Secret Memos

UK drops fight over Guantanamo information

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Published December 16, 2009, in Secrecy, Secret Memos

By RAPHAEL G. SATTER

LONDON — Details of U.S. interrogation techniques which Britain is fighting to keep secret are no different from what has already been made public by President Barack Obama, according to parts of a U.K. court ruling that were declassified Wednesday.

Three of four paragraphs censored from an October ruling show that high court justices discounted the British government’s argument that revealing the information would harm U.S.-British intelligence cooperation.

One passage said it was “impossible to believe” that the U.S. would punish Britain for releasing information which was similar to the interrogation memos Obama himself declassified earlier this year.

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Britain releasing secret detainee treatment rules

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Published November 30, 2009, in Secrecy, Secret Memos

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.—AP/File

‘I have faith in our security services, we must also ensure
that the public have all the faith that is necessary in our
security services and we condemn absolutely the use of
torture,’ Brown told the House of Commons.—AP/File

LONDON: Britain will release its secret rules governing the treatment of overseas detainees, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said Wednesday in an attempt to bolster public faith after a string of allegations that the UK colluded in torture, AP reports.

The government will also appoint a former senior judge to make sure they are being followed, he said.

Ethopian-born British resident Binyam Mohamed claimed after his release from Guantanamo Bay that MI5 domestic security agents had ignored his complaints about torture in Pakistan following his arrest there in 2002. He also alleged that British agents later supplied questions to interrogators who abused him in Morocco. A lawyer for Shaker Aamer, a Saudi resident of Britain, charged Wednesday that a British intelligence officer had watched Aamer being mistreated in Afghanistan in 2002.

The government has repeatedly denied that it has colluded in or condoned the torture of suspects overseas.

‘I have faith in our security services, we must also ensure that the public have all the faith that is necessary in our security services and we condemn absolutely the use of torture,’ Brown told the House of Commons.

But lawmakers on the Intelligence and Security Committee — which oversees intelligence agencies — said Tuesday that they took the allegations of British complicity in torture seriously enough to send Brown proposals for reform.

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Documents describe chaos of Gitmo’s early months

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Published July 3, 2009, in Guantanamo, Secret Memos

By PAMELA HESS and NEDRA PICKLER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Newly released Defense Department documents and memos about the first years of operation of the jail at the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, portray a chaotic and sometimes violent operation that its own commanders described as dysfunctional.

President Barack Obama has ordered the detention facility closed next year. It holds more than 200 terror suspects whose cases are undergoing review for their potential release, prosecution or continued confinement.

The documents and memos were turned over to the American Civil Liberties Union as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit. The ACLU has sued for release of all materials related to the government’s interrogation program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

 

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ACLU: Pentagon to release images of prisoner abuse

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Published May 8, 2009, in Abu Ghraib, Mohamed Adel, Secrecy, Secret Memos, Secret Photos

ACLU says Pentagon agrees to release ‘substantial number’ of photos of abuse of prisoners

Staff AP News

 

The Defense Department will release a “substantial number” of photos depicting abuse of prisoners by U.S. personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan, the American Civil Liberties Union said late Thursday.

The photos will be made available by May 28, the ACLU said, citing a letter dated Thursday from the Justice Department to a federal judge in New York. The photos’ release is in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the ACLU in 2004 and will include images from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan at locations other than Abu Ghraib, the ACLU said.

“These photographs provide visual proof that prisoner abuse by U.S. personnel was not aberrational but widespread, reaching far beyond the walls of Abu Ghraib,” Amrit Singh, staff attorney with the ACLU, said in a statement. “Their disclosure is critical for helping the public understand the scope and scale of prisoner abuse as well as for holding senior officials accountable for authorizing or permitting such abuse.”

 

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Government Could Destroy Records in Hundreds of Guantanamo Cases

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Published May 7, 2009, in C.I.A., Secrecy, Secret Memos

 

ProPublica
ProPublica

by Chisun Lee

A stockpile of documents about hundreds of Guantanamo Bay detainees, some written by the prisoners themselves, could be destroyed under a little-known provision of a federal court order the Bush administration obtained in 2004.

For four years, records in the prisoners’ habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the legality of their detentions have been piling up in a secure federal facility in the Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, Va. Because much of the information is classified, the 750 or so attorneys representing the prisoners are required to do and store all their work on-site.

The provision is part of a broad order [1] (PDF) issued at the very outset of the habeas cases — at the last official count in January, 220 cases remained — that set rules for how sensitive documents and attorney access should be handled. It calls for the government to destroy all classified records given to, prepared by or kept by prisoners’ lawyers — including originals and copies of writings, photographs, videotapes, computer files and voice recordings — when the cases end.

 

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Newly Released Memo Inadvertently Reveals CIA Held (and Abused) Missing Prisoner

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Published April 17, 2009, in C.I.A., Ghost, Hassan Ghul, Secret Memos

by Dafna Linzer

A newly released memo inadvertently reveals the name of a ‘ghost detainee’

A newly released memo inadvertently reveals the name of a 'ghost detainee'

Among the OLC memos released today [1], one appears to inadvertently reveal that a top al-Qaeda suspect captured in northern Iraq in January, 2004, was held by the CIA in a secret prison.

After Hassan Ghul was arrested in early 2004, President Bush told reporters [2]: “Just last week we made further progress in making America more secure when a fellow named Hassan Ghul was captured in Iraq. Hassan Ghul reported directly to Khalid Sheik Mohammad, who was the mastermind of the September 11 attacks. He was captured in Iraq, where he was helping al Qaeda to put pressure on our troops.”

 

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Obama releases CIA interrogation memos

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Published April 17, 2009, in CIA Tapes, Secret Memos

Washington, (DPA) US President Barack Obama Thursday released four internal legal opinions that were used by former president George W. Bush’s administration as justification for harsh CIA interrogations, but ruled out prosecuting anyone involved in such practices.
The memorandums released by the Justice Department offered legal justification for a series of harsh interrogation tactics against suspects held in CIA prisons, including sleep deprivation and a drowning-simulation technique known as waterboarding, which some

human rights groups have said amounted to torture.

But Obama said he had no intention to prosecute any CIA officials involved in the interrogations.

“In one of my very first acts as president, I prohibited the use of these interrogation techniques because they undermine our moral authority and do not make us safer,” Obama said in a statement.

 

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Obama Tilts to CIA on Memos

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Published April 15, 2009, in CIA Tapes, Obama's Broken Promises, Secrecy, Secret Memos, Torture, war crimes

Top Officials at Odds Over Whether to Withhold Some Details on Interrogation Tactics

By EVAN PEREZ and SIOBHAN GORMAN

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is leaning toward keeping secret some graphic details of tactics allowed in Central Intelligence Agency interrogations, despite a push by some top officials to make the information public, according to people familiar with the discussions.

These people cautioned that President Barack Obama is still reviewing internal arguments over the release of Justice Department memorandums related to CIA interrogations, and how much information will be made public is in flux.

Among the details in the still-classified memos is approval for a technique in which a prisoner’s head could be struck against a wall as long as the head was being held and the force of the blow was controlled by the interrogator, according to people familiar with the memos. Another approved tactic was waterboarding, or simulated drowning.

A decision to keep secret key parts of the three 2005 memos outlining legal guidance on CIA interrogations would anger some Obama supporters who have pushed him to unveil now-abandoned Bush-era tactics. It would also go against the views of Attorney General Eric Holder and White House Counsel Greg Craig, people familiar with the matter said.

 

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‘Holy Hell’ Over Torture Memos

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Published April 3, 2009, in C.I.A., CIA Tapes, Eric Holder, Secret Memos

Attorney General Eric Holder wants to release classified Bush-era interrogation memos. But U.S. intel officials are fiercely lobbying the White House to block him from moving forward.

Michael Isikoff

A fierce internal battle within the White House over the disclosure of internal Justice Department interrogation memos is shaping up as a major test of the Obama administration’s commitment to opening up government files about Bush-era counterterrorism policy.

As reported by NEWSWEEK, the White House last month had accepted a recommendation from Attorney General Eric Holder to declassify and publicly release three 2005 memos that graphically describe harsh interrogation techniques approved for the CIA to use against Al Qaeda suspects. But after the story, U.S. intelligence officials, led by senior national-security aide John Brennan, mounted an intense campaign to get the decision reversed, according to a senior administration official familiar with the debate. “Holy hell has broken loose over this,” said the official, who asked not to be identified because of political sensitivities.

 

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Deadline nears for release of ‘torture documents’

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Published April 2, 2009, in Secret Memos

By Terry Frieden
CNN Justice Producer

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Administration officials faced a close-of-business deadline Thursday to decide whether to release Justice Department legal memos from 2005 that guided the CIA on what “enhanced interrogation” techniques it could use against suspected terrorists.

One official says Attorney General Eric Holder is leaning toward releasing the documents.

One official says Attorney General Eric Holder is leaning toward releasing the documents.

The internal documents have been the object of a high-profile, long-running court battle between the government and the American Civil Liberties Union, which has demanded release of what the group calls “torture documents.”

The demand for the three memorandums written in May 2005 by Justice Department lawyer Stephen Bradbury has been at the center of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by ACLU lawyers against the Bush administration in federal court in New York.

“The Obama administration should end this coverup and release the memos,” ACLU attorney Jameel Jaffer said.

 

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