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NEWS DIGEST 2006.03.01 - 2006.05.31
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Washington Post --

May 31, 2006

CONGRESSMAN TRIED TO HIDE PAPERS, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT SAYS

Court Filing in Response to Jefferson Lawsuit Defends Raid

By Allan Lengel and Charles Babington

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/05/30/AR2006053001236.html

The Justice Department yesterday vigorously defended the recent weekend raid of
Rep. William J. Jefferson's Capitol Hill office as part of a bribery
investigation, asserting that the Democratic lawmaker attempted to hide
documents from FBI agents while they were searching his New Orleans home last
August.

The government questioned in a 34-page motion filed in U.S. District Court here
whether it could have obtained all the materials it had sought in a subpoena if
it had not launched the surprise raid on Jefferson's congressional office May
20. According to the government filing, an FBI agent caught Jefferson slipping
documents into a blue bag in the living room of his New Orleans home during a
search.

"It is my belief that when Congressman Jefferson placed documents into the blue
bag, he was attempting to conceal documents that were relevant to the
investigation," FBI agent Stacey E. Kent of New Orleans stated in an affidavit
that was part of the government's court submission. The document was filed in
response to Jefferson's lawsuit demanding that the government return to him
documents seized during the raid on his Capitol Hill office 11 days ago.

Robert P. Trout, Jefferson's attorney, said he would refrain from commenting
pending further review of the government's documents. Meanwhile, the recent FBI
raid spurred new tensions between Congress and the administration, as a House
committee chairman vowed to interrogate top Justice Department officials.

Judiciary Committee Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. (R-WI) said he wants
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III to
appear "up here to tell us how they reached the conclusion" to conduct the raid,
which Sensenbrenner called "profoundly disturbing" on constitutional grounds.
The chairman also said that his committee "will be working promptly" to draft
legislation that would clearly prohibit wide-ranging searches of lawmakers'
offices by federal officials pursuing criminal cases.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse reiterated the agency's defense of
the search as legal and necessary. He cautioned that Gonzales would not be able
to go into detail about the Jefferson probe if he were to testify.

As part of its response to Jefferson's lawsuit, the government offered to
provide a "filter team" -- to be made up of an FBI agent and two Justice
Department lawyers not part of the investigation -- which would allow Jefferson
to examine all the seized materials. If Jefferson thought legislative materials
were "privileged" and unrelated to the criminal investigation but the government
disagreed, a judge would be the final arbiter, under the proposal.

The Justice Department's court filing and Sensenbrenner's comments -- made
during a hearing in which constitutional scholars sharply criticized the May 20
raid -- ran counter to recent efforts by President Bush and key lawmakers to
calm down talk of a constitutional standoff. Bush last week ordered the seized
materials to be sealed for 45 days, allowing time for tempers to cool and for
lawyers and elected officials to confer.

But Sensenbrenner and several committee colleagues yesterday described the FBI's
weekend search of Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office Building as an
arrogant, unnecessary breach of tradition and vital constitutional protections.
The FBI had several other ways to compel Jefferson to surrender specific items,
they said. The copying of Jefferson's computer hard drive, they said, was akin
to rifling through every file cabinet, including files dealing with matters
unrelated to the alleged crimes.

The Constitution says House and Senate members "shall not be questioned . . .
for any Speech or Debate in either House." Bruce Fein, one of the constitutional
lawyers who testified yesterday, said that "when it comes to documents, the only
way you can search is to read everything. And when you read everything, you
encroach on the 'Speech or Debate' clause."

Noting that Gonzales, Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty
signaled that they would resign if they were forced to return the Jefferson
documents, Fein said: "Well, let them resign. I am astonished that the president
would not have fired them for undertaking this action without consulting him in
advance."

In yesterday's court filing, the government argued that law enforcement
authorities should not be barred from conducting searches of congressional
offices simply because they contain legislative materials -- such as committee
reports, internal memos and drafts of bills -- that are protected under the
"Speech or Debate" clause. "If his argument is accepted by this court, members
of Congress and their staffs would be able to create search-free zones wherever
they go by bringing along some legislative materials," the government said of
Jefferson, 59, who has been under investigation since March 2005 over
allegations that he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange
for using his congressional influence to promote business ventures in Africa. A
key part of the FBI probe has centered on Jefferson's dealings with iGate Inc.,
a Louisville high-tech company that was marketing broadband technology for the
Internet and cable television in Africa.

Last Aug. 3, FBI agents searched Jefferson's New Orleans home while the
congressman and family members were present. Kent said she was assigned to watch
Jefferson and his family during the search, according to her affidavit
accompanying the government motion yesterday.

She said she observed him looking at several pieces of paper on a table. At one
point, she said, he asked to see a copy of the subpoena.

"After a copy had been brought to him and he reviewed it, I observed Congressman
Jefferson then take the subpoena and the documents he had been reading earlier
and place them together under his elbow on the kitchen table."

At one point, she said, he moved to the living room, which had just been
searched, and sat on a recliner. While sitting, he slipped the subpoena and the
documents into a blue bag that he knew had already been searched, Kent's
affidavit said.

"After several minutes, I approached Congressman Jefferson and told him that I
needed to look at the documents that he had placed into the bag," the agent
stated. "Congressman Jefferson told me the documents were subpoenas."

He finally pulled out the documents that were from a B.K. Son. The search
warrant had asked for all communications between Jefferson and Son, the
affidavit said. Son is the chief technology officer of iGate.

U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan set a June 16 hearing to address the motion
by Jefferson's attorney seeking the return all the seized documents.

[ Staff writer Dan Eggen contributed to this report. ]

*


Boston Globe --

May 28, 2006

CHENEY AIDE IS SCREENING LEGISLATION

Adviser seeks to protect Bush power

By Charlie Savage

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/28/
cheney_aide_is_screening_legislation

WASHINGTON -- The office of Vice President Dick Cheney routinely reviews pieces
of legislation before they reach the president's desk, searching for provisions
that Cheney believes would infringe on presidential power, according to former
White House and Justice Department officials.

The officials said Cheney's legal adviser and chief of staff, David Addington,
is the Bush a dministration's leading architect of the "signing statements" the
president has appended to more than 750 laws. The statements assert the
president's right to ignore the laws because they conflict with his
interpretation of the Constitution.

The Bush-Cheney administration has used such statements to claim for itself the
option of bypassing a ban on torture, oversight provisions in the USA Patriot
Act, and numerous requirements that they provide certain information to
Congress, among other laws.

Previous vice presidents have had neither the authority nor the interest in
reviewing legislation. But Cheney has used his power over the administration's
legal team to promote an expansive theory of presidential authority. Using
signing statements, the administration has challenged more laws than all
previous administrations combined.

"Addington could look at whatever he wanted," said one former White House lawyer
who helped prepare signing statements and who asked not to be named because he
was describing internal deliberations. "He had a roving commission to get
involved in whatever interested him."

Knowing that Addington was likely to review the bills, other White House and
Justice Department lawyers began vetting legislation with Addington's and
Cheney's views in mind, according to another former lawyer in the Bush White
House.

All these lawyers, he said, were extremely careful to flag any provision that
placed limits on presidential power.

"You didn't want to miss something," said the second former White House lawyer,
who also asked not to be named.

Cheney and Addington have a long history. Addington was a Republican staff
member on the congressional committee investigating the Iran-Contra scandal in
the 1980s, while Cheney was the ranking GOP House member. When Cheney became
defense secretary under President George H. W. Bush, he hired Addington as
Pentagon counsel.

After Cheney became vice president in 2001, he again hired Addington as counsel.
Addington played a major role in shaping the administration's legal policies in
the war on terrorism, including a 2002 memo arguing that Bush could authorize
interrogators to bypass anti torture laws. In October, when Cheney's former
chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted for perjury and resigned,
Cheney replaced Libby with Addington.

A spokeswoman for Cheney's office, asked to comment on Addington's role in
reviewing legislation, said, "We do not comment on internal deliberations."

Addington, through the spokeswoman, declined to be interviewed.

But Martin Lederman, who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel under presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, said that Addington is
simply doing the day-to-day legwork for Cheney and that he is influential within
the administration because of the vice president's desire to enhance executive
power and Bush's willingness to endorse Cheney's views.

"In every administration, Democratic and Republican, there are officials with
strongly held constitutional views, including somewhat idiosyncratic views,"
said Lederman, now a law professor at Georgetown University. "What is new is
that the extremely idiosyncratic and aggressive constitutional views are being
adopted by the vice president and, therefore, by the administration."

Previous administrations left the reviewing of legislation to the White House
counsel's office and the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

"What's happening now is unprecedented on almost every level," said Ron Klain,
who was chief of staff to Vice President Al Gore from 1995 to 1999. "Gore was a
very active policy maker in the Clinton administration, but that didn't include
picking through bills of Congress to find things to disagree with."

The administration insists that Bush's use of signing statements is not
unprecedented. Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said, "President
Bush's signing statements are lawful and indistinguishable from those issued on
hundreds of occasions by past presidents."

The use of signing statements was rare until the 1980s, when President Ronald W.
Reagan began issuing them more frequently. His successors continued the
practice. George H. W. Bush used signing statements to challenge 232 laws over
four years, and Bill Clinton challenged 140 over eight years, according to
Christopher Kelley, a political science professor at Miami University of Ohio.

But in frequency and aggression, the current President Bush has gone far beyond
his predecessors.

All previous presidents combined challenged fewer than 600 laws, Kelley's data
show, compared with the more than 750 Bush has challenged in five years. Bush is
also the first president since the 1800s who has never vetoed a bill, giving
Congress no chance to override his judgments.

Douglas Kmiec, who as head of the Office of Legal Counsel helped develop the
Reagan administration's strategy of issuing signing statements more frequently,
said he disapproves of the "provocative" and sometimes "disingenuous" manner in
which the Bush administration is using them.

Kmiec said the Reagan team's goal was to leave a record of the president's
understanding of new laws only in cases where an important statute was
ambiguous. Kmiec rejected the idea of using signing statements to contradict the
clear intent of Congress, as Bush has done. Presidents should either tolerate
provisions of bills they don't like, or they should veto the bill, he said.

"Following a model of restraint, [the Reagan-era Office of Legal Counsel] took
it seriously that we were to construe statutes to avoid constitutional problems,
not to invent them," said Kmiec, who is now a Pepperdine University law
professor.

By contrast, Bush has used the signing statements to waive his obligation to
follow the new laws. In addition to the torture ban and oversight provisions of
the Patriot Act, the laws Bush has claimed the authority to disobey include
restrictions against US troops engaging in combat in Colombia, whistle-blower
protections for government employees, and safeguards against political
interference in taxpayer-funded research.

Cheney's office has taken the lead in challenging many of these laws, officials
said, because they run counter to an expansive view of executive power that
Cheney has cultivated for the past 30 years. Under the theory, Congress cannot
pass laws that place restrictions or requirements on how the president runs the
military and spy agencies. Nor can it pass laws giving government officials the
power or responsibility to act independently of the president.

Mainstream legal scholars across the political spectrum reject Cheney's
expansive view of presidential authority, saying the Constitution gives Congress
the power to make all rules and regulations for the military and the executive
branch and the Supreme Court has consistently upheld laws giving bureaucrats and
certain prosecutors the power to act independently of the president.

One prominent conservative, Richard Epstein of the University of Chicago Law
School, said it is "scandalous" for the administration to argue that the
commander in chief can bypass statutes in national security matters.

"It's just wrong," Epstein said. "It is just crazy as a matter of constitutional
interpretation. There are some pretty clear issues, and this is one of them."

Laurence Tribe, a prominent liberal at Harvard Law School, said: "Nothing in the
text and structure of the Constitution, or Supreme Court precedents, supports
the Bush-Cheney assertion that Congress cannot limit or direct what government
officials may or must do."

Nonetheless, Bush has demonstrated that he is willing to put his legal team's
claims about his authority into action. Shortly after the terrorist attacks of
Sept. 11, 2001, Bush authorized the military to eavesdrop on Americans'
international phone calls without a warrant, bypassing a surveillance law that
requires warrants.

Passed in 1978, the warrant law is one of a series of policies enacted after the
Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal. The laws sought to prevent future abuses
by regulating how the president can use his national security powers.

In December 2005, shortly after the warrantless wiretapping program was exposed,
Cheney gave a rare press conference to explain why he believed the program was
legal. Offering an early view of the administration's argument that the warrant
law is unconstitutional, Cheney recalled the period in which it was enacted as a
time of congressional overreach.

"A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam, both, in the '70s served to
erode the authority, I think, the president needs to be effective, especially in
a national security area," said Cheney, who served as White House chief of staff
to President Gerald Ford .

Cheney also offered a roadmap to his thinking about presidential power. He told
reporters to read a 1987 report whose production he oversaw when he was a
leading Republican in the House of Representatives. The report offered a
dissenting view about the Iran-Contra scandal.

"If you want reference to an obscure text, go look at the minority views that
were filed with the Iran-Contra Committee," Cheney said. "Nobody has ever read
them, but . . . I think [they] are very good in laying out a robust view of the
president's prerogatives with respect to the conduct of especially foreign
policy and national security matters."

The Iran-Contra scandal involved efforts by Reagan administration officials to
bypass a law cutting off funds to anti-Marxist rebels in Nicaragua. The
officials secretly sold arms to Iran, sent the proceeds to the rebels, and lied
to Congress to cover it up.

A congressional committee issued a 427-page report concluding that a "cabal of
zealots" in the administration who had "disdain for the law" had violated the
statute.

But some of the Republicans on the committee, led by Cheney, refused to endorse
that finding. They issued their own 155-page report asserting the real problem
was Congress passing laws that intruded into a president's authority to run
foreign policy and national security.

"Judgments about the Iran-Contra affair ultimately must rest upon one's views
about the proper roles of Congress and the president in foreign policy,"
Cheney's report said. "The fundamental law of the land is the Constitution.
Unconstitutional statutes violate the rule of law every bit as much as do
willful violations of constitutional statutes."

Cheney's report includes a lengthy argument that the Constitution puts the
president beyond the reach of Congress when it comes to national security. Some
18 years later, the Justice Department would repeat these same arguments in a
42-page memo arguing that Bush's warrantless wiretapping program is a lawful
exercise of presidential power.

Despite legal scholars' skepticism about the expansive theory of presidential
power Cheney has long promoted, Bush's legal team has used the theory to target
every law that regulates the military or the executive branch.

Kmiec, one of the only scholars who has testified that Bush might have the
authority to set aside the warrant law, said he thinks the administration's use
of signing statements has gone too far, needlessly antagonizing Congress. Arlen
Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman,
recently announced hearings into the matter.

"The president is not well served by the lawyers who have been advising him,"
said Kmiec.

*


Washington Post --

May 27, 2006

A DEFIANT STANCE IN JEFFERSON PROBE

Justice Dept. Talked of Big Resignations
If White House Agreed to Return Papers

By Dan Eggen and Peter Baker

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052601016.html

The Justice Department signaled to the White House this week that the nation's
top three law enforcement officials would resign or face firing rather than
return documents seized from a Democratic congressman's office in a bribery
investigation, according to administration sources familiar with the
discussions.

The possibility of resignations by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales; his
deputy, Paul J. McNulty; and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III was communicated
to the White House by several Justice officials in tense negotiations over the
fate of the materials taken from Rep. William J. Jefferson's office, according
to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the
sensitivity of the issue.

Justice prosecutors and FBI agents feared that the White House was ready to
acquiesce to demands from House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) and other
lawmakers that the materials be returned to the Louisiana congressman, who is
the subject of a criminal probe by the FBI. Vice President Cheney's chief of
staff, David S. Addington, was among the leading White House critics of the FBI
raid, telling officials at Justice and on Capitol Hill that he believed the
search was questionable, several sources familiar with his views said.

Administration officials said yesterday that the specter of top-level
resignations or firings at Justice and the FBI was a crucial turning point in
the standoff, helping persuade President Bush to announce a cease-fire on
Thursday. Bush ordered that the Jefferson materials be sealed for 45 days while
Justice officials and House lawmakers work out their differences, while also
making it clear that he expected the case against Jefferson to proceed.

Spokesmen for the White House, Cheney's office, the Justice Department and the
FBI declined to comment, saying they would not discuss internal deliberations.

White House officials were not informed of the search until it began last
Saturday and did not immediately recognize the political ramifications, the
sources said. By Sunday, however, as the 18-hour search continued, lawmakers
began lodging complaints with the White House.

Addington -- who had worked as a staffer in the House and whose boss, Cheney,
once served as a congressman -- quickly emerged as a key internal critic of
raiding the office of a sitting House member. He raised heated objections to the
Justice Department's legal rationale for the search during a meeting Sunday with
McNulty and others, according to several sources.

The talk of resignations adds another dramatic element to the remarkable tug of
war that has played out since last Saturday night, when about 15 FBI agents
executed a search warrant on Jefferson's office in the Rayburn House Office
Building.

The raid -- the first physical FBI search of a congressman's office in U.S.
history -- sparked an uproar in the House, where Hastert joined Minority Leader
Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) in demanding that the records be returned because they
viewed the search as an illegal violation of the constitutional separation of
powers.

Hastert wrote in an article published in USA Today yesterday that House lawyers
are working with the Justice Department to develop guidelines for handling
searches of lawmakers' offices. "But that is behind us now," Hastert wrote. "I
am confident that in the next 45 days, the lawyers will figure out how to do it
right."

Also yesterday, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) met with Gonzales at
the senator's Capitol Hill office.

"We've been working hard already, and we'll continue to do so pursuant to the
president's order," Gonzales told reporters on his way into Frist's suite just
off the Senate floor.

Jefferson, 59, has been under investigation since March 2005 for allegations
that he took hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in exchange for using
his congressional influence to promote business ventures in Africa. Two people
have pleaded guilty to bribing him, including Brett Pfeffer, one of his former
aides, who was sentenced yesterday to eight years in prison by a federal judge
in Alexandria.

An FBI affidavit released this week alleged that Jefferson was videotaped taking
$100,000 in bribe money and that a search of his Washington apartment turned up
$90,000 of that money wrapped in foil inside his freezer. Jefferson, who has not
been charged, has denied any wrongdoing.

The unprecedented FBI raid on Jefferson's office triggered an extraordinary
chain of events. Hastert, long one of the president's staunchest allies in
Congress, and his chief of staff, Scott Palmer, were immediately angered by the
tactic. On Monday, Hastert pushed Bush strongly on the issue during a trip the
two shared on Air Force One coming back from Chicago. "Hastert was white-hot,"
said a senior administration official.

Bush expressed sympathy but did not take sides, the official said: "He did not
say, 'I share your view.' He said, 'Look, we're going to try to work with you to
help resolve this.' "

The view of the emerging political landscape was notably different at Justice,
where officials feared they were quickly losing the debate. Prosecutors and FBI
agents felt the materials were obtained from Jefferson through a lawful and
court-approved search and that returning them -- as demanded by Hastert and
others -- would amount to an intolerable political intervention in the criminal
justice process.

Justice had one ally at the White House in Frances Fragos Townsend, the homeland
security adviser and former prosecutor, who spoke in defense of the raid's
legality at a meeting on Monday, according to two sources familiar with her
remarks. Townsend was not invited to participate in subsequent discussions on
the issue, however. A senior administration official said she would not normally
be involved in the topic.

At a particularly contentious meeting Monday night at the Capitol, Palmer
angrily upbraided William E. Moschella, the assistant attorney general for
legislative affairs, and two other Justice officials, saying they had violated
the Constitution, several sources said.

As the week progressed, the confrontation escalated further. At some point in
the negotiations, McNulty told Palmer that he would quit if ordered to return
the materials to Jefferson, according to several officials familiar with the
conversation.

McNulty, a former Alexandria prosecutor who was recently named Gonzales's
deputy, was a central player in the contentious negotiations with Capitol Hill
and the White House, sources said. He had also worked in the House for 12 years,
as chief counsel for both the majority leader's office and a crime subcommittee.

A message that McNulty might quit was passed along to the White House, along
with similar messages for Gonzales and Mueller. Sources familiar with the
discussions declined to say which Justice officials communicated those
possibilities to the White House.

The discussion of Gonzales and the others resigning never evolved into a direct
threat, but it was made plain that such an option would have to be considered if
the president ordered the documents returned, several sources said. "It wasn't
one of those things of 'If you will, I will,' " one senior administration
official said. "It was kind of the background noise."

"One of the reasons the president did what he did was these types of
conversations and other types of conversations in the House were escalating,"
the official said, referring to murmured threats by some House Republicans to
call for Gonzales's resignation.

The desire to do something before the Memorial Day recess also created an
"artificial deadline" that Bush considered counterproductive. "As the week moved
on," the official said, "there's no question emotions were running high on both
sides. . . . People had a gun to their head, and it was really making people not
more flexible but more intense. It was his view to say let's get more time."

The White House grew especially concerned about a House Republican Conference
meeting scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday and later rescheduled for 3:30 p.m. In
the heat of the moment, it could have gotten out of hand and wound up with some
sort of resolution demanding that Gonzales step down. "You never know what's
going to happen in a conference," the official said.

Bush decided to head off the situation. He summoned Cheney, Chief of Staff
Joshua B. Bolten, Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, counselor Dan Bartlett,
legislative director Candida Wolff, White House Counsel Harriet Miers, Deputy
White House Counsel William K. Kelley and some other staff members to the Oval
Office on Thursday morning and announced that he had decided to seal the
Jefferson documents.

"I'm going to put an end to the escalation," one official quoted Bush as saying.
"We've got to calm this down."

Bush directed Cheney to inform Hastert, while Bolten told Gonzales.

Bush aides were also worried about a war with the Republican House if the
president did not act.

"If you tell the House to stick it where the sun don't shine, you're talking
about a fundamentally corrosive relationship between two branches of
government," the senior administration official said. "They could zero out
funding; they could say, 'Okay, you can do subpoenas, so can we.' "

[ Staff writer Jim VandeHei and researcher Julie Tate contributed to this
report. ]

*


Canada Free Press --

May 25, 2006

TORTURE FLIGHTS: THE SHOCKING FACTS

By Gordon Thomas

http://www.canadafreepress.com/2006/thomas052506.htm

(To prepare this exclusive report, the award-winning intelligence expert GORDON
THOMAS spoke to a range of sources in Britain, the Middle East, Eastern Europe
and the United States.)

Despite the Bush administration’s insistence it neither participates nor
condones -- "in any form" -- torture, the CIA continues to fly high-value
al-Qaeda and Taliban suspects to interrogation centres which are beyond US
jurisdiction -- and where torture is routine.

Investigations by the European Union and human rights activists like Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have done nothing to end the secret flights
that weekly cross the globe with their human cargoes destined for torture
chambers.

What happens on some of the flights has been graphically described by a senior
British intelligence officer who spoke under a guarantee of anonymity.

"I have personal knowledge of two flights on which the prisoners were shackled
in their seats and drugged for the flight. CIA officers were on board to conduct
preliminary interrogations. The heavy duty stuff is left until after landing".

Confirmation of the drugging and hooding has come from Kuwait-born Khaled al-
Masari, who had become a German citizen. There is no record of him having any
connection with a terrorist organisation.

In June 2003, he was on holiday in Macedonia, touring the country by bus. One
day he was taken off a bus and held in the local jail in Skopje for three weeks.
No interrogation took place. Requests to see the German consul were ignored. So
were requests to see a lawyer. One night he was driven to Skopje’s international
airport. In a sworn affidavit he says this is what happened next.

"Two men came in. They spoke with American accents. They were in civilian
clothes. With them were two uniformed police officers. They held me down and I
was injected. In moments I felt dizzy. A hood was placed over my head. I was
then put on an aircraft. On the flight I was told I was going to a special place
and no one would find me. After a long flight I was driven to a prison still
hooded. I found myself among prisoners from Pakistan, Tanzania, Yemen and Saudi
Arabia. I was there for five months, regularly beaten and told to confess I was
a terrorist. Then one day I was dragged from my cell, put inside a closed truck
and driven to a plane. After the flight, I was taken off. An American told me
that a mistake had been made: I was not a terrorist. He put me in a car with
more Americans. They drove for a while, stopped the car, told me to get out and
drove off. I found out I was in Albania. I made my way back to Germany."

He reported his story to the police in Frankfurt. The details were passed on to
the Kriminalamt, the country’s equivalent of the FBI. Al-Masari was interviewed
by two agents. Satisfied, they informed the Bundesamtes Fur Fefassungsschuts,
the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. It contacted the CIA
station chief in Berlin. He sent a report to Langley. He was told, according to
a German police file on the case, there was "a mistake, a confusion of names".
The German interior minister, Otto Schily, on a visit to Washington raised the
matter with Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice. She offered him the same
response. Officially the matter ended. Al-Masari’s attempts to obtain
compensation have so far failed and he has been told there is no point in
pursuing it.

Craig Murray, the former British ambassador to Uzbekistan, confirmed that Al-
Masari had undergone "extraordinary rendition". The flights are run by the
highly secret CIA Counter Terrorist Intelligence Centre, CTIC, at Langley.
Originally created in the mid-90s by the Clinton Administration, it had rapidly
expanded after the 9/11 attacks to counter the threat of Islamic terrorism and
overcome CIA difficulties in obtaining convictions against terrorists. Further
expansion followed the end of the war with Iraq when a number of meetings took
place in London and Washington, chaired by both country’s intelligence chiefs,
to decide how to best deal with the large number of captured suspected
terrorists.

Out of those meetings came the creation of a purpose-built interrogation centre
in the US base at Bagram in the charge of forty CTIC men and women, including
doctors trained in the use of psychotropic drugs. Many were familiar with the
use of mind-bending chemicals which had been developed for the notorious CIA MK-
ULTRA programme in the 1960s. Bagram quickly became crowded with captured
Taliban and foreign mercenaries. In the first weeks, two died during
interrogation and several were left permanently physically incapacitated.

The centre was soon overflowing with prisoners. At a meeting in London in April
2002 chaired by John Scarlett -- now head of MI6 -- at the offices of the Joint
Intelligence Committee and attended by CTIC officers, it was decided Bagram was
not able to operate efficiently under such conditions. Even when detainees were
transferred on the so-called Guantanamo Express to Cuba, the freight car cells
at Bagram quickly filled up with new prisoners.

Could another site -- possibly several -- be found? Scarlett had served in
Moscow as an MI6 officer and recalled the existence of interrogation centres
throughout the Soviet Union: he said the harshest had been those run by the KGB
in Uzbekistan, Moldova and Poland. They could well serve CTIC’s purpose.
Scarlett knew two senior officers of Polish military intelligence. They were
invited to London to meet senior members of MI6 who had worked in Eastern
Europe. CIA chief, George Tenet, now in the dying months of his tenure, sent
several senior officials to attend. The Poles confirmed the KGB interrogation
centres remained intact and were used by local security services to question
criminals.

CTIC already had its own aircraft and its senior officer at the meeting said
there would be no problem in arranging overflying and refuelling rights in
countries like Britain, Germany and Spain.

The Polish officers identified airfields within the old Warsaw Pact that could
be used as stopovers; the air base at Tazar in south-central Hungary, the
Szczytno-Szymany base in Poland and the Markuleshti airfield in Moldova. During
the Cold War they had all been used for secret operations by Warsaw Pact Special
Forces. Interrogations had also been conducted there by the KGB.

The operational plans sufficiently advanced, it was time for them to be
politically rubber-stamped. Scarlett informed prime minister Tony Blair and
Tenet briefed President Bush. Both quickly endorsed them.

Recognising that Poland would have an important role to play as the refuelling
point for all flights going to Uzbekistan -- selected by CTIC to be the prime
interrogation centre for the terrorists -- it was essential to get the support
of Leszek Miller, the country’s soon to be ousted prime minister who had
staunchly supported the war on Iraq. He immediately agreed to allow the
Szczytno-Szymany base to be used as CTIC’s prime refuelling point in Eastern
Europe.

The first flight began in May 2002. A Gulfstream V executive jet, registration
N379P, landed at Northolt airport near London. It had a long history of being a
staging post for CIA and MI6 officers en route to secret missions in Europe
during the Cold War. Under what the Ministry of Defence later called "standing
regulations", the only details listed of the Gulfstream flight were the names of
the pilot and the aircraft owner. No record was made of any passengers on board.

On a sunny Spring day the Gulfstream V and its unrecorded passengers flew from
Northolt to the Szczytno-Szymany base in northern Poland still blanketed by
winter snow. After refuelling, the aircraft flew on to Uzbekistan. Soon the
executive jet was on a regular run, picking up detainees in Jakarta in
Indonesia, Pakistan and Bagram. One was the Yemeni microbiologist Jamil Qasim
Seed Mohammed, wanted by CTIC "in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole
while the warship was at anchor off Aden". He was flown to Uzbekistan and his
fate remains unknown. Another passenger was Muhammed Saad Madni, an Egyptian
suspect who had worked with the British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. He was
"rendered" from Jakarta to Egypt. His fate also remains unknown.

By December 2005, CTIC employed over 1,000 people: field officers, analysts,
translators and liaison officers with foreign intelligence services. Their
closest relationship remained with Mossad: its own agents in Iran, Pakistan,
Syria and Afghanistan provided updates of the movements of terrorist suspects on
the CTIC list. The decision as to who would be rendered was made by CTIC in
conjunction with CIA director, Porter Goss. He was still doing so the day before
he suddenly resigned in May 2006 -- a victim of political manoeuvring in
Washington.

By then "rendition" had been fine-tuned. In May, 2006, CTIC officers were
stationed in twenty-two countries around the globe to handle the arrests and
transportation of suspects. They were usually picked up by the local security
service and held in solitary confinement until they could be flown out to a
designated "black site" -- the CTIC in-house description of the interrogation
centres. The decision as to which site a suspect should be sent was made by the
senior CTIC officer on the spot.

"If a strong psychological interrogation with some physical force is required, a
detainee is flown to Jordan. If a suspect is to be interrogated in between
periods of strong physical force, he is sent to Egypt. For the most severe of
torture for information, he is sent to Uzbekistan where he is killed after he
can reveal no more", a senior Mossad officer said.

Craig Murray, when British ambassador to Uzbekistan, wrote in a memo to Jack
Straw, Britain’s Foreign Secretary in November 2004: "The CIA chief in this
country acknowledged to me that torture of those rendered includes the boiling
in vats of prisoners". Murray was relieved of his post, labelled as "mentally
unstable" and finally dismissed from the diplomatic service. By December 2005,
he had become one of the first to publicly reveal some of the details of the
rendition process. As a result he said he was threatened by Britain’s security
services.

But the flights continued with CTIC’s aircraft criss-crossing the world. The
Gulfstream V had been joined by a C-130 Hercules, a Casa turboprop, a Gulfstream
and a Boeing-737. All were painted white and bore no markings. Some were also
leased from the Premier Executive Transport Service in Massachusetts. When
contacted, the company declined to discuss the planes or the purpose for which
they are used. A glimpse of what happened on board the aircraft came from two
intelligence sources -- one in London, the other in Washington.

"The prisoners are shackled to their seats and are gagged and often drugged
during their flights. CTIC officers travel with them to their interrogation
country. The flight manifests contain no details of who they are. At a
refuelling stop, the aircraft window blinds are drawn. No local official is
allowed on board. Fuel is paid for by a credit card the pilot carries. It is
billed to CTIC", said the London source.

The Washington source added: "In countries like Uzbekistan, Soviet-trained
interrogators carry out the torturing. They have a list of information targets
to obtain. The answers are passed to the resident CTIC officer. He sends them to
Washington".

From there the information is distributed within the US intelligence community
and sent to selected foreign intelligence services, including Mossad. In Tel
Aviv it is carefully tested against other material gathered by the service’s own
network of agents and informers.

By May, 2006, the "torture flights" had flown scores of suspects to the secret
"black sites" far beyond the public eye and the US justice system. Swiss
Intelligence -- a small but well respected spying organisation -- intercepted a
fax sent by Ahmed Abdul Gheit, Egypt’s foreign minister, to its London embassy’s
intelligence chief. The minister wanted to know the fate of twenty-three
detainees "rendered" from Afghanistan to a "black site" on Romania’s Black Sea
coast. Swiss Intelligence, whose relationship with Mossad is close, sent a copy
of the fax to Tel Aviv where the authenticity of the fax was quickly
established. In it the minister had referred to "similar interrogation centres
in Ukraine, Kosovo, Macedonia and in Bulgaria".

By May, 2006, the "torture flights" (the description was coined by Amnesty
International) had made over 50 flights in and out of Britain and close to 200
through German air space. Other flights had passed through Spanish airports and
Shannon, Ireland’s international airport. The logs kept by air traffic
controllers in those countries listed over 300 flights of CTIC aircraft.

In Tel Aviv senior members of Mossad have begun to view "rendition" as an
embarrassing sideshow "which is obstructing the CIA’s real work and is unable to
provide reliable intelligence".

A senior member of director-general Meir Dagan’s staff said: "The danger with
the torture flights is that they provide invaluable propaganda for our enemies.
Where does harsh interrogation cross the borderline into torture? We are not
averse to harsh questioning, but we draw the line at methods that allow
prisoners to be severely beaten, sexually assaulted and given repeated electric
shocks and threats to their families. It is not that we are squeamish, but
practical. That kind of interrogation does not produce credible intelligence".

But the torture flights have continued . There are no plans to stop them. An
intelligence source in Washington said: "They will continue as long as Bush’s
war on terrorism".

[ Gordon Thomas is the author of Gideon’s Spies: The Secret History of the
Mossad. He specialises in international intelligence matters. ]

*


US News & World Report --

May 29, 2006

CHENEY'S GUY

He's barely known outside Washington's corridors of power, but David Addington
is the most powerful man you've never heard of. Here's why...

By Chitra Ragavan

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060529/29addington.htm

One week after the September 11 terrorist attacks, President George W. Bush
briefly turned his gaze away from the unfolding crisis to an important but far
less pressing moment in the nation's history. The president signed legislation
creating a commission to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of
Education, the landmark Supreme Court ruling desegregating public schools. In a
brief statement, Bush invited the various educational groups listed in the
legislation to suggest the names of potential commissioners and also urged
members of Congress to weigh in, as a "matter of comity." But in a little-noted
aside, Bush said that any such suggestions would be just that -- because under
the appointments clause of the Constitution, it was his job, and his alone, to
make those kinds of decisions.

This was what is known, in the cloistered world of constitutional lawyers and
scholars, as a "signing statement." Such statements, in the years before
President Bush and his aides moved into the White House, were rare. A signing
statement is a legal memorandum in which the president and his lawyers take
legislation sent over by Congress and put their stamp on it by saying what they
believe the measure does and doesn't allow. Consumed by the 9/11 attacks,
Americans for the most part didn't realize that the signing statement
accompanying the announcement of the Brown v. Board commission would signal one
of the most controversial hallmarks of the Bush presidency: a historic shift in
the balance of power away from the legislative branch of government to the
executive. The shift began soon after Bush took office and reached its apogee
after 9/11, with Bush's authorization of military tribunals for terrorism
suspects, secret detentions and aggressive interrogations of "unlawful enemy
combatants," and warrantless electronic surveillance of terrorism suspects on US
soil, including American citizens.

THE INVISIBLE HAND

Much of the criticism that has been directed at these measures has focused on
Vice President Dick Cheney. In fact, however, it is a largely anonymous
government lawyer, who now serves as Cheney's chief of staff, who has served as
the ramrod driving the Bush administration's most secretive and controversial
counterterrorism measures through the bureaucracy. David Addington was a key
advocate of the Brown v. Board and more than 750 other signing statements the
administration has issued since taking office -- a record that far outstrips
that of any other president.

The signing statements are just one tool that Addington and a small cadre of
ultraconservative lawyers at the heart of the Bush administration are employing
to prosecute the war on terrorism. Little known outside the West Wing and the
inner sanctums of the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department, Addington is
a genial colleague who also possesses an explosive temper that he does not
hesitate to direct at those who oppose him. Addington, says an admiring former
White House official, is "the most powerful person no one has never heard of."

Name one significant action taken by the Bush White House after 9/11, and
chances are better than even that Addington had a role in it. So ubiquitous is
he that one Justice Department lawyer calls Addington "Adam Smith's invisible
hand" in national security matters. The White House assertion -- later proved
false -- that Saddam Hussein tried to buy nuclear precursors from Niger to
advance a banned weapons program? Addington helped vet that. The effort to
discredit a former ambassador who publicly dismissed the Niger claim as
baseless, by disclosing the name of his wife, a covert CIA officer? Addington
was right in the middle of that, too, though he has not been accused of wrong-
doing.

In national security circles, Addington is viewed as such a force of nature that
one former government lawyer nicknamed him "Keyser Soze," after the ruthless
crime boss in the thriller THE USUAL SUSPECTS. "He seems to have his hand in
everything," says a former Justice Department official, "and he has these
incredible powers, energy, reserves in an obsessive, zealot's kind of way."
Addington declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this story.

Addington's admirers say he is being demonized unfairly. "This is a new war, an
unconventional war," says an informal Cheney adviser, Mary Matalin. "When you
are making new policy to meet new challenges, you are going to get vicious
opposition."

Few would have predicted that Addington, 49, would become such a lightning rod.
Tall, bearded, and imposing, Addington has the look, says former White House
associate counsel Bradford Berenson, of "a rumpled bureaucrat crossed with a CIA
spook." The son of a career military official, Addington was born and raised in
the nation's capital and was in the eighth or ninth grade when he read Catherine
Drinker Bowen's MIRACLE AT PHILADELPHIA: THE STORY OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL
CONVENTION, MAY TO SEPTEMBER 1787.

THE NEXT BATTLEFIELD

Thus began a lifelong love affair with the US Constitution. Even today,
Addington carries a copy in his pocket and doesn't hesitate to wield it to back
up his arguments. "The joke around here," says a senior congressional staffer
with a chuckle, "is that Addington looks at the Constitution and sees only
Article II, the power of the presidency." Berenson, Bush's former associate
counsel, says that's because Addington is so intensely security minded: "He's
absolutely convinced of the threat we face. And he believes that the executive
branch is the only part of the government capable of securing the public against
external threats." Addington, Berenson adds, is a national security conservative
with a twist. "He's not the intellectual legal conservative of the Federalist
Society type," Berenson says, referring to the group of conservative lawyers
esteemed by the likes of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, "for whom
judicial restraint is the holy grail. He's much more of a Cold War conservative
who has moved on to the next battlefield."

Addington began his government career 25 years ago, after graduating summa cum
laude from the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and with honors
from the Duke University Law School. He started out as an assistant general
counsel at the CIA and soon moved to Capitol Hill and served as the minority's
counsel and chief counsel on the House intelligence and foreign affairs
committees. There, he began his long association with Cheney, then a Wyoming
congressman and member of the intelligence panel. Addington and Cheney -- who
served as President Gerald Ford's chief of staff -- shared the same grim
worldview: Watergate, Vietnam, and later, the Iran-contra scandal during
President Reagan's second term had all dangerously eroded the powers of the
presidency. "Addington believes that through sloppy lawyering as much as through
politics," says former National Security Council deputy legal adviser Bryan
Cunningham, "the executive branch has acquiesced to encroachment of its
constitutional authority by Congress."

When Cheney became ranking Republican on the House select committee
investigating the Iran-contra scandal, Addington helped write the strongly
worded minority report that said the law barring aid to the Nicaraguan contras
was unconstitutional because it improperly impinged on the president's power.
The argument would become the cornerstone of the Bush administration's post-9/11
policies.

A second critical article of faith for Addington has to do with the presidential
chain of command. "He believes there should be the shortest possible distance
from the president to his cabinet secretaries, and he does not like staffers or
coordinating bodies in that chain of command," says Cunningham, who worked
closely with Addington and also was a Clinton administration lawyer.

GUIDE STARS

Addington is a strong adherent of the so-called unitary executive theory, which
is cited frequently and prominently in many of Bush's legislative signing
statements. The theory holds that the president is solely in charge of the
executive branch and that Congress, therefore, can't tell him how to carry out
his executive functions, whom to pick for what jobs, or through whom he must
report to Congress. Executive power, separation of power, a tight chain of
command, and protecting the unitary executive -- those became the guide stars of
Addington's legal universe.

Addington spent two years in the Reagan White House in a variety of positions.
When George H.W. Bush was elected president, Addington moved to the Pentagon to
help with the confirmation hearings for Bush's nominee for defense secretary,
former Texas Sen. John Tower. Cheney, meanwhile, had just been named the new
Republican whip in the House and hired Addington as his new counsel. Addington
switched jobs, but within weeks, the Senate rejected the Tower nomination, and
Bush tapped Cheney to be his new nominee for defense secretary. Addington dug
in, helped Cheney prepare for his confirmation hearings, and subsequently became
his special assistant. Addington, says one of Cheney's closest friends and
colleagues, David Gribbin, "became the most powerful staffer in the Pentagon"
because he processed virtually all the position papers flowing to and from the
secretary and deputy secretary. Still, Gribbin says he never viewed Addington as
a gatekeeper, but many others did. "If David and I ever tangled," says one
former senior Pentagon official, "it was because I may have thought a time or
two that he was overzealous in his defense of the prerogatives of the
secretary."

Those prerogatives, however, were sacrosanct to Addington. If a staffer
submitted a draft memo for President Bush that copied Cheney and the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Addington would cross out the latter. "He would say, the
president talks to the secretary, and the secretary can do what he wants," says
the former Pentagon official. Oddly, Addington "abhorred" the use of Latin
phrases in memos, this official says, and would slash them out with his infamous
red pen.

It wasn't long before Addington became the military's top lawyer. As the
Pentagon general counsel, Addington soon alienated the armed forces' judge
advocate generals by authoring a memo ordering the proudly independent corps of
career military attorneys to report to the general counsel of each service. "He
wanted the military services to be not so independent," says a retired Navy JAG,
Rear Adm. Don Guter. "It came under the rubric of civilian control of the
military. It's centralization. It's control."

The JAG officers fought back and, with Congress's support, remained independent.
But Addington, typically, found another way to prevail. He wrote a memo
decreeing that only the general counsel of each service -- not the JAGs -- could
issue final legal opinions. After George W. Bush was elected president in 2000
(Addington sat out the Clinton years, in private practice), Guter warned his
colleagues: "I said, 'Stand by, these same people are coming back. And you
remember what they tried to do last time.'" After the 9/11 attacks, the JAG
officers were marginalized from the decision making on military tribunals and
detainee treatment policies. They became among President Bush's most vocal
critics within the military.

By then, the odds were tilted overwhelmingly in Addington's favor. In January
2001, he became Cheney's legal counsel and, according to former Solicitor
General Theodore Olson, the vice president's "eyes, ears, and voice." Cheney
implicitly trusts Addington on judgment calls because they are, in the words of
adviser Matalin, "the same kind of person -- Addington was always the first
among equals when the vice president sought advice. And he has always been the
final voice and analysis on what we were discussing." Cheney and his aide are so
close, says Nancy Dorn, an Addington colleague from the Reagan, George H.W.
Bush, and George W. Bush years, that they "hardly even have to communicate with
words."

Addington, his colleagues say, is modest, courtly, and family oriented. He
commutes to the White House by Metro when he could easily command a government
car, usually eats at the staff table at the White House mess, and spends
weekends cheering at his daughters' soccer games. "There are a lot of
transactional people in Washington," says Matalin. "He's not one of them. He's a
good soul."

According to critics, the reason Addington is such an effective bureaucratic
infighter is that he's an intellectual bully. "David can be less than
civilized," one official says. "He can be extremely unpleasant." Others say it's
because Addington is a superb lawyer and a skilled debater who arms himself with
a mind-numbing command of the facts and the law. Still others attribute
Addington's power to the outsize influence of Cheney. "Addington does a very
good job," says a former justice official who has observed him, "of harnessing
the power of the vice president."

But it's a subtle kind of harnessing. Addington, according to current and former
colleagues, rarely if ever invokes Cheney's name. An administration official
says that it's sometimes unclear whether Addington is even consulting the vice
president. But Cheney is always the elephant in the room. "People perceive that
this is the real power center," says attorney Scott Horton, who has written two
major studies on interrogation of terrorism suspects for the New York City Bar
Association, "and if you cross them, they will destroy you."

GRAB BAG

If he can dish out the lumps inside the bureaucracy, Addington has also taken a
share of his own -- in court. Many of the post-9/11 policies -- of which
Addington was the central architect -- have been questioned by federal judges
and repudiated by even some of the administration's advocates, including
indefinite detention of terrorism suspects without access to legal recourse,
creation of military commissions, and aggressive interrogation tactics. "They've
inflicted wounds unnecessarily," says a former Justice Department lawyer. "They
treated the post-9/11 situation as a grab bag and gave the administration a bad
name."

Win or lose, those who know him say Addington simply outworks his adversaries.
Even when lightning caused a fire that nearly destroyed his home, Addington
missed just a day of work. His office piled high with paperwork, eschewing a
secretary, Addington is impossible to reach by phone, but he E-mails colleagues
at all hours of the day and night about urgent government business and,
sometimes, his own arcane intellectual pursuits, like British high court
decisions and Australian Supreme Court rulings. "It's clear," says a former
White House official, "that he has a wellspring of information to back up that
wellspring of opinion." Addington's capacity to absorb complex information is
legendary. "My joke about David Addington is this is a guy who can throw the US
budget in the air," says Gribbin, "and before it hits the ground, mark it with
up with his red pen."

A voracious consumer of information, Addington keeps tabs on judicial
selections, US attorney nominations, and political polls. He is, says his former
colleague Nancy Dorn, "granular" and "microscopic," adding: "There was no issue
too small, his eyes would catch it. It used to drive me crazy. But that's what
you need."

Addington's position in Cheney's office -- at "the sausage end of the sausage-
making machine," as one former Justice official describes it -- allows him to
wield enormous influence because he is typically the second-to-last lawyer to
vet documents before they land on the president's desk. "David was exceptionally
good," says Cunningham, the former deputy legal adviser to the National Security
Council, "at keeping his powder dry until the last minute." Addington's bottom
line, those who know him say, is ensuring that even if the administration loses
on a policy issue, the principle of executive power is protected. "He was very
disciplined about knowing and articulating the difference," says Cunningham,
"between constitutional legal issues and policy issues."

That became evident when Addington began his first big legal battle, in early
2001, after Cheney refused to release documents relating to a controversial
energy task force that he headed. Two private watchdog groups and Congress sued
to find out whether energy industry lobbyists improperly sat on the task force
and influenced administration policy. In a series of letters to David Walker,
the comptroller general of the Government Accountability Office, the
investigative arm of Congress, Addington argued that neither Congress nor the
courts could "intrude into the heart of executive deliberations," because it
would inhibit the "candor" necessary to "effective government." Addington argued
strenuously that no matter what the political or policy outcomes, protecting the
information sought by the task force was the right thing to do. "They gave up
short-term political expediency," Berenson says, "for the larger constitutional
principle." More than three years later, Addington's judgment was vindicated by
the Supreme Court, which refused to order the Bush administration to release the
documents.

TOUGH GUYS

The 9/11 attacks became the crucible for the administration's commitment to
restoring presidential power and prerogative. In the national security arena,
the expansive view is that the president, as commander in chief, has the
inherent authority to exercise vast powers to secure the nation from external
threats.

But even some pro-presidential lawyers in the administration argued in favor of
exercising caution with that approach. "My advice was that we need to take the
least aggressive position consistent with what we need to do," says a former
Justice Department official. "It lets you build on it, and it doesn't make you
look so extreme." That was the crux of the post-9/11 debate.

In the months after the attacks, the White House made three crucial decisions:
to keep Congress out of the loop on major policy decisions like the creation of
military commissions, to interpret laws as narrowly as possible, and to confine
decision making to a small, trusted circle. "They've been so reluctant to seek
out different views," says one former official. "It's not just Addington. It's
how this administration works. It's a very narrow, tight group."

That core group consisted of Bush's counsel and now attorney general, Alberto
Gonzales; his deputies, Timothy Flanigan and David Leitch; the Pentagon's
influential general counsel, William Haynes; and a young attorney named John
Yoo, who worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

Whether or not he became the de facto leader of the group, as some
administration officials say, Addington's involvement made for a formidable
team. "You put Addington, Yoo, and Gonzales in a room, and there was a race to
see who was tougher than the rest and how expansive they could be with respect
to presidential power," says a former Justice Department official. "If you
suggested anything less, you were considered a wimp." Others say Addington and
Flanigan influenced Gonzales, who lacked their national security background.

Addington had close ties to Yoo, Haynes, and Flanigan. Yoo was Addington's
protege and Hayne's squash buddy. Haynes, whose friendship with Addington dates
back nearly two decades, was backed by Rumsfeld and his neoconservative deputies
Stephen Cambone and Paul Wolfowitz. Addington and Flanigan had also become
close, having experienced 9/11 from an extraordinary vantage point -- Flanigan
from the White House Situation Room, Addington by Cheney's side at the
President's Emergency Operations Center in a bunker underneath the complex. In
the weeks and months after the attacks, says a former White House official, the
two men would often take secret trips to undisclosed locations together,
including the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, where the Pentagon began holding
hundreds of detainees. One time, they even showed up together on a nuclear
submarine.

Addington, clearly, was a force behind the scenes in the legal skirmishing
within the administration. "There'd be lurches in policy; we wouldn't know what
was going on," says Admiral Guter. "Haynes would have meetings at the White
House with Gonzales and Addington, and he'd come back and give the next
iteration of what we were doing, and we'd scratch our heads and say, 'Where did
that come from?'"

One of Addington's most important allies in asserting presidential power was the
OLC's Yoo. Traditionally, OLC staffers tend to be longtime career lawyers who
ensure that the tenor of the legal opinions rendered is devoid of political
overtones. After 9/11, however, OLC lawyers drafted a series of opinions that
many career Justice Department attorneys viewed as having traduced the office's
heritage of nuanced, almost scholarly, legal analysis. Addington, according to
several Justice Department officials, helped Yoo shape some of the most
controversial OLC memos.

The administration's first goal was winning passage of a congressional
resolution authorizing the use of military force. The Pentagon and Joint Chiefs
of Staff wanted Congress to define the conflict narrowly and authorize the use
of force against al Qaeda and its confederates, as well as the Taliban. "It has
a good impact on morale to have a conflict that's narrowly defined and easily
winnable," says attorney Horton. But Addington and Cheney, according to Horton,
"really wanted it [defined more broadly], because it provided the trigger for
this radical redefinition of presidential power."

In an Addington-influenced OLC opinion issued shortly after 9/11, Yoo wrote that
Congress can't "place any limits on the president's determinations as to any
terrorist threat, the amount of military force to be used in response, or the
method, timing, and nature of the response."

A second critically important issue was what to do with those captured on the
field of battle. The State Department's ambassador at large for war crimes
issues, Pierre Prosper, headed an interagency group within the administration
and began exploring ideas. National Security Council legal adviser John
Bellinger was a key member of the group, which discussed options ranging from
military tribunals to prosecutions in federal court. The discussions were short-
circuited, several former administration officials say, when Flanigan, one of
Gonzales's two top aides, wrested away the group's work product on military
commissions. With Berenson's and Addington's assistance, Flanigan wrote a draft
order for the White House, based on an OLC memo arguing that the president had
the legal authority to authorize military commissions -- period.

That led Bush, on November 13, to authorize the secretary of defense to create
military commissions to deal with "unlawful enemy combatants." The Pentagon's
entire corps of JAG officers was kept in the dark, as were Ambassador Prosper,
Bellinger, then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and then Secretary
of State Colin Powell.

When Bush issued the executive order, a furious Bellinger confronted Gonzales in
his office, administration sources say, to protest what he viewed as an end run.
Gonzales and Bellinger would have many similar heated discussions about
Addington's policy influence.

OPTICS

Prosper felt the military commissions order was workable but believed the
commissions' rules would make or break the order's credibility. He, Bellinger,
and others believed that the administration ought to have an independent review
component, perhaps even a civilian one, to allay the distrust of European
governments toward all things military. "It's important that sometimes you put
in a rule we may not end up using," says Prosper, "but the optics are good for
public opinion." But Addington, Flanigan, Gonzales, and especially Haynes
remained adamantly against the civilian review idea, current and former
officials say.

On military commissions and other issues, Addington's frequent sparring partner
was Bellinger, administration officials say, because Addington viewed Bellinger
-- who had begun to voice deep concerns about the secrecy and the lack of
interagency coordination and input -- as "weak kneed."

Tensions between Addington and others in the administration would flare again
and again. One vexing issue, for instance, was whether to treat members of the
Taliban captured in Afghanistan as prisoners of war. Addington's colleague, Yoo,
called Afghanistan a "failed state" and argued that Taliban fighters therefore
didn't constitute a real army but were more of a "militant terrorist-like
group." A draft memorandum, dated Jan. 25, 2002, signed by Gonzales and written,
sources say, by Flanigan with Addington's input, called Yoo's opinion
"definitive." The war on terrorism, Gonzales extrapolated, is a "new paradigm"
that "renders obsolete" the "strict limitations" the Geneva Conventions place on
interrogations and "renders quaint" the protections it affords prisoners. Some
government lawyers believed Bush could have announced his decision without
endorsing the controversial "failed state" theory. "It's the least you need to
say to get the president what he wants," says a former Justice official. "They
go beyond where they need to go."

If the question of incarceration was vexing, the question of how to extract
information from those incarcerated was positively inflammatory. In August 2002,
the head of OLC, Jay Bybee, signed a memo interpreting the US law prohibiting
torture and implementing the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Addington helped
shape the Bybee memo, which was authored by Yoo. Once again, the State
Department -- which has the lead role in monitoring implementation of the treaty
-- was left out of the discussions.

Bybee, Yoo, and Addington saw the torture statute, unsurprisingly, as an
unwarranted infringement on executive-branch power. Their goal was to interpret
it as narrowly as possible, and their memo, consequently, explored the outer
limits of the interrogation methods the statute allowed. The three lawyers
agreed that the president could override or ignore the statute, as needed, to
protect national security. And they concluded that those who engaged in conduct
that might violate the law might nevertheless have an appropriate legal defense
based on "self-defense" or "necessity."

The Bybee memo caused a storm of protest in the legal community, including among
many conservative lawyers inside the Justice Department. "From the beginning, no
one has ever said we would violate the torture statute," says a former Justice
Department official. "So why would you write a memo writing all the ways we
could violate the statute? It's just dumb."

In October 2003, Bybee's replacement as the head of OLC, Jack Goldsmith, began
reviewing all the "war on terror" memos the office had generated and later told
the Pentagon not to use the Bybee memo. Deputy Attorney General James Comey soon
ordered the memo withdrawn, and another OLC attorney, Daniel Levin, then wrote a
more limited opinion that scrapped whole sections of the Bybee memo. Unlike
Bybee, Levin circulated his draft memo widely and made revisions, according to
Justice Department officials, after lawyers at the State Department and other
agencies had commented on it.

As with the incarceration and interrogation issues, President Bush's decision,
within days of the 9/11 attacks, to authorize the National Security Agency to
conduct electronic surveillance inside the United States, without review by the
secret Justice Department intelligence court, had David Addington's handwriting
all over it. Bush, Addington and others in the small coterie of conservative
administration lawyers argued, had the authority to order the secret
surveillance under his constitutional authority as commander in chief and by the
authority granted to him by Congress's use-of-force resolution before the
invasion of Afghanistan. Goldsmith and Patrick Philbin weren't so sure. In March
2004, the two Justice Department lawyers expressed their doubts about the
program to Comey, the deputy attorney general. Like Addington, Goldsmith and
Philbin are extremely conservative and pro-presidential power. But according to
former Justice Department attorneys who know both men, they are also careful
lawyers who found Addington and Yoo's legal analysis and opinions to be sloppy
and overreaching. By reviewing all the "war on terror" memos, says a former
Justice Department attorney, "part of what Jack was doing was returning OLC more
to its traditional role." Addington excoriated Goldsmith over what he viewed as
his betrayal, administration officials say, and his response, several
individuals who know him say, was entirely in keeping with his character. People
in the front lines of the war on terrorism "were relying on these memos," says
one former Justice Department official. "People felt like you're changing the
rules on us; you're running for the hills." That, says Cheney adviser Matalin,
is antithetical to Addington's makeup: "Once he's disaggregated the problem and
reaggregated the solution," Matalin says, "he can stand his ground."

ANGELS

In recent months, the battle over executive power has pitted Addington and
Cheney against Sen. John McCain, the Arizona Republican who spearheaded an
amendment banning the use of torture or cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment
of detainees. The administration wanted McCain to include presidential
discretion to shield interrogators from prosecution and immunity for officials
who approved acts of abuse. Cheney's office was deeply engaged in pushing the
changes -- and in trying to scotch the McCain legislation. "It was coming from
Addington," says Horton, "time and time again."

Bush threatened to veto the McCain legislation, and Cheney personally joined the
fray, urging Republican senators to exempt the CIA from the provisions. In the
end, Bush's national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, met with McCain to
negotiate a compromise when it became clear that McCain had rolled up veto-proof
majorities in the House and Senate.

The McCain amendment requires the government to set out uniform standards for
detainee interrogations in an updated field manual. The manual was last revised
after the 1992 Gulf War and ceased to have legal force in 2002. A new manual has
not been reissued. "Addington has been the principal reason there has been no
manual," Horton says. "It's his refusal to accept Geneva Conventions on any
terms. We know this for a fact."

As legal scholars continue to examine the government's 9/11 policies, David
Addington's singular presence looms larger than ever. What is unclear, at this
juncture anyway, is how history will regard him: as a legal path setter who
devised innovative means to help a president defeat an unconventional enemy or
as a dangerous advocate who, in pushing the envelope legally to help prosecute
the war on terrorism, set US foreign policy, and America's image in the world,
back by decades. Even his toughest critics in the administration say Addington
believes utterly that he is acting in good faith. "He thinks he's on the side of
the angels," says a former Justice Department official. "And that's what makes
it so scary."

[ With research assistance from the US News library. ]

*


ABC News --

May 23, 2006

GUANTANAMO'S INNOCENTS: NEWLY RELEASED PRISONERS STRUGGLE TO FIND A HOME

Men Without A Country 'Disappointed' In America
After A 'Pointless' Four Years At Gitmo

By Lara Setrakian

http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=1997083&page=1

May 23, 2006 -- - Their story may be the strangest one you'll hear out of
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Even after being cleared of any wrongdoing, five innocent men were kept captive
at the detention center at Guantanamo. Today, these men who started out in China
and ended up in Cuba are now free and in the Eastern European country of
Albania, the only country that would take them. They spoke to the ABC News Law &
Justice Unit in their first American interview.

'IN THE WRONG PLACE AT THE WRONG TIME'

Many of Guantanamo's prisoners proclaim they're innocent. What's different about
these men, Muslims from China's Uighur minority, is that even American
authorities said they were innocent, referring to them as "no longer enemy
combatants" or "NLEC." Nevertheless, they remained imprisoned more than a year
after their names were cleared -- after the U.S. government determined they did
nothing wrong and posed no terrorist threat to America or Americans.

Why were they kept at Guantanamo so long after they were deemed innocent? Simply
put, no country -- including the United States -- would accept them. They
couldn't go back to China because they believed, as did the American government,
that as Uighur Muslims they faced persecution by the Chinese government. With
nowhere else to turn, they were taken in by Albania, a country with a Muslim
majority.

Even as they struggle to find a place to call home, they are working to move
past the ordeal of incarceration.

"We were isolated from the rest of the world," said Abu Bakkir Qassim, speaking
through a translator.

Speaking for the group, he told ABC News: "We spent a pointless four-and-a-half
years in Guantanamo."

In December 2005, a U.S. federal judge said of the men's detainment, "This
indefinite imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay is unlawful."

Michael Sternell, a lawyer who represents three of the men on behalf of law firm
Kramer, Levin, Naftalis and Frankel told ABC News, "These men have suffered more
than anyone should ever have to in a lifetime in just the last four-and-a-half
years. They were detained simply because they were in the wrong place at the
wrong time."

Q & A: LIFE AT GUANTANAMO AND BEYOND

Weeks after their release from Guantanamo, the Uighur men were just sitting down
to lunch when they told the ABC News Law & Justice Unit about their experience.

The following is a transcript of the conversation with Qassim, who spoke through
a translator on behalf of the entire group.

Q: What was Guantanamo like?

A: Guantanamo is like a hell where there is no justice or respect for human
dignity. Our life there was very, very miserable, especially the last one year
after being told that we are innocent and still living behind wired walls. We
feel confused, frustrated and tired. I would call the worst period of time of my
four years incarceration in Guantanamo.

The saddest part of the whole thing is that after being cleared, no longer enemy
combatants, or innocent. Being innocent people, we were told that we have no
rights but shelter, food, water and a place to pray. Given that, that place is
not the normal, usual prison. So I would say that it is a hell.

Q: Did anyone ever tell them why they were there or did any of the guards there
express guilt about them being there?

A: They didn't tell us why we were at Guantanamo, but the only thing they kept
telling us, the U.S. government, the interrogators, the guards, understand our
situation and they know that we shouldn't be there. In the meantime, they keep
telling us that we will not be sent back to China and the U.S. government is
looking for a third country to settle.

Q: So there was some sympathy, you think? Some guilt expressed?

A: No, I don't think so. Sympathy or regret never was expressed by anyone from
the guards.

Q: After being cleared as non-enemy combatants, were they allowed to contact
their families or use the telephone?

A: No. Only one exception. One of the five men were able to speak to a sister
who lives in Sweden.

Q: What was your interaction like with their fellow prisoners? What did they
think of each other?

A: If you're in a cage, or in those camps, camp one, camp three, you're allowed
to speak to your neighbor, cellmate. But if you're outside, on the playground,
you're not supposed to talk. So the interaction with the other inmates is very,
very limited.

Q: Was there a hardest day, a moment when you'd most lost hope?

A: After we were handed over to American authorities in Kandahar. We thought it
was good, Americans uphold people's rights and protect them. When we realized
where we were going -- to Guantanamo -- that was the hardest moment.

Q: Last week, the U.N. came out with a report saying that Guantanamo should be
shut down. What do you think?

A: In my view, as someone who spent four-and-a-half years in prison in
Guantanamo, I believe the United States should charge the men who are in
Guantanamo or release them, so I don't believe this prison could be kept as it
is today.

Q: So it shouldn't be shut down or it should be shut down?

A: My honest answer would be yes, of course.

Q: How long has it been since you've seen your families?

A: Most of us left in 1999. [By] last summer, when our American lawyers get
involved in our case, our family members pretty much thought that we evaporated
from the face of the earth.

It is very difficult. We are alive but not being able to talk to our loved ones
and let them know that we are thinking about them and missing them, caring about
them, telling them that everything is going to be all right. Some of us have
kids [at] home, whom we haven't seen yet. I even have two children, a daughter
and a son, that were born after I left China. My wife was pregnant when I left
my homeland.

Q: How do you like Albania so far? What is life like there?

A: We are very pleased that the Albanian government and the Albanian people
opened their hearts and welcomed us. Despite the fact that all the strong,
powerful, democratic countries are able and capable of accepting us, they did
not do that. We are having some problems ... there are no Uighurs in Albania,
and we don't speak the Albanian language.

It would have been much easier if we stayed closer to the Uighur community so
that they can come and help us to forget our life, the time that we spent in
Guantanamo and help us to heal the wounds that were created in the last four-
and-a-half years of incarceration. Albania is a great people [sic], it's very
nice here. However, we don't see any future culturally and economically.

Q: If not Albania, where do you want to be?

A: Were hoping that the United States government would recognize the mistake
that it has done and accept, allow us to enter the United States. U.S.
government captured us, U.S. government incarcerated us, locked us up in prison,
and U.S. government said that we were not a threat and should be released.

Uighur-Americans came forward, made an offer to the United States government to
accept us into Uighur-American society and community. They even went into the
courts and contacted the lawyers and wrote a letter to the U.S. government
officials asking them to consider releasing us into the United States.
Unfortunately, it did not happen, a rather disappointing decision.

However, other countries such as Canada, Germany, Norway, Turkey would also be
good countries for us to settle because of their sizable Uighur populations.
Uighur culture is an interdependent culture where we always need to see our
friends and sit down and talk with them. And especially in our situation, we
need a lot of people around us helping us to forget this bitter life experience
that we spent wasted in Guantanamo for the last four-and-a-half years.

Q: Are you angry at the United States?

A: I wouldn't call it angry. I would rather describe it as extreme
disappointment. The Uighur people see the United States as a country that
promotes democratic freedom and protects human rights of the people,
particularly people like the Uighurs, my people. We look up to the United States
as a source of hope, inspiration for our liberty. And because of that image that
we hold of the United States and what we have experienced in Guantanamo, we feel
extremely disappointed.

We are so fortunate to have a group of good-hearted American lawyers, who never
gave up on us, and freed us. We would never be here if we didn't have the good
American lawyers who helped us to be free. And for that we are very, very
thankful.

Q: What were you doing when you were apprehended in Afghanistan? There are U.S.
officials who have said you had associations with the Taliban or al Qaeda or
received weapons training. What do you say?

First of all, let me correct. I was not captured in Afghanistan. I was picked up
by a Pakistani bounty hunter in Pakistan and sold to the U.S. military for
$5,000.

You may wonder why I went to Pakistan, but I originally, initially, was hoping
to get to Turkey to join the Uighur community in Turkey. My friend in Pakistan
advised me that there was a Uighur village in Afghanistan where I can stay while
my visa was processed and they told me they will call me and I can come back and
get my passport and go to Turkey to earn more money and support my family. So
basically my departure from China was seeking greater economic and political
freedom to be able to live well.

Q: Did you ever receive anything like weapons training?

I reject the motion that I ever received military training. When I went to
Afghanistan, I find that quite compelling to use that opportunity to study the
Koran ... Uighurs are physically Muslim, but they don't really know how to read
[religious texts]. That environment provided me an excellent opportunity, so I
spent most of my time reading the Koran, learning Islamic, taking Islam,
learning more about Islam.

Afghanistan is a country ... where you can see guns everywhere. Out of my
curiosity, I learned how to use them. It doesn't mean that I was seeking weapons
training. I told the U.S. government that just learning how to use that machine
gun does not make me a dangerous person or a person who would attack someone or
gets me the title that I received military training.

Q: Do you want to go back to China? If not, why not?

A: No -- we don't want to go back to China. Chinese had been persecuting,
discriminating and doing horrible things on our people. And recently, they've
been calling anyone who disagrees with the Chinese either terrorists or
separatists.

The second reason that we cannot go back is that the United States government
invested so much energy and time to let the world know that anyone and everyone
in Guantanamo is terrorist. [After] four-and-a-half years at Guantanamo Bay ...
you earn a title "terrorist." And the Chinese strongly believe it.

RESPONSE FROM WASHINGTON

In earlier statements, the State Department has defended its treatement of the
five Uighur men.

In February 2006, a representative told ABC News: "It is the longstanding policy
of the United States not to transfer a person to a country if it is determined
that it is more likely than not that the person will be tortured. We are looking
into resettlement outside China."

[ Jeng-Tyng Hong in New York contributed to this article. ]

*

Washington Post --

May 20, 2006

4 MEN CLEARED OF TERRORISM LINKS BUT STILL DETAINED

No Explanation Or Timetable for Release Given

By Josh White and Julie Tate

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901603.html

The May 5 release of Chinese Muslims from the military prison at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, leaves four men there who have been cleared of all connections to
terrorism but continue to live in a legal limbo, with no indication of when they
will be freed, according to the captives' attorneys and military documents.

The government considers the men ready for outright release -- "no longer enemy
combatants" (NLECs) in military jargon. In fact, 38 detainees, 5 percent of the
759 prisoners ever held at Guantanamo Bay, have officially earned NLEC status
since the island prison opened in early 2002.

They are men such as Zakirjan Hassam, an Uzbek refugee who was sold to U.S.
forces in Afghanistan for $5,000 in May 2002 by people he mistakenly believed
would shelter him. He ended up in Guantanamo Bay the following month and is
still there today.

According to the U.S. military, Hassam is not an enemy, and a military tribunal
decided in 2004 that his stay at Guantanamo Bay had been based on inaccurate
information. There is no evidence that Hassam took up arms against anyone or
that he ever supported terrorism, and his only apparent link to alleged
terrorist groups were conversations with fellow detainees during his
imprisonment at Guantanamo Bay, according to testimony by Hassam that is not
disputed by the government.

"He's lost four years of his life for being in the wrong place at the wrong time
and for being sold to U.S. forces," said Christopher Moore, a New York lawyer
who represents Hassam.

Earlier this month, the government released five Chinese Uighurs who were among
the last nine NLECs at Guantanamo Bay. After years of detention and, ultimately,
government efforts to find them a home in a third country, the men were sent to
Albania. The U.S. had feared that they would be jailed or tortured if returned
to China.

Beijing, which considers Uighur separatists to be terrorists, demanded that they
be returned.

The accounts of NLECs, contained in hearing transcripts, show that many were
rounded up by profiteers along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and sold to U.S.
or Northern Alliance forces. Some were Arabs who stood out in local populations,
while others were arrested by overzealous Pakistani police forces seeking to
cooperate with the U.S. effort to root out terrorists. The Uighurs were in
transit to other countries or training for action against the Chinese
government.

"In Afghanistan they heard that American forces are providing $25,000 to capture
each Arab and $15,000 to capture each Afghan," Haji Shahzada, an Afghan NLEC who
was released last year, told his military tribunal.

The NLECs are from 14 countries. One was captured in Mexico. Half are from
Afghanistan, with the others from Pakistan, France, the Maldives, Jordan, Sudan,
Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Egypt, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkey and China.

"Nobody ever asked who I am, what did I do, or where did I live," said Padsha
Wazir, an Afghan detainee who was released. "They just handcuff me. . . . It has
been three years, and it shouldn't take that long for Americans to find the
truth."

In fact, Pentagon officials say that 121 of the approximately 460 detainees
currently at Guantanamo Bay are now eligible for release or transfer to the
custody of their home countries. The government still considers 104 of them
threats to the United States and its allies. They are scheduled to be returned
to the control of other nations, where they probably would be imprisoned. Many
are waiting to go to Afghanistan, where the United States is helping to build a
prison for some of them.

U.S. military officials have decided that they can free 13 other detainees,
though they have not been given NLEC status. The remaining four are NLECs. But
there are no immediate plans to release them.

Just this week, 15 other detainees were released into the custody of the Saudi
government.

"At Guantanamo, the United States only holds enemy combatants that were members
of or supporting Taliban, al-Qaeda and associated forces," said Navy Lt. Cmdr.
J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, who added that detainees' status is regularly
reviewed. "We have no interest in detaining anyone longer than necessary."

The 38 NLECs earned their status through the military's Combatant Status Review
Tribunal process between August 2004 and March 2005. Those hearings allowed
detainees to learn the unclassified allegations against them and to tell their
personal stories to a panel of military officials.

While their identities have not been released, The Washington Post obtained the
NLECs' testimony, with names redacted, through a Freedom of Information Act
request and compared it to the testimony of named detainees released by the
Pentagon to the Associated Press in March.

Mustaq Ali Patel, a French detainee who was released in March 2005, told his
hearing panel that he was simply trying to visit Afghanistan when he was
arrested at the Iranian border. He said he was beaten by Afghan government
officials who threatened to kill him if he did not say he was a Saudi citizen.

"I just want to say that I want to go home, and please set me free," Patel told
his captors. "I have nothing to do with this; there's nothing more they could've
written badly about me, except that I lied."

Gordon, the Pentagon spokesman, said that "everyone who is or has been detained
at Guantanamo was sent there for a valid reason." He noted that of the 10,000
people captured in and around Afghanistan since 2002, fewer than 10 percent have
ended up at Guantanamo Bay.

But many cases take years to resolve.

Fethi Boucetta, for example, is an Algerian national who was arrested in
Pakistan when local authorities came looking for another man. According to his
tribunal records, Boucetta sought asylum in Pakistan in 1996 after leaving
Algeria to avoid military service. A doctor who was teaching at an embassy in
Pakistan, Boucetta had not entered Afghanistan after 1992 and told a military
representative that he did not organize or belong to any extremist groups, as
U.S. officials alleged.

"They went to his house and asked to speak with somebody else, and Fethi said he
didn't know that person and that he wasn't there," said Danielle R. Voorhees, a
U.S. lawyer representing Boucetta, who is still held at Guantanamo Bay.
"Pakistani police came back with Americans in plain clothes, and they said they
wanted to question him. That's when he was arrested."

According to his attorneys, Boucetta was told in May 2005 that he was no longer
considered an enemy combatant and could go home, but he has learned nothing
since of efforts to have him released. His first contact with his wife in
Algeria in four years was a telephone conversation in late April.

"It's easy for us to say 'Just release him,' but it's a difficult situation,"
said Don Degnan, another lawyer who represents Boucetta. "There's not a lot of
First World countries that want a Guantanamo detainee released into their
country."

Lawyers from the Justice Department have told federal judges that there are
continuous discussions with other nations about transferring detainees but that
the government has a strict policy of not releasing them to countries likely to
mistreat them. The same lawyers have said that they do not want any of the men,
even those not considered threats, released in the United States.

In one unusual NLEC case, lawyers have asked federal courts to order the
government not to release their client so that he will not be sent to his native
Egypt, where they fear he would be arrested, jailed and possibly tortured.

Late last year, Justice Department lawyers said that Ala Abdel Maqsud Muhammad
Salim, an NLEC still held at Guantanamo Bay, would be released to Egypt. But, in
January, they filed a motion stating that new information warranting further
investigation had resulted in there no longer being "immediate plans to
transfer, repatriate, or release" him.

Salim -- also referred to in documents as Alladeen -- was born in Egypt in 1967
and spent his first 22 years there, a period that included several arrests that
never resulted in charges, according to briefs filed by his Washington-based
attorney, Carol Elder Bruce. He left Egypt for Saudi Arabia in 1989 and later
went to Pakistan, where he worked for the Islamic Relief Organization
distributing aid to Afghanistan. He was arrested by Pakistani authorities in
2002 and transferred to U.S. custody; he was later sent to Guantanamo Bay.

At Guantanamo Bay, Bruce asserts in legal papers, Salim was interrogated by
Egyptian officials who chained him to the floor and threatened to harm him when
he is released. "We will take you somewhere and they will never see you again,"
Bruce wrote, quoting Salim's interaction with the Egyptian delegation.

In a November hearing, U.S. District Judge James Robertson expressed concern
that the United States would "release" Salim to Egypt, where he could face
pressure from the government because he had been detained at Guantanamo Bay.

*


Boston Globe --

May 18, 2006

FREED FROM GUANTANAMO, 5 FACE DANGER IN ALBANIA

By Charlie Savage

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/05/18/freed_from_guan
tanamo_5_face_danger_in_albania/

WASHINGTON -- Five Chinese Muslims recently released from the Guantanamo Bay
prison are living under increasingly dangerous conditions in Albania, the only
country to let them in after the United States determined they were not ''enemy
combatants," according to their lawyer.

The lawyer, Sabin Willett of Boston, asked in court papers filed yesterday that
the Bush administration bring the five men to the United States for their own
safety.

The men, who are members of an ethnic group known as Uighurs, were arrested in
Afghanistan four years ago. A military tribunal later determined that the men
had never been enemies of the United States, and ordered them released.

But because the Chinese government has a history of persecuting Uighurs, who
have been seeking greater independence, the men could not be sent back to China.

Two weeks ago, on the eve of a court hearing into their fate, the military
announced that it had dropped the men off in Albania, a mostly Muslim country in
southeast Europe. Willett, who has been waging a court battle to get the Uighurs
brought to the United States as refugees, flew to Albania.

In an affidavit filed yesterday with the US Court of Appeals for the District of
Columbia, Willett described a harrowing trip to a slum where the five men are
living in a refugee processing center. He said he was able to take his clients
to a restaurant and get glasses made for one of them, but since he left, they
have been afraid to leave the compound.

The men's arrival has caused a sensation in Albania, he said. The Chinese
government has called on Albania to extradite the men, whom it calls terrorists.
Members of the Albanian parliament have vowed to send them to China. And even if
the men are allowed to stay in Albania, Willett said, they would face a bleak
future.

"The impoverished country where they were dumped without community, common
language, family, or prospects is ill-suited to withstand the strident demands
of the most powerful communist dictatorship on earth," Willett wrote. "These men
never wronged the United States in any way. What has happened is shameful."

The Bush administration has asked the court to dismiss the case on the grounds
that it is now moot. A Justice Department spokeswoman did not return a call
yesterday

Also yesterday, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister announced that 16 captives held
at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp would be transferred to Saudi jails in
coming days -- the first large-scale transfer from this isolated island prison
camp in more than a year.

*


Washington Post --

May 14, 2006

FIRED OFFICER BELIEVED CIA LIED TO CONGRESS
Friends Say McCarthy Learned of Denials About Detainees' Treatment

By R. Jeffrey Smith

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/05/13/AR2006051301311.html

A senior CIA official, meeting with Senate staff in a secure room of the Capitol
last June, promised repeatedly that the agency did not violate or seek to
violate an international treaty that bars cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment
of detainees, during interrogations it conducted in the Middle East and
elsewhere.

But another CIA officer -- the agency's deputy inspector general, who for the
previous year had been probing allegations of criminal mistreatment by the CIA
and its contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan -- was startled to hear what she
considered an outright falsehood, according to people familiar with her account.
It came during the discussion of legislation that would constrain the CIA's
interrogations.

That CIA officer was Mary O. McCarthy, 61, who was fired on April 20 for
allegedly sharing classified information with journalists, including Washington
Post journalist Dana Priest. A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became
convinced that "CIA people had lied" in that briefing, as one of her friends
said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but
also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel,
inhumane or degrading.

Whether McCarthy's conviction that the CIA was hiding unpleasant truths provoked
her to leak sensitive information is known only to her and the journalists she
is alleged to have spoken with last year. But the picture of her that emerges
from interviews with more than a dozen former colleagues is of an independent-
minded analyst who became convinced that on multiple occasions the agency had
not given accurate or complete information to its congressional overseers.

McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a
camp of CIA officers who felt that the Bush administration's venture into Iraq
had dangerously diverted U.S. counterterrorism policy. After seeing -- in
e-mails, cable traffic, interview transcripts and field reports -- some of the
secret fruits of the Iraq intervention, McCarthy became disenchanted, three of
her friends say.

In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told
the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the
CIA's detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence
committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the
senior Democrat.

McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA's general counsel had
worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the
agency's creation of "ghost detainees" -- prisoners removed from Iraq for secret
interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross --
because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices.

Almost all of McCarthy's friends and colleagues interviewed for this report
agreed to speak only on the condition of anonymity because her case still could
be referred for prosecution and because much of her work involved highly
classified information.

As a former director of intelligence programs in the Clinton administration's
National Security Council, McCarthy was entrusted with deep secrets regarding
the nation's covert actions overseas. She was a contributor in 2004 to the
presidential campaign of Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), and a former
colleague of two Clinton aides -- Richard A. Clarke and Rand Beers -- who had
publicly assailed what they considered President Bush's misguided focus on Iraq.

By many accounts, those traits helped fit McCarthy precisely into the current
White House's model of a disloyal intelligence officer: She dissented from Bush
administration policy, and she let others know.

But McCarthy's friends, including former officials who support aggressive
interrogation methods, resist any suggestion that she handled classified
information loosely or that political motives lay behind her dissent and the
contacts she has told the agency she had with journalists. She was, in the view
of several who know her well, a CIA scapegoat for a White House that they say
prefers intelligence acolytes instead of analysts and sees ulterior motives in
any policy criticism.

They allege that her firing was another chapter in a long-standing feud between
the CIA and the Bush White House, stoked by friction over the merits of the war
in Iraq, over whether links existed between Saddam Hussein's government and al-
Qaeda, and over the CIA-instigated criminal inquiry of White House officials
suspected of leaking the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame.

"When the president nominated Porter Goss [as CIA director in September 2004],
he sent Goss over to get a rogue agency under control," Steven Simon, a
colleague of McCarthy's at the National Security Council from 1994 to 1999, said
Goss's aides told him. Simon said McCarthy's unusually public firing appeared
intended not only to block leaks but also to suppress the dissent that has "led
to these leaks. The aim was to have a chilling effect, and it will probably work
for a while."

Goss himself was forced to resign earlier this month.

CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, without naming McCarthy, denied that
the firing was meant to suppress dissent. She said it was provoked solely by the
officer's admission to CIA investigators to having provided classified
information to the media. "You can't ignore an officer ignoring their secrecy
agreement," Dyck said.

Many lawmakers have said they share this viewpoint, and some have called for
tougher CIA sanctions to enforce the secrecy rules.

But McCarthy, in e-mails to friends, has denied leaking anything classified. She
has not denied speaking to Priest but has said she was unaware that the CIA had
secret prisons in Eastern Europe, the most attention-getting detail in Priest's
articles last year. Her lawyer has said the same thing publicly.

Assessing whether politics played a role in the firing is difficult, given the
reluctance of those involved to lay bare the underlying facts. The CIA has
declined to disclose the evidence it collected against McCarthy. McCarthy
declined to be interviewed for this article, and her attorney, Ty Cobb, said the
CIA has precluded him from discussing what McCarthy said in CIA interviews and
polygraph examinations between February and April 18.

Reporters at The Washington Post and other publications do not discuss sources
for articles beyond what is published. Priest's disclosures about the secret
prisons were attributed to multiple current and former intelligence officials on
three continents.

McCarthy was drawn into the CIA's wrenching internal debate over treatment of
foreign detainees when she was recruited by Inspector General John L. Helgerson
in the summer of 2004 to oversee the agency's criminal probe of alleged
wrongdoing in the war on Iraq. CIA Director George J. Tenet requested the probe
shortly before he was replaced by Goss.

Both Helgerson and McCarthy were veterans of the agency's Intelligence
Directorate; neither had worked in the Directorate of Operations (D.O.), whose
employees in Iraq and Afghanistan were at the heart of the abuse allegations and
whose leadership often resents independent scrutiny. But McCarthy was in some
ways well prepared for the job, because she had tangled with the D.O. previously
over several of its covert-action programs.

A historian by training and a passionate hockey fan, she had two brief jobs in
academia and a stint at a risk-assessment firm before joining the agency's
Africa and Latin America divisions. In 1991, she became a deputy to legendary
CIA analyst Charlie Allen, then the agency's chief warning officer. After
McCarthy succeeded Allen in 1994, Allen paid tribute to her "strong views" on
the need for "extraordinary rigor" in analysis.

The job involved supervising a tiny staff tasked with separating wheat from
chaff and calling attention to imminent crises, but afforded marginal clout in
influencing the agency's intelligence-gathering priorities. It left her
frustrated, and in articles published in a small-circulation intelligence
journal in 1994 and 1998, she decried the agency's adherence to an "old analytic
culture" and its reluctance to reorganize to improve its warning capability.

Much of the intelligence community was marked by "ingrown bureaucracies that
have become isolated and smug" instead of risk-taking, McCarthy said in one
article. She also warned that in all the reviews of major U.S. intelligence
failures, "there emerges abundant evidence . . . that analysts often shaped
their judgments with policy in mind."

In 1996, then-national security adviser Anthony Lake, who shared her intense
interest in Africa, recruited her to a White House job in which she helped
conduct an annual review of all presidentially authorized covert-action
programs. James B. Steinberg, who became deputy national security adviser at the
end of that year, said McCarthy "did not see herself as carrying the water for
any particular policy or perspective. . . . Is she someone I would trust to
handle the information properly and sensitively? I would say, absolutely."

As the National Security Council's director and then senior director of
intelligence programs, McCarthy helped enforce the classification rules at the
White House and sometimes blocked staff access to documents or CIA programs. She
also developed a reputation for bluntly expressed opinions about deficiencies in
the intelligence and analysis prepared for President Bill Clinton.

"She gave the CIA a very hard time when she thought they were not doing what
they were supposed to do," a former colleague recalled. "She wasn't snowed very
easily. It is her nature to be a skeptic."

McCarthy tangled with the Directorate of Operations over whether some covert
actions were still productive. She concluded that evidence linking a Sudanese
pharmaceutical plant with al-Qaeda was thin, and she lodged a dissent with the
national security adviser before U.S. cruise missiles were fired at the facility
in 1998. She also fought for a year with James L. Pavitt, then the head of the
directorate, who opposed a White House-backed plan to deploy pilotless Predator
planes over Afghanistan.

"Her personality was engaging, charming, persistent, and also loud and
aggressive," said a CIA official who experienced McCarthy's occasionally painful
grilling. "Sometimes she got a bee in her bonnet about something that others
thought was not so important." The exchanges, which one official called "head-
butting," helped harden McCarthy's view that "the CIA is just very insular," a
former colleague said. "It is kind of a boys' club" closed to "new ways of doing
analysis."

After Bush's election, McCarthy stayed at the White House briefly and then
accepted a temporary assignment at the CIA's Science and Technology Directorate,
where she felt "underutilized," according to one friend. She enrolled in law
classes in preparation for retirement and took a sabbatical at the Center for
Strategic and International Studies.

Then Helgerson persuaded her to oversee his inquiry of detainee treatment in
Iraq, and later Afghanistan.

McCarthy's findings are secret. According to a brief CIA statement about the
probe in a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union,
investigators set out to examine "the conduct of CIA components and personnel,
including DO personnel" during interrogations. Tens of thousands of pages of
material were collected, including White House and Justice Department documents,
and multiple reports were issued. Some described cases of abuse, involving fewer
than a dozen individuals, and were forwarded to the Justice Department,
according to government officials.

Another report, completed in 2004, examined the CIA's interrogation policies and
techniques, concluded that they might violate international law and made 10
recommendations, which the agency has at least partially adopted. That report
jarred some officials, because the Justice Department has contended that the
international convention against torture -- barring "cruel, inhumane, and
degrading" treatment -- does not apply to U.S. interrogations of foreigners
outside the United States.

Little else is known publicly. The CIA inspector general's reports have narrow
circulation. When IG inquiries involve covert actions such as foreign
interrogations, for example, the agency briefs only the chairmen and ranking
members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, instead of the full
panels. So only a handful of people in Washington knew what McCarthy knew.

The CIA has rebuffed the ACLU's legal requests to disclose about 10,000 pages of
documents, arguing that they contain sensitive material about intelligence
sources and methods. The presiding judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein, said in
September 2004 that "if the documents are more of an embarrassment than a
secret, the public should know of our government's treatment of individuals
captured and held abroad." But he has not forced any disclosures.

McCarthy "was seeing things in some of the investigations that troubled her,"
said one of her friends, and she worried that neither Helgerson nor the agency's
congressional overseers would fully examine what happened or why. "She had the
impression that this stuff has been pretty well buried," another friend said. In
McCarthy's view and that of many colleagues, two friends say, torture was not
only wrong but also misguided, because it rarely produced useful results.

Officials at the CIA and the White House declined to say whether McCarthy's
firing, which came 10 days before her planned retirement, was discussed between
them in advance. But a CIA official said that when Goss himself was asked to
resign two weeks later, Bush thanked Goss indirectly for the action when he said
Goss had "instilled a sense of professionalism" at the agency.

CIA officials have said that McCarthy nonetheless will receive her pension. At
the time of her firing, the House was considering legislation, provoked in part
by The Post article about secret prisons, requiring the CIA director to study
the feasibility of revoking the pensions of those who make unauthorized
disclosures of classified information. The legislation was approved by the House
five days after the firing became public.

[ Staff reporter Dafna Linzer, researcher Madonna Lebling and research editor
Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report. ]

*


New York Times --

May 10, 2006

CLASH FORESEEN BETWEEN C.I.A. AND PENTAGON

By Eric Schmitt

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/10/washington/10cambone.html

WASHINGTON, May 9 -- President Bush's selection of Gen. Michael V. Hayden to be
the next director of the Central Intelligence Agency sets the stage for new
wrangling with the Pentagon, which is rapidly expanding its own global spying
and terrorist-tracking operations, both long considered C.I.A. roles.

Overseeing Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's drive to broaden the
military's clandestine reconnaissance and man-hunting missions is Stephen A.
Cambone, the Pentagon's intelligence czar and one of Mr. Rumsfeld's most trusted
aides, whose low public profile masks his influence as one of the nation's most
powerful intelligence officials.

Since his office was created three years ago, Mr. Cambone and his deputy, Lt.
Gen. William G. Boykin, a former commander of the Army's elite Delta Force, have
carried out a wide-ranging restructuring of the Pentagon's sprawling
intelligence bureaucracy.

The C.I.A. has the lead role in managing "human intelligence," or spying in the
government. Whether by design or circumstance, though, much of the growth in the
military's spy missions has come in the Special Operations Command, which
reports to Mr. Rumsfeld and falls outside the orbit controlled by John D.
Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

In one of the boldest new missions, the Pentagon has sharply increased the
number of clandestine teams of Defense Intelligence Agency personnel and Special
Operations forces conducting secret counterterrorism missions in Iraq,
Afghanistan and other foreign countries. Using a broad definition of its current
authority to conduct "traditional military activities" and "prepare the
battlefield," the Pentagon has dispatched teams to gather information about
potential foes well before any shooting starts.

In an effort to enhance military interrogations, Mr. Cambone is also overseeing
the politically sensitive task of rewriting the Army's field manual. Just last
week, he and other top Pentagon officials briefed senior senators on a Pentagon
proposal to have one set of interrogation techniques for enemy prisoners of war
and another, presumably more coercive, set for the suspected terrorists
imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said Senate aides, who were granted
anonymity because the discussions were confidential.

At the Pentagon Tuesday, Mr. Rumsfeld voiced support for General Hayden's
nomination and dismissed any reported rivalries with his intelligence brethren
as "theoretical conspiracies" that were "all off the mark." He added, "There's
no power play taking place in Washington."

Some of the Pentagon's new initiatives have been previously disclosed. But in
interviews, more than two dozen officials from intelligence agencies, the
Defense Department and Congress provided new details of what they described as a
strong effort by the Pentagon to assert a much broader role in the clandestine
world of intelligence.

Mr. Cambone insisted that the Pentagon was working closely with the C.I.A. and
Mr. Negroponte's office, saying that he held a 20-minute conference call with
officials from a dozen intelligence agencies every Tuesday and Thursday morning.
But Mr. Cambone said the military's thirst for information to help soldiers on
the ground after the Sept. 11 attacks had fueled the Pentagon's intelligence-
gathering expansion, particularly against shadowy terrorist cells.

"There's a lot more to do today than on Sept. 10," Mr. Cambone said in an
interview in his office last Friday, just before Mr. Bush's announcement. "The
department has taken the responsibility to better prepare itself and to be
prepared to operate in environments we encounter. Is that different than in the
past? I think the difference is more the amount of activity as opposed to the
activity itself."

The Pentagon has always been a behemoth in the intelligence world, largely
because it controlled agencies with multibillion-dollar budgets like the
National Security Agency and National Reconnaissance Office that are responsible
for eavesdropping and satellites. What is different now is that the Pentagon is
pushing deeper into human intelligence.

The C.I.A. has always been a much smaller organization than the Pentagon that
served both the military and senior policy makers in Washington, including the
president. But after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon felt it had to step in
to fulfill many of its own additional intelligence needs that the C.I.A. could
not.

This activity has stirred criticism from some lawmakers who express concern that
the Pentagon is creating a parallel intelligence-gathering network independent
from the C.I.A. or other American authorities, and one that encroaches on the
C.I.A.'s realm.

"I still harbor concerns that some things are being done under the rubric of
preparing the battlefield that I'd consider to be intelligence-collection
activities, are being run separately and are feeding a planning apparatus that's
not well understood by Congress," said Representative Jane Harman of California,
the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

General Hayden, while seeking to play down any turf war with the Pentagon,
acknowledged some skirmishes over staff. The new law creating Mr. Negroponte's
job gave the director the authority to transfer personnel from individual
intelligence agencies into joint centers or other agencies to speed the
integration of the civilian and military intelligence communities. But Mr.
Rumsfeld made that process more difficult, some lawmakers said, by issuing a
directive last November that required "the concurrence" of Mr. Cambone before
any transfers could take place.

General Hayden said in a telephone interview last Thursday that while the
Pentagon adopted every one of his suggested changes to the 11-page document, the
timing of its release just a few months after Mr. Negroponte's office was
established "created a horrible optic." On the personnel issue, General Hayden
acknowledged that "there is genuine overlap" that will have to be resolved "one
step at a time."

Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican who played a chief role in writing the
intelligence overhaul, criticized the directive as a Department of Defense power
grab. "The issuance of the directive sent exactly the wrong signal," Ms. Collins
said.

She said it implied a questioning of Mr. Negroponte's authority "over those
agencies that I find to be contrary to the intent of the legislation," adding,
"D.O.D. is very eager to fill any vacuum or even create one, if necessary."

A central figure in how this debate plays out is Mr. Cambone, a 53-year-old
native of Highland, N.Y., who as undersecretary of defense for intelligence
oversees 130 full-time employees and more than 100 contractors. His office's
responsibilities include domestic counterintelligence, long-range threat
planning and budgeting for new technologies.

Mr. Cambone emphasized that his office did not collect or analyze intelligence
itself; it oversees those who do, assessing the quality of what organizations
like the N.S.A. and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency collect and
analyze.

Colleagues say that Mr. Cambone, who holds a doctorate in political science from
Claremont Graduate School, is a skilled bureaucrat who can dominate a briefing
with his mastery of complex subjects but can also rub people the wrong way with
what some say is his abrasive style.

"He has a strong personality and can be a lightning rod for controversy," said
Barry Blechman, a longtime friend who is a member of the Defense Policy Board.

Mr. Cambone draws much of his influence from the close working relationship he
has developed with Mr. Rumsfeld, beginning in the late 1990's when Mr. Cambone
served as staff director for independent commissions on space and ballistic
missile threats that Mr. Rumsfeld headed when both men were out of government.

Mr. Cambone was at Mr. Rumsfeld's elbow on Sept. 11, taking notes from his boss
to look into Iraq's possible role in the attacks. Later, he served in important
jobs forming policy and deciding which weapons systems to buy or cancel. "He's
Rumsfeld's go-to guy," said Dov S. Zakheim, the Pentagon's comptroller until May
2004.

In a sign of the importance Mr. Rumsfeld places on the intelligence czar
position, last December he quietly revamped the civilian line of succession in
the Pentagon hierarchy in the event the secretary and deputy secretary died or
were incapacitated. He put the undersecretary for intelligence next in line. The
secretary of the Army had traditionally been No. 3.

But few issues have stirred the passions of lawmakers and intelligence officials
like the Pentagon's expanding clandestine missions.

"The question in my mind is with such a large expansion, are some of these
people really qualified?" said W. Patrick Lang, a former head of the Defense
Human Intelligence Service.

Since the Afghan war, elite Special Operations forces have worked with C.I.A.
counterparts to kill or capture fighters for Al Qaeda or other terrorists. But
Mr. Rumsfeld, frustrated with the C.I.A.'s limited resources to provide fresh
targets, has pushed the military to develop more of its own intelligence
abilities.

Last year, Congress gave the Pentagon important new authority to fight terrorism
by authorizing Special Operations forces for the first time to spend $25 million
a year through 2007 to pay informants and recruit foreign paramilitary fighters.

The money was requested by the Pentagon and the commander of Special Operations
forces as part of a broader effort to make the military less reliant on the
C.I.A. In the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Special Operations troops had to
wait for the C.I.A. to pay informants and could not always count on timely
support, the Pentagon concluded.

General Hayden, who is Mr. Negroponte's deputy and formerly served as head of
the N.S.A., is seen by many intelligence officials and lawmakers as independent
and forceful enough to lay down markers with the Pentagon. In the interview,
General Hayden said it had become more difficult to distinguish between
traditional secret intelligence missions carried out by the military and those
by the C.I.A.

"There's a blurring of functions here," General Hayden said. "My intent is that
we'll work this out on a case by case basis."

At the Pentagon, Mr. Cambone said American troops were now more likely to be
working with indigenous forces in countries like Iraq or Afghanistan to combat
stateless terrorist organizations and needed as much flexibility as possible.
"We're lending support of a very different kind than you might have in the
past," Mr. Cambone said. "It's a very different world in which you're
operating."

*


Washington Post --

May 1, 2006

OUTLOOK: REALITIES OF GUANTANAMO

Mahvish Khan, Law Student, University of Miami

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/
2006/04/28/DI2006042801221.html

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: It's a place of tropical beauty that hides a controversial
reality -- the U.S. Naval base camps that house prisoners in the war against
terrorism. Many of the men have been in detention awaiting charges for three
years or more. Mahvish Khan , an Afghan American law student at the University
of Miami, felt so strongly about the situation that she wangled her way into an
interpreting assignment with American lawyers traveling to Guantanamo to
represent the detainees in their petitions for habeas corpus before U.S. courts.
She tells the story of her experiences in her Sunday Outlook article, "My
Guantanamo Diary." Mahvish Khan was online from Guantanamo Monday, May 1, at
noon ET to discuss her article and the realities of Guantanamo.

My Guantanamo Diary (Post, April 30, 2006):

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/
2006/04/29/AR2006042900145_pf.html

The transcript follows.
____________________

Mahvish Khan: Hi everyone, I'm in Guantanamo right now and welcome any
questions.
_______________________

Athol, Mass.: Can you help me understand why I should care about the treatment
of individuals bent on killing me and / or my countrymen. Lincoln suspended
habeas corpus during the Civil War, Roosevelt illegally placed thousands upon
thousands of Japanese in camps during WWII and Wilson put the boots to the press
(effectively suspending free-speech) during WWI.

Mahvish Khan: There's no evidence and nothing's been proven that these people
actually were killing your children and your families. The whole purpose of
having habeus corpus down there is to have a trial and if they're found guilty
then lock them up and you don't have to care about people who've committed
crimes. We don't know that they've committed crimes and there are laws of war
for a reason.
_______________________

Albany, N.Y.: Would closing the Guantanamo Bay prison camp reverse the damage
this operation has done to the U.S.'s image abroad? Or is the taint to America's
ostensibly pro-liberty and pro-freedom image irreversible in the eyes of the
Muslim world?

Mahvish Khan: I think closing this detention center can help redeem some of the
unlawful detentions, but what's going on in Guantanamo is abhorrent to the laws
of our nation and habeus corpus pre-dates the Magna Carta and having the
Guantanamo detention camps is an affront to international and domestic law. So
putting an end to the detentions in Guantanamo can only begin to redeem the
injustice that has been done by our country.
_______________________

Urbana, Ill.: This open dialogue is great. Since the exposure of the conditions
in the camps in the last year, do you know if there have been any improvements
in the camp conditions?

Mahvish Khan: It depends on the camp that the detainee is in. Some of them are
in complete solitary confinement and don't see the light of day for months. It's
often arbitrary which camps they're placed in; some are given a checkerboard in
solitary confinement but it's hard to play checkers by yourself. In Camp 4 for
example detainees mingle with each other several times a day so there is someone
they can speak with but it depends on where they are placed. Some of the Uighar
detainees who have been deemed non-enemy combatants are housed in Camp Iguana
and have a communal setting and get to watch movies, etc. But those are not
enemy combatants and they are still being detained.
_______________________

Detroit, Mich.: This article puts human face on the Guantanamo prisoners. We are
paying huge bounties for the terrorist in poor war-ravaged countries, so it
doesn't come as surprise that many innocent end up in our hands. If our
government has solid cases against these prisoners couldn't they provide them
with speedier trials? How many prisoners have been found innocent so far and
released? Once released, one could imagine that many of them await brutal
treatment in their own countries, so what does our government do to ensure their
safety?

Mahvish Khan: I don't know the numbers of people who have been released; some
have been released but it's totally based on military discretion. Some fear that
when they are released they are released to their home countries where they will
later be imprisoned and some face torture in certain Middle Eastern countries.
To my knowledge the U.S. hasn't done anything to ensure their safety upon their
release. Regarding the speedier trials, they aren't afforded civilian trials in
the sense that we know and the government is fighting what habeus counsel are
trying to provide. Currently all they're being given generally is military
hearings where they have no lawyer and most of the witnesses they want to call
are deemed not presently available because they are outside of the country, they
don't have an investigator to gather evidence and the attorneys who are
representing the clients feel that their military hearings are not fair and not
impartial. On a side note about the bounties, for example Afghanistan has a per
capita income in 2005 $288 per year so when the U.S. military drops leaflets
offering millions of dollars to pay for an entire tribe's cattle and school.
Specifically they were giving $5000-$25,000 to turn in anybody who was Talib or
al Qaeda member. In a country with such a low per capita income, that kind of
money goes a long way.
_______________________

Silver Spring, Md.: Are the Gitmo prisoners and personnel supervised in an
effective way, for example, by video camera reviewed by independent viewers, to
prevent torture of prisoners?

Mahvish Khan: No, there's no video cameras to monitor if torture is occurring
but the interrogations are recorded by the government.
_______________________

Salt Lake City, Utah: I worked as an interrogator at Gitmo for the Department of
Defense from 2002 to 2003. I interrogated many prisoners, and recommended many
for release to their home countries. My question is, of the 180+ detainees that
have been released from Gitmo so far, what compensation have they received for
the time they have been incarcerated, kept away from family and friends, and
deprived of liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Thank you for your work and dedication to ensuring adherence to human rights and
dignity.

Sincerely.

Mahvish Khan: To my knowledge the detainees that have been released haven't
received any form of monetary compensation or otherwise for their wrongful
detention.
_______________________

Washington D.C.: Ms. Khan - can you answer a question?

Is there a SINGLE inmate / detainee presently - right now, in real-time - at
Guantanamo who has actually been determined by ANY tribunal (military or other)
to be an anti-U.S.. terrorist actually involved in any attack on the U.S. or
U.S. forces?

My understanding is that, at maximum, there have never even been 10% of the
Guantanamo detainees even formally accused of any specific action hostile to the
U.S. or Coalition forces. A large number seem to have been "sold" to the U.S. by
bounty hunters, and some other detainees seem to have been collected entirely by
accident.

Thanks.

Mahvish Khan: According to the recently published statistical reports based on
unclassified government documents (by Seton Hall University), 86% of the
detainees were sold into captivity, 5% are there as a result of U.S.
intelligence and there have been no fair trials and impartial hearings to
determine whether the allegations that many of these prisoners face are true.
While all of the detainees I have encountered have been accused of hostilities
against U.S. and Coalition forces, because they have not been allowed to bring
forth evidence and have fair representation of their side of the stories, many
of these men are being detained on the flimsiest of allegations, often hearsay
reports, and when they ask who their accusers are and for the evidence against
them they're often told that the evidence is classified, so they have no way of
refuting it.
_______________________

Pittsburgh, Pa.: Thank you for the work you are doing and for your excellent
article. I also read "Wilting Dreams" by P. Sabin Willett (WP 4-27) and cannot
express how ashamed the treatment of these individuals makes me. What in your
opinion can the average citizen do to help?

Mahvish Khan: I would say write to your Congressmen and Senators and forward
those articles around. It's important for Americans to know whose in Guantanamo
and to be informed and to speak out against the injustice that are ongoing in
Guantanamo.
_______________________

New York, N.Y.: I am from Pakistan and completely understand the feelings you
expressed in the article. I think it is difficult to comment whether one is
guilty or not just by listening to him/her once. No offence, but when its
emotional, you tend to think more from heart than mind. It's probably more
likely that they did something wrong without any intention to harm the U.S.
Having said that, I really appreciate whatever you are doing to help those
people getting the fair treatment and justice; it really requires a courage, not
many people have. Thank you!

Mahvish Khan: I've seen the military charge sheets, I've read the transcripts of
hearings and my belief is that this is not based on emotional attachment but
after analyzing the allegations and the complete lack of evidence that the U.S.
has on many of these men, I came to that conclusion. For example, Dr. Shah is
accused of associating with the Taliban. He spent 12 years in exile in Iran
while the Taliban were in power. The Taliban looted his personal property and
estate while he was in Iran, only when the Taliban fell did he return to his
country and he was arrested two days later. The allegations against him have not
been substantiated. This is a man who worked closely with the U.N. to encourage
Afghan electoral support. He was in support of the Karzai administration and
wanted nothing to do with the Taliban.
_______________________

Washington, D.C.: The article did a nice job of pointing out that there may be
some innocent people in the prison. But comparing to the justice handed out to
Americans in all Muslim countries, where an American is very likely to find his
head separated from his body without any kind of trial, these people are not
getting too bad of a deal and in the end will get their day in court and may be
freed (the U.S. has released many prisoners from Guantanamo and no one has been
executed yet). There were more than 11,000 terrorist attacks last year by
Muslims (about 30 a day). When you pray for these prisoners, I hope you also say
a prayer for all terrorists' victims and their families.

Mahvish Khan: Of course my heart goes out to victims of terrorism, but just
because there are acts of terrorism occurring around the world doesn't mean we
should strip people of their natural right to a trial.
_______________________

Silver Spring, Md.: How were you able to visit Guantanamo? Can any U.S. citizen
get permission to go there?

Mahvish Khan: I had to go through a rigorous six month security clearance and my
purpose was to travel with the habeus team. Any citizen cannot go to Guantanamo
unless cleared by the State Department. Some journalists are allowed to go but
have not been allowed to meet detainees.
_______________________

Toronto, Canada: In answer to your first questioner -- I encourage them to try
reading some of the transcripts from the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, and
from the more recent Administrative Review Boards. They are online. Here is the
URL: Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board Documents
(U.S. Dept. of Defense)

http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/foi/detainees/csrt/index.html

I am sure if he or she reads half a dozen they will be sure to come across some
detainees where they must admit there is doubt about their guilt. I am sure if
he or she reads a dozen they will be convinced some of the detainees are
completely innocent.

Mahvish Khan: Furthermore, as is also written in my article, I quoted the
military presiding officer of Dr. Shah's military hearing and this military
judge stated that he "couldn't believe" that Dr. Shah was flown all the way over
to Cuba. He said that no matter what accusations somebody brought against him he
found it very difficult to believe that he is guilty. And yet he has sat for the
last few years in prison.
_______________________

Albany, N.Y.: The US government seems to make no distinctions between terrorists
from any countries -- inmates at Guantanamo Bay hail from nearly 50 countries.
Why are there no U.S. citizens detained at Guantanamo?

Mahvish Khan: Guantanamo Bay is a place where only aliens and non-U.S. citizens
have been held. It is outside of U.S. jurisdiction and that has allowed the
administration to create legal loopholes and strip the legal rights of
prisoners.
_______________________

Reston, Va.: In what specific respects is the prison illegal and
unconstitutional?

Mahvish Khan: The right of habeus corpus is enshrined in our constitution and it
forces the jailer to show why he is holding somebody prisoner. It's also
unconstitutional in that these detainees have been given no legal recourse, they
have not been afforded the right to a trial or lawyers. There's hearsay evidence
used against them in their military commissions. In addition to violating
domestic law, it violates international law, the Geneva Conventions and it goes
against past historical U.S. precedent.
_______________________

Detroit, Mich.: Do you know if there is a time-line for closing of the prison?

From the recently published list of the prisoners, I was surprised that in
addition to the "regular suspects" (Afghans, Arabs, Pakistanis) that there are
also prisoners from less suspecting countries like China. It seems absurd that
Chinese are terror suspects.

Besides the somewhat random list of their country of origin, the common link
between the prisoners seem to be that they are Muslim and not white. Do you
think that racism is a part of the reason for the horrible treatment that is
inflicted upon them?

Mahvish Khan: I don't know if racism is the reason they have been treated the
way they are. To my knowledge there is no plan to close the prison; in fact they
are in the process of building another detention facility called Camp Six. So in
fact it appears as though they're expanding. With regard to the Chinese
detainees, those are the Uighars and they've been designated as non-enemy
combatants.
_______________________

Toronto, Canada: Thanks for your excellent, important article.

About a year ago, when the DoD let a BBC crew interview some of the enlisted
staff, they broadcast a short interview with one guard, who made two points. (1)
He expressed a sense of helplessness, that the prisoners could throw bodily
waste on them, or threaten them, and they had no means to retaliate; (2) "Half
of the guys here killed an American soldier".

The soldier's notion was absurd, of course. I checked. About 190 GIs had died in
Afghanistan, at that point -- most of them long after most detainees had been
captured.

Have any of the staff there expressed similarly misinformed notions to you, on
your visits?

Mahvish Khan: I have heard in the past of detainees, I don't know how many or
how frequently, throwing feces or urine on guards. But I don't believe that
means they are guilty of anything other than that in and of itself.
_______________________

Mahvish Khan: I'd like to thank everybody for your interest in the story. I've
enjoyed speaking with you. I hope you continue your interest in what's going on
here.

*


Boston Globe --

April 30, 2006

BUSH CHALLENGES HUNDREDS OF LAWS
President cites powers of his office

By Charlie Savage

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/04/30/
bush_challenges_hundreds_of_laws/

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more
than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to
set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his
interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations,
affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about
immigration services problems, "whistle-blower" protections for nuclear
regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally
funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can
bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of
Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The
Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and
to the president a duty "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed."
Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to "execute" a law
he believes is unconstitutional.

Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the
right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he
is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on
presidential power.

But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a
law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists
say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the
constitutional authority to override.

Far more than any predecessor, Bush has been aggressive about declaring his
right to ignore vast swaths of laws -- many of which he says infringe on power
he believes the Constitution assigns to him alone as the head of the executive
branch or the commander in chief of the military.

Many legal scholars say they believe that Bush's theory about his own powers
goes too far and that he is seizing for himself some of the law-making role of
Congress and the Constitution-interpreting role of the courts.

Phillip Cooper, a Portland State University law professor who has studied the
executive power claims Bush made during his first term, said Bush and his legal
team have spent the past five years quietly working to concentrate ever more
governmental power into the White House.

"There is no question that this administration has been involved in a very
carefully thought-out, systematic process of expanding presidential power at the
expense of the other branches of government," Cooper said. "This is really big,
very expansive, and very significant."

For the first five years of Bush's presidency, his legal claims attracted little
attention in Congress or the media. Then, twice in recent months, Bush drew
scrutiny after challenging new laws: a torture ban and a requirement that he
give detailed reports to Congress about how he is using the Patriot Act.

Bush administration spokesmen declined to make White House or Justice Department
attorneys available to discuss any of Bush's challenges to the laws he has
signed.

Instead, they referred a Globe reporter to their response to questions about
Bush's position that he could ignore provisions of the Patriot Act. They said at
the time that Bush was following a practice that has "been used for several
administrations" and that "the president will faithfully execute the law in a
manner that is consistent with the Constitution."

But the words "in a manner that is consistent with the Constitution" are the
catch, legal scholars say, because Bush is according himself the ultimate
interpretation of the Constitution. And he is quietly exercising that authority
to a degree that is unprecedented in US history.

Bush is the first president in modern history who has never vetoed a bill,
giving Congress no chance to override his judgments. Instead, he has signed
every bill that reached his desk, often inviting the legislation's sponsors to
signing ceremonies at which he lavishes praise upon their work.

Then, after the media and the lawmakers have left the White House, Bush quietly
files "signing statements" -- official documents in which a president lays out
his legal interpretation of a bill for the federal bureaucracy to follow when
implementing the new law. The statements are recorded in the federal register.

In his signing statements, Bush has repeatedly asserted that the Constitution
gives him the right to ignore numerous sections of the bills -- sometimes
including provisions that were the subject of negotiations with Congress in
order to get lawmakers to pass the bill. He has appended such statements to more
than one of every 10 bills he has signed.

"He agrees to a compromise with members of Congress, and all of them are there
for a public bill-signing ceremony, but then he takes back those compromises --
and more often than not, without the Congress or the press or the public knowing
what has happened," said Christopher Kelley, a Miami University of Ohio
political science professor who studies executive power.

MILITARY LINK

Many of the laws Bush said he can bypass -- including the torture ban -- involve
the military.

The Constitution grants Congress the power to create armies, to declare war, to
make rules for captured enemies, and "to make rules for the government and
regulation of the land and naval forces." But, citing his role as commander in
chief, Bush says he can ignore any act of Congress that seeks to regulate the
military.

On at least four occasions while Bush has been president, Congress has passed
laws forbidding US troops from engaging in combat in Colombia, where the US
military is advising the government in its struggle against narcotics-funded
Marxist rebels.

After signing each bill, Bush declared in his signing statement that he did not
have to obey any of the Colombia restrictions because he is commander in chief.

Bush has also said he can bypass laws requiring him to tell Congress before
diverting money from an authorized program in order to start a secret operation,
such as the "black sites" where suspected terrorists are secretly imprisoned.

Congress has also twice passed laws forbidding the military from using
intelligence that was not "lawfully collected," including any information on
Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment's protections
against unreasonable searches.

Congress first passed this provision in August 2004, when Bush's warrantless
domestic spying program was still a secret, and passed it again after the
program's existence was disclosed in December 2005.

On both occasions, Bush declared in signing statements that only he, as
commander in chief, could decide whether such intelligence can be used by the
military.

In October 2004, five months after the Abu Ghraib torture scandal in Iraq came
to light, Congress passed a series of new rules and regulations for military
prisons. Bush signed the provisions into law, then said he could ignore them
all. One provision made clear that military lawyers can give their commanders
independent advice on such issues as what would constitute torture. But Bush
declared that military lawyers could not contradict his administration's
lawyers.

Other provisions required the Pentagon to retrain military prison guards on the
requirements for humane treatment of detainees under the Geneva Conventions, to
perform background checks on civilian contractors in Iraq, and to ban such
contractors from performing "security, intelligence, law enforcement, and
criminal justice functions." Bush reserved the right to ignore any of the
requirements.

The new law also created the position of inspector general for Iraq. But Bush
wrote in his signing statement that the inspector "shall refrain" from
investigating any intelligence or national security matter, or any crime the
Pentagon says it prefers to investigate for itself.

Bush had placed similar limits on an inspector general position created by
Congress in November 2003 for the initial stage of the US occupation of Iraq.
The earlier law also empowered the inspector to notify Congress if a US official
refused to cooperate. Bush said the inspector could not give any information to
Congress without permission from the administration.

OVERSIGHT QUESTIONED

Many laws Bush has asserted he can bypass involve requirements to give
information about government activity to congressional oversight committees.

In December 2004, Congress passed an intelligence bill requiring the Justice
Department to tell them how often, and in what situations, the FBI was using
special national security wiretaps on US soil. The law also required the Justice
Department to give oversight committees copies of administration memos outlining
any new interpretations of domestic-spying laws. And it contained 11 other
requirements for reports about such issues as civil liberties, security
clearances, border security, and counternarcotics efforts.

After signing the bill, Bush issued a signing statement saying he could withhold
all the information sought by Congress.

Likewise, when Congress passed the law creating the Department of Homeland
Security in 2002, it said oversight committees must be given information about
vulnerabilities at chemical plants and the screening of checked bags at
airports.

It also said Congress must be shown unaltered reports about problems with visa
services prepared by a new immigration ombudsman. Bush asserted the right to
withhold the information and alter the reports.

On several other occasions, Bush contended he could nullify laws creating
"whistle-blower" job protections for federal employees that would stop any
attempt to fire them as punishment for telling a member of Congress about
possible government wrongdoing.

When Congress passed a massive energy package in August, for example, it
strengthened whistle-blower protections for employees at the Department of
Energy and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The provision was included because lawmakers feared that Bush appointees were
intimidating nuclear specialists so they would not testify about safety issues
related to a planned nuclear-waste repository at Yucca Mountain in Nevada -- a
facility the administration supported, but both Republicans and Democrats from
Nevada opposed.

When Bush signed the energy bill, he issued a signing statement declaring that
the executive branch could ignore the whistle-blower protections.

Bush's statement did more than send a threatening message to federal energy
specialists inclined to raise concerns with Congress; it also raised the
possibility that Bush would not feel bound to obey similar whistle-blower laws
that were on the books before he became president. His domestic spying program,
for example, violated a surveillance law enacted 23 years before he took office.

David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive-
power issues, said Bush has cast a cloud over "the whole idea that there is a
rule of law," because no one can be certain of which laws Bush thinks are valid
and which he thinks he can ignore.

"Where you have a president who is willing to declare vast quantities of the
legislation that is passed during his term unconstitutional, it implies that he
also thinks a very significant amount of the other laws that were already on the
books before he became president are also unconstitutional," Golove said.

DEFYING SUPREME COURT

Bush has also challenged statutes in which Congress gave certain executive
branch officials the power to act independently of the president. The Supreme
Court has repeatedly endorsed the power of Congress to make such arrangements.
For example, the court has upheld laws creating special prosecutors free of
Justice Department oversight and insulating the board of the Federal Trade
Commission from political interference.

Nonetheless, Bush has said in his signing statements that the Constitution lets
him control any executive official, no matter what a statute passed by Congress
might say.

In November 2002, for example, Congress, seeking to generate independent
statistics about student performance, passed a law setting up an educational
research institute to conduct studies and publish reports "without the approval"
of the Secretary of Education. Bush, however, decreed that the institute's
director would be "subject to the supervision and direction of the secretary of
education."

Similarly, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld affirmative-action programs,
as long as they do not include quotas. Most recently, in 2003, the court upheld
a race-conscious university admissions program over the strong objections of
Bush, who argued that such programs should be struck down as unconstitutional.

Yet despite the court's rulings, Bush has taken exception at least nine times to
provisions that seek to ensure that minorities are represented among recipients
of government jobs, contracts, and grants. Each time, he singled out the
provisions, declaring that he would construe them "in a manner consistent with"
the Constitution's guarantee of "equal protection" to all -- which some legal
scholars say amounts to an argument that the affirmative-action provisions
represent reverse discrimination against whites.

Golove said that to the extent Bush is interpreting the Constitution in defiance
of the Supreme Court's precedents, he threatens to "overturn the existing
structures of constitutional law."

A president who ignores the court, backed by a Congress that is unwilling to
challenge him, Golove said, can make the Constitution simply "disappear."

COMMON PRACTICE IN '80S

Though Bush has gone further than any previous president, his actions are not
unprecedented.

Since the early 19th century, American presidents have occasionally signed a
large bill while declaring that they would not enforce a specific provision they
believed was unconstitutional. On rare occasions, historians say, presidents
also issued signing statements interpreting a law and explaining any concerns
about it.

But it was not until the mid-1980s, midway through the tenure of President
Reagan, that it became common for the president to issue signing statements. The
change came about after then-Attorney General Edwin Meese decided that signing
statements could be used to increase the power of the president.

When interpreting an ambiguous law, courts often look at the statute's
legislative history, debate and testimony, to see what Congress intended it to
mean. Meese realized that recording what the president thought the law meant in
a signing statement might increase a president's influence over future court
rulings.

Under Meese's direction in 1986, a young Justice Department lawyer named Samuel
A. Alito Jr. wrote a strategy memo about signing statements. It came to light in
late 2005, after Bush named Alito to the Supreme Court.

In the memo, Alito predicted that Congress would resent the president's attempt
to grab some of its power by seizing "the last word on questions of
interpretation." He suggested that Reagan's legal team should "concentrate on
points of true ambiguity, rather than issuing interpretations that may seem to
conflict with those of Congress."

Reagan's successors continued this practice. George H.W. Bush challenged 232
statutes over four years in office, and Bill Clinton objected to 140 laws over
his eight years, according to Kelley, the Miami University of Ohio professor.

Many of the challenges involved longstanding legal ambiguities and points of
conflict between the president and Congress.

Throughout the past two decades, for example, each president -- including the
current one -- has objected to provisions requiring him to get permission from a
congressional committee before taking action. The Supreme Court made clear in
1983 that only the full Congress can direct the executive branch to do things,
but lawmakers have continued writing laws giving congressional committees such a
role.

Still, Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton used the presidential veto instead
of the signing statement if they had a serious problem with a bill, giving
Congress a chance to override their decisions.

But the current President Bush has abandoned the veto entirely, as well as any
semblance of the political caution that Alito counseled back in 1986. In just
five years, Bush has challenged more than 750 new laws, by far a record for any
president, while becoming the first president since Thomas Jefferson to stay so
long in office without issuing a veto.

"What we haven't seen until this administration is the sheer number of
objections that are being raised on every bill passed through the White House,"
said Kelley, who has studied presidential signing statements through history.
"That is what is staggering. The numbers are well out of the norm from any
previous administration."

EXAGGERATED FEARS?

Some administration defenders say that concerns about Bush's signing statements
are overblown. Bush's signing statements, they say, should be seen as little
more than political chest-thumping by administration lawyers who are dedicated
to protecting presidential prerogatives.

Defenders say the fact that Bush is reserving the right to disobey the laws does
not necessarily mean he has gone on to disobey them.

Indeed, in some cases, the administration has ended up following laws that Bush
said he could bypass. For example, citing his power to "withhold information" in
September 2002, Bush declared that he could ignore a law requiring the State
Department to list the number of overseas deaths of US citizens in foreign
countries. Nevertheless, the department has still put the list on its website.

Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor who until last year oversaw the
Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel for the administration, said the
statements do not change the law; they just let people know how the president is
interpreting it.

"Nobody reads them," said Goldsmith. "They have no significance. Nothing in the
world changes by the publication of a signing statement. The statements merely
serve as public notice about how the administration is interpreting the law.
Criticism of this practice is surprising, since the usual complaint is that the
administration is too secretive in its legal interpretations."

But Cooper, the Portland State University professor who has studied Bush's
first-term signing statements, said the documents are being read closely by one
key group of people: the bureaucrats who are charged with implementing new laws.

Lower-level officials will follow the president's instructions even when his
understanding of a law conflicts with the clear intent of Congress, crafting
policies that may endure long after Bush leaves office, Cooper said.

"Years down the road, people will not understand why the policy doesn't look
like the legislation," he said.

And in many cases, critics contend, there is no way to know whether the
administration is violating laws -- or merely preserving the right to do so.

Many of the laws Bush has challenged involve national security, where it is
almost impossible to verify what the government is doing. And since the
disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, many people have expressed alarm
about his sweeping claims of the authority to violate laws.

In January, after the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could
disobey the torture ban, three Republicans who were the bill's principal
sponsors in the Senate -- John McCain of Arizona, John W. Warner of Virginia,
and Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina -- all publicly rebuked the president.

"We believe the president understands Congress's intent in passing, by very
large majorities, legislation governing the treatment of detainees," McCain and
Warner said in a joint statement. "The Congress declined when asked by
administration officials to include a presidential waiver of the restrictions
included in our legislation."

Added Graham: "I do not believe that any political figure in the country has the
ability to set aside any . . . law of armed conflict that we have adopted or
treaties that we have ratified."

And in March, when the Globe first wrote about Bush's contention that he could
ignore the oversight provisions of the Patriot Act, several Democrats lodged
complaints.

Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate
Judiciary Committee, accused Bush of trying to "cherry-pick the laws he decides
he wants to follow."

And Representatives Jane Harman of California and John Conyers Jr. of Michigan
-- the ranking Democrats on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees,
respectively -- sent a letter to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales demanding
that Bush rescind his claim and abide by the law.

"Many members who supported the final law did so based upon the guarantee of
additional reporting and oversight," they wrote. "The administration cannot,
after the fact, unilaterally repeal provisions of the law implementing such
oversight... Once the president signs a bill, he and all of us are bound by it."

LACK OF COURT REVIEW

Such political fallout from Congress is likely to be the only check on Bush's
claims, legal specialists said.

The courts have little chance of reviewing Bush's assertions, especially in the
secret realm of national security matters.

"There can't be judicial review if nobody knows about it," said Neil Kinkopf, a
Georgia State law professor who was a Justice Department official in the Clinton
administration. "And if they avoid judicial review, they avoid having their
constitutional theories rebuked."

Without court involvement, only Congress can check a president who goes too far.
But Bush's fellow Republicans control both chambers, and they have shown limited
interest in launching the kind of oversight that could damage their party.

"The president is daring Congress to act against his positions, and they're not
taking action because they don't want to appear to be too critical of the
president, given that their own fortunes are tied to his because they are all
Republicans," said Jack Beermann, a Boston University law professor. "Oversight
gets much reduced in a situation where the president and Congress are controlled
by the same party."

Said Golove, the New York University law professor: "Bush has essentially said
that 'We're the executive branch and we're going to carry this law out as we
please, and if Congress wants to impeach us, go ahead and try it.' "

Bruce Fein, a deputy attorney general in the Reagan administration, said the
American system of government relies upon the leaders of each branch "to
exercise some self-restraint." But Bush has declared himself the sole judge of
his own powers, he said, and then ruled for himself every time.

"This is an attempt by the president to have the final word on his own
constitutional powers, which eliminates the checks and balances that keep the
country a democracy," Fein said. "There is no way for an independent judiciary
to check his assertions of power, and Congress isn't doing it, either. So this
is moving us toward an unlimited executive power."

*


Washington Post --

April 30, 2006

MY GUANTANAMO DIARY
Face to Face With the War on Terrorism

By Mahvish Khan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/04/29/AR2006042900145_pf.html

GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba

The sailor at the entrance to Camp Echo peers through the gate as Peter and I
hold up our laminated blue cards. "HC," for habeas counsel, they read. "Escort
Required." He waves us through, searches our bags for recording devices, then
issues safety instructions -- dial 2431 on the wall phone in the room -- in case
anything should happen in our meeting with prisoner No. 1154.

The gravel crunches beneath our shoes as we follow a soldier across a dusty
courtyard to a painted brown door. Before we go in, I drape the shawl I'm
carrying over my head and arms. This is my first meeting with a Guantanamo Bay
detainee, and I'm feeling nervous about sitting down with a man who may be a
terrorist.

Ali Shah Mousovi is standing at attention at the far end of the room, his leg
chained to the floor. His expression is wary, but when he sees me in my
traditional embroidered shawl from Peshawar, he breaks into a smile. Later,
he'll tell me that I resemble his younger sister, and that for a split second he
mistook me for her.

I introduce myself and Peter Ryan, a Philadelphia lawyer for whom I'm
interpreting. I hand Mousovi a Starbucks chai, the closest thing to Afghan tea
I've been able to find on the base. Then I open up boxes of pizza, cookies and
baklava, but he doesn't reach for anything. Instead, in true Afghan fashion, he
urges us to share the food we have brought for him.

Mousovi is a physician from the Afghan city of Gardez, where he was arrested by
U.S. troops 2 1/2 years ago. He tells us that he had returned to Afghanistan in
August 2003, after 12 years of exile in Iran, to help rebuild his wathan , his
homeland. He believes that someone turned him in to U.S. forces just to collect
up to $25,000 being offered to anyone who gave up a Talib or al-Qaeda member.

As I translate from Pashto, Mousovi hesitantly describes life since his arrest.
Transported to Bagram air base near Kabul in eastern Afghanistan, he was thrown
-- blindfolded, hooded and gagged -- into a 3 1/2 -by-7-foot shed. He says he
was beaten regularly by Americans in civilian clothing, deprived of sleep by
tape-recordings of sirens that blared day and night. He describes being dragged
around by a rope, subjected to extremes of heat and cold. He says he barely
slept for an entire month.

He doesn't know why he was brought to Guantanamo Bay. He had hoped he would be
freed at his military hearing in December 2004. Instead, he was accused of
associating with the Taliban and of funneling money to anti-coalition
insurgents. When he asked for evidence, he was told it was classified. And so he
sits in prison, far from his wife and three children. More than anyone, he
misses his 11-year-old daughter, Hajar. When he talks about her, his eyes fill
with tears and his head droops.

I don't know exactly what I had expected coming to Guantanamo Bay, but it wasn't
this weary, sorrowful man. The government says he is a terrorist and a monster,
but when I look at him, I see simply what he says he is -- a physician who
wanted to build a clinic in his native land.

A guard knocks at the door, signaling time's up. Mousovi signs a document
agreeing to have Peter represent him in filing a petition for habeas corpus
before U.S. civilian courts. "I pray to Allah," he says, holding his palms
together, "for sabar." Patience. He stands up as Peter and I say goodbye. When I
glance back after we walk out, he is still standing, gazing after us.

It was Google that got me to Gitmo.

My interest in the U.S. military base in Cuba was sparked by an international
law class I took last year at the University of Miami. I decided I wanted to
become involved in what is going on there. So I Googled the names of the
attorneys on the landmark 2004 Supreme Court case Rasul v. Bush, which held that
the U.S. court system had authority to decide whether non-U.S. citizens held at
Guantanamo Bay were being rightfully imprisoned. Then I started bombarding them
with calls and e-mails expressing my desire as a law student, a journalist and a
Pashtun to help, both on the legal end and as an interpreter.

The very existence of the military detention camp at Guantanamo Bay seemed an
affront to what the United States stands for. How could our government deny the
prisoners there the right to a fair hearing? I didn't know whether they were
innocent or guilty -- but I figured they should be entitled to the same
protections as any alleged rapist or murderer.

Maybe part of my interest had to do with my heritage. My Pashtun parents are
doctors who met in medical school in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan near
the Afghan border. They came to the United States to continue their medical
educations. I was born in America in 1978, but I grew up speaking Pashto at
home, and am a practicing Muslim. I've always felt the pull of my heritage, and
the tragedy of the Afghan people, whose country has been overrun so many times
throughout history.

As an American, I felt the pain of Sept. 11, and I understood the need to invade
Afghanistan and destroy the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But I also felt the suffering
of the Afghans as their country was bombed. And when hundreds of men were
rounded up and thrust into a black hole of detention, many with seemingly no
proof that they had any terrorist connections, I felt that my own country had
taken a wrong turn.

The attorneys I e-mailed eventually put me in touch with Peter Ryan at Dechert
LLP, which represents 15 Afghan detainees. After a rigorous six-month background
check for a security clearance, off I went in January on my first trip to the
base.

I've now been down a total of nine times. And each time, I'm struck by the
ordinariness of Guantanamo Bay, the startling disconnect between the beauty of
the surroundings and the evil they mask.

I expected a stern, forbidding place. Instead I found sunshine and smiling young
soldiers, boozy nighttime barbecues and beaches that call to you for a midnight
swim. I've also found loss and tears. Over three months, I've interpreted at
dozens of meetings with detainees and heard many stories -- of betrayal and
mistaken identity, of beatings and torture, of loneliness and hopelessness.

I've listened to Wali Mohammed protest that he was just a businessman trying to
get along in Taliban-run Afghanistan. I've watched Chaman Gul, crouched in his
7-by-8-foot cage, weep for fear that his family will forget him. I've marveled
at the pluck and wit of Taj Mohammad, a 27-year-old uneducated goat herder who
has taught himself fluent English while in Cuba.

No matter the age or background of the detainee, our meetings always leave me
feeling helpless. These men show me the human face of the war on terrorism.
They've been systematically dehumanized, cast as mere numbers in prison-camp
fashion. But to me, they've become almost like friends, or brothers or fathers.
I can honestly say that I don't believe any of our clients are guilty of crimes
against the United States. No doubt some men here are, but not the men I've met.

I wish we could just hand our clients the freedom they desperately crave, but so
far, we haven't been able to, though three of Dechert's clients were released at
the military's discretion before any of us ever even went to the prison. Still,
our work with those who remain seems to give them what they need to persevere --
a thread of hope.

The trip to Gitmo begins at the commuter terminal of Florida's Fort Lauderdale-
Hollywood International Airport. With the exception of one corporate law firm
that has become known for making a grand entrance in a chartered private jet,
the attorneys doing habeas work at Guantanamo Bay fly the puddle-jumper Lynx Air
or Air Sunshine.

At the airline counter, you're asked to show clearance documentation from the
Defense Department. Passengers are then weighed for optimum weight distribution
on the tiny propeller planes. The 10-seat cabin is so small you can't stand up
straight. There are no bathrooms, either, so everybody hits the restroom several
times before boarding.

The flight from Fort Lauderdale takes three hours because you have to go around
the island to avoid Cuban airspace. Upon arrival, we're greeted by armed U.S.
Army personnel who direct us to customs, which consists of a couple of brown
tables where more Army boys rifle through our bags.

The base is divided into two areas -- the leeward side and the windward side --
by the 2 1/2 mile wide Guantanamo Bay. The main base is on the windward side,
which is where the detention camps are built. Habeas counsel are lodged on the
leeward side, at the combined bachelor quarters, or CBQ, for $20 a day.

There is cable TV, a phone, dial-up Internet, a small kitchen and maid service.
Each room has four twin beds. On my first trip, I debated whether to sleep in a
different bed each night.

Gitmo is a strange place, but soon after arriving, you find yourself adjusting
to its clockwork military rhythm. Every morning begins at 7:30. It's usually
bright and sunny. The Jamaican gardener, Bartley, is always yelling something or
other. Everyone meets at the concrete tables at the front of the CBQ to wait for
the bus, which leaves at exactly 7:41 a.m. It takes us to the ferry and pulls in
at 7:51 a.m., just as the ferry is docking. At precisely 8:20 a.m., we're
dropped off on the windward side, where we're always greeted by one of three
military escorts who hand out our habeas badges. Next stop is Starbucks and the
food court to pick up food for the detainees and to have breakfast. Then on to
Camp Echo, the special section of the base where meetings with detainees are
held.

The only part of the Gitmo experience that doesn't run with military precision
are these meetings. More often than not, there's a delay in bringing the
prisoners over to Camp Echo. Once, we had to wait five hours on the bus. This
frustrates the attorneys, given the weeks of work they've spent preparing. Not
to mention that the ice cream we bring turns to soup.

As we leave our meeting with Mousovi, I pull the heavy shawl off my head. Primo,
our military escort, is standing outside the fenced compound, taking deep drags
off a Marlboro Red. We pile onto the bus, and Peter picks up a large manila
envelope, seals his stack of handwritten notes inside and writes "1154" on the
outside. The notes will be sent to Washington for classification review.

Primo drives us and another group of attorneys to the Navy Exchange. Adjacent to
this large supermarket are a Subway, a gift shop and ATMs. Across the street
there's a KFC and a McDonald's. At the exchange, we pick up a stack of
porterhouse steaks, charcoal, potatoes, chips, lots of beer and assorted wines.
Everyone barbecues for dinner, because other than the Clipper Club, a small
greasy spoon that serves fried hot dogs and pizza, there's nothing to eat where
we're based.

Over steak dinner, I comment on how nice our military escorts are. They joke and
laugh with us. Primo gives me pointers on shooting pool in the CBQ lobby.
Everyone brings them beer and cigarettes. I think I had expected them to be more
aloof, even hostile.

But Tom Wilner, a partner in the Washington office of Shearman & Sterling LLP,
quickly retorts: "Yeah, they're nice. But this whole place is evil -- and the
face of evil often appears friendly."

His words hit me hard. Tom is one of the most passionate lawyers working at
Guantanamo Bay. He gets angry talking about the conditions under which the
detainees live. Most are held in isolation in cells separated by thick steel
mesh or concrete walls. Every man eats every meal alone in his small cell. The
prisoners are allowed out of their cells three times a week for about 15 minutes
to exercise, often in the middle of the night, so many don't see sunlight for
months at a time.

Tom and his firm got involved representing 12 Kuwaiti detainees in March 2002,
after a group of families contacted him. At first, like most of the lawyers
here, Tom took up the cause because of the legal principles at stake. But after
he finally met the detainees in January 2005, his attitude changed. Suddenly he
was fighting for real people. "Most of these guys," he says, "were totally
innocent and simply swept up by mistake."

I think of Ali Shah Mousovi when he says that. Even the presiding officer at
Mousovi's hearing declared that he found it "difficult to believe" that the
United States had imprisoned Mousovi and flown him "all the way to Cuba." Yet
here he sits.

One of the things Tom hates most is having to tell his clients that a close
relative has died while they've been detained. But he has had to do so countless
times: Fouad al-Rabiah's father and brother died; Omar Amin's father died;
Nasser al-Mutairi's father died; Saad al-Azmi's father died; Khaled al-Mutairi's
father died; Fawzi al-Odah's grandmother died.

"The way these men have been treated and what they've had to suffer makes me
ashamed," Tom says. He and the other lawyers think it's a joke that the iguanas
at Guantanamo Bay, which are protected by the U.S. Endangered Species Act, have
more rights than the detainees.

Tonight, Tom is intense, going on about the face of evil, how so many of the
perpetrators of some of the worst crimes in history were men who appeared
perfectly ordinary, who were kind to children and dogs. I can't stop thinking
about what he says.

After dinner, I take a 10-minute walk down a barren dirt road to a breathtaking
secluded beach and drown everything out in the cool of the evening water. The
waves keep rushing in and blending with the peaceful Cuban shore.

At 80, Haji Nusrat -- detainee No. 1009 -- is Guantanamo Bay's oldest prisoner.
A stroke 15 years ago left him partly paralyzed. He cannot stand up without
assistance and hobbles to the bathroom behind a walker. Despite his paralysis,
his swollen legs and feet are tightly cuffed and shackled to the floor. He says
that his shoes are too tight and that he needs new ones. He has asked for
medical attention for the inflammation in his legs, but has not been taken to a
hospital.

"They wait until you are almost dead," he says.

He has a long white beard and grayish-brown eyes that drift from Peter's face to
mine as we explain his legal issues to him. In the middle of our meeting, he
says to me: "Bachay." My child. "Look at my white beard. They have brought me
here with a white beard. I have done nothing at all. I have not said a single
word against the Americans."

He comes from a small mountain village in Afghanistan and cannot read or write.
He has 10 children and does not know if his wife is still alive -- he hasn't
received any letters.

U.S. troops arrested Nusrat in 2003, a few days after he went to complain about
the arrest of his son Izat, who is also detained at Guantanamo Bay. Nusrat is
charged with being a commander of a terrorist organization in Afghanistan with
ties to Osama bin Laden, and with possession of a cache of weapons. Izat, who
appeared as a witness at his father's military hearing, maintained that the
weapons in question were in a storehouse set up by the Afghan defense ministry,
which he was paid to guard and maintain.

During our meeting, Nusrat's emotions range from anger to despair. In his
desperation, he begins to promise Peter that he will make him famous if he helps
him get home. "Everyone in Afghanistan will know your name," he says. "You will
be a great, famous lawyer."

As I interpret, I feel a lump growing in my throat. Suddenly, I can't speak.
Peter and Nusrat pause as the tears flood down my face and drip onto my shawl.

The old man looks at me. "You are a daughter to me," he says. "Think of me as a
father." I nod, aligning and realigning pistachio shells on the table as I
interpret.

As the meeting ends and we collect our things to go, the old man opens his arms
to me and I embrace him. For several moments, he prays for me as Peter watches:
"Insha'allah, God willing, you will find a home that makes you happy.
Insha'allah, you will be a mother one day. . . . "

He lets me go and asks me to say dawa, prayers, for him. "Of course," I promise.
"Every day."

And until the next time I see him, I will.

m.rukhsana@gmail.com

[ Mahvish Khan will graduate next month from the University of Miami School of
Law. She works for the Miami public defender's office. ]

*


Los Angeles Times --

April 30, 2006

A DILEMMA FOR THE DEFENDERS
Ordered to represent Guantanamo prisoners who repudiate them, military lawyers
face a quandary that tests their highest obligations.

By Carol J. Williams

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/
la-na-gitmo30apr30,0,999510,full.story

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL STATION, Cuba -- For military lawyers assigned to defend
terrorism suspects, the job is a constant struggle over competing loyalties to
client and command chain -- and an uphill fight to gain the trust of men who
have seen the same uniforms on their captors, interrogators and jailers.

Take the predicament of Army Lt. Col. Bryan T. Broyles, whose client, Jabran
Said bin al Qahtani, rejects Broyles' legal assistance and the legitimacy of the
war crimes commissions. Broyles has been ordered by a superior officer to
represent the defiant Saudi anyway.

Or Army Capt. Wade N. Faulkner's client, Algerian Sufyian Barhoumi, who has been
complying with the war crimes process but threatened to boycott his latest
hearing when Faulkner couldn't explain why prison officials moved him into
solitary confinement. Barhoumi alleges it was done without explanation and
without regard for his handicap, a mangled left hand that he could better cope
with when he lived in a communal compound.

Attorneys for three other charged suspects expressed frustration with a judicial
forum they said denied fundamental rights and protections set out in the U.S.
Constitution and courts, international law and the Uniform Code of Military
Justice.

Distrustful of the process and their assigned attorneys, a number of the accused
want to be able to represent themselves.

Gaining clients' confidence has been arduous, said Faulkner, because "we wear
the same uniform as the people who captured them and who guard them."

The attorney-client relationship is at best "fragile" and can be damaged by
perceived setbacks, said Faulkner. He cited as examples the government's failure
to grant a security clearance to a civilian attorney assisting in Barhoumi's
defense, and the months of bureaucratic delays in letting Barhoumi call home
after learning of his father's death last year.

"Every little thing chips away at the relationship," Faulkner said, describing
his attempts at providing Barhoumi with a good defense as a pattern of "one step
forward, two back."

Broyles' efforts to do right by his contentious client prompted a phone call to
his Kentucky Bar Assn. ethics office during a hearing recess Tuesday, for
guidance on how or whether to proceed. Broyles said his conscience told him to
respect Al Qahtani's wishes that he not represent him, yet the judge in the
case, Navy Capt. Daniel E. O'Toole, ordered him to represent the Saudi. Broyles
succeeded in persuading O'Toole to postpone the pretrial hearing to consider a
legal motion.

Only 10 of the roughly 490 suspects still imprisoned here have been charged, and
all but one of those have challenged the legitimacy of the court that denies
defendants the rights and protections accorded prisoners of war under the Geneva
Convention. The Bush administration says the convention doesn't apply, that the
prisoners here are not POWs but "enemy combatants."

"I don't want this court. You judge me and you sentence me the way you want, if
this is God's will," Al Qahtani pronounced in his first court appearance before
O'Toole, who as presiding officer acts as a judge in the tribunal. The
belligerent Saudi, who Broyles guesses is in his mid-20s, said he didn't want
any part of the process and refused to return after a midmorning recess.

The chief prosecutor for the U.S. government in the terrorism trials, Air Force
Col. Morris D. Davis, expresses little concern over the dilemmas faced by the
military lawyers assigned to defendants who don't want them. "Right now they're
military officers and they're ordered to do so," Davis said.

Human rights advocates and legal scholars monitoring the proceedings expressed
admiration for the military lawyers who had insisted on basic rights for their
clients. Such observers consider the ethical dilemmas confronting the defense
attorneys to be among many flaws in what they consider an illegitimate tribunal.

Ben Wizner, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Broyles
was "being ordered to provide representation that his ethical duties may
prohibit."

In the case of Ethiopian suspect Binyam Ahmed Muhammad, who appeared earlier
this month, his Air Force reservist counsel, Maj. Yvonne Bradley, refused the
presiding officer's order to proceed after her client insisted on representing
himself.

The right to be one's own attorney is accorded defendants in U.S. civilian
courts -- would-be hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui was allowed to represent himself
until he became too unruly -- as well as in military courts-martial. Guantanamo
defendants are denied self-representation by Pentagon order.

Bradley invoked her 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, risking a
contempt citation and forcing the presiding officer, Marine Col. Ralph H.
Kohlmann, to call for legal briefs to clarify the procedural guidance for the
commissions.

In representing a Yemeni named Ali Hamza al Bahlul who is accused of being an Al
Qaeda recruitment propagandist, Army reservist Maj. Thomas A. Fleener has argued
well past the patience of the presiding officer that Al Bahlul should have the
right to represent himself; to confront his accusers; and to be tried in a free,
fair and open process.

Career military lawyers including Broyles have stopped short of defying
presiding officers' orders but have recorded their objections.

The head of the Guantanamo defense team, Marine Col. Dwight Sullivan, described
the situation as "extraordinarily difficult" because the legal guidance for the
commission was "so vague, so ambiguous and constantly changing."

"The defense counsel works for the general counsel, who is effectively the
prosecuting authority in the system," Sullivan said, noting the competing
pressures of a military chain of command and his lawyers' commitment to provide
the best defense possible for each client.

Those outside the military hierarchy criticize the tribunal's apparent
indifference to the Hobson's choices imposed on the defenders.

"These young men and women are facing a tremendously difficult choice, and I
have enormous respect for what they are doing," said veteran Vermont attorney
and law professor Robert D. Rachlin, who has represented detainees in U.S. court
proceedings challenging the detention camp and tribunal legitimacy. He described
the work of the commission defense lawyers as "bushwhacking through the legal
thicket where there is no path evident."

A former military lawyer, who requested anonymity because of the civilian job he
is currently performing, said his time at the Guantanamo commissions "was the
most challenging environment to act ethically in my career as a lawyer."

Priti Patel, an observer and analyst for the advocacy group Human Rights First,
lamented the opinions of bar officials advising Fleener and Broyles that their
first responsibility was to the tribunal. "The idea that you would have an
ethical duty to the legal process instead of to your client is just shocking,"
she said.

Broyles agreed that the tribunal process was "fundamentally flawed," but said he
believed his duty was to challenge it.

"They gave me a mission and the mission is to attack this process," he said.

Even if the government could prove every element in the charges against Al
Qahtani, none constitutes a war crime, Broyles argued. Al Qahtani, Barhoumi and
Saudi Ghassan Abdullah al Sharbi -- dubbed the Faisalabad Three, for the
Pakistani town in which they were arrested -- are charged with conspiracy to
commit terrorism for allegedly plotting to construct remote-controlled explosive
devices. But none of their alleged deeds resulted in an attack on anyone,
Broyles noted.

Attorneys for the charged suspects plan to argue that conspiracy is not a war
crime and that because the government has said the Guantanamo inmates are not
POWs, the U.S. military has no right to try the accused outside the functioning
judiciary in the country where each was detained.

All 10 under indictment were picked up in Pakistan or Afghanistan and flown to
Guantanamo by U.S. forces.

The Faisalabad Three appeared before the tribunal last week. Through or around
their attorneys, they rejected the court's authority to try them.

"They're not making a mockery of the system," Broyles said of the defiant
defendants. "They believe the system is a mockery of justice."

*


New York Times --

April 30, 2006
ABUSE CONCERNS STYMIE RELEASES FROM GUANTANAMO
By Tim Golden

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/30/world/30gitmo.html

A long-running effort by the Bush administration to send home many of the terror
suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has been stymied in part because of
concern among United States officials that the prisoners may not be treated
humanely by their own governments, officials said.

Administration officials have said they hope eventually to transfer or release
many of the roughly 490 suspects now held at Guantanamo. As of February,
military officials said, the Pentagon was ready to repatriate more than 150 of
the detainees once arrangements could be made with their home countries.

But those arrangements have been more difficult to broker than officials in
Washington anticipated or have previously acknowledged, raising questions about
how quickly the administration can meet its goal of scaling back detention
operations at Guantanamo.

"The Pentagon has no plans to release any detainees in the immediate future,"
said a Defense Department spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon of the Navy. He
said the negotiations with foreign governments "have proven to be a complex,
time-consuming and difficult process."

The military has so far sent home 267 detainees from Guantanamo after finding
that they had no further intelligence value and either posed no long-term
security threat or would reliably be imprisoned or monitored by their own
governments. Most of those who remain are considered more dangerous militants;
many also come from nations with poor human rights records and ineffective
justice systems.

But Washington's insistence on humane treatment for the detainees in their
native countries comes after years in which Guantanamo has been assailed as a
symbol of American abuse and hypocrisy -- a fact not lost on the governments
with which the United States is now negotiating.

"It is kind of ironic that the U.S. government is placing conditions on other
countries that it would not follow itself in Guantanamo or Abu Ghraib," said a
Middle Eastern diplomat from one of the countries involved in the talks. He
asked not to be named to avoid criticizing the United States in the name of his
government.

The push for human rights assurances now, some officials said, also reflects a
renewed effort by the State Department to influence the administration's
detention policy, even as the United States continues to face wide criticism for
sending terror suspects to be interrogated in countries known to practice
torture.

Neither the State Department, which is the lead agency in the repatriation
talks, nor the Pentagon would comment on them in detail. United States officials
who agreed to discuss them would do so only on the condition of anonymity,
either because they were not authorized to speak publicly or to avoid disrupting
the negotiations.

Those officials said the talks had been particularly difficult with Saudi Arabia
and Yemen, two nations that account for almost half of the detainees now at
Guantanamo.

The Saudi government was among the first to seek the return of its citizens from
Guantanamo, and its discussions with United States officials have proceeded in
fits and starts for more than three years.

Five Saudi prisoners were sent home in May 2003 in an arrangement that some
officials said could be a template for future transfers.

But several American officials have since acknowledged privately that the
repatriation was part of a secret, high-level pact with the Saudi and British
governments, in which the Saudi authorities later freed five British citizens
and two other men Saudi Arabia had convicted on what British officials said were
trumped-up charges of terrorism.

United States officials said they had no indication that any of the five
repatriated Saudis were abused after returning home. As discussions have moved
forward on the 128 Saudis still at Guantanamo, however, Saudi Arabia's record on
human rights has emerged as a central obstacle, several American officials said.

According to a State Department human rights report released in March, the Saudi
authorities have used "beatings, whippings and sleep deprivation" on Saudi and
foreign prisoners. The report also noted "allegations of beatings with sticks
and suspension from bars by handcuffs."

Mindful of such allegations, officials of the State Department's human rights
bureau, among others, have insisted that any transfer deal include clear
assurances that the prisoners will not be tortured and will be treated in
accordance with international humanitarian law, and that those pledges can be
verified, officials familiar with the discussions said.

The negotiations have bogged down over questions of how those commitments should
be formalized and monitored. United States officials at one point suggested that
the prisoners be visited by the International Committee of the Red Cross, but
the Saudi government does not now allow the Red Cross access to its prisons, and
the proposal was set aside, officials said.

Although Saudi Arabia ratified the Convention Against Torture and other Cruel,
Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment in 1997, it also does not accept
the jurisdiction of a committee that the convention established to investigate
allegations of systematic torture.

A spokesman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington, Nail al-Jubeir, said he could
not comment on specifics of the negotiations, but recalled that the United
States had earlier insisted that foreign governments agree to imprison the
repatriated Guantanamo detainees, regardless of whether they had committed
crimes at home.

"The people coming back from Guantanamo will be questioned and investigated, and
if they have blood on their hands, they will face the Saudi justice system," Mr.
Jubeir said. But he added, "If we have nothing to hold them on, why hold them?"

United States officials said they had hoped to begin repatriating Saudi
detainees last year in groups of about 20 at a time. They noted that some --
including Mohammed al-Qahtani, who was captured in Afghanistan months after he
tried to meet up with some of the 9/11 hijackers in Florida -- were expected to
remain at Guantanamo for years, if not decades, to come.

By last summer, the Defense Department had approved 18 Saudi detainees for
repatriation, and the number has since increased to about two dozen, officials
said. But their transfers have been held up by continuing differences between
the governments, the officials said.

"We're operating in an environment where we don't want to send people to a
country where we are going to find out two weeks later that they've been
tortured," a State Department official said. Referring to Saudi Arabia, he said,
"We hope to reach the point soon where we are comfortable with the humanitarian
arrangements."

Other major difficulties have emerged in Washington's negotiations with the
government of Yemen, which has about 105 citizens at Guantanamo. (The Pentagon
has refused to make public the nationalities of all of the Guantanamo
prisoners.)

The State Department report cited the use of sleep deprivation, threats of
sexual assault and other abuses by Yemeni state-security agents. Despite efforts
by the Yemeni Interior Ministry to curb torture in its prisons, the department
said, there were also reports that ministry agents "routinely" used of torture
to extract confessions from criminal defendants.

Even so, some American officials said a more immediate obstacle to the possible
transfer of Guantanamo prisoners was a basic lack of security in Yemeni prisons.
The most vivid example, they said, was the escape on Feb. 3 of 23 men, including
some important operatives of Al Qaeda, from a high-security prison run by the
country's intelligence service in the capital, Sana. (Eight have surrendered or
been recaptured.)

Barely a month later, Yemeni security officials announced that they had thwarted
two more escape attempts involving a dozen Qaeda operatives at other prisons.

A spokesman for the Yemeni Embassy in Washington, Mohammed A. al-Basha, said his
government was eager to have Yemeni detainees repatriated and was "fully
committed" to international laws governing their treatment.

Of the Afghans captured during and since the American-led overthrow of the
Taliban, nearly 100 remain at Guantanamo; their repatriation may be easier. The
United States is paying $12 million to refurbish part of an old Soviet-built
prison outside Kabul to house transferred detainees; the work is to be completed
by December.

Since 2002, the Defense Department has sent 187 Guantanamo detainees to their
home countries to be released and 80 more for continued incarceration. Panels of
military officers at Guantanamo who reviewed the status of 463 prisoners last
year recommended the transfer to foreign custody of 120 and outright release of
14 more.

But only 15 of those 134 prisoners have thus far been sent home, a military
spokesman said. The rest -- along with 22 others whose transfer or release was
approved earlier and 9 more who have been deemed "no longer enemy combatants" --
remain at Guantanamo.

Among those that remain are 22 Chinese Muslim separatists from the Uighur ethnic
minority. United States officials have said they would respect the men's request
not to be sent back to China because of the possibility that they would be
mistreated. But the State Department has been unable to find a third country
that will accept them as refugees.

Human rights concerns have also been a sticking point in the possible transfer
of Guantanamo detainees to countries including Egypt, Algeria and Uzbekistan,
United States officials said.

The one clear case in which repatriated detainees have suffered serious abuse
involves seven Russians sent home from Guantanamo in May 2004. At the time,
American officials were primarily concerned with ensuring that the men would
continue to be detained; instead, they were jailed briefly and released without
charge.

But at least four of the men were later rearrested by various security forces.
Three reported being beaten or tortured into confessing to an involvement in
terrorism, and although one was later acquitted after a jury trial, he has since
been arrested again.

*


Washington Post --

April 27, 2006

WILTING DREAMS AT GITMO
A detainee is denied a garden, and hope...

By P. Sabin Willett

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/26/
AR2006042602390.html

I brought flowers to the isolation cell when I visited Saddiq this month. He
likes to draw roses and often asks for gardening magazines.

Saddiq is one of the many mistakes at Guantanamo Bay. In 2005 our military
admitted that he was not an enemy combatant, but the government hasn't been able
to repatriate him. (By a curious irony, Saddiq's opposition to Osama bin Laden
makes him too hot to handle in his native Saudi Arabia.) So he lives behind
razor wire in Camp Iguana, with eight other men whom the military cleared long
ago but who are nevertheless forbidden newspapers, visits from loved ones,
English-language dictionaries -- and flowers.

For some time we lawyers have been asking the military for a garden. Gardens are
commonplace in prisoner-of-war camps, and these men aren't even enemies. They
live in a pen, but it has a small patch of ground. Why not? The military
refused.

I was trying to explain this to Saddiq, along with other inexplicable things
(such as how it is that innocent men can be held for years in an American
prison), when he said, "We planted a garden. We have some small plants --
watermelon, peppers, garlic, cantaloupe. No fruit yet. There's a lemon tree
about two inches tall, though it's not doing well."

"The guards gave you tools?"

He shook his head.

"Then -- how do you dig?" I was struggling to grasp this.

"Spoons," he said. "And a mop handle."

The soil in Camp Iguana is dry and brittle as flint. And I've seen the spoons
they give our clients.

"But the spoons are plastic -- aren't they?"

Saddiq nodded. "At night we poured water on the ground. In the morning, we
pounded it with the mop handle and scratched it with the spoons. You can loosen
about this much." He held his thumb and forefinger about a half-inch apart. "The
next day, we did it again. And so on until we had a bed for planting." He
shrugged. "We have lots of time, here."

"But the seeds?" I asked. "Did they give you seeds?"

After four years at Guantanamo, Saddiq rarely smiles, but his face seemed to
brighten then. "Sometimes, with the meal, they give us a bit of watermelon or
cantaloupe to eat. We save the seeds."

One day the sordid history of Guantanamo will be written. There will be chapters
on torture, chapters on the how the courts turned a blind eye, chapters on
cruelties large and petty, on the massive stupidity and uselessness of the
place. Many pages will illustrate the great lie of Guantanamo -- that it is a
"terrorist detention facility" -- with accounts of goatherds and chicken farmers
and stray foreigners sold by Pakistani grifters to the United States for
bounties. Saddiq may have one of the oddest chapters of all: jailed first by the
Taliban as an enemy of its regime, then by us.

For all that, as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote, "There lives the dearest
freshness deep down things." Maybe the History of Guantanamo will have a few
uplifting footnotes. America denied them seeds and trowels and they created life
anyway. We tried to withhold beauty, but from the grim earth of Guantanamo they
scratched a few square meters of garden -- with spoons. Guantanamo is ugly, but
man's instinct for beauty lives deep down things.

When our meeting was over, the flowers had wilted. Saddiq picked up the little
nosegay. "May I take these back to Camp Iguana?"

But flowers are contraband. He wasn't allowed to keep them.

[ The writer, a Boston lawyer with Bingham McCutchen, represents Saddiq Ahmad
Turkistani, who is about to begin his fifth year of imprisonment at Guantanamo
Bay. ]

*


Salon --

April 14, 2006

WHAT RUMSFELD KNEW

Interviews with high-ranking military officials shed new light on the role
Rumsfeld played in the harsh treatment of a Guantanamo detainee.

By Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/04/14/rummy/

April 14, 2006 | Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was personally involved in
the late 2002 interrogation of a high-value al-Qaida detainee known in
intelligence circles as "the 20th hijacker." He also communicated weekly with
the man in charge of the interrogation, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, the
controversial commander of the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

During the same period, detainee Mohammed al-Kahtani suffered from what Army
investigators have called "degrading and abusive" treatment by soldiers who were
following the interrogation plan Rumsfeld had approved. Kahtani was forced to
stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a
homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform "dog tricks"
on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days.

Little more than two years later, during an investigation into the mistreatment
of prisoners at Guantanamo, Rumsfeld expressed puzzlement at the notion that his
policies had caused the abuse. "He was going, 'My God, you know, did I authorize
putting a bra and underwear on this guy's head?'" recalled Lt. Gen. Randall M.
Schmidt, an investigator who interviewed Rumsfeld twice in early 2005.

These disclosures are contained in a December 20, 2005, Army inspector general's
report on Miller's conduct, which was obtained this week by Salon through the
Freedom of Information Act. The 391-page document -- which has long passages
blacked out by the government -- concludes that Miller should not be punished
for his oversight role in detainee operations, a fact that was reported last
month by Time magazine. But the never-before-released full report also includes
the transcripts of interviews with high-ranking military officials that shed new
light on the role that Rumsfeld and Miller played in the harsh treatment of
Kahtani, who had met with Osama bin Laden on several occasions and received
terrorist training in al-Qaida camps.

In a sworn statement to the inspector general, Schmidt described Rumsfeld as
"personally involved" in the interrogation and said that the defense secretary
was "talking weekly" with Miller. Schmidt said he concluded that Rumsfeld did
not specifically prescribe the more "creative" interrogation methods used on
Kahtani. But he added that the open-ended policies Rumsfeld approved, and that
the apparent lack of supervision of day-to-day interrogations permitted the
abusive conduct to take place. "Where is the throttle on this stuff?" asked
Schmidt, an Air Force fighter pilot, who said in his interview under oath with
the inspector general that he had concerns about the length and repetition of
the harsh interrogation methods. "There were no limits."

Schmidt also saw close parallels between the interrogations at Guantanamo, and
the photographic evidence of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. "Just for the
lack of a camera, it would sure look like Abu Ghraib," Schmidt told the
inspector general, in the interview that was conducted in August 2005. At the
direction of Pentagon officials, Miller led a mission to Iraq in August 2003 to
review detainee operations at Abu Ghraib -- a visit that critics say
precipitated the abuse of prisoners there.

In April 2005, Schmidt completed his report on detainee abuse at Guantanamo,
which he co-authored with Brig. Gen. John T. Furlow. They recommended that
Miller be "admonished" and "held accountable" for the alleged abuse of Kahtani.
But that recommendation was rejected by Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, the current head
of the Southern Command, who said Miller had not violated any law or policy.

On December 2, 2002, Rumsfeld approved 16 harsher interrogation strategies for
use against Kahtani, including the use of forced nudity, stress positions and
the removal of religious items. In public statements, however, Rumsfeld has
maintained that none of the policies at Guantanamo led to "inhumane" treatment
of detainees. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, told Salon Thursday that
Kahtani was an al-Qaida terrorist who provided a "treasure trove" of still-
classified information during his interrogation. "Al-Kahtani's interrogation was
guided by a very detailed plan, conducted by trained professionals in a
controlled environment, and with active supervision and oversight," Gordon said
in an e-mail statement. "Nothing was done randomly."

Miller -- who has invoked his right against self-incrimination in courts-martial
of Abu Ghraib soldiers -- said that he did not know all the details of Kahtani's
interrogation. But Schmidt told the inspector general that he found that claim
"hard to believe" in light of Miller's knowledge of Rumsfeld's continuing
interest in Kahtani. "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the
interrogation of one person, and the entire General Counsel system of all the
departments of the military," Schmidt said. "There is just not a too-busy alibi
there for that."

The harsh interrogation of Kahtani came to an abrupt end in mid-January 2003.
Gen. James T. Hill, Craddock's predecessor as the head of Southern Command,
recalled in his interview with the inspector general that he received a call
from Rumsfeld on a January weekend asking about the progress of Kahtani's
interrogation. "Someone had come to him and suggested that it needed to be
looked at," Hill said of Rumsfeld. "He said, 'What do you think?' And I said,
'Why don't [you] let me call General Miller.'"

According to Hill's account of that call, Miller advised that the harsh
interrogation of Kahtani should continue, using the techniques Rumsfeld had
previously approved. "We think we're right on the verge of making a
breakthrough," Hill remembered Miller saying. Hill said he called Rumsfeld back
with the news. "The secretary said, 'Fine,'" Hill remembered.

Nonetheless, several days later Rumsfeld revoked the harsher interrogation
methods, apparently responding to military lawyers who had raised concerns that
they may constitute cruel and unusual punishment or torture.

"My attitude on that was, 'Great!'" said Hill. The general recalled thinking
about Rumsfeld and the decision to halt the harsh interrogation, "All I'm trying
to do is what you want us to do in the first place and doing it the right way."

The harsher methods were not approved again.

* Army IG interview with Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt (2005.08.24):

http://images.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2006/04/14/fri/Schmidt.pdf

* Army IG interview with Gen. James Hill (2005.10.07):

http://images.salon.com/ent/col/fix/2006/04/14/fri/HILL.pdf

*


Salon --

April 14, 2006

NO JUSTICE FOR ALL

Army investigators found "probable cause" that a civilian interrogator abused a
detainee at Abu Ghraib. Why has the Department of Justice failed to prosecute
him -- or any of the other 18 civilians suspected of criminal acts?

By Mark Benjamin

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/04/14/contractor/index.html

April 14, 2006 | Salon has obtained a previously unpublished 2003 Abu Ghraib
photograph that shows Daniel Johnson, a civilian contractor, interrogating an
Iraqi prisoner using what an Army investigation calls "an unauthorized stress
position."

The Army investigated the circumstances behind the photograph, found "probable
cause" that a crime had been committed, and referred the case to the Justice
Department for prosecution. (Salon obtained the photo from someone who spent
time at Abu Ghraib as a uniformed member of the military and is familiar with
the Army investigation there.) But in early 2005, a Department of Justice
attorney told the Army that the evidence in the case did not justify
prosecution.

This failure to act by the Justice Department, which has sole jurisdiction over
crimes committed by civilian contractors in Iraq, has prompted a Democrat on the
Senate Judiciary Committee and human-rights organizations to question the
seriousness with which the Bush administration is pursuing prisoner-abuse cases.
At his January 2005 confirmation hearing, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales
declared, "Abuse will not be tolerated by this administration. If confirmed, I
will ensure that the Department of Justice aggressively pursues those
responsible for such abhorrent actions."

Two soldiers -- who served as military policemen at Abu Ghraib and had already
been sentenced and imprisoned for their mistreatment of detainees -- told Army
investigators that Johnson had directed and participated in prisoner abuse.
Johnson's role is highlighted in transcripts, obtained by Salon, of Army
interviews with Pvt. Ivan Frederick II and Pvt. Charles Graner.

Frederick said in the interview with investigators that Johnson told him to
cover a prisoner's mouth and nose to stop his breathing. The former military
policeman at Abu Ghraib said that Johnson had also instructed him to inflict
pain by squeezing pressure points on the same prisoner's face and body. Graner,
who received immunity from further prosecution for his cooperation with Army
investigators, said that he also "roughed up" this prisoner at Johnson's
instigation.

Not a single civilian has been prosecuted for prisoner abuse in Iraq. Army
investigations, however, have identified several civilian contractors as
involved with the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib. The Johnson file is among 19
detainee-abuse cases referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern
District of Virginia, which in 2004 was designated as the office in charge of
prosecuting prisoner-abuse cases from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Among these 19 referrals, it is the photograph that makes the Johnson case
unusual. In response to questions from Salon, Army Criminal Investigation
Command (CID) spokesman Chris Grey said that his office had "investigated the
circumstances surrounding the incident depicted in the photograph" and found
"probable cause to believe a crime was committed by civilian contractors." He
added in his written statement that the investigation "did not establish that
any U.S. Soldiers were implicated in regard to this photograph." Grey went on to
state that on March 8, 2005, an assistant U.S. attorney in Virginia told the
Army that he had reviewed the Johnson case and found there was "insufficient
evidence" to prosecute.

Now, more than a year later, the Justice Department insists the case is still
open. In a statement about the case prompted by Salon, a spokesman for the U.S.
Attorney's Office in the Eastern District of Virginia said that his office "had
not made any final decisions about whether to ask a grand jury to consider
charges against any individuals." The spokesman, who did not want his name used,
went on to say, "We are conducting a thorough, professional and independent
review, devoid of any political considerations."

A follow-up statement from the Eastern District of Virginia explained that two
of the 19 prisoner-abuse cases referred to it have been dropped. The statement
said that these decisions had been made on the recommendation of the Justice
Department in Washington.

Outside the Justice Department, little is known about the decision-making in the
investigations of alleged prison abuse in Iraq by civilians. "Unfortunately, we
don't know much," admitted Illinois Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin, who had
pointedly questioned Paul McNulty, who had been the U.S. attorney for the
Eastern District of Virginia, about this failure to prosecute civilians. Durbin
raised his questions at a Judiciary Committee hearing in early February about
McNulty's soon-to-be-successful confirmation as deputy attorney general, the
department's second-highest position.

When told about the existence of the Johnson photograph and the corroborating
statements obtained by Salon, Durbin said that he would have pressed McNulty
harder to explain why he had not pursued such a clear-cut case. "That is the
first I have heard of anything that well documented," Durbin said in an
interview. "If I had known about this case, trust me, this would have been on
the table."

At his confirmation hearing, McNulty offered an explanation of the inaction of
his office in prosecuting detainee-abuse cases. He said that his staff was
struggling to find witnesses and victims. McNulty also complained about the
difficulty sorting out complicated jurisdictional issues. "We are still working
hard on those cases," McNulty told the Senate. "It may very well be that in the
not-too-distant future charges will be brought."

In contrast to the slow-moving Justice Department, the Army has so far
successfully prosecuted 10 soldiers from Abu Ghraib, most of whom appear in the
abuse photographs from the prison previously published by Salon. This new
photograph of Johnson and the allegations made by Frederick and Graner are
similar to the evidence that the Army used in these 10 successful court-martial
cases.

Scott Horton, who chairs the International Law Committee of the New York City
Bar Association, said, "This case is just staggering, frankly. The reputation
within the Justice Department is that the prosecuting process is being heavily
politicized and the epicenter of this problem is the Eastern District of
Virginia."

Army files identify Johnson as an interrogator with the military and homeland-
security contracting firm CACI International, which had $1.6 billion in revenues
in 2005. The documents state that the woman in the photograph is Etaf Mheisen, a
civilian translator who worked for a subcontractor of the San Diego-based Titan
Corp. The Army employed dozens of CACI interrogators and Titan translators at
Abu Ghraib in 2003.

CACI contended in a written statement to Salon on March 27 that the photo does
not show abuse and the company said that it "addressed this photograph directly
with the United States Army in 2004." CACI went on to say that it "neither
condones nor tolerates any abusive behavior by its current or former employees
at any time."

Efforts to locate Johnson and to solicit further comment from CACI about this
article were unsuccessful.

The photo of Johnson, Mheisen and the detainee on the white chair has not
previously been made public. But it was apparently described in the August 2004
Army investigation into Abu Ghraib by Maj. Gen. George R. Fay. The Fay report
describes a then-unreleased photograph of a prisoner "squatting on a chair which
is an unauthorized stress position" while being interrogated by a CACI
interrogator and a female Titan translator.

Titan, which is now a subsidiary of L-3 Communications, would not comment on
this article, except to say that its records show that Mheisen worked for a
subcontractor and was terminated in November 2005. Titan also claimed that
Mheisen is a man, not a woman. But Army investigative materials and statements
from soldiers who served at Abu Ghraib say Etaf Mheisen was indeed a woman as it
clearly appears in the photo.

CACI said in its statement that the prisoner in the photograph with Johnson and
Mheisen was "suspected of smuggling a gun to a detainee at Abu Ghraib, who used
it to shoot American soldiers."

That statement refers to a Nov. 24, 2003, event at the prison in which an Iraqi
policeman allegedly smuggled a pistol to a detainee. The prisoner and a U.S.
soldier were both wounded in the subsequent shootout when the prisoner opened
fire.

Frederick, in one of the transcripts obtained by Salon, describes the
interrogations of the Iraqi policeman, which was directed by Johnson. Mheisen is
said to have stood by during the abuse, unfazed, while she translated.

In his questioning by CID on Nov. 3, 2004, Frederick said that the photograph of
the detainee with Johnson and Mheisen was taken on "one of the nights that he
was interrogating him," though he could not say exactly which night. Frederick,
who had been sentenced to eight years in prison before this CID interview, said
that his role during the interrogation was to wait for a cue from Johnson and
then rough up the prisoner if he would not cooperate.

"Me and Johnson had a verbal agreement," Frederick recounted. "I was standing
outside the door. Now the way it worked was he [Johnson] would be questioning
the guy and if he didn't answer, Johnson would say he was going to have me come
in the room. That was my key to come into the room."

Frederick said that, on Johnson's instruction, he was supposed to get more and
more violent whenever the policeman would not cooperate. "It started off with a
show of force," Frederick said, explaining that he would "stomp in the room, get
real close to [the policeman], breathe real hard. I believe I slapped the wall
or bed real hard just to make a commotion."

Johnson soon directed Frederick to get rougher. "I would put my hand over his
mouth and pinch his nose," so he could not breathe, Frederick said. He added
that Johnson twice personally interfered with the prisoner's breathing in
similar fashion. At Johnson's request, Frederick said that he also pressed pain-
inducing pressure points around the detainee's cheek, nose and chin, ear and
wrist.

According to Frederick, Johnson was, "very aggressive and confident in his
skills... He yelled and screamed a lot. He walked around like he was the man."
Frederick went on to say, "To me, he was a little bit on the side that he didn't
care and would pull all the stops if he had to."

Graner, sentenced to 10 years in prison for abuse at Abu Ghraib, gave a similar
interview to CID in April 2005 after he had been convicted. Graner said that
under Johnson's direction, he and Frederick had on one occasion "basically
roughed up" the prisoner. Graner identified the captive as "the Iraqi
corrections officer who allegedly brought in the weapon."

During one of those "roughing-up" sessions by Frederick and Graner, the
detainee's forehead was split open. Despite the wound, Graner said, Johnson
would not allow a medic to administer stitches. Instead, Graner did the sutures
himself, a procedure that was depicted in previously published Abu Ghraib
photographs. [See photos 18-33 in the "Lacerations" chapter of the Abu Ghraib
Files.]

These statements by Frederick and Graner amplify the 2004 Fay report. That
report, which never refers to civilian contractors by name, says that a CACI
interrogator "encouraged" Frederick to abuse a captured Iraqi policeman after a
shooting incident in the prison. The Army inquiry goes on to state that this
civilian contractor "failed to prevent" Frederick from covering the prisoner's
mouth and nose during an interrogation. The report also mentions that during a
separate interrogation, possibly with another prisoner, the same CACI
interrogator had a detainee threatened with a snarling military working dog.

The Fay report recommended that the Army consider referring the CACI
interrogator, apparently Johnson, to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
It says that the female Titan translator (presumably Mheisen) should be
considered for prosecution for failing to report detainee abuse. The Fay report
also suggested that three other civilian contractors who worked at Abu Ghraib be
considered for prosecution based on separate allegations of detainee abuse.

A former top Justice Department prosecutor in the Clinton administration
reviewed the photographs and corroborating information at Salon's request. "I
have a pretty hard time trying to figure out how they don't have enough evidence
to prosecute," he concluded. The attorney, who did not want his name used
because he did not know all the facts in the case, stressed that it would be
particularly odd if the Justice Department did not bother to interview key
witnesses or use its subpoena power. "That is evidence any prosecutor would
subpoena once they crawled out of the crib," he said. "Your job is to find out
the truth. The question is whether the prosecutor did anything to investigate
this case."

The lack of any Justice Department prosecutions of civilians arising from
incidents in Iraq galls human-rights advocates. Jean Alyward, a senior associate
for government affairs at Human Rights First, asks rhetorically, "If a wayward
contractor is able to use abusive tactics in his interrogations of detainees
without any reprimand, what message does this send to military members and other
U.S. personnel?"

The answer to that question now rests with Attorney General Gonzales and Charles
"Chuck" Rosenberg, a respected career prosecutor who replaced McNulty in the
Eastern District of Virginia as the U.S. attorney in charge of detainee-abuse
cases from Iraq. It remains unclear whether Rosenberg will pursue cases like
that of Daniel Johnson -- cases that have been in suspended animation since the
Army referred them to the Justice Department.

[ With additional reporting by Michael Scherer ]

*


Washington Post --

April 9, 2006

A 'CONCERTED EFFORT' TO DISCREDIT BUSH CRITIC

Prosecutor Describes Cheney, Libby as Key Voices Pitching Iraq-Niger Story
By Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/04/08/AR2006040800916.html

As he drew back the curtain this week on the evidence against Vice President
Cheney's former top aide, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald for the first
time described a "concerted action" by "multiple people in the White House" --
using classified information -- to "discredit, punish or seek revenge against" a
critic of President Bush's war in Iraq.

Bluntly and repeatedly, Fitzgerald placed Cheney at the center of that campaign.
Citing grand jury testimony from the vice president's former chief of staff, I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald fingered Cheney as the first to voice a line
of attack that at least three White House officials would soon deploy against
former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

Cheney, in a conversation with Libby in early July 2003, was said to describe
Wilson's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger the previous year -- in which the envoy
found no support for charges that Iraq tried to buy uranium there -- as "a
junket set up by Mr. Wilson's wife," CIA case officer Valerie Plame.

Libby is charged with perjury and obstruction of justice for denying under oath
that he disclosed Plame's CIA employment to journalists. There is no public
evidence to suggest Libby made any such disclosure with Cheney's knowledge. But
according to Libby's grand jury testimony, described for the first time in legal
papers filed this week, Cheney "specifically directed" Libby in late June or
early July 2003 to pass information to reporters from two classified CIA
documents: an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and a March 2002
summary of Wilson's visit to Niger.

One striking feature of that decision -- unremarked until now, in part because
Fitzgerald did not mention it -- is that the evidence Cheney and Libby selected
to share with reporters had been disproved months before.

United Nations inspectors had exposed the main evidence for the uranium charge
as crude forgeries in March 2003, but the Bush administration and British Prime
Minister Tony Blair maintained they had additional, secret evidence they could
not disclose. In June, a British parliamentary inquiry concluded otherwise,
delivering a scathing critique of Blair's role in promoting the story. With no
ally left, the White House debated whether to abandon the uranium claim and
became embroiled in bitter finger-pointing about whom to fault for the error. A
legal brief filed for Libby last month said that "certain officials at the CIA,
the White House, and the State Department each sought to avoid or assign blame
for intelligence failures relating to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction."

It was at that moment that Libby, allegedly at Cheney's direction, sought out at
least three reporters to bolster the discredited uranium allegation. Libby made
careful selections of language from the 2002 estimate, quoting a passage that
said Iraq was "vigorously trying to procure uranium" in Africa.

The first of those conversations, according to the evidence made known thus far,
came when Libby met with Bob Woodward, an assistant managing editor of The
Washington Post, on June 27, 2003. In sworn testimony for Fitzgerald, according
to a statement Woodward released on Nov. 14, 2005, Woodward said Libby told him
of the intelligence estimate's description of Iraqi efforts to obtain
"yellowcake," a processed form of natural uranium ore, in Africa. In an
interview Friday, Woodward said his notes showed that Libby described those
efforts as "vigorous."

Libby's next known meeting with a reporter, according to Fitzgerald's legal
filing, was with Judith Miller, then of the New York Times, on July 8, 2003. He
spoke again to Miller, and to Time magazine's Matt Cooper, on July 12.

At Cheney's instruction, Libby testified, he told Miller that the uranium story
was a "key judgment" of the intelligence estimate, a term of art indicating
there was consensus on a question of central importance.

In fact, the alleged effort to buy uranium was not among the estimate's key
judgments, which were identified by a headline and bold type and set out in
bullet form in the first five pages of the 96-page document.

Unknown to the reporters, the uranium claim lay deeper inside the estimate,
where it said a fresh supply of uranium ore would "shorten the time Baghdad
needs to produce nuclear weapons." But it also said U.S. intelligence did not
know the status of Iraq's procurement efforts, "cannot confirm" any success and
had "inconclusive" evidence about Iraq's domestic uranium operations.

Iraq's alleged uranium shopping had been strongly disputed in the intelligence
community from the start. In a closed Senate hearing in late September 2002,
shortly before the October NIE was completed, then-director of central
intelligence George J. Tenet and his top weapons analyst, Robert Walpole,
expressed strong doubts about the uranium story, which had recently been
unveiled publicly by the British government. The State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, likewise, called the claim "highly dubious." For
those reasons, the uranium story was relegated to a brief inside passage in the
October estimate.

But the White House Iraq Group, formed in August 2002 to foster "public
education" about Iraq's "grave and gathering danger" to the United States,
repeatedly pitched the uranium story. The alleged procurement was a minor issue
for most U.S. analysts -- the hard part for Iraq would be enriching uranium, not
obtaining the ore, and Niger's controlled market made it an unlikely seller --
but the Niger story proved irresistible to speechwriters. Most nuclear arguments
were highly technical, but the public could easily grasp the link between
uranium and a bomb.

Tenet interceded to keep the claim out of a speech Bush gave in Cincinnati on
Oct. 7, 2002, but by Dec. 19 it reappeared in a State Department "fact sheet."
After that, the Pentagon asked for an authoritative judgment from the National
Intelligence Council, the senior coordinating body for the 15 agencies that then
constituted the U.S. intelligence community. Did Iraq and Niger discuss a
uranium sale, or not? If they had, the Pentagon would need to reconsider its
ties with Niger.

The council's reply, drafted in a January 2003 memo by the national intelligence
officer for Africa, was unequivocal: The Niger story was baseless and should be
laid to rest. Four U.S. officials with firsthand knowledge said in interviews
that the memo, which has not been reported before, arrived at the White House as
Bush and his highest-ranking advisers made the uranium story a centerpiece of
their case for the rapidly approaching war against Iraq.

Bush put his prestige behind the uranium story in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of
the Union address. Less than two months later, the International Atomic Energy
Agency exposed the principal U.S. evidence as bogus. A Bush-appointed commission
later concluded that the evidence, a set of contracts and correspondence sold by
an Italian informant, was "transparently forged."

On the ground in Iraq, meanwhile, the hunt for weapons of mass destruction was
producing no results, and as the bad news converged on the White House -- weeks
after a banner behind Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" on the deck of the
USS Abraham Lincoln -- Wilson emerged as a key critic. He focused his ire on
Cheney, who had made the administration's earliest and strongest claims about
Iraq's alleged nuclear program.

Fitzgerald wrote that Cheney and his aides saw Wilson as a threat to "the
credibility of the Vice President (and the President) on a matter of signal
importance: the rationale for the war in Iraq." They decided to respond by
implying that Wilson got his CIA assignment by "nepotism."

They were not alone. Fitzgerald reported for the first time this week that
"multiple officials in the White House"-- not only Libby and White House Deputy
Chief of Staff Karl Rove, who have previously been identified -- discussed
Plame's CIA employment with reporters before and after publication of her name
on July 14, 2003, in a column by Robert D. Novak. Fitzgerald said the grand jury
has collected so much testimony and so many documents that "it is hard to
conceive of what evidence there could be that would disprove the existence of
White House efforts to 'punish' Wilson."

At the same time, top officials such as then-deputy national security adviser
Stephen J. Hadley were pressing the CIA to declassify more documents in hopes of
defending the president's use of the uranium claim in his State of the Union
speech. It was a losing battle. A "senior Bush administration official,"
speaking on the condition of anonymity as the president departed for Africa on
July 7, 2003, told The Post that "the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire
uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union
speech." The comment appeared on the front page of the July 8 paper, the same
morning that Libby met Miller at the St. Regis hotel.

Libby was still defending the uranium claim as the administration's internal
battle burst into the open. White House officials tried to blame Tenet for the
debacle, but Tenet made public his intervention to keep uranium out of Bush's
speech four months earlier. Hadley then acknowledged that he had known of
Tenet's objections but forgot them as the State of the Union approached.

Hoping to lay the controversy to rest, Hadley claimed responsibility for the
Niger remarks.

In a speech two days later, at the American Enterprise Institute, Cheney
defended the war by saying that no responsible leader could ignore the evidence
in the NIE. Before a roomful of conservative policymakers, Cheney listed four of
the "key judgments" on Iraq's alleged weapons capabilities but made no mention
of Niger or uranium.

On July 30, 2003, two senior intelligence officials said in an interview that
Niger was never an important part of the CIA's analysis, and that the language
of Iraq's vigorous pursuit of uranium came verbatim from a Defense Intelligence
Agency report that had caught the vice president's attention. The same day, the
CIA referred the Plame leak to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution,
the fateful step that would eventually lead to Libby's indictment.

[ Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. ]

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

*

Washington Post --

April 2, 2006

COURTED AS SPIES, HELD AS COMBATANTS
British Residents Enlisted by MI5 After Sept. 11 Languish at Guantanamo

By Craig Whitlock

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040101465.html

LONDON -- As they tried to board a flight at Gatwick Airport in November 2002,
three Arab residents of Britain were pulled aside by security agents. Police had
questions about their luggage and ties to a radical Islamic cleric. After four
days in custody, the men were cleared of suspicion and resumed their trip.

But British intelligence officials weren't ready to drop their interest in the
men. Before the three flew out of the country, the MI5 security service sent
cables to a "foreign intelligence agency," according to court testimony and
newly declassified MI5 documents, calling the men Islamic extremists and
disclosing their destination: Gambia, a tiny West African country.

When they arrived on Nov. 8, they were detained by Gambian and U.S. intelligence
operatives, who interrogated them again, this time for a month, British and U.S.
documents show. Then two of the men, Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna,
disappeared into the netherworld of the U.S. government's battle against
terrorism, taken first to a prison in Afghanistan, then to the Naval detention
center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The primary purpose of this elaborate operation, documents and interviews
suggest, was not to neutralize a pair of potential terrorists -- authorities
have offered no evidence that they were planning attacks -- but to turn them
into informers.

U.S. and British efforts to infiltrate Britain's Islamic underground went into
high gear after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the documents show. The two men,
acquaintances of the radical cleric Abu Qatada, were singled out by MI5 for
threats, cajoling and offers of cash and protection if they would channel
information. Although one of them offered some assistance, MI5 wanted more.

Rawi, 38, and Banna, 43, remain at Guantanamo. They have told their attorneys
that U.S. and British intelligence operatives have visited them repeatedly there
and in Afghanistan, renewing demands that they inform, offering them freedom and
money in exchange. Both men say they have refused.

A review of hundreds of pages of documents recently released by the U.S.
Department of Defense, a British court and the men's attorneys illustrates how
the U.S., British and Gambian governments worked together in an operation that
circumvented their judicial systems and, through a process known as
extraordinary rendition, had two men incarcerated who had not been charged with
breaking any law.

George Brent Mickum IV, a Washington lawyer who represents both men,
acknowledged that they were friends of Abu Qatada. But he said neither shared
the cleric's radical beliefs nor represented a security risk to the United
States.

He said he was still trying to understand why British intelligence would
engineer their seizure. "Either it was an attempt to put these guys at risk and
to use them to find evidence that would implicate Abu Qatada," he said, "or it
was an attempt to bring them within the closer control of MI5."

Spokesmen for the Pentagon, the CIA and the U.S. Embassy in Banjul, the Gambian
capital, declined to comment for this article. MI5 has a policy of not
commenting to the media.

The British Foreign Office released a statement last week denying complicity by
the British government: "The United Kingdom did not request the detention of the
claimants in the Gambia and did not play any role in their transfer to
Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay."

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said she could not answer questions because of a
pending lawsuit seeking to force the British government to intercede on the
men's behalf. On March 22, the government said it would ask for Rawi's release;
its previous position was that it could not intercede for a non-British citizen.

The case has caused a political uproar in Britain. Critics say the documents
show the British government has helped place people in Guantanamo, despite its
claims that the prison is strictly a U.S. operation.

A parliamentary committee is investigating. "The key issue that certainly
concerns me is whether our government, the British government, was involved in
something that I would consider to be unlawful," said Andrew Tyrie, the
committee chairman. "I don't want to live in a country that could be complicit
in such abuses."

Rawi came to Britain as a teenager in 1984 with his family from Iraq, where his
father had been tortured by Saddam Hussein's secret police, family members said
in interviews. He attended British schools but was a self-described poor student
who didn't need to find a job because his family was wealthy. He retained his
Iraqi citizenship in hopes of reclaiming confiscated family property if
Hussein's government ever fell.

One day after the Sept. 11 attacks, two MI5 agents knocked on the door of the
house where he lived with his sister and her husband, family members said. The
agents asked about Qatada, whom he knew from the mosque. "He was completely
gobsmacked," said Nomi Janjua, his brother-in-law. "He said, 'What? Secret
services?' I started laughing because we couldn't believe it."

Rawi agreed to become an unpaid informer, according to the family and his
attorneys, a claim that the British government has acknowledged in court without
elaborating. Although he kept details of his talks with MI5 to himself, British
agents quickly became a presence at the family's house. They telephoned so often
that his relatives complained, forcing MI5 to give him a mobile phone and meet
him elsewhere.

Sometimes the contacts were unfriendly, family members recalled. Once, when he
took his mother to an airport, agents pulled him aside for a long interrogation.

MI5 documents show that some agents came to have reservations about whether he
was carrying out their orders. He tried to end the relationship in the summer of
2002, upsetting his handlers.

Banna, a Palestinian with Jordanian citizenship, came with his wife to London in
1994 from Pakistan. He had worked in an orphanage in Peshawar, where he met
Qatada, a fellow Jordanian.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Banna also received a visit from two intelligence
agents, one British and one American, according to his wife, Sabah. The agents
inquired about Qatada. He resisted their pressure to become an informer, she
said, but they kept it up.

In late 2002, Banna and Rawi made plans to go to Gambia. The purpose of the
trip, they have said, was to help Rawi's brother, Wahab, set up a peanut-oil
processing plant. In an interview, Wahab al-Rawi said he had invested $225,000
in the venture and had recruited his brother, Banna, and two other friends as
partners.

On Oct. 31, 2002, as Banna was packing for the trip, an M15 agent called at his
London home and pressed him again to infiltrate extremist circles on behalf of
British intelligence, either domestically or in a Muslim country.

"He did not give any hint of willingness to cooperate with us," the unnamed MI5
agent wrote in a report. "I returned to the choice which he could make; he could
either continue as at present, with the risks that entailed, or he could start a
new life with a new identity. . . . It was quite possible that he could find
himself swept up in a further round of detentions."

In an interview, Sabah el-Banna said she didn't recall details of the
conversation except that the agents assured Banna that he could fly to Africa.
"They said, 'No, no -- go ahead. Good luck in your business." MI5 records
confirm that Banna was given clearance to go.

The detention at Gatwick delayed the three travelers' arrival in Gambia by seven
days. It has led to speculation by the men's attorneys and families that the
delay gave the CIA time to position operatives in Gambia.

On Nov. 8, Wahab al-Rawi, who was already in Gambia, and a business partner
drove to the Banjul airport to meet the travelers. There, all five men were
taken into custody.

Gambian officials initially said there was a visa problem. But the men were soon
locked up and moved to hidden locations and safe houses around the capital.
American spies acted as if they were in charge, Wahab al-Rawi said. A brawny man
who identified himself as Lee and said he was from the U.S. Embassy spent days
questioning the men. He wanted to know about their ties to Qatada, whether the
peanut business was a front for terrorist activities and whether they hated
Americans.

Wahab al-Rawi said he refused to cooperate at first, demanding that he be
allowed to contact a lawyer and the British Embassy. "Lee said, 'Who do you
think asked us to arrest you? Where do you think this information came from, the
questions we are asking you?' " Wahab al-Rawi said.

After four weeks, Wahab al-Rawi and one of the business partners -- both British
citizens -- were released and put on a flight back to London. A third partner, a
Gambian citizen, also was let go. But Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil el-Banna were
flown to Afghanistan.

They have given their attorneys this account of their arrival there: They were
taken to a prison near Kabul, the capital, and kept in the darkness for two
weeks, with loudspeakers blaring music around the clock. Later they were
transferred to a prison at Bagram air base.

Rawi and Banna said they were asked by CIA operatives in Afghanistan whether
they would serve as informants, said Mickum, their attorney. Banna was offered
increasing sums of money and a U.S. passport to work for the CIA, but refused,
Mickum said.

A few weeks later, they were flown to Guantanamo Bay. On March 12, 2003, Rawi
wrote a sardonic letter to his family in London.

"Dear Mum and family," it read. "I'm writing to you from the seaside resort of
Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. After winning first prize in a competition, I was
whisked to this nice resort with all expenses paid (I did not need to spend a
penny). . . . Everyone is very nice, the neighbors are very well-mannered, the
food is best class, plenty of fun."

Rawi told his lawyer he was visited in Guantanamo at least six times by MI5
officials, including some of the same agents who had served as his handlers in
London. They apologized for the turn of events, but asked whether he would still
be willing to work for the agency if they could secure his release.

"He asked me a few questions about a few people here" in Guantanamo, Rawi said
of one MI5 agent, according to a transcript of a U.S. military tribunal hearing.
"He asked me, if I were released, where would I like to go? I mentioned a few
places; I told him he could buy me a ticket to the moon."

In September 2004, the two were brought before tribunals that would determine
whether they could be formally classified as "enemy combatants." The primary
evidence against them: they knew Abu Qatada, and had wired money on his behalf
to Jordan.

They were also accused of carrying a suspicious electronic device in their
luggage to Gambia; British police who stopped them at Gatwick determined it was
a battery charger, police reports show.

In testimony during the hearings, the detainees admitted knowing Qatada and
helping him transfer the funds, which they said went to a charity. They said MI5
had been aware of all their activities and had encouraged them to interact with
Qatada. They also pointed out that British police had them in custody just prior
to their trip to Gambia and could have pressed charges if they were suspected of
illegal acts.

"We were kidnapped in Gambia, not arrested," Banna said, according to a
transcript of his hearing. "I don't even know what I have done. . . . If I were
a danger to anyone, Britain would have put me in jail."

The tribunals ruled that both men should be classified as enemy combatants.

[ Researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report. ]

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

* See also DETAINEE DOCUMENTS:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100592.html

*


The Sunday Times (UK) --

March 26, 2006
IRAQIS KILLED BY US TROOPS 'ON RAMPAGE'
Claims of atrocities by soldiers mount
By Hala Jaber and Tony Allen-Mills

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2103695,00.html

THE villagers of Abu Sifa near the Iraqi town of Balad had become used to the
sound of explosions at night as American forces searched the area for suspected
insurgents. But one night two weeks ago Issa Harat Khalaf heard a different
sound that chilled him to the bone.

Khalaf, a 33-year-old security officer guarding oil pipelines, saw a US
helicopter land near his home. American soldiers stormed out of the Chinook and
advanced on a house owned by Khalaf’s brother Fayez, firing as they went.

Khalaf ran from his own house and hid in a nearby grove of trees. He saw the
soldiers enter his brother’s home and then heard the sound of women and children
screaming.

"Then there was a lot of machinegun fire," he said last week. After that there
was the most frightening sound of all -- silence, followed by explosions as the
soldiers left the house.

Once the troops were gone, Khalaf and his fellow villagers began a frantic
search through the ruins of his brother’s home. Abu Sifa was about to join a
lengthening list of Iraqi communities claiming to have suffered from American
atrocities.

According to Iraqi police, 11 bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the house,
among them four women and five children aged between six months and five years.
An official police report obtained by a US reporter for Knight Ridder newspapers
said: "The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed
11 people."

The Abu Sifa deaths on March 15 were first reported last weekend on the day that
Time magazine published the results of a 10-week investigation into an incident
last November when US marines killed 15 civilians in their homes in the western
Iraqi town of Haditha.

The two incidents are being investigated by US authorities, but persistent
eyewitness accounts of rampaging attacks by American troops are fuelling human
rights activists’ concerns that Pentagon commanders are failing to curb military
excesses in Iraq.

The Pentagon claims to have investigated at least 600 cases of alleged abuse by
American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to have disciplined or punished
230 soldiers for improper behaviour. But a study by three New York-based human
rights groups, due to be published next month, will claim that most soldiers
found guilty of abuse received only "administrative" discipline such as loss of
rank or pay, confinement to base or periods of extra duty.

Of the 76 courts martial that the Pentagon is believed to have initiated, only a
handful are known to have resulted in jail sentences of more than a year --
notably including the architects of detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

Most other cases ended with sentences of two, three or four months. "That’s not
punishment, and that’s the problem," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch,
which is compiling the study with two other groups.

"Our concern is that abuses in the field are not being robustly investigated and
prosecuted, and that they are not setting an example with people who cross the
line," said Sifton. "There is a clear preference by the military for discipline
with administrative and non-judicial punishments instead of courts martial. That
sends the message that you can commit abuse and get away with it."

Yet the evidence from Haditha and Abu Sifa last week suggested that the Pentagon
is finding it increasingly difficult to dismiss allegations of violent excesses
as propaganda by terrorist sympathisers.

It was on November 19 last year that a US marine armoured vehicle struck a
roadside bomb that killed a 20-year-old lance-corporal. According to a marine
communique issued the next day, the blast also killed 15 Iraqi civilians and was
followed by an attack on the US convoy in which eight insurgents were killed.

An investigation by Time established that the civilians had not been killed by
the roadside bomb, but were shot in their homes after the marines rampaged
through Haditha. Among the dead were seven women and three children.

One eyewitness told Time: "I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in the
chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny."

A Pentagon inquiry has reportedly confirmed that the civilians were killed by
marines. But it said the deaths were the result of "collateral damage" and not,
as some villagers alleged, murder by marines taking revenge for the death of
their comrade. The case has been handed over to the Naval Criminal Investigative
Service to determine if the rules of war were broken.

In Abu Sifa last week, Khalaf’s account was corroborated by a neighbour, Hassan
Kurdi Mahassen, who was also woken by the sound of helicopters and saw soldiers
entering Fayez’s home after spraying it with such heavy fire that walls
crumbled.

Mahassen said that once the soldiers had left -- after apparently dropping
several grenades that caused part of the house to collapse -- villagers searched
under the rubble "and found them all buried in one room".

"Women and even the children were blindfolded and their hands bound. Some of
their faces were totally disfigured. A lot of blood was on the floors and the
walls."

Khalaf said he had found the body of his mother Turkiya with her face
unrecognisable. "She had been shot with a dumdum bullet," he claimed.

While many allegations of US atrocities have later turned out to be exaggerated
or false, the Abu Sifa incident was supported by hospital autopsy reports that
said all the victims had died from bullet wounds. A local Iraqi police commander
-- supposedly co-operating with US forces -- confirmed that the bodies had been
found with their wrists tied.

The US military put the number of civilians killed at four: two women, a child
and a man. A spokesman said troops had gone to the house in response to a tip
that a member of Al-Qaeda was there. The terrorist was found and arrested. The
spokesman insisted that coalition forces "take every precaution to keep
civilians out of harm’s way" and that it was "highly unlikely" that the Abu Sifa
allegations were true.

Some villagers were quoted as confirming that an Al-Qaeda member was visiting
the house. "But was my six-month-old nephew a member of Al-Qaeda?" asked Khalaf.
"Was my 75-year-old mother also from that organisation?" While the Pentagon is
investigating the incident, the soldiers involved remain on active duty.

Sifton acknowledged that human rights activists needed to distinguish between
cases of detainee abuse -- invariably carried out in cold blood -- and incidents
that occur on a dangerous and volatile battlefield.

"We are not unsympathetic to the stresses of battlefield situations," he said.
"There’s a saying in the military that it’s better to be judged by 12 (a jury)
than be carried by six (coffin-bearers). We would hesitate to second-guess a
soldier’s reactions under fire. But there’s a limit to how much leniency you can
give troops because of the fog of war. You can’t give the US military a free
pass."

He added: "If they are pissed off because a buddy got killed and they want
revenge, that’s a violation of the rules of war."

Senior officers have argued that insurgents are targeting the civilian
population in order to blame coalition forces, and that troops are trained to
take all reasonable precautions to prevent civilian casualties while defending
themselves against attack.

The problem for the Pentagon is that every new incident involving civilian
deaths triggers a new wave of anti-American fervour.

Last week Jalal Abdul Rahman told this newspaper about the death in January of
his 12- year-old son Abdul. It was a Sunday evening and father and son were
driving home after buying a new game for the boy’s PlayStation.

They were a few hundred yards from their home in the Karkh neighbourhood of
Baghdad when -- according to Rahman -- US forces opened fire on the car, killing
Abdul.

Soldiers approached the car and told Rahman he had failed to stop when ordered
to do so. Rahman said he had never heard an order to stop. The soldiers searched
the car and, as they departed, they threw a black body bag on the ground.

"They said, ‘This is for your son,’ and they left me there with my dead son," he
added.

Rahman claimed he had had nothing to do with the insurgency until that moment.
"But this is America, the so-called guardian of humanity, and killing people for
them is like drinking water. I shall go after them until I avenge the blood of
my son."

[ Additional reporting: Ali Abdul Rahman, Abu Sifa, and Hamoudi Saffar and Ali
Rifat, Baghdad. ]

*


Washington Post --

March 26, 2006

THE WORD AT WAR

Propaganda? Nah, Here's the Scoop,
Say the Guys Who Planted Stories in Iraqi Papers

By Lynne Duke

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032500983.html

Oh, no, not at all -- the Lincoln Group does not do propaganda. Sure, the firm's
been tarred by some in Congress, the media and the defense establishment for
paying Iraqi newspapers to publish hundreds of "news" stories secretly written
by U.S. troops.

But Paige Craig, the West Point dropout and former Marine intelligence
specialist who is the Lincoln Group's president, says the practice is not
propaganda. The word carries such baggage, such suggestions of mind control. So
in an industry in which euphemism thrives, a more elegant word is deployed.

"We call it 'influence,' " says Craig, whose business has 12 U.S. government
contracts totaling more than $130 million.

The Lincoln Group even has a "senior director for insight and influence." His
name is Andrew Garfield. Over lunch near the group's Pennsylvania Avenue
offices, he also tries to steer the lexicon at play around the table and to
clarify what he calls the "tradecraft" of "influence."

Take "psyops," for instance. That's short for "psychological operations." Like
the word "propaganda," it, too, conjures mystery, deception.

But that's not what the Lincoln Group does, says Garfield. The company has been
contracted by a psyops division of the U.S. military, but Garfield insists that
Lincoln's work cannot be considered psyops. That word, Garfield protests, refers
to a military operation. And Garfield is very familiar with military psyops, as
he is a former British military and intelligence official who regularly teaches
a course at the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg -- a course on . . . psyops.

Bombs are blasting in Baghdad. War fills the air there and fills the airwaves
here. But a more quiet war -- the information war -- is waged by stealth, in the
words and images deployed by pundits, partisans, policymakers, propagandists,
psychological operators and influence specialists, both civilian and military.

Call it influence. Or call it propaganda, info-ops, psyops or strat comm (that's
short for "strategic communications"). It's all information, and information can
be a weapon as lethal, at times, as bullets and bombs.

But wait! Not only are we in an information war, we are also in a war over the
info war -- over techniques such as Lincoln's and the extent to which the U.S.
government should or does disseminate propaganda, even pay to publish favorable
"news" stories.

Outrage was so great when word leaked last December of Lincoln Group's Iraq
activities -- one writer described it as bribery -- that the Pentagon launched
an investigation. Army Gen. George W. Casey announced earlier this month that
the probe had found the Lincoln Group's work violated no law or policy. But the
final report, while completed, is under internal review. No additional details
have been released.

Lincoln's work in Iraq continues.

And so we meet the influencers: Craig, 31, one of the brains behind the
business, a California guy who grew up fascinated by foreign cultures and drawn
by geopolitics; Garfield, 45, the former intelligence analyst turned romantic
who married an American physical therapist who helped him through an illness;
and Scott Feldmayer, 29, the former Army brat in Europe turned Army captain in
Iraq turned influence manager at Lincoln.

Over a recent lunch, they agreed to discuss what they do, albeit only in broad
brush. They are stingy with details, they said, because their contracts prohibit
them from revealing too much.

Lincoln Group works in Iraq, Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates and Jordan,
employing about 200 people, says Craig, who attended but did not graduate from
West Point before he joined the Marines. He founded Lincoln along with Christian
Bailey, a British entrepreneur. Bailey was not available for lunch, as he was
off in the world somewhere, influencing.

The P-Word

Words can change what people think. Add some emotional punch and piercing
imagery, and words can change how people behave. Repeat these words and images
over and over, and they can define a culture.

That's the info war -- far more intense than mere "spin" -- and it's been raging
in the United States since the words "war on terror" were uttered in public and
the national zeitgeist became one of fear. With the body politic and the vox
populi deeply polarized before and after the war started, "we look at everything
in terms of propaganda," says Nancy Snow, a former State Department official and
author of "Information War."

Think of all the big-ticket war issues that still are contested: WMD, aluminum
tubes, uranium, the spurious Saddam-9/11 connection, the Iraqis whom U.S.
officials said would greet U.S. troops as liberators, the good news that
allegedly is being ignored by all those journalists who keep writing about the
bombs still exploding, the bodies still falling.

In the most recent burst of concern about disinformation and the war, enter the
Lincoln Group and accusations that its packaging of an American point of view is
just propaganda.

It's that P-word again. So let's parse it. It means "any systematic, widespread
dissemination or promotion of particular ideas, doctrines, practices, etc., to
further one's own cause or to damage an opposing one." That's the basic Webster
definition, which sounds so straightforward.

In the real world, though, the word is "a contested term, ideologically based,"
says Snow, a senior research fellow at the Center on Public Diplomacy at the
University of Southern California and an assistant professor in communications
at the California State University at Fullerton.

It's a slippery word indeed. At the core, it's about manipulation, planting an
idea in your head or a sentiment in your heart on the sly.

"Part of the beauty of real successful propaganda is it works without you
knowing that it works," says Anthony Pratkanis, co-author of "Age of Propaganda"
and a professor of social psychology at the University of California at Santa
Cruz.

The word "propaganda" conjures some pretty ugly stuff, like the old Bolshevik
and Soviet agitprop, the sinister wordsmithery of Nazi Joseph Goebbels, the
"destroy the village to save it" doublespeak of U.S. military leaders during the
Vietnam War.

To be lumped with those folks is, well, understandably upsetting.

"When you use that term about our business, you discredit our business," says
Garfield, the influence director.

For Craig, the Lincoln Group president, "propaganda" conjures "posters from
World War II where every American is thinking that Germans are just stabbing
babies or the Japanese are a bunch of crazy lunatics."

Says Garfield: "One of the things our critics do in the deployment of the term
propaganda is they then seek to stifle any debate."

Now he breaks into a full-bore lecture: "It's as if telling the Iraqi people
about the positive aspects, about the emergence of democracy in their country,
the significant efforts being done by the coalition to protect them, to achieve
the security that everybody acknowledges is necessary for people to embrace a
new government and a new armed forces -- as if all of that is bad. The moment
you label it with the term propaganda, you immediately end any debate. It's
absolutely necessary to counter the negative use of information by our
adversaries."

Sending Signals

So how does the Lincoln Group attempt to capture Iraqi hearts and minds? "We use
whatever mediums one could employ to influence an audience," says Garfield.

They've planted those fake news articles trumpeting pro-U.S. stories. They've
conceived and distributed anti-terror comic strips and leaflets. They ran a
campaign that distributed water bottles bearing a phone number that Iraqis could
call to report terror activity to U.S. authorities. They do research, media
analysis, polling and focus groups. They seek to completely understand a
culture, so they can better influence it.

Speaking hypothetically, the Lincoln officials said entertainment, music, soap
operas, comedy, documentaries, educational programs and advertising also can be
employed to influence.

Would a visitor be able to identify Lincoln Group's work in Iraq?

"You shouldn't stumble across our work," says Garfield. "What I mean is: You
shouldn't know it was our work."

Lincoln's work complements military psyops. In Iraq and Afghanistan, psyops
teams have air-dropped leaflets telling people not to resist U.S. troops.
They've hollered through loudspeakers urging the enemy to surrender. They have
transmitted radio broadcasts from an airplane called Commando Solo and
distributed radios on which such broadcasts can be heard.

Military commanders have at times used false information to fool the enemy, such
as the October 2004 announcement that the battle of Fallujah had started when,
in fact, it did not begin until three weeks later. Information has been used to
buoy the spirits of the American public, such as the initial heroic fiction
offered on the capture and rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch.

The Lynch story was among the stories cited in a 2003 analysis titled "Truth
From These Podia," by Sam Gardiner, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and former
instructor at the National War College. Gardiner studied the Iraq-war-related
statements of U.S. and British officials and found "over 50 stories manufactured
or at least engineered that distorted the picture" for American and British
newspaper readers.

These media-related tactics aren't limited to wartime. Remember those columnists
paid to write in support of Bush administration education and marriage
initiatives? And the dissemination of fake TV news stories to promote the
administration's prescription drug plan? "The Daily Show" dubbed these
techniques "infoganda."

But none of this is new -- especially not in war. The effort to sway, influence,
deceive and propagandize is as old as combat.Back in the 4th century B.C.,
Alexander the Great ordered his troops to craft huge breastplates of armor that
they left behind to trick the enemy into thinking Alexander had giants in his
army.

During World War I, the U.S. government's Office of Public Information
dispatched thousands of "four-minute men" in cities and towns across the country
to make boisterous and emotional pro-war appeals.

During World War II, there was the Orwellian-sounding Office of Facts and
Figures, later renamed the Office of War Information. It touted war bonds and
rationing. It immortalized "Rosie the Riveter" to propel women to leave their
homes and go to work. It leaned on Hollywood to make patriotic films. It warned
Americans to watch their tongues. A famous wartime poster said: "Loose Lips
Might Sink Ships" -- now a timeworn and abbreviated cliche.
Rumsfeld's 'Roadmap'

But Americans just don't understand. The culture hasn't come to grips with
information as a part of warfare. That's Garfield, lecturing again.

"I think we've got to back up a little bit and look at warfare," he says,
telling how the conventional notion of war has changed, with insurgencies and
asymmetric conflict growing more prevalent, meaning that bullets and bombs alone
won't win. Information -- its strategic use -- can tip the scales. And yet this
fact does not yet resonate in American culture.

"People are more comfortable with killing than they are with influencing," he
says. "The majority can be convinced that the use of military force is
acceptable, but everybody becomes very uncomfortable when you talk about the use
of information," like "promoting your cause, promoting your ideals" and
"discrediting the tactics and the arguments and the strategy of the enemy."

Not surprisingly, considering who the Lincoln Group's big client is, Garfield
sounds very much in sync with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

Rumsfeld's got an "Information Operations Roadmap," which he approved in 2003
and which was declassified earlier this year. It's supposed to "advance the goal
of information operations as a core military competency."

The Roadmap follows an earlier information effort, the Pentagon's Office of
Strategic Influence, which was dismantled in 2002 after news reports, since
denied, that the Pentagon intended to plant false news items in the foreign
press. A version of that effort was then outsourced to the Lincoln Group, though
Craig and Garfield say they traffic only in truth.

In an op-ed piece last month in the Los Angeles Times, Rumsfeld bemoaned the
uproar over the Lincoln Group and described its work as a "non-traditional means
to provide accurate information to the Iraqi people in the face of an aggressive
campaign of disinformation. Yet this has been portrayed as inappropriate: for
example, the allegations of 'buying news.' "

In a way, this is the price to be paid for not going covert all the way. Had the
program been conducted completely undercover, it would have been better, says
Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer and now a resident fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute.

"You can compliment the Pentagon for at least trying," he says of the military's
outsourcing to Lincoln. "I think the agency [CIA] should have been engaged in
this a long time ago."

"I suppose the historical parallel would be the agency's efforts during the Cold
War to fund magazines, newspapers and journalists who believed that the West
should triumph over communism," he says. "Much of what you do ought to be
covert, and, certainly, if you contract it out, it isn't."
The Truth of the Matter


Craig and Garfield make much of their assertion that they traffic in the truth.
It's as if they think truth and propaganda are mutually exclusive. But consider
this:

"For a long time, propagandists have recognized that lying must be avoided,"
wrote Jacques Ellul in his classic 1965 work, "Propaganda: The Formation of
Men's Attitudes." For the masses to believe it, "propaganda must be based on
some truth that can be said in a few words and is able to linger in the
collective consciousness."

But truth can be elastic, even inconvenient. For instance, Garfield says Lincoln
really had no choice but to hide the authorship of those upbeat "news" stories.

Had they been identified as products of the U.S. government, someone could have
gotten killed. And just how receptive would Iraqi readers have been to a U.S.
government product anyway?

"You wouldn't look at them objectively," says Garfield, projecting what an Iraqi
reader might think. "You wouldn't give them a fair hearing."

He says: "How do you get a fair hearing when (a) the audience is preconditioned
to respond negatively to anything you say, and (b) just as importantly, there's
a whole bunch of people out there who will do whatever they can to prevent that
fair hearing? If you just stand up and say, 'I stand for truth and freedom and
you should listen to me because of it,' forget it. You're dead. Do you not
engage in an argument with those people because it doesn't say, 'Paid for by the
United States'?"

So, yes, there was that deception.

"But the aim is not deceit," he says.

It's just a means to an end in wartime.

© 2006 The Washington Post Company

*


March 19, 2006

TASK FORCE 6-26:
BEFORE AND AFTER ABU GHRAIB, A U.S. UNIT ABUSED DETAINEES

By Eric Schmitt and Carolyn Marshall

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html

By ERIC SCHMITT and CAROLYN MARSHALL

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations
forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein's former military bases near Baghdad
into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the
former Iraqi government's torture chambers into their own interrogation cell.
They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with
rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used
detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was
to extract information to help hunt down Iraq's most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit
or were briefed on its operations.

The Black Room was part of a temporary detention site at Camp Nama, the secret
headquarters of a shadowy military unit known as Task Force 6-26. Located at
Baghdad International Airport, the camp was the first stop for many insurgents
on their way to the Abu Ghraib prison a few miles away.

Placards posted by soldiers at the detention area advised, "NO BLOOD, NO FOUL."
The slogan, as one Defense Department official explained, reflected an adage
adopted by Task Force 6-26: "If you don't make them bleed, they can't prosecute
for it." According to Pentagon specialists who worked with the unit, prisoners
at Camp Nama often disappeared into a detention black hole, barred from access
to lawyers or relatives, and confined for weeks without charges. "The reality
is, there were no rules there," another Pentagon official said.

The story of detainee abuse in Iraq is a familiar one. But the following account
of Task Force 6-26, based on documents and interviews with more than a dozen
people, offers the first detailed description of how the military's most highly
trained counterterrorism unit committed serious abuses.

It adds to the picture of harsh interrogation practices at American military
prisons in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as well as at secret Central
Intelligence Agency detention centers around the world.

The new account reveals the extent to which the unit members mistreated
prisoners months before and after the photographs of abuse from Abu Ghraib were
made public in April 2004, and it helps belie the original Pentagon assertions
that abuse was confined to a small number of rogue reservists at Abu Ghraib.

The abuses at Camp Nama continued despite warnings beginning in August 2003 from
an Army investigator and American intelligence and law enforcement officials in
Iraq. The C.I.A. was concerned enough to bar its personnel from Camp Nama that
August.

It is difficult to compare the conditions at the camp with those at Abu Ghraib
because so little is known about the secret compound, which was off limits even
to the Red Cross. The abuses appeared to have been unsanctioned, but some of
them seemed to have been well known throughout the camp.

For an elite unit with roughly 1,000 people at any given time, Task Force 6-26
seems to have had a large number of troops punished for detainee abuse. Since
2003, 34 task force members have been disciplined in some form for mistreating
prisoners, and at least 11 members have been removed from the unit, according to
new figures the Special Operations Command provided in response to questions
from The New York Times. Five Army Rangers in the unit were convicted three
months ago for kicking and punching three detainees in September 2005.

Some of the serious accusations against Task Force 6-26 have been reported over
the past 16 months by news organizations including NBC, The Washington Post and
The Times. Many details emerged in hundreds of pages of documents released under
a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union. But
taken together for the first time, the declassified documents and interviews
with more than a dozen military and civilian Defense Department and other
federal personnel provide the most detailed portrait yet of the secret camp and
the inner workings of the clandestine unit.

The documents and interviews also reflect a culture clash between the free-
wheeling military commandos and the more cautious Pentagon civilians working
with them that escalated to a tense confrontation. At one point, one of Defense
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's top aides, Stephen A. Cambone, ordered a
subordinate to "get to the bottom" of any misconduct.

Most of the people interviewed for this article were midlevel civilian and
military Defense Department personnel who worked with Task Force 6-26 and said
they witnessed abuses, or who were briefed on its operations over the past three
years.

Many were initially reluctant to discuss Task Force 6-26 because its missions
are classified. But when pressed repeatedly by reporters who contacted them,
they agreed to speak about their experiences and observations out of what they
said was anger and disgust over the unit's treatment of detainees and the
failure of task force commanders to punish misconduct more aggressively. The
critics said the harsh interrogations yielded little information to help capture
insurgents or save American lives.

Virtually all of those who agreed to speak are career government employees, many
with previous military service, and they were granted anonymity to encourage
them to speak candidly without fear of retribution from the Pentagon. Many of
their complaints are supported by declassified military documents and e-mail
messages from F.B.I. agents who worked regularly with the task force in Iraq.

A Demand for Intelligence

Military officials say there may have been extenuating circumstances for some of
the harsh treatment at Camp Nama and its field stations in other parts of Iraq.
By the spring of 2004, the demand on interrogators for intelligence was growing
to help combat the increasingly numerous and deadly insurgent attacks.

Some detainees may have been injured resisting capture. A spokesman for the
Special Operations Command, Kenneth S. McGraw, said there was sufficient
evidence to prove misconduct in only 5 of 29 abuse allegations against task
force members since 2003. As a result of those five incidents, 34 people were
disciplined.

"We take all those allegations seriously," Gen. Bryan D. Brown, the commander of
the Special Operations Command, said in a brief hallway exchange on Capitol Hill
on March 8. "Any kind of abuse is not consistent with the values of the Special
Operations Command."

The secrecy surrounding the highly classified unit has helped to shield its
conduct from public scrutiny. The Pentagon will not disclose the unit's precise
size, the names of its commanders, its operating bases or specific missions.
Even the task force's name changes regularly to confuse adversaries, and the
courts-martial and other disciplinary proceedings have not identified the
soldiers in public announcements as task force members.

General Brown's command declined requests for interviews with several former
task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint
Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies
the unit's most elite troops.

One Special Operations officer and a senior enlisted soldier identified by
Defense Department personnel as former task force members at Camp Nama declined
to comment when contacted by telephone. Attempts to contact three other Special
Operations soldiers who were in the unit -- by phone, through relatives and
former neighbors -- were also unsuccessful.

Cases of detainee abuse attributed to Task Force 6-26 demonstrate both confusion
over and, in some cases, disregard for approved interrogation practices and
standards for detainee treatment, according to Defense Department specialists
who have worked with the unit.

In early 2004, an 18-year-old man suspected of selling cars to members of the
Zarqawi terrorist network was seized with his entire family at their home in
Baghdad. Task force soldiers beat him repeatedly with a rifle butt and punched
him in the head and kidneys, said a Defense Department specialist briefed on the
incident.

Some complaints were ignored or played down in a unit where a conspiracy of
silence contributed to the overall secretiveness. "It's under control," one unit
commander told a Defense Department official who complained about mistreatment
at Camp Nama in the spring of 2004.

For hundreds of suspected insurgents, Camp Nama was a way station on a journey
that started with their capture on the battlefield or in their homes, and ended
often in a cell at Abu Ghraib. Hidden in plain sight just off a dusty road
fronting Baghdad International Airport, Camp Nama was an unmarked, virtually
unknown compound at the edge of the taxiways.

The heart of the camp was the Battlefield Interrogation Facility, alternately
known as the Temporary Detention Facility and the Temporary Holding Facility.
The interrogation and detention areas occupied a corner of the larger compound,
separated by a fence topped with razor wire.

Unmarked helicopters flew detainees into the camp almost daily, former task
force members said. Dressed in blue jumpsuits with taped goggles covering their
eyes, the shackled prisoners were led into a screening room where they were
registered and examined by medics.

Just beyond the screening rooms, where Saddam Hussein was given a medical exam
after his capture, detainees were kept in as many as 85 cells spread over two
buildings. Some detainees were kept in what was known as Motel 6, a group of
crudely built plywood shacks that reeked of urine and excrement. The shacks were
cramped, forcing many prisoners to squat or crouch. Other detainees were housed
inside a separate building in 6-by-8-foot cubicles in a cellblock called Hotel
California.

The interrogation rooms were stark. High-value detainees were questioned in the
Black Room, nearly bare but for several 18-inch hooks that jutted from the
ceiling, a grisly reminder of the terrors inflicted by Mr. Hussein's
inquisitors. Jailers often blared rap music or rock 'n' roll at deafening
decibels over a loudspeaker to unnerve their subjects.

Another smaller room offered basic comforts like carpets and cushioned seating
to put more cooperative prisoners at ease, said several Defense Department
specialists who worked at Camp Nama. Detainees wore heavy, olive-drab hoods
outside their cells. By June 2004, the revelations of abuse at Abu Ghraib
galvanized the military to promise better treatment for prisoners. In one small
concession at Camp Nama, soldiers exchanged the hoods for cloth blindfolds with
drop veils that allowed detainees to breathe more freely but prevented them from
peeking out.

Some former task force members said the Nama in the camp's name stood for a
coarse phrase that soldiers used to describe the compound. One Defense
Department specialist recalled seeing pink blotches on detainees' clothing as
well as red welts on their bodies, marks he learned later were inflicted by
soldiers who used detainees as targets and called themselves the High Five
Paintball Club.

Mr. McGraw, the military spokesman, said he had not heard of the Black Room or
the paintball club and had not seen any mention of them in the documents he had
reviewed.

In a nearby operations center, task force analysts pored over intelligence
collected from spies, detainees and remotely piloted Predator surveillance
aircraft, to piece together clues to aid soldiers on their raids. Twice daily at
noon and midnight military interrogators and their supervisors met with
officials from the C.I.A., F.B.I. and allied military units to review operations
and new intelligence.

Task Force 6-26 was a creation of the Pentagon's post-Sept. 11 campaign against
terrorism, and it quickly became the model for how the military would gain
intelligence and battle insurgents in the future. Originally known as Task Force
121, it was formed in the summer of 2003, when the military merged two existing
Special Operations units, one hunting Osama bin Laden in and around Afghanistan,
and the other tracking Mr. Hussein in Iraq. (Its current name is Task Force
145.)

The task force was a melting pot of military and civilian units. It drew on
elite troops from the Joint Special Operations Command, whose elements include
the Army unit Delta Force, Navy's Seal Team 6 and the 75th Ranger Regiment.
Military reservists and Defense Intelligence Agency personnel with special
skills, like interrogators, were temporarily assigned to the unit. C.I.A.
officers, F.B.I. agents and special operations forces from other countries also
worked closely with the task force.

Many of the American Special Operations soldiers wore civilian clothes and were
allowed to grow beards and long hair, setting them apart from their uniformed
colleagues. Unlike conventional soldiers and marines whose Iraq tours lasted 7
to 12 months, unit members and their commanders typically rotated every 90 days.

Task Force 6-26 had a singular focus: capture or kill Mr. Zarqawi, the Jordanian
militant operating in Iraq. "Anytime there was even the smell of Zarqawi nearby,
they would go out and use any means possible to get information from a
detainee," one official said.

Defense Department personnel briefed on the unit's operations said the harsh
treatment extended beyond Camp Nama to small field outposts in Baghdad, Falluja,
Balad, Ramadi and Kirkuk. These stations were often nestled within the alleys of
a city in nondescript buildings with suburban-size yards where helicopters could
land to drop off or pick up detainees.

At the outposts, some detainees were stripped naked and had cold water thrown on
them to cause the sensation of drowning, said Defense Department personnel who
served with the unit.

In January 2004, the task force captured the son of one of Mr. Hussein's
bodyguards in Tikrit. The man told Army investigators that he was forced to
strip and that he was punched in the spine until he fainted, put in front of an
air-conditioner while cold water was poured on him and kicked in the stomach
until he vomited. Army investigators were forced to close their inquiry in June
2005 after they said task force members used battlefield pseudonyms that made it
impossible to identify and locate the soldiers involved. The unit also asserted
that 70 percent of its computer files had been lost.

Despite the task force's access to a wide range of intelligence, its raids were
often dry holes, yielding little if any intelligence and alienating ordinary
Iraqis, Defense Department personnel said. Prisoners deemed no threat to
American troops were often driven deep into the Iraqi desert at night and
released, sometimes given $100 or more in American money for their trouble.

Back at Camp Nama, the task force leaders established a ritual for departing
personnel who did a good job, Pentagon officials said. The commanders presented
them with two unusual mementos: a detainee hood and a souvenir piece of tile
from the medical screening room that once held Mr. Hussein.

Early Signs of Trouble

Accusations of abuse by Task Force 6-26 came as no surprise to many other
officials in Iraq. By early 2004, both the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. had expressed
alarm about the military's harsh interrogation techniques.

The C.I.A.'s Baghdad station sent a cable to headquarters on Aug. 3, 2003,
raising concern that Special Operations troops who served with agency officers
had used techniques that had become too aggressive. Five days later, the C.I.A.
issued a classified directive that prohibited its officers from participating in
harsh interrogations. Separately, the C.I.A. barred its officers from working at
Camp Nama but allowed them to keep providing target information and other
intelligence to the task force.

The warnings still echoed nearly a year later. On June 25, 2004, nearly two
months after the disclosure of the abuses at Abu Ghraib, an F.B.I. agent in Iraq
sent an e-mail message to his superiors in Washington, warning that a detainee
captured by Task Force 6-26 had suspicious burn marks on his body. The detainee
said he had been tortured. A month earlier, another F.B.I. agent asked top
bureau officials for guidance on how to deal with military interrogators across
Iraq who used techniques like loud music and yelling that exceeded "the bounds
of standard F.B.I. practice."

American generals were also alerted to the problem. In December 2003, Col.
Stuart A. Herrington, a retired Army intelligence officer, warned in a
confidential memo that medical personnel reported that prisoners seized by the
unit, then known as Task Force 121, had injuries consistent with beatings. "It
seems clear that TF 121 needs to be reined in with respect to its treatment of
detainees," Colonel Herrington concluded.

By May 2004, just as the scandal at Abu Ghraib was breaking, tensions increased
at Camp Nama between the Special Operations troops and civilian interrogators
and case officers from the D.I.A.'s Defense Human Intelligence Service, who were
there to support the unit in its fight against the Zarqawi network. The discord,
according to documents, centered on the harsh treatment of detainees as well as
restrictions the Special Operations troops placed on their civilian colleagues,
like monitoring their e-mail messages and phone calls.

Maj. Gen. George E. Ennis, who until recently commanded the D.I.A.'s human
intelligence division, declined to be interviewed for this article. But in
written responses to questions, General Ennis said he never heard about the
numerous complaints made by D.I.A. personnel until he and his boss, Vice Adm.
Lowell E. Jacoby, then the agency's director, were briefed on June 24, 2004.

The next day, Admiral Jacoby wrote a two-page memo to Mr. Cambone, under
secretary of defense for intelligence. In it, he described a series of
complaints, including a May 2004 incident in which a D.I.A. interrogator said he
witnessed task force soldiers punch a detainee hard enough to require medical
help. The D.I.A. officer took photos of the injuries, but a supervisor
confiscated them, the memo said.

The tensions laid bare a clash of military cultures. Combat-hardened commandos
seeking a steady flow of intelligence to pinpoint insurgents grew exasperated
with civilian interrogators sent from Washington, many of whom were novices at
interrogating hostile prisoners fresh off the battlefield.

"These guys wanted results, and our debriefers were used to a civil
environment," said one Defense Department official who was briefed on the task
force operations.

Within days after Admiral Jacoby sent his memo, the D.I.A. took the
extraordinary step of temporarily withdrawing its personnel from Camp Nama.

Admiral Jacoby's memo also provoked an angry reaction from Mr. Cambone. "Get to
the bottom of this immediately. This is not acceptable," Mr. Cambone said in a
handwritten note on June 26, 2004, to his top deputy, Lt. Gen. William G.
Boykin. "In particular, I want to know if this is part of a pattern of behavior
by TF 6-26."

General Boykin said through a spokesman on March 17 that at the time he told Mr.
Cambone he had found no pattern of misconduct with the task force.

A Shroud of Secrecy

Military and legal experts say the full breadth of abuses committed by Task
Force 6-26 may never be known because of the secrecy surrounding the unit, and
the likelihood that some allegations went unreported.

In the summer of 2004, Camp Nama closed and the unit moved to a new headquarters
in Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad. The unit's operations are now shrouded in
even tighter secrecy.

Soon after their rank-and-file clashed in 2004, D.I.A. officials in Washington
and military commanders at Fort Bragg agreed to improve how the task force
integrated specialists into its ranks. The D.I.A. is now sending small teams of
interrogators, debriefers and case officers, called "deployable Humint teams,"
to work with Special Operations forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Senior military commanders insist that the elite warriors, who will be relied on
more than ever in the campaign against terrorism, are now treating detainees
more humanely and can police themselves. The C.I.A. has resumed conducting
debriefings with the task force, but does not permit harsh questioning, a C.I.A.
official said.

General McChrystal, the leader of the Joint Special Operations Command, received
his third star in a promotion ceremony at Fort Bragg on March 13.

On Dec. 8, 2004, the Pentagon's spokesman, Lawrence Di Rita, said that four
Special Operations soldiers from the task force were punished for "excessive use
of force" and administering electric shocks to detainees with stun guns. Two of
the soldiers were removed from the unit. To that point, Mr. Di Rita said, 10
task force members had been disciplined. Since then, according to the new
figures provided to The Times, the number of those disciplined for detainee
abuse has more than tripled. Nine of the 34 troops disciplined received written
or oral counseling. Others were reprimanded for slapping detainees and other
offenses.

The five Army Rangers who were court-martialed in December received punishments
including jail time of 30 days to six months and reduction in rank. Two of them
will receive bad-conduct discharges upon completion of their sentences.

Human rights advocates and leading members of Congress say the Pentagon must
still do more to hold senior-level commanders and civilian officials accountable
for the misconduct.

The Justice Department inspector general is investigating complaints of detainee
abuse by Task Force 6-26, a senior law enforcement official said. The only wide-
ranging military inquiry into prisoner abuse by Special Operations forces was
completed nearly a year ago by Brig. Gen. Richard P. Formica, and was sent to
Congress.

But the United States Central Command has refused repeated requests from The
Times over the past several months to provide an unclassified copy of General
Formica's findings despite Mr. Rumsfeld's instructions that such a version of
all 12 major reports into detainee abuse be made public.

*


TIME --

March 19, 2006

COLLATERAL DAMAGE OR CIVILIAN MASSACRE IN HADITHA?

Last November, U.S. Marines killed 15 Iraqi civilians in their homes. Was it
self-defense, an accident or cold-blooded revenge? A Time exclusive

By Tim McGirk

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1174649,00.html

BAGHDAD -- The incident seemed like so many others from this war, the kind of
tragedy that has become numbingly routine amid the daily reports of violence in
Iraq. On the morning of Nov. 19, 2005, a roadside bomb struck a humvee carrying
Marines from Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, on a road near Haditha, a
restive town in western Iraq. The bomb killed Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.)
Terrazas, 20, from El Paso, Texas. The next day a Marine communique from Camp
Blue Diamond in Ramadi reported that Terrazas and 15 Iraqi civilians were killed
by the blast and that "gunmen attacked the convoy with small-arms fire,"
prompting the Marines to return fire, killing eight insurgents and wounding one
other. The Marines from Kilo Company held a memorial service for Terrazas at
their camp in Haditha. They wrote messages like "T.J., you were a great friend.
I'm going to miss seeing you around" on smooth stones and piled them in a
funeral mound. And the war moved on.

But the details of what happened that morning in Haditha are more disturbing,
disputed and horrific than the military initially reported. According to
eyewitnesses and local officials interviewed over the past 10 weeks, the
civilians who died in Haditha on Nov. 19 were killed not by a roadside bomb but
by the Marines themselves, who went on a rampage in the village after the
attack, killing 15 unarmed Iraqis in their homes, including seven women and
three children. Human-rights activists say that if the accusations are true, the
incident ranks as the worst case of deliberate killing of Iraqi civilians by
U.S. service members since the war began.

In January, after Time presented military officials in Baghdad with the Iraqis'
accounts of the Marines' actions, the U.S. opened its own investigation,
interviewing 28 people, including the Marines, the families of the victims and
local doctors. According to military officials, the inquiry acknowledged that,
contrary to the military's initial report, the 15 civilians killed on Nov. 19
died at the hands of the Marines, not the insurgents. The military announced
last week that the matter has been handed over to the Naval Criminal
Investigative Service (ncis), which will conduct a criminal investigation to
determine whether the troops broke the laws of war by deliberately targeting
civilians. Lieut. Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing, spokeswoman for the Multi-
National Force-Iraq, told Time the involvement of the ncis does not mean that a
crime occurred. And she says the fault for the civilian deaths lies squarely
with the insurgents, who "placed noncombatants in the line of fire as the
Marines responded to defend themselves."

Because the incident is officially under investigation, members of the Marine
unit that was in Haditha on Nov. 19 are not allowed to speak with reporters. But
the military's own reconstruction of events and the accounts of town residents
interviewed by Time -- including six whose family members were killed that day
-- paint a picture of a devastatingly violent response by a group of U.S. troops
who had lost one of their own to a deadly insurgent attack and believed they
were under fire. Time obtained a videotape that purports to show the aftermath
of the Marines' assault and provides graphic documentation of its human toll.
What happened in Haditha is a reminder of the horrors faced by civilians caught
in the middle of war -- and what war can do to the people who fight it.

Here's what all participants agree on: at around 7:15 a.m. on Nov. 19, a U.S.
humvee was struck by a powerful improvised explosive device (ied) attached to a
large propane canister, triggered by remote control. The bomb killed Terrazas,
who was driving, and injured two other Marines. For U.S. troops, Haditha, set
among date-palm groves along the Euphrates River, was inhospitable territory;
every day the Marines found scores of bombs buried in the dirt roads near their
base. Eman Waleed, 9, lived in a house 150 yards from the site of the blast,
which was strong enough to shatter all the windows in her home. "We heard a big
noise that woke us all up," she recalls two months later. "Then we did what we
always do when there's an explosion: my father goes into his room with the Koran
and prays that the family will be spared any harm." Eman says the rest of the
family -- her mother, grandfather, grandmother, two brothers, two aunts and two
uncles -- gathered in the living room. According to military officials familiar
with the investigation, the Marines say they came under fire from the direction
of the Waleed house immediately after being hit by the ied. A group of Marines
headed toward the house. Eman says she "heard a lot of shooting, so none of us
went outside. Besides, it was very early, and we were all wearing our
nightclothes." When the Marines entered the house, they were shouting in
English. "First, they went into my father's room, where he was reading the
Koran," she claims, "and we heard shots." According to Eman, the Marines then
entered the living room. "I couldn't see their faces very well -- only their
guns sticking into the doorway. I watched them shoot my grandfather, first in
the chest and then in the head. Then they killed my granny." She claims the
troops started firing toward the corner of the room where she and her younger
brother Abdul Rahman, 8, were hiding; the other adults shielded the children
from the bullets but died in the process. Eman says her leg was hit by a piece
of metal and Abdul Rahman was shot near his shoulder. "We were lying there,
bleeding, and it hurt so much. Afterward, some Iraqi soldiers came. They carried
us in their arms. I was crying, shouting 'Why did you do this to our family?'
And one Iraqi soldier tells me, 'We didn't do it. The Americans did.'" Time was
unable to speak with the only other survivor of the raid, Eman's younger
brother, who relatives say is traumatized by the experience. U.S. military
officials familiar with the investigation say that after entering the house, the
Marines walked into a corridor with closed doors on either side. They thought
they heard the clack-clack sound of an AK-47 being racked and readied for fire.
(Eman and relatives who were not in the house insist that no guns were there.)
Believing they were about to be ambushed, the Marines broke down the two doors
simultaneously and fired their weapons. The officials say the military has
confirmed that seven people were killed inside the house--including two women
and a child. The Marines also reported seeing a man and a woman run out of the
house; they gave chase and shot and killed the man. Relatives say the woman,
Hiba Abdullah, escaped with her baby.

According to military officials, the Marines say they then started taking fire
from the direction of a second house, prompting them to break down the door of
that house and throw in a grenade, blowing up a propane tank in the kitchen. The
Marines then began firing, killing eight residents -- including the owner, his
wife, the owner's sister, a 2-year-old son and three young daughters.

The Marines raided a third house, which belongs to a man named Ahmed Ayed. One
of Ahmed's five sons, Yousif, who lived in a house next door, told Time that
after hearing a prolonged burst of gunfire from his father's house, he rushed
over. Iraqi soldiers keeping watch in the garden prevented him from going in.
"They told me, 'There's nothing you can do. Don't come closer, or the Americans
will kill you too.' The Americans didn't let anybody into the house until 6:30
the next morning." Ayed says that by then the bodies were gone; all the dead had
been zipped into U.S. body bags and taken by Marines to a local hospital morgue.
"But we could tell from the blood tracks across the floor what happened," Ayed
claims. "The Americans gathered my four brothers and took them inside my
father's bedroom, to a closet. They killed them inside the closet."

The military has a different account of what transpired. According to officials
familiar with the investigation, the Marines broke into the third house and
found a group of 10 to 15 women and children. The troops say they left one
Marine to guard that house and pushed on to the house next door, where they
found four men, one of whom was wielding an AK-47. A second seemed to be
reaching into a wardrobe for another weapon, the officials say. The Marines shot
both men dead; the military's initial report does not specify how the other two
men died. The Marines deny that any of the men were killed in the closet, which
they say is too small to fit one adult male, much less four. According to the
military officials, the series of raids took five hours and left at least 23
people dead. In all, two AK-47s were discovered. The military has classified the
15 victims in the first two houses as noncombatants. It considers the four men
killed in the fourth house, as well as four youths killed by the Marines near
the site of the roadside bombing, as enemy fighters. The question facing naval
detectives is whether the Marines' killing of 15 noncombatants was an act of
legitimate self-defense or negligent homicide. Military sources say that if the
ncis finds evidence of wrongdoing, U.S. commanders in Iraq will decide whether
to pursue legal action against the Marines.

The available evidence does not provide conclusive proof that the Marines
deliberately killed innocents in Haditha. But the accounts of human-rights
groups that investigated the incident and survivors and local officials who
spoke to Time do raise questions about whether the extent of force used by the
Marines was justified -- and whether the Marines were initially candid about
what took place. Dr. Wahid, director of the local hospital in Haditha, who asked
that his family name be withheld because, he says, he fears reprisals by U.S.
troops, says the Marines brought 24 bodies to his hospital around midnight on
Nov. 19. Wahid says the Marines claimed the victims had been killed by shrapnel
from the roadside bomb. "But it was obvious to us that there were no organs
slashed by shrapnel," Wahid says. "The bullet wounds were very apparent. Most of
the victims were shot in the chest and the head -- from close range."

A day after the incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at
the local morgue and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was
obtained by the Hammurabi Human Rights Group, and has been shared with TIME. The
tape makes for grisly viewing. It shows that many of the victims, especially the
women and children, were still in their nightclothes when they died. The scenes
from inside the houses show that the walls and ceilings are pockmarked with
shrapnel and bullet holes as well as the telltale spray of blood. But the video
does not reveal the presence of any bullet holes on the outside of the houses,
which may cast doubt on the Marines' contention that after the ied exploded, the
Marines and the insurgents engaged in a fierce gunfight.

There are also questions about why the military took so long to investigate the
details of the Haditha incident. Soon after the killings, the mayor of Haditha,
Emad Jawad Hamza, led an angry delegation of elders up to the Marine camp beside
a dam on the Euphrates River. Hamza says, "The captain admitted that his men had
made a mistake. He said that his men thought there were terrorists near the
houses, and he didn't give any other reason."

But the military stood by its initial contention -- that the Iraqis had been
killed by an insurgent bomb -- until January when Time gave a copy of the video
and witnesses' testimony to Colonel Barry Johnson, a U.S. military spokesman in
Baghdad. After reviewing the evidence, Johnson passed it on to the military
command, suggesting that the events of Haditha be given "a full and formal
investigation." In February an infantry colonel went to Haditha for a weeklong
probe in which he interviewed Marines, survivors and doctors at the morgue,
according to military officials close to the investigation. The probe concluded
that the civilians were in fact killed by Marines and not by an insurgent's bomb
and that no insurgents appeared to be in the first two houses raided by the
Marines. The probe found, however, that the deaths were the result of
"collateral damage" rather than malicious intent by the Marines, investigators
say.

The U.S. has paid relatives of the victims $2,500 for each of the 15 dead
civilians, plus smaller payments for the injured. But nothing can bring back all
that was taken from 9-year-old Eman Waleed on that fateful day last November.
She still does not comprehend how, when her father went in to pray with the
Koran for the family's safety, his prayers were not answered, as they had been
so many times in the past. "He always prayed before, and the Americans left us
alone," she says. Leaving, she grabs a handful of candy. "It's for my little
brother," she says. "I have to take care of my brother. Nobody else is left."

[ With reporting by Aparisim Ghosh/Baghdad ]

[ In the original version of this story, TIME reported that "a day after the
incident, a Haditha journalism student videotaped the scene at the local morgue
and at the homes where the killings had occurred. The video was obtained by the
Hammurabi Human Rights Group, which cooperates with the internationally
respected Human Rights Watch, and has been shared with TIME." In fact, Human
Rights Watch has no ties or association with the Hammurabi Human Rights Group.
TIME regrets the error. ]

*


New York Times --

March 6, 2006

VOICES BAFFLED, BRASH AND IRATE IN GUANTANAMO

By Tim Golden

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/international/americas/06gitmo.html

Among the hundreds of men imprisoned by the American military at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, there are those who brashly assert their determination to wage war against
what they see as the infidel empire led by the United States.

"May God help me fight the unfaithful ones," one Saudi detainee, Ghassan
Abdallah Ghazi al-Shirbi, said at a military hearing where he was accused of
being a lieutenant of Al Qaeda.

But there are many more, it seems, who sound like Abdur Sayed Rahman, a self-
described Pakistani villager who says he was arrested at his modest home in
January 2002, flown off to Afghanistan and later accused of being the deputy
foreign minister of that country's deposed Taliban regime.

"I am only a chicken farmer in Pakistan," he protested to American military
officers at Guantanamo. "My name is Abdur Sayed Rahman. Abdur Zahid Rahman was
the deputy foreign minister of the Taliban."

Mr. Rahman's pleadings are among more than 5,000 pages of documents released by
the Defense Department on Friday night in response to a lawsuit brought under
the Freedom of Information Act by The Associated Press.

After more than four years in which the Pentagon refused to make public even the
names of those held at Guantanamo, the documents provide the most detailed
information to date about who the detainees say they are and the evidence
against them.

According to their own accounts, the prisoners range from poor Afghan farmers
and low-level Arab holy warriors to a Sudanese drug dealer, the son of a former
Saudi Army general and a British resident with an Iraqi passport who was
arrested in Gambia.

One 26-year-old Saudi, Muhammed al-Utaybi, said he was studying art when he
decided to travel to Pakistan to train with the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
He was not much of a militant himself, he suggested, saying the training "was
just like summer vacation."

The documents -- hearing transcripts and evidentiary statements from the two
types of military panels that evaluate whether the detainees should remain at
Guantanamo -- are far from a complete portrait of those in custody there.

They do not include the classified evidence that is generally part of the review
panels' deliberations, nor their final verdicts on whether or not to recommend
the detainees' release. Of the about 760 men who have been held at Guantanamo,
the documents cover fewer than half.

But a reading of the voluminous files adds texture to the accusations that the
men face and the way they have tried to respond to them. It also underscores the
considerable difficulties that both the military and the detainees appear to
have had in wrestling with the often thin or conflicting evidence involved.

At one review hearing last year, an Afghan referred to by the single name
Muhibullah denied accusations that he was either the former Taliban governor of
Shibarghan Province or had worked for the governor. The solution to his case
should have been simple, Mr. Muhibullah suggested to the three American officers
reviewing his case: They should contact the Shibarghan governor and ask him.

But the presiding Marine Corps colonel said it was really up to the detainee to
try to contact the governor. Assuming that the annual review board denied his
petition for freedom, noted the officer, whose name was censored from the
document, Mr. Muhibullah would have a year to do so.

"How do I find the governor of Shibarghan or anybody?" the detainee asked.

"Write to them," the presiding officer responded. "We know that it is difficult
but you need to do your best."

"I appreciate your suggestion, but it is not that easy," Mr. Muhibullah said.

Bush administration officials and military leaders have often justified the
extraordinary conditions under which detainees are held at Guantanamo by
insisting that the detainees are hardened terrorists. Secretary of Defense
Donald H. Rumsfeld famously described the Guantanamo detainees as "the worst of
the worst."

And while many administration officials have privately backed away from such
claims, they argue that most of the 490 detainees still being held would pose a
significant threat to the United States if released. Pentagon spokesmen have
generally dismissed the detainees' protestations of innocence as the predictable
lies of well-trained militants.

Accusations and Replies

The hearing transcripts are from review panels known as Combatant Status Review
Tribunals, where three military officers weigh whether a detainee is properly
classified as an "enemy combatant." Few of them have made the process as easy as
Ghassan Abdallah Ghazi al-Shirbi.

"Honestly," he said, "I did not come here to defend myself, but defend the
Islamic nation; this is my duty, and I have to do it."

Among the accusations against Mr. Shirbi recounted in the hearing transcript
were that he trained with Al Qaeda, was "observed chatting and laughing like
pals with Osama bin Laden," and was known as the "right-hand man" to Abu
Zubaydah, a top Qaeda operative. Mr. Shirbi said he was willing to accept all of
those accusations.

He then told the hearing officers, "I found the accusations against you to be
many."

With that, Mr. Shirbi unleashed a tirade against capitalism, America,
homosexuality, Israel, support for Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran, and
the more recent war against Iraq.

"Your status as enemy combatants does not need a court," he told the officers.

As for his own classification of enemy combatant, Mr. Shirbi was blunt: "It is
my honor to have this classification in this world until the end, until
eternity, God be my witness."

In other cases, the incriminating evidence has generally been less clear-cut.

Another Saudi, Mazin Salih Musaid al-Awfi, was one of at least half a dozen men
against whom the "relevant data" considered by the annual review boards included
the possession at the time of his capture of a Casio model F-91W watch.
According to evidentiary summaries in those cases, such watches have "been used
in bombings linked to Al Qaeda."

"I am a bit surprised at this piece of evidence," Mr. Awfi said. "If that is a
crime, why doesn't the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and
people who own them?"

Another detainee whose evidence sheet also included a Casio F-91W, Abdullah
Kamal, was an electrical engineer from Kuwait who once played on his country's
national volleyball team. He was also accused of being a leader of a Kuwaiti
militant group that collected money for Mr. bin Laden.

As for the Casio allegation, Mr. Kamal said the watch was a common one in Kuwait
and had a compass that could be used to find the direction of Mecca for his
prayers. "We have four chaplains" at Guantanamo, he said. "All of them wear this
watch."

While many of the detainees are citizens of Afghanistan or were captured there
during and after the Taliban's overthrow, the documents also make clear the long
reach of the American campaign against terror.

One unidentified Pakistani detainee was seized as he tried to cross into the
United States from Mexico. He said he had paid an immigrant smuggler $16,000 to
$18,000 to take him to Guatemala and then north; his smuggler was known to the
American authorities for having ties to Arab militant groups, documents from his
case show.

Another Pakistani, Saifullah Paracha, was arrested in Thailand in July 2003. Mr.
Paracha, a wealthy real estate developer who said he attended the New York
Institute of Technology, was accused of making investments for Qaeda members,
plotting to smuggle explosives into the United States and urging the use of
nuclear weapons against American soldiers. He acknowledged having met Mr. bin
Laden twice, but denied the other allegations.

An unidentified 34-year-old Mauritanian who appears to be Mohamedou Ould Slahi,
the onetime imam of a mosque in Montreal who was linked in Germany to two of the
Sept. 11 hijackers, told of being "kidnapped" after he turned himself in to the
Mauritanian authorities and of being taken to Jordan for eight months while
"they tried to squeeze information out of me." He said he was flown from Jordan
to Afghanistan, and then on to Guantanamo.

Yet for all the gravity of the global fight against terrorism, the give-and-take
at the Guantanamo hearings is sometimes reminiscent of a local arraignment
court.

Consider the exchange over a Belgian detainee, captured in Afghanistan. One
allegation, read in court, was that he was a member of the Theological
Commission of the GICM.

"What is GICM?" asked the detainee, who was not identified.

The tribunal president asked a clerk, "Could you explain what GICM is? I have
the same question."

The clerk said he was not sure, either. Another accusation was read: that GICM
is associated with Al Qaeda. The detainee answered again, "I don't know this
group."

The tribunal president announced a short break so the clerk could "find out, for
everyone's benefit, What GICM stands for." When the tribunal reconvened, the
clerk announced that GICM stood for Groupe Islamiste Combatant du Maroc, or the
Moroccan Islamic Combat Group.

To which the detainee responded, "I never before heard of all this."

Defining the Details

The files are replete with retractions. Detainees who had confessed to having
ties to Al Qaeda or the Taliban or terrorism frequently told the tribunals that
they had only made those admissions to stop beatings or torture by their
captors.

"The only reason for my original statements is because I was tortured when I was
captured," said a former mechanical engineering student from Saudi Arabia who
was accused of training at a Qaeda camp in Afghanistan. "In Kabul, an Afghan
interrogator beat me and told me they would kill me if I didn't talk. They shot
and killed someone in front of me and said they would do the same if I didn't
cooperate."

Another common defense of the detainees, particularly those captured in
Afghanistan or Pakistan, is that they were turned over to American forces in
exchange for some kind of bounty, or that they were arrested when they refused
to or could not pay bribes to the local authorities.

"The Pakistanis are making business out of this war," said a detainee from
Tajikistan who was arrested in Pakistan in November 2001. "The detainees are not
being captured by U.S. forces, but are being sold by the Pakistan government.
They are making 2, 3, or $10,000 to sell detainees to the U.S."

As the Pentagon has defined the term enemy combatant for purposes of the
tribunals, it includes anyone "who was part of or supporting the Taliban or Al
Qaeda forces, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the
United States or its coalition partners."

But many of the detainees protested in their hearings that such a wide net was
catching many who were not real enemies of the United States.

One 29-year-old Saudi acknowledged having fought with jihadist groups in the
Philippines and Afghanistan, saying he had been a "zealous" younger man. But he
also said that he had a brother and a cousin who had both married Americans, and
he had a complex set of views on the United States.

"I'm an educated guy and I understand politics," the detainee said, suggesting
that he had had a change of heart. "The United States has made some wrong
decisions, but that doesn't give me the right to consider them an enemy or kill
their people."

However improbably, many of the detainees said that the allure of Afghanistan
for them was not jihad. Maasoum Abdah insisted that his mission was entirely
personal.

In 2000, he said, he left Syria and traveled to Turkey and Iran and finally
Afghanistan. He was accused of living in a Taliban safe house in Kabul. The
authorities said his name was on a list of men being trained as snipers.

He acknowledged that he knew how to shoot from his days in the Syrian police.
But even in the police, he said, "in a year and a half, I only shot seven
bullets." And he said he had no allegiance to the Taliban.

Then why the long, arduous journey to Afghanistan, a tribunal officer asked. "I
wanted to go to Afghanistan to find a wife and get married and stay there," Mr.
Abdah answered through a personal representative.

Why not find a wife in Syria?

"It is very expensive to find a wife," Mr. Abdah explained. "The price is at
least $3,000. I might work for years and still not be able to collect that much
money. In Afghanistan, it is very cheap. The most is $300."

[ Tom Torok contributed reporting for this article. ]

[ For the Record Appended

This article was reported by Margot Williams, Tim Golden and Raymond Bonner and
written by Mr. Golden. ]

[ Correction: March 7, 2006

A front-page article yesterday about prisoners held by the American military at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, as described in documents released Friday by the Defense
Department, misstated in some copies the total number of men who have been held
at Guantanamo. It is 760, not 660. ]

*


AP / Washington Post --

March 3, 2006
PENTAGON RELEASES NAMES OF GITMO INMATES
By Miranda Leitsinger and Ben Fox

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/03/03/AR2006030301269.html

GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba -- After four years of secrecy, the Pentagon
handed over documents Friday that contain the names of detainees held at the
U.S. military prison at Guantanamo. The release resulted from a victory by The
Associated Press in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

The Bush administration had hidden the identities, home countries and other
information about the men, who were accused of taking up arms against the United
States. But a federal judge rejected administration arguments that releasing the
identities would violate the detainees' privacy and could endanger them and
their families.

The names were scattered throughout more than 5,000 pages of transcripts of
hearings at Guantanamo Bay. The names were given only in the testimony _ when
court officials referred to them by name in their remarks or when one detainee
spoke of another detainee by name. The documents themselves released by the
Pentagon did not identify each detainee who testified.

In some cases, even having the name didn't clarify the identity. In one
document, the tribunal president asks a detainee if his name is Jumma Jan. The
detainee responds that no, his name instead is Zain Ul Abedin.

Zahir Shah, an Afghan accused of being a member of an Islamic militant group and
of having a grenade launcher and other weapons in his house, admitted to having
rifles. He said it was for protection and insisted to the tribunal he did not
fight U.S. troops.

"The only thing I did in Afghanistan was farming. Other than that, I did not do
anything else in the country," Shah said, according to the transcripts.

The documents also contain the names of former prisoners, like Moazzam Begg and
Feroz Abbasi, both British citizens. A handwritten note shows Abbasi pleading
for prisoner-of-war status.

The status of other named detainees, such as Naibullah Darwaish, was not
immediately clear. Darwaish was described as having been the chief of police for
the Shinkai district in Zabol Province, Afghanistan, when he was captured.

Most of the men were captured during the 2001 U.S.-led war that drove the
Taliban from power in Afghanistan and sent Osama bin Laden deeper into hiding.

Most of the Guantanamo hearings were held to determine if the detainees were
enemy combatants. That classification, Bush administration lawyers say, deprives
the detainees of Geneva Convention prisoner-of-war protections and allows them
to be held indefinitely without charges.

Documents released last year _ also because of a Freedom of Information Act
lawsuit by the AP _ had the detainees' names and nationalities blacked out.

"Some folks don't want the names to be released for security and privacy
reasons. Other folks think it should be open to the world to see," Army Maj.
Jeffrey Weir, a Guantanamo spokesman, said Friday outside the kitchen where
prisoners' food is prepared.

The documents, transcripts from at least 317 hearings at Guantanamo Bay, should
shed light on the scope of an insurgency still battling U.S. troops in
Afghanistan, in part by detailing how Muslims from many countries wound up
fighting alongside the Taliban there.

U.S. District Judge Jed S. Rakoff of New York ruled in favor of the AP last
week, a major development in a protracted legal battle.

Some current and former Guantanamo detainees remained unidentified, even after
the release of the documents Friday. An unknown number of the named prisoners
have been freed or transferred to custody elsewhere.

The AP has also filed suit seeking a list of all detainees who are being held or
have been held at the prison in eastern Cuba.

"This is extremely important information," said Curt Goering, senior deputy
executive director of Amnesty International USA. "We've been asking ever since
the camp opened for a list of everyone there as one of the most basic first
steps for any detaining authority."

Human rights monitors say keeping identities of prisoners secret can lead to
abuses and deprive their families of information about their fate.

The United States, which opened the prison on its Navy base in eastern Cuba in
January 2002, now holds about 490 prisoners at Guantanamo. Only 10 have been
charged with crimes.

Neal Sonnett, chairman of the American Bar Association's task force on enemy
combatants, said he hopes the documents will help focus attention on the
conditions for the detainees and the way the hearings were handled.

The documents that were released on Friday were unedited transcripts of the
hearings.

"Perhaps even more important than just the identities of the detainees are the
unedited transcripts of the hearings, which I think will reveal a lot about the
way in which the detainees have been treated and the way in which their status
has been determined," Sonnett said. He was at Guantanamo to observe pretrial
hearings for two detainees charged with crimes.

The Pentagon's secrecy has drawn criticism from human rights groups and lawyers.

"You can't just draw a veil of secrecy when you are locking people up," said
Jamie Fellner, director of the U.S. program for Human Rights Watch. "You have to
do at least the minimum, which is to acknowledge who you are holding."

The Defense Department had argued that releasing the identities of detainees
could subject their families, friends and associates to embarrassment and
retaliation.

But Rakoff said the relatives and others "never had any reasonable expectation"
of anonymity. Friday was the deadline he set for release of the material.

Last year, the judge ordered the government to ask each detainee whether he or
she wanted personal identifying information to be turned over to the AP as part
of the lawsuit.

Of 317 detainees who received the form, 63 said yes, 17 said no, 35 returned the
form without answering and 202 declined to return the form.

The judge said none of the detainees, not even the 17 who said they did not want
their identities exposed, had a reasonable expectation of privacy during the
tribunals.

A Pentagon lawyer delivered the documents Friday about 20 minutes after a 5 p.m.
deadline. They were stored as 60 .pdf files on a CD-ROM. But within minutes, an
officer returned and took back the CD-ROM, which contained letters from
relatives of some of the prisoners that were not intended for release. A second
CD-ROM was later delivered.

[ Associated Press reporters Ben Fox contributed to this story from San Juan,
Puerto Rico, and Lolita C. Baldor contributed from Washington. ]

* * *