The Boys of War

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One more boy got dragged into the horror of our country’s war on terror today: Tanner Speer, the 8 or 9 year old son of Christopher Speer, whose death Omar Khadr confessed to. Tanner’s mother read a note the boy wrote for (I think) Memorial Day.

“Omar Khadr should go to jail because of the open hole he made in my family,” wrote Tanner. “Army rocks. Bad guys stink.”

Shortly thereafter, Khadr made an unsworn statement, confessing to killing Speer, but spending time too talking about his biggest dream, to get out of Gitmo, describing how he wanted to be a doctor to help heal the pain of others. He turned to Speer’s widow and apologized for the pain he caused her family; the widow shook her head no in response.

“I’m really, really sorry for the pain I’ve caused you and your family. I wish I could do something that would take this pain away from you,” he said, standing in the witness box and looking at the widow of U.S. Delta Force soldier Christopher Speer.

Also today, Josh Rogin got a copy of the memo the State Department wrote explaining why the US needed to tolerate Yemen’s recruitment of 15 year old boys–the same age Khadr was when we captured him.

Imposing the section 404(a) prohibition against Yemen at this time would harm the cooperative relationship we have begun to rebuild with Yemen at a pivotal point in the fight against terrorism and have a negative impact on U.S. national security.

[snip]

Cutting off assistance would seriously jeopardize the Yemeni Government’s capability to conduct special operations and counterterrorism missions, and create a dangerous level of instability in the country and the region.

It’s not enough for the Speers apparently, for Khadr to apologize. Because that won’t fix the hole in the Speer family.

I believe that, and I am sorry for their loss.

But these boys conscripted by all sides into the war on terror are not the ones putting the holes in families.

“Profound Equities with Yemen in Terms of Counter-Terrorism” Justify Child Soldiers?

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As the prosecutors in Omar Khadr’s sentencing hearing try to undercut the testimony of a defense witness who believes Khadr can be rehabilitated, not least because of his age, an anonymous White House official justifies to Josh Rogin Obama’s decision to undercut a law prohibiting the government from funding countries that use child soldiers.

As I suspected, the Administration rationale for exempting Yemen from sanction explicitly has to do with our counter-terrorism efforts there.

Yemen is a recipient of significant direct U.S. military assistance, having received $155 million in fiscal 2010 with a possible $1.2 billion coming over the next five years. Yemen is also a much needed ally for counterterrorism operations. The government is engaged in a bloody fight with al Qaeda (among other separatist and terrorist groups), and estimates put the ratio of child soldiers among all the groups there at more than half. Nevertheless, “the president believes there are profound equities with Yemen in terms of counterterrorism that we need to continue to work on,” the official told The Cable.

It’s bad enough that our assistance in Yemen will contribute to a war in which half the soldiers are boys.

But I really am saddened by the coincidence in this timing. At this very moment, we’re going to great lengths in Gitmo to villainize Khadr, at least partly to dismiss all the criticism about trying a child soldier (for a crime that is not a crime). It’s as if those involved are trying to convince themselves that their war on terror trumps international norms of decency.

And even as we’re doing that, the President is taking affirmative steps to make it more likely that another boy, like Khadr, will be put in the same situation as him, attacked for following the orders of the adults around him.

The Logical Outcome of Juan Williams’ Legitimization of Irrational Fears

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As Adam Serwer noted, a family apparently dressed in Muslim garb was removed from a plane and questioned by the FBI today.

Some cannot help but think their appearance had something to do with a family’s removal from a plane Tuesday morning at Memphis International Airport.

“My understanding is they were dressed in attire that would indicate some Muslim-type religion,” said airport vice-president Scott Brockman.

[snip]

“The family was asked to leave the aircraft, which they did peacefully,” said Brockman.  “At that point, the aircraft was inspected and cleared,” he added.

A bomb-sniffing dog and other measures resulted in a two-hour delay.  The family was placed on a later flight following an interview with the FBI.

Thanks to Juan Williams’ legitimization of this kind of irrational response, I guess people dressed in religious garb no longer can pee in crappy airplane bathrooms without expecting to be detained by the FBI.

The Same Day US Gets Guilty Plea from Child Soldier, It Exempts Yemen and Others from Restrictions on Using Child Soldiers

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The asshole in charge of shredding our Constitution has a really sick sense of humor. Yesterday, the same day the government got Omar Khadr to plead guilty to crimes that aren’t crimes that occurred when he was a child, Obama issued this memorandum.

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, pursuant to section 404(c) of the Child Soldiers Prevention Act of 2008 (CSPA), title IV of the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 (Public Law 110 457), I hereby determine that it is in the national interest of the United States to waive the application to Chad, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Sudan, and Yemen of the prohibition in section 404(a) of the CSPA.

This memo appears to waive the following restriction, thereby allowing the US to fund operations with or make weapons sales to Chad, DRC, Sudan, and Yemen, even though the State Department has reason to believe they use child soldiers.

(a) In General- Subject to subsections (c), (d), and (e), none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available for international military education and training, foreign military financing, or the transfer of excess defense articles under section 116 or 502B of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 (22 U.S.C. 2151n(f) and 2304(h)), the Arms Export Control Act (22 U.S.C. 2751), the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act, 2008 (division J of Public Law 110-161) or under any other Act making appropriations for foreign operations, export financing, and related programs may be obligated or otherwise made available, and no licenses for direct commercial sales of military equipment may be issued to the government of a country that is clearly identified, in the Department of State’s Country Report on Human Rights Practices for the most recent year preceding the fiscal year in which the appropriated funds, transfer, or license, would have been used or issued in the absence of a violation of this title, as having governmental armed forces or government-supported armed groups, including paramilitaries, militias, or civil defense forces, that recruit and use child soldiers.

So, one of the side benefits of Yemen’s cooperation with us on the war on terror is that it can conscript those under 18 and accept as volunteers those under 16 in its military.

This hopey changey thing is really beginning to overwhelm me.

Update: the State Department Report on Yemen last year described this use of child soldiers:

Reports of child soldiers increased in a number of armed conflicts across the country. According to the NGO Small Arms Survey, direct involvement in combat killed or injured hundreds of children annually.

The intermittent conflict in Saada, which began again in August, reportedly drew underage soldiers fighting for the government and the rebel Houthis (see section 1.g.). The Houthis reportedly used children as runners in between groups of fighters as well as to carry supplies and explosives, according to local children’s rights NGO Seyaj. Tribes the government armed and financed to fight alongside the regular army used children younger than 18 in combat, according to reports by international NGOs such as Save the Children.

Married boys, ages 12 to 15 years, were reportedly involved in armed conflict beginning in November 2008 in Amran governorate between the Harf Sufian and al-Osaimat tribes. According to tribal custom, boys who married were considered adults who owed allegiance to the tribe. As a result, half of the tribal fighters in such conflicts were children who had volunteered to demonstrate their tribal allegiance.

It also described the sex trafficking in girls.

There were reports of underage internal sex trafficking during the year. According to a local human rights NGO, an unknown number of women were trafficked from their homes to other regions within the country for the purposes of prostitution.

Though the report says most sex slaves worked in hotels, casinos, and nightclubs, if any of them were used by the armed forces, they would also count as child soldiers.

Update: See this exchange between harpie and powwow, who were discussing this earlier this month.

Juan Williams’ Irrational Fear of Non-Terrorists

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I’m happy to see Juan Williams and his crappy analysis gone from NPR. But the whole ruckus over Juan Williams’ firing from NPR over his admission that he does a double take when he sees people dressed in obviously Muslim garb is missing a key point.

Williams says he gets anxious when he sees people in Muslim garb.

WILLIAMS: Wednesday afternoon, I got a message on my cell phone from Ellen Weiss who is the head of news at NPR asking me to call. When I called back, she said, “What did you say, what did you mean to say?” And I said, “I said what I meant to say” which is that it’s an honest experience that went on in an airport and I see people who are in Muslim garb who identify themselves as first and foremost as Muslims, I do a double take. I have a moment of anxiety or fear given what happened on 9/11. That’s just a reality. And she went on to say, “Well that crosses the line.” And I said, “What line is that?”

And she went on to somehow suggest that I had made a bigoted statement. And I said “that’s not a bigoted statement. In fact, in the course of this conversation with O’Reilly, I said that we have as Americans an obligation to protect constitutional rights of everyone in the country and to make sure we don’t have any outbreak of bigotry but that there’s a reality. You cannot ignore what happened on 9/11 and you cannot ignore the connection to Islamic radicalism and you can’t ignore the fact that what has been recently said in court with regard to this is the first drop of blood in a Muslim war on America. [my emphasis]

Of course, the “reality” that Williams is missing is that when Islamic terrorists get onto planes to try to blow them up, they don’t dress in Muslim garb. On the contrary, we know that Islamic terrorists make sure they appear as “normal” as possible by shaving and dressing as mainstream Americans would. Moreover, Islamic terrorists are increasingly recruiting people who look like westerners.

The last people you should be afraid of on a plane are those self-identifying by their dress as Muslims.

Maybe this is a side-effect of hanging out at with the stupid people and bigots at Fox News for so many years, this really irrational sense of what we should fear. But no matter whether you consider Williams’ statement itself bigoted or not, it is undeniably stupid. Really stupid. And on that basis alone, NPR is justified in firing Williams.

Update: George Stephanopoulos asks Williams whether he should have admitted he was being irrational.

CIA and DOJ’s Different Ideas of Accountability on Khost

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I wanted to return to yesterday’s report on the investigation in the Khost bombing. As I noted, the CIA had advance warning that Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi might be a double agent. The report also found a number of other operational problems in al-Balawi’s treatment. But Leon Panetta decided not to hold anyone responsible for the attack.

Now let’s return to another curious detail about the Khost bombing.

The CIA is not holding anyone responsible.

But DOJ is.

As I noted last month, DOJ is using Hakimullah Mehsud’s involvement in the Khost bombing–the DOJ has videos of Mehsud talking about the attack with al-Balawi in advance of the bombing–as its basis for indicting him on conspiracy charges.

It’s not that I mind DOJ indicting Mehsud. They say they’ve got evidence linking him to Faisal Shahzad’s attempted Time Square bombing. And if they do, I’d love to see them indict and try Mehsud on that count.

But it’s a tremendous stretch to argue that Mehsud’s conspiracy with al-Balawi to strike the CIA officers who were targeting Pakistan with drone strikes was illegal. Either the CIA officers must be treated as civilians, in which case they should not be launching drones at people like Mehsud’s brother, whom they killed in a drone attack. Or they are legitimate military targets, in which case any involvement from Mehsud seems to have been a legitimate act of self-defense (hell, regardless of their civilian status, he could probably legitimately claim self-defense in any case).

Mind you, they’ll probably end up taking Mehsud out the same way the took his brother, with a drone, making any indictment moot. But it all seems to suggest that at its higher levels, at least, we’re running this war on terror motivated primarily by our own insecurities, latching onto things that most shame us, rather than any consistent approach. We’ve got to avoid accountability at CIA for some obvious failures because we don’t want to be critical of the dead (or note the mistakes of more senior officers). But we’ve got to use the same event as reason to label the self-defense of an opponent as a crime.

Which seems to be the same thing going on with Fox’s story that Anwar al-Awlaki dined at the Pentagon after 9/11 (at a luncheon in Jim Haynes’ Office of General Counsel!). The fear-mongerers seem to want to suggest this was another big lapse in our vetting system (and maybe it was), as if to suggest that al-Awlaki in 2001 is in the same place he allegedly is now. The FBI was investigating this lunch subsequent to Nidal Hasan’s Fort Hood attack (the 302 is dated November 23, 2009, so at about the time when Yemen asked us to take out al-Awlaki, but probably before he was reportedly put on JSOC’s kill list, which may have happened in December). And leak of this news seems to be part of an effort to suggest the government missed an obvious threat long before Fort Hood. But that’s not at all clear.

The UndieBomber Hearing

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The UndieBomber, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, had his first day in court since he decided to represent himself today. The outcome of the day was to schedule another pre-trial hearing on January 12.

The only drama of the day pertained to whether Abdulmutallab would grant his standby counsel, Anthony Chambers, access to discovery. Abdulmutallab stated he thought it was unnecessary. But then Judge Nancy Edmunds overrode that judgment and ordered the government to hand over discovery. Abdulmutallab did waive his right to speedy trial, thus granting Chambers the 90 days he requested to review the discovery. (Prosecutor Jonathan Tukel suggested that Abdulmutallab should just hand over the discovery — which would have had the effect of depriving Chambers of discovery — but Chambers objected with Edmunds’ support.)

Abdulmutallab seems to have no objection to Chambers himself, and it seems likely Chambers will be doing more than just stand-by counsel, while still giving Abdulmutallab the ability to object.

Abdulmutallab, by the way, was brought into the court room in khaki pants and a short-sleeve khaki shirt over an untucked t-shirt and blue sneakers — which all looked like a boy scout uniform, particularly given that Abdulmutallab is so short (probably shorter than my 5’6″). He had only a thin set of red handcuffs, and those were removed for the hearing itself.

Another day, another uneventful civilian hearing for an accused terrorist, yet more proof that the civilian courts can handle terrorist cases.

Update: The big news of the day in the Detroit court house, I should say, was not that a scary terrorist had a hearing leading up to his civilian trial. Rather it was that 85 people (many of whom appeared to be, as would be normal in Detroit, Arabs) got sworn in as American citizens.

Rule of civilian law and a bunch of immigrants becoming citizens. It’s a good day in America!

Court Dockets Are Becoming the 21st Century Memory Hole

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Dafna Linzer has two important pieces on the habeas petition of Abdul Rahim Mohammed Uthman which should both be read in full. This one describes how the government’s case against Uthman, which alleges that he was one of Osama bin Laden’s guards, relies on the following testimony:

  • A statement from Hakim Abd Al Karim Amin Bukhari describing him as a member of OBL’s security detail. In his opinion on the case, Judge Henry Kennedy Jr treated that statement with skepticism because he believed it may have come second-hand from information Bukhari learned at Gitmo, and because Bukhari had become psychotic while at Gitmo, which rendered his statements about other detainees–according to a military psychologist–unreliable.
  • A witness statement from Abdul Rahman Ma’ath Thafir al Amri, based on a photograph, identifying Uthman as “Yasser Al-Madani.” As Linzer points out, calling him “al-Madani” would label him as a Saudi, not as the Yemeni he is. Al Amri killed himself three years ago after a hunger strike at Gitmo.
  • A statement from Salim Hamdan identifying Uthman as “Hudayfah al-Adani,” which is one of the few things Kennedy accepted as credible.
  • A statement from Yemeni detainee Sharqawi Abdul Ali al Hajj identifying Uthman as an OBL bodyguard. Before making that statement at Gitmo, Hajj was tortured in Jordan over a period of 19 months in Jordan. Kennedy ruled that Hajj’s statement was too closely tied to the torture he experienced in Jordan to be considered reliable.
  • A statement from Yemeni detainee Sanad Yislam al Kazimi saying a photo of Uthman looked like Hadayfah al-Yemeni, whom Kazimi claims to have seen in Kabul several months before Uthman arrived in Afghanistan. Kazimi claims to have been severely tortured in Dubai and Kabul in 2003. As a result, Kennedy deemed his statement, like Hajj’s, to be too closely tied to torture to be treated as credible.

Go read Linzer’s piece for much more on the thin case against Uthman. And note, Uthman is one of the 48 men the government claims it has reason to hold indefinitely.

The other piece provides background on how Linzer was able to piece together all those details from Kennedy’s opinion. As she describes, DOJ accidentally submitted Kennedy’s opinion without redacting it. Only after she pulled a copy of it did DOJ remove it from PACER entirely and–a day later–replace the opinion with a significantly altered version.

A day after his March 16 order was filed on the court’s electronic docket, Kennedy’s opinion vanished. Weeks later, a new ruling appeared in its place. While it reached the same conclusion, eight pages of material had been removed, including key passages in which Kennedy dismantled the government’s case against Uthman.

[snip]

The alterations are extensive. Sentences were rewritten. Footnotes that described disputes and discrepancies in the government’s case were deleted. Even the date and circumstances of Uthman’s arrest were changed. In the first version, the judge said Uthman was detained on Dec. 15, 2001, in Pakistan by Pakistani authorities. Rewritten, Kennedy said in the public opinion that Uthman admitted being captured “in late 2001 in the general vicinity of Tora Bora,” the cave complex where bin Laden was thought to be hiding at that time.

Linzer’s story provides a detailed background of what happened with this opinion: how DOJ tried to reclaim all the copies of it, how Kennedy had to insist on an opinion being published at all, how they forced Kennedy to write another version, how DOJ has since released the government’s appeal of Kennedy’s order with information redacted in his opinion left unredacted in their appeal.

Particularly troubling is Linzer’s description of how the completely altered opinion falsely suggests Uthman was present at Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden, even while it hides evidence that he was turned over by Pakistanis implicated in turning over Arabs for bounty.

Kennedy’s original opinion noted that Uthman was seized in Parachinar; that he reached the town after an eight-day trek from the Afghan town of Khost, nowhere near Tora Bora; and that his journey to Pakistan began around Dec. 8, 2001. Those facts make it difficult to portray Uthman as a fighter in a battle that took place between Dec. 12 and Dec. 17 at Tora Bora. Two footnotes in the original opinion note that the government does not contest that Uthman was taken into custody in Parachinar.

Both were removed in the second opinion and Kennedy substituted wording to write instead that Uthman admitted he was seized “in late 2001 in the general vicinity of Tora Bora, Afghanistan.”

The intent of this editing may have been to conceal the role of the Pakistanis in capturing al-Qaida fighters although those details were long ago declassified. But the effect was to link Uthman more closely to the retreat of bin Laden and his inner circle through Tora Bora.

Now all of this is disturbing enough. But I’m particularly interested in the way DOJ tried to hide the fact that the opinion had been altered.

Even the court docket was altered. When the opinion was originally posted on March 16, the docket noted Kennedy’s grant of the writ of habeas corpus to the petitioner. Today, the entry for March 16 simply reads: “Document Entered In Error Erroneously.”

That is, the government is using classification to conduct legal spin, and then it is hiding all evidence they have done so. This is the same DOJ, of course, that is disappearing all evidence of the proceedings against high level Colombian terrorists extradited for drug-related infractions (but not terrorism), and in the process, removing them from Colombia’s reconciliation process. While it’s not clear whether the government is doing the latter just to protect an ongoing investigation or doing it to protect the members of the Colombian government with ties to these right wing terrorists, the way in which the government has turned the court docket into a memory hole seems to be playing a central role in completely arbitrary designations of who is and who is not a terrorist.

The war on terror has become capricious enough. But as the docket increasing gets treated like Orwell’s memory hole, it plays a key role in the government’s ability to sustain its arbitrary claims about what makes a person a terrorist.

Kaplan’s Decision Not Just about Coercion of Ghailani, but Also of Abebe

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The usual suspects are out wailing that Judge Lewis Kaplan’s order, excluding the testimony of Hussein Abebe from Ahmed Ghailani’s trial, proves civilian courts don’t work for terrorism. Glenn rounds up more of the whiners and notes that you really can’t complain about Kaplan’s decision and still claim to believe in rule of law.

I wanted to add just one detail to the discussion bmaz offered yesterday (and thanks to him and Mary for watching the likker cabinet while I was away).

Kaplan rejected Abebe’s testimony not just because of the CIA’s coercion of Ghailani, but also because of possible coercion of Abebe himself.

Mary noted Kaplan’s suggestion that the witnesses put forth by the government either did not include all the witnesses who should have testified that Abebe would testify voluntarily, or weren’t themselves credible. Here’s what Kaplan said:

On the basis of that record – including importantly its assessment of the credibility of the only witnesses called to testify who actually were present when Abebe was persuaded to confess his role, to implicate Ghailani, and to cooperate with authorities – it now finds and concludes that the government has failed to prove that Abebe’s testimony is sufficiently attenuated from Ghailani’s coerced statements to permit its receipt in evidence.

And here’s what Mary wrote about it:

It makes it sound as if the issue isn’t just how attentuated the evidence from the coercion, but also how credible the witnesses. The “only witnesses called to testify who were actually present” – for some reason this makes me wonder if the court was aware that there were clearly other witnesses present when Abebe was being “persuaded” and they were purposefully not being provided to testify? And it makes you wonder about the persuasion. Being persuaded and being questioned have some different feel to the underlying words.

Kaplan’s earlier order dismissing the government’s other justifications for calling Abebe as a witness indicates the source of his skepticism–at least as it was before later hearings on the question [note, the earlier filing redacted Abebe’s name, though I’ve put it in where it contextually must be the redacted word].

It is entirely possible that [Abebe] if he were to appear, would be a willing witness. But the burden of proof on the attenuation claim [in which the government relies on Abebe’s willingness to testify to claim it had little to do with Ghailani’s coerced testimony] is on the government. It has submitted no affidavit from [Abebe]. Moreover, there is evidence that arguably undermines the government’s claim. The circumstances of [Abebe’s] initial questioning, at least to the extent that the Court has been made aware of them, perhaps suggest that he is not simply a public spirited citizen who “has come forward [to] offer evidence entirely of [his] own volition.” He was arrested by Tanzania, flew to a distant location, held there for days, and questioned by Tanzanian police before the FBI questioned him. Indeed, he told the Tanzanian authorities at the time of his arrest “that he knew this day would come–that he had been waiting eight years for the authorities to locate him.” The record discloses nothing about what happened while he was in Tanzanian custody, and it is sketchy even about what took place after the FBI arrived. We know only that [Abebe] was released after he was questioned by the FBI and promised to appear as a witness in this case.

The suggestion, of course, is that Abebe may have himself been subject to physical coercion, and at the very least he was only freed after agreeing to testify in Ghailani’s trial, which doesn’t make him a very voluntary witness. Kaplan’s references to the credibility (or not) of the witnesses who testified as well as his suggestion that not everyone involved in Abebe’s interrogation did testify probably suggest he suspects that those other law enforcement officers involved (I’m guessing there has to be at least one Tanzanian official and one US official who didn’t testify) would not be able to testify that Abebe’s testimony was voluntary.

Mind you, for the usual suspects, piling coercion on top of coercion doesn’t much make a difference. And it seems that the government has at least one other witness who knew (perhaps identified through Ghailani’s torture) that a Hussein–who appears to be Abebe–was involved in the plot.

But it sure seems that the problem is not just that they tortured Ghailani and now want to use his testimony under torture to help convict him, but that they may have continued to coerce witnesses–in unknown ways–to get a conviction for Ghailani.

Key Prosecution Witness Excluded Over Torture In New York Terror Trial

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Last Friday, I reminded the clueless media, and thus mostly uninformed public, there was a critical terror trial going on right in their midst in New York City, and doing so quietly and competently as was claimed was impossible by howlers such as Liz and Dick Cheney, Guiliani, Lindsey Graham and the right wing noise machine. The case is US v. Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, and as I explained, although jury selection was well under way, there was a brief delay imposed by the trial judge, SDNY Judge Lewis Kaplan, until today so he could contemplate a motion to exclude a critical prosecution witness argued by the defense on the grounds the putative testimony was the product of torture and coercion.

The decision by Judge Kaplan was just issued and, in somewhat of a shock, he has ordered the witness, Hussein Abebe, excluded. From Bloomberg News:

A judge barred the U.S. from calling as a witness a Tanzanian miner who admits supplying explosives to Ahmed Ghailani, an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist charged with the 1998 bombing of the U.S. embassies in Africa.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan, in New York, denied a request by federal prosecutors to allow Hussein Abebe to testify that he sold five crates of dynamite to Ghailani before the blast. Abebe, whom prosecutors called a “giant” witness in their case, would provide a first-hand account of Ghailani’s role in the attacks, the government said.

Kaplan ruled that Abebe’s testimony is too closely tied to coerced statements made by Ghailani while he was in CIA custody and must be excluded from the trial. The ruling, made public today, will delay the trial’s start until Oct. 12 to give the government time to decide whether to appeal.

“The court has not reached this conclusion lightly,” Kaplan wrote. “It is acutely aware of the perilous nature of the world in which we live. But the Constitution is the rock upon which our nation rests. We must follow it not only when it is convenient, but when fear and danger beckon in a different direction.”

This is a critical ruling and, while it should not be this way, a refreshingly positive one for the health and sanctity of the Constitution and federal Article III courts. Hats off to Judge Kaplan, for while the legal basis seems quite clear on its face, the blowback pressure from the government and boogity boogity terrorism howlers described above (not to mention the Old Gluehorse McCain) will be intense. Here is the critical language from Kaplan’s order:

Abebe was identified and located as a close and direct result of statements made by Ghailani while he was held by the CIA. The government has Read more →