Director for Torture

From the Washington Post
Wednesday, November 23, 2005; Page A18

CIA DIRECTOR Porter J. Goss insists that his agency is innocent of torturing the prisoners it is holding in secret detention centers around the world. “This agency does not torture,” he said in an interview this week with USA Today. “We use lawful capabilities to collect vital information, and we do it in a variety of unique and innovative ways, all of which are legal and none of which are torture.” Mr. Goss didn’t describe any of those “innovative” interrogation techniques, nor has his agency allowed its secret prisons to be visited by the International Red Cross or any other monitor. But some of the people who work for him provided a description of six “enhanced interrogation techniques” to ABC News, because they believe “the public needs to know the direction their agency has chosen,” the network reported. Thanks to that disclosure, it’s possible to compare Mr. Goss’s words with reality.

The first three techniques reported by ABC involve shaking or striking detainees in an effort to cause pain and fear. The fourth consists of forcing a prisoner to stand, handcuffed and with shackled feet, for up to 40 hours. Then comes the “cold cell”: Detainees are held naked in a cell cooled to 50 degrees, and periodically doused with cold water. Last is “waterboarding,” a technique that’s already been widely reported. According to the information supplied to ABC: “The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner’s face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.” ABC quoted its sources as saying that CIA officers who subjected themselves to waterboarding “lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in.”

Are these techniques “not torture,” as Mr. Goss claims? In fact, several of them have been practiced by repressive regimes around the world, and they once were routinely condemned by the State Department in its annual human rights reports. By insisting that they are not torture, Mr. Goss sets a new standard — both for the treatment of detainees by other governments and for the handling of captive Americans. If an American pilot is captured in the Middle East, then beaten, held naked in a cold cell and subjected to simulated drowning, will Mr. Goss say that he has not been tortured?

Are the techniques “legal”? In 1994 the Senate ratified the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment; in doing so, it defined “cruel, inhuman or degrading” as anything that would violate the Fifth, Eighth, or 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Bush administration has never been clear about whether it considers the CIA’s techniques legal by that standard. If it does — as Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales has suggested — then it has opened the way for the FBI to use cold cells and waterboarding on Americans. But the administration also claims a technical loophole: Since the Constitution doesn’t apply to foreigners outside the United States, the administration argues that by the Senate’s standard, the CIA can use cruel and inhuman methods on foreign detainees held abroad.

Few legal experts outside the administration agree that this loophole exists. To make sure, senators led by Republican John McCain of Arizona are fighting, by means of amendments to the current defense authorization and appropriations bills, to bar the use of “cruel, inhuman and degrading” methods. But Mr. Goss’s statements suggest a deeper problem. Even if the legislation passes — and Mr. Bush has threatened a veto — the CIA will be led by an administration that has redefined standard torture techniques as “unique and innovative ways” of collecting information. No one beyond Mr. Goss and a handful of senior officials accepts that spin: not the agencies’ professionals, or 90 members of the Senate, or the rest of the democratic world. Yet now that the Bush administration has so loosened and degraded the torture standard, the abuse of detainees will become far harder to prevent — not only in the CIA’s clandestine cells but around the world.

Bringing Torture Home to American Citizens

From Slate Magazine’s daily roundup of news stories, this digest

The Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal world-wide newsbox, and New York Times all lead with once-suspected “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, who has been held without being charged as an enemy combatant for three years, being indicted on charges of conspiracy to support terrorism overseas.

The feds brought charges against (Jose) Padilla just a week before government lawyers would have had to submit briefs to the Supreme Court responding to an appeal from Padilla’s lawyers asserting that the government does not have the right to hold U.S. citizens as enemy combatants without charges. Announcing the charges, Attorney General Gonzales said, given that Padilla is now headed to court, the appeal “is moot.”

“The indictment is doubtless a strategy by the Bush administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil,” said one law prof in the Post. “There is also some respectable chance that the Supreme Court will not bite on this strategy.” ( brief redact here by jrl … )

As for the charges themselves against Padilla, Gonzales said, “The indictment alleges that Padilla traveled overseas to train as a terrorist with the intention of fighting in violent jihad. Those trained as terrorists engage in acts of physical violence such as murder, maiming, kidnapping and hostage-taking against innocent civilians.” And that’s about as much detail as the government gave. There were no specific plots mentioned.

As a NYT editorial emphasizes, the indictment also doesn’t mention the original dirty bomb allegations. (That shouldn’t be surprising. Though the nickname has stuck, government officials actually distanced themselves from the allegations minutes after then-AG Ashcroft made them.) Not that Gonzales was open to discussing that. Asked whether the original accusations were now “off the table,” Gonzales stayed mum.

As the WP off-leads, a jury convicted a Virginia-area man and al-Qaida sympathizer of plotting to kill President Bush. The plot never got far, but the jury convicted Abu Ali on all nine counts against him. The case relied heavily on statements Ali made while imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, where he says he was tortured. (Emphasis added by JRL)

In Other Torture News

By JAN SLIVA
Associated Press Writer

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — Europe’s top human rights watchdog stepped up its probe into alleged secret CIA detention centers Wednesday, while more EU governments were investigating possible CIA flights across their countries.

Council of Europe Chairman Terry Davis urged European countries to provide full information on the issue, joining a formal probe the body launched two weeks ago. Austria’s air force was investigating allegations that a CIA transport plane containing suspected terrorist captives flew through the neutral country’s airspace in 2003, and Denmark said it would ask U.S. authorities for details about the alleged transport of detainees on planes said to be used by the CIA over Danish territory.

Bulgaria was the latest country to deny reports of involvement, saying the CIA’s planes never landed at the Sarafovo airport near the Black Sea port of Burgas as alleged by the media.

The flights have become an issue in many European countries amid reports that U.S. intelligence may have transported suspected al-Qaida members and others through Europe en route to secret prisons in eastern Europe and other countries for interrogation.

Allegations the CIA hid and interrogated key al-Qaida suspects at Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe were first reported in The Washington Post on Nov. 2. The paper did not name the countries involved.

A day later, Human Rights Watch said it had evidence indicating the CIA transported suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan to Poland and Romania. The New York-based group identified the Kogalniceanu military airfield in Romania and Poland’s Szczytno-Szymany airport as possible sites for secret detention centers, saying it based its conclusions on flight logs of CIA aircraft from 2001 to 2004.

Speaking in Strasbourg, France, Davis said that due to the serious nature of the allegations, he had sent a letter to the governments of the Council of Europe’s 45 member states demanding information on how their law ensures that acts by foreign agencies within their jurisdiction are subject to adequate controls.

Austria’s air force chief Erich Wolf told Austrian state broadcaster ORF that a CIA transport plane that took off from Frankfurt, Germany, and headed to Azerbaijan crossed Austrian airspace on Jan. 21, 2003.

Austria’s air force scrambled fighter jets to make contact with the plane’s pilot, but did not suspect anything wrong at the time and lodged no diplomatic protests, Wolf said. “There was no sign of an airspace abuse,” he said.

Since then, however, Austrian authorities have found reason to believe the flight was transporting suspected terrorists, Wolf added. He did not elaborate.

On Tuesday, Swiss senator Dick Marty, who leads the Council of Europe probe, said he was investigating 31 suspect planes that landed in Europe in recent years, and was trying to acquire past satellite images of sites in Romania and Poland. He said that despite lack of proof, there were “many hints, such as suspicious moving patterns of aircraft, that have to be investigated.”

Other airports that might have been used by CIA aircraft in some capacity include Palma de Mallorca in Spain, Larnaca in Cyprus and Shannon in Ireland, as well as the U.S. air base at Ramstein, Germany, Marty said in a report.

Swedish authorities, meanwhile, have confirmed at least one plane with alleged CIA links landed in Sweden three times since 2002. Denmark says 14 flights with suspected CIA ties entered its airspace since 2001; Norway has confirmed three such flights; and Icelandic media have reported 67 landings.

There have been other unconfirmed reports in Macedonia and Malta.

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