The Scandal Is that Jonathan Alter Doesn’t See the Scandal

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[Sorry for my unannounced absence. I’m on a road trip visiting Mr. EW’s family. Thanks to Jim White and bmaz for guarding the likker cabinet! I know they’ll keep it safe!]

I once got in trouble for mocking people who thought that blowjobs were a scandal worth legal investigation, but torture was not. Given that Jonathan Alter is the so-called liberal who, weeks after 9/11, affirmatively embraced torture, I’m not surprised he still falls in the former group. On Thursday, he wrote a Bloomberg piece sycophantically wondering how Obama managed to have such a scandal-free Administration. This, of the President whose Administration continues to invent all sorts of legal gimmicks to protect his predecessor’s torture. And this, of the guy who is looking high and low for new ways to bail out the banksters from the consequences of their crimes.

This Administration has smothered what was left of rule of law. And yet Alter can’t find a scandal?

Part of the problem stems from Alter’s terms. he equates scandal with some kind of honesty.

President Barack Obama goes into the 2012 with a weak economy that may doom his reelection. But he has one asset that hasn’t received much attention: He’s honest.

Obama certainly lies: about his commitment to the public option, his opposition to telecom immunity, and even his belief that no one is above the law. But what Obama does more is spin–spending months claiming that the deficit is the biggest threat to our country, claiming that a bank settlement is necessary to get the housing market back on track. That kind of spin requires real analysis to catch. Which, I guess, Alter isn’t up to.

And part of Alter’s problem is his adoption of Brendan Nyhan’s definition of scandal: the reference to something as a scandal by a WaPo reporter on that rag’s front page.

Nyhan says that political scientists generally see The Washington Post as a solid indicator of elite opinion — so for his study, a problem officially curdles into a scandal once the S-word is used in a reporter’s own voice in a story that runs on the front page of the Post.

Given that one of the WaPo editorial page’s most striking ideological commitments is to torture, it seems nearly impossible that torture–and the refusal to prosecute it–would ever be a scandal by Nyhan’s (and therefore Alter’s) terms. And Dana Milbank’s bankster epiphany notwithstanding, WaPo reporters are, almost by definition, isolated from the effects of the banksters’ crimes by class and distance.

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The “Good Faith” Dodge: Moving From Torture to Business?

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One short phrase in an article bmaz alerted me to yesterday set my blood to boiling.  I fumed about it off and on through the rest of the day and even found myself going back to thinking about it when I should have been drifting off to sleep.

The phrase?  “Good faith”

Here’s the phrase in the context of the article:

The U.S. Justice Department’s stepped up enforcement in the pharmaceutical industry has struck “the fear of God” in executives, a top lawyer at GlaxoSmithKline said today, addressing whether prosecutors have gone too far in building cases rooted in business conduct.

/snip/

The panel’s moderator, Jonathan Rosen, a white-collar defense partner in the Washington office of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, described what he called a “highly aggressive” enforcement environment.

Rosen posed questions to the panel members to explore the extent to which the government is criminalizing good-faith business decisions.

So, why would the longer phrase “criminalizing good-faith business decisions” set me off so? When I read that phrase, my mind flashed back to April, 2009 and the release of the torture memos.  Here is Eric Holder, as quoted by ABC News:

“Those intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and in good faith and in reliance on Department of Justice opinions are not going to be prosecuted,” he told members of a House Appropriations Subcommittee, reaffirming the White House sentiment. “It would not be fair, in my view, to bring such prosecutions.”

But Holder left open the door to some legal action, saying that though he “will not permit the criminalization of policy differences,” he is responsible as attorney general to enforce the law.

Uh-oh.  Now it’s even worse.  See the additional parallel?  Holder decried the “criminalization of policy differences” at the same time he said he wouldn’t prosecute those who acted in “good faith” on the torture memos.  The “good faith” in the business article above was smack in the middle of “criminalizing” “business decisions”. Read more →

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The OTHER Saudi Assassination Plotter Got a Reduced Sentence in July

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This post from Cannonfire reminded me how convenient for our country it is that Moammar Qaddafi was executed rather than captured alive and tried: he will not be able to tell anyone, now that he’s dead, how Ibn Sheikh al-Libi, who under torture provided one of the casus belli for the Iraq war, came to be suicided in a Libyan prison just as Americans started focusing on torture in 2009.

That, plus the death of the Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz al Saud, made me think of another plot Qaddafi brings to his grave: that he had purportedly arranged to assassinate then Crown Prince now King Abdullah. The evidence to support that plot mostly came from Abdulrahman Alamoudi, a prominent American Muslim who was arrested in 2003 on charges he violated trade sanctions against Libya.

Tell me if this sounds familiar. A naturalized American citizen is arrested upon re-entry to the country and charged with a bunch of crimes. After a period of no bail, he confesses to participation in the assassination plot of a top Saudi.

Court documents said the assassination plot arose from a March 2003 conference at which Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi and Prince Abdullah had a heated exchange. Angered at how Gaddafi was treated, Libyan officials recruited Alamoudi.

Even after he learned that the target was Abdullah, Alamoudi shuttled money and messages between Libyan officials and the two Saudi dissidents in London, the documents said. Although Gaddafi is not named as a planner, sources familiar with the case have said he appears in the documents as “Libyan government official #5,” who met personally with Alamoudi.

Mind you, though the judge considered the assassination plot in Alamoudi’s sentence, he plead guilty not to murder-for-hire, but to prohibited financial transactions with Libya (the kind of thing JPMC just got its wrist slapped for), unlawful procurement of naturalization, and tax evasion.

Anyway, thinking about the similarities between that case and the Scary Iran Plot led me to consult Alamoudi’s docket (most of which is not available online). What happens to a guy convicted in connection with plotting with a nasty African dictator as we launch the war to finally kill that dictator?

Well, it turns out that at about the time it was clear we’d stick around to ensure Qaddafi died in this kinetic action, a sealed document got filed in Alamoudi’s case. And, on July 20, 2011, Alamoudi got about 30% knocked off his sentence, from 276 months to 197.

Mind you, no one was hiding the fact that Alamoudi would continue to cooperate with authorities while in prison–so it’s no surprise his sentence got lowered. Nor does Alamoudi’s sentence reduction necessarily have anything to do with Alamoudi’s testimony in the assassination plot.

But I do expect, a decade from now, that’s what’s going to happen to Manssor Arbabsiar’s docket.

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Three Teenagers and a Journalist Attempt to Prosecute Bush for Torture

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Bush is in British Columbia today, giving a $100,000 speech.

Three men first captured when they were teenagers–Hassan bin Attash (Walid’s brother, who was captured when was 16 and remains in Gitmo), Muhammed Khan Tumani (who was captured when he was 17), and German-born Murat Kurnaz (who was 19 when he was captured)–and the Al Jazeera journalist, Sami al-Hajj, are using the opportunity to try to get Bush prosecuted for torture.

There are several interesting details from the filing. For example, they show that Americans used techniques at the Dark Prison (the Salt Pit)–spraying Attash with water–that were not permitted under the Bybee Memo and that were reportedly implicated in Gul Rahman’s death not long after. Attash was also physically beaten in Jordan during the period we were drumming up intelligence for the Iraq War because he did not provide the answers on WMD his interrogators wanted.

Nonsensically, the interrogators asked the youth question after question about weapons of mass destruction—nuclear, biological, and chemical. They also asked him about his brother, Walid bin Attash. When Hassan did not give the answers the interrogators wanted, they would beat him. Americans were present during these interrogation and beating sessions.

And, anticipating Abu Ghraib’s tortures, Attash was threatened with electrocution.

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Is the US Outsourcing Torture, Again?

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As you may recall, one of the most explosive revelations from the Iraq War Logs released by WikiLeaks pertains to US forces ignoring Iraqi torture of other Iraqis.

The biggest headline from Friday’s Wikileaks dump (everywhere but the NYT, anyway) is that the “US ignored torture.” But the way in which an official policy ignoring torture was followed by collaboration with one of Iraq’s torture squads raises the question whether the US involvement in Iraqi torture was more direct.

Did the US “ignore” torture, or “encourage” it?

The basis for the claim that the US ignored torture comes from references to Frago 242, which officially instituted a policy of looking the other way in cases of Iraqi on Iraqi abuse.

This is the impact of Frago 242. A frago is a “fragmentary order” which summarises a complex requirement. This one, issued in June 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, orders coalition troops not to investigate any breach of the laws of armed conflict, such as the abuse of detainees, unless it directly involves members of the coalition. Where the alleged abuse is committed by Iraqi on Iraqi, “only an initial report will be made … No further investigation will be required unless directed by HQ”.

Another cable showed that US forces turned over detainees to an Iraqi unit known to torture.

By the end of 2004, according to the Wikileaks dump, the US was handing over detainees to a US trained group known to torture.

In Samarra, the series of log entries in 2004 and 2005 describe repeated raids by US infantry, who then handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for “further questioning”. Typical entries read: “All 5 detainees were turned over to Ministry of Interior for further questioning” (from 29 November 2004) and “The detainee was then turned over to the 2nd Ministry of Interior Commando Battalion for further questioning” (30 November 2004).

Which is why the following detail–from a UN report issued yesterday describing the systematic use of torture in Afghan prison interrogations–is so important.

[UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan]’s detention observation included interviews with 89 detainees who reported the involvement of international military forces either alone or with Afghan security forces in their capture and transfer to [National Directorate of Security] or [Afghan National Police] custody. UNAMA found compelling evidence that 19 of these 89 detainees were tortured in NDS facilities namely, NDS Department 90/124 and NDS Laghman and three in ANP custody (ANP in Kunduz and Tirin Kot). This situation speaks to the need for robust oversight and monitoring of all transfers of detainees to NDS and ANP custody and possible suspension of transfers where credible reports of torture exist.

[snip]

The US and other ISAF military forces, including Canada and the UK reportedly transferred approximately 2,000 individuals to Afghan custody in 2009 and 2010.166 Judicial rulings in Canada and the UK resulted in suspension of transfers of detainees by those countries’ military forces to various NDS facilities over different periods of time.167 In both cases, the courts’ decisions were based on the credibility of information that NDS abused and tortured detainees in selected locations (Kabul and Kandahar). The UK stopped transfers to NDS Kandahar and NDS facilities in Kabul. Canada ceased transfers to all NDS facilities in Kabul, but continued to transfer to Kandahar’s MoJ Sarapoza prison. Canadian and the UK governments also implemented monitoring programmes in detention facilities where they handed over detainees to custody of Afghan authorities.
The US has not yet put in place a monitoring programme to track detainees it hands over to Afghan authorities. A US government official advised UNAMA that the US Embassy finalised plans for a post‐transfer detainee monitoring programme and a proposal is with the Afghan government for its consideration. The Embassy stated that it regards the proposed programme as a positive way for the US to continue its work with the Afghan government to ensure its detention system is safe, secure, and humane.168

In early July 2011, US military forces stopped transferring detainees to NDS and ANP authorities in Dai Kundi, Kandahar, Uruzgan and Zabul based on reports of a consistent practice of torture and mistreatment of detainees in NDS and ANP detention facilities in these areas.169 ISAF advised UNAMA that it asked the Government to investigate these reports and indicates it will not resume transfers until the situation is satisfactorily addressed.
In early September 2011, in response to the findings in this report, ISAF stated that it stopped transferring detainees to certain installations as a precautionary measure.170

That is, even though our coalition partners had already stopped transferring detainees to Afghans known to use torture in interrogations, the US continued doing so until last month.

And this torture is happening almost exclusively to obtain confessions.

Out of 273 detainees interviewed, 125 (46 percent) reported they had been tortured while in NDS custody. The forms of abuse most commonly reported were suspension (being hung by the wrists from chains attached to the wall, iron bars or other fixtures for lengthy periods) and beating, especially with rubber hoses, electric cables and wires or wooden sticks and particularly on the soles of the feet. Other forms of abuse reported included electric shock, twisting of the detainee’s penis and wrenching of the detainee’s testicles, removal of toenails and forced prolonged standing. Detainees also reported blindfolding and hooding. According to detainees, these abuses almost always took place during interrogations and were aimed at obtaining a confession. Only two percent of those detainees who reported abuse by NDS said that any abuse took place at the time of arrest or in any other context.

[snip]

Based on the interviews it conducted, UNAMA found compelling evidence that officials at Department 90/124 systematically tortured detainees for the purposes of obtaining information and confessions. According to UNAMA’s findings, NDS officials in Department 90/124 used beating, suspension, and twisting and wrenching of genitals as means of torture. Two detainees also reported receiving electric shocks, two detainees reported their beards had been pulled, and three detainees reported having their heads banged against the wall.57 All of the abuse took place in the context of the interrogation process. In most cases, the detainee’s account of the sequence of events makes it clear that NDS officials used abusive interrogation procedures to obtain information and formal confessions.

It’d be nice if we did more than stop turning over detainees to prisons known to use torture now that the UN has formally put us on notice about it. It’d be nice if we reviewed when the US became aware of this practice and why we kept turning people over to the Afghans.

But I guess that would amount to looking backward.

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If the Legal Case for Killing Awlaki Is So Sound, Then Why Maintain Presidential Plausible Deniability?

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Glenn Greenwald has another worthwhile post on Democrats’ silence about the Anwar al-Awlaki assassination. But i wanted to push back against one thing he said. After quoting from this Mark Hosenball story on the kill list approval process, Glenn said,

So a panel operating out of the White House — that meets in total secrecy, with no law or rules governing what it can do or how it operates — is empowered to place American citizens on a list to be killed, which (by some process nobody knows) eventually makes its way to the President, who is the final Decider.

But that’s not actually what Hosenball wrote. On the contrary, Hosenball emphasized that Obama’s role in the kill list approval process remains unclear.

The role of the president in ordering or ratifying a decision to target a citizen is fuzzy. White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined to discuss anything about the process.

[snip]

Other officials said the role of the president in the process was murkier than what Ruppersberger described.

They said targeting recommendations are drawn up by a committee of mid-level National Security Council and agency officials. Their recommendations are then sent to the panel of NSC “principals,” meaning Cabinet secretaries and intelligence unit chiefs, for approval. The panel of principals could have different memberships when considering different operational issues, they said.

[snip]

Several officials said that when Awlaki became the first American put on the target list, Obama was not required personally to approve the targeting of a person. But one official said Obama would be notified of the principals’ decision. If he objected, the decision would be nullified, the official said.

A former official said one of the reasons for making senior officials principally responsible for nominating Americans for the target list was to “protect” the president.

And the Administration has tried to keep Obama’s role murky. In addition to the Vietor refusal to discuss the issue Hosenball notes, Obama very pointedly refused to answer whether he had ordered Awlaki’s killing when asked by Michael Smerconish.

Michael Smerconish: Now comes the news that we’ve taken out Anwar al-Awlaki. Did you give that order?

Obama: I can’t talk about the operational details, Michael. [my emphasis]

This is, sadly, another way that the Awlaki assassination is like Bush’s torture program. There, too, the Administration built in plausible deniability for the President. The initial authorization for the torture–Bush’s September 17, 2001 Finding authorizing the capture and detention of al Qaeda figures–didn’t mention torture at all. The Administration twice refused to tell Jane Harman whether the President had authorized the program. The White House only gave more formal Presidential torture authorization in 2003 and again in 2004 (though even there, it attempted to avoid doing so).

Sure, Bush ultimately boasted that he had approved torture. But for years, the Administration sustained the President’s plausible deniability for the illegal program.

The Obama White House efforts to do the same with Awalaki’s death are all the more striking given that it has not been so coy about Obama’s involvement in ordering hits in the past, most notably when we killed Osama bin Laden. Indeed, they worked hard to foster the narrative of Obama making the difficult decision to order the SEAL operation. And here’s what a Senior Administration Official who may be named John Brennan said the day after the Osama bin Laden killing regarding Obama’s role.

In the middle of March, the President began a series of National Security Council meetings that he chaired to pursue again the intelligence basis and to develop courses of action to bring justice to Osama bin Laden.  Indeed, by my count, the President chaired no fewer than five National Security Council meetings on the topic from the middle of March — March 14th, March 29th, April 12th, April 19th, and April 28th.  And the President gave the final order to pursue the operation that he announced to the nation tonight on the morning — Friday morning of April 29th. [my emphasis]

With OBL, the Administration proudly highlighted Obama’s role in the decision-making process; here, they’re working hard to obscure it.

As with the torture program, that suggests the Administration may believe it important for the President to have plausible deniability about this killing.

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Dick Cheney: Awlaki Killing Violated American Principles of Justice Just Like Torture Program Did

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I can think of no stronger indictment of the process by which the Obama Administration killed Anwar al-Awlaki than for Dick Cheney to, first, confirm that the process by which Awlaki was targeted does not constitute due process, and then state that Presidents should have that authority anyway.

Cheney then says Obama should apologize for suggesting, in his Cairo speech, that the Bush Administration’s counterterrorism policies had violated America’s principles.

I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect, and one based upon the truth that America and Islam are not exclusive and need not be in competition.  Instead, they overlap, and share common principles — principles of justice and progress; tolerance and the dignity of all human beings.

[snip]

And finally, just as America can never tolerate violence by extremists, we must never alter or forget our principles.  Nine-eleven was an enormous trauma to our country.  The fear and anger that it provoked was understandable, but in some cases, it led us to act contrary to our traditions and our ideals.  We are taking concrete actions to change course.  I have unequivocally prohibited the use of torture by the United States, and I have ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed by early next year.

Cheney’s right: this assassination exhibited the same disdain for our Constitution that Cheney’s torture program did. And Obama does owe an apology: not to Cheney, but to the America people.

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Cheney Tells the Seventh Circuit It Would Erode Military Discipline To Let Courts Second Guess Cheney’s Torture Decisions

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Remember that letter a bunch of former Directors of Central Intelligence wrote begging Obama to kill an investigation into George W Bush-approved CIA torture?

Poppy, the father of the President who authorized that torture, had the good grace not to sign onto the letter.

These things tend to look like stunts when someone with that kind of personal conflict signs on.

Which is why this amicus brief from all former Secretaries of Defense, submitted in the Vance v. Rumsfeld suit suing Donald Rumsfeld for torture inflicted on two contractors in Iraq, is so farcical. (h/t Lawfare) Right there between “Frank C. Carlucci III, Secretary of Defense from 1987 to 1989” and “William S. Cohen, Secretary of Defense from 1997 to 2001” comes “Richard B. Cheney, Vice President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, and Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993.”

Otherwise known as the architect of the torture program for which Dick’s first important boss, Rummy, is now being sued.

As you might expect from a brief submitted by David Rivkin, the argument in the brief itself isn’t any more credible. It does two things. First, it argues that if Vance were allowed to sue under Bivens for being tortured by his own government, then it would break down military discipline that requires–and affords Vance as recourse, they claim–members of the military to report detainee abuse up the chain of command. We saw how well that worked for Joe Darby and a bunch of Gitmo whistleblowers. And of course these former Secretaries of Defense are arguing that military discipline will guarantee that the entire chain of command would be able to hold its civilian leadership accountable for illegal orders to torture civilians. Never mind that those former Secretaries pretty much admit there is little means under the UMCJ to actually punish civilian leaders (the whole brief ignores that some of the torturers were also civilians), as distinct from the members of the military whose punishment the brief lays out in some detail–for breaking the law.

With respect to civilian officials and employees, the process of investigation would have vindicated Plaintiffs’ rights by, at a minimum, providing “a forum where the allegedly unconstitutional conduct would come to light,” Bagola v. Kindt, 131 F.3d 632, 643 (7th Cir. 1997) (citing Bush v. Lucas, 462 U.S. 367 (1983); Schweiker v. Chilicky, 487 U.S. 412 (1988)), and review of Plaintiffs’ constitutional claims, with the possibility of review by the U.S. Supreme Court, 10 U.S.C. § 867A(a).

Military discipline that must be preserved would guarantee that the Lynndie Englands were held accountable. And that, for these former Secretaries of Defense, is enough, I guess.

Of course, all this only works because of the brief’s other strategy: to simultaneously suggest that this was not torture (that is, something clearly prohibited by law), calling it consistently “mistreatment.” Even while ignoring that Ashcroft v. al-Kidd requires the showing of obviously prohibited behavior, like torture.

The panel majority’s narrow framing of its holding—that it extends only to conduct of the nature alleged by Plaintiffs, Slip op. 58-59—is yet another attempt to craft “[a] test for liability that depends on the extent to which particular suits would call into question military discipline and decisionmaking.” Stanley, 483 U.S. at 682. But this “would itself require judicial inquiry into, and hence intrusion upon, military matters,” and “the mere process of arriving at correct conclusions would disrupt the military regime.” Id. at 683-84. Moreover, this limitation is arbitrary; in no case has Bivens’ availability turned on the gravity of the alleged deprivation.

A final consequence is the likelihood that, fearing personal liability, those officials charged with ensuring the Nation’s security “would be deterred from full use of their legal authority.” Ashcroft v. al-Kidd, 131 S.Ct. 2074, 2087 (2011) (Kennedy, J., concurring).

It’s not that Rummy (and Cheney, though Cheney and his colleagues don’t say this) should have and in fact did know that torture was illegal, this brief pretends (as al-Kidd mistakenly, IMO, pretends that Ashcroft had no way of knowing what material witness detention allowed). Rather, you simply can’t question military matters, at all, never ever, even in cases of gross violations of law, because that’s a slippery slope that will erode military discipline.

The military discipline that ensures that Secretaries of Defense–and Vice Presidents–will never held accountable for their crimes.

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Is DOD Trying to Bypass the Gitmo Press Corps (AKA Carol Rosenberg)?

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Yesterday, we had an interesting discussion about whether efforts by Gitmo Chief Prosecutor Mark Martins to expand viewing of Gitmo military commissions was about cover-up or transparency. I suggested that it might be something in-between–an effort to bypass members of the existing Gitmo press corps, who know a lot more about Gitmo and detainee histories than those of us following along at home and therefore can provide context the government finds inconvenient. But at the same time, bypassing the Gitmo press corps will limit the government’s ability to gag reporters as they did when Rosenberg and others reported on Joshua Claus. And expanding access did have other real benefits, like letting victims follow the trials without onerous travel to Gitmo.

That is, I suggested it was largely a different strategy for controlling information.

So I was rather interested to see this passage in Carol Rosenberg’s report on a shiny new–but substantively incomplete–website Gitmo had set up.

The new website appeared on Wednesday morning without an announcement from the Secretary of Defense’s Public Affairs office, which has handled military commissions releases for the past six years. Instead, a former Bush era Defense Department deputy responsible for detention issues broke the news on a Heritage Foundation blog. Cully Stimson, himself a Navy reserve judge, said the new site heralded a new ear of transparency in the at-times secretive court proceedings.

It was the second revelation from the Obama Defense Department to be revealed in conservative circles. Sunday, The Weekly Standard magazine included a profile of the new Obama era War Crimes Prosecutor, Army Brig. Gen Mark Martins, pledging to beam closed-circuit broadcasts of remote Guantánamo proceedings to both victims and media viewing centers on U.S. soil.

Not only won’t the Public Affairs office tell Rosenberg any useful news about the upcoming Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri trial (nor had they posted documents his lawyers recently filed; though she did just tweet that al-Nashiri’s trial is on), but what news they were released was going through decidedly conservative channels: the Weekly Standard and the Heritage Foundation.

And surprise surprise, those conservative channels deem this shiny new technology that doesn’t give us a full picture “transparency.”

Is DOD suggesting that to conservatives, a website looks like information whether or not there’s anything in that information?

Whether or not this is the plan, to bypass the people who actually know something about this place and these people by wowing people who will be impressed by empty bells and whistles, it is telling that Gitmo is going to conservative sites. If your idea of “transparency” is only to show the kind of information that conservatives will like, then it’s pretty clear you’re hiding something.

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Cover-up Specialist Mark Martins Chosen as Gitmo Chief Prosecutor

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Brigadier General Mark Martins, CEO of Cover-ups R Us.

On Sunday, Carol Rosenberg informed us that there will be a new Chief Prosecutor in charge of military commissions at Guantanamo:

The Obama administration’s handpicked choice to run prosecutions at the Guantánamo war crimes court is pledging a new era of transparency from the remote base, complete with near simultaneous transmissions of the proceedings to victims and reporters on U.S. soil.

Army Brig. Gen. Mark Martins made the disclosure in a profile published Sunday in the Weekly Standard that likened the West Point, Oxford and Harvard Law graduate to a James Bond-style problem solver. It also cast Martins as “The Rebrander” of the at-times denounced military commissions system, which Barack Obama scorned as a candidate and senator then reformed with Congress as president.

Despite the Weekly Standard’s fawning profile of Martins as some sort of savior to the system who will lend an air of legitimacy to the military commissions, Martins is in reality a hack who is dragged out periodically by the Pentagon to cover up its worst abuses. Martins was chosen by Obama to head the committee that attempted to re-brand indefinite detention as legal, has served as Commander and Deputy Commander of JTF 435, the notorious JSOC group charged with running detention programs in Afghanistan, has served as legal adviser to David Petraeus, and, in the most outrageously named position of all, now commands “the newly established Rule of Law Field Force-Afghanistan”.

Here is how Martins’ recent positions are spun in his official biography from which I took the quote on his current position:

Brigadier General Martins assumed command of the newly established Rule of Law Field Force-Afghanistan on 1 September 2010. During the previous year, he served as the first Commander of Joint Task Force 435 and then as its first Deputy Commander upon Senate Confirmation of Vice Admiral Robert Harward. In these roles, Brigadier General Martins led the effort to reform United States detention operations in Afghanistan. Immediately prior to his deployment to Afghanistan, Brigadier General Martins co-led the interagency Detention Policy Task Force created by the President in January 2009.

Martins’ career, then, consists of using his “West Point, Oxford and Harvard Law” degrees to cover up the blatantly illegal indefinite detention policy of the US, along with justifying torture and improper arrest of civilians in night raids in Afghanistan.

Back in April of 2010, I described how Martins had been chosen first to review detention policy and then to go to Afghanistan to implement the “new” policy he had designed. Here is how that description ended:

I fail to see how the process described above is any kind of improvement in achieving release of prisoners who have been improperly detained. This description of the process also serves to expose as a sham the entire Special Task Force’s charge of improving how the US handles prisoners. And right in the middle of this mess is Obama’s hand-picked (through Gates) architect of the process, who now is dutifully overseeing its implementation.

There is no getting around the fact that it would have been known that Martins would come up with a program designed to continue the efforts to cover up the imprisonment of innocent citizens. As I noted above, his previous assignments overlap with previous significant cover-ups. Also, as just one more example, Martins wrote an article (pdf) in 2004 that lovingly described the legal justification for the Commander’s Emergency Response Program (CERP) in Iraq. This program was in reality so loosely set up that it has been the subject of significant attention for misuse of funds.

So while there is perhaps an improvement of conditions for reporters such as Rosenberg who will be covering the proceedings of the military commissions with the advent of near real-time broadcasts of the hearings, don’t expect any sudden changes in favor of the rule of law. Mark Martins has built his career around covering up the worst of Pentagon abuses and he now is in charge of covering up what can be considered its most prominent legal quagmire. Martins was chosen for this position precisely because the Pentagon knows it can count of him to promote the status quo while lending a false air of legitimacy.

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