The Quiet Death of Habeas Corpus

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Pow Wow left a comment, in response to me and Candace Gorman, on Marcy’s Gitmo Lawyers Information Gulag post that warrants highlighting and further comment. For convenience, here it is in full:

This is what bmaz and hcgorman @ 12 are referencing:

Two Guantanamo detainees, Fahmi Al-Assani and Suleiman Al-Nahdi, have moved the D.C. Circuit to dismiss their habeas appeals (Al-Assani’s motion is here, Al-Nahdi’s is here). Both men lost their district court habeas cases in decisions by Judge Gladys Kessler; the Al Assani decision is here, the Al-Nahdi decision is here. Both men appealed, and today, both men have given up their appeals as lost causes.

Their lawyer, Richard Murphy, explained in an email,

Judge Kessler denied our clients’ habeas petitions and we appealed to the D.C. Circuit, but then stayed the appeals pending the outcome of several [other Guantanamo habeas] cases in which [Supreme Court] cert petitions had been filed. Once cert [review] was denied [by the Supreme Court] in all of the relevant cases coming out of the D.C. Circuit it became clear that the appeals were futile. Under the detention standard that has been developed by the D.C. Circuit (which the Supreme Court has refused to review), it is clear that the courts provide no hope for the men remaining at Guantanamo.

This development strikes me as a big deal–albeit a quiet one that won’t get a lot of press attention. […] – Benjamin Wittes, June 2, 2011

That grim assessment of the current posture of Guantanamo habeas petitions, which, for years, have been pending before federal judges serving in the Judicial Branch of the United States Government, was further illuminated and reinforced by this June 8, 2011 Benjamin Wittes post:

Habeas lawyer David Remes sent in the following comments on recent developments in D.C. Circuit case law. He emphasizes that he has been counsel in several of the cases discussed below and that the following represents his own opinion only:

I agree with my colleague Richard Murphy (here) that for Guantánamo detainees, seeking habeas relief has proven to be an exercise in futility. The D.C. Circuit appears to be dead-set against letting them prevail. It has not affirmed a grant in any habeas case, and it has remanded any denial that it did not affirm.

Moreover, the Supreme Court, having declared in Boumediene that detainees have a constitutional right to seek habeas relief, appears to have washed its hands of the matter. It denied review in every case brought to it by detainees this Term, including one, Kiyemba III, which eliminated the habeas remedy itself.

The D.C. Circuit has decided twelve habeas appeals on the merits. In four, the detainee prevailed in the district court; in eight, the government prevailed. The D.C. Circuit erased all four detainee wins. It reversed two outright (Adahi, Uthman) and remanded the other two (Salahi, Hatim). By contrast, the court Read more →

The Gitmo Lawyers’ Information Gulag

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Charlie Savage reports on the new “relaxed” standards that will allow Gitmo defense lawyers to glance at the Gitmo Detainee Assessment Briefs released by WikiLeaks. (h/t fatster)

In guidance to the lawyers — who have security clearances, and so are required to follow government rules for the handling of classified information — the department’s court security officer said Friday that they were now permitted to view the leaked documents on the Internet.

But they are still not allowed to download, save or print the documents because they might contain restricted information.

“While you may access such material from your non-U.S.-government-issued personal and work computers, you are not permitted to download, save, print, disseminate, or otherwise reproduce, maintain, or transport potentially classified information,” the directive said.

I’m not sure how this is all that much better for Gitmo lawyers.

As I explained back in April, the request to allow access to the Gitmo files came from Saifullah Paracha’s lawyer, David Remes. His client’s file contains a number of glaringly problematic details that have now been in the public domain for two months.

Remes goes on to describe how this prevents him from defending his client publicly, specifically because he can’t comment for a big article the NYT did which (IMO) offered a credulous reading of Paracha’s file. While that article contains a quote from ACLU National Security Project Director Hina Shamsi noting that the information in the files is uncorroborated, and while NYT admits much of the evidence derives from KSM whom they note was waterboarded, rather than point out obvious suspect details in Paracha’s file, it simply repeats those details uncritically.

Here’s just one reason why Remes needs to have access to the file to adequately represent his client and refute credulous readings of Paracha’s file:

(S//NF) The plan called for shipping explosives in containers that detainee used to ship women’s and children’s clothing to the US. Detainee agreed to this plan. KU-10024 [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] claimed in early March 2003, PK-10020 and PK-10018 [Ammar al-Baluchi, KSM’s nephew] were arranging the details with detainee and his son Uzair. KU-10024 stated detainee knew all the details of the plan. Uzair understood PK-10018 and PK-10020 were al-Qaida, but KU-10024 was unsure how much Uzair [Paracha’s son] knew about the actual smuggling plan.8 [my emphasis]

There are, in general, just two kinds of evidence offered by KSM in March 2003: evidence the CIA itself claims was disinformation offered by KSM in his early days of captivity while he was still successfully resisting interrogation, and evidence offered up under torture, potentially one of the 183 waterboarding sessions KSM survived in March 2003.

It’s unclear which category this piece of intelligence falls into, but the use of the verb “claimed” suggests there’s something about the intelligence that may have led even the briefer on Paracha’s file to doubt it.

The intelligence report cited for this detail (and therefore collected in March 2003), TD-314/16519-03, is cited three more times in Paracha’s file, only one of which is corroborated by reports dated 2004 and 2005.

In other words, one of the claims against Paracha can be traced back to a March 2003 interrogation of KSM that no one should consider credible. The entire case against Paracha builds off this early interrogation.

There are a number of other reasons to doubt the “facts” laid out in Paracha’s file. Notably, references to Aafia Siddiqui make no mention of her earlier reported detention by the US in Afghanistan, and instead claims “Siddiqui was detained in Afghanistan in mid-July 2008,” thereby hiding a key detail as to the credibility of any intelligence Siddiqui may have offered (or, just as likely, making no mention of intelligence Siddiqui refuted during years of interrogation in US custody in Afghanistan).

The government just generously granted Remes the opportunity to look at all these glaring problems firsthand.

But if he can’t “disseminate” this information–if he can’t go to reporters and say, “all that damning information against my client comes not just from a detainee who was waterboarded, but it comes from the period when he was being waterboarded,” what good does it do?

ACLU FOIAs WikiLeaks Cables

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Back in April, the ACLU FOIAed a bunch of State Department cables that had been released via WikiLeaks. The State Department made no response. So now the ACLU is suing to get the cables.

The suit is interesting for several reasons. First, check out which cables ACLU has FOIAed:

The requested cables relate to the United States’ diplomatic response to foreign investigations of United States abduction, interrogation, detention, and rendition practices; efforts by the Federal government to prosecute or release former and current Guantanamo detainees; the United States’ use of unmanned aerial vehicles; and the diplomatic efforts surrounding President Obama’s decision to oppose the release of photographs depicting U.S. interrogations of persons suspected of terrorism.

The ACLU is focusing on cables that cut to the heart of America’s hypocrisy on human rights and international law.

As the suit suggests, it wants the government to have to confirm or deny whether the discussions depicted in the cables actually happened.

In spite of the urgent national interest and extensive media coverage surrounding the alleged diplomatic cables, at the time this FOIA request was made, DOS had not yet informed the American people whether the disclosed documents referred to actual federal government activity. Nor has it done so to date.

Mind you, we know they really happened–but by releasing the cables through FOIA, the State Department will have to admit it. And if they have to admit it, it will become harder to keep quashing these investigations.

(As luck would have it, the European Parliament yesterday just passed a resolution that “Calls on the EU and Member States authorities, as well as the US authorities, to ensure that full, fair, effective, independent and impartial inquiries and investigations are carried out into human rights violations and crimes under international, European and national law, and to bring to justice those responsible, including in the framework of the CIA extraordinary renditions and secret prisons programme;”)

Plus, this suit will be an interesting parallel proceeding to the government’s plodding formulation of guidelines that will allow Gitmo defense lawyers some access to the Gitmo Documents that describe their clients.

Finally, there’s one other interesting wrinkle here. Many of these documents seemingly should have been turned over in the ACLU’s (and CCR’s) previous FOIAs on torture and rendition. So will this FOIA suit force the State Department to admit whether it was blowing off a FOIA in the past?

Here’s the actual request from April. The cables they’ve requested are below:

SPAIN STILL INTERESTED IN GUANTANAMO DETAINEES, BUT NOT OPTIMISTIC ABOUT CONVICTION

SPAIN: PROSECUTOR WEIGHS GTMO CRIMINAL CASE VS. FORMER USG OFFICIALS

SPAIN: ATTORNEY GENERAL RECOMMENDS COURT NOT PURSUE GTMO CRIMINAL CASE VS. FORMER USG OFFICIALS

GARZON OPENS SECOND INVESTIGATION INTO ALLEGED U.S. TORTURE OF TERRORISM DETAINEES

GOT ASKS EUROPEANS NOT TO TAKE TUNISIAN GUANTANAMO DETAINEES

SUBJECT: REQUEST FOR EXPLANATION OF RETURNED DETAINEE ARM DISABILITY

COUNSELOR, CSIS DIRECTOR DISCUSS CT THREATS, PAKISTAN, AFGHANISTAN, IRAN

TO HELL AND BACK: GITMO EX-DETAINEE STUMPS IN LUXEMBOURG

FRENCH JUDGE SAYS C/T FOCUS IS ON “JIHADISTS TO IRAQ”

TWO EX-GTMO DETAINEES CHARGED WITH TERRORIST CONSPIRACY BUT ONE ORDERED RELEASED ON BAIL

DOD INTEL FLIGHTS: FCO CLARIFIES

EMERGING CONSTRAINTS ON U.S. MILITARY TRANSITS AT SHANNON

PORTUGUESE FM OFFERS TO RESIGN IF CIA FLIGHT ALLEGATIONS PROVE TRUE

GENERAL PETRAEUS’ MEETING WITH SALEH ON SECURITY ASSISTANCE, AQAP STRIKES

GILANI TO CODEL SNOWE: HELP US HIT TARGETS

USDP EDELMAN’S OCTOBER 15 MEETINGS IN LONDON

SPECIAL ADVISOR HOLBROOKE’S MEETING WITH SAUDI ASSISTANT INTERIOR MINISTER PRINCE MOHAMMED BIN NAYEF

SWISS COUNTERTERRORISM OVERVIEW – SCENESETTER FOR FBI DIRECTOR MUELLER

GOS “HEADS UP”: SWISS FEDERAL PROSECUTOR TO ANNOUNCE FINDINGS ON OVERFLIGHT INVESTIGATION

SECDEF MEETING WITH ITALIAN PRIME MINISTER SILVIO BERLUSCONI, FEBRUARY 6, 201…

NETHERLANDS: TOUR D’HORIZON WITH FOREIGN MINISTER BOT

AL-MASRI CASE — CHANCELLERY AWARE OF USG CONCERNS

Chiquita’s Alleged Victims Can Sue for Torture, But Not Terrorism

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As fatster noted, Judge Kenneth Marra has allowed the suit against Chiquita for its support of Colombian terrorists to go forward. But the ruling is fascinating, because it holds that the plaintiffs can sue for Chiquita’s involvement in torture, but not for its involvement in terrorism.

Relying in part on a 1984 Robert Bork opinion finding there was ““international law and the rules of warfare as they now exist are inadequate to cope with this new mode of conflict,” Marra ruled the Alien Tort Statute doesn’t apply to terrorism. (Note, Marra also cited more recent District Court rulings on this issue.)

So in spite of our decade-long war against terrorism, it appears corporations can support terrorism in other countries and not be held liable.

But unlike terrorism, torture, extra-judicial killing, and crimes against humanity are widely recognized under international law to qualify for the ATS, so plaintiffs can sue for Chiquita’s involvement in it.

Marra also rejected Chiquita’s claim that it could not be held liable under the Torture Victims Protection Act.

Chiquita first argues that the “‘plain reading of the TVPA strongly suggests that it only covers human beings, and not corporations.’” First Mot. at 68 (DE 93) (quoting Exxon Mobil, 393 F. Supp. 2d at 28). This limitation to individuals, Chiquita contends, bars Plaintiffs’ TVPA claims against it, a corporation. Recent Eleventh Circuit precedents, however, hold that “‘an individual’ to whom liability may attach under the TVPA also includes a corporate defendant.” Sinaltrainal, 578 F.3d at 1264 n.13; see also Romero, 552 F.3d at 1315 (“Under the law of this

Circuit, the Torture Act allows suits against corporate defendants.”). Thus, under the precedent of this Circuit, the Court rejects Chiquita’s first basis for dismissal.

Particularly gratifying, a key part of Chiquita’s liability was its intent to support AUC’s violence. Marra notes, for example, that plaintiffs had shown Chiquita supported AUC in part to quell labor unrest.

The AUC’s agreement with Chiquita involved forcing people to work using threats and illegal violence, as well as the quelling of labor and social unrest through the systematic terrorization of the population of Uraba.

[snip]

The complaints here contain sufficient “‘factual content that allows the court to draw the reasonable inference’” that Chiquita assisted the AUC with the intent that the AUC commit torture and killing in the banana-growing regions.

So in American courts, corporations like Jeppesen helping the US commit torture won’t be held liable for torture. But corporations like Chiquita helping terrorists and other governments torture may well be held liable!

Teaching Our Polish Partners in Torture: State Secrets

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I had been predicting for weeks before Obama went to Poland that the Poles would move to quash their investigation into the black site at which KSM and others were tortured.

And sure enough, that appears to be what happened.

The first move actually happened before Obama arrived in Poland: three days before Obama got there, the AP reported that one of the two prosecutors in the investigation, Jerzy Mierzewski, had been sacked.

On Wednesday, it became clear why Mierzewski had been sacked: because he was preparing charges against the politicians who had partnered with the CIA.

Polish state prosecutors are considering bringing charges against members of the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) for their alleged involvement in secret CIA prisons located on Polish soil between 2002-2005. The prisons were allegedly used to torture terrorist suspects from al-Qaeda.

Officials from the leftist SLD government in power at the time, including former Prime Minister Leszek Miller, may be charged with violating Poland’s constitution, helping to illegally imprison a number of people and with participating in crimes against humanity.

That’s according to documents released by daily Gazeta Wyborcza, which show that former deputy prosecutor Jerzy Mierzewski, who was recently removed from the investigation, wanted to press these charges.

And now AP reports that Poland is responding in the same way the US would: to declare state secrets and pursue the whistleblowers.

Adam Borzyszkowski, a prosecutor in Gdansk, said his office would question the reporter and editors at the newspaper due to “state secrets being leaked” from the main investigation. He said those steps come amid an ongoing 10-month investigation into other media reports that leaked sensitive information.

Back when I was reading lots of samizdat in grad school, it was clear the US genuinely served as a model for Eastern European activists (whether or not we should have been a model is another question).

I guess we still serve as such a model. Only rather than serving as a model of democracy and creativity, we’re now showing others how to use state secrets to hide torture and other crimes.

“Terrorists are cowards. Torturers are, too.”

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Former Gitmo prosecutor Morris Davis makes, in really powerful fashion, a point I’ve been contemplating: how does Hillary Clinton get off criticizing the torture of Syrian teenager Hamza Ali al-Khateeb or Pakistani journalist Syed Saleem Shahzad when we have done nothing to hold those who tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani accountable? (h/t Michelle Shephard)

In the fall of 2005, when I was chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, I sat down for a lengthy discussion with a veteran member of the prosecution team, a Marine Corps officer with an extensive background in criminal prosecution. We discussed a case that caused him concern, one he said he was not comfortable prosecuting. After describing some of the specifics of the detainee’s treatment at Guantanamo, which was documented in official records, the prosecutor said: “Sir, they fucked with him and they fucked with him until now he’s as crazy as a shit-house rat.” In an interview with Bob Woodward published in the Washington Post in January 2009, Susan Crawford, the Bush administration official who supervised the military commissions, explained why she refused to send the same case to trial when it reached her desk in the spring of 2008. “We tortured Qahtani,” she said, “His treatment met the legal definition of torture.”

The alleged torture of Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, Syed Saleem Shahzad, and Mohammed al Qahtani by government agents that signed the Convention Against Torture begs the question, is a law that is ignored worth the paper it is written on?

If we want to criticize others for their crimes, Davis argues, then we need to practice what we preach.

Who decides which obligations are truly obligatory and which means go too far to ever justify the ends? Chemical weapons may have been a fast and convenient way to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda in the rugged Tora Bora region in late 2001 and may have killed Bin Laden a decade earlier, but is effectiveness, or that it might work, or that others do it justification to violate the Chemical Weapons Convention prohibitions and commit a war crime? If the standard is the United States decides ad hoc which commitments it will honor and which it will not then it should be honest and repudiate those it considers non-binding and the sense to stop the hypocritical criticism of others that fail to live up to its “do as we say, not as we do” example. On the other hand, if the United States means what it says about the rule of law, it has to demonstrate that it practices what it purports to preach.

And he ends by calling on decent people to reclaim our national moral compass.

Do decent human beings have the temerity to stand up and insist the law be enforced? Does the United States have the integrity to lead by example, or has the government engaging in torture become as accepted as government official lying when the truth is inconvenient? We need to find our moral compass.

Go read it.

Why Didn’t We Ask China to Find Scooter Libby’s Missing Plame Leak E-Mails?

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WSJ has an article reporting on the purportedly Chinese-launched GMail hacks that targeted top White House officials.

The article is interesting not because it claims the Chinese want to hack top officials. Who do you think they’d be most interested in hacking?

Rather, the article is interesting for some of the implications bandied about in the article. For example, Darrell Issa and CREW’s Melanie Sloan suggest the only reason the Chinese would hack the GMail accounts of White House officials is if those people were improperly conducting official business on GMail.

“If all White House officials were following rules prohibiting the use of personal email for official business, there would simply be no sensitive information to find,” said Rep. Darrell Issa, Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and a frequent thorn in the Obama administration’s side. “Unfortunately, we know that not everyone at the White House follows those rules and that creates an unnecessary risk.”

Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a watchdog group, said the hacking “suggests China believes government officials are using their personal accounts for official business, because I doubt they were looking for their weekend plans or a babysitter’s schedule. Presumably, the Chinese wouldn’t have done this if they weren’t getting something.”

More plausible is the suggestion that the Chinese were phishing for information they could then use to compromise other accounts.

Stewart Baker, a former homeland security official in the Bush administration, said he suspects the ultimate goal of the hacking may have been to use the email accounts as a stepping stone to penetrate the officials’ home computers.

“If you can compromise that machine, you may well be able to access the communications they are having with the office,” said Mr. Baker.

I’m most interested in all the assumptions here, that a bunch of Chinese hackers know precisely how the White House email system works. If that’s true, why haven’t we asked the Chinese to turn over the emails OVP deleted from the first days of the Plame leak investigation? And why haven’t we asked the Chinese to turn over all those emails hidden on the RNC’s server? Maybe they can also help us find all of John Yoo’s torture emails?

Given how common it is, these days, for top officials to just delete their most inconvenient emails, I’m thinking American citizens ought to invite Chinese hackers to help us reclaim all the official records our overlords try to destroy.

Why Is Michael Hayden’s Desperation on Illegal Interrogation More Urgent than on Illegal Wiretapping?

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Even though he admits yet again that torture didn’t get Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Furaj al-Libi to reveal the name of Osama bin Laden’s courier, Michael Hayden has launched yet another round of sophism to defend the case that torture led to Osama bin Laden–and if it didn’t it produced a whole lot of information. The only thing that’s novel about this latest effort is the new contortions he goes through to try to avoid admitting that torture didn’t do what it was promised it would do: provide the most critical information quickly.

But it got me thinking.

Michael Hayden was a not-bad CIA Director. Particularly compared to his predecessors George “Slam Dunk” Tenet and Porter Goss and his Gosslings he was reasonably successful.

But he was a pretty big failure as head of the NSA.

There’s all the revelations the government wants to send Thomas Drake to jail for revealing: that Hayden chose to enrich SAIC with $1 billion of pork rather than invest $3 million in house for something that worked far better. That management failures prevented NSA from implementing the security improvements that might have prevented WikiLeaks, not to mention so much of the hacking done by our enemies.

And while I don’t hold it against him, under Hayden’s command, NSA did fail to find the 9/11 terrorists whose calls in the US had been picked up on wiretaps to an al Qaeda safe house. Nor did NSA pick the hijackers up as they were wiring their excess funds back to Dubai from a Giant store close to Ft. Mead.

But Hayden’s real failure, of course–and a near parallel to the torture decision that he says “I thank God that I did not have to make”–was in bowing to Bush and Cheney’s claim to inherent power to set up an illegal wiretap program that not only compromised Americans’ privacy, but didn’t work.

Indeed, the Inspectors General who reviewed Hayden’s illegal wiretap program found it to be about as ineffective as the CIA Inspector General found torture to be.

So why is Hayden wasting his breath boasting about how effective torture was rather than making specious claims that the illegal program implemented under his command nailed OBL?

Mind you, the NSA (or perhaps Pakistani SIGINT) played an absolutely critical role in tracking down the courier that led us to OBL. But no one claims the illegal program provided even a shred of intelligence that helped us find OBL. If anything, our belief in the magic of the illegal program–and SIGINT in general–apparently led counterterrorism types to dismiss the importance of couriers for some years after it should have become clear al Qaeda had taken measures to avoid using the telecom they knew Americans were tracking.

So why is Hayden blowing so much hot air about the value of torture? Would claims that the illegal wiretap program Hayden implemented played a role be even more ridiculous?

Larry Thompson: From Rendering Maher Arar to Pushing Pop to Teaching Lawyers

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Oh is Mary going to love this.

As she has tirelessly reminded us over the years, Larry Thompson, the former Deputy Attorney General who signed off on Maher Arar’s rendition to Syria to be tortured, has spent the last 7 years at PepsiCo serving as their General Counsel.

But he’s got a new job: as a law professor at University of Georgia.

Now, it appears he’ll just be teaching corporate law and white collar crime and not–like John Yoo at Berkeley–constitutional law.

But it’s yet another example of a top Bush lawyer who, after abusing the rule of law while in government, is being rewarded with a job teaching the next generation of lawyers.

Here’s what the Center for Constitutional Rights had to say about the move (remember they’ve represented Arar):

The Center for Constitutional Rights is profoundly concerned at the news that the University of Georgia School of Law has hired former Deputy Attorney General Larry Thompson as a permanent member of its law school faculty.  Mr. Thompson played a prominent role in the extraordinary rendition of our client, Maher Arar, to Syria where he was tortured and detained for a year.  Mr. Arar’s case caused international outrage that led the Canadian government to launch a public inquiry, exonerate him of any wrongdoing, acknowledge their role in his treatment, and compensate him.  It would be shocking if the Law School were aware of Mr. Thompson’s role in this case and hired him nonetheless.  The notion that Mr. Thompson should be held out as a model for future law students when in fact he should be, at a bare minimum, investigated for his role in Mr. Arar’s rendition to torture is astonishing.  We call on the Law School to investigate and reconsider its appointment of Mr. Thompson accordingly.  Anything short of a full investigation into this matter would bring into question the integrity of The University of Georgia School of Law.

Please Help Support My Next 525 Posts on Torture

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Just over two years ago, right around the time I reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in a month, many of you chipped into the “Marcy Wheeler fund” to support my work; that generosity paid my way until a short time ago. Here’s what that support made possible.

Between May 1, 2009 and yesterday, by my rough count, I wrote 525 posts on torture. I unpacked the torture memos, the CIA IG Report, the OPR Report, and thousands of documents released through FOIA. I showed the bureaucratic games they used to set up our torture program, early efforts to place limits on things like mock execution, followed by more bureaucratic and legal means to get away with violating even those limits. I showed how they hid documents and altered tapes to hide evidence of their torture. I showed how, after CIA and parts of DOJ tried to put limits on torture in 2004, they again used bureaucratic tricks and ridiculous legal documents to reauthorize it. I’ve tracked DOJ’s kabuki claims to investigate torture (though bmaz gets credit for forcing DOJ to admit John Durham’s torture tape investigation had run out the clock on Statutes of Limitation). And I’ve tracked the Obama Administration’s successful efforts to suppress all evidence of torture. And all the while, I’ve relentlessly pushed back against the torture apologists’ lies.

Of course, while writing about torture is a major part mapping out the decline of the rule of law, it’s not the only part. Since May 2009, I’ve written almost 200 posts on wiretapping, almost as many on our Gitmo show trials, posts about state secrets, drones, fusion centers, the forever war metastisizing around the world. I’ve written about Wikileaks and Bradley Manning’s treatment and the banksters and the auto companies.

Cataloging the decline of the rule of law has been exhausting and infuriating. The work has been challenging.

But most of all, it has been humbling. That’s because you made this happen, as much as I did.

In addition to the absolutely brilliant observations you’ve made in comments, your support, two years ago, made this work possible. I’m profoundly grateful that many of you invested your faith and financial support in my work.

And now I’m asking for your faith and financial support again, to support the next 525 posts on torture. This time that support will come in the form of an ongoing Firedoglake membership. By becoming a member of Firedoglake, you will not only give my work some stability over the long term, but support the superb work of Jane and DDay and Jon Walker, and just as importantly, the work of the people backstage who make this all technically possible. And you will become a closer part of our efforts to push our country in the right direction, to return to the rule of law.

Please join Firedoglake today.

I hope some day soon we’ll begin to make headway against our expanding national security state. I hope some day, I won’t feel the need to write a post on torture five days a week. But until then, I feel compelled to write about what is happening to our country. And I can only continue to do that with your help.