CIA Finally Declassifies “Gloves Come Off” Memorandum of Notification Reference
Back in 2012, I wrote a series of posts on the Obama Administration’s extraordinary efforts to censor this title. (post 1, post 2, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6, post 7, post 8)
The title was part of some smart CYA on the part of George Tenet. When things started to go south with the torture program in 2003, he wrote this document, ostensibly putting order to the torture program, but also making it clear the whole thing operated on Presidential authority. (The document, which should have been released to David Passaro in his criminal trial for torturing a detainee who subsequently died, was withheld, which prevented him from pointing out anything he did, he did with Presidential approval, so Tenet’s CYA didn’t help him at all.)
The judge in ACLU’s lawsuit to liberate torture documents, Alvin Hellerstein, decided the language should not be censored, and ordered the government release it. Then National Security Advisor Jim Jones wrote a secret declaration stating that it could not be disclosed. All the while, ACLU thought they were fighting to release a description of waterboarding, when in fact Hellerstein was trying to force the Administration to release the single detail that torture had been done on the President’s order.
But the Second Circuit overruled Hellerstein, declaring these 8 words a source and method (for the record, I guessed exactly what was behind the redaction so their secret was only useful for legal challenges).
That the torture program operated pursuant to a Finding (that is, as a covert op) had long been known thanks to blabby CIA types like John Rizzo. But it was formally declassified as part of the Torture Report. It got released today as part of a Jason Leopold lawsuit.
So there you have it. “Presidential Memorandum of Notification of 17 September 2001.” A secret Obama fought to the circuit court, now public for all the world to see.
It doesn’t feel so momentous, does it?
it seems to me it s proof the lil bush gang are all war criminals and owe a trip to the ICC
“It doesn’t feel so momentous, does it?”
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Probably the best person to ask this question would be david Passaro.
If the question was asked of me, today, in 2016, my answer would be “No; None of the allegation in the Passaro case seems anything but pretty much normal current United States of America Police Procedure. Except there is no evidence of a high-tech TAZER, cattle-prod-with-a-20-foot-range, being used in the torture of Wali. I don’t know that American Cops would know what to do without their ‘make-’em-dance-on-a-wire’ tool of the trade.
As for lying officials, prevaricating court personnel and legal game playing and bullshitting representatives of ‘ha-ha-“justice”-hee-hee,’ when was the last time that was new enough in the United States to make a gasp of outrage sound more than stagey? Sacco-Vanzetti?
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If I may ask without being mistaken for a hack Republican Party flack, Isn’t it maybe about time to send the Mexican-style “Justice” and “Justice System” back to Mexico, and wall it off there?
(P.S.
The kind of “walling off” our current system appears to have come to the point of needing is the kind seen in that famous Goya painting showing the Spanish lawyer before the French jury with an arm raised and, lawyer-like, getting in the last word…)
I see this as part and parcel to Cheney’s “make me do it” philosophy. They will protect to the death (or appeals court) every layer that encircles problematic orders.
Reading here at emptywheel.net has always been an experience of seeing the news YEARS before hearing the same “news” elsewhere.
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Any reaction from former U.S. Rep from California Jane Harman?
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Is the CIA the classifying agency after all for the MON reference? and not the National Security Council? Remember the Executive’s legal argument that CIA spokesperson’s earlier reference to a Presidential directive was not an ‘official disclosure’ –implying that the CIA didn’t have the authority to declassify?
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Are the presidential candidates (Clinton, Sanders, Trump) going to field questions about the Gloves Come Off MON? Do they plan to keep Bush Jr on the hook for it? Or do they plan to write their own MON or new Finding?
I don’t think I’ve ever heard a peep of criticism of the CIA from Clinton or Trump. Actually, Clinton was apparently involved in approving CIA drone killings! Sanders is lukewarm, scaling himself way back from, say… 1974.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2016/02/24/sanders_i_no_longer_want_to_abolish_the_cia_but_i_have_a_lot_of_problems_with_their_activities.html
Here be ‘handlers’.
The darkside, the aliens in control.
Thanks for the link.
Hoping the question is constantly posed during the run up to the presidential election. Even a ‘no comment’ or ‘undecided’ answer would be entertaining.
The first time I clicked on the document from Tenet it came up, but subsequently it won’t come up–just a lot of symbols–it’s in some weird code.
I don’t know that this answers the question as to how the torture program got authorized. According to a newly unredacted portion of the IG report (p. 11):
“The 17 September 2001 MON [approx. one line redacted] authorizes the DCI, acting though CIA, to undertake operations ‘designed to capture and detain persons who pose a continuing, serious threat of violence or death to U.S. persons and interests or who are planning terrorist activities.’ Although the MON does not specifically mention interrogations of those detained, this aspect of the CTC Program can be justified as part of CIA’s general authority and responsibility to collect intelligence.
“The DCI delegated responsibility for implementation of the MON to the DDO and D/CTC. Over time, CTC also solicited assistance from other Agency components, including OGC, OMS, OS, and OTS.”
— So I read this as the MON authorizing the detention and rendition program, but not the “EIT” torture program. CIA seems to have fashioned that on its own. Hence Bush never ordered torture. CIA undertook that on its own, and once Bush and NSC “principals” were briefed, retroactive approval was given.
Do you see things in the same way? If true, it shows that CIA is the wild elephant in the room once again, and not the pure servant of the executive branch it claims to be.