On Two Torture Investigations
photo: design wallah via Flickr
Across the pond–in the investigation of British complicity with the torture of Binyam Mohamed and others–the Supreme Court has told the government it can’t present secret evidence.
The supreme court has outlawed the use of secret evidence in court by the intelligence services to conceal allegations that detainees were tortured.
The decision will be seen as a significant victory for open justice, but the panel of nine judges pointed out that parliament could change the law to permit such “closed material procedures” in future.
The appeal was brought by lawyers for MI5 seeking to overturn an earlier appeal court ruling that prevented the service from suppressing accusations British suspects had been ill-treated at Guantánamo Bay and other foreign holding centres.
And here in the land where such secrets have become the norm, Apuzzo and Goldman reveal one of the reasons why DOJ is taking a closer look at Manadel al-Jamadi’s death: because the CIA guy in charge of an unofficial interrogation program in Iraq went beyond clear directions from HQ.
Steve Stormoen, who is now retired from the CIA, supervised an unofficial program in which the CIA imprisoned and interrogated men without entering their names in the Army’s books.
The so-called “ghosting” program was unsanctioned by CIA headquarters. In fact, in early 2003, CIA lawyers expressly prohibited the agency from running its own interrogations, current and former intelligence officials said. The lawyers said agency officers could be present during military interrogations and add their expertise but, under the laws of war, the military must always have the lead.
This detail is interesting for another reason. The AP notes that Stormoen asked to use torture tactics.
Tactics such as waterboarding and sleep deprivation, which the CIA used in other overseas prisons, were prohibited at Abu Ghraib without prior approval. In videoconferences with headquarters, Stormoen and other officers in Iraq repeatedly asked for permission to use harsher techniques, but that permission was never granted, one former senior intelligence official recalled.
This would have put Stormoen in Iraq asking to use things like waterboarding not long after someone in OVP suggested waterboarding a different detainee, Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi.
At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.
[snip]
Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”
Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney.
Now, I have always imagined that Cheney tried to order up military interrogators to waterboard Khudayr; OVP wasn’t exactly getting along with the CIA in 2003. But you do have to wonder why Stormoen ignored HQ’s directions on torture.
I love it when you “wonder why!”
Ummm, because he got a personal phone call from Cheney telling him to go ahead with it?
It would not be out of character. Remember, prior to the 2002 elections Cheney called a mid-level bureaucrat (IIRC, at either Bureau of Land Management or the Fish and Wildlife Service) to “encourage” that bureaucrat to manipulate dam flows in then-drought-stricken Oregon where irrigating farmers, who reliably voted Republican, were up in arms over decreased amounts of water available to irrigate. As a result, one of the largest fish kills in history took place, all of which was greeted with a “who could have known” denial of any WH/OVP responsibility. And this from a devoted angler. So, I can see him having a back channel to a torturer telling him to torture for the sake of torturing and telling the torturer to go ahead because he’d be loyal to and back up his soldier on the battlefield regardless of what happened.
Yep. If these and the teahadist members of congress are not considered the “Enemy Within”, I don’t know what would!
Just look at members of congress buying hedge funds that bet against the country while they on the side of fighting the debt ceiling increase!
Treasonous Enemies of the State!
x2
Boxturtle (But are we any closer to justice?)
Well, or remember when Cheney was personally calling the Iraq weapons Survey Group, giving them coordinates that he conjured up to go look for the WMDs? He did do that kind of thing, so…..
Hey, Southern California here — we’ve been trying to stop the stupid Sunrise Powerlink from going in — cloaked in green, but SDGE refused to commit to that, and in fact it appears to be a taxpayer gift to SDG&E and Sempra Energy, to bring in dirty energy from Mexico and lock California in to a dirty energy future. (Click on the map (PDF) at above link.) Even though there are lawsuits pending, one of Arnold’s last acts as governor was to hold a groundbreaking publicity ceremony in Boulevard last December — on private property, only invited guests allowed in, via helicopter, bus and SUV. The protesting public was kept outside on the other side of a gate guarded by armed police. The excluded public held their own protest event outside there, with speakers, including one who spoke of a phone call from Dick Cheney (to the BLM office in El Centro? – per memory), apparently to smooth the way for the Sunrise Powerlink.
If you scroll down in the link to where I copied that passage, check out the photo of the fire hazard map and think of the climate change drought that’s projected for Southern California’s next century. When you think of huge California wildfires, think SDG&E.
Great planning, Dick! Way to go, Arnold and CPUC! (Remember the 2003 CARB vote (at 7:00) to end the zero-emissions mandate, thus killing the electric car?)
(Bush admin federal involvement in killing California’s electric cars: youtube – Bush and Rove pushing hydrogen alternative @4:48 (note 5 miracles needed to make hydrogen practical @5:49)
Madness… Cheney…
Marcy, you have to keep up this type of reporting at the new place. Okay, you don’t have to put up as many each day, but how else will I be able to keep up with the Spook drama and the Bush Admin torture program? ;-)
You know they won’t tell me and from all the ones I have had the opportunity to speak with they all have a special hatred for Cheney.
Since the US and Holder refuses to actually investigate this we have no choice but to depend on foreign nations. Can’t thank you enough for bringing these facts to the page!
I been out of the loop for a couple or so months now,um,what new place??
“videoconferences with headquarters” but there were no live feeds with condi, rummy, george and dick were getting their collective psycho-sexual jollies from directing the action in real time ? Sure……
I think they could have skated without the limitless statute of limitations on murder, like they said in their own words if the Suspect dies you’re doing it wrong. They are accountable until they enter their graves.
Agreed! No excuses. There are none left. They used and abused our intelligence agencies and our military.
I am still wondering about Panetta’s quote about killing 20 leaders and how it relates to Cheney’s Secret Plan?
So, any way to investigate if Stormoen was part of Cheney’s secret effort?
Was ghosting part of the secret operations too?
The AP article is a little bit misleading about CIA interrogations and ghosting.
That second sentence really needs an “in Iraq” added to it. Back in a bit with more explanation.
Look forward to your addition.
They are still telling our troops in Iraq that they are there because of 9-11. Our military is on a revenge trek in Iraq for the atrocity on American soil and have yet to be told the truth!
Let me explain this a little. Here’s the timeline of events for al Jamadi and Hiwa Adbul Rahman Rashul, whose case is interlinked in interesting ways.
Early 2003 – CIA lawyers prohibit CIA from running interrogations in Iraq because of concerns about the Geneva Conventions.
June 16, 2003 – The “Bullet Points” document outlines what the CIA thought they could legally do to terrorists (glossed as “Captured Al-Qa’ida Personnel”). The list includes “the attention grasp”, the facial slap, the abdominal slap, cramped confinement, stress positions, and wall standing.
June/July 2003 – Rashul, an Iraqi alleged to be a member of the Ansar al Islam terrorist group, comes into CIA custody (apparently after being captured by the Kurds). The CIA and OVP want to torture him, but they can’t do that in Iraq. Patrick Philbin is asked if it is ok to send Rashul to Bagram [to be tortured], but he doesn’t have the guts to say no. Rashul is shipped off.
Oct 6 2003 – Jack Goldsmith becomes head of OLC and is immediately asked to authorize the action of sending Rashul out of Iraq. After a couple of weeks, he tells the WH and OVP to bring Rashul back (sending him was potentially a war crime).
Oct 27 2003 – The Red Cross office in Baghdad is bombed.
Oct 29 2003 – Rashul is flown back to Iraq.
Tenet asks Rumsfeld to hold Rashul as a ghost detainee.
Nov 4 2003 – al Jamadi is captured by Navy Seals and taken to Abu Ghraib, where he is interrogated by the CIA. His death was caused by the combination of the stress position and the beating, both techniques that the CIA believed were valid to use on terrorists.
Nov 18 2003 – Gen. Sanchez issues a classified order formally establishing Rashul’s “ghost” status. Rashul is more or less forgotten until the “ghost” detainee story breaks in 2004.
Do we know who developed the concept and the implimentation of “ghost” status?
Exactly my point. These things were authorized verbally. Why just Rashul? Why not an entire ghost program, into which al-Jamadi was initiated unto death?
In his limited hangout presser in June 2004, Rumsfeld claims that he got a letter from Tenet:
Rumsfeld seems to be saying (in his inimitable way) that there was a generalized practice of the CIA requesting the military to hold certain detainees “off the books”.
Is that from his book? His draft memo sure wasn’t hitting the war crimes issue as a problem. It was a pretty disgraceful piece of crap.
The parenthetical was not something Goldsmith every admitted, but it was the only reason to bring Rashul back to Iraq.
Gotcha – I don’t think he even gave the advice, though. His draft memo is from March 2004
If I had to lay money, I’d bet it was something that involved Taft that got the ball rolling on Rashul. Apparently the Red Cross knew a pretty fair amount about what was going on with ghosting all kinds of detainees and was putting on as much pressure as they could. They were basically out in the open with their concerns by the first of 2004, so I think they were pushing much earlier. State is where they would have lighted first, and Taft & Powell both had enough military connections they probably had a good idea what was going on and that they were also being excluded from meetings.
This is probably wrong, but I could see Taft using something like a contact from the Red Cross to do something like issue advice that both ghosting and also taking out of country were war crimes – – I’d almost bet that Goldsmith’s draft memo was intended as an OLC counterweight to other existing advice from another quarter, to “overrule” it.
Maybe all wrong, but I just don’t buy Goldsmith, particularly after reading that drivel of a draft, as being the guy who pre-memo gave them the pitch that they would be committing a war crime. I think a more serious, for real, lawyer was invovled in that and Taft is the only one that I can think of that seems to fit the bill.
Another item to consider in a timeline the capture of ex-Baathist Manadel al-Jamadi on Nov. 4, 2003, is Operation Victory Bounty, a large-scale roundup of Baathists happening at the time. You can consider it the hunt for Saddam, and as starting with the deaths of Uday and Qusay.
Here’s Jon Stewart on it, on Aug. 3, 2003. Camp Vigilant within Abu Ghraib can be thought of as a large outdoor razorwire POW camp built specifically for the roundup.
Ghost prisoner schemes would work well, to get around the EPW status that al-Jamadi and others would have.
I wish the British Supreme Court has begun a trans-Atlantic trend. But, then, I’d love to see a real unicorn, too.
Seems like the subject of this post would have provided some good fodder for questions re: “The Interrogator” Book Salon this past weekend.
(I don’t recall it being brought up,but I have been so distracted of late, it may have zoomed right past me.)
bmaz: ICRC tweet you sent, wow. That’s an eye opener.
Verbal commands.
Much of the torture, historically, is given by verbal command. This was, for instance, how the CIA handled much of the MKULTRA program. From the 1963 CIA IG report on MKULTRA:
In The Torture Team, Phillipe Sands notes that Rumsfeld gave a verbal command to initiate the harsher torture of Al-Qahtani (on Nov. 23, 2002), and a memo only came later.
I’m sure if we looked, we could document much like this.
Also, there’s no reason to believe the CIA on this issue. If the operation were part of a SAP, for instance, it could easily have involved people from multiple components of the military or IC community, with others sealed off on a “need to know” basis, and a cover-story put in place to protect the operation. IOW, if a CIA attorney says that they weren’t approving CIA interrogation or torture in Iraq, there’s no reason to believe the CIA didn’t interrogate or torture outside of some command structure. The CIA routinely lies on clandestine matters.
a) Do we know how the express prohibition was expressed? A memo? A cable?
b) Where was Stormoen before Abu Ghraib?
c) What had he been authorized to do other places? (You’d be amazed at how often the answer to Whys is “Because he could.” That’s the whole problem with what DOJ and Obama have done – – they’ve said to a huge swath, “sure, you can get by with it)
d) Is DOJ really going to run with the argument that it’s torture because it went beyond what he was instructed to do in that particular location – but it wouldn’t have been torture at a black site where it was authorized? Really? huh.
e) If the issue is CIA interrogation involvement in Iraq, then what about the Mowhoush torture? Or was it ok for CIA to collect MEK torturers and visit military prisoners with them, as long as MEK did the torture and CIA just questioend? Or as long as CIA just watched and MEK tortured and questioned?
f) The fact that CIA wasn’t authorizing it’s kidnap/torture programs to be conducted except at its black sites really reopens the issue of intent behind that Goldsmith memo on taking kidnap victims in Iraq over the borders to “temporarily”
tortureinterrogate them.g) Since Stormoen just “ran” the ghosting/torture program and didn’t do the actual torture, at least in the subject case, it’s not just that he thought it would be ok, it’s that his torturers thought so too.
This is certainly the kind of action that Jeremy Scahill is saying is taking place in Mogadishu.
http://www.thenation.com/article/161936/cias-secret-sites-somalia
d) NO
g) Exactly. To prosecute the government has to be willing to let the case travel a bit up and down the chain. They are not.
Re the no – the tenor and language does conjure up from Jane Mayer’s piece on Panetta as the new torture overlord (who espouses America as a nation of armchair assassination bombers now, despite his prior concerns about being armchair torturers)
and the blip on Durham and Zubaydah:
I don’t buy the seriousness (and this was from 2009, btw, and we still have no actual investigation, just a preliminary nod that there should be an investigation – of things they haven’t managed to run out the statute with their pre-investigation) but this is the same concept – hey, guys, before the OLC told you it was ok, it wasn’t. It’s like having the lolcats in charge of the legal theory.
Thanks for the link and the citation.
Regardless of what Rumsfeld was authorized in this particular case, or what he may have authorized, my point was only that historically, unsavory political commands in secret matters are often given without written documentation (or that documentation is given later).
Now that I think of it, there was oral approval supposedly given in late July 2002 re use of EITs on Zubaydah (EW covered this), prior to the Yoo/Bybee memo. And I seem to remember that oral approvals for some of the interrogation program were given by Ashcroft early on.
Then there’s this posted by Valtin,in April,2009 regarding Rumsfeld’s verbal commands to take gloves off in John Walker Lindh’s case-the Bush administration original torture victim:
Other Evidence: Re John Walker Lindh
Finally, I would like to suggest that there is at least one other piece of evidence related to this early use of torture and/or planning for torture. This concerns the report by Jesselyn Radack, a Justice Department attorney in 2001, tasked as a legal ethics advisor in DoJ’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office, with advising on the procedures surrounding the interrogation of the captured American John Walker Lindh in Afghanistan.
Radack wrote in 2007:
According to a secret document I obtained in June 2004, an Army intelligence officer “advised that before interviewing Lindh, instructions came from higher headquarters for him to coordinate with JSOTF [the Joint Special Operations Task Force] JAG officer. He was told . . . he could collect on anything criminal that was volunteered.”But Higher Headquarters told the intelligence office more than that. Rumsfeld’s office told him not to handle Lindh with kid gloves. In a stunning revelation, the documents states: “The Admiral told him that the Secretary of Defense’s counsel had authorized him to ‘take the gloves off’ and ask whatever he wanted.” These instructions to get tough wth Lindh, contained in the document I have, are the earliest known evidence that the Bush Administration was willing to push the envelope on how far it could go to extract information from suspected terrorists.
Unfortunately, Ms. Radack does not supply the date for this document, or to whom it was addressed by the Army Intelligence officer in question. I’m sure that the Spanish court could obtain this document in full, if it so desired.
Described in a discovery letter given to John Walker Lindh’s lawyers, according to Spencer Ackerman at TPM Muckraker in 2007 article:
Me: Cheney!
The link to the letter is now dead, though the relative snippet is still embedded in the article and reads:
See also Dave Lindorff — written memo signed by Haynes, not verbal — though I wonder if he’s confusing the discovery letter with an actual memo?
I did ask Glenn Carle about this in the book salon and he didn’t reply. Since Lindh is Detainee 001, I’m thinking this authorization, whether verbal or memo, is crucial.
Thanks for the additional info. I particpated in that Carle book salon,and here are our exchanges I found them quite interesting,although they appear quite innocuous at first glance:
Gitcheegumee July 9th, 2011 at 3:01 pm
59
I had read that Blackwater was in Afghanistan very early on. Any opinions or input about the CIA and Blackwater’s relationship?
Was Blackwater ever actual “interviewers” themselves? Do you address them in this book,btw?
Thank you in advance,and thanks for being here.
Reply
Glenn L. Carle July 9th, 2011 at 3:17 pm
70
In response to Gitcheegumee @ 59 (show text)
In my experience, and to my knowledge, no contractor ever did an interrogation. But, I only know what I know. I find it hard to imagine the Agency would ever give such a sensitive assignment to a non-staff person.
No, I was not allowed to address the issue of Blackwater or contractors in my book. I tried. So, on this I think I have to punt a little.
NOTE to tvt: When I wrote “Blackwater was early on in Afghanistan”, I was thinking of John Walker Lindh. And btw, Blackwater WAS in Afghanistan,very early on,however they had not yet reached the size nor status they would eventually develop later on.
Carle’s statement that it would be hard for him to imagine that the agency would give such an assignment to a non-staff person was quite astonishing..at least to me. Did this mean that at all these black sites and ghost ships that the torture wasn’t really outsourced ,but performed by CIA?
And although I have posted several times here about the special ops program named “Copper Green”,I am going to poach one of Mad Dog’s inimitable posts,if I may:
MadDog June 15th, 2009 at 9:08 pm
10
In response to MadDog @ 7 (show text)
And to finish making my point (which I didn’t really do *g*), consider:
– The highest priority was to capture or kill Zarqawi. Similar to the original priority to do the same with Osama Bin Laden.
– The Special Ops folks, who had this mission as their highest priority, had migrated from the Afghanistan warzone where EITs/torture first started on al-Qaeda captures.
– Every single Special Ops person was required to attend SERE training in order to join Special Ops.
– Even if waterboarding was no longer used in any particular service’s SERE training (Seals, Delta Force, Rangers, etc. all had their own service SERE schools) at the time the Special Ops person attended, it is highly likely that they knew secondhand or even taught about waterboarding in the SERE curriculum and the “success” it would deliver in “breaking” the victim.
So if one was a Special Ops person, tasked with the highest priority in Iraq of capturing or killing Zarqawi, and a prisoner like Ghul came into one’s hands, who it was claimed had come to Iraq to contact Zarqawi, what is the likelihood that waterboarding would rise to the top of the list of “interrogation techniques” for use in “breaking” the victim Ghul?
And lastly, remember that Operation Copper Green was born as a Special Access Program in Rumsfeld’s DOD:
…Hersh claims to have spoken to a senior CIA official who said the program was designed by Rumsfeld to wrest control of information from the CIA, and place it in the hands of the Pentagon…
And it was:
…run by Deputy Undersecretary Stephen Cambone. Hersh claims the special access program members were told “Grab whom you must. Do what you want”…
We’ve only been told that the CIA waterboarded 3 people. No one that I’m aware of has stepped out and denied that the DOD’s SAP did it too, and even if they did deny it, would you believe Rumsfeld, Cambone, Wolfowitz, Feith, et al.?
The DOJ IG report on FBI involvement describes what I’d consider a commonly used “field expedient waterboarding” technique.
Saleh’s statement about his treatment is worth reading, at pdf page 20 of the CID investigation.