By Steven Watt, Senior Staff Attorney, ACLU Human Rights Program at 2:09pm
After being shut out of U.S. courts, yesterday we filed a case with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on behalf of three Afghans and three Iraqis who were tortured while held by the American military at detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Pictured above are Sherzad Kamal Khalid, left, and Thahe Mohammed Sabbar, in front of the White House during a visit to the U.S. in November 2005.)
By Chris Anders, Senior Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 6:39pm
At today's NDAA hearing, torture memo author Steven Bradbury will advise the Senate not to block the use of the NDAA indefinite detention powers in the United States itself.
For nearly 10 years, Ali Soufan helped fight the United States’ secret war on terror, gathering intelligence and interrogating prisoners as an FBI Special Agent. Soufan claims that former Vice President Dick Cheney’s insistence that waterboarding was effective is flat-out wrong.
By Ben Wizner, Director, ACLU Speech, Privacy & Technology Project at 3:48pm
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.
By Hina Shamsi, Director, ACLU National Security Project at 4:33pm
Almost ten years after 9/11, in May of this year, a majority of the US House of Representatives voted to give President Obama — and all future presidents — more war authority than Congress gave to President Bush two days after the 9/11 attacks: a president would no longer have to show a connection to 9/11, or even any specific threat to America, before using military force anywhere in the world that a terrorism suspect may be found, including within the United States.
The Aspen Security Forum never lacks for high-powered panelists for its annual discussions on homeland security. The July 30 session featuring ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero was no exception.
For a discussion on The Rule of Law and the War on Terrorism, Romero went up against, among others, John Yoo, the former assistant attorney general in the last Bush administration, whose memo provided the legal justification for water boarding, and former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, also Yoo’s old boss.
Earlier 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).
By Allie Bohm, Advocacy & Policy Strategist, ACLU at 1:32pm
Remember back in the 1980s when some cars only had one side rear-view mirror? Remember how that was later made illegal, and cars were required to have mirrors on both sides as a matter of safety?
On Friday, Gen. David Petraeus was quoted in the Wall Street Journal as saying, "It is time to take the rear-view mirrors off the bus with respect to certain actions out there." Now, I remember driver education, and I remember the video showing just how large buses' blind spots are and just how necessary their mirrors are. As any 16-year old in drivers' ed can tell you, rear-view mirrors — and the ability to see behind yourself — are paramount to safety on the road.
By Matthew Harwood, Media Relations Associate, ACLU at 5:41pm
On Thursday, John Brennan, the White House deputy national security advisor for homeland security and counterterrorism, will come before the Senate to interview for one of the most powerful jobs in the world: director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Brennan's nomination is by no means a fait accompli.
Brennan, who served in the top echelons of the CIA during the key early years of the Bush administration, still has many questions he hasn't answered regarding the agency's role in torture, indefinite detention and kidnapping during his time there. And he has at least as many questions to answer about his role running the killing program in the Obama White House.
