as you want. Until you place him at the scene, without the sleight of hand of saying "the mailbox was near a storage closet that housed materials from a sorority that he was obsessed with 30 years ago," the case is noticeably weak. You can pull out all the acquaintances of Ivins (which conflict with those who actually knew him well), but all they do is prove Ivins was a creep (which is believable), not necessarily a bioterrorist.

The evidence we do have is middling.

While what I've seen of their case so far makes a pretty compelling argument that Ivins was involved in creating the anthrax, they've got nothing that explains how it walked out of Ft. Detrick, got into envelopes, and got sent to a bunch of media figures and senators. Importantly, their "motive" for the selection of Leahy and Daschle is piss poor.

And, as I've said twice already, if they take their "motive" seriously: a desire to make sure anthrax vaccines were continued, a desire to pass the PATRIOT Act, and a reason to dislike Daschle and Leahy, Scooter Libby (who also lived in an area where he could have gotten those envelopes) and Dick Cheney had much stronger motives for sending the anthrax.

But don't worry, the FBI says. We've got Ivins 200 miles away and no real motive and no real evidence tying him to the emptying the flask, but since we used some really cool science to place Ivins with the flask, that should be good enough for you.

The science is thin; the circumstantial evidence (he hated the ACLU! An NBC reporter was on his case at one point! He wrote a variation of "death to America" in an email in September 2001!) is voluminous and not particularly compelling. I'm seeing the FBI link the anthrax to a particular flask, but Ivins had no residue on him, in his car, in his house, in his lab, or really anywhere he had access to. And Greenwald makes an important point:

It is critical to keep in mind that all they released is their own claims and summary about the evidence they have. The evidence itself continues to remain concealed, in their exclusive possession, examined by nobody.

What happened today with this selective document release is akin to a criminal trial where only the Prosecutor is allowed to see the relevant evidence, only the Prosecutor is allowed to select which evidence is presented, and only the Prosecutor speaks. Such a distorted, one-sided process doesn't even happen at Guantanamo, which should, by itself, indicate how much skepticism is warranted here until the FBI makes the actual evidence available so that its claims can be subjected to critical scrutiny.

Plus, even if you agree with the FBI's conclusions, you have to consider them criminally liable for allowing Ivins to continue to work inside a government lab years after they pinpointed the flask that contained the deadly anthrax and linked it to him. That's insane.

Even the victims and their families and friends, who you would think would be most willing to have closure on this, aren't all convinced.

Dena Briscoe, president of the American Postal Workers Union local for Washington and Southern Maryland, slipped into the news conference at the Justice Department to ask when postal employees would be informed about the investigation. "There are still too many unanswered questions. I still can't say that one person did all of this," Briscoe told a reporter just before an official asked her to leave the room [...]

Leroy Richmond, 64, who nearly died after contracting anthrax at Brentwood, was asked later about the briefing. "I'm okay with it," he said, holding aloft a ream of documents. He referred questions to his attorney, Gregory Lattimer, who said the Stafford resident is still considering a lawsuit.

"A plausible case could be made in terms of Mr. Ivins's guilt, but on the other hand, a case could be made that none of this constitutes a smoking gun," Lattimer said.

This demands a full investigation and a full release of all the data that the FBI is using to convict Ivins in the media. In addition, we need to know who leaked to Brian Ross of ABC News the disclosure that the anthrax contained bentonite, linking it to Iraq. TV Newser has a long interview with Ross where he insists that his sources, all government scientists involved in the initial analysis, were not intentionally lying to him but simply mistaken. The sources themselves need to answer those questions.

Anthrax Case Twists And Turns

There is a very coordinated push to leak details about the late Bruce Ivins to certify that he is the "lone nut" anthrax killer which don't entirely hold up upon scrutiny. There's definitely a desire on the part of the government to make this an open and shut case seven years after the fact, but it doesn't completely hold together. The LA Times is claiming that Ivins stood to make money off of an anthrax panic, because he invented some bioterror vaccines, but inside the article it's made clear that we're talking about $10,000 rather than $1 million. We're hearing that a social worker who worked as a therapist with Ivins was scared to death of him and claimed that he tried to poison people in the past, but the social worker, Jean Duley, has her own checkered past, with a long rap sheet, and apparently knew about the grand jury investigation, as it's in her restraining order against Ivins:

client has a history dating to his graduate days of homicidal threats, actions, plans, threats & actions toward theripist. Dr. David Irwin his psychiatrist called him homicidal, sociopathic with clear intentions will testify with other details FBI involved, currently under investigation & will be charged with 5 capital murders. I have been subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury August 1, 2008 in Washington, D.C.

How would she know that before testifying? Why does she have intimate knowledge of the case? Why is she the recipient of FBI information?

The FBI is leaking to the LA Times that DNA evidence proves Ivins' guilt, after a fresh look at the genetic evidence, and that after these tests it was clear that only Ivins could have been the killer. But the New York Times Scott Shane calls the evidence circumstantial and that the grand jury was planning to continue to meet for weeks.

While genetic analysis had linked the anthrax letters to a supply of the deadly bacterium in Dr. Ivins’s laboratory at Fort Detrick, Md., at least 10 people had access to the flask containing that anthrax, said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation also have no evidence proving that Dr. Ivins visited New Jersey on the dates in September and October 2001 when investigators believe the letters were sent from a Princeton mailbox, the source said.

The source acknowledged that there might be some elements of the evidence of which he was unaware. And while he characterized what he did know about as “damning,” he said that instead of irrefutable proof, investigators had an array of indirect evidence that they argue strongly implicates Dr. Ivins in the attacks, which killed 5 people and sickened 17 others.

And Ivins had security clearance as recently as last month and was only barred from the Ft. Detrick site after counselors warned of his "deteriorating mental condition."

This could be a guilty man knowing the walls are closing in, or a marked man who was harassed into suicide because many in government wanted to close the case. The point is that there are a lot of questions, and until the evidence is revealed there's no reason to accept the official story. It is called "unlikely" that Ivins even knew how to produce weaponized, dry anthrax and didn't have access to it. (The site Anthrax Vaccine is going to be indispensable going forward; Dr. Meryl Nass, the author, and Glenn Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now this morning.)

Meanwhile, regarding the false ABC report linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq (which was not the first, by the way, there was a lot of misinformation or disinformation out there at the time), Glenn Greenwald writes:

Relating to ABC, a reader exchanged emails with Brian Ross this weekend, and Ross wrote this (the email was sent from Ross' ABC address; yesterday, I emailed both him and ABC's Jeffrey Schneider to request confirmation of its authenticity, and they didn't reply):

As we reported more than six years ago our information came from current and former government scientists. The report was discointed [sic] and denied by the White House which we reported. I believe now the scientists got it wrong although they insisted they were correct long after.

Actually, this is the first time, to my knowledge, that Ross has ever acknowledged that his sources for the bentonite story were "current and former government scientists." Given that he previously described his sources as being "well-placed," that means, presumably, that they were scientists with extremely close proximity to Fort Detrick (where the anthrax tests were being conducted) if not Fort Detrick scientists themselves. That would mean, if the FBI's accusation against Ivins is true, that the same Government lab where the attacks originated was the source for falsely telling Ross that tests revealed evidence linking the attacks to Iraq. In light of that, how can Ross possibly continue to conceal which Government scientists disseminated this false story?

It is also worth noting that Ross, who was a key witness in the Steven Hatfill litigation (since he had published numerous incriminating leaks from the DOJ) badgered at least one of his government sources, FBI spokesman Edwin Cogswell, to provide Ross with a release authorizing Ross to disclose the source's identity (allowing Ross to avoid being held in contempt by the court). Has Ross sought a similar release from his bentonite sources? Clearly, at least in some instances, Ross is able to convince his sources to allow him to disclose their identity when he is properly motivated to do so. For the reasons Professors Rosen and Gillmor point out, no release should be necessary, since these sources fed him deliberate falsehoods, but one wonders if Ross has even tried to persuade them to give permission for Ross to disclose who they are.

There are far more questions than answers at this point. ABC and any other journalist who got tips about this case need to burn their sources if they believe that the sources have lied. Tom Daschle, who received one of the anthrax-laced letters, wants full disclosure on the botched investigation as well.

There's clearly going to be a sustained effort to close this case, finger Ivins as the killer, and turn away from any of the lingering questions. That would be a huge mistake.

Acceptable v. Unacceptable

When you read this story, you have to play back in your mind the vision of Brian Ross getting the release of Hillary Clinton's personal First Lady schedule, flipping through his heavily dog-eared copy of the Starr Report, and studiously matching up dates. All the while approving the clip art of the semen-stained dress and Lewinsky, making sure it all fit in the frame, etc.

You could bust a guy for sexual deviancy just for the work it took to produce this swill.

Hillary Was in White House on "Stained Blue Dress" Day

Schedules Reviewed by ABC Show Hillary May Have Been in the White House When the Fateful Act Was Committed

Hillary Clinton spent the night in the White House on the day her husband had oral sex with Monica Lewinsky, and may have actually been in the White House when it happened, according to records of her schedule released today by the National Archives....

The public schedule for Sen. Clinton on Feb. 28, 1997, the day on which Lewinsky's infamous blue dress would become stained by the president, shows the first lady spent the morning and the night in the White House....

This is somehow a perfectly acceptable news item, possibly even acceptable enough for a broadcast story too. And yet coffins of American bodies coming home from an unnecessary war based on deception is too "offensive" for tender eyes.

I'll give you another example. Bill Maher said this about McCain on Hardball today:

you know, we are one terrorist attack away from john mccain i'm sure rising in the polls by ten points. because people think, oh, yeah, he is tougher. he is not tougher about the war. he's dumber about the war. he's dumb about the war because he thinks by keeping troops in the heart of the muslim world that's going to help the war on terror. that's exactly what started the war on terror. that's why bin laden was so angry at the u.s. because we had tloops in saudi arabia. we pulled them out after 9/11, by the way. of course we go right back in and plant them in the heart of the muslim world and build pizza huts. that is why young muslim men want to come here and blow themselves up and kill us. it is not about what happens in iraq. we need to get out of iraq not build bases there.

This is very true. But what of course is so ridiculous is that this is one of the quotes that, when broadly defined, got Rev. Wright in trouble. When it comes down to it, there's not much daylight between "We caused 9/11" and "bin Laden was angry at us about having bases in Saudi Arabia." I think Maher's analysis is correct, but it shouldn't be lost that he's allowed to say it.

The larger point about all this is how conservatives and in particular the media define acceptable discourse, and what will provoke outrage, or barely a twitter. When Janet Jackson shows a covered nipple, the world comes to an end. I saw about 20 minutes of Eliot Spitzer's prostitute's Girls Gone Wild video, played on an endless loop in the middle of the day today, and then we have this really putrid Brian Ross "investigative news article" literally peeping into someone else's bedroom. When Christian conservatives rewrite the words to "God Bless America" and sing it in front of Republican Presidential candidates, nobody in the media considers that to be a "problem" for the GOP because white religious nuts are SUPPOSED to be crazy, and therefore accepted. Black religious figures, on the other hand, when they step outside the bounds as defined in the media by, I don't know, "Sister Act," represent a threat to the Republic.



Now, Janet Folger, who put together that Values Voter Presidential Debate, where "Why should God Bless America" was sung from the stage, has endorsed John McCain. It's as easy to make the guilt-by-association argument with respect to him as it has been to Obama or Clinton's litany of associates. But nobody does.

This is about defining the discourse. And if it hurts Democrats, or anyone who seeks to challenge the status quo, for the most part the videotape rolls. If not it gets locked up. Funny how that works.