Shades of the Secret Police!

It seems that in order to be secure US citizens must be kept in the dark about what their own government is spending and what it is doing. For without security the citizenry will not retain their freedom to remain in the dark! I think it is the security of the politicians and their servants in intelligence agencies that is threatened.

Bush Allies in Congress Block Bill That Would Require Intelligence Disclosures
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By MARK MAZZETTI
Published: April 17, 2007
WASHINGTON, April 16 — The Bush administration’s allies in Congress on Monday blocked a bill that would require the White House to disclose the locations of secret prisons run by the Central Intelligence Agency and to reveal the amount spent annually by American intelligence agencies.

The vote on the intelligence bill was a blow to Senate Democrats, newly in control of Congress, who had hoped that they would be able to extract more details from the White House about some of the most widely debated intelligence programs begun after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Opponents of the legislation, led by Senator Jim DeMint, a South Carolina Republican, won enough support on Monday to prevent the bill from going to the Senate floor for a final vote. But Congressional officials said that negotiations over the measure would continue Tuesday, and Democrats said they were still hopeful the bill could eventually pass.

Money for the 2007 intelligence budget was already appropriated last year through the defense spending bill, so defeat of the bill would not hold up money for the 16 agencies that make up the American intelligence network. The White House last week threatened to veto the intelligence bill because it contained several provisions it deemed objectionable, including a requirement that the Bush administration give Congress a detailed report about C.I.A. prison locations and interrogation methods used on high-level terrorism suspects.

Since 2002, the C.I.A. has detained and interrogated several top operatives of Al Qaeda, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, suspected of being the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks. Last year, President Bush announced that all C.I.A prisoners had been transferred to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and put in military custody, but that the C.I.A. prisons would remain in operation.

The White House has since declined to say whether the C.I.A. currently has any prisoners in custody.

The Senate bill also requires the White House to make public the annual budget of the American intelligence agencies. The intelligence budget, which has long been classified, is widely believed to be approximately $44 billion.

A White House statement issued last week said that publicly disclosing the figures would allow adversaries to track annual changes in the budget, which could compromise intelligence sources and methods.

Another of the bill’s provisions would require the White House to hand over any intelligence document to Congress within 30 days of its request, unless the President makes a specific claim of executive privilege.

The White House statement called the provision “highly objectionable,” and said it would “foster political gamesmanship and elevate routine disagreements to the level of constitutional crises.”

Democrats responded angrily to efforts to block the intelligence bill.

Harry Reid, of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, said that Republicans’ “actions don’t match their rhetoric” on national security issues, and that passage of the bill was necessary for American intelligence agencies to do their jobs effectively.

US secret CIA prisoners still missing

This is a scandal that seems to be ignored for the most part. There is a new report available from Human Rights Watch called Ghost Prisoner.

US: Secret CIA Prisoners Still Missing
Washington Should Reveal Fate of People ‘Disappeared’ by US
(New York, February 27, 2007) – The US government should account for all the missing detainees once held by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Human Rights Watch said in a report released today.

The CIA program – and the civilian leaders who created it – have inflicted tremendous harm on the reputation, moral standing, and integrity of the United States. It’s time for President Bush to repudiate this program, and to take steps to repair the damage it has done.

Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch







Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention
Report, February 27, 2007

Letter from Human Rights Watch to President Bush
Letter, February 27, 2007



The 50-page report, “Ghost Prisoner: Two Years in Secret CIA Detention,” contains a detailed description of a secret CIA prison from a Palestinian former detainee who was released from custody last year. Human Rights Watch has also sent a public letter to US President George W. Bush requesting information about the fate and whereabouts of the missing detainees.

“President Bush told us that the last 14 CIA prisoners were sent to Guantanamo, but there are many other prisoners ‘disappeared’ by the CIA whose fate is still unknown,” said Joanne Mariner, terrorism and counterterrorism director at Human Rights Watch. “The question is: what happened to these people and where are they now?”

In early September, 14 detainees were transferred from secret CIA prisons to military custody at Guantanamo Bay. In a televised speech on September 6, President Bush announced that with those 14 transfers, no prisoners were left in CIA custody.

The former CIA detainee, Marwan Jabour, told Human Rights Watch about a number of other people who were in CIA detention but whose present whereabouts are unknown. Jabour saw one of these men, Algerian terrorism suspect Yassir al-Jazeeri, as recently as July 2006 in CIA custody.

“The Bush administration needs to provide a full accounting of everyone who was ‘disappeared’ into CIA prisons, including their names, locations, and when they left US custody,” Mariner said.

Human Rights Watch’s letter to Bush contained two lists of missing detainees. The first list names 16 people whom Human Rights Watch believes were held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown. The second list names 22 people who may have been held in CIA prisons and whose current whereabouts are unknown.

Human Rights Watch expressed concern about what may have happened to the missing prisoners. One possibility is that the US may have transferred some of them to foreign prisons where they remain under the CIA’s effective control.

Another worrying possibility is that prisoners were transferred from CIA custody to places where they may face torture. A serious concern is that some of the missing prisoners might have been returned to their countries of origin, which include Algeria, Egypt, Libya and Syria, where the torture of terrorism suspects is common.

The new report provides the most comprehensive account to date of life in a secret CIA prison, as well as new information regarding 38 possible detainees. The report explains that these prisoners’ treatment by the CIA constitutes enforced disappearance, a practice that is absolutely prohibited under international law.

Marwan Jabour was arrested by Pakistani authorities in May 2004 in Pakistan and held for more than a month at a secret facility in Islamabad operated by both US and Pakistani personnel, during which time he was badly abused. In June, he was flown to another secret prison, which he believes was in Afghanistan, where all or nearly all of the personnel were American.

His clothes were taken from him when he arrived, and he was left completely naked for a month and a half, including during questioning by women interrogators and filming. He was chained tightly to the wall of his small cell so that he could not stand up, placed in painful stress positions so that he had difficulty breathing, and told that if he did not cooperate he would be put in a suffocating “dog box.”

During the more than two years that he was held in this secret prison, Jabour spent nearly all of his time alone in a windowless cell, with little human contact besides his captors. Although he worried incessantly about his wife and three young daughters, he was not allowed even to send them a letter to reassure them that he was alive.

“It was a grave,” Jabour later told Human Rights Watch. “I felt like my life was over.”

The wife of another former CIA detainee whose whereabouts remain unknown told Human Rights Watch that she has had to lie to her four children about her husband’s “disappearance.” She explained that she could not bear telling them that she did not know where he was.

“What I’m hoping,” she said, “is if they find out their father has been detained, that I’ll at least be able to tell them what country he’s being held in, and in what conditions.”

Enforced disappearance involves arbitrary, secret and incommunicado detention, and poses a serious risk to the right to life and to protection from torture and other mistreatment. As these cases make clear, enforced disappearance also inflicts severe mental pain and suffering on the “disappeared” person’s family.

Human Rights Watch expressed grave concern about President Bush’s stated view that the Military Commissions Act of 2006 permits the government to restart the CIA’s secret prison program. Human Rights Watch called upon the Bush administration to reject the use of secret detention and coercive interrogation as tactics in fighting terrorism, and announce that the CIA’s detention and interrogation program has been permanently discontinued.

“The CIA program – and the civilian leaders who created it – have inflicted tremendous harm on the reputation, moral standing, and integrity of the United States,” Mariner said. “It’s time for President Bush to repudiate this program, and to take steps to repair the damage it has done.”

US opinion piece on Arar case

This is from the Huffington Post. Some of the comments are weird. I will try to find out more about the treaty binding governments not to hold people in secret detention.

U.S. Handling of Arar Case Shows How far We've Fallen ()
Late last month Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued a formal apology "on behalf of the government of Canada" to one of its citizens, Maher Arar, and his family. Moreover, the Canadian government agreed to pay Arar more than $10 million to settle his case.

On September 26, 2002, U.S. authorities detained Arar, the Syria-born Canadian citizen, during a stopover in New York en route from Tunisia to Canada.

He was subsequently sent to Syria for torture under the controversial American practice of "extraordinary rendition." After a year of torture and pressure by the Canadian government, Arar was released and returned to Canada.

According to the official inquiry conducted by the Canadian government, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service agents acted on false and misleading information supplied by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The inquiry findings led to the prime minister's formal apology to Arar on behalf of the Canadian government and the $10 million settlement. In addition, RCMP Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli resigned as a result of the Arar controversy.

Meanwhile, Arar still appears on the U.S. watch list -- American authorities are refusing Canada's request to purge his name. His inclusion on U.S. lists effectively excludes Arar from at least one-third of the world's nations, according to his attorneys.

The Arar case has all the familiarity of the administration's misguided "if you knew what we knew" play book that has effectively led us into the current quagmire. More concerning, the Arar case is reflective of what we have become.

The U.S. government's unwillingness to remove Arar's name, let alone apologize, demonstrates how far astray we have become from our own democratic sensibilities. As chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Patrick Leahy noted that instead of sending Arar a "couple of hundred miles to Canada and (have him) turned over to the Canadian authorities ... he was sent thousands of miles away to Syria."

The absurdity is mind-boggling, with each passing day we come closer to an Orwellian nightmare.

Just this week, representatives from 57 countries signed a treaty that prohibits governments from holding people in secret detention. Regretfully, but not surprising given the current climate, the United States was not among the countries that endorsed the treaty, suggesting that the text did not meet U.S. expectations.

When one begins to connect the dots, linking Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, secret prisons, the selective application of habeas corpus, the Arar case, along with our unwillingness to sign a treaty that prohibits secret detention, it becomes quite clear that rather than a few bad apples or isolated incidents, the aforementioned reveal a systematic approach in the use of torture while ignoring the rule of law.

Where is the outrage? Such malfeasance should create the unlikely coalition of liberals, conservatives, Greens, libertarians, fundamentalists and atheists taking to the streets in mass protest.

We become further entrenched in the abyss because what is now required goes against one of America's less flattering values.

Historically, official apologies from the government have been rare. I recall when President Clinton went to Africa. He came as close to an official apology for the atrocities of slavery as anyone. The next day Republicans took to the floor outraged.

If there cannot be an official apology for the institution of slavery, which almost divided the nation over 200 years ago, it seems rather hopeless that we could show humility for infractions no more than four years removed.

The gravity of mistakes made in the invasion and occupation of Iraq make the need for contrition essential. Not only does Arar deserve an apology -- and to have his name removed from the U.S. watch list -- but this government must humble itself before the world community. The seldom-used art of apology could be a crucial first step in paving the way for whatever bad choice in Iraq we ultimately settle on.

Since it appears unlikely that such impulses are part of the DNA of the present administration, I suggest the myriad candidates running for president in 2008 put together a contrition speech in case he or she wins. It might come in handy.

Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. E-mail him at byron
@byronspeaks.com or leave a message at (510) 208-6417.

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