Appendix #1 of Petition re: MCA of 2006

Appendix #1 of Petition re: Military Commissions Act of 2006, "Sanctioning Tyranny, Torture...submitted to US District Court, District of Columbia 12/17/09

(#1) An amnesty law is any law that retroactively exempts a select group of people, usually military leaders and government leaders, from criminal liability for crimes committed. Most allegations involve human rights abuses and crimes against humanity. During the War on Terror, the Bush administration enacted the Military Commissions Act (MCA) in an attempt to regulate the legal procedures involving detainees called illegal combatants. Part of the act was an amendment which retroactively rewrote the War Crimes Act effectively making policy makers (i.e., politicians and military leaders) and those applying policy (i.e., CIA interogators and soldiers) no longer subject to legal prosecution under US law for acts defined as war crimes before the amendment was passed. Because of that, critics describe the MCA as an amnesty law or crimes committed in the War on Terror. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amnesty_law
(#1a) ‘‘Military Commissions Act of 2006’’. (d) Common Article 3 Violations.— (1) Prohibited conduct.— In subsection (c)(3), the term “grave breach of common Article 3” means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows:
(A) Torture.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind.
(B) Cruel or inhuman treatment.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions), including serious physical abuse, upon another within his custody or control.
2) Definitions.— In the case of an offense under subsection (a) by reason of subsection (c)(3)—
(A) the term “severe mental pain or suffering” shall be applied for purposes of paragraphs (1)(A) and (1)(B) in accordance with the meaning given that term in section 2340 (2) of this title;
(B) the term “serious bodily injury” shall be applied for purposes of paragraph (1)(F) in accordance with the meaning given that term in section 113 (b)(2) of this title;
(C) the term “sexual contact” shall be applied for purposes of paragraph (1)(G) in accordance with the meaning given that term in section 2246 (3) of this title;
(D) the term “serious physical pain or suffering” shall be applied for purposes of paragraph (1)(B) as meaning bodily injury that involves—
(i) a substantial risk of death;
(ii) extreme physical pain;
(iii) a burn or physical disfigurement of a serious nature (other than cuts, abrasions, or bruises); or
(iv) significant loss or impairment of the function of a bodily member, organ, or mental faculty; and
(E) the term “serious mental pain or suffering” shall be applied for purposes of paragraph (1)(B) in accordance with the meaning given the term “severe mental pain or suffering” (as defined in section 2340 (2) of this title), except that—
(i) the term “serious” shall replace the term “severe” where it appears; and
(ii) as to conduct occurring after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the term “serious and non-transitory mental harm (which need not be prolonged)” shall replace the term “prolonged mental harm” where it appears.

(F) Intentionally causing serious bodily injury.— The act of a person who intentionally causes, or conspires or attempts to cause, serious bodily injury to one or more persons, including lawful combatants, in violation of the law of war.

(#1b)17 (1) IN GENERAL.—Section 2441 of title 18, United States Code, is amended— (A) in subsection (c), by striking para20graph (3) and inserting the following new paragraph (3): ‘‘(3) which constitutes a grave breach of common Article 3 (as defined in subsection (d)) when committed in the context of and in association with an armed conflict not of an international character; or’’; and (B) by adding at the end the following new subsection: ‘‘(d) COMMON ARTICLE 3 VIOLATIONS.—**(1) PROHIBITED CONDUCT; In subsection (c)(3), the term “‘grave breach” of common Article 3’ means any conduct (such conduct constituting a grave breach of common Article 3 of the international conventions done at Geneva August 12, 1949), as follows: ‘‘(A) TORTURE.—The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions) upon another person within his custody or physical control for the purpose of obtaining information or a confession, punishment, intimidation, coercion, or any reason based on discrimination of any kind. ‘‘(B) CRUEL OR INHUMAN TREATMENT.— The act of a person who commits, or conspires or attempts to commit, an act intended to inflict severe or serious physical or mental pain or suffering (other than pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions), including serious physical abuse, upon another within his custody or control.
(2) RETROACTIVE APPLICABILITY.—The amendments made by this subsection, except as specified in subsection (d)(2)(E) of section 2441 of title 18, United States Code, shall take effect as of November 26, 1997, as if enacted immediately after the amendments made by section 583 of Public Law 105–118 (as amended by section 4002(e)(7) of Public Law 107–273).http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_cong_bills&docid=f:s3930es.txt.pdf
(#1c) Military Commissions Act of 2006; contained herein is the

Section 6 addresses several aspects of the Geneva Convention under U.S. law. It amends the War Crimes Act (WCA) (18 U.S.C. 2441) by retroactively replacing the existing generic codification of CA3 violations with an explicitly defined set of offenses. It gives the President authority to interpret the meaning of the Conventions and also to promulgate additional Convention violations as criminal offenses via Executive Order published in the Federal Register.
The retroactive narrowing of the scope of criminal CA3 violations was obviously crafted to exempt government officials from prosecution for detainee treatment that would fall within any reasonable person’s interpretation of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment proscribed by CA3. It also excludes denial of a fair trial from the list of defined offenses, so participants in the military commission process are protected as well. On the incomprehensible side, the MCA addresses “grave breaches” of CA3 although there is no such thing under the Conventions, and bars use of foreign/international legal materials in interpreting CA3 violations. The last point is probably largely symbolic; since the statute now spells out in detail the conduct that can be punished there is less need to consult persuasive authority than if the statute simply makes violation of the somewhat ambiguous CA3 language.
(#1d) The MCA revises this portion of the War Crimes Act, replacing the blanket criminalization of Common Article 3 violations with a list of "grave breaches" of Common Article 3, which are specified and defined in the legislation. And the law is amended retroactively to November 26, 1997, meaning that perpetrators of several categories of what were war crimes at the time they were committed, can no longer be punished under U.S. law.
Now, under the MCA, torture and cruel and inhuman treatment qualify as "grave breaches," but degrading or humiliating treatment does not. The MCA also eliminates as a war crime the passing of sentences by a court that does not meet international fair trial standards.
A twist in the new legislation is that it includes two separate definitions of cruel and inhuman treatment, one that applies to abuses that occurred prior to the MCA's passage, and another that applies to future conduct. If committed after the passage of the MCA, cruel and inhuman treatment only requires a finding of serious and non-fleeting mental pain or suffering. But for abuses committed prior to the law's passage, the perpetrator can only be penalized if the pain or suffering is "prolonged."
This provision may immunize from prosecution CIA interrogators who have previously employed abusive interrogation techniques such as waterboarding and extended sleep deprivation . ,,,Making them ex post facto, amnesty laws http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20061025.html -- techniques that cause time-limited but severe mental anguish. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20061025.htmlSection 6.(b)(5) declares that although Congress has substantially narrowed the scope of CA3 violations that can be prosecuted in federal courts, this does not define the limits of U.S. obligations under CA3. Section 6.(c) categorically declares that the U.S. government is prohibited from inflicting “cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment” on any person, regardless of nationality or location. This treatment is then defined in terms of conduct that would be proscribed under the Fifth, Eighth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and the President is called upon to ensure compliance via administrative rules and procedures. Once this is done, U.S. service personnel and civilian defense contractors could likely be prosecuted for violations under UCMJ article 92, although CIA personnel probably could not be. Unfortunately it appears that the Department of Justice takes a very narrow view of what conduct violates these amendments so it remains to be seen what standard will ultimately be applied. http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/annotationsy/2007/10/test.php
1)(e) http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_sepp.html
(#2)(32)^ Cerone, John P. (November 13, 2006). "The Military Commissions Act of 2006:Examining the Relationship between the International Law of Armed Conflict and US Law". American Society of International Law. http://www.asil.org/insights/2006/11/insights061114.html. Retrieved 2007-05-30.
(#3)(33)^ Mariner, Joanne (October 25, 2006). "The Military Commissions Act of 2006: A Short Primer (Part Two)". FindLaw. http://writ.news.findlaw.com/mariner/20061025.html. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
(#4)(34)^ Center for Constitutional Rights. "Military Commissions Act of 2006: A Summary of the Law" (PDF). http://ccrjustice.org/files/MCA%20Factsheet%209-23-08.pdf. Retrieved 2009-06-23. ‘
(#5) "The Military Commissions Act is unconstitutional. It is un-American. It Is designed to Insure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing Its unlawful abuses of power." * Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, January 4, 2007 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1248318531.html
(#6a) news reports, quoting unnamed sources, say that if Holder decides in the coming weeks to authorize a criminal investigation it would be limited to the “few bad apples” at the CIA who exceeded interrogation limits set by Justice Department attorneys in memos that authorized brutal acts of torture against suspected terrorists. http://pubrecord.org/law/2948/holder-torture-probe-would-likely/
(#6b) Sunday's New York Times called on Congress to impeach federal judge Jay Bybee over his now infamous role in authoring one of the Bush administration memos arguing for the legality of torture. "These memos make it clear that Mr. Bybee is unfit for a job that requires legal judgment and a respect for the Constitution," wrote the paper. "Congress should impeach him." Today, Bybee is a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He was confirmed by the Senate on March 13, 2003--some time before any of the "torture memos" became public. He has never answered questions about them, has never had to defend his conduct http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/19/jay-bybee-nyt-calls-for-i_n_188680.html
(#6c) TORTURING AN IRAQ-AL QAEDA CONNECTION: As McClatchy reported, "[T]he Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime."
As The Wonk Room's Matt Duss explained, "[T]he time spent and assets used in attempting to torture out a justification for what we now know was a predetermined Iraq invasion could have been better spent actually protecting America. In other words, the Iraq war was damaging U.S. national security even before it began."
Such information -- which doesn't exist -- "would've provided a foundation" for Bush's arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. According to the Armed Services Committee report, former U.S. Army psychiatrist Maj. Charles Burney told Army investigators in 2006 that, "the more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-progress-report/the-tortured-past_b_190625.html

(#7) Yoo Admits He Fixed Law Around Bush’s Torture Policy Yoo wrote a book in 2006, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account on the War On Terror, where he admitted that he acted as an advocate for White House policy in what would appear to be a violation of Justice Department guidelines on issues such as torture and domestic surveillance. On torture, Yoo described his participation in meetings that helped develop the controversial policies for the treatment of detainees.
For instance, Yoo wrote about a trip he took to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, with other senior administration officials to observe interrogations and to join in discussions about specific interrogation methods. In other words, Yoo was not acting as an independent attorney providing the White House with unbiased legal advice but was more of an advocate for administration policy.
In his book, Yoo wrote that in December 2001 “senior lawyers from the Attorney General’s office, the White House counsel’s office, the Department’s of State and Defense, and the [National Security Council] met to discuss the work on our opinion” regarding whether the Geneva Convention applied to members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban.“This group of lawyers would meet repeatedly over the next months to develop policy on the war on terrorism,” Yoo wrote.
“Meetings were usually chaired by [former White House counsel] Alberto Gonzales…his deputy, Timothy Flanigan, usually played the role of inquisitor, pressing different agencies to explain their legal reasoning to justify their policy recommendations.” Yoo wrote that the policies he and other senior administration officials recommended, that al-Qaeda and the Taliban were not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention, also rankled military lawyers.“Judge Advocates General [JAG's] worried that if the United States did not follow the Geneva Conventions, our enemies might take it as justification to abuse American POW’s in the future,” Yoo wrote. http://pubrecord.org/torture/216/yoo-admits-he-fixed-law-around- bushs-torture-policy/,

(#8) MEMOS THAT PAVED THE WAY pp.4-8 of Appendix
A handful of legal opinions opened the way to the abuses documented in McClatchy's investigation. Among them:
In a Jan. 9, 2002, memorandum for Haynes, co-author Yoo opined that basic Geneva Convention protections known as Common Article Three forbidding humiliating and degrading treatment and torture of prisoners didn't cover alleged al Qaida or Taliban detainees — the entire incoming population of detainees in Afghanistan and Guantanamo.
In a memorandum to Bush dated Jan. 25, 2002, Gonzales said that rescinding detainees' Geneva protections "substantially reduces the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act." Doing so, Gonzales wrote, also would create a solid defense against prosecutors or independent counsels who may in the future "decide to pursue unwarranted charges based on Section 2441," the U.S. War Crimes Act, which prohibits violations of the Geneva Conventions. Gonzales added that by withholding Geneva protections and prisoner-of-war status, Bush could avoid case-by-case reviews of detainees' status.
On Feb. 7, 2002, Bush issued a memorandum declaring that alleged al Qaida or Taliban members wouldn't be considered prisoners of war and, further, that they wouldn't be granted protection under Common Article Three. Most nations accept Article Three, common to all four Geneva Conventions, as customary law setting the minimum standard for conduct in any conflict, whether internal or international.
An Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum that Gonzales requested from the Justice Department defined torture as "injury such as death, organ failure or serious impairment of body functions," a high bar for ruling interrogation techniques or detainee treatment illegal. U.S. law, according to the memorandum's analysis, "prohibits only extreme acts."
A March 14, 2003, memorandum that Yoo prepared at Haynes' request concluded that even if an interrogation method violated U.S. criminal statutes — such as the one against war crimes — the interrogators involved most likely couldn't be prosecuted because they were operating within the scope of Bush's constitutional authority to wage war against al Qaida and other militant groups. "In wartime, it is for the president alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy," Yoo wrote.
The five lawyers on the War Council met every few weeks behind closed doors in Gonzales' or Haynes' office to plot legal strategy, according to Jack Goldsmith, a former senior Justice Department lawyer.
Several other former U.S. officials confirmed that the group was the driving force for White House policy on detainees.
Fears of future prosecution motivated many officials in the administration, Goldsmith said in his book "The Terror Presidency," published last year. The five lawyers saw legal opinions drafted by Yoo and others in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel as a shield, Goldsmith wrote, that would make it hard to convict someone of acting on legal advice from the premier legal office in the administration.
"In my two years in the government, I witnessed top officials and bureaucrats in the White House and throughout the administration openly worrying that investigators acting with the benefit of hindsight in a different political environment would impose criminal penalties on heat-of-battle judgment calls," wrote Goldsmith, who declined interview requests. As the head of the Office of Legal Council from the fall of 2003 to the summer of 2004, Goldsmith reversed the August 2002 and March 2003 opinions.
MILITARY LAWYERS CONCERNED
The military's lawyers were among those who were most concerned about what the new policies would mean for soldiers in the field.
The military legal community complained, to little avail, that the policies hatched with the consent of Bush, Cheney and then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld were replacing decades of U.S. military policy on handling detainees. When they protested, the War Council shut them out.
"We were absolutely marginalized," said Donald J. Guter, a rear admiral who served as the Navy's judge advocate general from 2000 to 2002. "I think it was intentional, because so many military JAGs spoke up about the rule of law."
Thomas Romig, a major general who was the Army's judge advocate general from 2001 to 2005, agreed that the JAGs were pushed to the side: "It was a disaster," he said. Trust between the uniformed military lawyers and the Bush administration collapsed in the months after 9-11.
Haynes, then the Pentagon's head lawyer, had asked whether hundreds of the prisoners could be detained on Navy warships. The security and logistics involved in operating a ship while maintaining a maximum-security prison onboard would have been impossible. Guter thought that Haynes was raising such ideas to push him toward establishing a prison at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base.
Guter said "it became apparent pretty quickly" that Haynes wanted a place "outside of the courts," where no judge could consider whether detainees were being held lawfully or under appropriate conditions.
"What they were looking for was the minimum due process that we could get away with," said Guter, who's now the dean of Duquesne University's law school. "I felt like they knew the answer they wanted to hear."
Romig recalled tense discussions with Yoo in November and December 2001 about setting up military commissions to try detainees, "John Yoo wanted to use military commissions in the manner they were used in the Indian wars," Romig said. "I looked at him and said, 'You know, that was 100-and-something years ago. You're out of your mind; we're talking about the law.' "
The military commissions that the U.S. used against Native Americans during the mid-19th century were often ad hoc and frequently resulted in natives being hanged or shot.
"As they viewed it, due process is legal mumbo jumbo," said Romig, who's now the dean of Washburn University's law school. "They wanted to get them, get the facts and convict them. ... If you're caught as a terrorist, you're presumed guilty and you have to prove you're innocent. It was crazy."
When Romig objected to pushing the boundaries of interrogation procedures during meetings in late 2002 or early 2003, he recalled that civilian defense officials replied that the time for law had passed.
"Guys, it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. It's time to take the gloves off," Romig said he was told by Marshall Billingslea, a deputy to Douglas Feith — who was then the undersecretary of defense for policy, the Pentagon's third-ranking official.
Romig said that he and other military officers asked, "Do you realize the implications of what you're saying?" Like many in the military, Romig doubted the quality of intelligence gathered by physical coercion.
Haynes, who also was present, had no objections to what Billingsley had said, according to Romig. Billingslea and Haynes declined requests for comment. In June 2006, over the objections of the White House, the Supreme Court ruled that Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions was applicable to detainees at Guantanamo Bay.
Four months later, Bush signed the Military Commissions Act, which said that no foreign unlawful combatant subject to trial by military commission could invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights, and that no U.S. court or judge has jurisdiction to hear cases in which such detainees contest their incarceration.
The bill also rewrote part of the U.S. legal code on war crimes, changing the definition of a war crime from conduct that "constitutes a violation of Common Art. 3 to the much higher standard of "a grave breach of Common Article 3."
Within that new definition, it excluded "meaning harsh treatment pain or suffering incidental to lawful sanctions," that's allowed by the Bush administration's legal interpretations.
Among those whom Bush thanked at a bill-signing ceremony were Cheney — Addington's main backer in the White House — and Gonzales.
Two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that detainees have the right to challenge their detention before federal judges, striking down that section of the Military Commissions Act. The 5-4 decision said the law applied to everyone: "From an early date it was understood that the king, too, was subject to the law."
The policies hatched in the offices of Gonzales, Addington and Haynes muddied decades of U.S. military policy on handling detainees.
Changes to detainee law such as rescinding Common Article Three give a "dehumanizing message about the people (detainees) we're dealing with," said Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, a defense attorney in the Office of Military Commissions, which was set up to try detainees at Guantanamo.
"The people who pursue that sort of academic, intellectual pursuit," said Broyles, who represents Qahtani, "don't understand the effect it has on the people (soldiers) who only see the end result."http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38886.html

(#9) Proof Bush Fixed The Facts by Ray McGovern May 4, 2005 Downing Street Memos



(Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour).
…some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove(Director of British Intelligence) briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq. Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral.
Juggernaut Before The Horse - In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:
· Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
· Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
· Tall tales from a drunk defector about mobile biolab weapons
· Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
· A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure. http://www.tompaine.com/articles/proof_bush_fixed_the_facts.php

(#10) David Luban of Georgetown wrote in OF LAW AND MORALS -, regarding the legal reasoning in the torture memos,
“They read as if they were reverse engineered to reach a pre-determined outcome: approval of waterboarding and the other CIA techniques. The memo's authors were obviously looking for a standard of torture so high that none of the enhanced interrogation techniques would count. But legal ethics does not permit lawyers to make frivolous arguments merely because it gets them the results they wanted.
I have called the interrogation memos a legal train wreck.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2218290/

The disgrace of secret law by Christopher Kutz, U.C. Berkeley School of Law http://lawweb.usc.edu/centers/clp/papers/documents/Kutz.pdf
#(11) FAITHFULLY EXECUTING THE LAWS: INTERNAL LEGAL CONSTRAINTS ON EXECUTIVE POWER.
UCLA Law Review, August 2007 by Dawn E. Johnsen
Dawn Johnsen, OLC nominee, has said, “As my article The Absolute Prohibition of Torture documents, death threats, use of dogs to create intense fear, beatings, the cold cell or a related inducement of hypothermia, and waterboarding are each manifest forms of “torture” that are absolutely prohibited under all circumstances and regardless of the status of the victim. In fact, there are 29 U.S. judicial opinions and 7 U.S. executive Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, among other cases and materials, recognizing that waterboarding and related inducements of suffocation are “torture.” If they were not torture, they would also be absolutely prohibited as cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, along with the other tactics mentioned.” “To justify otherwise unlawful policies, President Bush and his lawyers have espoused an extreme view of expansive presidential power during times of war and national emergency.”
“Most infamously, government lawyers in OLC gave executive branch policymakers dangerously flawed advice in the early months after the September 11 attacks regarding the legality of using torture to acquire information from detainees.12 Although the substance of the advice has been almost universally condemned, and the Bush Administration publicly disavowed the advice after it was leaked, the failures that led to this debacle demand far greater scrutiny, both to determine accountability for past misdeeds and to promote future legal compliance.”
“A defense of necessity would argue that torture--notwithstanding the statute's prohibition--was necessary to gain information to prevent a future terrorist attack:”

http://www.britannica.com/bps/additionalcontent/18/27070619/FAITHFULLY-EXECUTING-THE-LAWS-INTERNAL-LEGAL-CONSTRAINTS-ON-EXECUTIVE-POWER
(#11)(b) http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/cia/

(#12) Senior administration officials kept insisting the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
Al-Libi is subjected to a series of increasingly harsh techniques http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1209-07.htm , including at least one, waterboarding, that is considered torture. http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=torture,_rendition,_and_other_abuses_against_captives_in_iraq,_afghanistan,_and_elsewhere&startpos=200#amid0302tentechniques
Reputedly, he is finally broken after being waterboarded and then forced to stand naked in a cold cell overnight where he is repeatedly doused with cold water by his captors. In order to avoid harsh treatment he will also provide false information, alleging that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases. [ABC News, 11/18/2005 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866 ;
New York Times, 12/9/2005] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1209-07.htm
New York Times, November 6, 2005 By DOUGLAS JEHL http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10detain.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=&st=nyt , http://www.newsweek.com/id/196818
Senior administration officials kept insisting the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, Former Vice President Dick Cheney and others who advocated the use of sleep deprivation, isolation and stress positions and waterboarding, which simulates drowning, insist that they were legal.
"Cheney's and Rumsfeld's people were told repeatedly, by CIA . . . and by others, that there wasn't any reliable intelligence that pointed to operational ties between bin Laden and Saddam, and that no such ties were likely because the two were fundamentally enemies, not allies."
Senior administration officials, however, "blew that off and kept insisting that we'd overlooked something, that the interrogators weren't pushing hard enough, that there had to be something more we could do to get that information," he said. http://www.mcclatchydc.com/227/story/66622.html
The use of abusive interrogation —widely considered torture —as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses. Former Powell chief of staff Lawrence Wilkerson wrote,
“So furious was this effort that on one particular detainee, even when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney’s office that their detainee “was compliant” (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP’s office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods,” Wilkerson added. “The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa’ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, “revealed” such contacts. Of course later we learned that al-Libi revealed these contacts only to get the torture to stop.”
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/05/14/ex-bush-official-says-torture-approved-in-effort-to-tie-iraq-to-al-qaeda/

(#13a) Al-Libi is subjected to a series of increasingly harsh techniques http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1209-07.htm , including at least one, waterboarding, that is considered torture. http://www.historycommons.org/timeline.jsp?timeline=torture,_rendition,_and_other_abuses_against_captives_in_iraq,_afghanistan,_and_elsewhere&startpos=200#amid0302tentechniques
Reputedly, he is finally broken after being waterboarded and then forced to stand naked in a cold cell overnight where he is repeatedly doused with cold water by his captors. In order to avoid harsh treatment he will also provide false information to the Egyptians, alleging that Iraq trained al-Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases. [ABC News, 11/18/2005 http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/Investigation/story?id=1322866 ;
New York Times, 12/9/2005] http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1209-07.htm
New York Times, November 6, 2005 By DOUGLAS JEHL http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/10/washington/10detain.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=&st=nyt , http://www.newsweek.com/id/196818

(#13b) Report Warned Bush Team About Intelligence skepticism regarding Ibn Libi's tortured account, still President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/06/politics/06intel.html?pagewanted=print

(#13c) In Cincinnati in October 2002, Bush informed the public: "Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."[cite this ote]
This claim was repeated several times in the run-up to the war, including in then-Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the U.N Security Council on 5 February 2003, which concluded with a long recitation of the information provided by al-Libi. Powell's speech came less than a month after a then-classified CIA report concluding that the information provided by al-Libi was unreliable and about a year after a Defense Intelligence Agency report concluded the same thing.

http://wapedia.mobi/en/Ibn_al-Shaykh_al-Libi

(#14) Between March 2001 and May 2001: Richard Clarke: Bush Officials Discuss Creating Casus Belli for War with Iraq Counterterrorism “tsar” Richard Clarke later says that sometime between March and May, Bush administration officials discussed creating a casus belli for war with Iraq. In a 2007 interview with radio show host Jon Elliot, Clarke says:
“Prior to 9/11 a number of people in the White House were saying to me you know this—this administration, particularly Cheney, but also Bush [and] people like Wolfowitz in the Pentagon, are really intent on going to war with Iraq. And this was the whispered conversations in the National Security Council staff.… Early, early on in the administration people I knew and trusted in the administration were saying to me, ‘You know. They’re really going to do it. They are going to go to war with Iraq.’ And I was flabbergasted. Why would you want to do that of all the things in the world that one could choose to do?… And how are we going to do it? How are we going to cause that provocation? And there was some discussion of ‘Well maybe [we’ll] keep flying aircraft over Iraq and maybe one day one of them will be shot down.’…And some of the talk I was hearing—in the March, April, May timeframe—‘Maybe we’ll do something that is so provocative and do it in such a way that our aircraft will be shot down.’ And then we’ll have an excuse to go to war with Iraq.” http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=RichardClarkeCasusBelliIraqWar

Excerpts
“[T]he United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages. These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention.” — April 2001 [University, 4/2/2001, pp. 34 ; University, 4/2/2001, pp. 34 ]
“Iraq remains a destabilizing influence to… the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East. Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. This would display his personal power, enhance his image as a pan-Arab leader and pressure others for a lifting of economic sanctions against his regime. The United States should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments. The United States should then develop an integrated strategy with key allies in Europe and Asia, and with key countries in the Middle East, to restate goals with respect to Iraqi policy and to restore a cohesive coalition of key allies…” — April 2001 [University, 4/2/2001, pp. 42 ; University, 4/2/2001, pp. 42 ]
“Iraqi [oil] reserves represent a major asset that can quickly add capacity to world oil markets and inject a more competitive tenor to oil trade.” — April 2001 [University, 4/2/2001, pp. 43 ; University, 4/2/2001, pp. 43 ]
9:00 to 10:00 p.m. (see (9:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m.) September 11, 2001), President Bush continues meeting with a smaller group of advisers. During this meeting, Bush says the US will punish not just the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, but also those who harbored them (this closely echoes the rhetoric he used in a speech that evening (see 8:30 p.m. September 11, 2001)). Secretary of State Colin Powell suggests the US needs to build a coalition of other nations. But according to the 9/11 Commission, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld urges Bush to “think broadly about who might have harbored the attackers, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Sudan, and Iran. He wonder[s] aloud how much evidence the United States would need in order to deal with these countries, pointing out that major strikes could take up to 60 days to assemble.” [9/11 Commission, 7/24/2004, pp. 330] According to journalist Bob Woodward, at this meeting, “Rumsfeld actually puts Iraq on the table and says, ‘Part of our response maybe should be attacking Iraq. It’s an opportunity.’” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006] Earlier in the day, notes by a Rumsfeld aide indicate Rumsfeld was aware that evidence was already suggesting al-Qaeda was behind the 9/11 attacks, but he wanted to use 9/11 as an excuse to attack Iraq as well (see (2:40 p.m.) September 11, 2001).
Powell agrees with Clarke that the immediate focus should be al-Qaeda. However, Powell also says, “Public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible.” Clarke complains to him, “Having been attacked by al-Qaeda, for us now to go bombing Iraq in response would be like our invading Mexico after the Japanese attacked us at Pearl Harbor.”
At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting al-Qaeda. I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that (Defense Secretary Donald) Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.” [Associated Press, 3/22/2004; Washington Post, 3/22/2004; New York Times, 3/28/2004] “They were talking about Iraq on 9/11. They were talking about it on 9/12.” [Clarke, 2004; Reuters, 3/19/2004; Associated Press, 3/20/2004]

(#14b) the information wrenched from Ibn Libi under torture [1] was cited by the George W. Bush Administration in the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. [2] That information was frequently repeated by members of the Bush Administration even though then-classified reports from both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Defense Intelligence Agency strongly questioned its credibility, suggesting that al-Libi was "intentionally misleading" interrogators. (Ibn Libi was desperate to stop the torture) http://wapedia.mobi/en/Ibn_al-Shaykh_al-Libi http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=RichardClarkeCasusBelliIraqWar
Between March 2001 and May 2001: Richard Clarke: Bush Officials Discuss Creating Casus Belli for War with Iraq
And some of the talk I was hearing—in the March, April, May(or '02) time maybe we'll something that is so provocative and do it in such a way that our aircraft will be shot down.’ And then we’ll have an excuse to go to war with Iraq.” http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=RichardClarkeCasusBelliIraqWar&scale=0#RichardClarkeCasusBelliIraqWar
(#15) This post is part of a series (see Introduction and Parts 1, 2A-1, 2A-2, 2A-3, 2A-4, 2A-5, 2B-1, 2B-2, 2C, 3, 3A) focused on building a case to demonstrate the Bush White House's intelligence manipulation, fixing and misrepresentation, mostly using published Congressional reports like the Phase I Senate (SSCI) Report, the Robb-Silberman WMD Commission Report, etc. In previous parts of this series, the focus has largely been the misrepresentation of intel reports by the White House through the use of deliberately misleading or false statements (mostly in the context of the aluminum tubes issue and partly on the uranium from Africa issue). I now turn the focus onto how raw intelligence was deliberately cooked to create dubious or false intel for the White House. In this context, there has been a lot of focus on the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and other entities (like the Iraqi National Congress - INC), but there is one particular group which has received less attention (in my view) than it deserves. I am referring here to the role played by certain individuals in CIA's WINPAC, especially individuals who were often the White House's co-conspirators contacts within the CIA, in manipulating or misrepresenting raw intel to generate false claims regarding Iraq's alleged quest for WMDs, in order to satisfy the expectations of the Bush White House.
In this part I focus on the role played by a few individuals in WINPAC in perpetrating the uranium from Africa hoax. The picture that emerges is that the uranium from Africa claim was stovepiped to the White House by those individuals using bogus raw "intel", in order to meet the White House's expectations, while a parallel communication channel from the CIA that even included then-DCI George Tenet was trying hard (and ultimately unsuccessfully) to get the WH to drop the uranium claim. Thus, a rogue operation involving some personnel in a WH-created group within the CIA (WINPAC) who were cooperative with the WH, was conveniently used to paint the "CIA" as a monolithic entity that got the intel "wrong". In other words, the scapegoating of the CIA for WMDgate was a deliberate act of deception by the Bush administration - to falsely paint the CIA (and other IC agencies) as organizations that had no internal dissenting views regarding the fabricated or misrepresented "intelligence". Additionally, in the first week of October 2002, the NSC/WH was evidently receiving two opposing views on the uranium matter from the CIA - the WINPAC view and the official view of the CIA conveyed by someone as high as George Tenet in a far more aggressive and categorical manner. Yet the WH did not tell their WINPAC contacts that they were wrong, and that they should be following the lead of George Tenet. The reason for this is quite obvious.
http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/006336.php

(#16) Top Interrogation Experts Agree: Torture Doesn't Work
Apologists for torture say that it was a "necessarily evil" to stop future terror attacks.
However, the top interrogation experts all say torture that doesn't work:
The military agency which actually provided advice on harsh interrogation techniques for use against terrorism suspects warned the Pentagon in 2002 that those techniques would produce "unreliable information."
Army Field Manual 34-52 Chapter 1 says:
"Experience indicates that the use of force is not necessary to gain the cooperation of sources for interrogation. Therefore, the use of force is a poor technique, as it yields unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say whatever he thinks the interrogator wants to hear."
A declassified FBI e-mail dated May 10, 2004, regarding interrogation at Guantanamo states "[we] explained to [the Department of Defense], FBI has been successful for many years obtaining confessions via non-confrontational interviewing techniques." (see also this)
Brigadier General David R. Irvine, retired Army Reserve strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner interrogation and military law for 18 years with the Sixth Army Intelligence School, says torture doesn't work
The CIA's own Inspector General wrote that waterboarding was not "efficacious" in producing information
A former FBI interrogator -- who interrogated Al Qaeda suspects -- says categorically that torture does not help collect intelligence. On the other hand he says that torture actually turns people into terrorists
A 30-year veteran of CIA’s operations directorate who rose to the most senior managerial ranks, says:
“The administration’s claims of having ‘saved thousands of Americans’ can be dismissed out of hand because credible evidence has never been offered — not even an authoritative leak of any major terrorist operation interdicted based on information gathered from these interrogations in the past seven years. … It is irresponsible for any administration not to tell a credible story that would convince critics at home and abroad that this torture has served some useful purpose.This is not just because the old hands overwhelmingly believe that torture doesn’t work — it doesn’t — but also because they know that torture creates more terrorists and fosters more acts of terror than it could possibly neutralize.”
(#17) the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.” http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/cia/
More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.


(#18) Two provisions of the MCA have been criticized for allegedly making it harder to prosecute and convict officers and employees of the US government for misconduct in office.
First, the MCA changed the definition of war crimes for which US government defendants can be prosecuted. Under the War Crimes Act of 1996, any violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions was considered a war crime and could be criminally prosecuted. Section 6 of the Military Commissions Act amended the War Crimes Act so that only actions specifically defined as "grave breaches" of Common Article 3 could be the basis for a prosecution, and it made that definition retroactive to November 26, 1997. The specific actions defined in section 6 of the Military Commissions Act include torture, cruel or inhumane treatment, murder, mutilation or maiming, intentionally causing serious bodily harm, rape, sexual assault or abuse, and the taking of hostages. According to Mariner of Human Rights Watch, the effect is "that perpetrators of several categories of what were war crimes at the time they were committed, can no longer be punished under U.S. law."[32] The Center for Constitutional Rights adds:
The MCA's restricted definitions arguably would exempt certain U.S. officials who have implemented or had command responsibility for coercive interrogation techniques from war crimes prosecutions.. . . .This amendment is designed to protect U.S. government perpetrators of abuses during the "war on terror" from prosecution.[33]
In 2005, a provision of the Detainee Treatment Act (section 1004(a)) had created a new defense as well as a provision to providing counsel for agents involved in the detention and interrogation of individuals “believed to be engaged in or associated with international terrorist activity”. The 2006 MCA amended section 1004(a) of the Detainee Treatment Act to guarantee free counsel in the event of civil or criminal prosecution and applied the above mentioned legal defense to prosecutions for conduct that occurred during the period September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. Although the provision recognizes the possibility of civil and or criminal proceedings, the Center for Constitutional Rights has criticised this claiming that "The MCA retroactively immunizes some U.S. officials who have engaged in illegal actions which have been authorized by the Executive." [34] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Commissions_Act_of_2006
(#19) Memos Suggest Legal Cherry-Picking in Justifying Torture
In general, the memos “cherry-pick the law and cases that they want to apply,” says Dakwar. For example, the memos rely on interpretations by the International Criminal Court, even though the United States, and particularly the Bush administration, opposed the creation of the ICC and don’t recognize its legitimacy. “Yet it utilized those interpretations in defense of their unjustified practices.”
The other strange thing about the memos is that in parts, they analyze the conditions of the detainees’ confinement — the physical conditions of their cells and whether they were provided with food and water and allowed to sleep, for example — separately from their treatment during interrogations, which sometimes specifically included sleep and food deprivation. And portions of the conditions’ descriptions — for example, the way prisoners’ cells are illuminated 24-hours a day — are redacted, and therefore incomplete. That makes it almost impossible to consider the legality of the conditions as a whole. “Alone, a condition may not amount to a violation, but in certain circumstances, a combination of techniques and methods would constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, or could even rise to the level of torture,” said Dakwar.
(#20)"The Military Commissions Act (f 2006)stitutional. It is un-American. It Is designed to Insure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing Its unlawful abuses of power." * Senate Judiciary chairman Patrick Leahy, January 4, 2007 http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P3-1248318531.html
(#21) As the U.S. Supreme Court wrote in 1944, Ashcraft v. Tennessee, 322 U.S. 143 (1944) “There have been, and are now, certain foreign nations with governments … which convict individuals with testimony obtained by police organizations possessed of an unrestrained power to seize persons suspected of crimes against the state, hold them in secret custody, and wring from them confessions by physical or mental torture. So long as the Constitution remains the basic law of our Republic, America will not have that kind of government.”
http://washingtonindependent.com/465/using-law-to-justify-torture
(#22) Re: White House manipulation of intelligence:This post is part of a series (see Introduction and Parts 1, 2A-1, 2A-2, 2A-3, 2A-4, 2A-5, 2B-1, 2B-2, 2C, 3, 3A) focused on building a case to demonstrate the Bush White House's intelligence manipulation, fixing and misrepresentation, mostly using published Congressional reports like the Phase I Senate (SSCI) Report, the Robb-Silberman WMD Commission Report, etc. In previous parts of this series, the focus has largely been the misrepresentation of intel reports by the White House through the use of deliberately misleading or false statements (mostly in the context of the aluminum tubes issue and partly on the uranium from Africa issue). I now turn the focus onto how raw intelligence was deliberately cooked to create dubious or false intel for the White House. In this context, there has been a lot of focus on the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) and other entities (like the Iraqi National Congress - INC), but there is one particular group which has received less attention (in my view) than it deserves. I am referring here to the role played by certain individuals in CIA's WINPAC, especially individuals who were often the White House's co-conspirators contacts within the CIA, in manipulating or misrepresenting raw intel to generate false claims regarding Iraq's alleged quest for WMDs, in order to satisfy the expectations of the Bush White House.
In this part I focus on the role played by a few individuals in WINPAC in perpetrating the uranium from Africa hoax. The picture that emerges is that the uranium from Africa claim was stovepiped to the White House by those individuals using bogus raw "intel", in order to meet the White House's expectations, while a parallel communication channel from the CIA that even included then-DCI George Tenet was trying hard (and ultimately unsuccessfully) to get the WH to drop the uranium claim. Thus, a rogue operation involving some personnel in a WH-created group within the CIA (WINPAC) who were cooperative with the WH, was conveniently used to paint the "CIA" as a monolithic entity that got the intel "wrong". In other words, the scapegoating of the CIA for WMDgate was a deliberate act of deception by the Bush administration - to falsely paint the CIA (and other IC agencies) as organizations that had no internal dissenting views regarding the fabricated or misrepresented "intelligence". Additionally, in the first week of October 2002, the NSC/WH was evidently receiving two opposing views on the uranium matter from the CIA - the WINPAC view and the official view of the CIA conveyed by someone as high as George Tenet in a far more aggressive and categorical manner. Yet the WH did not tell their WINPAC contacts that they were wrong, and that they should be following the lead of George Tenet. The reason for this is quite obvious. http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/006336.php
Holder has named longtime prosecutor John H. Durham, who has parachuted into crisis situations for both political parties over three decades, to open an early review of nearly a dozen cases of alleged detainee mistreatment at the hands of CIA interrogators and contractors.
Holder Names Prosecutor: Progress or Whitewash? August 24, 2009, 7:46 pm http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/cia/
In a statement Monday afternoon, Holder cautioned that the inquiry is far from a full-blown criminal investigation. Rather, he said, it is unknown whether indictments or prosecutions of CIA contractors and employees will follow. Lawyers involved in similar reviews said that any possible cases could take years to build because of challenges with witnesses and evidence.
In appointing a prosecutor to investigate alleged CIA interrogation abuses, including episodes that resulted in prisoner deaths, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Monday shook off warnings from President Obama to avoid becoming mired in past controversies.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082401743_pf.html
Holder’s Modified, Limited Hangout
Attorney General Eric Holder today announced that he has charged John Durham, a career prosecutor from Connecticut, to examine a series of cases in which CIA interrogators appear to have exceeded the guidelines provided in the use of Bush-era torture techniques and to determine whether cause exists for a full criminal investigation
that Holder decided not to release the report of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), which reviews and comments on the legal guidance given by OLC.
First, the report itself could question the legal competence of the OLC memos—which were in fact repudiated by the Bush Administration before Holder.
There’s ample reason to doubt whether anyone with legal training—or indeed, anyone with a functioning mind and the ability to read—would find the memos to be persuasive statements of the law. That matters, because the law requires someone relying on them to have done so “in good faith.”
Second, the factual section of the OPR report could show that the memos were not commissioned because the White House or the CIA wanted the benefit of OLC’s thoughts about the law. In fact, the torture program was already in place and being used. These memos were solicited and written as get-out-of-jail cards to get CIA interrogators, at least some of whom raised concerns about the legality of what was being done, to use the new techniques, as well as Bush administration officials
the OLC memos were written as a collaborative effort between the OLC attorneys and still-unidentified persons who worked for Cheney.


Does he want to put the Justice Department in the position of saying it has investigated the crimes that obviously occurred, and then limit the scope of the investigation in a way that makes any prosecution rather unlikely? Doing so might keep criminal action involving Justice Department personnel (and in the White House) at bay. No–it seems that he is offering what, as John Dean reminds us, was known in the Watergate era as a “modified, limited hangout.” Yes, some of those involved in the program will be exposed to the possibility of prosecution–but right now it seems that the torture program’s true authors could escape any serious scrutiny.
That would be a travesty. But it would be wrong to believe at the outset that this
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2009/08/hbc-90005596

A bipartisan congressional report traces the U.S. abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Garaib to President George W. Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memorandum that excluded “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s report said Bush’s memo opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” http://baltimorechronicle.com/2008/121208Leopold.html

.) (#10) OF LAW AND MORALS -As David Luban of Georgetown has argued, regarding the legal reasoning in the torture memos
“They read as if they were reverse engineered to reach a pre-determined outcome: approval of waterboarding and the other CIA techniques. The memo's authors were obviously looking for a standard of torture so high that none of the enhanced interrogation techniques would count. But legal ethics does not permit lawyers to make frivolous arguments merely because it gets them the results they wanted.
I have called the interrogation memos a legal train wreck.”
http://www.slate.com/id/2218290/
The disgrace of secret law by Christopher Kutz, U.C. Berkeley School of Law

Greenwald notes that in his statement this morning, Holder says the prosecutor’s initial review is limited only “to those who hose who failed to ‘act in good faith and within the scope of legal guidance’ — meaning only those interrogators and other officials who exceeded the torture limits which John Yoo and Jay Bybee approved. Those who, with good faith, tortured within the limits of the OLC memos will ‘be protected from legal jeopardy.’”
As a practical matter, Holder is consciously establishing as the legal baseline — he’s vesting with sterling legal authority — those warped, torture-justifying DOJ memos. Worse, his pledge of immunity today for those who complied with those memos went beyond mere interrogators and includes everyone, policymakers and lawyers alike: “the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees.” Thus, as long as, say, a White House official shows that (a) the only torture methods they ordered were approved by the OLC and (b) they did not know those methods were criminal, then they would be entitled to full-scale immunity under the standard Holder announced today. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/cia/

(#6) news reports, quoting unnamed sources, say that if Holder decides in the coming weeks to authorize a criminal investigation it would be limited to the “few bad apples” at the CIA who exceeded interrogation limits set by Justice Department attorneys in memos that authorized brutal acts of torture against suspected terrorists. http://pubrecord.org/law/2948/holder-torture-probe-would-likely/
This is a long post that is divided into the following sections (for a high-level summary read the conclusions section).
1. Introduction: SSCI Report on the Role of WINPAC
2. Analysis Timeline
2.1 Focus: 8/1/02 though 1/28/03 2.2 Timeline: The CIA's expressed position on "uranium from Africa"
3. The NIE claim on uranium from Africa
3.1 How the NIE claim came about: Not from a CIA Paper 3.2 The CIA did not stand by the NIE claim 3.3 WINPAC knew that uranium claim was bogus/not credible 3.4 The Stovepiping: Most pipes lead back to WINPAC
4. Uranium from Africa: WINPAC v. The Others in the CIA - in a Nutshell
5. Conclusions
Appendix 1: Acronyms used in this post
More than a year before President Bush declared in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear weapons material in Africa, the French spy service began repeatedly warning the CIA in secret communications that there was no evidence to support the allegation.

The White House orders the FBI to hand Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi over to the CIA. Soon after, Ibn al-Libi is flown to a site in Egypt. [Newsweek, 6/21/2004 http://www.newsweek.com/id/54093; Washington Post, 6/27/2004 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A8534-2004Jun26.html