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…
Daniel Levin's Last Minute "Combined" Memo
I've been looking through some old FOIA documents and noticed an interesting email exchange turned over in one of last August's document dumps (PDF 21-22). It's an email chain between a CTC lawyer (whose name we don't know) and John Rizzo and…
"Humane Societies ... Pursue Justice"
One of the most important ways in which humane societies struggle to deter outbreaks of mass violence is by working to pursue justice, so that would-be war criminals might think twice about their actions after seeing that perpetrators of such…
What Happened to that OTHER OPR Report?
Remember the OPR Report? No, not the OPR Report on John Yoo's laughably bad torture memos. I'm talking about the OPR Report on John Yoo's even worse memo(s) authorizing domestic surveillance. The Torture OPR Report notes that it was the domestic…
Meet Deputy Attorney General Robert Gibbs
I guess, in addition to President Rahm Emanuel and Attorney General Lindsey Graham, Deputy Attorney General Robert Gibbs sees the wisdom in putting aside rule of law for political expediency.
Some policy advisers have wondered why the administration's…
Did CIA Misrepresent Interrogation Policy to Court in Passaro Case?
I wrote in my last post on David Passaro that he knew precisely how to defend himself (go here for general background on Passaro and his case). Even before he was indicted, Passaro asked for discovery on CIA's rules of engagement for detainee…
Al-Awlaki Family: Let's Make a Deal
Glenn Greenwald just tweeted this fairly unsurprising article reporting that Anwar al-Awlaki's family would like the US to take him off their kill lists.
His father, Nasser al-Awlaki, a former minister of agriculture and rector at the University…