Crappy Record-Keeping: A Feature, Not a Bug
Catalog of records the Bush Administration kept in such disorganized fashion that no one could reconstruct WTF BushCo had been doing on that subject:
- Gitmo detainee records
- Torture tapes
- Finance records from the NRCC for 2002-2006
- Database of US citizens surveilled under CIFA
- Emails pertaining to Medicare Part D passage
- Records showing oil companies cheated the federal government out of royalties for drilling on federal land
- Emails from the period when Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby were planning their Plame cover-up
- The talking point document Scooter Libby used to leak Valerie Wilson’s identity to Judy Miller on July 8, 2003
- Almost all the emails (stored on RNC servers) documenting illlegal politicization of government
- Karl Rove’s collected works
(What am I missing?)
You see, historically, authoritarians usually happen to be superb record-keepers. That has been their undoing, once historians got to them. One thing the Bush fuckers got right (from their perspective, mind you) was to avoid leaving usable records.
The mind boggles.
And in so doing, violated statutory requirements – other wise known as “the law” for those of us “subjects” bound by such “quaint” mandates.
I guess this proves they weren’t Nazis after all.
Yeah. You’ve said directly what I was trying to say without invoking Godwin’s law.
But that’s what I was thinking…
It says that they realized the mistakes of the Nazis … to precisely document everything.
The Nazis thought they would never be out of power.
… and thus, the evidence could never be used against them.
Remarkable lack of foresight on their parts, from my hindsight perspective.
Arrogance removes the possibility of failure …
Yes, the very definition of arrogance, not unlike those in charge these past eight miserable years. Nazis never could admit a thought of some future accounting for the deeds accruing in their rise to power, or a Nuremburg or finishing off not in a blaze of conquering glory but at the end of a rope.
Actually, Nazis knew what records not to keep.
IIRC, they burned all records of Auschwitz at Auschwitz. They overlooked plans that were kept separately, and these are now at important proof against Holocaust denial. Eventually, other documents appeared that were accidentally conserved.
I believe there is also no written record of the final solution decision.
http://www.hdot.org/learning/myth-fact#auschwitz
guess again
In 1947, a man named Robert Kemper found a copy of Adolph Eichmann’s minutes from The Wannsee Protocol
scroll to the “proceedings” section of the second link to see copies of eichmannn’s list of attendees and minutes
Heydrich and eichmann couldn’t cover their tracks, and I don’t think dead eye dick is nearly as competent as Heydrich and eichmann (in Heydrich’s defense, he was dead long before the need to cover his tracks was evident)
btw, I’ve seen the 2001 BBC/HBO film Conspiracy staring Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci that is mentioned at the bottom of the wiki entry, it’s your typical “made for television” dreck, not bad, but not great either
No Paper Trail Left Behind
as
No Paper Trail Ever in Mind
(what bush learned from his military service records.)
Well, Bush left behind for all time the 16 words in the State of the Union. No way to erase that from our history books or collective memories.
I’m still hoping someone somewhere has a copy of everything they thought they destroyed–maybe even the perpetrators themselves. Even serial killers keep trophies of their victims.
Somebody’s/ies’ got it. Note how little fuss about Rove having an unsecured Blackberry while on government payroll…
But what price to obtain the goods?
That’s the part I don’t get. How can a blackberry which sends signals wirelessly not leave traces of its received and sent messages throughout the communications network?
So, organized disorganization.
Interesting feature.
Whistleblowers coming forward in the next while could be a godsend for untangling the mess and uncovering the crimes. A better term for those brave souls is truthtellers, so little truth having yet been had about Bush and his cohorts doings. Several journos have hinted they know a fw that have the goods. But when will they come forward?
another name I like is “lamplighters”. courtesy of Frank Serpico
“Lamplighters” was also the name for the British security service’s agents given the all dirty work in John le Carre’s Karla trilogy, beautifully filmed thirty years ago as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy and Smiley’s People, starring the late Sir Alec Guinness.
The WaPoo’s article also illustrates the MSM’s continuing use of false equivalency, special pleading and Bush propaganda. Just which unnamed
former BushObama administration officials, for example, excused the clusterfuck of record keeping at Gitmo as illustrating the “complexity and dangers” of the job? Which of them say that it illustrates the Obama administration’s need to back pedal from its promises to quickly close Gitmo and to try or release these prisoners?This was a novel, once secret prison specifically set up to house “the worst of the worst”. (In reality, these men were mostly a collection of children, taxi drivers and camel herders caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.) Cheney drove this process through his men at Rumsfeld’s DoD. They steamrolled all opposition, curtailing and ending careers to get their way. If they had made any attempt to keep accurate records, or to perform the slightest investigation into why these men deserved detention, there would have been no lack of interagency sharing of information. There would have been detailed voluminous records justifying their crimes and the need for their continued detention.
The rationales given in this article for why there were no accurate detailed files for each prisoner don’t pass the smell test. Yet the WaPoo repeats them without contradiction, giving them credibility they do not merit.
As with the criminal lack of records at the White House, these records are in complete disarray because Cheney is a master bureaucrat. The lack of records here, at the White House, at the DOJ, even at Kyle Sampson’s old desk, makes proving crimes hard and keeping the public’s and Congress’ attention harder. Cheney may be a street punk mowing down scores of pedestrians as he road races past the street cams, but he was smart enough to disconnect the cameras first. Pity about all his victims, but without the film or radar, he may keep his license and stay out of jail.
Tice and a few more have told what they know but when will the Dr. Jeff Wigands appear? At least one is needed to get press.
I suppose we could substitute the Khmer Rouge here; there’s no equivalent yet of Godwin’s Law with regard to them, is there?
Seems sad to think that Bushies could end up like Pol Pot, quietly laying down and dying in 20 years without being brought to justice.
I would like to get everyone together with BushCo and have a cocktail party with Dr. Paul Ekman. I would make sure we gave Ekman a long list of questions.
EW All
The Diane Rehm show focused on Gitmo closing and Obama policies changing
10:00U.S. Anti-terror Tools in the Obama Adminstration
In his Inaugural address, President Obama said ‘we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals’. A look at how the new administration may modify or dismantle anti-terror tools adopted under President Bush.
Guests
Mike Posner, president, Human Rights First
Jess Bravin, reporter, Wall Street Journal
Mark Thiessen, speechwriter for former President Bush
Send in your questions [email protected]
Call in with your questions
1-800-433-8850
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/
He should be impeached just for being sloppy.
Eric Holder during last week’s hearing “no one is above the law” Hogwash simply hogwash!
Many of our Reps (Feinstein, Whitehouse etc) repeated the same line over and over again. The peasants know this endlessly repeated claim is absolutely horse shit.
There’s a difference between the principle (”No one is above the law”) and the practice (Bush officials who broke the law have not been indicted by a politicized DOJ). We need to uphold the principle, and work towards changing the practice.
Cynicism leads to tacit acceptance of the practice, which to me is intolerable.
Bob in HI
On the list of the lost, you left off KSM’s children and Aafia Siddiqui’s children. When they found one of Siddiqui’s children with her, they went out of their way to “lose” that child again. Then there’s the CIA porn pic, where they stripped down all their kidnap victims and had women take pictures of them stripped – in Binyam Mohammed’s case that would include some evidence of the scalpel wounds. They also have “lost” the body of at least one of the torture victims who died – and was deliberately tossed into an unmarked hole in the ground.
The lack of records is pretty much reflective of the fact that they didn’t really want intelligence. They didn’t want usuable, valid, reliable info.
What they did want was pretty simple – they just wanted to show they had power. It wasn’t about the answers given during torture, it was about having the power to torture.
For 7 years they nurtured sadists over savants because … they could. A glorification of “kick the dog” syndrome, where you add steel toed boots and keep kicking the muzzled, whimpering dog to death, all the while lining up the kiddies to see what happens when daddy’s home. Sick.
Jane Mayer has a short piece up on Obama’s torture orders. Apparently, he had his crew do a “cost-benefit” analysis on torture.
Still, he’s “sympathetic” to the fact that the CIA really needs to be able to create more Maher Arar’s and Khalid el-Masri’s:
Jesus Mary and Joseph help us.
Were the documents having to do with the Pat Tillman death ever handed over?
http://www.opednews.com/articl….._stand.htm
Yet, when the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform sent the President a bi-partisan request for a number of documents related to the Tillman investigation, the Administration refused to turn over key communications the Committee asked for, citing Executive Privilege.
“Cost-benefit analysis”
My fear about Obama is that he’s extremely careful about his image. The torture issue is a PR nobrainer. For the front-row seats it makes sense to end it all, clean sweep, new day dawning; for the insiders, some accommodations will be made, like Appendix M in the Army Field Manual. I’m afraid that as time goes by, we’ll see this emerging as a pattern on other issues as well (Al-Haramain?). I hope this turns out to be useless worry though.
He needs to get better advisers. Some of his are of questionable character. Or questionable sympathies. (I think of people for whom ‘Israel Can Do No Wrong’, even as they talk about how evil Iran is.) And he needs to read that NIE on Iran nad it’s nuke program, not just the summaries handed to him by those people for whom ICDNW.
What about the documents or information for the Cheney energy task force
Now on the Rehm show they are discussing “the big Rich” oil families
11:00Bryan Burrough: “The Big Rich” (Penguin)
Guest host: Susan Page
“Vanity Fair” correspondent, Bryan Burrough, explores the beginnings of America’s obsession with oil by chronicling the lives of the Texas oil industry’s four wealthiest families — known in their heyday as “The Big Four.”
Guests
Bryan Burrough, is a special correspondent at “Vanity Fair” magazine and the author of three books. He was formerly a finance reporter for “The Wall Street Journal.”
http://wamu.org/programs/dr/
A virtual fingerprint expert would say those intentional, precisely focused “errors” in record keeping is a twelve-point match for Richard Bruce Cheney. His administration had access to computer wizards from Ohio to Oregon and was willing to spend your grandchild’s last tax dime. It acted with the restraint of a drunken frat jock ambling through Bangkok’s Patpong district with a thousand dollar bill in his pocket. If it wanted something, it wanted it now and it got it now, damn the consequences. Bruce Cheney wanted everything now and he didn’t want to get caught.
It will not serve them as well as they think. There are firms out there that do nothing but indexing, essentially putting disorganized (mainly paper) records into a usable state and then entering them into databases. They work quickly, brag about their accuracy, and at least some of them would accept a government P.O.
Bush really wasn’t aware of the information age, was he?
Boxturtle (They also digitize newspaper morgues)
The jerk didn’t use email because he was paranoid, he didn’t use it because he didn’t understand it and didn’t know how it worked. The one time in his life where “stupid” paid off.
Do those NSA intercepts that Biden, Kerry, Chaffee kept asking for during the Bolton hearing come under this category
Shredding: not only a real archival problem-solver, but environmentally sound, as well.
Refuse to hand over energy task force records
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/f…..A9679C8B63
documents refused having to do with firing of attorneys
http://www.npr.org/templates/s…..d=11826067
other documents they refused to hand over
Lawmakers say the two Bush administration officials refused to respond to subpoenas for documents about communications between the White House and EPA. The papers concern White House intervention in Johnson’s December decision to overrule EPA officials who were in favor of granting California and 17 other states permission to mandate a reduction of vehicle emissions by 30 percent by 2016.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..02068.html
Copies of those documents having to do with John Bolton accessing NSA intercepts
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/004569.php
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06……html?_r=1
Congress Seeks Company Names in Bolton Inquiry
Article Tools Sponsored By
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Senator Richard G. Lugar of Indiana, the Foreign Relations Committee’s Republican chairman, had joined Mr. Biden in urging the administration to give Congress the same information Mr. Bolton received. Last Friday, Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who has been a leading supporter of Mr. Bolton’s, suggested that the administration and the Senate might be able to work out a compromise that would allow for a vote.
The records-keeping issue is a lesson learned from the Nixon White House tapes affair, a lesson not lost on Cheney.
Keep up the good work Marci, we need you.
good stuff on cspan2 on military commissions.
OT, but under ’see also: Big Picture, Karma’:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01…..ef=opinion
Scroll to the end of the column and you’ll see this:
This is William Kristol’s last column.
(Via Sully’s “Daily Dish”). Interesting little ‘tea leaf’, eh?
—————————
Just to underscore the irony of the BushCheney failure to maintain organization and records will be of extreme interest as future historians see it within the larger context of Google’s transformation of daily life, the shifts in news media to more online content (which requires indexing and linking in each and every online page), and developments in software that enabled anyone with a word processor to insert web links, keywords, and ’search’ features.
And any business that kept records like those described by EW would surely be the target of law enforcement investigation.
Creeps are creeps, even to other creeps.
Wanna bet there’s a “personal stash” of at least some of this info, tucked away on someone’s hard drive somewhere, as protection against future intimidation such as Mike Connell finally died of.
I can’t imagine that at least one of the guilty parties doesn’t hold much of this evidence as protection. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and one of them will rat the rest of them out.
It’s what rats do…
Please…. be patient; Justice shall be with us shortly…
I’m not sure that we’ll get all the evidence, but it sure seems likely that Alberto Gonzales took classified info out of DoJ in order to find some way to make copies in an effort to ‘protect himself’.
If even Comey and Mueller were afraid of being spied on, it must have been Paranoia Central in D.C.
Kind of makes you wonder if President Obama’s reported circumspection about CIA “methods” contains an element of self-preservation.
Maybe.
Then again, maybe the NSA would like to redeem itself and supply backups???!!!
Gooper is their name.
Obstruction is their game.
Plus, leaving actually well kept records behind would ruin their image as incompetent idiots. That’s been their cover all along (even when they weren’t, which was rare!)
Sloppy? Maybe. Sometimes. The Washington Post article has this to say about the records “disarray” (emphasis mine):
What you will see at Guantanamo, just as at Abu Ghraib, is that there was an overlay of different “agencies”, people running around with different clearances, and different agendas. So the wide spread of the Guantanamo files are in part due to appropriations for certain unknown purposes. Detention and interrogation were not about prosecutions. What were they about? After months and years in detention, they certainly were not about actionable intelligence.
Most have forgotten the early reports of Guantanamo patients being drugged. One researcher (very respected) I know will have a book coming out soon that will put some of this together. A big part of Gitmo was about something quite horrible, worse than we know. One way to think about it is to remember how MKULTRA worked. In the early 1950s, Nazi prisoners and sympathizers held by the Allies were used for horrific, and often “terminal” experiments as part of the U.S. and British biological weapons and “mind control” programs. I don’t know if that’s what was going on at Gitmo or not. But something was. Even the researcher I know is keeping his cards close to his vest and hasn’t told me the full details of the book. I will say this: doctors, psychiatrists, and psychologists were involved.
It also seems that along with the cavalier attitude towards certain documents, the fact that “incoming legal and national security officials [were] barred until the inauguration from examining classified material on the detainees” makes me believe that there was likely destruction of records as well. Maybe massive destruction of records, similar to the loss incurred when they destroyed most of the MKULTRA files. One program from that earlier era, MKNAOMI, which was developing various lethal and incapacitating materials for the CIA, had its records so thoroughly destroyed that we know almost nothing about its operations.
Whereever you see CIA, you see evidence of criminality.
I do believe you are on to something here.
See this.
I’ll be looking for that.
Back in the day, we Canadians had a ring-side seat to the CIA-funded experiments done on psychiatric patients by Dr. Cameron.
MKUltra photocopied document re testing on “unwitting subjects”, the importance of keeping this secret, and use of other government agencies. I think elements of DoD, witting or not, were used as cover for CIA experiments. I can’t prove it, of course, but further documentation should be coming along soon.
look at the name: this is Valtin – the doctor who has been posting on USG official torture for years now.
I’m not familiar with the name.
What about the “contractors”
Very good question. I suspect the “contractors” are in some cases cover for agency men. It’s easier to sneak your men in and out if there’s some amount of chaos or complexity going on about you. Some of the contractors may also have been legitimate interrogators, hired as part of the philosophy of privatization. But the two possibilities are not mutually exclusive.
In any case, we have a lot to learn about that aspect of Guantanamo (and other U.S. prison) functioning.
More difficult to hold accountable. Remember Brigadier General Janet Karpinski talking about “contractors” at Abu Gharib
Further evidence of the presence of Israeli operatives in Iraq arose this weekend when the general formerly in charge of the U.S.-run Iraqi prison system, herself considered partly responsible for torture at Abu Ghraib and other prisons under her command, told the BBC that she met an Israeli interrogator working in a U.S.-run “intelligence center” in Baghdad. Brigadier General Janet Karpinski told BBC Radio in an interview on Saturday that she met with a man who claimed to be Israeli and that he “did some of the interrogation” at the facility.
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/el…..cleid=2959
This excerpt from an excellent article by Alfred McCoy on the CIA at Abu Ghraib will point to the answer to a lot of questions (my bold emphases):
I would say something similar happened at Guantanamo, I just can’t point to a specific timeline, pre-October 2002.
Thank you, Valtin, for all your work. I have found your comments on other sites at which I am not registered to comment.
I am in my early 70’s and until about 2 years ago (when I got the internet) I was totally ignorant of these psychopathic, perverted operations conducted by our own government. All those years our government railed against Russia, China and North Korea for such acts and experiments in torture and their kangaroo courts….that covered up the CIA’s own dark deeds very well.
I followed the link you gave which took me to the article on MKNAOMI, which gave in its ref section the links to MKULTRA, MKDELTA, OPERATION ARTICHOKE (which gives the video of Eric Olsen), PROJECT BLUEBIRD, and OPERATION CHATTER. I have read about or viewed some of these but not all. (I list them here for benefit of those unfamiliar with them.)
I would appreciate your writing a series of articles here on this subject. Now is the time to make a loud issue of these shameful operations by our government. I think that only a loud public outcry will put an end to these crimes and hopefully bring to justice those responsible for ordering them.
I remember The Cold War very well and can see the need to be aware of such treatment by those considered our enemies during that period, but the poison of that knowledge has led us to commit the disgraceful deeds of Abu Graib and GITMO.
Our mirror of America now shows us not the noble country we used to be, but the diseased picture of a Dorian Gray which we have become.
heck they didn’t even make the trains run on time….
they cancelled the budget.
Failure to maintain records should be considered a betrayal of the public trust and the oath to preserve, protect and defend….
Nail their asses I say..
…sure seems like there’s a lot of pissed off people out there.
Which could be a positive factor when it comes to whistleblowers. They can NOT intimidate everyone, all the time. They tried and look what happened with the public, much less their own people.
Someone with a grudge, and the guts to come forward is likely to appear because they’ve been so fed up by BushCo’s brazen lawbreaking. There have been several, but they haven’t had a good enough venue to get heard. So the old ones and some new ones with a megaphone need and are hopefully figuring out a way to get what they need to out.
Personally, being stepped on just makes me more angry and that means i start looking for ways to speak out. I’m pretty sure i’m not the only one who reacts that way.
OT – Breaking news from the Department of Who Could Have Thought:
The NY Times is reporting that:
“Legal and political analysts said Mr. Blagojevich’s decision to skip representation in the impeachment trial here and instead take to the airwaves suggested that he had given up on remaining in office and was now looking ahead to federal criminal charges — and potential jurors — he faces. In the impeachment hearing, removal seemed all but certain; but on television, these analysts said, Mr. Blagojevich could try to write his own narrative.”
You forgot the Air Traffic Controller/ eastern seaboard records for Sept. 11, 2001.
It goes all the way back to the disappearing TANG records. They were careful to get rid of any evidence that would point to Junior’s AWOL days.
emptywheel, wrt the missing Libby “third of a page” talking points to Judy,
is there any possibility (I didn’t check with Judy’s testimony) that the document in question is not typed but hand written? and maybe hand written by Libby or hand written at Libby’s request by Cheney himself?
Libby’s answers seem to allow these possibilities, I think:
Libby’s answers, from the Grand Jury testimony and questioning by Pat Fitzgerald:
Q. Okay. Who created that document?
A. I did.
Q . Personally?
A. Yes. Well, you know, I, I didn’t type it I don’t suppose, but I directed it to be done.
Q. Okay. So do you know who would have typed it?
A. Well, if I didn’t type it, then I assume it would have been Jenny Mayfield, my assistant.
Q. Do you type?
A. I do type.
Q. You’re not big on e-mail I take it?
A. No. Not in this job. I was in my prior job. (35)
Q. Okay. And when you type, do you type at a word processor and print it out?
A. Yeah.
Q. In reviewing the documents for production for discovery or compliance with the subpoenas, have you ever seen a copy of the redacted document that you shared with Ms. Miller?
A. Yes, sir.
Q. Okay.
A. Well, I’m not sure exactly what I shared but I think I have.
Q. And how long was the document in terms of pages?
A. A third of a page.
Q. And did you share that document with the Vice President prior to sharing it with Judith Miller?
A. No, sir. (35-36)
Sure makes a person wonder about an official Secrets Act. How in the hell do they nail journalist who are foreign agents for other nations?
Office of Vice President mis-filed under “Fourth Branch of Government“
From the Department of You’re Doing It Wrong:
Secret Steve reporting today on Dennis Blair’s Senate confirmation hearing last week:
“The DNI-nominee also told Sen Kit Bond and Sen Whitehouse that he favored prosecution of leakers of classified information:
“If I could ever catch one of those it would be very good to prosecute them.”
http://tinyurl.com/d2fkbr
Secret Steve also linked last week to the Columbia Journalism Review focusing its latest edition on BCA info ‘protection’, including a piece by Laura Rozen: http://tinyurl.com/be7z24
Your use of the term “A feature, not a bug” is perfect.
Knowing the software and IT its funny that I really did not put this perfect motto/phrase into its most apt use.
With that old keystone crew that we like to call “stupid” so much of what they did was pretty much what they planned.
The problem is, if records haven’t been kept from that time, they would just evaporate. And who knows the vitals on Rove’s blackberry, in order to trace it, anyway?
It’s important to note that times are different. Before we didn’t have a digital age and The Internet. Looking back at the Lutherin Reformation, during that time, books and especially Bibles were hard to come by and they were expensive. Information during that time was word of mouth and since little detail was known, all that moved around was rumored suspicion. When Luther’s Bible was made available, that information was trustworthy and consistent. Hence people were able to read and judge what was happening around them. Luther was forced to change his name and go into hiding because corrupt officals wanted him dead.
Today, the internet offers updated highly detailed information fast. No matter how much detail is accumilated, nearly all will be made available as long as we are persistent. Bush’s Administration is involved in so many numerous criminal activities that when they all come out, everyone will be astonished and overwhelmed. But it’s been going on for decades right under our noses. I know because I was in a family for more than 26 years who are in it. Why we didn’t see it before is because of control. They had to increase their control to securely manage what they “are” doing. Notice that I said “are” because it’s still happening with Obama.
In summary, today’s Reformation is happening in large part because of the internet. Keeping it clean and open to all news and opinions is important and may forever be a fight to keep it that way. The Lutherin Reformation, if I’m correct lasted for nearly 100 years. My family fled Paris during the seventh Reformation war to Luxembourg (~200 miles away), The Puritans fled England for America for the same reason. If you look closely following the trail of the huge Politically Managed Drug system from Colombia and other countries linked with the drugs, including Mexico who are the main distributors for the US, to the end users, you’ll see a lot more showing how things have been done and now are changing.
The Political establishment that is involved in these criminal activities HAVE to cover up what they are doing. Plus because of their paranoia, they have beem micro-snooping us for decades in fine detail trying to build Phsy profiles hoping to prejudge our moves. All of this plus more is located in records somewhere. The drug system is enormous. Chicago alone gets a weekly $100 million dollar shipment in Cocaine. That is more than $5 billion per year and the proceeds are being used to FUND “Black-Op’s” in support of another White House Coup. Even if you don’t want to believe this, a lot of detailed evidence is on the Net. I know from being in a family for more than 26 years. It’s all there, all anyone has to do is read. But they don’t want you to read, now do they?
Marty Didier
Northbrook, IL
Hey, Mr. Marty Didier. I warned Plunger about the way out conspiracy bullshit, now I am warning you. This blog is not the place for your rantings. Take them somewhere else. You ain’t gotta go home, but you got to get out of here with that tripe. Capiche?
I couldn’t read the whole thread, but a comment here. All of the communications that are listed as missing ( not documents ) are preserved in the datamining database of the TIA. Somebody should be able to do a google style query and pull all of the missing electronic stuff up.
Failure of accountability
We have a concept in the military to help out with property discipline. If you sign for a piece of property, you are presumed to have it. If it was destroyed or lost in the line of duty, it’s your responsibility to document that. Just losing it, or losing accountability for it, carry the same signficance — you need to either produce the property or pay the govenment to buy a replacement, because the presumption is that you stole it. Lose a Humvee, and fail to produce some credible acocunt of how it was lost depsite your appropriate care, and you’ve just bought yourself a Humvee.
I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know if the law has a similar principle, but it seems just common sense to me that if we know that wrongdoing occurred, and you, as a government official, had a duty to maintain records that would inculpate or exonerate you from that wrong-doing, the non-existence of such records should be treated the same as the existence of records that inculpate you, to the maximum extent that such records could be imagined to inculpate you. If a prisoner under your care dies, and you had a duty to maintain records about that prisoner’s condition that could prove or disprove the role that your maltreatment might have played in his death, and those record either never existed or have gone missing, then you have just bought yourself a first-degree murder conviction.
I’m not quite following. What is being suggested about GITMO? That torture was done on prisoners after they had been psychologically conditioned using some sort of new, drug-based techniques? Would that somehow be part of why some of those in-the-know continue to defend that torture? (Can’t imagine what in the world could possibly make it defensible.) Just trying to draw a coherent thread of some kind here.
Well, kind of, yes. Basically, and Valtin can supplement/correct if he should happen along, but they “reverse engineered” (somewhat of a misnomer, but anyway) the SERE techniques and also came up with new ones as well as deciding that the layering and combination of techniques was a lovely idea. In order to determine what was the most effective to their beady little mindsets, they went about testing their new toys on the detainees at GITMO. And, yes, my guess is that drugs were part of the protocols being used.
Yes, you got it, though we both probably only understand it up to a point, lacking more documentation. Luckily, a tireless researcher will be publishing a book largely on this topic in just a few months. Here’s the Amazon link.
bmaz, remember a few months ago you asked all who could to contribute to Thomas Tamm’s legal defense fund? Well, I did, and yesterday I received a thank-you note from his team at bottom of which he wrote me a personal note of thanks. I feel really good about that. Thanks for the tip.
Hey, thank you. Worthy cause.
I sent him by snail mail a paper check and inspiring letter worthy of his deed. (If I do say so myself hee,hee,hee)
That way I get to keep the cancelled check for my grandkids.
I just threw up in my mouth. That would seem to hit Geneva, war crimes, crimes against humanity, involuntary medical experimentation on humans, and probably about twenty other US and international criminal statutes, would it not?