05.10.06
Posted in What I'm Reading, Torture, Spooks, Covert Action, Politics at 8:21 pm by Spencer
The McGeorge School of Law at the University of the Pacific has launched a new quarterly, the Journal of National Security Law and Policy, now in its second issue. For now, at least, they’re posting all articles as PDFs for free download, so if’n you’re interested — and you should be — get on over there.
The journal focuses on “questions of war and terrorism, international relations, democracy, and civil liberties.” While peer-reviewed and faculty edited, its authorial base is broader than might be expected, reaching “across doctrinal lines by involving academics from disciplines other than law, as well as members of the military, intelligence, law enforcement, and civil liberties communities.”
The current issue includes papers from two symposia, one on “Fighting Terrorism with Torture: Where to Draw the Line?” and the second on “Lawyers’ Roles in the War on Terror.” Topics include Abu Ghraib (facetiously titled “‘Just for Fun’”), examinations of the CIA’s current role in torture and of the Military Commissions (”Should Lawyers Participate in Rigged Systems?”), and the ramifications of the notorious 2002 “torture memo” issued by the White House Office of Legal Counsel. See why you should be interested?
The legal aspects of the War on Terror ™ in general, the sweeping reinterpretations (cough) of law and treaty obligations staked out by the Bush Administration, the to-date compliant — nay, the treasonously collaborationist — attitude of Congress, the GOP’s highyl successful packing of the federal judiciary with ideological neanderthals, and the domestic and international implications of it all mean that the Journal of National Security Law & Policy — or at least its focus — is something to pay very close attention to.
And while such journals may sometimes make for dry reading, if you’ve got four neurons to rub together, can read at a freshman collegiate level, and have access to Google for the toughies and tangents you can easily understand this sort of fare.
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04.28.06
Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Torture, Spooks, Covert Action at 12:17 am by Spencer
This really is gravely serious. Please act IMMEDIATELY: contact your Congressional Representative and tell them to oppose this terrifying and utterly irresponsible slide into a Gestapo state. Find/contact your Representative via http://www.house.gov/writerep/
The House version of the 2007 intelligence authorization bill — H.R. 5020 — would grant CIA and NSA security personnel the authority to make “warrantless arrests” for “any felony” committed in their presence, no matter how remote from the foreign intelligence mission it might be or where they occurred, the Baltimore Sun reported on April 25, 2006.
Section 432 of the bill grants similar authority to NSA security personnel.
For more info, see:
http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2006/04/house_poised_to_grant_arrest_p.html
and
http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.spies25apr25,0,5928384.story
For the full bill –HR 5020 — see http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.5020:
(Relevant excerpts are also quoted below.)
This legislation would create what can only be characterized as a secret police force controlled directly by the President. This is precisely the American Gestapo that the Republicans themselves warned about when Truman first sought to create the CIA in 1945.
There are two (count ‘em) fig leaves in the legislation, both meaningless. First, the power of warrentless arrest would apply “only” to “personnel designated to carry out protective functions.” A literalist reading of this would equate to security personnel; in practice there is nothing to prevent the Director of Central Intelligence (Porter Goss, a partisan Republican warrior whose leadership had sharply divided the CIA) from “designating” every employee, agent, and asset of the CIA as having a “protective function.” Second (albeit not quoted below), the DCI’s and NSA director’s “policies” must be in line with “policies” promulgated by the Attorney General. But considering that our current Atty. Gen., Alberto Gonzales, signed on to the notion that no law or treaty or Constitutional provison in any way restricts the President from authorizing torture and, jeepers, unilateral secret detention of anyone anywhere, this is obviously a distinction without a difference.
Let us review the basic current situation:
* The President has claimed for himself the power to hold anyone, including any US citizen, in secret detention “exempt” from habeas corpus protection.
* The President claims the courts have no jurisdiction. After the Supreme Court challenged this, Congress recently passed a law (still untested in the courts) specifically declaring that the courts have no jurisdiction over such “detentions”.
* Ever-mounting evidence from multiple independent sources makes it undeniable that A) an unknown but presumably large number of persons have been abducted by US intelligence and military personnel, and B) an extensive “black” network of airplanes is secretly transporting these abductees to third countries for incarceration, interrogation, and torture (otherwise…why do it at all, and why fire CIA analysts for allegedly leaking the info)
* In January 2005, Newsweek reported senior Pentagon counterinsurgency planners were seriously considering what they referred to as “The Salvador Option” for Iraq — meaning creating and controlling death squads just as had been done throughout Latin America during the latter years of the Cold War. Less than a year later, the first press reports began to surface of death squad activity in Iraq, believed to be tied to the Iraqi Interior Ministry.
* The Bush Administration has made it abundantly clear that it makes little or no distinction between tactics and strategies that can/should be applied abroad vs. domestically.
* The “warrantless arrest” provision was inserted into the bill at the request of National Intelligence Director John D. Negroponte. As US Ambassador to Honduras during the 1980s, Negroponte helped facilitate and cover-up, you guessed it, death squad activities in Latin America.
* There have been numerous accurate reports in recent months of sweeping abuses of power in the “war on terror” directly targeting the homeland population.
Now the House wants to grant arrest powers to the CIA and the NSA??!?!?!
SPECIFIC LANGUAGE:
H.R.5020
Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (Engrossed as Agreed to or Passed by House)
SEC. 423. ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONS AND AUTHORITIES FOR PROTECTIVE PERSONNEL OF THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY.
[…snip…]
(b) Authority to Arrest-
(1) Chapter 203 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following:
`Sec. 3065. Powers of authorized personnel in the Central Intelligence Agency
`(a) The Director of the Central Intelligence Agency may issue regulations to allow personnel designated to carry out protective functions for the Central Intelligence Agency under section 5(a)(4) of the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 (50 U.S.C. 403f) to, while engaged in such protective functions, make arrests without a warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of such personnel, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States, if such personnel have probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing that felony offense.
[…snip…]
SEC. 432. CODIFICATION OF AUTHORITIES OF NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY PROTECTIVE PERSONNEL.
[…snip…]
(b) Authority to Arrest-
(1) Chapter 203 of title 18, United States Code, as amended by section 423 of this Act, is amended by adding at the end the following:
`Sec. 3066. Powers of authorized personnel in the National Security Agency
`(a) The Director of the National Security Agency may issue regulations to allow personnel designated to carry out protective functions for the Agency to–
`(1) carry firearms; and
`(2) make arrests without warrant for any offense against the United States committed in the presence of such personnel, or for any felony cognizable under the laws of the United States, if such personnel have probable cause to believe that the person to be arrested has committed or is committing that felony offense.
[…end quote…]
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02.27.06
Posted in What I'm Reading, Torture, Spooks, Politics at 8:12 pm by Spencer
Yep, here’s Spence with another light read. “The Torture Papers” by Jane Mayer, the featured article in the latest issue of The New Yorker, traces the dismaying tale of (now-former) US Navy general counsel Alberto J. Mora and the circular-file fate of his damning 22-page secret memo, which dared to call out the Pentagon for formulating a systematic policy of torture.
The article makes quite it clear that (duh) Rumsfeld and the Cheney Cabal knew exactly what they were doing: implementing a policy of systematic torture. Mora it makes in quite clear that they are criminals in the eyes of duly-enacted and standing US law, their equally tortured “interpretations” of presidential power notwithstanding.
And how’s this for irony? Mora retired from the military in January, 2006. His job now? General counsel for Wal-Mart’s international operations. …Brain…Hurts…
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02.24.06
Posted in News of the World, What I'm Reading, Torture, Spooks at 12:56 am by Spencer
Astute students of contemporary political history will recognize Alfred McCoy as the author of one of the most important works of the last 50 years, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, a book that for the first time (well, except for Allen Ginsberg’s work on the subject) laid bare in copious, empirical detail and beyond refute that the CIA has a long history of being in active cahoots with drug dealers. Ain’t read it? Shame on you. Required reading (preferrably the second edition), even if it is rather hefty.
McCoy’s latest book, just out and another must-read, is titled A Question of Torture (Henry Holt & Co., 2006), which I happen to have just started and, even this early on, very highly recommend. As we have come to expect of Prof. McCoy, it is scrupulously documented and deeply disturbing. Currently I’m only on chapter 2, but already I’m impressed with his conscision and perspicacity. He — quite rightly — begins with the CIA’s early mind control and interrogation experiments (BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MK-ULTRA, MK-DELTA, MK-NAOMI, and others) and works from there to trace the profoundly disturbing but vitally important suppressed history of our government’s decades-long dance with the Dark Side viz. torture.
Most importantly, per our current situation as citizens of an ostensible democratic republic, McCoy makes it crystal clear from the get-go (again with that assiduous documentation) that seemingly innoccuous Gitmo ploys like hooding “detainees” and such have their basis in what are actually truly horriffic psychological torture techniques with genesis in criminal programs like MK-ULTRA.
The point? Well, aside from “you mustrun out right now and get the damn book already”, you should also take the time to read this typically excellent interview with McCoy on Democracy Now!
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01.25.06
Posted in News of the World, Torture, Covert Action, Politics at 8:27 pm by Spencer
Read the official full text of the Jan. 22, 2006 preliminary report by Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, Alleged secret detentions in Council of Europe member states, which is also archived at Cryptome.
The “information memorandum” is part of an ongoing investigation that US-based Human Rights Watch is publicly calling on member European nations to cooperate with. (A worthwhile visit is HRW’s index of their recent work viz. Torture and Abuse.)
The report was released simultaneously with this article in New Statesman magazine (also covered in the Guardian (UK) newspaper) revealing a leaked British government memo formulating what the Guardian calls a “hidden strategy aimed at suppressing a debate about rendition” intended to “stifle attempts by MPs to find out what it knows about CIA ‘torture flights’” even as the Foreign Ministry “privately admits that people captured by British forces could have been sent illegally to interrogation centres.” The memo was written in response to a request from Prime Minister Blair’s office on advice on how to deal with the scandal and, in particular, mounting evidence that the British government was a knowing participant in the secret US program of “extraordinary rendition.” (Hanah Arendt on the role of euphemism in fascism, anyone?)
‘Course, those of us who remember the ’80s — and were paying any attention at all at the time — remember another euphemism: disappearances. I’m just sayin’.
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