And once again the US media remain mute, accepting the official story, which was of ISAF forces responding to an attack which in reality appears never to have happened.

Before I started to write this piece, which once again was broken by the intrepid Jerome Starkey, a reporter in Afghanistan who works for the Times of London, I thought maybe I should read the Sunday edition of the New York Times, to see whether America’s “paper of record” had reported on this latest atrocity. But the night before we had suffered a heavy storm that knocked down three large trees in my front yard, and there was currently a thunderstorm underway, with rain pouring down, so I decided, what the hell, I’ll just write it. There’s no way the Times would cover this story.

I was right, of course. When the rain let up, and I went out and got the paper, and scoured it for word of this latest obscene slaughter by US forces, I found nothing. The Times’ reporters in Afghanistan and the reporters in the paper’s Washington bureau who cover the Pentagon had ignored it. So, a Google search discloses, did the rest of the servile US media.

So what actually happened?

According to Starkey, US and Afghan Army forces on February 12 launched a pre-dawn assault on the home of a prominent and popular policeman’s home just outside of Gardez, the capital of Paktia province in eastern Afghanistan. The first person to die was reportedly the policeman himself, Commander Dawood, who had stood in his doorway protesting the innocence of his family. In the volley of fire directed against him by the brave US-led team, his pregnant wife, another pregnant woman and an 18-year-old girl were also slaughtered.

Commander Dawood had been hosting a party to celebrate the naming of a newborn baby boy, Starkey reported. As he writes:

Sitting together along the walls of a guest room, the men had taken turns dancing while musicians played. Mohammed Sediq Mahmoudi, 24, the singer, said that at some time after 3am one of the musicians, Dur Mohammed, went outside to go to the toilet. “Someone shone a light on his face and he ran back inside and said the Taliban were outside,” Mr Sediq said.

Also killed was Dawood’s brother, Saranwal Zahir, a local prosecutor, who had been shouting for soldiers not to shoot as women had run outside to tend to the wounded.

A younger brother of the two men, Mohammed Sabir, was arrested by the invading forces and brought to a US base, where he was held for several days and interrogated by “ an American in civilian clothes,” before being released. Sabir said he was shown photos of a man who had been at the party, a certain Shamsuddin. Sabir says he told the interrogatyor, “Yes, he was at the party. Why didn’t you arrest him?” The man in question, Shamsuddin, later turned himself in and was, after questioning, reportedly also released.

Raising the question, what was this raid, and all the pointless killing, about in the first place?

As Starkey writes, the US and the ISAF initially, following what appears to be standard operating procedure, concocted a lie about the incident In a release immediately afterward, under the headline, “Joint force operating in Gardez makes gruesome discovery,” the NATO release claimed that the US-led team had found the women’s bodies “tied up, gagged and killed” in a room. That statement went on to say: “Several insurgents engaged the joint force in a firefight and were killed.”

As Starkey, who charges NATO with a “coverup,” reports: “The family, however, insists that no one threw so much as a stone.”

He goes on:

Rear Admiral Greg Smith, NATO’s director of communications in Kabul, denied that there had been any attempt at a cover-up.

He said that both the men who were killed were armed and showing “hostile intent” but admitted “they were not the targets of this particular raid.”

“I don’t know if they fired any rounds,” he said. “If you have got an individual stepping out of a compound, and if your assault force is there, that is often the trigger to neutralise the individual. You don’t have to be fired upon to fire back.”

He admitted that the original statement had been “poorly worded” but said “to people who see a lot of dead bodies” the women had appeared at the time to have been dead for several hours.

Starkey reports that the Americans offered the distraught family $2000 per victim of the botched raid. But as the mother of the slain brothers, Bibi Sabsparie, told him bitterly, “There’s no value on human life. They killed our family, then they came and brought us money. Money won’t bring our family back.”

So once again, we have a massacre (in a night-time raid that occurred two weeks after the US commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal ordered an end to the practice because of the number of errors and civilian deaths, and the bad public relations such raids cause among Afghans), with no coverage by the US media.

Meanwhile, Starkey says that even in the UK, his stories have been ignored by the rest of the British media, and that his own efforts to get at the truth have begun causing problems with the US-led military command in Afghanistan.

As he told one reader who had written him to congratulate him on his work:

Word in Kabul is that NATO are turning their wrath on me, personally,

and about to release a rebuttal. All of a sudden it’s a daunting

prospect and more than ever I feel what it must be like to be churned

through the military machine. It’s good to know people appreciate it.

I’ve also had emails from the victims’ family, which is heartening.

It is not easy to be an honest reporter in wartime, where sycophancy and blind patriotism are what is demanded. Sadly, the US media are taking the easy way out, accepting the rules of being embedded, which require them to submit articles for censorship, to avoid being critical and to play the game, in return for getting easy human interest stories to send back to the readers and viewers back home.

That’s not journalism. It’s PR. It ought to be labeled as such.

Extra! Also ignored by the Times and most of the rest of the US corporate media was a historic decision by a federal judge in Chicago on March 4 to compel former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to respond to charges by to US torture victims that Rumsfeld authorized their torture by US forces at Camp Cropper in Iraq. The two men, David Vance and Nathan Ertel, were whistleblowers against the private security (mercenary) firm that had hired them, claiming it was secretly providing arms to insurgents. Instead of getting the firm investigated, they were arrested by US troops and held–and tortured, they claim–for three months, before being released without charge and sent home to the US.

Their attorney, Mike Kanovitz of Chicago’s Loevy & Loevy, correctly calls the quashing of Rumsfeld’s effort to have the suit against him thrown out, “pretty historic”–a former secretary of defense is being accused of authorizing the torture of American citizens and will have to answer the charge in a federal court–but you wouldn’t know it from the response of the US mainstream media, which has been…nothing.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

(Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: phunkstarr, Travelin' Librarian, Joshua Davis)

This story was originally published on Truthout.org and is being republished here under a Creative Commons license.

One week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told the press corps, “This isn’t Pearl Harbor.” No, it was worse.

In 1941, the United States didn’t have a director of central intelligence, 14 intelligence agencies and an overall intelligence budget of more than $50 billion to provide early warning of enemy attack. One day after a Nigerian man nearly blew an airliner out of the sky, Director of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told the media that the system had worked. No, the system was dysfunctional.

In 2009, we had two additional intelligence agencies, a czar for national intelligence and an intelligence budget of more than $75 billion. In all three cases, there was sufficient intelligence available to prevent the attacks. In all three cases, however, our intelligence efforts were unimaginative, divided and diffuse.

A blizzard of warnings went unheeded in all three cases. The United States had broken the Japanese military code, which provided many warnings of a decision to attack the United States. In the case of 9/11, the Central Intelligence Agency received warnings from foreign liaison intelligence services, including the French, German, Israeli and Russian services.

The German intelligence service warned both the CIA and Mossad, the Israeli service, in the summer of 2001 that terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack US targets. The Israelis issued their own warnings to the FBI and the CIA in August 2001 that al-Qaeda was planning to attack US targets. The State Department and the CIA even possessed information that al-Qaeda had decided on targeting American Airlines and United Airlines, prompting some Foreign Service officers to change travel plans.

As early as August 2009, the CIA and the National Security Agency had sensitive information on a person of interest dubbed the “Nigerian,” who was suspected of meeting with terrorist elements in Yemen. The mainstream media are treating Yemen as a new concern, but Yemen has been a problem for terrorism for the past ten years.

Adm. Tony Zinni had been warned in 2000 not to refuel ships off the Yemeni coast, but chose to ignore these warnings. The USS Cole was attacked in October 2000. A prominent Nigerian banker and former senior government official, well known to the international community, relayed suspicions about his son to the US Embassy and the CIA station in Lagos, but there was no effort to approach Yemeni officials to gather information on the banker’s son, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab.

The son was a poster child for the “no fly” list, buying his ticket with cash, checking no luggage, lying to British authorities about his student visa and spending several months in Yemen. The British denied Abdulmutallab reentry, but the US State Department didn’t even bother to check whether he had an entry visa for the United States.

In fact, he had a multiple entry visa and, since all intelligence and law enforcement agencies have access to State’s consular database listing visa holders, this fact was available throughout the community. It’s one thing to worry about due process in dealing with a US citizen; it makes no sense to wait for additional derogatory information in the case of a foreigner who has traveled to Yemen and whose father has provided a warning about his son’s extremism.

The simple fact is that the intelligence community is not a “community”; it does not share intelligence effectively and it fails to make corporate decisions. The NSA had transcripts of al-Qaeda phone conversations in 2001 and sensitive intercepts on the “Nigerian” in 2009 that it didn’t share with the CIA, the FBI or the National Security Council. The FBI accumulated intelligence on al-Qaeda that it hoped to use in a criminal case against Osama bin Laden; therefore, most of this intelligence never left the compartmented areas of FBI headquarters. The CIA withheld information on two 9/11 terrorists, presumably because it hoped to recruit these suspects as sources.

We were led to believe the intelligence situation had improved in the wake of 9/11, but in view of the traditional cultural and professional jealousies of the military and civilian intelligence agencies, we have no evidence of significant change. Various departments and agencies have their own watch lists for limiting travel of terrorist suspects, but apply their own parochial concerns to operational activities and often ignore the intelligence products of rival agencies.

The master list at the National Counter Terrorist Center is too large and unwieldy (more than 550,000 names) to be useful, and the State Department computer network lacks an automatic feedback loop that would link a suspect to a US visa. The Department of Homeland Security never should have been created and should have been abolished in the wake of Hurricane Katrina (remember “you’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie”). If we must have such a superfluous organization, then it should possess a centralized depository of terrorist suspects containing all relevant information.

The analytical capabilities of the CIA, the FBI and the DHS have not been enhanced by the creation of the intelligence czar. Moreover, it is revealing that President Barack Obama made his decision last month to increase troops in Afghanistan without requesting a National Intelligence Estimate from the so-called intelligence community. Perhaps, he understands that there are too many instances where assumptions drive facts in the intelligence process.

Former members of the 9/11 Commission are claiming that their recommendations have not been fully implemented, but it was the 9/11 Commission that helped to create the crazy-quilt intelligence organization that we now have, with too many working parts and a cumbersome bureaucracy. The Commission is responsible for the creation of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), a sclerotic and bloated bureaucracy that has done little to improve strategic intelligence, and the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which is at the center of the Nigerian intelligence failure. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 demonstrated DHS is dysfunctional; the Nigerian failure teaches us that the DNI and the NCTC need reform.

The 9/11 Commission’s creation of an intelligence czar has ensured that diversity and competition in collection and analysis of intelligence will be given short shrift. Truth is elusive within the intelligence process, and there is rarely a single answer to a controversial question or problem. The best intelligence analysis often comes from contrarian thinkers, but the militarized intelligence process rewards consensus and not competition.

In the one area where we need centralization, watch lists for terrorist suspects, we have a redundancy of collections. Homeland Security keeps one list for border crossings; the State Department has a list for visas; the Transportation Security Administration has a no-fly list and a selectee list with 4,000 and 14,000 listings, respectively; and the National Counter Terrorism Center has an unwieldy database of 550,000 names. The criteria for each list differ, and it takes an interagency group to determine whether to place an individual on a specific list.

There is at least one thing we have to be thankful for. In view of the failed efforts of Robert Reid in 2001 and Abdulmutallab, we can be thankful al-Qaeda still has not perfected an effective detonator. We should also applaud the post-9/11 reforms that limited the amounts of liquid that can be taken on commercial aircraft.

The United States may not be so lucky the next time around, so President Obama must take a hard look at his entire national security team, particularly CIA Director Leon Panetta, DNI Dennis Blair, and NSC Deputy Director John Brennan, to make sure they are taking the necessary actions to reform the process. The failure points seem obvious, with bad decisions being made at a relatively low level in the process. The president has not demonstrated an interest in reforming the intelligence community, however, despite his campaign rhetoric.

Ironically, the president has left the CIA without its most effective component for investigating failure because he hasn’t named a statutory inspector general for the CIA to replace John Helgerson, who announced his retirement ten months ago. Helgerson was responsible for the most authoritative investigation of the 9/11 failure, which the Bush administration and the CIA managed to cover up.

Melvin A. Goodman is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and adjunct professor of government at Johns Hopkins University. He spent 42 years with the CIA, the National War College, and the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.

State Dining Room, 4:34 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. The immediate reviews that I ordered after the failed Christmas terrorist attack are now complete. I was just briefed on the findings and recommendations for reform, and I believe it’s important that the American people understand the new steps that we’re taking to prevent attacks and keep our country safe.

This afternoon, my Counterterrorism and Homeland Security Advisor, John Brennan, will discuss his review into our terrorist watchlist system — how our government failed to connect the dots in a way that would have prevented a known terrorist from boarding a plane for America, and the steps we’re going to take to prevent that from happening again.

Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano will discuss her review of aviation screening, technology and procedures —- how that terrorist boarded a plane with explosives that could have killed nearly 300 innocent people, and how we’ll strengthen aviation security going forward.

So today I want to just briefly summarize their conclusions and the steps that I’ve ordered to address them.

In our ever-changing world, America’s first line of defense is timely, accurate intelligence that is shared, integrated, analyzed, and acted upon quickly and effectively. That’s what the intelligence reforms after the 9/11 attacks largely achieved. That’s what our intelligence community does every day. But, unfortunately, that’s not what happened in the lead-up to Christmas Day. It’s now clear that shortcomings occurred in three broad and compounding ways.

First, although our intelligence community had learned a great deal about the al Qaeda affiliate in Yemen — called al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula — that we knew that they sought to strike the United States and that they were recruiting operatives to do so — the intelligence community did not aggressively follow up on and prioritize particular streams of intelligence related to a possible attack against the homeland.

Second, this contributed to a larger failure of analysis —- a failure to connect the dots of intelligence that existed across our intelligence community and which, together, could have revealed that Abdulmutallab was planning an attack.

Third, this, in turn, fed into shortcomings in the watch-listing system which resulted in this person not being placed on the “no fly” list, thereby allowing him to board that plane in Amsterdam for Detroit.

In sum, the U.S. government had the information — scattered throughout the system — to potentially uncover this plot and disrupt the attack. Rather than a failure to collect or share intelligence, this was a failure to connect and understand the intelligence that we already had.

That’s why we took swift action in the immediate days following Christmas, including reviewing and updating the terrorist watchlist system and adding more individuals to the “no fly” list, and directing our embassies and consulates to include current visa information in their warnings of individuals with terrorist or suspected terrorist ties.

Today, I’m directing a series of additional corrective steps across multiple agencies. Broadly speaking, they fall into four areas.

First, I’m directing that our intelligence community immediately begin assigning specific responsibility for investigating all leads on high-priority threats so that these leads are pursued and acted upon aggressively — not just most of the time, but all of the time. We must follow the leads that we get. And we must pursue them until plots are disrupted. And that mean assigning clear lines of responsibility.

Second, I’m directing that intelligence reports, especially those involving potential threats to the United States, be distributed more rapidly and more widely. We can’t sit on information that could protect the American people.

Third, I’m directing that we strengthen the analytical process, how our analysis — how our analysts process and integrate the intelligence that they receive. My Director of National Intelligence, Denny Blair, will take the lead in improving our day-to-day efforts. My Intelligence Advisory Board will examine the longer-term challenge of sifting through vast universes of intelligence and data in our Information Age.

And finally, I’m ordering an immediate effort to strengthen the criteria used to add individuals to our terrorist watchlists, especially the “no fly” list. We must do better in keeping dangerous people off airplanes, while still facilitating air travel.

So taken together, these reforms will improve the intelligence community’s ability to collect, share, integrate, analyze, and act on intelligence swiftly and effectively. In short, they will help our intelligence community do its job even better and protect American lives.

But even the best intelligence can’t identify in advance every individual who would do us harm. So we need the security — at our airports, ports, and borders, and through our partnerships with other nations — to prevent terrorists from entering America.

At the Amsterdam airport, Abdulmutallab was subjected to the same screening as other passengers. He was required to show his documents — including a valid U.S. visa. His carry-on bag was X-rayed. He passed through a metal detector. But a metal detector can’t detect the kind of explosives that were sewn into his clothes.

As Secretary Napolitano will explain, the screening technologies that might have detected these explosives are in use at the Amsterdam airport, but not at the specific checkpoints that he passed through. Indeed, most airports in the world — and in the United States — do not yet have these technologies. Now, there’s no silver bullet to securing the thousands of flights into America each day, domestic and international. It will require significant investments in many areas. And that’s why, even before the Christmas attack, we increased investments in homeland security and aviation security. This includes an additional $1 billion in new systems and technologies that we need to protect our airports — more baggage screening, more passenger screening and more advanced explosive detection capabilities, including those that can improve our ability to detect the kind of explosive used on Christmas. These are major investments and they’ll make our skies safer and more secure.

As I announced this week, we’ve taken a whole range of steps to improve aviation screening and security since Christmas, including new rules for how we handle visas within the government and enhanced screening for passengers flying from, or through, certain countries.

And today, I’m directing that the Department of Homeland Security take additional steps, including: strengthening our international partnerships to improve aviation screening and security around the world; greater use of the advanced explosive detection technologies that we already have, including imaging technology; and working aggressively, in cooperation with the Department of Energy and our National Labs, to develop and deploy the next generation of screening technologies.

Now, there is, of course, no foolproof solution. As we develop new screening technologies and procedures, our adversaries will seek new ways to evade them, as was shown by the Christmas attack. In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary. That’s what these steps are designed to do. And we will continue to work with Congress to ensure that our intelligence, homeland security, and law enforcement communities have the resources they need to keep the American people safe.

I ordered these two immediate reviews so that we could take immediate action to secure our country. But in the weeks and months ahead, we will continue a sustained and intensive effort of analysis and assessment, so that we leave no stone unturned in seeking better ways to protect the American people.

I have repeatedly made it clear — in public with the American people, and in private with my national security team — that I will hold my staff, our agencies and the people in them accountable when they fail to perform their responsibilities at the highest levels.

Now, at this stage in the review process it appears that this incident was not the fault of a single individual or organization, but rather a systemic failure across organizations and agencies. That’s why, in addition to the corrective efforts that I’ve ordered, I’ve directed agency heads to establish internal accountability reviews, and directed my national security staff to monitor their efforts. We will measure progress. And John Brennan will report back to me within 30 days and on a regular basis after that. All of these agencies — and their leaders — are responsible for implementing these reforms. And all will be held accountable if they don’t.

Moreover, I am less interested in passing out blame than I am in learning from and correcting these mistakes to make us safer. For ultimately, the buck stops with me. As President, I have a solemn responsibility to protect our nation and our people. And when the system fails, it is my responsibility.

Over the past two weeks, we’ve been reminded again of the challenge we face in protecting our country against a foe that is bent on our destruction. And while passions and politics can often obscure the hard work before us, let’s be clear about what this moment demands. We are at war. We are at war against al Qaeda, a far-reaching network of violence and hatred that attacked us on 9/11, that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, and that is plotting to strike us again. And we will do whatever it takes to defeat them.

And we’ve made progress. Al Qaeda’s leadership is hunkered down. We have worked closely with partners, including Yemen, to inflict major blows against al Qaeda leaders. And we have disrupted plots at home and abroad, and saved American lives.

And we know that the vast majority of Muslims reject al Qaeda. But it is clear that al Qaeda increasingly seeks to recruit individuals without known terrorist affiliations not just in the Middle East, but in Africa and other places, to do their bidding. That’s why I’ve directed my national security team to develop a strategy that addresses the unique challenges posed by lone recruits. And that’s why we must communicate clearly to Muslims around the world that al Qaeda offers nothing except a bankrupt vision of misery and death –- including the murder of fellow Muslims –- while the United States stands with those who seek justice and progress.

To advance that progress, we’ve sought new beginnings with Muslim communities around the world, one in which we engage on the basis of mutual interest and mutual respect, and work together to fulfill the aspirations that all people share — to get an education, to work with dignity, to live in peace and security. That’s what America believes in. That’s the vision that is far more powerful than the hatred of these violent extremists.

Here at home, we will strengthen our defenses, but we will not succumb to a siege mentality that sacrifices the open society and liberties and values that we cherish as Americans, because great and proud nations don’t hunker down and hide behind walls of suspicion and mistrust. That is exactly what our adversaries want, and so long as I am President, we will never hand them that victory. We will define the character of our country, not some band of small men intent on killing innocent men, women and children.

And in this cause, every one of us — every American, every elected official — can do our part. Instead of giving into cynicism and division, let’s move forward with the confidence and optimism and unity that defines us as a people. For now is not a time for partisanship, it’s a time for citizenship — a time to come together and work together with the seriousness of purpose that our national security demands.

That’s what it means to be strong in the face of violent extremism. That’s how we will prevail in this fight. And that’s how we will protect our country and pass it — safer and stronger — to the next generation.

Thanks very much.

The United States of America owes much of the hope it has right now of remaining what John Adams called “a nation of laws, not men” to Italian law enforcement.

Were it not for the fact that Italian prosecutors, unlike their American counterparts, answer to the law rather than a president, the enforcement of laws against a massive crime spree by U.S. officials (and their Italian accomplices) would not have begun.

In 2003, the CIA and the United States military kidnapped a man, a political refugee, in Italy. His name was Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

CIA agents spied on him from their luxury hotels and gourmet-meal lives in Milano (all paid for by U.S. taxpayers). They were told to kidnap Nasr and send him to Egypt to be tortured, and they did so.

According to recent statements by two of them, they knew perfectly well they were violating the law. But they were not worried enough at the time to refrain from discussing the matter on their cell phones as they enjoyed the dolce vita and racked up credit card bills wasting the same currency the U.S. government claims it has a moral duty not to waste on healthcare.

Nasr was indeed kidnapped, flown to Egypt, and tortured. His wife, Ghali Nabila, testified in Italian court for over six hours. In October 2004, she had been able to see him, briefly out of Egyptian prison. (He was eventually released years later.) Nabila said in court:

“I found him wasted, skinny – so skinny his hair had turned white, he had a hearing aid.”

Ordered, against her will, to describe his torture, she said:

“He was tied up like he was being crucified. He was beaten up, especially around his ears. He was subject to electroshocks to many body parts.”

Asked if that included genitals, she replied “Yes.”

Nasr himself wrote in a letter smuggled out of prison and printed in the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera:

“I was hung by my feet from the ceiling, my head down, my hands tied to my back, my feet tied up. I was subjected to electric shocks all over my body, especially in my head, nipples, testicles, and penis. My testicles where also beaten with a stick and squeezed tightly if I refused to answer their questions or was suspected of telling lies.

“They fixed my body to an iron door and on a wooden instrument they call the bride, where my hands where tied over my head from behind and my legs tied together or sometimes each leg on different sides. The torture that takes place during this is electric shocks, and beating with a shoe and cables.”

Presidents Barack Obama and Silvio Berlusconi oppose prosecuting Americans or Italians for kidnapping this man and transporting him to his torturers. The U.S. Department of Justice will, therefore, not prosecute.

In Italy, on the other hand, there is still some measure of law, law as a standard applied to all equally, without immunity for those with the power to commit the greatest crimes.

Last Wednesday, an Italian court convicted 22 CIA agents and one member of the U.S. Air Force. The prosecutor Armando Spataro has repeatedly asked the Italian government to issue an international arrest warrant and request extradition by the United States. It has not yet done so.

One of the convicted CIA agents, Sabrina De Sousa, openly admits that the kidnapping was illegal, but says that she feels betrayed by those who authorized the operation and failed to protect its participants from prosecution.

De Sousa ignores Nuremberg Principle IV, which requires noncompliance with illegal orders or instructions:

“The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

But De Sousa also has a point, one well exemplified at Nuremberg: Those at the bottom are not the most responsible.

Those who must be held accountable first and foremost are the decision-makers at the top. And who authorized the policy of kidnapping people and shipping them off to be tortured? Three top U.S. officials have authorized rendition: Presidents Clinton, Bush, and Obama. And in this case, the presidents responsible were Bush and, almost certainly, Berlusconi.

The New York Times reported that most top CIA officials who planned the Abu Omar rendition have since left the agency, with the exception of Stephen Kappes, who was then assistant director of the CIA’s clandestine branch and is now CIA deputy director.

For justice to reach to the highest levels and thereby deter the practice of kidnapping, under the name rendition, in the years ahead, justice must be permitted to proceed on the paths it has blazed thus far.

Americans must make Italians aware of our gratitude for their efforts to save us from ourselves. And Italy must be compelled to obey its laws rather than its president on the question of issuing international arrest warrants and a demand for extradition.

The 23 fugitives already can expect arrest if they visit any nation of Europe. They should not be free to roam the rest of the world.

By U.S. standards, Italy would be justified in kidnapping these fugitives and “rendering” them to Italian prisons. An extradition request would be a generous favor of a sort that the United States does not grant to others.

Failure to take that step on behalf of the rule of law will put the blood of future rendition victims on the hands of the Italian as well as the American people.

David Swanson is the author of the new book Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union by Seven Stories Press. You can order it and find out when tour will be in your town by visiting davidswanson.org

“I’m talking of people being raped with broken bottles,” Murray said. “I’m talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I’m talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on.”

Ahmed Karzai

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose, just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article Wednesday reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the CIA payroll.

Okay, the article was lacking much historical perspective (more on that later), and the dead hand of top editors was evident in the overly cautious tone (I loved the third paragraph, which stated that “The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raises significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.”

Well, duh! It should be raising questions about why we are even in Afghanistan, about who should be going to jail at the CIA, and about how can the government explain this to the over 1000 soldiers and Marines who have died supposedly helping to build a new Afghanistan).

But that said, the newspaper that helped cheerlead us into the pointless and criminal Iraq invasion in 2003, and that prevented journalist Risen from running his exposé of the Bush/Cheney administration’s massive warrantless National Security Agency electronic spying operation until after the 2004 presidential election, this time gave a critically important story full play, and even, appropriately, included a teaser in the same front-page story about October being the most deadly month yet for the US in Afghanistan.

What the article didn’t mention at all is that there is a clear historical pattern here. During the Vietnam War, the CIA, and its Air America airline front-company, were neck deep in the Southeast Asian heroin trade. At the time, it was Southeast Asia, not Afghanistan, that was the leading producer and exporter of opium, mostly to the US, where there was a heroin epidemic.

A decade later, in the 1980s, during the Reagan administration, as the late investigative journalist Gary Webb so brilliantly documented first in a series titled “Dark Alliance” in the San Jose Mercury News, and later in a book by that same name, the CIA was deeply involved in the development of and smuggling of cocaine into the US, which was soon engulfed in a crack cocaine epidemic—one that continues to destroy African American and other poor communities across the country. (The Times role here was sordid—it and other leading papers, including the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times—did despicable hit pieces on Webb shamelessly trashing his work and his career, and ultimately driving him to suicide, though his facts have held up. For the whole sordid tale, read Alex Cockburn’s and Jeffrey St. Clair’s White Out).

In this case, Webb showed that the Agency was actually using the drugs as a way to fund arms, which it could use its own planes to ferry down to the Contra forces it was backing to subvert the Sandinista government in Nicaragua at a time Congress had barred the US from supporting the Contras.

And now we have Afghanistan, once a sleepy backwater of the world with little connection to drugs (the Taliban, before their overthrow by US forces in 20001, had, according to the UN, virtually eliminated opium production there), but now responsible for as much as 80 percent of the world’s opium production—this at a time that the US effectively finances and runs the place, with an occupying army that, together with Afghan government forces that it controls, outnumbers the Taliban 12-1 according to a recent Associated Press story.

The real story here is that where the US goes, the drug trade soon follows, and the leading role in developing and nurturing that trade appears to be played by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Your tax dollars at work.

The issue at this point should not be how many troops the US should add to its total in Afghanistan. It shouldn’t even be over whether the US should up the ante or scale back to a more limited goal of hunting terrorists. It should be about how quickly the US can extricate its forces from Afghanistan, how soon the Congress can start hearings into corruption and drug pushing by the CIA, and how soon the Attorney General’s office will impanel a grand jury to probe CIA drug dealing.

Americans, who for years have supported a stupid, blundering and ineffective “War on Drugs” in this country, and who mindlessly back “zero-tolerance” policies towards drugs in schools and on the job, should demand a “zero-tolerance” policy toward drugs and dealing with drug pushers in government and foreign policy, including the CIA.

For years we have been fed the story that the Taliban are being financed by their taxes on opium farmers. That may be partly true, but recently we’ve been learning that it’s not the real story. Taliban forces in Afghanistan, it turns out, have been heavily subsidized by protection money paid to them by civilian aid organizations, including even American government-funded aid programs, and even, reportedly, by the military forces of some of America’s NATO allies (there is currently a scandal in Italy concerning such payments by Italian forces).

But beyond that, the opium industry, far from being controlled by the Taliban, has been, to a great extent, controlled by the very warlords with which the US has allied itself, and, as the Times now reports, by Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s own brother.

Karzai, we are also told by Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen, was a key player in producing hundreds of thousands of fraudulent ballots for his brother’s election theft earlier this year. Left unsaid is whether the CIA might have played a role in that scam too. In a country where finding printing presses is sure to be difficult, and where transporting bales of counterfeit ballots is risky, you have to wonder whether an agency like the CIA, which has ready access to printers and to helicopters, might have had a hand in keeping its assets in control in Kabul.

Sure that’s idle speculation on my part, but when you learn that America’s spook agency has been keeping not just Karzai, but lots of other unsavory Afghani warlords, on its payroll, such speculation is only logical.

The real attitude of the CIA here was best illustrated by an anonymous quote in the Filkins, Mazzetti and Risen piece, where a “former CIA officer with experience in Afghanistan,” explaining the agency’s backing of Karzai, said, “Virtually every significant Afghan figure has had brushes with the drug trade. If you are looking for Mother Teresa, she doesn’t live in Afghanistan.”

“The end justifies the means” is America’s foreign policy and military motto, clearly.

The Times article exposing the CIA link to Afghanistan’s drug-kingpin presidential brother should be the last straw for Americans.  President Obama’s “necessary” war in Afghanistan is nothing but a sick joke.

The opium, and resulting heroin, that is flooding into Europe and America thanks to the CIA’s active support of the industry and its owners in Afghanistan are doing far more grave damage to our societies than any turbaned terrorists armed with suicide bomb vests could hope to inflict.

The Afghanistan War has to be ended now.

Let the prosecution of America’s government drug pushers begin.

Finally, a note about Sen. John Kerry Kerry, D-MA, who went to Afghanistan to press, for the Obama administration, to get his “good friend” President Karzai to agree to a run-off election after Karzai’s earlier theft of the first round, has played a shameful role here. Once, back when he still had an ounce of the principle that he had back when he was a Vietnam vet speaking out against the Indochina War, Kerry held hearings on the CIA’s cocaine-for-arms operation in Central America. Now he’s hugging the CIA’s drug connections.

Dave Lindorff is a Philadelphia-based journalist. He is author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Penalty Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2003) and The Case for Impeachment (St. Martin’s Press, 2006). His work is available at thiscantbehappening.net

Department of Defense (DOD) file photo shows an unmanned Predator surveillance plane. Sources close to the jirga said the latest Predator strike, and reports that Washington was intensifying its aerial bombardment, were likely to reinforce sentiment in favour of the militants and make it even more difficult to achieve peace.

Since taking office, President Obama has sanctioned at least 41 Central Intelligence Agency drone strikes in Pakistan that have killed between 326 and 538 people, many of them, critics say, “innocent bystanders, including children,” according to a published report.

“Even if a precise account is elusive,” writes Jane Mayer in the Oct. 26 The New Yorker, “the outlines are clear: the C.I.A. has joined the Pakistani intelligence service in an aggressive campaign to eradicate local and foreign militants, who have taken refuge in some of the most inaccessible parts of the country.”

Based on a study just completed by the non-profit, New America Foundation of Washington, D.C., “the number of drone strikes has risen dramatically since Obama became President,” Mayer reports.

In fact, the first two strikes took place on Jan. 23, the President’s third day in office and the second of these hit the wrong house, that of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one just five years of age.

At any time, the C.I.A. apparently has “multiple drones flying over Pakistan, scouting for targets,” the magazine reports. So many Predators and its more heavily armed companion, the Reaper, are being purchased that defense manufacturer General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, of Poway, Calif., can hardly make them fast enough. The Air Force is said to possess 200.

Mayer writes, “the embrace of the Predator program has occurred with remarkably little public discussion, given that it represents a radically new and geographically unbounded use of state-sanctioned lethal force.” Today, Mayer writes, “there is no longer any doubt that targeted killing has become official U.S. policy.” And according to Gary Solis, who teaches at Georgetown University’s Law Center, nobody in the government calls it assassination. “Not only would we have expressed abhorrence of such a policy a few years ago; we did,” Solis is quoted as saying.

David Kilcullen, a counter-insurgency warfare authority who co-authored a study for the Center for New American Security, of Washington, D.C., has suggested the drone attacks have backfired. As he told The New Yorker, “Every one of these dead non-combatants represents an alienated family, a new revenge feud, and more recruits for a militant movement that has grown exponentially even as drone strikes have increased.”

And because of the C.I.A. program’s secrecy, Mayer writes, “there is no visible system of accountability in place, despite the fact that the agency has killed many civilians inside a politically fragile, nuclear-armed country with which the U.S. is not at war.”

The New Yorker further reports the Obama Administration has also expanded the sphere of authorized drone assaults in Afghanistan. An August Senate Foreign Relations Committee report said the Pentagon’s list of approved terrorist targets held 367 names and included some 50 Afghan drug lords “who are suspected of giving money to help finance the Taliban,” Mayer reports. She quotes the Senate report as stating, “There is no evidence that any significant amount of the drug proceeds goes to Al Qaeda.”

It is the military’s version of the drone assaults that operates in Afghanistan and Iraq, while the C.I.A.’s drones hunt terror suspects in countries where U.S. troops are not based and is “aimed at terror suspects around the world,” Mayer writes. The C.I.A. effort was launched by Obama’s predecessor, and a former aide to President George W. Bush says Obama has left nearly all the key personnel in place.

Running the C.I.A. program is a team of operators that handle Predator flights off runways in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Once aloft, the Predators are passed over to controllers at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., who maneuver joysticks and monitor events from a live video feed from the drone’s camera.

The magazine article reports the government plans to commission “hundreds more” of the drones, including “new generations of tiny ‘nano’ drones, which can fly after their prey like a killer bee through an open window.”

Sherwood Ross formerly worked for The Chicago Daily News and other major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. He currently runs a public relations firm for “worthy causes”. Reach him at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

Fouad al-Rabia

In four years of researching and writing about Guantánamo, I have become used to uncovering shocking information. But for sheer cynicism, I am struggling to think of anything that compares to the revelations contained in the unclassified ruling in the habeas corpus petition of Fouad al-Rabiah, a Kuwaiti prisoner whose release was ordered last week by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly.

In the ruling, to put it bluntly, it was revealed that the US government tortured an innocent man to extract false confessions and then threatened him until he obligingly repeated those lies as though they were the truth.

The background: Lies hidden in plain sight for five years

To establish the background to this story, it is necessary for me to return to my initial response to the ruling a week last Friday, before these revelations had been made public, when, based on what I knew of the case from the publicly available documents, I explained that I was disappointed that the Obama administration had pursued a case against al-Rabiah, alleging that he was a fundraiser for Osama bin Laden and had run a supply depot for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan’s Tora Bora mountains, for two particular reasons.

The first was because a CIA analyst had interviewed al-Rabiah at Guantánamo in the summer of 2002 and had concluded that he was an innocent man caught at the wrong time and in the wrong place; and the second was because, although al-Rabiah had said that he had met bin Laden and had been present in the Tora Bora mountains, he had provided an innocent explanation for both occurrences. He had, he said, been introduced to bin Laden on a trip to Afghanistan to investigate proposals for a humanitarian aid mission, and he had been at Tora Bora — and compelled to man a supply depot — because he was one of numerous civilians caught up with soldiers of al-Qaeda and the Taliban as he tried to flee the chaos of Afghanistan for Pakistan, and had been compelled to run the depot by a senior figure in al-Qaeda.

These appeared to be valid explanations, especially as al-Rabiah, a 42-year old father of four children, had no history of any involvement with militancy or terrorism, and had, instead, spent 20 years at a management desk job at Kuwait Airways, and had an ownership interest in some health clubs. Moreover, he had a history of legitimate refugee relief work, having taken a six-month approved leave of absence from work in 1994-95 to do relief work in Bosnia, having visited Kosovo with the Kuwaiti Red Crescent in 1998, and having made a trip to Bangladesh in 2000 to delivery kidney dialysis fluid to a hospital in the capital, Dhaka.

As a result, it appeared to me a week last Friday that Judge Kollar-Kotelly granted al-Rabiah’s habeas petition because neither his meeting with bin Laden nor his presence in Tora Bora indicated that he was either a member of, or had supported al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

However, now that Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling has been issued, I realize that the account given by al-Rabiah during his Combatant Status Review Tribunal at Guantánamo in 2004 — on which I based my account of his activities — was a tissue of lies, and that the truth, hidden for over six years, is that, like torture victims groomed for show trials throughout the centuries, he made up false stories under torture, and repeated them obediently, fearing further punishment and having been convinced that he would never leave Guantánamo by any other means.

An introduction to the torture revelations, and an endorsement of al-Rabiah’s explanations about his time in Afghanistan

In her ruling, Judge Kollar-Kotelly methodically dissected the government’s case to reveal the chilling truth. After noting, initially, that the “evidentiary record” was “surprisingly bare,” because the government “has withdrawn its reliance on most of the evidence and allegations that were once asserted against al-Rabiah, and now relies almost exclusively on al-Rabiah’s ‘confessions’ to certain conduct,” she added, with a palpable sense of disbelief:

Not only did al-Rabiah’s interrogators repeatedly conclude that these same confessions were not believable — which al-Rabiah’s counsel attributes to abuse and coercion, some of which is supported by the record — but it is also undisputed that al-Rabiah confessed to information that his interrogators obtained from either alleged eyewitnesses who are not credible and as to whom the Government has now largely withdrawn any reliance, or from sources that never even existed … If there exists a basis for al-Rabiah’s indefinite detention, it most certainly has not been presented to this Court.

In dealing with al-Rabiah’s background, and his reasons for traveling to Afghanistan, Judge Kollar-Kotelly was required to consider his own assertion that, after a preliminary ten-day visit in July 2001 to identify areas where humanitarian aid might be delivered, he returned in October 2001 “to complete a fact-finding mission related to Afghanistan’s refugee problems and the country’s non-existent medical infrastructure,” against the government’s claim that he was “‘not an aspiring aid worker caught up in the front lines of the United States war against al-Qaeda’ but instead was someone who traveled to Afghanistan in October 2001 as a ‘devotee of Osama bin Laden who ran to bin Laden’s side after September 11th.’”

Concluding that “the evidence in the record strongly supports al-Rabiah’s explanation,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted that he had officially requested leave prior to his departure, and quoted from two letters sent to his family. In the first, on October 18, 2001, he explained that “for ten days he assisted with the delivery of supplies to refugees and that he was able to take video ‘reflecting the tragedy of the refugees,’ but that he was unable to leave Afghanistan through Iran (the route he took to enter the country) because the borders had been closed.” As a result, he “wrote in his letter that he and an unspecified number of other persons decided ‘to drive four trucks to Pakistan making our way to Peshawar,’” and he also asked his brother to notify his boss at Kuwait Airlines that he was having difficulties returning to Kuwait on time.

After noting that “The evidence in the record establishes that al-Rabiah did, in fact, travel across Afghanistan towards Peshawar, ultimately getting captured (unarmed) by villagers outside of Jalalabad … on approximately December 25, 2001” (with Maher al-Quwari, a Palestinian who also ended up in Guantánamo), Judge Kollar-Kotelly quoted from a second letter sent to his family, in which — ironically, in light of what was to come — he wrote that he was “detained by the American troops and thanks to God they are good example[s] of humanitarian behavior.” He added that he was “detained pending verification of [his] identity and personality,” and that the “investigation and verification procedures may last for a long time due to the great number of detained Arabs and other persons” who had been fleeing the situation in Afghanistan, which “turned upside down between one day and night and every Arab citizen has become a suspect.”

Discrediting the government’s unreliable witnesses

Moving on to the government’s key allegations — about Osama bin Laden and Tora Bora — Judge Kollar-Kotelly dismissed the allegations regarding al-Rabiah’s supposed activities in Tora Bora, which were made by another prisoner who claimed that he “was told that al-Rabiah was in charge of supplies at Tora Bora,” by noting that, “Although his allegations are filled with inconsistencies and implausibilities, the Government continues to rely on him as an eyewitness.” She also noted that, although the witness had identified al-Rabiah as the man under discussion, from his kunya (nickname), Abu Abdullah al-Kuwaiti, the government had conceded that another Abu Abdullah al-Kuwaiti, an actual al-Qaeda operative named Hadi El-Enazi, was present in Tora Bora, and also noted that an interrogator had expressed doubt about the supposed eyewitness at the time (much of the ruling is redacted, but this seemed to involve a claim that al-Rabiah’s oldest son was with him in Afghanistan, when this was demonstrably not the case).

Judge Kollar-Kotelly also dismissed two other sets of allegations by the supposed eyewitness. Noting further “inconsistencies and impossibilities” in his accounts, she stated that “the Court has little difficulty concluding that [his] allegations are not credible,” and explained that, to reach this conclusion, she had also drawn on statements provided by al-Rabiah’s lawyers, which further undermined his reliability, “based on, among other things, undisputed inconsistencies associated with his allegations against other detainees,” and his medical records, which obviously indicated mental health problems (although the description was redacted). “At a minimum,” she added, “the Government would have had to corroborate [his] allegations with credible and reliable evidence, which it has not done.”

Osama bin Laden, it then transpired, appeared in allegations made by a second prisoner, who “alleged that al-Rabiah attended a feast hosted by Osama bin Laden,” where he “presented bin Laden with a suitcase full of money.” This source also alleged that al-Rabiah “served in various fighting capacities in the Tora Bora mountains,” and that he “funneled money to mujahadeen in Bosnia in 1995.”

After noting that the government had dropped “almost all” of these allegations, except for the one relating to Bosnia, Judge Kollar-Kotelly stated, witheringly, “the only consistency with respect to [these] allegations is that they repeatedly change over time.” For particular condemnation, she singled out one claim that the feast had taken place in August 2001 (when al-Rabiah was in Kuwait, before his return to Afghanistan in October 2001), amongst other more outlandish claims, including an absurd allegation that al-Rabiah had trained the 9/11 hijackers.

As with the first supposed eyewitness, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted that there were “multiple exhibits in the record demonstrating [his] unreliability as a witness” (although, sadly, the exact number of prisoners against whom he had made verifiably false allegations was redacted), and concluded that, although the many “inconsistencies and impossibilities” in his statements “raise, at a minimum, a serious question about [his] mental capacity to accurately make allegations against al-Rabiah,” the government “did not address them at the Merits Hearing” in August.

After dismissing a third supposed eyewitness, because he had withdrawn his allegation (which was redacted) several months after making it, Judge Kollar-Kotelly dismissed a fourth, even though it was “undisputed” that al-Rabiah actually had contact with him in Afghanistan. Despite redactions, it seems that this man was Maher al-Quwari, and that his statement involved second-hand hearsay about al-Rabiah being seen with a gun. While this was sufficiently weak for the judge not to accept it without further corroboration, she also made a point of discounting it because the supposed witness only “made this allegation while he was undergoing a cell relocation program at Guantánamo called the ‘frequent flier program,’ which prevented a detainee such as [redacted] from resting due to frequent cell movements.”

While the description of a “cell relocation program” sounds relatively benign, Judge Kollar-Kotelly made a point of noting that it was, in fact, a program of sleep deprivation, adding that, “According to a report published by the Senate Armed Services Committee concerning the treatment of detainees in United States custody, sleep deprivation was not a technique that was authorized by the Army Field Manual.” Although she also noted that “sleep deprivation became authorized at Guantánamo by the Secretary of Defense on April 16, 2003, the guidance issued by the Commander of USSOUTHCOM on June 2, 2003 prohibited the use of sleep deprivation for more than ‘four days in succession,’” whereas the supposed witness’s “allegation against al-Rabiah was made after one week of sleep deprivation in the program, and he did not repeat this allegation either before or after the program.”

False confessions obtained through torture

Despite ruling out all of the government’s supposed eyewitnesses, and noting that the government had withdrawn “most of its reliance on these witnesses” by the time of the Merits Hearing, Judge Kollar-Kotelly added that “it is very significant that al-Rabiah’s interrogators apparently believed these allegations at the time they were made, and therefore sought to have al-Rabiah confess to them” — despite the well-chronicled unreliability of the first two supposed witnesses, the withdrawing of the statement made by the third, and the fact, easily perceived by the judge, that the fourth made his statement only after being subjected to sleep deprivation that exceeded established guidelines and that was, therefore, not only unreliable, but also abusive.

The judge also noted the significance of the evidence in the record indicating that al-Rabiah “subsequently confided in interrogators [redacted] that he was being pressured to falsely confess to the allegations discussed above,” and also the significance of the fact that, although “al-Rabiah’s interrogators ultimately extracted confessions from him,” they “never believed his confessions based on the comments they included in their interrogation reports.”

After noting — again with a palpable sense of incredulity — that “These are the confessions that the Government now asks the Court to accept as evidence in this case,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly proceeded to demolish them all, breaking them down into three periods: the first, when “there were no allegations directed toward al-Rabiah and al-Rabiah provided no confessions”; the second, when the supposed eyewitnesses “made their now-discredited allegations and al-Rabiah was told of the allegations against him, but al-Rabiah nevertheless made no confessions”; and the third (which, shockingly, continued “until the present”), when “al-Rabiah confessed to the now-discredited allegations against him, as well as to other ‘evidence’ that interrogators told him they possessed, when, in fact, such evidence did not exist.”

In the first phase, Judge Kollar-Kotelly noted that there was no indication “that interrogators believed al-Rabiah had engaged in any conduct that made him lawfully detainable,” and explained that, “To the contrary, the evidence in the record during this period consists mainly of an assessment made by an intelligence analyst that al-Rabiah should not have been detained.” As discussed in my previous article, this analyst was “a senior CIA intelligence analyst, who, almost uniquely, was also an Arabic expert,” but although I wrote that “it amaze[d] me that no one in the Justice Department, under President Obama, investigated the CIA analyst’s report,” the truth, as revealed in the unclassified ruling, is even bleaker.

It transpires that Justice Department officials had read the report, but tried to discredit the analyst’s verdict, “arguing that it represented the opinion of only one analyst,” ignoring his well-chronicled expertise, and obliging the judge to point out that, “according to the Government’s own evidence, ‘[i]ntelligence analysts undergo rigorous tradecraft training [and] employ specific analytical tools to assist them in sorting and organizing various pieces of information,” and are also “trained to recognize and mitigate biases, not only in the information presented to them, but their own cognitive biases as well.”

In the second phase, despite extensive redactions to the ruling, it is clear that al-Rabiah was repeatedly interrogated, although he “express[ed] frustration to FBI agents that he was repeatedly asked, among other questions, whether he had ever seen Osama bin Laden, and remark[ed] that his answer was ‘no’ and would continue to remain ‘no.’” What happened next, in a “new three-pronged approach,” is unknown, as the details are severely redacted, but it “did not result in any confessions. Al-Rabiah repeatedly denied the allegations against him.”

After this, apparently following some kind of advice given to the lead interrogator (by an unknown party whose identity and suggestions were redacted), the interrogators “began using more aggressive interrogation tactics.” Again, the details are redacted, but enough information is available from passages that were not redacted earlier in the ruling to indicate that these “tactics” included sleep deprivation (the “frequent flier program”), which, as I explained in my previous article, led three British men released in March 2004 — the so-called “Tipton Three,” whose story was dramatized in the film “The Road To Guantánamo” — to explain that al-Rabiah was moved every two hours, over an unspecified period of time (but one that clearly exceeded the four-day recommendation by a substantial margin), leaving him “suffering from serious depression, losing weight in a substantial way, and very stressed because of the constant moves, deprived of sleep and seriously worried about the consequences for his children.”

Possibly in reference to the use of sleep deprivation (although it could also have been another “enhanced interrogation technique”), Judge Kollar-Kotelly explained that, “Once it became authorized, it could not be used on a detainee until ‘the SOUTHCOM Commander ma[de] a determination of “military necessity” and notif[ied] the Secretary [of Defense] in advance’ of its use,” and also made a point of noting that “the Government was unable to produce any evidence that [the interrogator] obtained authorization to use the [redacted] technique with al-Rabiah despite requests by the Court at the Merits Hearing for such evidence.”

Although the other techniques are not described, they undoubtedly included some or all of the following — prolonged isolation, the use of extreme heat and cold, short-shackling in painful stress positions, forced nudity, forced grooming, religious and sexual humiliation, and the use of loud music and noise — because this whole package of techniques, including sleep deprivation, was approved for use at the highest levels of the Bush administration, as a Senate Committee explained in the detailed report in April this year that was cited by the judge. The program was based on reverse engineering techniques taught in US military schools (the SERE program — Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) to train recruits to resist interrogation if captured by enemy forces.

These techniques were acknowledged to be illegal and, moreover, were intended to produce false confessions, but this did not prevent senior Bush officials from pushing for their implementation, and, in al-Rabiah’s case, they duly led to his conversion from an innocent man who refused to falsely confess to allegations produced by unreliable witnesses into a modern-day version of the victims of the Spanish Inquisition, the seventeenth century “witches” of Salem and elsewhere, the victims of Stalin’s show trials, or the captured US pilots on whom the North Koreans had practiced the techniques adopted by the SERE schools: a broken man prepared not only to falsely confess to any lies put before him, but also prepared to learn these confessions and repeat them as his masters saw fit.

As the ruling makes clear, between redactions, “The following day marked a turning point in al-Rabiah’s interrogations,” and “From that point forward, al-Rabiah confessed to the allegations that interrogators described to him.” Despite the extensive redactions, the following passage from the ruling makes clear the full horror of his confessions:

Al-Rabiah’s confessions all follow the same pattern: Interrogators first explain to al-Rabiah the “evidence” they have in their possession (and that, at the time, they likely believed to be true). Al-Rabiah then requests time to pray (or to think more about the evidence) before making a “full” confession. Finally, after a period of time, al-Rabiah provides a fill confession to the evidence through elaborate and incredible explanations that the interrogators themselves do not believe. This pattern began with his confession that he met with Osama bin Laden, continued with his confession that he undertook a leadership role in Tora Bora, and repeated itself multiple other times with respect to “evidence” that the Government has not even attempted to rely on as reliable or credible.

In the following pages of the ruling, which are again fill of redactions, it is nevertheless possible to glimpse the progress of this game that was not only grim and cynical, but also potentially deadly (because, as a prisoner put forward for a trial by Military Commission, it was always possible that the government would have pressed for the death sentence had al-Rabiah been convicted).

For page after page the distressing truth peeks out: al-Rabiah “did not know what to admit” when his interrogators explained that his “full confession did not incorporate a description concerning a suitcase full of money that he allegedly gave bin Laden”; they “began to question the truthfulness of his confessions almost immediately”; they “began ‘grilling’ al-Rabiah concerning [redacted]”; al-Rabiah “was interrogated [redacted] during which he made a full confession regarding his activities at Tora Bora”; interrogators “pressed for additional details concerning Tora Bora”; they “became increasingly convinced that his confessions [redacted]”; they “concluded in one interrogation report [redacted]”; “One week later, his interrogator concluded [redacted]”; “After several additional interrogation sessions, al-Rabiah’s interrogators concluded simply [redacted].”

Readers can fill in the gaps through the judge’s response to the redacted passages. “Incredibly,” she wrote, “these are the confessions that the Government has asked the Court to accept as truthful in this case.”

Al-Rabiah explains his cooperation with the interrogators; threats and punishment described

Judge Kollar-Kotelly then dismissed further allegations, which again, were mostly redacted but included the following ironic gem: “The Government has not even attempted to explain how someone with no known connection to al-Wafa [a Saudi charity regarded, during Guantánamo’s “witch-hunt” phase, with particular suspicion] and who had never even been to Afghanistan longer than a few weeks could ascend to such an honored position, and no credible explanation is contained in the record.”

She then moved on to al-Rabiah’s own explanations of how he came to make false confessions, noting that he had stated that, shortly after his arrival at Guantánamo, “a senior [redacted] interrogator came to me and said, ‘There is nothing against you. But there is no innocent person here. So, you should confess to something so you can be charged and sentenced and serve your sentence and then go back to your family and country, because you will not leave this place innocent.”

This is deeply disturbing, of course, as it indicates that at least one senior interrogator recognized that the Bush administration’s refusal to recognize that there were innocent men at Guantánamo — and it has been clear for many years that hundreds of innocent men were held, who had no connection whatsoever to any form of militancy, let alone terrorism — had set in motion a system in which, whether voluntarily or not, all the innocent men at Guantánamo were expected to make false confessions, either so that they could continue to be labeled as “enemy combatants” on release, to maintain the illusion that Guantánamo was full of “the worst of the worst,” or, as in al-Rabiah’s case, so that they could be tricked and transformed into terrorist sympathizers and facilitators.

For some (and it has been confirmed by a former interrogator that at least 100 prisoners in Guantánamo were subjected to SERE-derived “enhanced interrogation”), confessions clearly came easily, and without the use of abuse or torture, but for others, including al-Rabiah, “pressure” was involved. Judge Kollar-Kotelly drew on a declaration from March this year, in which he explained that his confessions arose out of “scenarios offered … by [his] interrogators … which [he] believed to be the story they wanted [him] to tell and which [he] felt pressured to adopt” (emphasis added). As he also explained:

[M]y interrogators told me they knew I had met with Osama bin Laden, that other detainees had said I met with Osama bin Laden, that there was nothing wrong with simply meeting Osama bin Laden, and that I should admit meeting him so I could be sent home … In about August 2004, shortly before my CSRT hearing [the tribunal at which al-Rabiah repeated his approved confessions in detail], my interrogators told me the CSRT was just a show that would allow the United States to “save face.” My interrogators told me no one leaves Guantánamo innocent, and told me I would be sent home to Kuwait if I “admitted” some of the false things I had said in my interrogations. The interrogators also told me that I would never go home again if I denied these things, because the United States government would never admit I had been wrongly held.

In a key passage, he spelled out what being “pressured” meant. As the judge explained, he stated that “he made his confessions to reduce the abuse meted out by his interrogators ‘to obtain confessions that suited what [they] thought they knew or what they wanted [him] to say.’ He maintained his confessions over time because ‘the interrogators would continue to abuse me anytime I attempted to repudiate any of these false allegations.’” As she also noted:

There is substantial evidence in the record supporting al-Rabiah’s claims. The record is replete with examples of al-Rabiah’s interrogators emphasizing a stark dichotomy — if he confessed to the allegations against him, his case would be turned over to [redacted] so that he could return to Kuwait; if he did not confess, he would not return to Kuwait, and his life would become increasingly miserable.

Through the veil of redactions, it is clear that al-Rabiah attempted, on more than one occasion, to withdraw his confessions, but that his interrogators threatened to withdraw something (food? comfort items?) as a result, and Judge Kollar-Kotelly also noted that punishment, as well as the threat of punishment, was meted out to him. “The record,” she wrote, “also supports al-Rabiah’s claims that he was punished for recanting.” Examples provided by the judge were redacted, but the following passage, in which she discussed further abuse as a result of the interrogators’ frustrations regarding al-Rabiah’s inability to invent a coherent false narrative, was not. She wrote:

The record contains evidence that al-Rabiah’s interrogators became increasingly frustrated because his confessions contained numerous inconsistencies or implausibilities. As a result, al-Rabiah’s interrogators began using abusive techniques that violated the Army Field Manual and the 1949 Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War. The first of these techniques included threats of rendition to places where al-Rabiah would either be tortured and/or would never be found.

These threats were made on at least four occasions, and, as the judge explained, “were also reinforced by placing al-Rabiah into the frequent flier program,” discussed above. It is also apparent that the threats continued throughout this period, as the judge also noted that “al-Rabiah’s interrogators continued to threaten him [redacted].”

After making a point that, as explained in the Army Field Manual, “prohibited techniques [are] not necessary to gain the cooperation of interrogation sources,” and, in fact, that the use of these methods is likely to “yield unreliable results, may damage subsequent collection efforts, and can induce the source to say what he thinks the interrogator wants to hear,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly added that, “Underscoring the impropriety of these techniques is the fact that [redacted], al-Rabiah’s lead interrogator, was disciplined for making similar threats during the same period toward a Guantánamo detainee who was also one of the alleged eyewitnesses against al-Rabiah … for which he was disciplined” (the details, predictably, were redacted).

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s devastating conclusions

Judge Kollar-Kotelly added, pointedly, “These abusive techniques did not result in any additional confessions from al-Rabiah, although he continued to parrot his previous confessions with varying degrees of consistency,” and then reached her devastating conclusion:

The Court agrees with the assessment of al-Rabiah’s interrogators, as well as al-Rabiah’s counsel in this case, that al-Rabiah’s confessions are not credible. Even beyond the countless inconsistencies associated with his confessions that interrogators identified throughout his years of detention, the confessions are also entirely incredible. The evidence in the record reflects that, in 2001, al-Rabiah was a 43 year old who was overweight, suffered from health problems, and had no known history of terrorist activities or links to terrorist activities. He had no military experience except for two weeks of compulsory basic training in Kuwait, after which he received a medical exemption. He had never traveled to Afghanistan prior to 2001. Given these facts, it defied logic that in October 2001, after completing a two-week leave form at Kuwait Airlines where he had worked for twenty years, al-Rabiah traveled to Tora Bora and began telling senior al-Qaeda leaders how they should organize their supplies in a six square mile mountain complex that he had never previously seen and that was occupied by people whom he had never met, while at the same time acting as a supply logistician and mediator of disputes that arose among various fighting factions.

It remained only for Judge Kollar-Kotelly to replay some of the more obvious discrepancies in al-Rabiah’s “confessions” to demolish the government’s claims that they should be accepted as “reliable and credible,” and to refute the government’s argument that, “even if al-Rabiah’s confessions in 2003 were the product of abuse or coercion … the taint … would have dissipated” by the time of his CSRT in 2004, when he provided the painstakingly detailed and superficially plausible false confession that was the only publicly available account of his activities until Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling was released.

Taking exception to the government’s argument “for both factual and legal reasons,” the judge took particular note of the role played by al-Rabiah’s lead interrogator, “who extracted al-Rabiah’s confessions and punished his recantations,” noting that he “continued to make ‘appearances’ at al-Rabiah’s interrogations at least as late as [redacted] — after al-Rabiah’s testimony in his CSRT proceedings.” She also explained, “Such ‘appearances’ appear to have been terrifying events for al-Rabiah given the description included in a [redacted] interrogation report” (the details of which were, again, redacted).

On a legal basis, she dismissed the government’s argument by explaining that, although “it is certainly true in the criminal context that coerced confessions do not necessarily render subsequent confessions inadmissible because the coercion can be found to have dissipated,” there needs to be evidence of “a ‘clean break’ between the coercion and the later confessions,” which is simply not available in al-Rabiah’s case. “If anything,” she concluded, “the evidence suggests that there was not a ‘clean break’ between the coercion and his later statements because there is evidence that [redacted] continued to appear at al-Rabiah’s interrogation sessions through at least September 2004” (the date redacted in the paragraph above).

As a final stab at the government, she mentioned a statement made by al-Rabiah in May 2005, and submitted to his first annual Administrative Review Board (the military panels that reviewed the bases for prisoners’ ongoing detention), which had not surfaced until the Merits Hearing, in which al-Rabiah attempted to set the record straight, “recant[ing] all of his previous confessions with the sole exception of one admission that he saw [but did not meet] Osama bin Laden during his July 2001 trip to Afghanistan.”

After dealing with a few more ingenious but flawed claims by the government, it remained only for Judge Kollar-Kotelly to recap the whole sorry saga, and to deliver the final words to restore Fouad al-Rabiah’s liberty:

During the merits Hearing, the Government expressly relied on “Occam’s Razor,” a scientific and philosophic rule suggesting that the simplest of competing explanations is preferred to the more complex … The Government’s simple explanation for the evidence in this case is that al-Rabiah made confessions that the Court should accept as true. The simple response is that the Court does not accept confessions that even the Government’s own interrogators did not believe. The writ of habeas corpus shall issue.

Final words

Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s ruling will, hopefully, be recalled in years to come as one of the most significant examples of a judge attempting to redress some of the most egregious injustices perpetrated in Guantánamo’s long, dark history. The shocking sub-text to this story is that al-Rabiah is not the only prisoner to have been brutalized into making false confessions, and then being required to repeat them. Ahmed al-Darbi, a Saudi put forward for a trial by Military Commission, made similar claims in a statement posted here, and, as I mentioned above, it is also clear that SERE-derived “enhanced interrogation techniques” were applied to at least 100 prisoners in Guantánamo between 2002 and 2004, above and beyond those like Mohammed al-Qahtani and Mohamedou Ould Slahi, whose stories are well-known. Many of these men — all the Europeans, other Arabs who had the misfortune to speak good English or to have visited the United States — have been released, their false confessions (like those made by the “Tipton Three” after months of abuse, before their lawyers proved one of them was working in a shop in England when he was supposedly videotaped at a training camp) filed away, used to justify their lifelong label as “enemy combatants,” but not leading, as with Fouad al-Rabiah, to a court appearance where the supposed evidence will ever be tested.

Al-Rabiah was fortunate to meet a judge with an inquiring and diligent mind, and an acute awareness of the many problems with the gathering and interpretation of information at Guantánamo, but others have not yet had an opportunity to do the same, and although further habeas petitions are forthcoming, and others are scheduled to face either trials by Military Commission or federal court trials, where similar patterns of false allegations followed by torture and false confessions may be detected, it troubles me that the 50 or so prisoners identified by officials last week as being candidates for indefinite detention — described by the New York Times as those who “are a continuing danger to national security but who cannot be brought to trial for various reasons, like evidence tainted by harsh interrogations” — may also have been caught up in a cynical cycle of false allegations, torture and false confessions.

As David Cynamon, one of Fouad al-Rabiah’s attorneys, explained to me in an email exchange:

To date, the debate about torture in the US has been skewed by the fact that the admitted victims of torture are also admitted al-Qaeda leaders, like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. This gives the Cheneys and Wall Street Journal types the argument that torture was justified to get valuable information from these hardened terrorists. I know this argument is wrong, but it’s being made, with some effect. But what happens when you declare the Geneva Conventions “quaint,” and lift all limits, is that pretty quickly the abusive interrogation techniques are not being limited to the KSMs but are being applied to innocent prisoners like Fouad al-Rabiah, who have no valuable intelligence because they have no connection with al-Qaeda or the Taliban. Instead, they are tortured in support of a cynical and misguided dictum that there can be no innocent men in Guantánamo.

It is hard to believe that the US could ever have sunk so low. And that the new Administration is keeping us down there. The Obama Department of Justice, with Attorney General Holder piously proclaiming that this Administration repudiates torture, and follows the rule of law, in fact is following the Bush playbook to the letter. In this case, the DoJ defended the abusive and coercive interrogation techniques used against Fouad. Thank God, though, that we have an independent judiciary. The importance of the writ of habeas corpus and independent judges has never been more clear.

Andy Worthington, a regular contributor to The Public Record, is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison and the definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009. He maintains a blog at andyworthington.co.uk.