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ACLU: If We Ran the CIA... In what surely came as news to both venerable institutions, Michele Bachmann announced on Saturday night that the ACLU is “running the CIA.” In a campaign full of absurd moments, this one managed to stand out, and it got us thinking: What would the ACLU do if we did run the CIA? First and foremost, we’d stop suing ourselves! We would stop filing lawsuits on behalf of victims of the CIA’s programs of extraordinary rendition and abusive interrogation. We would stop arguing that the CIA’s use of drones to kill suspected terrorists far from any battlefield should be reviewed by federal courts. And we would stop demanding the release of still-secret CIA documents about waterboarding, the “black sites,” and the use of drones. Of course, we wouldn’t really end these lawsuits, but we would change the policies that we’ve sued over, because each of those policies undermines the rule of law, taints the reputation of our country, and creates a dangerous precedent for future administrations and other countries around the world. Here’s how we would change a few of those policies: We would publicly acknowledge that the CIA’s experiment with the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” (including waterboarding) was illegal, immoral, and ineffective. We would also publicly acknowledge the victims of the CIA’s torture and mistreatment and not stand in the way of their lawsuits. Some of those men are now free, including innocent victims of mistaken identity. Others are still imprisoned and accused of monstrous crimes. Even in the case of the latter, official acknowledgment of mistreatment is profoundly important. We are a nation of laws, strengthened by our commitment to our ideals. We deserve leadership courageous enough to abide by those ideals when they are most imperiled and to confess error when errors are made. If the ACLU ran the CIA, we would take the agency out of the business of killing individuals (including U.S. citizens) far from any battlefield. Except in the narrowest circumstances, the extrajudicial killing of an individual far from any battlefield is illegal under domestic and international law. Moreover, the danger in empowering a covert agency (as opposed to the military) to engage in targeted killing is that the CIA operates largely in secret, with little meaningful oversight or accountability. To this day, the CIA refuses to acknowledge what the entire world already knows: that it uses drones to kill suspected terrorists. This official denial has allowed the agency to shut down lawsuits about its use of drones, including a challenge to its authority to engage in targeted killing and a suit seeking the legal justification for the program. Finally, we would allow meaningful public scrutiny of the CIA’s practices through increased transparency. Secrecy is sometimes necessary, but evidence of torture and the CIA’s legal justification for its targeted killing program should not be kept secret. Keeping this information secret erodes public confidence, impedes democratic oversight, and allows abuse to go undetected and unpunished. * * * If these policies were adopted anytime soon, then there might be something to the notion that the ACLU is running the CIA. Don’t hold your breath. Tags: accountability, CIA, Michele Bachmann, Torture
Fighting for a Day in Court for an American Tortured on U.S. SoilThe ACLU was in court yesterday trying to hold officials accountable for the torture of U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. In 2002 he was taken from a New York jail by the military, declared an "enemy combatant," and secretly transported to a Navy brig in Charleston, South Carolina. He was imprisoned without charge for nearly four years, subjected to extreme abuse, and unable to communicate with his lawyers or family for two years. The illegal treatment included forcing Padilla into stress positions for hours on end, punching him, depriving him of sleep and threatening him with further torture and death. In February 2007, Padilla filed a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other officials. Earlier this year the U.S. District Court in South Carolina ruled that the defendants were entitled to "qualified immunity" for their roles in the arbitrary detention and brutal abuse of Padilla because no "clearly established" law prohibited the torture of an American citizen designated an "enemy combatant" by the executive branch. Yesterday ACLU National Security Project Litigation Director Ben Wizner asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to reinstate the case. Here's are some highlights from the arguments, reported by the Associated Press: Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III asked whether the court should open the door to… litigation for several reasons, including the possibility that government officials tasked with interrogating or detaining terrorism suspects might be deterred from taking some actions that could protect public safety and human lives. The courts have dismissed other lawsuits brought by victims of the Bush administration's torture policy, but Padilla's is unique. As Wizner puts it, "If the law does not protect Jose Padilla — an American citizen arrested on American soil and tortured in an American prison — it protects no one." Learn more about torture: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability, accountability for torture, Donald Rumsfeld, Jose Padilla, Torture
The Accountability Shell Game There are many awful legacies of the Bush administration's criminal embrace of torture in the months and years following the 9/11 attacks. Among the most agonizing — for the torture victims themselves, and for the lawyers who have represented them — is that not a single one of those victims has had his day in court. And not a single court that has been faced with a torture suit has addressed the core question of whether the victims' legal rights were violated. This is, of course, a tragedy for the victims, who must live with the twin traumas of having been tortured by the state and turned away by its courts. But it is also a grave threat to the rule of law. Without definitive adjudication of the legality of torture, we face the risk that the door has been left open to future abuses.
Of course, the courts are not alone in turning a blind eye to torture victims; both the Bush and Obama administrations have actively subverted victims' attempts to obtain compensation and redress. Indeed, each of the democratic institutions that should have provided a check on abuses — and a remedy for the abused — has instead engaged in a kind of accountability shell game. ACLU client Khaled El-Masri's case is illustrative. In a notorious case of mistaken identity, El-Masri, a German citizen, was kidnapped by the CIA in Macedonia, "rendered" to a CIA black site in Afghanistan, detained and tortured for several months, then released without apology or explanation. When a German reporter asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice whether the United States would provide redress for its horrific abuse of El-Masri, she responded: "When mistakes are made, we work very hard to rectify them. I believe that this will be handled in the proper courts, here in Germany and if necessary in American courts as well." El-Masri sought to bring his claims to those "proper courts," both in the United States and in Germany. But this was a bait and switch: rather than "handle" El-Masri's claims, the American courts told El-Masri, at the insistence of the executive, that he had come to the wrong place. "If El-Masri's allegations are true or essentially true," wrote a federal judge, "then all fair-minded people . . . must also agree that El-Masri has suffered injuries as a result of our country's mistake and deserves a remedy. Yet, it is also clear . . . that the only sources of that remedy must be the Executive Branch or the Legislative Branch, not the Judicial Branch." We now know — through documents released by Wikileaks — that Secretary Rice's State Department expended considerable diplomatic resources in seeking to terminate El-Masri's judicial proceedings in Germany, as well. El-Masri was not alone. When five other victims of the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, also represented by the ACLU, sought judicial redress against a government contractor that had knowingly profited from arranging their torture flights, the court told them, in effect, to look elsewhere: "Our holding today is not intended to foreclose — or to prejudge — possible nonjudicial relief, should it be warranted for any of the plaintiffs." The executive branch, the court insisted could "determine whether plaintiffs' claims have merit and whether misjudgments or mistakes were made that violated plaintiffs' human rights." And if that didn't work, "Congress also has the power to enact private bills." This was doubly absurd: Congress, of course, had already enacted public bills prohibiting torture — the very laws that the executive had violated and the courts had disregarded. ACLU client Jose Padilla encountered a different version of the accountability shell game: two courts pointing the finger at each other. Padilla, an American citizen, was seized by the military from a New York jail, unilaterally designated an "enemy combatant" by the president, detained incommunicado without charge or trial in a Naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina, and subjected to vicious interrogations, chilling sensory deprivation, and total isolation. After three years and eight months of illegal military detention, Padilla was returned to the civilian justice system and prosecuted for crimes wholly unrelated to his dubious "enemy combatant" designation. When Padilla sued his torturers, seeking one dollar in compensation as well as recognition that his rights had been violated, he was told, remarkably, that he had already had ample opportunity to air his grievances. "It is not as if the American judicial system has failed to afford [Padilla] significant opportunities to vindicate his legal rights," opined the judge. In particular, Padilla "was allowed in his criminal proceeding to raise issues of his detention in support of his motion to dismiss the criminal charges." But the judge declined to mention that when Padilla had attempted to raise those issues in his criminal case, he was told that he was in the wrong venue, and that he was "free to institute . . . an action for monetary damages or any other form of redress that he is legally entitled to pursue." "It ain't me, babe," sings Bob Dylan in a famous lyric. "It ain't me you're looking for." This has been the unvarying response of our courts and our Presidents to the powerful legal and moral claims of torture victims. The best that can be said about this chronic institutional buck-passing is that it betrays a degree of shame. That shame now belongs to all Americans. These terrible things were done in our name. And the failure to acknowledge the victims has been carried out in our name as well. Learn more about accountability for torture: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability, accountability for torture, Jeppesen Dataplan, Khaled el-Masri, Rendition, Torture
This Week in Civil Liberties (9/2/2011) What major telecom company participated in warrantless wiretapping? Which former leader has no regrets about Bush Administration torture policies? What supposedly quick fix to public education deficiencies endangers the separation between church and state? What group is entitled to due process according to a US Court of Appeals case from this week? Who did NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg endanger by failing to prepare adequately for Hurricane Irene? Don't Let Phone Companies Off the Hook: Demanding Accountability for Warrantless Wiretapping Cheney Digs in on Legacy of Torture School Vouchers Inflict More Harm Than Good No Bond, No Bars Rikers Island Spared by Irene, But What About Next Time? This is your week in civil liberties. Let us know if this is useful or if you'd like to see changes. Share your thoughts: ideas@aclu.org Learn more about your rights: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability, bloomberg, Bush administration, Cheikh Diop, church and state, Civil Liberties, Hurricane Irene, public education, Rikers Island, school vouchers, spying, telecom, Torture, warrantless wiretapping
Cheney Digs in on Legacy of Torture Former Vice President Dick Cheney's brazenness is again on display this week as he promotes his new book In My Time. His comments in a recent interview coupled with excerpts from the book have served as a jarring reminder of the lack of accountability we've seen for the torture policies of the Bush administration. The take-home message appears to be: He is not sorry. (The same unapologetic stance that a number of former Bush administration officials have maintained for a decade.) For example, in promoting the book, Cheney has suggested that it is not the detentions at Guantánamo Bay that hurt America's image abroad but rather critics who peddle falsehoods about it. He has also indicated that he is pleased that President Barack Obama has failed to close the prison in Guantánamo Bay, as he had pledged. These statements indicate that not only does the former vice president have no regrets, but that he actually believes the policies, that violated the rights of many people, are boast-worthy. In an NBC interview with Jamie Gangel, Cheney said we should still be using "enhanced" interrogation. When asked if we should still use waterboarding as a tool for interrogating terror suspects even though many have condemned it, calling it torture, Cheney stated that he would strongly support waterboarding if it were the only way to get a "high value detainee" to talk. Cheney has no regrets, even though the very policies that he wants his legacy to rest upon have been recognized as illegal and even criminal by the public and policymakers alike. It's impossible to forget that many Americans were disgusted by the Abu Ghraib revelations and the negative reports of torture and abuse that dominated the news for years. Following that scandal, the McCain anti-torture amendment aimed at the military passed the Senate by a 90-9 vote and became law. Also, the Senate Armed Services Committee wrote an exhaustive report on the damage done by the military's abuse of prisoners and held a series of hearings examining how the abuse hurt U.S. intelligence gathering and facilitated enemy recruitment. The Senate Intelligence Committee is currently undertaking a similar report on the CIA's detention and interrogation program. In addition, both chambers of Congress voted in favor of limiting the intelligence community to the Army Field Manual's interrogation techniques to make clear that the torture prohibition was absolute. And more recently, after the killing of Osama bin Laden Sen. John McCain delivered a floor speech attributing the successes of Seal Team 6 to practically everything under the sun with the exception of the use of torture. However, as we've seen again this week, the former vice president remains free to boast of his 'tough' interrogation polices because there has been little to no effort to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the torture and abuses they oversaw. Unfortunately, the Obama administration has made it clear that they would rather look forward and not back. But holding those responsible accountable for their actions is critical to ensure that we never return to a time where torture is authorized against anyone. The Bush administration's torture polices may have been marginalized, hopefully to the point of no return, but the only way to ensure that is through accountability. Follow us on Twitter where we'll tweeting live on Friday, September 9, 2011 from 9-10 a.m. EDT from an event hosted by the American Enterprise Institute where former vice president Dick Cheney will speak. The event is a 9/11 anniversary conversation entitled "Ten Years After: Lessons Learned, Lessons Unlearned." Tags: Abu Ghraib, accountability, Army Field Manual, Close Guantanamo, detention, Dick Cheney, enhanced interrogation, John McCain, Osama bin Laden, Seal Team Six, Senate Armed Services Committee, Senate Intelligence Committee, Torture, waterboarding
NYT Disappointed at Court Decision on CIA Contempt Motion"A Missed Chance for Accountability" is how The New York Times described last week's federal court decision failing to hold the CIA in contempt of the court for destroying the videotapes that documented the agency's torture of prisoners in its custody. The Times editorial states: Imposing civil contempt would not have interfered with the agency's current operations or required payment of a fine or damages. But it would have provided official acknowledgement that the conduct of C.I.A. officials was grossly improper, which is crucial to preventing a recurrence by successors. Last week's ruling was the end of a long road for the contempt motion, which we filed in December 2007 after the CIA revealed that it had destroyed videotapes of "enhanced" interrogations from 2002 (days before the Times was to publish a story revealing the same fact). (Check out our interactive timeline for a breakdown of key events related to the videotapes.) The videotapes, which depicted the torture — including waterboarding — of CIA detainees Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, were responsive to the ACLU's 2004 Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for information regarding the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas. Learn more about accountability for torture: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, Abu Zubaydah, accountability, accountability for torture, CIA, Torture
Court Sanctions CIA to Pay Fees Over Torture TapesEarlier today, we appeared in court for a hearing on our motion to hold the CIA in contempt of the court for destroying 92 videotapes depicting torture of two prisoners, Abu Zubaydah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri. (Coincidentally, the argument came on the nine-year anniversary of two of the “torture memos” that purported to provide legal cover for the brutal interrogation CIA detainees). We argued that the CIA showed complete disdain for the court and the rule of law itself when it flouted several court orders to produce the videotapes and instead destroyed them. To provide some background, in September 2004, the court first ordered the CIA to produce or identify all records pertaining to the treatment of detainees in its custody, which would have included at least 92 videotapes documenting the harsh interrogation of the two prisoners. Despite the orders, the CIA never produced the tapes or even acknowledged their existence. Unbeknownst to the public, the tapes were destroyed in November 2005, a year after the court’s first order, although the destruction was not publicly revealed until 2007. This motion came in our ongoing litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) for records related to the detention and treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody abroad. After a lively round of arguments, the judge sanctioned the CIA for its attempt to evade the law and will require the agency to pay our legal fees for costs incurred in bringing the misconduct to light. The judge also asked the CIA to publish its forthcoming document-destruction policies, which are being considered in response to our litigation to prevent this type of destruction from occurring again. Finally, the judge commented that the ACLU had played an “extraordinary” role in revealing to the public information about the abuse of detainees in U.S. custody. However, in his ruling from the bench, the judge failed to hold the CIA in contempt of court, leaving unaddressed our larger concerns about accountability. Though the Court’s sanctioning of the CIA is a positive step for accountability, it falls short of the full accounting necessary before we can turn the page on the last decade. Far more disturbing than the CIA’s destruction of the tapes is the CIA’s authorization of the brutal mistreatment captured by the tapes. By destroying that evidence of criminal activity in direct violation of the judge's clear instructions, the agency's top officials aimed to deny the public and the courts the chance to hold them accountable. Learn more about torture: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability, CIA, detention, Torture, video tapes
Newspapers in America's Three Biggest Cities Have Joined Call to Honor Opponents of Torture Today the Los Angeles Times published a stirring editorial calling on President Obama to honor those in government who resisted the Bush administration's torture policies. Joining The New York Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, the paper spotlighted public servants like:
The L.A. Times wrote:
Last Saturday, an editorial in the Chicago Sun-Times also pushed the point that the true representatives of American values are not those who endorsed torture, but rather the brave men and women who did all they could to stop it:
Right now, you can add your voice to our Honor Courage campaign by asking President Obama to send the right message to America and the rest of the world by honoring those who stood up against torture. Learn more about accountability for torture: Sign up for breaking news alerts, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability, detention, Honor Courage, Torture
Join Lili Taylor, Dahlia Lithwick and Jack Rice for "Reckoning with Torture" Tomorrow! Over the last few weeks, some apologists for torture have argued that Navy Seals were able to locate Osama bin Laden only because of evidence obtained through torture. We think Sen. John McCain and CIA Director Leon Panetta effectively quashed that argument. There's no evidence that torture worked, and there's lots of evidence it didn't. What we ought to be focused on now is making sure that no future administration revives the torture policies that the Bush administration authorized. This is why tomorrow's "Reckoning with Torture " event at Lincoln Center in New York is so important. "Reckoning with Torture" is an ACLU/PEN American Center event series that delivers key facts of the U.S. torture program through dramatic readings of documents related to the torture program, combined with video testimonials from former Guantánamo detainees and artwork by artist Jenny Holzer . (If you don't believe that an evening of readings of torture documents could be anything less than completely captivating, read this review of our Sundance event on Slate .) Tomorrow's stellar lineup includes Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, former CIA officer Jack Rice, author Russell Banks and actresses Lili Taylor and Dianne Wiest. When: May 24, 7 p.m. Jack Rice blogged Saturday: "As a former CIA officer, I have extremely strong feeling about [torture]. However, as a criminal defense attorney who walks into courtrooms everyday to stand up for the rights of my clients, I feel the need to stand up as well. Because if we don't, who will[?]" There are a few tickets left—buy them here, and be part of the conversation! Learn more about accountability for torture: Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability
Listen to Sen. McCain: Torture Doesn't WorkLots of people-including us-talk about torture. But few only people who have actually been tortured can speak authoritatively and publicly about exactly how it dehumanizes both victim and torturer — and why it doesn't work. Sen. John McCain, who was tortured during the Vietnam War, has been a pretty steadfast opponent of torture, and today, he added his voice to the debate about whether information gained through torturing detainees in U.S. custody contributed to finding Osama bin Laden. Sen. McCain wrote in Wednesday's Washington Post: I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading. In fact, as Sen. McCain asserted that torture doesn't work, others say abusive interrogations may even have hampered the hunt for bin Laden. Huffington Post's Dan Froomkin reports: "I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden," said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006. We disagree with Sen. McCain's view that the architects of the Bush administration should be absolved of legal consequences. And Sen. McCain is plain wrong when he asserts that "we wrote into [the Military Commissions Act of 2007] that no one who used or approved the use of these interrogation techniques before its enactment should be prosecuted." This is false. No federal statute-including the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act, to which Sen. McCain meant to refer-provides immunity for torture. The Detainee Treatment Act simply provides a defense for those who relied "in good faith" on the advice of counsel, but there is no immunity. (We can put aside for the moment whether anyone could have relied "in good faith" on John Yoo's torture memos.) In Wednesday's op-ed, Sen. McCain implores us to be "stronger and better than those who would destroy us." We can only be stronger and better if our leaders bring those responsible for torture and abuse to justice. But at least we can agree on one thing: torture doesn't work. So why is there even a discussion? Learn more about accountability for torture: Subscribe to our newsletter, follow us on Twitter, and like us on Facebook. Tags: accountability |
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