The Use of Photographs as Propaganda

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khalid_shaikh_mohammed_after_capture.jpg

Go read JimWhite’s diary about the military’s complaints that the Taliban are using a video of a captured American soldier as propaganda.

They’re exploiting the soldier for their own propaganda.

[snip]

The Taliban are using it as a propaganda tool.

Then read this passage from George Tenet’s book, co-written with Bill Harlow:

By the next morning, Sunday, March 2, US media outlets were carrying news of the [KSM] capture as well. Some of the stories described the worldly KSM as an al-Qa’ida James Bond. To illustrate the point, they showed photos of him with a full beard wearing what were supposedly his traditional robes. It didn’t take long for Marty to phone me and relay his disgust at some of the coverage.

[snip]

“Boss,” he said, “this ain’t right. The media are making this bum look like a hero. That ain’t right. You should see the way this bird looked when we took him down. I want to show the world what terrorists look like!”

Turns out, our officers on the scene in Rawalpindi had snapped and sent back some digital photos of KSM just after his capture, so I suggested that Marty call the Agency spokesman, Bill Harlow, and work something out. Within an hour, Harlow was in CTC looking over a selection of photos that made KSM look nothing like James Bond. Together they picked out the most evocative photo. Then Harlow, armed with a digital copy, called up a reporter at the Associated Press and told him, “I’m about to make your day.” Asking only that the AP not reveal where they got the picture, he released the image of a stunned, disheveled, scroungy KSM wearing a ratty T-shirt. The photo became one of the iconic images of the war on terrorism. If we could have copyrighted it, we might have funded CTC for a year on the profits. Foreign intelligence services later told us that the single best thing we ever did was release that photo. It sent a message more eloquently than ten thousand words ever could that the life of a terrorist on the run is anything but glamorous.

I hope to hell that soldier comes home safely and I’m sorry the Taliban used his image for propaganda purposes.

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One Former Official Ready to Bust Others for Torture

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In my post on the scope of any torture investigation, I noted that if you went after the guy–whom I called Mr. Poignant–who clearly exceeded even John Yoo’s guidelines on torture, he would quickly get you to the architects of the torture program.

In other words, if you go after Mr. Poignant, he will quickly be faced with the opportunity to burn the torture architects to protect himself. (And hell, even if he’s a Scooter Libby type, this stuff is all out there anyway.)

And in many posts–including this recent one on Chuck Todd’s inanity–I pointed to three things that would be used to implicate those architects.

  • The psychologist/interrogator/contractor quoted in the OLC opinion admitting he exceeded John Yoo’s guidelines
  • The OLC memo’s description of CIA HQ ordering up another round of waterboarding for Abu Zubayah when that violated the OLC memo’s clear prohibition on waterboarding when the detainee was compliant
  • The near-daily White House authorization of torture before John Yoo crafted a memo saying it was legal

The WaPo has a story today that proves my point. It is basically a summary of information already out there, supplemented by one "former US official" involved in the torture discussions who seems prepared to do just what I said–implicate the architects of the torture program.

The former official describes how, when interrogators in Thailand determined Abu Zubaydah was fully compliant, those in DC harangued them into further torture.

In August 2002, as the first anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks approached, officials at CIA headquarters became increasingly concerned that they were not learning enough from their detainee in Thailand. When the interrogators concluded that Abu Zubaida had no more to tell, Langley scolded them: "You’ve lost your spine." If Mitchell and his team eased up and then al-Qaeda attacked the United States again, agency managers warned, "it would be on the team’s back," recalled the former U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss classified information. 

[snip]

"Headquarters was sending daily harangues, cables, e-mails insisting that waterboarding continue for 30 days because another attack was believed to be imminent," the former official said. "Headquarters said it would be on the team’s back if an attack happened. They said to the interrogation team, ‘You’ve lost your spine.’ "

Mitchell and Jessen now found themselves in the same position as Soufan, Shumate and others.

"It was hard on them, too," the former U.S. official said. Read more →

Silvestre Reyes Announces Investigation into Violations of National Security Act

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Reyes announces:

After careful consideration and consultation with the Ranking Minority Member and other members of the Committee, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will conduct an investigation into possible violations of federal law, including the National Security Act of 1947.

This investigation will focus on the core issue of how the congressional intelligence committees and Congress are kept fully and currently informed. To this end, the investigation will examine several issues, including the program discussed during Director Panetta’s June 24th notification and whether there was any past decision or direction to withhold information from the Committee. 

Three points about this.

First, Reyes says he consulted with Crazy Pete Hoekstra. I look forward to seeing how Crazy Pete spins this.

That’ll be particularly interesting given the scope here. The investigation will include the reported assassination squad. But the core issue is more general–how CIA informs Congress. Which means that, in fact, this should also include whether or not CIA fullly briefed Pelosi and Goss on torture back in 2002.

Finally, the investigation will examine whether there was any "direction" to withhold information from Congress. I do hope they look at the question generally, as well as in the context of the reported assassination squad, because I suspect we’d see a pattern of Cheney instructing the Counterterrorism folks to lie to or withhold information from Congress.

Update: Reyes (and Jan Schakowsky) also announced the appointment of Adam Lurie, formerly an AUSA in NJ’s USA office, as staff director for the Investigations Subcommittee (which Schakowsky Chairs). He’ll be the lead staffer in this investigation.

Will Miguel Estrada Represent John Yoo Before Sonia Sotomayor at SCOTUS?

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I had a bit of a contest on Monday to guess which lawyer was representing John Yoo as Jose Padilla’s suit against him goes forward.

The winner of that poll is the anonymous reader who noted that Miguel Estrada represented Yoo when Yoo testified before Congress last year. You can let me know by email which deserving charity you’d like me to mail your utterly worthless hubcap to…

The Recorder has more details about the tough work Estrada has ahead of him. (h/t WSJ Law Blog)

John Yoo, author of some of the Bush administration’s war-on-terror memos, has hired Washington, D.C., lawyer Miguel Estrada to appeal a ruling that allowed an allegedly mistreated detainee’s suit against Yoo.

[snip]

Estrada has already been representing Yoo in an investigation by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility into the legal work behind the memos. That investigation is ongoing, though the results could be released at any time, and a draft finding reportedly would have referred Bybee and Yoo to State Bar authorities for possible discipline.

As a reminder, this means that Estrada will represent Yoo as he attempts to convince the 9th Circuit to reverse the District Court’s ruling that Padilla’s suit against Yoo can move forward.  And–it is not unreasonable to imagine–regardless of what the 9th Circuit decides, the Latino the Republicans wished had been the first on SCOTUS (Estrada) might soon face the Latina Republicans will grudgingly see confirmed as Justice in the next few weeks for a big showdown over the rule of law. Any bets on whether Estrada makes more money trying to save Yoo from any consequences for his actions (yes, taxpayers will be footing Estrada’s bill) than Sotyomayor will make in her first year on SCOTUS?

In addition to reporting that Estrada will represent Yoo, the Recorder has some interesting speculation from some law professors who have been following the case on why Yoo needs his own lawyer.

New York University School of Law professor Stephen Gillers, who has written about the investigation into the memos, said that the Justice Department should not have been Yoo’s sole representation in the first place, because conflicts of interest between Yoo and his former employer were too likely to occur.

Yoo may have wanted to make arguments that the Justice Department couldn’t pursue, such as implicating other DOJ officials, Gillers said. Read more →

Chuck Todd’s Law

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Aside from MSNBC’s squeamishness about blow jobs (but not about torture or the murder of teenagers or slobbering racism), here’s why, according to Chuck Todd, we cannot have an investigation of the crimes Dick Cheney committed.

  1. "I have a couple of roles as a journalist. Of course, number one is to hold government officials accountable, but also report on what they’re trying to do, what the motivations are behind what they’re trying to do, why they’re doing certain things"
  2. "This issue, whenever you see the words Cheney and intelligence pop up, and when I use the phrase ‘cable catnip’, it is when something becomes, when something becomes, whether the two polarized parts of our political society, are very entrenched in their views on this, and believe the other side is completely irrational on it. And so, that’s, whenever you have an issue like that, that’s what I describe as ‘cable catnip’. Because it becomes something that is easy to put on television, because you can find a left versus right, which is something that cable embraces to a fault"
  3. "If you could also guarantee me, that this wouldn’t become a show trial, and wouldn’t be put, and created so that we had nightly debates about it, [prosecution] is the ideal way to handle this … if you could guarantee me that we could keep this debate off of television"
  4. "We know it’s going to turn into a political trial. I’ll take that back – we don’t know whether it’s going to turn into a political trial. That is the experience of how these things have worked in the past, that end up getting turned into a political trial"

That is, we can’t hold Dick Cheney accountable for his crimes because the media–including Todd himself–is incapable of reporting the story as anything but a partisan story (in spite of the fact that–Glenn points out–there is bipartisan support for a torture prosecution), which guarantees that any investigation would turn into a show trial.

But it’s even stupider than that. Todd says we shouldn’t investigate the past administration becaues if we do the rest of the world might think we’re a banana republic (as if decorum and not rule of law is the example the US wants to set for the rest of the world). For Todd, it’s enough that we punish Administrations through the ballot box–but of course, we didn’t punish Bush in 2004 after he started an illegal war, and by the time 2008 rolled around, Bush was term-limited and Cheney was not on the ballot, so we have not, in fact, punished the criminals at the ballot box.

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Hellerstein: Accelerate the Production of the IG Report

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The ACLU just submitted a letter in the CIA IG case–pointing out that Judge Hellerstein had given the government until August 31 to produce the rest of the documents in the FOIA request with the implicit assumption that it produce the IG Report by June 19 June 26 July 1.

The key part of the letter, however, is the note Judge Hellerstein wrote by hand on the ACLU letter, saying:

The Court will meet with counsel, 7/15/09, 10:30 AM, to discuss the issues described in this letter. The gov’t will consider accelerating its schedule of production.

I guess Hellerstein thinks  he’s getting the run-around at this point, as much as the ACLU. 

Liz “BabyDick” Cheney Returns

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It was inevitable. Given the news over the weekend that DOJ might investigate PapaDick Cheney, we had to expect Liz "BabyDick" Cheney would be out again defending her Daddy (and, just as inevitably, the press would give her the soap box to do so).

But as more and more investigations start to focus on her Daddy, BabyDick sounds more and more pathetic. For example, here’s her attempt to scold Democrats for upholding the rule of law.

CHENEY: His reaction to the story that we may well be prosecuting folks, I’m happy to talk about that. … You know, he is very angry, as you’ve heard him say publicly. You know the notion that this administration is going to come into office and they’re going to prosecute the brave men and women who carried out this program that kept America safe. It is, it is un-American. It’s something that hasn’t happened before in this country, in terms of somebody taking office and then starting to prosecute people who carried out policies that they disagreed with, you know, in the previous administration. He’s been very public about that.[my emphasis]

Um, no. Depending on who you ask, Holder is considering prosecuting either those who overstepped the stated policy and/or those–like her Daddy–who ignored the law when they developed that policy. But BabyDick has to characterize a potential investigation in terms that conflict with everything Obama and Holder have said about a torture investigation so people don’t note that her–and her Daddy’s–cries of "un-American!!" are really just self-serving claptrap.

As if it would be un-American to tell PapaDick he has to follow the law.

Not only didn’t he–as the guy who redirected efforts in Afghanistan to an illegal war of choice in Iraq–keep us safe. But just about everything he did was un-American.

The Scope of the (Hypothetical) Torture Investigation

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It was just last night that Newsweek floated the notion of a torture investigation, and we’re already into a hot debate about the scope of any (thus far still hypothetical) investigation. Here are the posts you should read:

  • Tim F @BalloonJuice arguing that an investigation of just the torturers who exceeded guidelines would be worse than no investigation
  • Spencer@Attackerman arguing that focusing on the CIA–rather than the decision-makers–would be wrong
  • Glenn@Salon cataloging the different stories about scope–and arguing that if the investigation focuses on CIA it’ll be Abu Ghraib redux

Glenn and Spencer both point to Scott Horton–reporting that there is unlikely to be such a limit on scope–in an article I’ll look at in some detail below.

My take–one derived from some weeds–is that if Holder approves an investigation, it’ll be unlikely to just take on low-level CIA interrogators.

First, consider who we’re talking about. We’re not, actually, talking about low level CIA interrogators. We’re talking about contractors. James Mitchell, to be exact. And if James Mitchell is not the psychologist/interrogator who acknowledged he had exceeded the limits set by John Yoo’s Bybee Memo, but justified it by saying he had exceeded those limits (by using way more water, for longer time, and pressing on the detainee’s gut) because those things make the simulated drowning technique "for real–and … more poignant and convincing," then it’s almost certainly someone who works for James Mitchell and probably used to work for the DOD entity that administers SERE.

I, frankly, have no problem with prosecuting Mr. Poignant the sadist torturer and, given his acknowledgment that he exceeded Yoo’s guidelines, that’s probably where an investigation would start.

Now, as I said, Mr. Poignant is either James Mitchell or someone associated with him–the "psychologist/interrogator" strongly suggests this person is a contractor, not a CIA employee.

That means that going after Mr. Poignant gets you, in either one step or two, to the contractors who worked from the start to profit off torture.

And that gets you, almost immediately, to the process that the torture architects used to authorize their torture. That’s because there is a paper trail showing that the torture architects knew and intended the torture to exceed even Yoo’s memo. This is a document that both Jim Haynes and John Rizzo had and–between the two of them–gave to John Yoo during the drafting process for the Bybee Memo as the basis for his description of waterboarding.

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Ambinder on Holder

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There’s enough new reporting in this Ambinder piece (commenting on this Klaidman piece covered in this post) that it merits its own post.

First, there’s this description of the division of labor among Obama’s top lawyers.

When Obama asked Holder, a longtime friend, to become attorney general, Holder extracted a promise — perhaps extracted is too tough of a term because Obama readily agreed — that the White House would not interfere with the Department’s decisions about whether to launch investigations, according to two people with knowledge of the encounter. When it comes to setting and refining judicial policy, the White House counsel’s office plays the lead role. But Holder and his deputies get to decide whom to prosecute.

Now, I’m suspicious of Holder, but loathe all I know of Greg Craig, so this sparked my concern. I’m really curious, you lawyer types … Is it normal for the White House Counsel to "set and refine judicial policy"? Has Holder really become nothing but a glorified mega-prosecutor? (I can understand why he extracted this policy, having seconded Janet Reno, but still.)

And then there’s this loaded passage.

On the one hand, it is tough to see a prosecutor being given a mandate to determine whether former Vice President Dick Cheney ordered CIA officials to not brief Congress on a highly sensitive, classified intelligence collection program given the very real chance that the national security damage resulting from the disclosure of information about the program might be significant.

Nonetheless, it’s doubtful that Holder would lean into a decision in such a public way unless he was ready to consider an option that may well have significant ramifications for the country and lay a strong precedent for future administrations.

Since the beginning of his presidential transition, Obama has been counseled by his attorneys that any such investigation is likely to be incomplete, resulting in people being charged with sins they participated it but did not originate. Even senior Justice Department officials admit that the possibility of an elected White House decision-maker like the Vice President being charged with a crime is remote.  Obama would rather not see middle managers prosecuted for decisions, or crimes, of elected officials or senior political appointees. And he is very concerned with precedent.  But this will not be his decision to make.

I’m not entirely sure what that middle paragraph means. But I’m curious by the third and the first.

Everyone–everyone–seems to know Read more →

Holder v. Rahm: The Torture Fight

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rahmemanuel1113.thumbnail.jpgThe headline news in Dennis Klaidman’s long piece on Eric Holder is that Holder may appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate torture.

Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter.

But the whole piece is worth reading for two other reasons: the drama it paints between Holder and Rahm (and the White House political agenda more generally), and the details it gives about the torture policy thus far.

Rahm v. Holder

First, Rahm.  Even to the extent to which the profile of Holder here reads like a puff piece, the entire piece is driven with two, related, narrative conflicts: Holder’s regret over the Marc Rich pardon.

And though Holder has bluntly acknowledged that he "blew it," the Rich decision haunts him. Given his professional roots, he says, "the notion that you would take actions based on political considerations runs counter to everything in my DNA."

And the tension of working for a Rahm-driven White House.

Any White House tests an attorney general’s strength. But one run by Rahm Emanuel requires a particular brand of fortitude. A legendary enforcer of presidential will, Emanuel relentlessly tries to anticipate political threats that could harm his boss. He hates surprises. That makes the Justice Department, with its independent mandate, an inherently nervous-making place for Emanuel. During the first Clinton administration, he was famous for blitzing Justice officials with phone calls, obsessively trying to gather intelligence, plant policy ideas, and generally keep tabs on the department.

One of his main interlocutors back then was Holder.

[snip]

"Rahm’s style is often misunderstood," says Holder. "He brings a rigor and a discipline that is a net plus to this administration." For his part, Emanuel calls Holder a "strong, independent attorney general." But Emanuel’s agitated presence hangs over the building—"the wrath of Rahm," one Justice lawyer calls it—and he is clearly on the minds of Holder and his aides as they weigh whether to launch a probe into the Bush administration’s interrogation policies.

In spite of the reported warmth between the two, Rahm is depicted as opposing a torture investigation. And there’s a remarkable anonymous quote in the article that contextually appears to be Rahm, Read more →