By William Fisher President Barack Obama cautiously minced his way yesterday through a political minefield filled with imminent explosions from human rights advocates, national security hawks, and a Congress terrified by the potential political backlash of any move to bring Guantanamo Bay prisoners to the U.S. for trial or detention. The President defended his decisions [...]
May 21, 2009 | Filed under
Politics |
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By Jason Leopold Two weeks ago, the CIA said in court documents that it would not turn over documents to the ACLU related to the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes because it would compromise the integrity of a special prosecutor’s criminal investigation into the matter. But on Monday, the Justice Department, acting on behalf of [...]
May 21, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal. Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega has recently made news urging that we don’t rush into appointing a special prosecutor to investigate crimes of torture during George W. Bush’s presidency. In a provocative April 20th post entitled “Of Black Holes and [...]
May 20, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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By Jason Leopold House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is under fire for complaining that the CIA misled her in classified briefings about the Bush administration’s abusive treatment of “war on terror” detainees. Republicans and many media pundits have accused Pelosi of scapegoating the CIA for her failure to protest those techniques in a timely fashion. But [...]
May 20, 2009 | Filed under
Politics |
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By William Fisher Congressional Democrats and many Washington journalists are predicting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s current dispute with the Central Intelligence Agency may ultimately hasten the push toward the last thing Republicans want — a comprehensive investigation of prisoner detention and interrogation during the administration of former President George W. Bush. The Pelosi controversy [...]
May 19, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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By William Fisher The administration of President Barack Obama is considering the creation of a national security court to try cases in which there is enough reliable intelligence to hold a foreign terrorism suspect in preventive detention, but not enough to bring a case in federal court or even through military commissions. Human rights advocates [...]
May 19, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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By Jason Leopold In the summer of 2002, Michael Chertoff, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, offered assurances to the CIA that its interrogators would not face prosecution under anti-torture laws if they followed guidelines on interrogation techniques approved by the Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Those guidelines stretched the rules on permissible [...]
May 18, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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By Walter Brasch Dick Cheney has apparently been on a magical mystery media tour. He has sought out and been interviewed by more TV journalists and talk show hosts during the past month than during the eight years he was vice president.
May 17, 2009 | Filed under
Commentary |
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By William Fisher Human rights advocates are outraged by President Barack Obama’s decision to prosecute some Guantanamo detainees through the same Military Commissions he criticized during his campaign as a “flawed” system that “has failed to convict anyone of a terrorist act since the 9/11 attacks.” The White House said Friday that the Commissions would [...]
May 16, 2009 | Filed under
Law |
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By Jason Leopold U.S. Army soldiers in Afghanistan took dozens of pictures of their colleagues pointing assault rifles and pistols at the heads and backs of hooded and bound detainees and another photograph showed two male soldiers and one female soldier pointing a broom to one detainee “as if I was sticking the end of [...]
May 15, 2009 | Filed under
Torture |
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