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Report on Entrapment Describes Pattern of Informant-Created “Terrorism”

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We’ve been writing a bit about Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the young Oregon man charged on WMD charges for allegedly trying to detonate an inert bomb the FBI helped him get. His attorneys are preparing an aggressive entrapment defense (those defenses almost never work, but there are some interesting factors in his case), arguing that Mohamud refused early entreaties to engage in violence yet the FBI kept pressing him to do so.

NYU’s Center for Human Rights and Global Justice has just released a report mapping out the pattern of such cases. The report focuses on three NY-area cases–the Newburgh Four, the Fort Dix Five, and Shahawar Matin Siraj cases–to contextualize what is going on. It focuses on the role that informants play in these cases.

In the cases this Report examines, the government’s informants held themselves out as Muslims and looked in particular to incite other Muslims to commit acts of violence. The government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and, moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe it was their duty to take action against the United States. In two of the three cases, the government relied on the defendants’ vulnerabilities—poverty and youth, for example—in its inducement methods. In all three cases, the government selected or encouraged the proposed locations that the defendants would later be accused of targeting. In all three cases, the government also provided the defendants with, or encouraged the defendants to acquire, material evidence, such as weaponry or violent videos, which would later be used to convict them.

Most powerfully, the report explains how these cases have affected the mens’ families. For example, in the case of the Duka brothers, in which the informant testified on the stand that the Duka brothers had no knowledge of the alleged Fort Dix plot, their extended family has had their classic immigrant success story lives upended.

The same night that the FBI arrested his sons, Ferik Duka was arrested and held in immigration detention for a month.187

Amidst everything else, Dritan’s family was summarily evicted from the apartment they had rented. Zurata recalls,

“They [the landlord] said ‘get out of the apartment these are terrorists.’ They gave us three days’ time to get our clothes. We had to get clothes from the apartment and bring them to our house, which was surrounded by news people. I had the truck, but nobody to drive, nobody to help.”188

After the eviction, Dritan’s five children moved in with their grandparents and uncle Burim, where they’ve lived ever since. Without his brothers to run the roofing Burim dropped out of high school to support his remaining family members. Noting that his nieces and nephews are “like orphans now,” Burim said, “it’s me who supports them now… I basically support four families.”189 Shouldering a heavy burden for a 20-year old, Burim now runs one of the Dukas’ roofing companies; Ferik came out of retirement to run the other business.

At the time of the arrests, the Dukas’ roofing companies had over $400,000 in contracts. These dried up almost immediately after the brothers were arrested. People who had worked with Ferik for more than a decade took their business elsewhere. Their biggest customer, the local fire department, called to say they had been warned by the government not to do business with the Dukas. Internet sites labeled their businesses as being “run by terrorists,”190 and they received harassing phone calls at their businesses. While they once dreamt of building four neighboring houses, one for each brother, today they are barely able to make ends meet.

And perhaps the most stunning detail is this description of the incitement a cop, Osama Eldawoody, used to get Shahawar Matin Siraj to accept his invitation to violence: Abu Ghraib.

In April 2004, when the abuse of detainees by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib216 first became public, Eldawoody seized on the opportunity to take things to the next level. Shahina explains that Eldawoody started showing Shahawar “awful, awful scary photos of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. If you show these pictures even to a non-Muslim, it’ll make them crazy. No one can bear these photos, Eldawoody showed Shahawar these photos and said, ‘it’s your duty as a Muslim to do jihad in response.’”217

After months of Eldawoody’s campaign, Shahawar finally crumbled when he was shown pictures of young Iraqi girls being threatened and raped; he told Eldawoody that they had to do something.218 Eldawoody then told him about a group called “The Brotherhood,” with operatives in upstate New York who could help them.219 Then, in May 2004, Eldawoody told his handlers, “I believe it’s time to record.”220

Oh, okay. Use evidence of American crimes as a way to induce others to commit fake crimes. Only unlike all but a “few bad apples” convicted in those real crimes, the government will actually indict and convict in the fake crimes.

Do they not see how this is perverting the entire concept of justice?

DOD Passes the Buck Rather than Let Kucinich Visit Bradley Manning

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On February 4, Dennis Kucinich asked DOD to allow him to visit Bradley Manning so he could assess his conditions of confinement. On February 8, Robert Gates wrote Kucinich a short note telling him we was referring his request to Secretary of the Army, John McHugh. In a letter dated February 24–but apparently not received in Kucinich’s office until March 1–McHugh told Kucinich he was referring his request to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs.

In short, a full month after the date when a member of Congress requested a visit with Manning, DOD is still stalling on a real response with bureaucratic buck-passing.

As to the substantive response McHugh offered Kucinich? It matches all the disingenuous boilerplate responses the rest of DOD has offered–claiming that Manning is treated as any other “similarly situated” pretrial detainee at Quantico, without mentioning that there is at most one other Max prisoner, and none who have been held on Prevention of Injury watch for eight months.

PFC Manning experiences the same confinement conditions as other similarly situated pretrial prisoners at the MCBQ Pretrial Confinement Facility.

In addition, McHugh appeals to the same bogus privacy excuse that Quantico is now using to avoid explaining why they’re submitting Manning to the same treatment they used at Abu Ghraib.

PFC Manning’s custody and status classifications, like all pretrial prisoners at the MCBQ Pretrial Confinement Facility, are evaluated regularly by a board of corrections specialists pursuant to Department of Navy regulations. As United States laws prohibit the release of personal identification, including personal health information, I am not able to discuss PFC Manning’s specific custody and status classifications and other aspects of his care and treatment.

Effectively, they’re using “privacy” as their excuse not to admit that under POI, Manning is subject to some of the same degrading techniques we objected to in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib.

Kucinich isn’t missing that parallel, either. In his response today, he said,

My request to visit with Pfc. Manning must not be delayed further. Today we have new reports that Manning was stripped naked and left in his cell for seven hours. While refusing to explain the justification for the treatment, a marine spokesman confirmed the actions but claimed they were ‘not punitive.’

Is this Quantico or Abu Ghraib? Officials have confirmed the ‘non-punitive’ stripping of an American soldier who has not been found guilty of any crime. This ‘non-punitive’ action would be considered a violation of the Army Field Manual if used in an interrogation overseas. The justification for and purpose of this action certainly raises questions of ‘cruel and unusual punishment,’ and could constitute a potential violation of international law. [my emphasis]

As I said, it has been a full month since Kucinich made a legitimate request to visit with an American citizen who, thus far, must be assumed innocent. Yet DOD seems to be deploying the most transparent kind of bureaucratic stall to prevent Kucinich form visiting Manning.

Update: Corrected date of Gates note.

Days after Taguba Reported Sadistic Criminal Abuse at Abu Ghraib, DOD Asked to Use More Torture

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On March 13, 2004, according to the OPR Report, Jack Goldsmith and Patrick Philbin went to Jim Comey’s house on a Saturday to alert him of something. The military had contacted Goldsmith, wanting to use a more extreme form of torture against a detainee–something like isolation, waterboarding, water dousing, or death threats.* [Update: In this post I explain why I think DOD was requesting extended isolation.] But, as Goldsmith had told DOD General Counsel Jim Haynes the previous December, the March 2003 opinion Yoo wrote that authorized DOD’s use of such techniques was hopelessly flawed. Goldsmith wanted to explain the flaws of the memo to Comey to get his support for withdrawing the memo. Comey, who was then acting Attorney General (since John Ashcroft was in the ICU with pancreatitis), agreed with Goldsmith’s judgment and–the OPR Report explains–later got John Ashcroft to agree that “any problems with the analysis should be corrected.”

That meeting at Comey’s house took place just four days after Goldsmith and Comey refused to reauthorize the President’s illegal wiretapping program, just three days after Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card raced to the ICU to attempt to convince John Ashcroft to override Comey and reauthorize the program, just two days after Bush reauthorized the program without DOJ concurrence, and just one day after Comey, Goldsmith, and Philbin threatened to quit if Bush didn’t make certain changes to the wiretap program.

The meeting also took place just four days after General Antonio Taguba issued a report finding that “numerous incidents of sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses were inflicted on several detainees” at Abu Ghraib. Significantly, two of the allegations made against Americans by detainees that Taguba found to be credible–threatening detainees with a loaded pistol and pouring cold water on them–were among the four restricted torture methods that Haynes asked Goldsmith for authorization to use. While it’s not clear how much Goldsmith knew of DOD’s simmering torture problems (in Terror Presidency he said he didn’t learn of Abu Ghraib until it broke in April 2004, though aspects of his book clearly gloss then-classified events), Jim Haynes must have known about them.

The OPR Report doesn’t tell us how this conflict worked out–whether, in response to Goldsmith’s objections, DOD backed off its plans to torture a detainee or whether the White House overruled Goldsmith (or whether, as happened with a number of detainees, they used the technique before they asked to use it).

But we do know this occurred at a point when the White House was rejecting DOJ criticism of its counterterrorism programs. On March 11, in the context of the illegal wiretap program, Alberto Gonzales told Goldsmith that the President “had made an interpretation of law concerning his authorities and that DOJ should not act in contradiction of the President’s determinations.” And on March 16, again in the context of the illegal wiretap program, Gonzales had said,

While the President was, and remains, interested in any thoughts the Department of Justice may have on alternative ways to achieve the goals of the activities authorized by the Presidential authorization of March 11, 2004, the President has addressed definitively for the Executive Branch in the Presidential authorization the interpretation of the law.

In other words, at precisely this moment, the White House was telling DOJ–and Goldsmith and Comey specifically–that what they thought about the law was interesting, but in no way binding on the President. Indeed, Gonzales was telling these two men they had best not act counter to the will of the White House.

I’ll explain more how I think this resolved in later posts. But for now, realize that one response DOD made to the Abu Ghraib scandal was to ask for more torture.

*There is some ambiguity in the unclassified OPR Report about what range of techniques DOD was trying to use. In a later post I’ll show why I think it was one of the latter three techniques listed here: waterboarding, water dousing, or death threats. [Note, I now think the request was for extended use of isolation, as I explain in this post.]

First Abu Ghraib, and Now Siegelman

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Larisa reports that 60 Minutes has decided to spike its story on Don Siegelman.

60 Minutes Caves to Pressure from White House on Siegelman Story…

Well folks, seems that 60 Minutes is postponing (read "killing") its Siegelman story. The excuse I am told for this lapse in ethics is that the network needs more time to vet the whistle-blower, Dana Jill Simpson. You see, the reason the network suddenly needs more time to vet Simpson is that the White House has launched a direct campaign inside CBS to discredit her and just to make sure the dirt sticks, they have called in some favors too. I am told that Senator Jeff Sessions has been instructed to help the White House discredit Simpson as part of his "Senatorial" duties. Nice system of government we have here, eh?

So, two things are going to happen now. The first is, we will be including what 60 Minutes did not report as part of the Raw Story series on the case. Instead of 5 installments, we will now have 6. Second, all of you as citizens of this nation must voice your concerns about this situation to CBS. You want a free press? Then fight for it!

ADDRESS:
60 Minutes
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019

EMAIL: [email protected]
PHONE: (212) 975-3247

It’s probably worth reminding folks that 60 Minutes attempted to spike–and managed to postpone–another story that was politically damaging to the Administration.

The most interesting thing about the Dan Rather complaint, IMO, is the description it gave of CBS and Administration attempts to spike the Abu Ghraib story.

In late April 2004, Mr. Rather, as Correspondant, and Mary Mapes, a veteran producer, broke a news story of national importance on 60 Minutes II–the abuse by American military personnel of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison. The story, which included photographs of the abusive treatment of prisoners, consumer American news media for many months.

Despite the story’s importance, and because of the obvious negative impact the story would have on the Bush administration with which Viacom and CBS wished to curry favor, CBS management attempted to bury it. Read more →

Dan Rather Gets Discovery

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Great news. Dan Rather will join the 5,732 other people (in addition to the American public as a whole, of course) who have a legal claim to see all those emails the White House has already disappeared (h/t pontificator). The judge in Rather’s lawsuit has decided to grant him discovery for his lawsuit.

It looks like former CBS News anchor Dan Rather will indeed get his day in court. On Wednesday evening Justice Ira Gammerman of the New York Supreme Court in Manhattan made a preliminary ruling denying the TV network’s motion to dismiss Rather’s $70 million lawsuit. "I think discovery should go forward," said Gammerman.

[snip]

Now that the case will be moving forward, Rather’s lawyer Marty Gold wants CBS to start forking over internal emails and documents to prove his case, including exchanges between network brass and the White House. Naturally, this has CBS lawyers asking the court to limit the scope of the discovery. "It seems pretty clear they don’t want to produce [the documents]," said Gold.

So let’s see how those typical White House excuses are going to work…

State Secrets? The White House would have to claim that CBS was party to its biggest secrets, thereby proving that CBS is nothing but a party propaganda organ. Though of course, that’s effectively what they’ve said about Judy Judy Judy, both before and during Iraq.

Executive Privilege? For a case intimately involving whether Bush cheated his way out of military service? It doesn’t matter who it is, they’re not going to want to admit that anyone close enough to invoke privilege was "deliberating" about those TANG documents.

Which pretty much leaves the last refuge of the Bush Administration: the dog ate my emails. All of them.

Which will make it all the more interesting when the White House has to tell us what the state of their backup tapes is in approximately 3 days.