Just to revisit a story out since 2006 on GITMO:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15361458/ part 1

The Defense Department’s Criminal Investigation Task Force arrives at GITMO and things are not well. They warn of the commission of possible war crimes and that information is not reliable.

The investigators say their warnings began almost from the moment their agents got involved at the Guantanamo prison camp, in January 2002.

Since EW likes timelines, guess what else was happening in Jan 2002?

January 25, 2002 Alberto Gonzales is telling the President that determining the Geneva Conventions do not apply to detainees:

Substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act (18 U.S.C. 2441).

emph added

Back to the msnbc story on GITMO and the DoD’s CITF:

When they could not prevent the harsh interrogations and humiliation of detainees at Guantanamo, they say, they tried in 2003 to stop the spread of those tactics to Iraq, where abuses at Abu Ghraib prison triggered worldwide outrage with the publishing of graphic photos in April 2004.

Yeah – but golly, wasn’t that supposed to be “unrelated” per the ABC story?

The CITF mentions al-Qahtani, the “20th hijacker” but the story doesn’t mention the concurrent case of Slahi, which caused Lt. Col. Couch to refuse to prosecute Slahi, despite Couch’s own very strong feelings and losses on 9/11.

A week later, Col. Couch put his position in writing and asked that his concerns be raised with the Pentagon’s general counsel, William J. Haynes II. The legal adviser to the military commissions office, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, says: “Mr. Haynes was not informed of the issues raised by Lt. Col. Couch nor did he expect to be told about all internal operations within the Office of Military Commissions.”

Looks like Haynes did a better job than Ashcroft at that “eww, don’t actually TELL me about the tortures I’m authorizing” thing.

And despite that original response to CITF on al-Qahtani, guess who’s going to be in one of the show trial?

The CITF tried to address the cases of abuse going on by:

1. Going to Maj Gens Dunlavey and Miller. Miller questioned their patriotism, Dunlavey wouldn’t listen.

2.

Refused to participate in interrogations they felt were abusive; reported any signs of criminal acts by the intelligence interrogators; blocked an FBI plan to move al-Qahtani to another country where he could be tortured; and threatened to remove their investigators from Guantanamo entirely if they were forced to watch abusive interrogations

emph added

3. Sent their warnings up command to “the Pentagon’s general counsel, William J. Haynes III, and to officials in Rumsfeld’s office.”

Somehow, all the “detainee abuse” investigations that supposedly spun out from Abu Ghraib managed to miss them (CITF) and they were “surprised” to find that no one with any of the investigations ever contacted any of them.

Fallon, in the msnbc story, also makes it clear that while Ashcroft and Co. are giving broad legal blessings to abuse of “terrorists”, for many of the people at GITMO no one even knew their names, much less that they were some “high intelligence value” persona.

They didn’t have names for many of the detainees. It often wasn’t clear what country they were from. … Most weren’t picked up by U.S. forces, but were handed over by bounty hunters … They were transferred with scant records,
…
Fallon said two detainees were suspected in a rocket attack against U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The evidence against them was that they were found wearing dark olive green jackets similar to the one worn by the attacker. “I’ve been to Kabul,” he said. “That’s the only color jacket I’ve seen.”

Possibly the saddest thing of all, DOJ and Congrss have let things go so far astray, that all the firm statements made about not trying men because of the torture inflicted on them in the interrogation process, has now all gone out the door.

From part II to the msnbc piece:

military prosecutors told them not to worry about making a criminal case against al-Qahtani, the suspected “20th hijacker” of Sept. 11, because what had been done to him would prevent him from ever being put on trial

to “clean teams” who can wave a magic wand. And we have domestic cases where masked interrogators and coerced statements have become allowable “evidence” and where a US citizen can be disappeared into years of abuse without there ever, ever, ever, being any effect on a subsequent trial or on the torturers and those who lied about the torture. Break the mind, then have a trial.

The msnbc piece, btw, goes on to detail how sure the CITF crew were that Miller’s trip to Iraq would end up taking his abuse authorizations with him and their efforts to stop it, as well as the allegation’s that Miller urged: “that interrogators adopt ‘emerging strategic interrogation strategies and techniques” being used at Guantanamo.’”

And about that FBI plan to send al-Qahtani off for torture? “A later FBI legal analysis warned that even discussing such a plan, known as “rendition,” could be a crime, conspiracy to commit torture.”

Be interesting to know where that analysis came from and what it said and when. Wainstein, who has been defending the illegal wiretap progam, was either counsel or COS to Mueller through much of this operative timeline. You have to think that Mueller might have disucssed the torture issues with him some.

Fallon and his boss, Mallow begin raising the issues “almost weekly” in August/Sept 2002, with lawyers from Hayne’s office. So on Sept. 25, 2002, in swoops the torture delegation we’ve heard about, including:

Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and now attorney general; David S. Addington, legal counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney, now his chief of staff; Timothy E. Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel; William Haynes III, the Pentagon general counsel; Larry Thompson, then deputy attorney general; Christopher A. Wray, the principal associate deputy attorney general, [then] head of Criminal Division at the Justice Department[Luttig’s old law clerk, who went on to King & Spaulding in 2005 or 6]; and John Yoo, a lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counse

And on that Beaver argument – that a higher authority can authorize abuse? Fallon refused to let his CITF people even WATCH abusive interrogations and fought briefly (before winning the argument) with his supervisor over this:

“You’re talking illegal acts here,” Fallon said. “The secretary of defense can’t change the law. One of the things that we told all our personnel was the fact that during Nuremberg, Nazi war criminals were actually tried for acts that were perpetrated by them under orders of their superiors.”

All fwiw, but a bit more context.

19 Because apparently the DOD is taking the position that they are the agency that “classified” a lot of the info about GITMO, etc. and so things like FBI agents complaining about something (not classified at DOJ) is “classified” if DOD says that what FBI agents were talking about it is stuff that is classified at DOD. Also, some of the info is probably in the DoD records (like the FBI plan to ship to Egypt or Jordan for torture) that the IG needs for back up in the report. At least, those are my guesses.