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Humanizing Fayiz al-Kandari: A Guantanamo Prisoner Wrongfully Detained

The Public Record Staff — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 08:24:13 +0000

Editor’s note: This report was originally published at The Political Carnival and written by the blogger GottaLaff, who has been instrumental in exposing the systematic torture and abuse of Fayiz al-Kandari, a Kuwaiti imprisoned at Guantanamo for more than seven years on trumped up charges. The Public Record is reprinting this story in an effort to raise awareness about al-Kandari’s plight. On Sunday, The Public Record published a column written by al-Kandari’s military attorney, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard, which you can read here.

For weeks now, I have been telling the story, chapter by chapter, of one Guantanamo Bay detainee, Fayiz al-Kandari. I’d never heard of him before, had you? No. Nobody has for nearly eight years now.

Before I go on, do me one small favor, if you would. Clear your head of all other thoughts and imagine someone you love. Think about them for a moment. Feel the affection you have for that person, the memories you share, the tears and the laughter.

Now imagine this: That person you adore…

Had wood screws pierce his skull during a 24-hour plane ride to Cuba where he’d be imprisoned
Having his ribs broken
Choking on blood from a head laceration after having been brutally beaten and tortured
Being exposed to extreme cold temperatures and doused with ice cold water
Being subjected to painfully loud music
Suffering from severe sleep deprivation night after night until he had no idea what day it was, or if he was even sane any more
Being left for days chin-deep in sewage and blood-infested icy water
Having death threats whispered into his ear
Being stripped naked and humiliated in front of men and women who taunted him

Imagine the fear, the pain, the cries, the shivers, the tears, the panic on your loved one’s face after being sytematically tortured. Now replace your loved one’s face with that of Fayiz al-Kandari. Does that make it easier? Or excusable?

Fayiz experienced much of what I described above. Fayiz’s crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time doing charity work required of him by his religion. Fayiz, who comes from a wealthy family, from a country allied with ours, was sold to our forces for bounty.

He was then shipped from prison to prison, finally spending more than years locked up and tortured at Gitmo. Lawyers refer to that as “abuse” or “mistreatment.” I call it torture.

Torture is illegal and it’s a war crime. But the law was convoluted, twisted, maimed, and mangled in order to justify its use, by a handful of people with a lot of unchecked power who panicked after 9/11.

Not all of the torture is the kind I’ve described. Some has been psychological, including the unintended consequence of an interminable waiting game.

So now, imagine one last thing for me. Imagine your child, your cousin, your father, your brother sitting in a cell for nearly 8 years… waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

But a court date never comes. Just ask Fayiz’s lawyer, Lt. Col. Barry Wingard. Imagine your son’s hopes shooting up to the sky when a new president is elected, only to go through emotional whiplash, because the U.S. government is busy trying to figure out what to do with him.

With your son.

Four more months go by. Then six.

Thank you, you’ve done enough imagining. Now you can read for yourself what it has been like for someone else’s son. He has feelings. He’s been “abused” and “mistreated”. Tortured. He had hopes that have long since been obliterated.

He also has a name. It’s Fayiz:

My Convo with a Gitmo Detainee Lawyer: “I’ve given up on American media.” (Cross posted at Daily Kos here, and at Crooks and Liars here): This sums up Fayiz’s story and explains his lawyer’s disillusionment with the American press. They virtually ignored him.

Part 2– Gitmo Detainee: “Obama has perhaps broken the spirit of the detainees in a way the former administration could never”: The optimistic surge felt by Fayiz upon hearing about President Obama’s election? It didn’t last. He describes it as false hope.

Part 3–Gitmo Detainee Lawyer: “I guess the days of attorney/client privilege are over in GITMO: For the first time since George Bush left and Barack Obama took office, the letters (via snail mail) between Fayiz and Barry were opened and resealed before they left Gitmo.

VIDEO: Detainee lawyer on MSNBC with David Shuster: See what a truly meaningful story and a few tweets on Twitter to a real mensch can accomplish?

Part 4– A Gitmo Detainee’s story: The Hell Chronicles: A journal of sorts, including details of Fayiz’s “mistreatment”.

Part 5: A Gitmo Detainee Lawyer’s Plea: Lt. Col. Barry Wingard introduces Fayiz to us, and asks for help in telling his client’s story, .

Part 6: Gitmo Detainee Fayiz al-Kandari speaks… from his cell: Touching, and often humorous, observations from the prisoner, in his own words.

Part 7- Lawyer Visits Gitmo Detainee: “Barry, have you brought me justice today?“: Lt. Col. Wingard recounts a typical visit with his client over a three day period.

How innocent Gitmo detainee Fayiz al-Kandari got detained… and detained, and detained…: From the comfort and warmth of a wealthy Kuwaiti family to years of brutal isolation and a world of hurt at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Lt. Col. Wingard tracks Fayiz’s introduction to broken justice.

AUDIO: Gitmo Detainee Lawyer Lt. Col. Barry Wingard interviewed: On Common Sense Radio with Jim Alger.

CagePrisoners: An interview with Lt. Col. Wingard at a site that is designed to educate the public, run by a human rights organization that exists solely to raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and other detainees held as part of the so-called War on Terrorism.

Guantanamo suicide exposes detainees’ despair under Obama: “Most of the detainees, however, despite Obama’s overtures on closing the facility, remain depressed and desperate”… Fayiz is included in this piece.

The Washington Post “No Justice Today”: An op-ed by Lt. Col. Barry Wingard. It’s a first-hand look at what he and his client have been through.

Eight Years Later, Still Waiting for Justice: An op-ed by Lt. Col. Barry Wingard saying he used to think all the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay must be terrorists, but not anymore.

Rehabilitation: One Possible Solution for Some Gitmo Detainees: Lt. Col. Barry Wingard’s most recent op-ed piece, a clear, concise recap of how the justice system for detainees works [sic], and a brand new solution that could actually work to everyone’s benefit.

Fayiz’s Wikipedia page.

Project Kuwaiti Freedom: A site well worth visiting, dedicated to Kuwaiti prisoners at Gitmo, including Fayiz.

All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found here; That link includes audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you’d like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side. You’ll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I’m all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz’s story here, at Answers.com.

Pentagon Reclassifying Documents Already in the Public Domain

The Public Record Staff — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 04:32:05 +0000

From George Washington University’s National Security Archive:

Pentagon classification authorities are treating classified historical documents as if they contain today’s secrets, rather than decades-old information that has not been secret for years. On Friday, the National Security Archive posted multiple versions of the same documents—on issues ranging from the 1973 October War to anti-ballistic missiles, strategic arms control, and U.S. policy toward China—that are already declassified and in the public domain.

What earlier declassification reviewers released in full, sometimes years ago, Pentagon reviewers have more recently excised, sometimes massively. The overclassification highlighted by these examples poses a major problem that should be addressed by the ongoing review of national security information policy that President Obama ordered on May 27, 2009. New presumptions against classification that may be added to an executive order on national security information will not, in isolation, end overclassification. Rigorous oversight, accompanied by improved training and consequences for improper classification are essential.

Among the dubious secrets in today’s posting is the Air Force’s recent decision to classify the fact that the Nixon administrated ordered a DEFCON [Defense Readiness Condition] 3 alert during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. An excised Air Force history, released in 2009, conceals what is well known to historians, journalists, and the interested public: in the early morning of 25 October 1973, at the height of the Arab-Israeli War, the Nixon administration put U.S. military forces on higher alert–DEFCON 3 [See Document 8A below]. Defense Secretary James Schlesinger and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger ordered the DEFCON to deter a feared Soviet intervention in the Middle East conflict. The Nixon White House could not keep this a secret and news of the alert soon reached the national media, with The New York Times explaining to its readers what a DEFCON meant. More recently, U.S. government agencies have declassified documents mentioning the DEFCON 3 alert. In spite of the precedents and an appeal pointing out the previous disclosures, the Air Force today will not acknowledge the fact of the DEFCON, claiming that disclosure would cause “serious damage to the national security.”

This is one of a number of Pentagon Freedom of Information Act releases (FOIA) during the last few years, all of which are telling instances of excessive deletions, overclassification, and the application of inappropriate declassification guidelines. Other examples include:

Declassification reviewers withheld nearly-fifty-year-old information on the early history of the U.S. nuclear war plan, the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), which other offices at the Pentagon were about to declassify under mandatory review. (See Documents 1A-B).

Multiple instances of declassification authorities withholding the contents of documents on anti-ballistic missiles, strategic arms control, and U.S. policy toward China, all of which had been declassified years earlier, with one of them even published in the State Department’s historical series, Foreign Relations of the United States (e.g., Documents 3A-B, 4A-B and 7A-B).

These flawed classification decisions stem from overly stringent guidelines that are inappropriate for the declassification review of historical documents. Among the Pentagon offices that made these recent declassification decisions are the Joint Staff, the Strategic Threat Reduction Office, and the Program Analysis and Evaluation Office. For some of these documents, reviewers at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency also weighed in. Admittedly, declassification is a subjective process and mistakes can be made. Declassification reviewers cannot know everything that has already been declassified, but one wonders why earlier security reviewers could make decisions to declassify information that contemporary reviewers now believe must be kept classified. In some instances, the recent reviewers were made aware of the prior declassification releases and nevertheless decided to keep the information classified. The guidelines that declassification reviewers follow should be realistic and useful enough so that significant, but no longer sensitive, historical information can be routinely declassified and made available to the public.

The Obama administration’s review of U.S. secrecy policy should take examples like these into account when it tries to develop a credible system for classifying and declassifying information about U.S. foreign relations and military policy. Declassification standards for historical information (25 years old or older) should not mirror those used to declassify current information. Neither historians, taxpayers, nor the secrecy system itself are well-served when declassification reviewers treat historical classified information in the same way as today’s secrets. This doesn’t mean a laissez-faire attitude; in some areas—such as nuclear weapons design data and names of confidential informants—there is a public interest in secrecy, but the objective should be high walls around the most sensitive information, and the walls should be torn down when they are not needed.

Documents 1A-B: The Single Integrated Operational Plan [SIOP]

Document 1A: Working Papers, Joint Chiefs of Staff, “JCS SIOP-62,” n.d. [Late 1960], Top Secret, Excised copy, released by Defense Department 2007
Document 1B: Briefing, “Introduction to SIOP-63,” n.d. [June 1962], Top Secret, excised copy, released by Defense Department, 2007

In 2007, the Defense Department’s FOIA office released these heavily excised briefings on the earliest versions of the Single Integrated Operational Plan in response to an appeal filed 12 years ago. The massive redactions prevent the reader from learning anything significant about the plans, such as, for example, target priorities, attack options, and provisions for withholding some targets from attack. Nevertheless, most of the excisions are unwarranted as demonstrated by decisions also made in 2007 by the Washington Headquarters Service’s declassification office to release significant information on the early SIOP, including SIOP-62 and SIOP-63, in response to mandatory review appeals. Even if some of the details in the briefings are still properly classified, the scale of the excisions is extreme. These are prime examples of the excessively stringent declassification review process at the Pentagon.

Documents 2A-D: Fatalities and Targets

Document 2A: Office of the Secretary of Defense, ”Summary of Population Fatalities from Nuclear War in 1966,” 17 February 1962, with attachment on “Soviet Bloc Targets and U.S. and NATO Destruction Capabilities as of Mid-1967,” 15 February 1962, both Top Secret, released 1993
Source: NARA, Record Group 200, Papers of Robert S. McNamara, file: Defense Projects and Operations. Box 83. B-70 – McNamara Statements
Document 2B: Same document, as excised by Defense Department, November 2008
Document 2C: Office of the Secretary of Defense, “U.S.-Soviet Strategic Exchange (1976),” n.d. [circa 1966], Top Secret, annotations by Robert McNamara, released 1996
Source: RG 200, McNamara Papers, Defense Projects and Operations, box 83, B-70 – McNamara Statements
Document 2D: Same document, as excised by Defense Department, November 2008

A quick look at these documents shows that Defense Department reviewers sought to withhold estimates of fatality levels from a nuclear war, although using different standards. From page 1 of document 2B only Soviet fatalities and the reference to Soviet “cities” were excised, while from 2D all casualty estimates were excised. Declassified information on estimated fatalities from nuclear war is already in the public record, as is the fact that Soviet “cities” would be targeted, so it is hard to understand why security reviewers believed that this Cold War information remains sensitive. While page 2 of document 2A, which the Pentagon withheld completely in document 2B, has the appearance of sensitivity, significant information on prospective Soviet targets has already been declassified, even appearing in the State Department Foreign Relations compilations from the 1960s.

These documents were prepared for Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (document 2C has his annotations on it) and complete, non-excised versions were routinely declassified during the 1990s. The full versions give a sense of the horrible destructiveness of a U.S-Soviet nuclear war, triggered under various circumstances (e.g., first strike by, or 15 minute warning for, both superpowers), as estimated by defense officials. Besides estimates of U.S., Soviet, and Western European fatalities, document 2A includes a page estimating aim points, warhead assignments, and fatalities for a U.S.-NATO strike against Soviet bloc targets, under conditions of 15 minute warning of a Soviet strike or no warning of a Soviet nuclear attack. The strike option “II” that includes a substantial NATO medium-range missile forces estimated better “expected kill” results than otherwise.

Document 2B is more complex because of its hidden assumptions. Probably used for illustrative purposes in discussion of the FY 1968 defense budget, it includes 8 “cases” of U.S. and Soviet first strike scenarios based on varying assumptions about U.S. and Soviet force postures in 1976. For example, the cases included different levels of U.S. military expenditures, the “approved program” and two alternatives, Postures A and B, which posited different levels of spending on the Nike-X anti-ballistic missile system: Posture A ($8 billion), supporting defense of 25 cities, and Posture B ($17.5 billion), supporting defense of 52 cities. The cases also included the possibility of a “US. Missile only AD”, that is, a retaliatory U.S. strike against “assured destruction” urban-industrial targets designed to destroy one third of Soviet industry and population. The cases also include assumptions about Soviet force levels, e.g., whether they are based on the “NIE” threat posited in the current National Intelligence Estimate, whether Soviet missiles are equipped with “Pen-Aids” (Penetration aids such as decoys to confuse missile defenses), or whether the Soviets deployed mobile ICBMs. (Note 1)

Documents 3A-B: China

Document 3A: Special State-Defense Study Group, Working Paper, “Relations with Communist China: An Inventory of Problems Which the United States May Face in the Coming Decade,” 15 February 1966, Top Secret, released 1997
Source: RG 59, U.S. Department of State Records. Records of Ambassador-at-Large Llewellyn E. Thompson, 1961-1970, box 4, China
Document 3B: same document, as released by Defense Department, January 2009

This report, prepared during the deliberations of a special State Department-Defense Department study group, embodied a Cold War vision seeking “containment” of Chinese power in order to “fit China into an orderly world system.” The authors never tackled directly the possibility of engagement through negotiations and rapprochement (perhaps a more sophisticated version of containment), but only raised questions about the possibility of finding a “common ground of interest” and “mutual tolerance.” While the full version of this document has been in the declassified archival record since 1997, the version released by the Defense Department has excisions on topics that were sensitive in the 1960s, but which have been in the declassified record for some time, such as estimates of Chinese missiles force development, possibilities of preemptive strikes against Chinese nuclear facilities, and speculation about a Japanese nuclear capacity. Other excisions are of topics that are wholly innocuous and anodyne, such as methods to influence Asian communism, Soviet-Japanese and Soviet-Indian relations, and the British role east of Suez.

While security reviewers cannot know everything that has been declassified, they should have reasonable standards to help them make declassification decisions. What security interests are now protected by withholding information from this report is hard to fathom. It is as if the reviewers were treating this plainly historical document as if it were current information whose disclosure would cause serious harm to U.S. policy today.

Documents 4A-B: Missile Defense

Document 4A: Secretary of Defense McNamara Memorandum for the President, “Production and Deployment of the Nike-X,” 2 December 1966, Top Secret
Source: Lyndon B. Johnson Library, National Security File, box 16, Agency File, “Defense, Defense Dept. Budget for FY65 & Supplemental Appropriation for FY67″
Document 4B: Same document, version dated 10 December 1966, released in excised form by Defense Department, November 2008

This document has been declassified virtually in full since 2002, when it was published in the State Department’s Foreign Relations series. (Note 2) Since then, the Lyndon B. Johnson Library released a related version, also nearly in full. Nevertheless, in late 2008 the Defense Department released the excised version presented here with several pages withheld from an intelligence-based account of the Soviet ABM program. Although the debate between Moscow and Washington over the U.S. missile defense system deployments has been hot, it is perplexing why the Defense Department and possibly other agencies believe that the declassification of decades-old assessments of the Soviet ABM could harm national security when they had already approved the release of the McNamara memorandum. Again, one cannot expect overburdened security reviewers to know everything that been declassified in the past, but one can only wonder why the reviewers are now withholding information that other security reviewers saw fit to release in the past.

Documents 5A-B: Sufficiency

Document 5A: National Security Decision Memorandum 16, “Criteria for Strategic Sufficiency”
24 June 1969, Top Secret, NSC FOIA release 1989
Document 5B: Same document, as excised by Defense Department, July 2008

The Nixon White House produced NSDM 16, a set of very general “Criteria for Strategic Sufficiency,” to provide guidelines to the Pentagon and other agencies for the U.S. strategic force posture. “Sufficiency” was the watchword for the new administration, to show that it did not seek superiority and that it was taking a direction different from the Kennedy-Johnson-McNamara assured destruction concept. Nevertheless, the break from the past was slight; both administrations sought a retaliatory capacity that was destructive enough to deter a Soviet first strike. Moreover, like the Johnson administration, Nixon and Kissinger initially justified an ABM program to “limit damage” from attacks by small nuclear powers (e.g., China); the danger of accidental launches provided another reason.

NSDM 16 is so innocuous that it has been declassified for years, since 1989 when National Security Council reviewers first released it (The State Department also released it again in the mid-1990s and another version may be found on the Web site of the Federation of American Scientists). Nonetheless, the Pentagon’s reviewers treated it as a sensitive document and exempted its contents from declassification.

Documents 6A-B: Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT)

Document 6A: National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger to Secretary of Defense et al., “Preparations for Next Round of SALT,” 30 December 1969, with attached “Verification Working Group Task Y Outline,” Secret
Source: National Archives, Record Group 59, Records of the Policy Planning Council, Miscellaneous Records, 1959-1972, SALT December 1969
Document 6B: National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger to the Vice President et al., “NSC Meeting on SALT,” 24 March 1970, Confidential, with excised attachments, as released by Defense Department, March 2008

During the fall of 1969, U.S. and Soviet negotiators conducted the first round of strategic arms limitation talks. In the weeks that followed, Nixon administration officials began preparations for the round of talks that would begin in the spring of 1970. Document B, as released by the Pentagon in 2008, includes, as an attachment, a Kissinger memorandum of 30 December 1969 on the preparations with an enclosure “Verification Working Group Task Y Outline” (see 6B). As it turns out, the Kissinger memorandum and the attachment had been routinely declassified over 10 years ago at the National Archives (See enclosure 6A). A comparison of pages 7 through 11 (PDF page numbers) of document 6B with document 6A shows that Defense Department reviewers excised truly harmless language about a range of SALT issues. For example, this was redacted from the Kissinger memorandum: “The question of whether we should enter the next round of SALT with a single position or with several options will be resolved following the NSC meeting.” Even the discussion of “Verification Policy Options,” sometimes a sensitive issue because of intelligence secrecy, is so general (non-interference with “national means of verification”) that redaction should not even be an option. Similarly, the excision in the discussion of “Polaris Vulnerability” briefly questions, in very general terms, the notion, sometimes raised in strategy discussions since the 1960s, whether the U.S. can rely on submarine-launched missiles or other mobile missile system for deterrence.

Documents 7A-B: Gerard C. Smith on SALT

Document 7A: National Security Adviser Kissinger to Secretary of State et al, “ACDA Views on SALT Talks,” 24 March 1970, Secret, NSC FOIA release 2000
Document 7B: Same document, as released by the Defense Department, March 2008

Writing to President Nixon before the second series of SALT talks began, chief negotiator and director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA) Gerard C. Smith (a veteran of the Eisenhower administration) observed that two types of agreements were possible. One would be a comprehensive agreement, with a ban of multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs) and low levels of ABMs, the other would be a “relatively simple” freeze of major delivery systems. Smith plainly favored the former, but Kissinger would eventually pursue a freeze (in part, because his negotiating tactics undercut the possibility of a comprehensive agreement). (Note 3) This document is a useful exposition of Smith’s thinking, but after so many decades have passed there is nothing sensitive about it and it is perplexing why Defense Department officials decided to exempt the letter’s contents. This is an exceptional example of excessive secrecy. In any event, the NSC declassified the document years ago (7A) and it may also be found in the files of the Nixon Library.

Documents 8A-D: DEFCON 3 During the October War

Document 8A: Office of the Historian, Strategic Air Command, SAC History Study # 139, “Chronology, Subj: Middle East Crisis,” 12 December 1973, Top Secret, Excised Copy, final Air Force response to appeal, June 2009
Document 8B: Kissinger “telcon” with British Ambassador Lord Cromer, 25 October 1973, 1:03 A.M.
Source: State Department FOIA release
Document 8C: JCS Cable 2733 to CINCPAC et al., “Current Situation,” 25 October 1973
Document 8D: JCS Cable 5694 to CINCPAC et al., “Current Situation,” 28 October 1973
Document 8E: JCS Cable 8779 to CINCPAC et al., “Current Situation,” 31 October 1973
Source for C, D, and E: National Archives, Record Group 218, Records of JCS Chairman Thomas Moorer, box
Document 8F: Office of the Historian, Strategic Air Command, Historical Study No. 151, “History of SAC Reconnaissance Operations FY 1974,” 22 August 1975, Top Secret, excerpts

During the October 1973 Arab-Israeli war, Henry Kissinger and the National Security Council put the U.S. military, including strategic forces on a higher alert posture– DEFCON 3 (“Roundhouse”)–in response to a perceived threat by Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to intervene in the conflict. A DEFCON 3 alert was lower than the alert posture taken during the Cuban missile crisis, DEFCON 2, which readies forces for nuclear war, but higher than the usual readiness level. Whatever merits the White House decision may have had, whether it was a response to an actual threat or an overreaction to a Soviet miscalculation, the DEFCON 3 alert was immediately controversial, with critics linking it to Nixon’s embattled posture in the unfolding Watergate crisis. Controversy did not abate when it became learned that Nixon was apparently indisposed the night of 24 October and may have played no role in the decision process. What made controversy possible in the first place was that the alert was far from secret (not what Kissinger had expected) because word of it quickly spread from military units to the media, which duly reported on the five conditions of “defense readiness.” (Note 4)

Although much has been written about the DEFCON 3 declaration, not much has been declassified about it. To shed light on what happened “operationally” the National Security Archive filed requests for the Strategic Air Command headquarters chronology of the Middle East crisis (Document 8A). Yet, the significantly excised version of the SAC chronology released by the Air Force conspicuously conceals any references to the DEFCON (see Document 8A, page 7). A detailed FOIA appeal notwithstanding, the Air Force refused to release the information claiming that it would cause “serious damage to the national security.” This is a preposterous withholding that is truly hard to explain or even understand. The Air Force has already declassified a detailed account of SAC’s DEFCON 2 posture during the Cuban Missile Crisis, so apparently releasing information on DEFCONs is not a matter of principle. Nor is the fact that the Nixon administration ordered the DEFCON during the October War a strict matter of government secrecy; at the National Archives, Defense Department reviewers have declassified some of JCS Chairman Thomas Moorer’s messages during the crisis, which plainly refer to the DEFCON 3 alert and changes in alert status (See Documents 8C, 8D, and 8E above). Moreover, the State Department has declassified Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversation with British Ambassador Cromer, which also refers to the DEFCON 3 alert (See Document 8B, above). The Pentagon’s decision to keep the DEFCON 3 alert in the classified box appears to have no rhyme or reason.

Also withheld from the history are some of the details of SAC reconnaissance operations during the crisis, the GIANT REACH flights by the SR-71. Yet, the SAC history of the flights was declassified years ago (see document F), including details of the missions and the cooperation (or lack of cooperation) of foreign governments in facilitating them. (Note 5).

Edited by William Burr of the National Security Archive.

Saddam Hussein’s FBI Interviews Revealed

The Public Record Staff — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 23:06:53 +0000

FBI special agents carried out 20 formal interviews and at least five “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein after his capture by U.S. troops in December 2003, according to secret FBI reports released as the result of Freedom of Information Act requests by the National Security Archive and posted today on the Web at www.nsarchive.org.

Saddam denied any connections to the “zealot” Osama bin Laden, cited North Korea as his most likely ally in a crunch, and shared President George W. Bush’s hostility towards the “fanatic” Iranian mullahs, according to the FBI records of conversations from February through June 2004 between Saddam and Arabic-speaking agents in his detention cell at Baghdad International Airport.

The former Iraqi leader, when asked about his accomplishments, listed social progress for the people of Iraq, a temporary truce with the Kurds in the early 1970s, the nationalization of Iraq’s oil in 1972, support for the Arab side during the 1973 Middle East war with Israel, and after that, for the remaining 30 years of his rule, simple survival – through a devastating eight year war with Iran that he had launched, and a 12-year sanctions regime imposed on his people after another war that he began. During the interviews he repeatedly contests FBI evidence and the neutrality of his interlocutors – which one of them finds ironic, given the record of peremptory Iraqi justice under Saddam’s governance. He selectively outlines recent Iraqi history and acknowledges some mistakes, including the destruction without U.N. supervision or verification of some of Iraq’s WMD arsenal left over from the 1980s.

During the interviews Saddam refutes some examples of what he views as myths, like his purported use of body doubles. Instead he says that to evade his enemies he never used the telephone and traveled constantly from one dwelling to another (he describes the farm where he was captured in a “spider hole” as the same place where he took refuge after a failed 1959 coup attempt.)

He takes personal responsibility for ordering the launching of SCUD missiles against Israeli targets during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, because he blamed Israel and its influence in the U.S. for “all the problems of the Arabs”, but denies that his purpose was to draw that country into the conflict and to divide Washington from its Arab allies. He provides details on the lead-up to the war, reporting that during a January 1991 meeting former Secretary of State James Baker told Saddam’s foreign minister that if Iraq did not comply with U.S. conditions “we’ll take you back to the pre-industrial stage.”

Saddam’s historical recollections include his ascendancy within the Ba’athist party in 1968 and 1969; his disappointment after the Iran-Iraq war with Arab governments for their lack of gratitude for Iraq’s “saving all of the Arab world” from occupation by Iran; details about the 1991 Persian Gulf war; and the post-war Shi’a uprising in Iraq’s south, which he characterizes as “treachery” instigated by Iran.

Not included in these FBI reports are issues of particular interest to students of Iraq’s complicated relationship with the U.S. – the reported role of the CIA in facilitating the Ba’ath party’s rise to power, the uneasy alliance forged between Iraq and the U.S. during the Iran-Iraq war, and the precise nature of U.S. views regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons policy during that conflict, given its contemporaneous knowledge of their repeated use against Iranians and the Kurds.

This series of interviews also does not address chemical warfare in Kurdish areas of Iraq in 1987-1988, although an FBI progress report says Saddam was questioned on the topic. One interview, #20, is redacted in its entirety on national security grounds, although it is not clear what issues agents could have discussed with Saddam that cannot now be disclosed to the public.

The interviews and conversations were led by George L. Piro, one of an exceedingly small number of FBI agents who spoke Arabic. The agency expected that Saddam would feel rapport with Piro and develop a sense of dependency. During the interviews Piro hears Saddam out but is often openly skeptical of the former leader’s recollections. The agent does, however, assert with confidence that the U.S. side had information that Iraq was maintaining or developing a WMD capability and cites “evidence” of continuing contact between Iran and al-Qaeda, seemingly implying an operational relationship.

Read the Documents
Note: The following documents are in PDF format.

Newly Released CIA Documents Describe Systematic Torture of Detainees

The Public Record Staff — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 05:54:50 +0000

The CIA released still-highly redacted documents Monday in which Guantánamo Bay prisoners describe abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. The documents were released as part of an American Civil Liberties Union Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit seeking uncensored transcripts from Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRTs) that determine if prisoners held by the Defense Department at Guantánamo qualify as “enemy combatants.” In previously released versions of the documents, the CIA had removed virtually all references to the abuse of prisoners in their custody; the documents released today are still heavily blacked out but include some new information.

“The documents released today provide further evidence of brutal torture and abuse in the CIA’s interrogation program and demonstrate beyond doubt that this information has been suppressed solely to avoid embarrassment and growing demands for accountability,” said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project and lead attorney on the FOIA lawsuit. “There is no legitimate basis for the Obama administration’s continued refusal to disclose allegations of detainee abuse, and we will return to court to seek the full release of these documents.”

The newly unredacted information includes statements from the CSRTs of former CIA detainees, including Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, Abd Al Rahim Hussein Mohammed Al Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah and Majid Khan, including descriptions of torture and coercion. These statements include:

• Abu Zubaydah: “After months of suffering and torture, physically and mentally, they did not care about my injuries that they inflicted to my eye, to my stomach, to my bladder, and my left thigh and my reproductive organs. They didn’t care that I almost died from these injuries. Doctors told me that I nearly died four times.” “They say ‘this in your diary.’ They say ‘see you want to make operation against America.’ I say no, the idea is different. They say no, torturing, torturing. I say ‘okay, I do. I was decide to make operation.’”

• Al Nashiri: “[And, they used to] drown me in water.”

• Muhammad: “This is what I understand he [CIA interrogator] told me: you are not American and you are not on American soil. So you cannot ask about the Constitution.”

• Khan: “In the end, any classified information you have is through…agencies who physically and mentally tortured me.”

“The information released today sheds some new light on the CIA’s torture program, but there are still unanswered questions,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU National Security Project. “The Obama administration should make good on its commitment to transparency, stop suppressing information about torture and abuse and hold accountable the officials who put unlawful policies in place.”

More information about the ACLU’s CSRT FOIA, including the documents released today, is available online at: www.aclu.org/safefree/torture/csrtfoia.html

Obama Furthering Cover-Up of Torture By Withholding Abuse Photos

The Public Record Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:35:13 +0000

By Jason Leopold

By opposing the release of photographic and other evidence of prisoner abuse, President Barack Obama is furthering a long-running cover-up that has protected senior Bush administration officials who set the harsh interrogation policies that led to torture and other misconduct.

In effect, Obama’s reversals on his earlier pledges of openness regarding alleged U.S. war crimes means that he is shutting the door on new internal investigations that might go beyond the truncated inquiries allowed by President George W. Bush and his top aides.

Of the 12 investigations launched in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, not one scrutinized the roles of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or any other senior Pentagon or Bush administration official. The inquiries concentrated instead on the military police identified in the photographs, like Private Lynndie England and Corporal Charles Graner Jr.

Retired Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and who issued a critical report, later explained that the focus was kept narrow because investigators were barred from following the evidence up the chain of command.

In a June 2007 interview with New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh, Taguba said he was convinced that higher-ups were responsible for the misconduct, not the “few bad apples” who faced courts martial and sometimes imprisonment after the photos surfaced in 2004 — showing Iraqi prisoners stripped naked, kept in “stress positions,” threatened with attack dogs and sexually humiliated.

“From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba said. “These M.P. troops were not that creative.”

But Taguba said he was only authorized to investigate the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not more senior military officials.

“Somebody was giving them [the MPs] guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box,” Taguba said, adding that the “evasions and stonewalling by Rumsfeld and his aides” were rationalized by the supposed need to protect the CIA.

However, after his report was filed in March 2004, Taguba discovered that even the CIA had concerns about the harsh tactics being used by some military-intelligence interrogators to question so-called “high-value detainees,” Hersh reported.

Hersh cited a secret memo dated June 2, 2003, from General George Casey Jr., then director of the Pentagon Joint Staff, who warned General Michael DeLong at Central Command that “CIA has advised that the techniques the military forces are using to interrogate high value detainees (HVDs) . . . are more aggressive than the techniques used by CIA who is [sic] interviewing the same HVDs.”

Following Guidance

Taguba’s complaints about a cover-up were supported by other evidence. Indeed, MPs who appeared in the controversial photos told military investigators that they were following guidance from Special Forces Psyops and military interrogation teams.

One soldier said the MPs “kept the detainees awake by holding them up or by playing the loud music.” The soldier said Special Forces instructed soldiers that prisoners who were “violent or had information” were “flex-cuffed on their hands, heads covered and not allowed to sleep.”

A female soldier, who appeared in one of the 44 photographs that Obama has decided to keep secret, told military investigators that she didn’t specifically recall why the Iraqi prisoners were “flexicuffed to the bars … and have sandbags covering their heads.”

But she said “detainees were put in that stress position either because the interrogators felt that the detainee could provide further intelligence, or because the detainee was a disciplinary problem. … It was always [a military interrogator's] call to zip-tie them and put them in certain positions.”

These statements mesh with testimony from former Army Sgt. Sam Provance, who served as a military intelligence officer at Abu Ghraib for four months starting in September 2003, He was the only one in such a position to blow the whistle on the cover-up that sought to focus blame for the scandal on low-level military police.

“While serving with my unit in Iraq,” Provance said in a statement submitted to Congress, “I became aware of changes in the procedures in which I and my fellow soldiers were trained. These changes involved using procedures which we previously did not use, and had been trained not to use, and in involving military police (MP) personnel in ‘preparation’ of detainees who were to be interrogated.

“Some detainees were treated in an incorrect and immoral fashion as a result of these changes. After what had happened at Abu Ghraib became a matter of public knowledge, and there was a demand for action, young soldiers were scapegoated while superiors misrepresented what had happened and tried to misdirect attention away from what was really going on.”

After going public with his information, Provance said he was threatened by military superiors and forced out of the Army.

Commander’s View

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who was commander of U.S. forces in Iraq at the time of the Abu Ghraib scandal, confirmed in a recently published paperback version of his book, Wiser in Battle, that the prisoner-abuse investigations were constrained for political reasons.

“A meaningful and unlimited investigation, which the Bush administration adamantly opposed, would result in an unmitigated disaster,” Sanchez wrote. “It would open up Pandora’s box and let out a world of evil.”

Sanchez added, “It’s now clear the Bush administration did not tell the truth about the use of torture at Guantanamo Bay, or in Afghanistan and Iraq. … In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, administration officials worked diligently to deflect responsibility away from them and down to military leadership on the ground. …

“It is also apparent that the White House and the Department of Defense consistently attempted to minimize any further exposure of their actions and, specifically, to prevent a serious investigation into their executive-decision making process.”

Sanchez wrote that “to prevent this [disgrace] from ever happening again” and “to restore America’s moral authority,” the Obama administration and Congress “must conduct more comprehensive investigations across all involved agencies, learn from the findings, and implement permanent changes.”

In a 2004 investigation headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, Sanchez said his approval of more aggressive interrogation strategies was in accord with “the President’s Memorandum” justifying “additional, tougher measures” against detainees. Sanchez was referring to Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, memo excluding “war on terror” suspects from Geneva Convention protections.

A bipartisan report released by the Senate Armed Services Committee earlier this year also concluded that Bush’s Feb. 7, 2002, action memo and subsequent memos from Defense Secretary Rumsfeld led to the abuse of detainees depicted in the Abu Ghraib photographs. But the committee did not pursue the investigation much further.

Arguably, if Obama had followed through on his initial promise to release 44 photographs at the center of a lawsuit between his administration and the ACLU, the additional evidence would demonstrate that prisoner abuse reached far beyond Abu Ghraib and would strengthen the case for finally examining in detail the roles of Rumsfeld and other top Bush officials.

But it’s becoming increasingly clear that after deciding in April to disclose four Justice Department memos rationalizing torture, Obama was stung by the backlash from former Vice President Dick Cheney and other Bush administration defenders. Since then, the President has opposed release of the abuse photos and other documents related to the interrogations.

Obama claims that further disclosures would only enflame the Muslim world and endanger American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, but he also has adopted Bush’s long-discredited claim that the mistreatment of detainees was the work of few miscreant MPs.

“The individuals who were involved [in prisoner abuses] have been identified, and appropriate actions have been taken,” Obama said in a statement last month. “It’s therefore my belief that the publication of these photos would not add any additional benefit to our understanding of what was carried out in the past by a small number of individuals.”

The CIA’s Shifting Reasons For Withholding Documents in the Torture Tapes Case

The Public Record Staff — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 03:10:36 +0000

By Jason Leopold

Last month, the CIA told a federal court judge it could not abide by a court order and turn over detailed documents about the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes because it would compromise the integrity of a special prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the matter.

U.S. District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein responded by demanding a sworn declaration from special counsel John Durham confirming that to be the case.

In a subsequent court filing, Lev Dassin, acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, backtracked and said the government would no longer rely on that argument. Dassin said a “senior government official” would soon submit a declaration explaining why the detailed documents about related to the videotaped interrogations should not be turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union.

Late Monday, the identity of the “senior government official” was revealed. It was CIA Director Leon Panetta, who said in a 24-page sworn declaration that the documents must be withheld in the interests of national security.

Panetta argued that the documents should not be disclosed because they contain top-secret information about the use of specific interrogation techniques, as opposed to abstract information about the legal justification to use those methods that were included in four Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos — from 2002 and 2005 — that President Barack Obama ordered to be released in April.

Additionally, Panetta said a detailed description of the cables “contains information relating to intelligence sources and intelligence methods that is specifically exempted from disclosure” under the National Security Act.

Plus, “disclosure of explicit details of specific interrogations where [enhanced interrogation techniques] were applied would provide al-Qa’ida with propaganda it could use to recruit and raise funds,” Panetta said.

“Al Qa’ida has a very effective propaganda operation. When the abuse of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison was disclosed, al-Qa’ida made very effective use of that information in extremist websites that recruit jihadists and solicit financial support.

“Information concerning the details of the [enhanced interrogation techniques] being applied would provide ready-made ammunition for al-Qa’ida propaganda. The resultant damage to national security would likely be exceptionally grave, and the withholding of this information is therefore proper under” certain FOIA exemptions.

Arguments Challenged

However, Panetta’s arguments were disputed by ACLU officials.

“The public has a right to know not only which interrogation methods were authorized but how those unlawful methods were actually applied,” said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU National Security Project. “This information is particularly important because documents that are already public suggest that interrogators disregarded even the minimal limits that the memos set out.”

Other civil liberties advocates noted that the Obama administration’s argument that disclosures of national security crimes could endanger national security could be a blanket excuse to conceal wide swaths of government wrongdoing.

“The CIA’s withholding of documents because they might be used as propaganda would justify the greatest governmental suppression of the worst governmental misconduct,” said Alex Abdo, a fellow with the ACLU National Security Project.

“If we accept the CIA’s rationale, the government could, for example, suppress any document discussing torture, Abu Ghraib or Guantánamo Bay.”

The documents at issue, according to a description of the materials that accompanied Panetta’s declaration, included a photograph of the first “high-value” detainee, Abu Zubaydah, who was waterboarded 83 times during the month of August 2002 at a secret CIA “black site” prison.

Other documents were notes drafted after the videotaped interrogations were viewed; e-mails that raise questions about how the destruction of the tapes should be explained publicly; and other internal communications about the policies and legal guidance related to the videotaped interrogations and their destruction.

In previous court filings, the CIA disclosed that 12 of the 92 videotaped interrogations depict CIA interrogators subjecting Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, alleged mastermind of the USS Cole attack in 2000, to brutal interrogation methods, including waterboarding. The 80 other videotapes purportedly show Zubaydah and al-Nashiri in their prison cells.

Back-and-Forth

Last month, the CIA released indexes to the ACLU that showed how CIA interrogators provided top agency officials in Langley, Virginia, with daily “torture” updates of Zubaydah during the month of August 2002.

The extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and agency officials in Langley likely included updates provided to senior Bush administration officials.

Some of those cables are included in the 580 documents the CIA has identified as relating specifically to the case, and Panetta is asking Judge Hellerstein to let the agency keep the materials under wraps for national security reasons.

The Obama administration has used similar arguments about a threat to national security in explaining why it won’t turn over to the ACLU 44 photographs that depict U.S. soldiers abusing detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that a detailed description of the photographs at issue have been publicly available for some time.

In that case, the Obama administration is now going above and beyond what the Bush administration had done in attempting to block the materials.

While the Obama administration is appealing to the disclosure case to the Supreme Court, two pro-Iraq War senators, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are pushing for legislation to block release of photographs showing U.S. soldiers mistreating detainees.

Sens. Lieberman and Graham threatened to shut down Congress if legislation they sponsored blocking the release of all such photographs is stripped from the Iraq/Afghanistan war supplemental funding bill.

Both situations – the photos and the documents regarding the videotapes – mark an about-face on the open-government policies that President Obama proclaimed during his first days in office.

On Jan. 21, he signed an executive order instructing all federal agencies and departments to “adopt a presumption in favor” of Freedom of Information Act requests and promised to make the federal government more transparent.

Backlash on Openness

However, it’s becoming increasingly clear that after he ordered the disclosure of the “torture memos” in April, the President was stung by a backlash against his decision and now is aiming to avoid further criticism from the Right.

According to former CIA analyst Melvin Goodman, Panetta has become entrenched in the CIA bureaucracy. “It is obvious Panetta wants to make no waves at the CIA,” Goodman said.

“It is extremely difficult for any outsider to make his mark within a bureaucracy as parochial and insular as the one at CIA,” said Goodman, who spent more than two decades at the agency.

“Panetta, unfortunately, has tried to ingratiate himself with the negative elements. Panetta’s first mistake was to keep in place all of the holdovers from the era of George Tenet and Porter Goss, who were responsible for the culture of cover-up created at the CIA.

“In keeping Steven Kappes as the deputy director, Panetta signaled that there would be no change at the Agency and no punishment for corruption. Kappes, after all, was the ideological driver for those policies that Obama and Panetta criticized before Panetta’s confirmation.

“Instead of reaching out to contrarians or dissidents from the intelligence community, Panetta has relied solely on the leadership he inherited, the very people who have a vested interest in making sure that nothing changes.”

E-Mails Suggest 2005 Torture Memos Hastily Drafted to Give White House Retroactive Legal Cover

The Public Record Staff — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 00:59:13 +0000

By Jason Leopold

In 2005, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales bent to demands from President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney to push through new legal opinions sanctioning harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, according to e-mails written by then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey.

“The AG explained that he was under great pressure from the Vice President to complete both memos, and that the President had even raised it last week, apparently at the VP’s request and the AG had promised they [the opinions] would be ready early this week,” Comey wrote in one of several e-mails obtained by the New York Times.

The Times revealed the e-mails Saturday in an article that focused more on Comey’s acceptance of the legal interpretations of the anti-torture statute than on the behind-the-scenes battle over the White House demand that the Department of Justice reauthorize the “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

The White House role in pressing the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel to sign off again on the brutal tactics – after other OLC lawyers working with Comey had withdrawn the earlier approval – is crucial in assessing whether the OLC offered honest legal guidance or simply tailored its opinions to fit the desires of Bush, Cheney and other policymakers.

A key defense line for Bush has been that the President was just following the advice of the OLC, which is responsible for setting parameters on presidential authority, and thus Bush and his senior aides shouldn’t be held accountable for any law violations. However, if the White House had been stage-managing those opinions, that defense would crumble.

Comey’s e-mails offer additional proof that the White House was, in fact, pulling the strings on the OLC’s legal opinions, especially after Bush’s longtime legal counsel Gonzales was elevated to the post of Attorney General in 2005.

On April 27, 2005, several weeks before the OLC issued the first of the new memos, Comey sent an e-mail to his Chief of Staff Chuck Rosenberg describing a meeting with Gonzales about a draft legal opinion on allowing CIA interrogators to employ a combination of torture techniques against detainees.

“In our private meeting yesterday afternoon, I told [Gonzales] I was here to urge him not to allow the ‘combined effects’ memo to be finalized,” Comey wrote. “I told him it would come back to haunt him and the Department. I told him the first opinion [regarding legal interpretations of U.S. anti-torture statutes] was ready to go out and I concurred. I told him I did not concur with the second and asked him to stop it.”

Politicizing Justice

Comey wrote that Gonzales had essentially allowed Cheney and his legal counsel David Addington to politicize the Justice Department, with Gonzales complaining that “the VP kept telling him ‘we are getting killed on the Hill,’” a suggestion that members of Congress were raising objections about the interrogation policies.

“It leaves me feeling sad for the Department and the AG,” Comey said. “I just hope that when this all comes out, this institution doesn’t take the hit, but rather the hit is taken by those individuals who occupied positions at [OLC and the AG's office who] were too weak to stand up for the principles that undergird the rest of this great institution.”

According to Comey, Gonzales agreed about clearing the first opinion but not the second, promising to “speak with [White House Counsel] Harriet Miers and share the concerns.”

Comey added that Gonzales “also directed me to call [CIA general counsel] John Rizzo and the CIA and give him some comfort by saying the first [OLC memo] would be done and that we would need to do additional work on the second.”

Comey was not the only one concerned with the authorization to the CIA to use “combined effects” during interrogations. Patrick Philbin, the OLC’s deputy assistant attorney general, also raised red flags.

“Pat alerted me to his serious concerns about the adequacy of the ‘combined effects’ analysis, particularly as it related to the category of ’severe physical suffering,” Comey wrote.

After sharing Comey’s concerns with the Principals Committee – which included Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Cheney and Addington – Gonzales told Comey that DOJ’s objections didn’t matter, that Cheney and Addington were demanding that the disputed memo be finalized.

“I told [Gonzales] the people who were applying pressure now would not be there when the [expletive] hit the fan,” Comey wrote in an April 28, 2005 e-mail. “It would be Alberto Gonzales in the bull’s-eye. I told him it was my job to protect the department and the AG and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong.

“I told him it could be made right in a week, which was a blink of an eye, and that nobody would understand at a hearing three years from now why we didn’t take that week.”

In another e-mail, also dated April 28, 2005, Comey suggested that the legal opinion may have been needed quickly to provide retroactive cover for torture that already occurred.

Gonzales’s Chief of Staff Ted Ullyot “mentioned at one point that OLC didn’t feel like it could accede to my request to make the opinion focused on one person because they don’t give retrospective advice,” Comey wrote to Rosenberg. “I said I understood that, but that the treatment of that person had been the subject of oral advice, which OLC would simply be confirming in writing, something they do quite often.”

The identity of the detainee Comey had referred to is unknown.

Internal Battle

Steven Bradbury, who was acting head of the OLC during Bush’s second term, signed the May 2005 memos to reverse efforts led by former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith in 2003 and 2004 to scrap earlier OLC memos asserting Bush’s powers over detainee treatment.

Senior Bush administration officials, including Addington and Cheney, were furious at Goldsmith, who had Comey’s support in knocking down memos by previous OLC lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee.

In 2002, Yoo and Bybee worked closely with the White House to create legal arguments for Bush to claim that his Commander-in-Chief power essentially let him operate beyond the law.

In the May 2005 memos, Bradbury reinstated key elements of the Yoo-Bybee memos clearing the way for additional use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees.

In another e-mail, Comey wrote that Bradbury had succumbed to pressure from Cheney and Addington because he wanted to be nominated for the prestigious job as head of OLC.

“I have previously expressed my worry that having Steve as ‘Acting’ — and wanting the job — would make him susceptible to just this kind of pressure,” Comey wrote. (After signing the earlier memos, Bybee also was given the job he wanted, a lifetime seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.)

In her book, The Dark Side, New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer recounted the episode that Comey described in his e-mails. She wrote:

“The White House was so pleased with Bradbury’s work that the day after he completed his opinion legalizing the cruelest treatment of U.S.-held prisoners in history, President Bush sent his name forward to the FBI to begin work on a background check, so that Bradbury could be formally nominated to run the OLC. Evidently, the White House had received the ‘work product’ it wanted; Bradbury had passed his probation.”

One day after Bradbury signed the last of three torture memos issued in May 2005, Comey sent another e-mail to Rosenberg.

“In stark terms I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would mean for the president and the government,” Comey wrote on May 31, 2005. (Though Bush nominated Bradbury to be assistant attorney general at the OLC, the Senate never approved the nomination.)

See-No-Toture

In the same e-mail, Comey said he, OLC deputy Philbin and Bradbury met with Gonzales that morning to prepare the Attorney General for his meeting with the Principals Committee, which was chaired by Rice.

Gonzales “began by saying that Dr. Rice was not interested in discussing details [of the list of torture techniques] and that her attitude was that if DOJ said it was legal and CIA said it was effective, then that ended it, without a need for detailed policy discussion.

“In stark terms, I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would look like for the President and the government. … I told him it would all come out some day and be presented in the way I was presenting it.”

However, after losing the battle over the May 2005 torture memos – and having also offended the White House regarding its warrantless wiretap program – Comey knew his days were numbered. He soon resigned.

On Aug. 15, 2005, in his farewell speech, Comey urged his colleagues to defend the integrity and honesty of the Justice Department.

“I expect that you will appreciate and protect an amazing gift you have received as an employee of the Department of Justice,” Comey said. “It is a gift you may not notice until the first time you stand up and identify yourself as an employee of the Department of Justice and say something – whether in a courtroom, a conference room or a cocktail party – and find that total strangers believe what you say next.

“That gift – the gift that makes possible so much of the good we accomplish – is a reservoir of trust and credibility, a reservoir built for us, and filled for us, by those who went before – most of whom we never knew. They were people who made sacrifices and kept promises to build that reservoir of trust.

“Our obligation – as the recipients of that great gift – is to protect that reservoir, to pass it to those who follow, those who may never know us, as full as we got it. The problem with reservoirs is that it takes tremendous time and effort to fill them, but one hole in a dam can drain them.

“The protection of that reservoir requires vigilance, an unerring commitment to truth, and a recognition that the actions of one may affect the priceless gift that benefits all. I have tried my absolute best – in matters big and small – to protect that reservoir and inspire others to protect it.”

Though the full import of Comey’s comments was not apparent at the time, it now appears that he was referring to the legal gamesmanship that had enabled the Bush administration to circumvent American laws and traditions to engage in torture.

Bush’s Lawyer Shopping for Torture

The Public Record Staff — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 06:37:50 +0000

By Jason Leopold

In 2005, after pushing out the Justice Department lawyer who had overturned President George W. Bush’s claimed authority to abuse “war on terror” prisoners, his administration reinstated key elements of the memos granting Bush virtually unlimited powers over the detainees.

Steven Bradbury, who headed the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during Bush’s second term, signed the May 2005 memos to reverse efforts led by former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith in 2003 and 2004 to scrap earlier OLC memos asserting Bush’s powers.

Senior Bush administration officials were furious at the attempts by Goldsmith, who with the support of then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey, knocked down memos by previous OLC lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee.

Yoo and Bybee had worked closely with the White House to create legal arguments for Bush to claim his Commander-in-Chief power essentially let him operate beyond the law.

In the May 2005 memos, Bradbury reinstated key elements of the Yoo-Bybee memos – and even expanded on some – clearing the way for additional use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees.

The chronology of events – the White House collaborating with Yoo and Bybee to develop the memos after 9/11, Goldsmith and Comey then challenging them before being driven from their jobs, and Bradbury reviving the Yoo-Bybee arguments – provides further evidence that the Bush administration politicized the OLC’s traditional role of giving objective legal advice regarding the limits of presidential power.

In effect, Bush and his team appear to have “lawyer-shopped” for Justice Department officials who would give them legal cover to engage in torture and other actions that violated U.S. laws, international treaties and the U.S. Constitution.

Torture Memos

One memo signed by Bradbury on May 10, 2005, largely restored the infamous Yoo-Bybee “torture memo” of August 2002 which spelled out what techniques CIA interrogators could use against prisoners.

The “torture memo,” along with others drafted by Yoo and signed by Bybee, was withdrawn by Goldsmith after he took over the OLC in October 2003. In his 2007 book, The Terror Presidency, Goldsmith described the August 2002 memo as “legally flawed” and “sloppily reasoned.”

In his book, Goldsmith recounted his collaboration with Comey, an experienced federal prosecutor, in trying to restore some integrity to the legal advice under which the Bush administration had operated after the 9/11 attacks.

“Ever since Comey had come on board in December of 2003, he had been my most powerful ally … in correcting the flawed interrogation opinions,” Goldsmith wrote. “He always acted with a sensitivity to upholding the integrity of the Justice Department.”

As Goldsmith struck down key Yoo-Bybee opinions, he and Comey encountered angry resistance and even ridicule from Bush insiders, particularly David Addington, the legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Goldsmith described one White House meeting at which Addington pulled out a 3-by-5-inch card listing the OLC opinions that Goldsmith had withdrawn.

“Since you’ve withdrawn so many legal opinions that the President and others have been relying on,” Addington said with sarcasm in his voice, “we need you to go through all of OLC’s opinions and let us know which ones you will stand by.”

So, after nine contentious months at the OLC, a battered Goldsmith quit, accepting a tenured position at Harvard Law School.

Comey wasn’t far behind. Comey offended the White House, too, by resisting its warrantless surveillance program of Americans in March 2004.

That battle over the warrantless wiretaps reportedly earned Comey the derisive nickname from Bush as “Cuomey” or just “Cuomo,” a strong insult from Republicans who deemed former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo to be excessively liberal and famously indecisive.

Comey previously had been a well-respected Republican lawyer who was credited with prosecuting key terrorism cases including the Khobar Towers bombing which killed 19 U.S. servicemen in 1996.

Comey also wore out his White House welcome by picking Patrick Fitzgerald to be special prosecutor to investigate who leaked the identity of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame after her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, criticized Bush’s misuse of intelligence on Iraq.

In 2003, when Attorney General John Ashcroft was still handling the investigation, Bush expressed confidence that the leakers would never be identified. But Ashcroft stepped aside because of conflicts of interest and his deputy, Comey, selected U.S. Attorney Fitzgerald, who proved himself to be a more dogged investigator, eventually tracking the anti-Wilson campaign to the highest levels of the White House.

Restoring Bush’s Powers

After Goldsmith departed in summer 2004 and was replaced on an acting basis by Bradbury in 2005, Comey fought a rear-guard action against the restoration of the Yoo-Bybee views on sweeping presidential powers, but lost.

On May 10, 2005, Bradbury expanded those powers even more authorizing the CIA to use a combination of torture techniques, including waterboarding, prolonged standing, frigid temperatures and slamming detainees into walls.

The Justice Department was pressured by Dick Cheney and his lawyer, David Addington to approve the combined techniques memo and others issued that month, according to e-mails Comey wrote in April and May 2005 that were obtained and released by The New York Times Saturday.

Then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on ‘combined effects’ over the objections of Comey,who had resigned over a series of clashes he had with White House officials over the legality of torture and domestic surveillance.

The May 10, 2005, memo drafted by Bradbury discussed whether CIA interrogation methods violate the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment standard under federal and international law. The legal opinion concludes that past and present CIA interrogation methods do not constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.

Another memo issued on that date discussed “whether CIA interrogation methods violate the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment standard under federal and international law.”

That second legal opinion concludes that past and present CIA interrogation methods do not constitute cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. A third memo that provided a legal definition of torture in the context of “enhanced interrogations” was signed on May 30, 2005.

On Aug. 15, 2005, in his farewell speech, Comey urged his colleagues to defend the integrity and honesty of the Justice Department, which he said Gonzales had failed to do in his dealings with the White House, according to the e-mails obtained by the Times.

Torture Aftermath

The Yoo-Bybee and Bradbury memos were the subject of a four-year-long internal investigation conducted by Justice Department’s internal watchdog agencies. The probe centered on whether Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury provided the White House with poor legal advice and violated “professional standards” in interpreting the Constitution.

The probe was completed last year and is said to be highly critical of Yoo and Bybee’s legal work in this area. It remains to be seen whether Brabdury’s work will receive the same scrutiny. The report is expected to be released sometime in the summer.

Before leaving the vice presidency, Cheney acknowledged that he personally “signed off” on the waterboarding of al-Qaeda suspect Abu Zubaydah and two other alleged terrorist detainees and personally approved brutal interrogations of 33 others.

“I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared, as the [Central Intelligence] Agency, in effect, came in and wanted to know what they could and couldn’t do,” Cheney said in an interview last December with ABC News. “And they talked to me, as well as others, to explain what they wanted to do. And I supported it.”

In her book, The Dark Side, author and New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer wrote that the White House was so pleased with Bradbury’s work that “the day after he completed his opinion legalizing the cruelest treatment of U.S.-held in history, President Bush sent his name forewarned to the FBI to begin work on a background check, so that Bradbury could be formally nominated to run the OLC.”

“Evidently, the White House had received the ‘work product’ it wanted; Bradbury had passed his probation,” Mayer wrote.

Newly Released E-Mails Reveal Cheney Pressured DOJ to Approve Torture

The Public Record Staff — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:13:37 +0000

By Jason Leopold

Dick Cheney and his lawyer, David Addington, pressured the Department of Justice in 2005 to quickly approve a torture memo that authorized CIA interrogators to use a combination of barbaric techniques during interrogations of “high-value” detainees, despite protests from ormer Deputy Attorney General James Comey, according to several of his e-mails released over the weekend.

One of Comey’s 2005 e-mails said then Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was “weak” and had essentially allowed Cheney and Addington to politicize the Justice Department. The e-mails can be found here: Documents: Justice Department Communication on Interrogation Opinions.

“The AG explained that he was under great pressure from the Vice President to complete both memos, and that the President had even raised it last week, apparently at the VP’s request and the AG had promised they would be ready early this week,” Comey wrote. Gonzales “added that the VP kept telling him ‘we are getting killed on the Hill.’”

“It leaves me feeling sad for the Department and the AG… I just hope that when this all comes out, this institution doesn’t take the hit, but rather the hit is taken by those individuals who occupied positions at [Office of Legal Counsel] and [Office of the Attorney General] and were too weak to stand up for the principles that undergird the rest of this great institution.”

The New York Times obtained the e-mails, which were likely used to help form the narrative of a Justice Department watchdog’s report that will determine whether Office of Legal Counsel attorneys violated professional standards when authorizing the Bush administration’s interrogation program.

But the Times appears to have seriously mischaracterized the substance of some of Comey’s e-mails in a story the newspaper published Saturday.

The Times reported that Comey “went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.” But the issue is much more complex than that.

Comey’s e-mails tell a far more disturbing story about the way in which the Bush administration had politicized the Justice Department and pressured attorneys to come up with a legal rationale for torturing “war on terror” prisoners. Comey had gone so far as to say in one e-mail that he would accept the blame for thwarting the White House’s efforts to legalize torture.

The e-mails also clearly state that Comey had vehemently objected to torture on moral and constitutional grounds and predicted that the matter would become the focus of a congressional hearing “three years from now” if White House officials failed to heed his warnings.

Prior Battles

Comey had previously butted heads with Cheney, Addington and Gonzales over the legality of the Bush administration’s domestic surveillance program.

In March 2004, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was hospitalized with acute pancreatitis and it fell upon Comey to recertify the program. But Comey and his colleagues at the DOJ refused to do so because the program appeared to be illegal.

In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee two years ago, Comey said Bush, Dick Cheney, Gonzales, who was White House Counsel at the time, tried to override his refusal to reauthorize the surveillance program by pressuring Ashcroft, who was hospitalized and barely conscious, to sign off on the program, which Ashcroft had refused to do.

So beginning on March 11, 2004, on orders from Bush, the National Security Agency illegally operated the surveillance program for about three weeks when administration officials could not obtain approval from the Justice Department leading to an internal revolt at the agency which nearly resulted in Comey and Ashcroft’s resignation.

Pleading With Gonzales

A year later, Comey found himself in a similar situation over the Bush administration’s torture program.

In April 2005, several weeks before the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued the first of three torture memos, Comey sent an e-mail to his chief of ataff, Chuck Rosenberg, stating that he had met privately with Gonzales after reading a draft version of a legal opinion that allowed CIA interrogators to employ a combination of torture techniques against detainees, such as waterboarding, prolonged stress positions and slamming detainees into walls.

“In our private meeting yesterday afternoon, I told [Gonzales] I was here to urge him not to allow the ‘combined effects’ memo to be finalized,” Comey wrote on April 27, 2005. “I told him it would come back to haunt him and the Department. I told him the first opinion was ready to go out and I concurred. I told him I did not concur with the second and asked him to stop it.”

Surprisingly, Gonzales said he agreed with Comey and instructed him to tell OLC to finalize the first opinion-authorizing the CIA to torture–but not the second–the combination of techniques–that is until OLC could come up with a way to make it work legally, according to Comey’s e-mail.

Gonzales said, “He would speak with [White House Counsel] Harriet Miers and share the concerns.”

“He also directed me to call [acting general counsel of the CIA] John Rizzo and give him some comfort by saying the first [torture memo] would be done and that we would need to do additional work on the second,” Comey added in his e-mail to Rosenberg.

‘Retrospective Advice’

Another e-mail, this one sent on April 28, 2005, appears to suggest Comey was told the torture memos needed to be drafted quickly to provide retroactive cover for torture that already occurred.

The identity of the detainee Comey had referred to is unknown.

A month before Comey’s e-mail to Rosenberg, according to a report in last week’s Washington Post, Cheney briefed members of Congress about the torture program. At the time, some members of Congress had began to question its legality and even suggested they may support an investigation.

“Lawmakers at times challenged Cheney and CIA officials about the legality of the program and pressed for specific results that would show whether the techniques worked. In response, the CIA briefers said that half of the agency’s knowledge about al-Qaeda’s plans and structure had been obtained through the interrogations,” the Washington Post reported.

“On March 8, 2005 — two days after a detailed report in the New York Times about interrogations — Cheney gathered [Sen. Jay] Rockefeller, [Rep. Jane] Harman, [the ranking Democrats on the Senate and House intelligence committees], and the chairmen of the intelligence panels, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.).

“Weeks earlier, Roberts had given public statements suggesting possible support for the investigation sought by Rockefeller. But by early March 2005, Roberts announced that he opposed a separate probe, and the matter soon died.”

The Post had also reported that former CIA Deputy Inspector General Mary McCarthy alleged that the CIA had lied to members of Congress about the legality of the torture program in briefings in February and June 2005. The June briefing would have taken place just weeks after OLC finalized the torture memos.

That adds weight to suggestions by Comey in his e-mails to Rosenberg that Cheney, Addington and even Bush had pressured OLC to quickly draft the legal memos to provide the White House with retroactive cover for torture that had already been administered to a detainee(s).

Warnings Ignored

“Pat alerted me to his serious concerns about the adequacy of the ‘combined effects’ analysis, particularly as it related to the category of ’severe physical suffering,” Comey wrote in his e-mail to Rosenberg on April 27, 2005.

But Gonzales, after sharing Comey’s concerns with the Principals Committee, who included then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Cheney, Addington and others, told Comey they were not persuaded by his arguments. Cheney and Addington were pressuring him to have the memos authorizing torture and the combination of brutal methods finalized and signed immediately.

“I told [Gonzales] the people who were applying pressure now would not be there when the [shit] hit the fan,” Comey wrote in an April 28, 2005 e-mail. “It would be Alberto Gonzales in the bull’s-eye. I told him it was my job to protect the department and the AG and that I could not agree to this because it was wrong. I told him it could be made right in a week, which was a blink of an eye, and that nobody would understand at a hearing three years from now why we didn’t take that week.”

Additionally, Comey said he told Gonzales that he should tell the White House that Comey “had gone on record against this” and that he was willing to bear the brunt of the blame for blocking efforts to get the DOJ to authorize the torture program.

“I told [Gonzales] I was leaving and was perfectly willing to catch that spear, as I had in other contexts,” Comey wrote Rosenberg in the April 28, 2005 e-mail.

Recounting the episode that unfolded a year earlier at Ashcroft’s hospital bed, Comey told Rosenberg that he missed Ashcroft because, unlike Gonzales, Ashcroft had a “backbone.”

“People may think it strange to hear me say I miss John Ashcroft, but as intimidated as he could be by the [White House], when it came to crunch time, he stood up, even from an intensive care hospital bed. That backbone is gone.”

Torture Memos Approved

The opinion on combined techniques was approved on May 10, 2005. Another memo issued on that date discussed “whether CIA interrogation methods violate the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment standard under federal and international law.”

Steven Bradbury, who was the acting head of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during Bush’s second term, signed the May 2005 memos that reversed efforts led by former Assistant Attorney General Jack Goldsmith in 2003 and 2004 to scrap earlier OLC memos asserting Bush’s powers.

Senior Bush administration officials, including Addington and Cheney, were furious that Goldsmith, who was supported by Comey and Philbin, withdrew a previous memo by former OLC lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, which Goldsmith had said were “sloppily reasoned” and “legally flawed.”

In his book, The Terror Presidency Goldsmith recounted his collaboration with Comey in trying to restore some integrity to the legal advice under which the Bush administration had operated after the 9/11 attacks.

“Ever since Comey had come on board in December of 2003, he had been my most powerful ally in correcting the flawed interrogation opinions,” Goldsmith wrote. “He always acted with a sensitivity to upholding the integrity of the Justice Department.”

As Goldsmith struck down a key Yoo-Bybee opinion drafted in August 2002, he and Comey encountered angry resistance and even ridicule from Bush insiders, particularly David Addington, the legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Goldsmith described one White House meeting at which Addington pulled out a 3-by-5-inch card listing the OLC opinions that Goldsmith had withdrawn.

“Since you’ve withdrawn so many legal opinions that the President and others have been relying on,”- Addington said with sarcasm in his voice, “we need you to go through all of OLC’s opinions and let us know which ones you will stand by.”

Yoo and Bybee had worked closely with the White House to create legal arguments for Bush to claim his Commander-in-Chief power essentially let him operate beyond the law and Addington and Cheney found that person in Bradbury.

In the May 2005 memos, Bradbury reinstated key elements of the Yoo-Bybee memos clearing the way for additional use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against detainees and even expanded on some methods.

One of Comey’s e-mails to Rosenberg said that Bradbury had clearly succumbed to pressure from Cheney and Addington because he wanted to be nominated for the job as head of OLC.

“I have previously expressed my worry that having Steve as ‘Acting’ — and wanting the job — would make him susceptible to just this kind of pressure,” Comey wrote in his e-mail to Rosenberg.

Bradbury Rewarded

In her book, The Dark Side, author and New Yorker reporter Jane Mayer, recounted the episode Comey had described in his emails.

“In late spring of 2005, Comey went to the Attorney General and said in essence, “OK-I get it that you won’t accept my interpretation of the law,” Mayer wrote.

Comey then argued, “Just because you think you can do these things, it doesn’t mean you should.”

Mayer also added some insight into Bradbury’s work on the May 2005 memos.

“The White House was so pleased with Bradbury’s work that the day after he completed his opinion legalizing the cruelest treatment of U.S.-held in history, President Bush sent his name forewarned to the FBI to begin work on a background check, so that Bradbury could be formally nominated to run the OLC. Evidently, the White House had received the ‘work product’ it wanted; Bradbury had passed his probation,” Mayer wrote.

Final Warning

One day after Bradbury signed the last of three torture memos issued in May 2005, copies of which were declassified and released in April, Comey sent another e-mail to Rosenberg summarizing his conversation with Gonzales.

“In stark terms I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would mean for the president and the government,” says Comey’s May 31, 2005, e-mail to Rosenberg.

In that same e-mail, Comey said that he and Philbin and Bradbury met with Gonzales that morning to prepare him for his meeting with the Principals Committee.

“Pat [Philbin] and I urged [Gonzales] in the strongest possible terms to drive a full policy discussion of all techniques. I said I was not going to rehash my concerns about the legal opinion, but it was simply not acceptable for Principles [sic] to say that everything that may be ‘legal’ is also appropriate. In stark terms, I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would look like for the President and the government…I told him it would all come out some day and be presented in the way I was presenting it.”

On Aug. 15, 2005, in his farewell speech, Comey urged his colleagues to defend the integrity and honesty of the Justice Department.

Declassified Docs Offer New Revelations of Israeli Nuclear Weapons Program

The Public Record Staff — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:25:32 +0000

Recent Actions by Declassification Panel Show Pattern of CIA Overclassification and Tight Grip on Early Cold War History

New Declassification Releases by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP)

During the lead-up to the 2003 Iraq War, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research was one of the few U.S. intelligence organizations to dissent from the Bush administration’s allegations of a revved-up Iraqi nuclear program. Secretary of State Colin Powell ignored his own experts, but INR’s prescience raised its prestige.

INR also got it right in its forecast of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, according to a recently declassified post-mortem on the U.S. intelligence failure during the October War, published today by the National Security Archive. In the spring of 1973, INR analysts wrote that, absent diplomatic progress in the Middle East, “the resumption of hostilities will become a better than even bet.”

INR analysts argued that Egyptian president Anwar Sadat would go to war not for specific military objectives, but to take “military action which can be sustained long enough” to get the United States and the Soviet Union strongly involved in the Middle East peace process.

The authors of the October War post-mortem saw the INR estimate as a “case of wisdom lost,” because as the signs of conflict unfolded in the fall of 1973, the intelligence establishment forgot those warnings. The post-mortem, which reviewed failures to take into account communications intelligence (COMINT) and human intelligence (HUMINT), quickly became a secret “best seller” in the intelligence establishment after it was published.

When the Archive filed a mandatory review request for the post-mortem, the CIA denied much of the document, and it took a decision by the Interagency Security Classification Appeals Panel (ISCAP) in response to the Archive’s appeal to reverse the CIA decision and declassify much more of the withheld information. Acting as the court of last resort for mandatory declassification review requests, ISCAP recently reversed other CIA initial denials of documents from the 1960s and 1970s. While it exempted material it regards as sensitive, ISCAP nevertheless found that much of the information denied by the CIA could be declassified without harm to national security.

Among the ISCAP Releases Are:

The U.S. government’s first intelligence estimate–a Special National Intelligence Estimate from December 1960–on the purposes of Israeli nuclear activities at a nuclear reactor complex near Beersheba: “We believe that plutonium production for weapons is at least one major purpose of this effort.”
Biographical sketches of members of the Soviet delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks in 1969. For years, the CIA routinely refused to declassify its biographical reporting.
A top secret report from November 1973 on the possibility that Moscow shipped nuclear weapons into Soviet bases in Egypt during the 1973 Middle East war.
A National Intelligence Estimate from April 1986 on “The Likelihood of Nuclear Acts by Terrorist Groups” which found that the “prospects that terrorists will attempt high-level nuclear terrorism” was “low to very low.” While the CIA analysts speculated that even the terrorist groups of the 1980s may have had inhibitions against actions that produced civilian mass casualties, they suggested that the inhibitions could erode and that groups “with a different state of mind” could emerge.

ISCAP’s decision to declassify these documents is commendable, but the CIA’s initial denials suggest that the Agency is following overly restrictive declassification review standards. Just as troubling, the Agency used the CIA Information Act to prevent ISCAP from making a decision on the classification status of a history of early covert operations, “Office of Policy Coordination, 1948-1952.”

These CIA examples suggest that the rules and regulations that support the U.S. government secrecy system enable government agencies to follow unreasonably narrow standards. Moreover, as the CIA’s action on the covert operations history suggests, laws on the books give the Agency inordinate power to keep the veil of secrecy over important parts of its history. Indeed, President George W. Bush’s executive order on secrecy policy, still in force, gives the CIA veto power over ISCAP decisions on intelligence records. These problems point out the need for significant change in the U.S. government’s secrecy policy.

The declassified documents can be accessed at this link.