Why Were the Torture Tapes Destroyed?
Bob Baer has a column out stating that he can't figure out why the torture tapes were destroyed--and repeating CIA spin claiming the torture depicted in the tapes should not, itself, be a legal problem, since it was approved by DOJ. (h/t cs)
Did…
Court Slaps Government Over Use Of Torture Evidence
A Federal Court in Washington DC has issued a very hard slap down by of the government's continued use of bogus evidence obtained by brutal torture to try to justify continued detention of detainees at Guantanamo.
Mudd Wrestling and Torture
Spencer's got one of the big scoops of the day: that Philip Mudd left the FBI about six weeks ago (so early March).
Philip Mudd, one of the intelligence community’s leading al-Qaeda analysts, has quietly retired from the FBI, where he was…
Holder's Catch-22 on the al-Haramain Ruling
Michael Isikoff reports that--as I suspected--DOJ would very much like to accept the Vaughn Walker ruling and be done with George Bush's illegal wiretap program. But the Department of Justice led by a guy who got paid a lot of money to help…
The Interview Questions
I talked yesterday about one of the puzzling documents in last week's FOIA dump. In this post, I wanted to try to figure out why the most puzzling document--the Interview Questions from PDF 106-108. The document has no date nor any office information--it's…
The Wikileaks Medic's Soldier's Apology
Two of the guys in the Company depicted in the Wikileaks video--including the medic guy who pulled the girl from the van--recently wrote a letter apologizing for their role in the events depicted in the video. Here's how it starts:
Peace be…
The Abu Zubaydah Document
One of the most curious documents turned over in last week's FOIA dump is the last one, titled "The CIA Interrogation of Abu Zubaydah" (PDF 110-122). While these are just wildarsed guesses, I suspect it may either have been a summary developed…
Government Continues to Avoid Court Rulings on Domestic Surveillance
Three significant pieces of news, taken together, show that the Courts continue to chip away at Bush-and-now-Obama's domestic surveillance programs.
FISA Court Encourages Government to Stop Collecting Some Metadata
First, and potentially most…
Who Is Lying? The Torturers? Or John Yoo?
One of the potential bombshells in last week's FOIA dump appears in a CIA discussion about a potential statement in response to NYT's breaking of the torture tape story (PDF 86). The document notes that the videotapes would have shown the sheer…
A Concurrence In The Case Against Elena Kagan
Glenn Greenwald has been attacked for making the case against Elena Kagan as a nominee for the Supreme Court on policy and ideology grounds. But neither Greenwald nor the Kagan supporters have addressed the fact Kagan would be effectively the first justice in the history of the Supreme Court to have had no experience whatsoever in court as either an attorney or judge, a critical deficiency in her already thin background.
The Timeline of Torture Tape Destruction in John Durham's Documents
As I said the other day, most of the documents we received the other day are the 13 or so documents that CIA had cleared for FOIA release, but over which John Durham had declared a law enforcement privilege. This chart compares what we got with…
Did the White House Review CIA's Records on Congressional Briefings?
A month ago, I wrote a post noting that CIA had never finished its Memos for the Record of several key Congressional briefings. But as I've been reviewing old Vaughn Indices to get a better sense of what we received yesterday, I've seen some…
Abu Zubaydah May Have Been Waterboarded MORE than 83 Times
MadDog and I just realized something that should have been apparent since August. He and I have been looking at the passage of yesterday's document dump that refers to CIA keeping OLC informed of how many times waterboarding was used.
First,…
How Abu Zubaydah's Sleep Deprivation Got Out of Control
The latest CIA document dump also provides more background on how Abu Zubaydah got subjected to extended sleep deprivation long before it was approved. PDF page 113-114 explains:
After consulting with the NSC and DOJ, CTC[redacted] originally…
CIA's Lawyer Did Not Find Alteration of Torture Tapes "Noteworthy"
As I noted in my last thread, the latest ACLU document dump is here. And this is, indeed, the set of documents John Durham was withholding for his investigation.
I've long been interested in the role of the earlier destruction of the torture…
Is John Durham Finally Done?
While we're waiting to get the documents discussed in these NYT and WaPo and WSJ stories, in which (among other things) Dusty Foggo's Deputy records that Porter Goss "laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat"…
Eric Holder Addresses the Constitution Project
I happened to get lost, end up in DC, and show up to cover the Constitution Project's annual dinner, particularly Attorney General Eric Holder's keynote (see here for the [!]Breaking [!]News on that front).
Before I get into that, I just wanted…
Steven Kappes Leaves the Agency, Again
Here's one of the more curious details about yesterday's surprise news that Steven Kappes was leaving the CIA.
Best as I can tell, the White House has not yet issued a statement about his retirement (at least not via the White House press list).…
Reading Tea Leaves on Warrantless Wiretapping
Sorry I've been distracted all day. And yes, I will try to comment on the surprise news that Steven Kappes will be leaving the CIA next month later this evening.
But in the meantime, I wanted to look at this exchange between Arlen "Scrapple…
Holder Testifies Before Senate Judiciary Committee
The Committee feed is screwy right now, but cspan.org is carrying it. Pat Leahy will not be there today; he's at a funeral. I don't know if Herb Kohl (who will act as Chair) had an opening statement or not. But Jefferson Beauregard Sessions…