BREAKING!! White Terrorists to Be Treated Like Brown Terrorists!!

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All the discussion about the wisdom or legality of Eric Holder’s unilateral change to Miranda procedure for “operational terrorists” (Evan Perez story, Charlie Savage story, bmaz post) seems to be missing a stunning detail.

The memo laying out the change in procedures apparently doesn’t distinguish between foreign terrorists (that is, members of al Qaeda) and domestic terrorists (presumably including self-radicalized Muslims, but also white supremacists, and abortion doctor killers). Indeed, Perez’ article uses the term “domestic-terror” three times. I asked Savage about this specifically, and he said that while the preamble of the memo notes international terrorist groups are of particular danger (a claim I’m not convinced holds up after 10 years of the GWOT and the recent rise in right wing hate groups), the memo seems to apply to all “operational terrorists.”

Whatever the hell that means.

Update: Savage has made the text of the memo available here. Here’s how it describes an operational terrorist:

For these purposes, an operational terrorist is an arrestee who is reasonably believed to be either a high-level member of an international terrorist group; or an operative who has personally conducted or attempted to conduct a terrorist operation that involved risk to life; or an individual knowledgeable about operational details of a pending terrorist operation.

The latter two descriptions–an operative who “has personally … attempted to conduct a terrorist operation that involved risk to life” or “an individual knowledgeable about operational details of a pending terrorist operation” seem in no way limited to international terrorist groups. Furthermore, the third category, someone who knows about a pending attack, might not even be a terrorist himself.

Now, as much as I think the policy is ill-considered, at one level the application of it to white terrorists along with brown ones is, IMO, a good thing. After all, if the reason for the change in Miranda derives from “operational” risk, then nothing really does distinguish between the danger of an imminent attack by a white guy and the danger of an imminent attack by a brown guy. So to take any other approach–to apply the Miranda change just to brown terrorists–would demonstrate the claimed reason for it to be false.

Moreover, this country will never begin to restore a balance between rule of law and security until white terror suspects are treated according to the same abusive rules as brown terror suspects. I mean, you really think Peter King would be so thrilled about this change (as reported in Perez’ story) if he realized that the same rules might apply to white supporters of terrorists like him?

New York Republican Peter King, chairman of the House homeland-security committee, is among the lawmakers who welcomed Mr. Holder’s call to change Miranda. At a hearing last year, Mr. King said, “It’s important that we ensure that the reforms do go forward and that at the very least the attorney general consults with everyone in the intelligence community before any Miranda warning is given.”

All that said, what is the first non-distinction between foreign and domestic terrorists of the GWOT that I know of is deeply troubling.

It was inevitable, of course, that as the US continues its success at shutting down al Qaeda abroad, and as the government increasingly has to point to self-radicalized terrorists (or young Muslim men entrapped as such) to justify their expanded GWOT powers, and as it became increasingly clear that right wing terrorists pose as great a threat domestically and–with the MLK bomber–have the same operational sophistication as Islamic terrorists, that the limits on special terror-related authorities would begin to break down. But there’s really no protection against a further breakdown here. Soon, environmental activists (already officially classified as terrorists according to DOJ and DHS) will have their Miranda rights withheld because they were “operationally” prepared to strike at property, not people. And from there it won’t take long to deny peace activists their Miranda rights because they support humanitarian groups that might be trying to persuade terrorists to adopt peaceful tactics.

In spite of all the myths government lawyers have told themselves, in secret, to pretend the assault on privacy and civil liberties in the name of a war on terror is different from that of the 60s, we were always on a slippery slope that would eventually defy all those myths.

And limiting the Miranda rights of white terror suspects along with brown terror suspects is just one more important step down that slippery slope.

Update: Also note that the text of the memo allows individual agents to decide whether someone should be deprived of their Miranda rights.

As noted above, if there is time to consult with FBI-HQ (including OGC) and Department of Justice attorneys regarding the interrogation strategy to be followed prior to reading the defendant his Miranda rights, the field office should endeavor to do so. Nevertheless, the agents on the scene who are interacting with the arrestee are in the best position to assess what questions are necessary to secure their safety and the safety of the public, and how long the post-arrest interview can practically be delayed while interrogation strategy is being discussed. [my emphasis]

If I had any confidence DOJ’s Inspector General would have the same integrity in the future it had under Glenn Fine, I’d bet a ton of money that we see an IG Report describing the very predictable abuse that came out of this memo.

DOJ’s New Miranda Policy Betrays Constitution & Power of Judiciary

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The proclivity of the Obama Administration to simply do as it pleases, whether it violates the Constitution, established authority or the separation of powers doctrine is beyond striking. Last week at this time they were ignoring the Constitutional right of Congress, the Article I branch, to be the determinative branch on the decision to take the country to war. Today Mr. Obama’s Department of Justice has stretched its ever extending arm out to seize, and diminish, the power and authority of the judicial branch and the US Constitution.

Specifically, the DOJ has decided to arrogate upon itself the power to modify the Constitutionally based Miranda rights firmly established by the Article III Branch, the Supreme Court. From Evan Perez at the Wall Street Journal:

New rules allow investigators to hold domestic-terror suspects longer than others without giving them a Miranda warning, significantly expanding exceptions to the instructions that have governed the handling of criminal suspects for more than four decades.

The move is one of the Obama administration’s most significant revisions to rules governing the investigation of terror suspects in the U.S. And it potentially opens a new political tussle over national security policy, as the administration marks another step back from pre-election criticism of unorthodox counterterror methods.

The Supreme Court’s 1966 Miranda ruling obligates law-enforcement officials to advise suspects of their rights to remain silent and to have an attorney present for questioning. A 1984 decision amended that by allowing the questioning of suspects for a limited time before issuing the warning in cases where public safety was at issue.

That exception was seen as a limited device to be used only in cases of an imminent safety threat, but the new rules give interrogators more latitude and flexibility to define what counts as an appropriate circumstance to waive Miranda rights.

A Federal Bureau of Investigation memorandum reviewed by The Wall Street Journal says the policy applies to “exceptional cases” where investigators “conclude that continued unwarned interrogation is necessary to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.” Such action would need prior approval from FBI supervisors and Justice Department lawyers, according to the memo, which was issued in December but not made public.

This type of move has been afoot for almost a year, with Eric Holder proposing it in a string of Sunday morning talk shows on May 9, 2010 and, subsequently, based on Holder’s request for Congressional action to limit Miranda in claimed terrorism cases, Representative Adam Smith proposed such legislation on July 31, 2010. Despite the howling of the usual suspects such as Lindsay Graham, Joe Lieberman, etc. the thought of such legislation died in the face of bi-partisan opposition from a wide range of legislators who actually understood Constitutional separation of powers and judicial authority. They knew the proposed legislation flew in the face of both concepts. And they were quite Read more →

Keith Ellison Salutes Mohammed Salman Hamdani

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As I predicted in my liveblog, the most emotional moment of Peter King’s MUAC Hearing came when Keith Ellison saluted the sacrifice of Mohammed Salman Hamdani.

Every American, including Muslim Americans, suffered on 9/11.

29 Muslims died at the World Trade Center;

3 Muslims died in the hijacked planes (United Flight 175 and American Flight 11).

Muslims stood with the rest of America united in grief, in their resolve to protect America.  Along with Americans of all faiths, Muslim Americans rushed in to save and rescue victims of Al-Quaeda’s terrorism.

Let me close with a story, but remember that it’s only one of many American stories that could be told.  Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a 23-year-old paramedic, a New York City police cadet and a Muslim American.  He was one of those brave first responders who tragically lost their lives in the 9/11 terrorist attacks almost a decade ago.  As The New York Times eulogized, “He wanted to be seen as an all-American kid. He wore No. 79 on the high school football team in Bayside, Queens, where he lived, and he was called Sal by his friends… He became a research assistant at Rockefeller University and drove an ambulance part-time. One Christmas, he sang in Handel’s Messiah in Queens. He saw all the Star Wars movies, and it was well known that his new Honda was the one with “Yung Jedi” license plates.

Mr. Hamdani bravely sacrificed his life to try and help others on 9/11.  After the tragedy some people tried to smear his character solely because of his Islamic faith.  Some people spread false rumors and speculated that he was in league with the attackers only because he was Muslim. It was only when his remains were identified that these lies were fully exposed.

Mohammed Salman Hamdani was a fellow American who gave his life for other Americans.  His life should not be defined as a member of an ethnic group or a member of a religion, but as an American who gave everything for his fellow citizens.

King’s cold response to Sheila Jackson Lee’s request that each member be permitted an opening statement is not the only point in the hearing when he looked like an asshole, though: he twice interrupted his own witness, Abdirizak Bihi, as well as interrupting Jackson Lee. The lesson being, I guess, that if you want to end radicalization in the Muslim community the thing to do is not let brown people speak.

Peter King McCarthyist Hearing LiveBlog

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You can watch here or here.

Bennie Thompson gets permission for Andre Carson and two other Reps to sit on the hearing. People often forget that Carson, like Keith Ellison, is Muslim.

King accuses those who oppose the form of this hearing of hysteria. “To back down would be craven abdication to political correctness.”

King: “No equivalency of threat between al Qaeda and Neo-Nazis. Only Al Qaeda part of intl threat to our country.”

Bennie Thompson: Raises yesterday’s Spokane arrest and notes the suspect has ties to same group as Tim McVeigh. “A narrow focus lacks clarity.” Then says that we all come to this hearing from our history, alludes to King’s background in a country split by religion, an implicit reference to King’s material support for terrorism.

Thompson: I cannot help but worry that propaganda about this hearing will be used to inspire new suicide bombers.

John Dingell up. Note he represents Dearborn, the most Arab city in the US–though Conyers actually represents the side of the city with the heavy Muslim and Arab population (though of course his district has changed over the years).

Dingell: I kept a picture of Joe McCarthy on the wall so I knew what I did not want to be. I would beg you, Mr Chairman, to see to it that as we go into these matters we do not blot the good name of Arabs or Muslims or other Americans en masse. There will be plenty of rascals that we can point at and say these are real dangers to our country.

Keith Elliison up. Ellison introduces mother of son who died trying to rescue people on 9/11.

Ellison: This approach contrary to the best of American values. Need increased engagement to keep America safe.

Ellison: We need to conduct fair hearings and do no harm.[emphasizes reference to Muslim community in title of hearing] These are individuals not the entire community. [mentions people like Nidal Hasan and al-Awlaki] When you assign their violent actions, you assign collective blame to an entire group. Demanding a community response asserts entire community bears responsibility. All communities are responsible for combating violent extremism.

Ellison calls KKK “America’s oldest terrorist organization”

Ellison ends his testimony by describing how Hamdani–the Arab-AMerican who died trying to save people in 9/11–was vilified after the attacks until they found his remains. He described his football uniform, singing Messiah in the choir. By the end, Ellison was weeping. During it, CSPAN broke away to an image of the Twin Towers burning.

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On Eve of Peter King’s Anti-Muslim Hearings, FBI Arrest White Supremacist Alleged Terrorist

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The FBI has made an arrest in the MLK Day Spokane bombing. And the alleged culprit is–not surprisingly–a white supremacist.

An FBI source in Washington, D.C., said one man was arrested east of Spokane. Agents, including a bomb expert from Quantico, Va., were preparing to search a house where others associated with the suspect were living, the source said.

The suspects are apparently affiliated with white supremacists.

The source, who is familiar with the investigation but is not authorized to speak on the record, said that “good police work” led to the arrest and that forensic evidence taken from a backpack bomb was key to the case.

Update (not sure what happened to presser, but maybe Holder has decided not to speak publicly about terrorism since he got dinged the last time):

They’ve identified the suspect as Kevin William Harpham:

An ex-soldier with ties to the white supremacist movement has been taken into custody in connection with the planting of a backpack bomb along the planned route of the Martin Luther King Jr. march in downtown Spokane, authorities have confirmed.

Kevin William Harpham, 36, of Colville, could face life imprisonment on charges of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction and possession of an unregistered explosive device, according to documents on file in U.S. District Court. An initial court appearance is scheduled for this afternoon.

Peter King Needs to Be Object Lesson in Our Failed Counter-Terrorism Approach

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Back in January, I suggested that Peter King ought not be hailed for his role in the Irish peace process, but rather called out for his hypocrisy on terrorism.

Peter King would still be in prison if the US had treated his material support for terrorism as it now does, with sentences that can amount to a life sentence. Instead, the raging hypocrite is using the Congressional seat he owes, in part, to his earlier embrace of terrorism to sow bigotry and hatred–and to make the cooperation of the Islamic community, which plays a key role in identifying real extremists, more difficult.

The correct response to King’s actions is undoubtedly to point to this rank hypocrisy. Perhaps the NYT is suggesting it will do just that if King doesn’t back off his fear-mongering. But I believe it is already far too late for polite society to continue to soft-pedal this issue. It is inappropriate for a former terrorist sympathizer to head the Homeland Security Committee. And particularly when King uses that position to pull stunts like this, polite society needs to call out his hypocrisy in clear terms.

Credit where credit is due, polite society is doing that in a big way on the eve of King’s McCarthyite anti-Muslim hearings Thursday.

But it seems time to go the next step. Two people calling King out now (one a victim of an IRA attack, the other a former supporter) suggest that King ought to have a kind of insight that would help our fight against terrorism.

“King’s exactly right to say there’s a difference of approach between the I.R.A. and Al Qaeda,” said Tom Parker, a counterterrorism specialist at Amnesty International and a former British military intelligence officer. “But I personally consider both of them terrorist groups.”

Mr. Parker was at a birthday party for a friend in London in 1990 when the I.R.A. tossed a bomb onto the roof of the rented hall, a historic barracks. Many people, including Mr. Parker, were injured, but none died, by lucky chance of location and quick medical response, he said.

What troubles him, Mr. Parker said, is that Mr. King “understands the pull of ancestral ties. He took a great interest in a terrorist struggle overseas. He’s a guy who could bring real insight to this situation.” Instead, he said, “he is damaging cooperation from the greatest allies the U.S. has in counterterrorism.”

Some who have been close to Mr. King agree. Niall O’Dowd, an Irish-born New York publisher and writer who worked with him on the peace process in the 1990s, broke publicly with him Monday on his Web site, IrishCentral.com, describing Mr. King’s “strange journey from Irish radical to Muslim inquisitor.”

In Northern Ireland, Mr. O’Dowd said, they saw a Catholic community “demonized” by its Protestant and British critics and worked to bring it to the peace table. Seeing his old friend similarly “demonize” Muslims has shocked him, he said.

“I honestly feel Peter is wrong, and his own experience in Northern Ireland teaches him that,” Mr. O’Dowd said. “He’s a very honest, working-class Irish guy from Queens who’s had an amazing career. Now I see a man turning back on himself, and I don’t know why.” [my emphasis]

And I think that’s right. It is downright inappropriate to have an unapologetic terrorist sympathizer head our Committee on Homeland Security. So long as King maintains his terrorist support was justifiable but that of brown people is somehow different, he stands as a symbol of US hypocrisy on terrorism.

If King were to realize that his journey from terrorism to peace is no different than that of Muslims, he might well be able to teach his colleagues about the failures inherent in our counter-terrorism policy, particularly the approach that meets violence with even more violence, often hitting civilian bystanders.

But until he recognizes that, he is absolutely inappropriate to head Homeland Security. And that ought to be clear to polite society at this point.

FBI Gets Its Lone Wolf, Just in Time for PATRIOT Debate

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This morning, the FBI arrested 20-year old Saudi citizen Khalid Ali-M Aldawsari on one charge of attempted use of a weapon of mass destruction. According to the FBI, Aldawsari had allegedly purchased all the ingredients to make an IED using the explosive trinitrophenol, which also known as T.N.P., or picric acid. In addition, he had researched targets, including George W Bush’s home in Dallas, not far from his own location in Lubbock, TX.

If the facts are as alleged, Aldawsari sounds like a potentially much more dangerous person than the number of aspirational terrorists the FBI has entrapped of late. So I am grateful that Con-Way freight officials alerted the Lubbock Police Department when Aldawsari attempted to have them receive his shipment of phenol, an ingredient in picric acid.

But I have two concerns. The first, as Robert Chesney lays out, this case seems to strain the meaning of “attempt” in the charge.

This could be an important case from a legal perspective, in the sense that it may turn on the anticipatory scope of attempt liability – an issue that just doesn’t matter when it is possible to charge conspiracy, but which becomes central in the case of a lone wolf.

Absent a conspiracy, the prosecutors are instead relying on attempt as the inchoate charge (under 18 USC 2332a, the WMD statute; recall that “WMD” is defined very loosely to encompass more or less all bombs). The interesting question is whether the facts alleged below suffice to trigger “attempt” liability.  It does not sound as if he had yet assembled a bomb, which would have made for a much easier case.  On the other hand, the many substantial steps that he had actually taken, if one credits the allegations below, leave no room for doubt as to what was going on.  In any event, we can expect some interesting and important debate about the anticipatory scope of the attempt concept. If this proves problematic, and if this turns out to be a truly solo operation, it will serve to highlight a critical point about inchoate criminal law: criminal liability attaches far earlier in the planning process for groups than for individuals.

Unlike the case of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, the FBI doesn’t have evidence of the suspect literally trying to trigger a bomb. Unlike Najibullah Zazi, they FBI doesn’t have evidence of him trying to make the explosive he intended to use. They have, according to the affidavit, just evidence that he had purchased all the things he’d need to make an IED, and evidence that he had researched potential targets. Is that going to be enough to constitute an attempt?

But what I find more interesting is a point Chesney also alludes to.

Note too that this was not a “sting” case that might raise objections on entrapment grounds, at least according to these allegations.  It is very much the real deal lone wolf scenario, or so it seems, and we were deeply fortunate that it was discovered in advance.

Unlike Zazi and Mohamud, who had contacts with people abroad, Aldawsari is portrayed to be someone who plotted this completely on his own using research available on the Internet. Also unlike Zazi and Mohamud, Aldawsari is not a US person; he’s an F-1 student visa holder, meaning he qualifies for the Lone Wolf provision in the PATRIOT Act. And it appears likely that the government used the Lone Wolf provision to collect evidence in this case.

It appears Aldawsari first came to the government’s attention when Con-Way Freight contacted the Lubbock Police sometime on  January 30 or February 1, 2011 to report Aldawsari’s attempt to get them to receive the phenol he had ordered. It appears that the FBI in Greensboro, NC (either in response to the Con-Way alert or independently, the affidavit doesn’t make clear) learned that the company from which Aldawsari ordered the phenol had had a suspicious attempted purchase of phenol. From there, the FBI agent in this case, Michael Orndoff, first had the chemical supply company call (on February 3) and then posed as an employee of that company to call (February 8) Aldawsari to find out more about why he intended to buy the phenol. The FBI conducted physical searches of Aldawsari’s apartment on February 14 and February 17.

But the rest of the evidence against Aldawsari appears to come from what the affidavit repeatedly describes as “legally authorized electronic surveillance.” The affidavit describes emails on three different accounts going back to October 2010 (though I assume these would have been accessible in archived storage).

Now, we don’t know that the FBI used the Lone Wolf provision to get those emails. But DOJ has a habit of using expiring provisions just in time to demand their reauthorization. I suppose we’ll learn whether they did when the debate over the PATRIOT Act heats up again in the coming weeks.

If Aldawsari is as he is alleged, the detective work here was responsive and thorough; it may have prevented a real attack. But I can’t help but wonder whether the FBI triggered this “attempted use of a WMD” early so as to have its Lone Wolf in time for Congressional debates.

Confirmed: Our Government Has Criminalized Beauty Products

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A year and a half ago, I warned that if you bought certain beauty supplies–hydrogen peroxide and acetone–you might be a terrorism suspect.

I’m going to make a wildarsed guess and suggest that the Federal Government is doing a nationwide search to find out everyone who is buying large amounts of certain kinds of beauty products. And those people are likely now under investigation as potential terrorism suspects.

Shortly thereafter, John Kyl basically confirmed that the government had been tracking certain people buying hydrogen peroxide.

Yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller did so in even more explicit terms.

Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Robert Mueller appeared to indicate for the first time Wednesday that his agency uses a provision of the PATRIOT Act to obtain information about purchases of hydrogren peroxide–a common household chemical hair bleach and antiseptic that can also be turned into an explosive.

The comment in passing by Mueller during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing was noteworthy because critics have suggested that the FBI is using a provision in the PATRIOT Act to conduct broad surveillance of sales of lawful products such as hydrogen peroxide and acetone.

“It’s been used over 380 times since 2001,” Mueller said of the so-called business records provision, also known as Section 215. “It provides us the ability to get records other than telephone toll records, which we can get through another provision of the statutes. It allows us to get records such as Fedex or UPS records….or records relating to the purchase of hydrogen peroxide, or license records—records that we would get automatically with a grand jury subpoena on the criminal side, the [Section] 215 process allows us to get on the national security side.” (Emphasis original)

Emptywheel: where you read today about the civil liberties infringements your government will confirm years from now.

What Mueller didn’t confirm, but what we can pretty much conclude at this point, is that they’ve used the 215 provision to investigate as terrorists perfectly innocent (and possibly Muslim) purchasers of beauty supplies.

Recall how I first figured out the government was using Section 215 to track beauty supplies. After DiFi blabbed that they had used Section 215 in the Najibullah Zazi case, I examined the detention motion on Zazi to see what kind of evidence they used to justify refusing him bail. It included this:

Evidence that “individuals associated with Zazi purchased unusual quantities of hydrogen and acetone products in July, August, and September 2009 from three different beauty supply stores in and around Aurora;” these purchases include:

  • Person one: a one-gallon container of a product containing 20% hydrogen peroxide and an 8-oz bottle of acetone
  • Person two: an acetone product
  • Person three: 32-oz bottles of Ion Sensitive Scalp Developer three different times

The federal government argued, in part, that Zazi had to be denied bail because three people “associated with him” bought beauty supplies “in and around Aurora.”

Last February, Zazi accepted a plea agreement and has been cooperating with investigators; the government has twice delayed his sentencing, suggesting he’s still fully cooperating. Since that time, the only people arrested for participating in the actual plot–as opposed to obstructing justice by trying to hide the evidence of Zazi’s bomb-making, with which both Zazi’s father and uncle were charged–are in NY or Pakistan.

That is, it appears that Zazi had no accomplices “in and around Aurora.”

That’s particularly interesting given that Zazi is reported to have had few close ties in the Denver area. He only moved there in January 2009, 8 months before his arrest. And both his employer and the other worshipers at his mosque describe him as keeping to himself.

Unlike most drivers at ABC, who drove eight- or nine-hour shifts, Zazi routinely worked 16-to-18-hour days, often putting in as many as 80 hours a week ferrying passengers to and from DIA. “He was a regular kind of guy, but he worked hard and he wanted money,” says Hicham Semmaml, a Moroccan-born ABC driver. “I would have never suspected any of this.”

[snip]

“He kept to himself pretty much, and he never gave any outward signs of being connected with anybody,” Gross said.

[snip]

Zazi would turn up for afternoon prayers each Friday — Islam’s holy day — parking the ABC van in the parking lot outside the sprawling brick complex with its black dome and narrow minaret. Other regular worshippers agreed that he never spoke to anyone and usually rushed off immediately once the service ended.

All the currently available evidence suggests that these three Zazi “associates” buying beauty supplies turned out to be completely innocent. That would mean that one of the reasons the government said Zazi should be held without bail (there were plenty of others) basically amounts to innocent people with some attenuated tie to Zazi buying beauty supplies.

But consider what their beauty supply purchase has exposed them to–particularly if the association involved amounts to membership in the same mosque as him. Their purchase of beauty supplies undoubtedly made them a target for further investigation, presumably FBI agents asking questions of their neighbors and employers, probably the use of other PATRIOT provisions to track their calls and emails, and possibly even a wiretap.

So these three people, because they worshiped at the same mosque as Zazi or drove an airport van but presumably in the absence of any evidence of actual friendship with him had their lives unpacked by our government because they bought a couple bottles of beauty supplies.

The CIA IG Report on Renditions

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There are a couple of details I want to return to in this AP story on what has happened to those responsible for CIA’s biggest fuck-ups and crimes.

One is this discussion of the CIA Inspector General’s report on “erroneous” renditions.

While the inspector general was investigating the mishandled el-Masri case, congressional investigators discovered several other CIA renditions that seemed to rest on bad legal footing, a U.S. intelligence official said. The CIA looked into them and conceded that, yes, the renditions had been based on faulty analysis.

But the agency said the renditions would have been approved even if the correct analysis had been used, so nobody was disciplined.

Now, we’ve heard of this investigation before. References to it (but no details) appear in a lot of the documents or Vaughn Indices released as part of the torture and ghost detainee FOIAs (often in the form of Congress nagging the CIA for the results of the study). The most detailed early description of the investigation comes from a 2005 Dana Priest article that was also one of the earliest detailed description of Khaled el-Masri’s treatment.

The CIA inspector general is investigating a growing number of what it calls “erroneous renditions,” according to several former and current intelligence officials.

One official said about three dozen names fall in that category; others believe it is fewer. The list includes several people whose identities were offered by al Qaeda figures during CIA interrogations, officials said. One turned out to be an innocent college professor who had given the al Qaeda member a bad grade, one official said.

“They picked up the wrong people, who had no information. In many, many cases there was only some vague association” with terrorism, one CIA officer said.

Priest reviews several of the people rendered by the CIA but ultimately dumped in Gitmo which served–one of Priest’s sources explains–as the dumping ground for CIA’s mistakes.

Among those released from Guantanamo is Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian citizen, apprehended by a CIA team in Pakistan in October 2001, then sent to Egypt for interrogation, according to court papers. He has alleged that he was burned by cigarettes, given electric shocks and beaten by Egyptian captors. After six months, he was flown to Guantanamo Bay and let go earlier this year without being charged.

Another CIA former captive, according to declassified testimony from military tribunals and other records, is Mohamedou Oulad Slahi, a Mauritanian and former Canada resident, who says he turned himself in to the Mauritanian police 18 days after the 9/11 attacks because he heard the Americans were looking for him. The CIA took him to Jordan, where he spent eight months undergoing interrogation, according to his testimony, before being taken to Guantanamo Bay.

Another is Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, an Egyptian imprisoned by Indonesia authorities in January 2002 after he was heard talking — he says jokingly — about a new shoe bomb technology. He was flown to Egypt for interrogation and returned to CIA hands four months later, according to one former intelligence official. After being held for 13 months in Afghanistan, he was taken to Guantanamo Bay, according to his testimony.

Note Habib is one of the former detainees whose treatment at the hand of Omar Suleiman has come under new scrutiny given Suleiman’s role in a post-Mubarak Egypt.

Now, the AP piece doesn’t provide many new details, but two are worthy of note.

First, apparently Congress identified the erroneous renditions, not the CIA. That suggests the CIA was not forthcoming in admitting its mistakes to Congress (which is about par for the course).

But I’m interested too in the conclusion:the renditions had been based “on faulty analysis” but they would have been approved even if “the correct analysis” was used.

That suggests Inspector General John Helgerson, not long after CIA had finagled a way to limit his conclusions about torture, focused on just the analysis–presumably, the approval process–that went into the rendition. I’m not sure what that means, but looking back at Priest’s description of the problem behind “erroneous” renditions–notably, its reliance on torture-induced evidence from al Qaeda detainees–I wonder whether Helgerson assessed the actual facts behind the rendition, or just whether the rendition, using those faulty facts, would have been approved according to the right decision process. That is, I wonder whether the CIA decided that the disappearances that even it considers were wrong didn’t matter so much because they didn’t evaluate the lies and misinformation their torture program had introduced into the process by which they chose people to disappear.

That is, it appears CIA has labeled its disappearances simply a matter of flawed bureaucracy rather than a clear example of the problems that result when you eliminate due process.

Rummy’s Dump

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Donald Rumsfeld, channeling Julian Assange, has now made the database of documents accompanying his book available.

As Spencer notes, making these documents available is largely self-serving; a way for Rummy to point to early moments of reflection that were followed by later moments of rash stupidity or lies.

To put it uncharitably: when you’ve got a rep for being less-than-honest and unwilling to debate, you might as well let the documents speak for themselves.

So take, for instance, one that Rumsfeld’s promoting on his website. It’s a September 9, 2002 summary from the Joint Staff’s top intelligence official confessing that U.S. assessments of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction “rely heavily on analytic assumptions and judgment rather than hard evidence.” Rumsfeld told the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to “take a look” at the memo, because “what we don’t know about WMD… is big.”

Aha! Rumsfeld was a voice for moderation on the Iraq WMD all along! He looks pretty good for bravely disclosing that, right? Not when you remember that after he received that summary, he continued to portray the evidence against Iraq as ironclad, up to and after the invasion. (“We know where [the WMD] are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.”)

Spencer points to similar examples relating to Afghanistan and interrogation.

But there are some fascinating documents in here. As Marc Ambinder noted yesterday, there’s Rummy’s memo to General Myers and Stephen Cambone supporting George Tenet’s recommendation that John Brennan head the Terrorist Threat Integration Center; in that position Brennan oversaw targeting for Cheney’s illegal wiretap program. But in news relevant to today, the memo also emphasizes Brennan’s experience as CIA’s Chief of Station in Cairo.

Then there’s this memo from retired General Wayne Downing to Rummy recommending some changes to Special Operations. Among other things, this memo recommends that special operations report directly to the Secretary of Defense:

To flatten the chain of command, JSOC should report directly to the SD for the immediate future. There is precedent for this new approach to the combat employment of SOF that will better position DoD for the future fight. JSOC reported directly to the CJCS prior to Goldwater-Nichols legislation and the Nunn-Cohen Amendment.

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