More Torture Tapes

I think these things are starting to reproduce like spores:

Would it surprise you to know that the government just admitted to another torture tape, this one of Mohammed al-Qahtani's treatment? The Obama Administration has continued the Bush Administration's attempts to stonewall on release of this material.

The government never disclosed the existence of these tapes as exculpatory information in Mr. al Qahtani’s habeas case. CCR had filed a motion in February 2009 to compel the government to turn over exculpatory evidence in their client’s case and to hold the government in contempt for it’s “flagrant violation” of a judge’s November 2008 order to do so [...] The videotapes the government is required to produce will reveal the time period at the end of three months of intensive solitary confinement and isolation that immediately preceded the implementation of the “First Special Interrogation Plan,” a regime of systematic torture techniques approved by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for use against Mr. al Qahtani. In a letter to his superiors reporting possible abuse of men in U.S. custody, T.J. Harrington, Deputy Assistant Director, Counterterrorism Division, FBI described Mr. al Qahtani during this time as “evidencing behavior consistent with extreme psychological trauma (talking to non-existent people, reportedly hearing voices, crouching in a corner of the cell covered with a sheet for hours on end).”

The lawyers will receive these tapes, based on the judge's order. Qahtani is the man Susan Crawford, who helped run Gitmo for the Bush Administration, admitted was tortured by the US government.

The Obama Administration will never be able to suppress all this evidence forever. They might as well come clean about the past.

The Gitmo Trap

Change has come early to Guantanamo Bay.

A military judge on Tuesday postponed next week's trial of Canadian captive Omar Khadr, easing pressure on the new occupant of the White House to make a swift decision on military commissions.

Army Col. Patrick Parrish announced the delay at a pre-trial hearing Tuesday morning at the war court, which quit for the day before President Barack Obama took office. Hearings at both commissions courtrooms were scheduled to resume Wednesday morning [...]

Khadr, captured at 15, is charged with murder as a war crime for allegedly throwing a grenade in July 2002 in a firefight in Afghanistan that killed Sgt 1st Class Christopher Speer, 28, of Albuquerque, N.M.

Human rights groups had appealed to Obama even before he took office to halt the Jan. 26 trial.

Khadr, now 22, has grown into burly, bearded 6-foot-2 adulthood behind the razor wire of Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to the consternation of children's rights advocates, who say he should have been treated as a ''child soldier'' -- not interrogated for years as a terror suspect.

In fact, the prosecutors of the ongoing trials want to halt them as they await Obama's new formulation on military commissions, calling for an indefinite continuance. Defense lawyers actually oppose this on the grounds that they fear a preservation of the flawed system. But it appears that Obama's advisors want to flush the system and try terror suspects in federal courts rather than the military commissions.

The president-elect's aides are still formulating their plan for shutting the lockup, which has come to symbolize indefinite detention without charges. Yet there appears to be agreement among many experts, including some Obama aides and outside advisers, on key points, such as turning over terror suspects to federal courts and ending the use of military commissions.

"I do have some predispositions on this subject which I think are similar to the President-elect's. I think it is preferable that we proceed in . . . civilian courts," said Jeh Johnson, Obama's choice as the Pentagon's top lawyer, at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.

This is why I'm finding the leak to Bob Woodward of Susan Crawford's position on the torture of Mohammed al-Qahtani so disturbing. Crawford, a lifelong Republican, made the very specific point that she stopped Qahtani's military commission because he was tortured. By extension, he could never receive a fair trial in the US for this reason. And yet Crawford was insistent that Qahtani was one of the "worst of the worst" and that he should not be released. This is an argument for maintaining Gitmo, and I'm not the only one who thinks it's a trap.

GUDE: It does look very much as if the Obama is going to favor prosecutions in US courts, and any question about the psychological competence of the defendants could call into question those prosecutions. When you look at it in the bigger picture –- when you combine this statement by Crawford, her first ever interview, just days before the end of the Bush administration -– when you combine that with the story out of the Pentagon that they have upped the number of detainees that they claim have returned to the battlefield from 30 to 61, more than 10 percent of the detainees who have been released from Guantanamo since it opened in 2002, this looks like a coordinated effort to tie the hands of the Obama team, to make it much more difficult for the Obama administration to pursue its own policies on Guantanamo, and perhaps even down the road to undermine the Obama administration as it pursues its activities to close Guantanamo, pursue trials in US courts, and release some detainees either back to their home countries or transfer them to other countries for further incarceration.

DUSS: So, in your view, is this Dick Cheney, in his last moments in power, trying to lock in his methods, and his policies?

GUDE: You’ve seen in the numerous exit interviews that both he [Cheney] and Bush have been giving, they have been talking about this very issue about how they view that Guantanamo is going to be very hard. It’s going to be very hard to close, we’ve done what we could, and the reason why we’ve done what we could is because this is such a hard issue. And Susan Crawford used to work for Dick Cheney and a lot of people are saying, “you see, even Susan Crawford, who used to work for Dick Cheney, has seen the light and she’s admitting to torture.” Well, I choose to view it in a different way. And perhaps I have too negative a view of these things, but she’s still doing Dick Cheney’s work in my view. She is making it much more difficult now. This revelation makes it much more difficult to pursue the policy that the Obama team would like to pursue.

It's not just Qahtani, who is probably incapacitated, but Crawford is basically alluding to others who may be capable enough, but the torture of whom would allow them to be acquitted and released. And you know that the right will be calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer if one of these guys were set free, through no fault of his own. The Crawford interview did change everything, but maybe not in the way a lot of people think. She may have extended the lifespan of Guantanamo by months, years, or even indefinitely.

Bob Woodward Subscribes To The Progressive Book Club

I'm baffled as to why the Washington Post put this on the front page, and why most other papers referred to it as if Bob Woodward had a Watergate-esque scoop.

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a "life-threatening condition."

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

Al-Qahtani's interrogation logs, clearly showing torture, have been released. TIME Magazine published them over three YEARS ago. Phillippe Sands wrote an entire book about it, Torture Team: Rumsfeld's Memo and the Betrayal of American Values. In it, many people unequivocally state that we tortured al-Qahtani.

As for the supposed scoop that Crawford is the first Bush Administration official to admit to torture, um, how about Dick Cheney? CIA Director Michael Hayden? George W. Bush?

There is some news value in Crawford's remarks, on a couple of fronts. She admits that a combination of techniques that were authorized, administered in succession and over a long period of time, can have the same effect as torture. And the fact that she held back military lawyers from prosecuting him because of the torture used underscores what some are calling the difficulty with closing Guantanamo and dealing with the detainees.

The Qahtani case underscores the challenges facing the incoming Obama administration as it seeks to close the controversial detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including the dilemmas posed by individuals considered too dangerous to release but whose legal status is uncertain. FBI "clean teams," which gather evidence without using information gained during controversial interrogations, have established that Qahtani intended to join the 2001 hijackers. Mohamed Atta, the plot's leader, who died steering American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center, went to the Orlando airport to meet Qahtani on Aug. 4, 2001, but the young Saudi was denied entry by a suspicious immigration inspector.

"There's no doubt in my mind he would've been on one of those planes had he gained access to the country in August 2001," Crawford said of Qahtani, who remains detained at Guantanamo. "He's a muscle hijacker. . . . He's a very dangerous man. What do you do with him now if you don't charge him and try him? I would be hesitant to say, 'Let him go.' "

These decisions have to made for a relatively small group of individuals, maybe a dozen. And really, the answer is that the government should have thought of this before deciding to torture. As it is, they're going to have to do some investigative work and find the evidence of Al-Qahtani and other suspect's involvement rather than relying on confessions gained through torture. If you can find it, you charge them. If not, you release them. US courts have dealt with hundreds of terrorism trials and have methods for dealing with classified information. The sham military commissions need to stop. They're not even effective in dealing with the suspects they were DESIGNED to adjudicate, as this case shows.

...Omar Khadr's trial is scheduled for a week after Obama's inauguration. Khadr was 15 when he was captured, a child soldier. That military commission cannot go forward. Obama can stop it with the stroke of a pen.