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October 8, 2009

National Lawyers Guild, Other Human Rights Groups Send Open Letter to Eric Holder

Seventeen human rights and civil rights organizations and 45 prominent lawyers and civic leaders have sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder last week urging him to appoint a special independent prosecutor to investigate and prosecute Bush officials and lawyers involved in setting illegal interrogation policies.

Holder had expanded the mandate of Justice Department lawyer John Durham to include a preliminary investigation but limited Durham’s focus to a handful of interrogators who exceeded the limits set by the “torture memos.”

The groups and individuals stressed that the special prosecutor should come from outside the Department of Justice and not limit the investigation to low-level operatives, but “should investigate and prosecute all those who ordered, approved, justified, abetted or carried out the torture and abuse.”

The letter cites “political pressure” which has “led to [Holder’s] office taking too narrow an approach to the investigation.”

Signatories of the letter include the National Lawyers Guild, Center for Constitutional Rights, U.S. Human Rights Network, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility, as well as prominent torture survivor Sister Dianna Ortiz. Also signing is the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, the American Association of Jurists and many other international bar associations. They urge Holder to “hold firm against any attempts by former Vice President Dick Cheney, the CIA directors, and the media to silence those who demand that the United States hold accountable those who have committed and authorized torture.”

Both the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, and the Geneva Conventions “expressly require the United States to either extradite or initiate prosecution of persons who are reasonably accused,” the letter says, adding “this is a legal obligation.”

“Whether actionable intelligence was gained is not the issue,” the letter in conclusion reminds the Attorney General, and says that he cannot “pick and choose those laws you will enforce.”

If you or your organization wish to sign the letter, contact Marjorie Cohn at libertad48 ‘at’ san.rr.com.

August 16, 2009

Legendary Lawyer Doris Brin Walker Dies; Represented Angela Davis, Smith Act Defendants

Doris “Dobby” Brin Walker, the first woman president of the National Lawyers Guild, died on August 13 at the age of 90. Doris was a brilliant lawyer and a tenacious defender of human rights. The only woman in her University of California Berkeley law school class, Doris defied the odds throughout her life, achieving significant victories for labor, and political activists.

Doris’ legal and political activism spanned several decades and some of the most turbulent but significant periods in US history. She organized workers, fought against Jim Crow and McCarthyism, was active in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements, and actively opposed the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At UCLA, Doris became a Marxist. After she was sworn in as a member of the California State Bar, Doris joined the Communist Party USA, remaining a member until her death. Upon graduation from law school, Doris began practicing labor law; but a few years later, she went to work in California canneries as a labor organizer. When Cutter Labs fired Doris in 1956, the case was appealed all the way to the Supreme Court. Although the Court refused to hear the case, Justice Douglas, joined in dissent by Chief Justice Warren and Justice Black, wrote, “The blunt truth is that Doris Walker is not discharged for misconduct but either because of her legitimate labor union activities or because of her political ideology or belief. Belief cannot be penalized consistently with the First Amendment . . . The Court today allows belief, not conduct, to be regulated. We sanction a flagrant violation of the First Amendment when we allow California, acting through her highest court, to sustain Mrs. Walker’s discharge because of her belief.”

Doris returned to the practice of law and represented people charged under the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act) in California. The Act required all resident aliens to register with the government, enacted procedures to facilitate deportation, and made it a crime for any person to knowingly or willfully advocate the overthrow of the government by force or violence. The work of Doris and other NLG lawyers led to Yates v. United States, in which the Supreme Court overturned the convictions of Smith Act defendants in 1957. After Yates, the government never filed another prosecution under the Smith Act.

During the McCarthy era, Doris was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and she also represented several HUAC witnesses. From 1956 to 1961, Doris successfully defended William and Sylvia Powell, who faced the death penalty, against Korean War sedition charges. The US government charged that articles Powell had written reporting and criticizing US biological weapons use in Korea were false and written with intent to hinder the war effort. When a mistrial ended the sedition case, the government charged the Powells with treason. Attorney General Robert Kennedy dismissed the case in 1961.

A partner with the NLG firm of Treuhaft & Walker in Oakland, California from 1961 to 1977, Doris’ practice focused on civil rights, free speech and draft cases during the Vietnam War. She also defended death penalty cases. Perhaps best known for her defense of Angela Davis, Doris was part of a legal team that secured Angela’s acquittal on charges of murder, kidnapping and conspiracy. In that case, which Harvard Professor Charles Ogletree in 2005 called “clearly the trial of the 20th century, and one that exemplified the vast and diverse talents of the true Dream Team of the legal profession,” the defense pioneered the use of jury consultants.

Doris was elected president of the NLG in 1970 after a bruising battle during which one opponent labeled her “a man in a woman’s skirt.” She paved the way for the election of six women NLG presidents in the ensuing years.

Serving as Vice President of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers from 1970 to 1978, Doris supported the struggles of victims of U.S. imperialism throughout the world and was instrumental in the development of international human rights law. In 1996, Doris served as one of eight international observers at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings led by Desmond Tutu.

In 2004, Doris submitted a resolution on behalf of the NLG Bay Area Chapter to the Conference of Delegates of the California Bar Association asking for an investigation of representations the Bush administration used to justify the war in Iraq, for possible impeachment.

Noted writer Jessica Mitford and Doris were close friends for years; Jessica was married to Robert Truehaft, Doris’ law partner. When Doris invited Jessica to join the Communist Party, the latter replied, “We thought you’d never ask!” There is speculation that author J.K. Rowling, who cited Jessica as her main literary influence, named her Harry Potter house elf “Dobby” after seeing Dobby Walker’s name in Jessica’s books. On a recent visit to her home, Doris showed me the Dobby references in works by Jessica on her bookshelf.

Doris frequently called me with her concerns and opinions about the issues of the day and in the NLG. She remained intensely engaged in politics until the day she died.

Doris “Dobby” Walker inspired generations of progressive lawyers, law students and legal workers to struggle unrelentingly for justice and equality. She was a friend, comrade and role model to scores of people in and out of the NLG. We will never see the likes of her again.

Doris is survived by her daughter Emily Roberson and her granddaughter Iris Feldman. The family requests that contributions in Doris’ name be sent to the National Lawyers Guild, 132 Nassau St., Room 922, New York, NY 10038.

June 14, 2009

Agent Orange Continues to Poison Vietnam

From 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed Vietnam with Agent Orange, which contained large quantities of Dioxin, in order to defoliate the trees for military objectives. Dioxin is one of the most dangerous chemicals known to man. It has been recognized by the World Health Organization as a carcinogen (causes cancer) and by the American Academy of Medicine as a teratogen (causes birth defects).

Between 2.5 and 4.8 million people were exposed to Agent Orange. 1.4 billion hectares of land and forest – approximately 12 percent of the land area of Vietnam – were sprayed.

The Vietnamese who were exposed to the chemical have suffered from cancer, liver damage, pulmonary and heart diseases, defects to reproductive capacity, and skin and nervous disorders. Children and grandchildren of those exposed have severe physical deformities, mental and physical disabilities, diseases, and shortened life spans. The forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded. They may never grow back and if they do, it will take 50 to 200 years to regenerate. Animals that inhabited the forests and jungles have become extinct, disrupting the communities that depended on them. The rivers and underground water in some areas have also been contaminated. Erosion and desertification will change the environment, contributing to the warming of the planet and dislocation of crop and animal life.

The U.S. government and the chemical companies knew that Agent Orange, when produced rapidly at high temperatures, would contain large quantities of Dioxin. Nevertheless, the chemical companies continued to produce it in this manner. The U.S. government and the chemical companies also knew that the Bionetics Study, commissioned by the government in 1963, showed that even low levels of Dioxin produced significant deformities in unborn offspring of laboratory animals. But they suppressed that study and continued to spray Vietnam with Agent Orange. It wasn’t until the study was leaked in 1969 that the spraying of Agent Orange was discontinued.

U.S. soldiers who served in Vietnam have experienced similar illnesses. After they sued the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that manufactured and sold Agent Orange to the government, the case settled out of court for $180 million which gave few plaintiffs more than a few thousand dollars each. Later the U.S. veterans won a legislative victory for compensation for exposure to Agent Orange. They receive $1.52 billion per year in benefits.

But when the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange sued the chemical companies in federal court, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein dismissed the lawsuit, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the U.S. veterans’ suit that their liability was over and he was making good on his promise. His dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The chemical companies admitted in their filing in the Supreme Court that the harm alleged by the victims was foreseeable although not intended. How can something that is foreseeable be unintended?

On May 15 and 16 of this year, the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange convened in Paris and heard testimony from 27 victims, witnesses and scientific experts. Seven people from three continents served as judges of the Tribunal, which was sponsored by the International Association of Democratic Lawyers (IADL).

Testimony given by the witnesses showed the following:

Mai Giang Vu, a member of the Army of South Vietnam, carried barrels of the chemicals on his back. His two sons could not walk or function normally, their limbs gradually “curled up” and they could only crawl. They died at the ages of 23 and 25.

Pham The Minh, whose parents also served in the South Vietnamese Army, showed the Tribunal his severely deformed, crooked, skinny legs; he has great difficulty walking, as well as digestive and pulmonary diseases.

To Nga Tran is a French Vietnamese who worked as a journalist during the spraying. Her daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Her skin began shredding and she could not bear to have skin contact or simple demonstrations of love. She died at 17 months, weighing 6.6 pounds. Ms. To described a woman who gave birth to a “ball” with no human form. Many children are born without brains; others make inhuman sounds.

Rosemarie Hohn Mizo is the widow of George Mizo, who served in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in 1967. He slept on contaminated ground and consumed food and drink that were also contaminated. George refused to serve after he was wounded for the third time; he was court-martialed and sentenced to 2-1/2 years in prison and a dishonorable discharge. George helped found the Friendship Village where Vietnamese victims live in a supportive environment. He died from conditions related to his exposure to Agent Orange.

Georges Doussin, co-founder of the Friendship Village, visited a dormitory where he saw 50 highly deformed “monsters,” who produced inhuman sounds. One man whose parent had been exposed to Agent Orange had four toes on each foot. Doussin said Agent Orange creates “total anarchy in evolution.”

Dr. Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, from Tu Du Hospital in Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), sees many children born without arms and/or legs, without heads or faces, and without a brain chamber. According to the World Health Organization, only 1 – 4 parts per trillion (PPT) of Dioxin in breast milk can cause severe deformities in fetuses and even death. But up to 1450 PPT are found in maternal milk in Vietnam.

Dr. Jeanne Stellman, who wrote the seminal article about Agent Orange in the magazine Nature, testified that “this is the largest unstudied environmental disaster in the world (except for natural disasters).”

Dr. Jean Grassman, from Brooklyn College at City University of New York, testified that Dioxin is a potent cellular disregulator which alters a variety of pathways to disrupt many systems. Children, she said, are very sensitive to Dioxin; the intrauterine or post natal exposure to Dioxin may result in altered immune, neurobehavioral, and hormonal functioning. Women pass their exposure to their children both in utero and through the excretion of Dioxin in breast milk.

Many ecosystems have been destroyed and Dioxin continues to poison Vietnam, especially in the several “hot spots.”

Chemist Dr. Pierre Vermeulin testified that it was estimated that $1 billion would be required to restore one hectare of land in Vietnam. The cost of caring for the victims, many of whom need 24-hour care, is enormous.

In 1973, President Richard Nixon promised $3.25 billion in reconstruction aid to Vietnam “without any preconditions.” That aid was never granted.

There are only 11 Friendship Villages in Vietnam; 1000 are needed to care for the child victims of Agent Orange.

Last week, the Bureau of the IADL, meeting in Hanoi, presented President Nguyen Minh Triet of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam with the final decision of the Tribunal. The judges found the U.S. government and the chemical companies guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and ecocide during the illegal U.S. war of aggression in Vietnam. We recommended that the Agent Orange Commission be established in Vietnam to assess the damages suffered by the people and destruction of the environment, and that the U.S. government and the chemical companies provide compensation for the damage and destruction.

I told the President that it always struck me that even as U.S. bombs were dropping on the people of Vietnam, they always distinguished between the American government and the American people. The President responded, “We fought the forces of aggression but we always reserved our love for the people of America . . . because we knew they always supported us.”

An estimated 3 million Vietnamese people were killed in the war, which also claimed 58,000 American lives. For many other Vietnamese and U.S. veterans and their families, the war continues to take its toll.

Several treaties the United States has ratified require an effective remedy for violations of human rights. It is time to make good on Nixon’s promise and remedy the terrible wrong the U.S. government perpetrated on the people of Vietnam. Congress must pass legislation to compensate the Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange as it did for the U.S. Vietnam veteran victims.

Our government must know that it cannot continue to use weapons that target and harm civilians. Indeed, the U.S. military is using depleted uranium in Iraq and Afghanistan, which will poison those countries for incalculable decades.

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and president of the National Lawyers Guild, served as a judge on the International Peoples’ Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. She is a member of the Bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers.

May 30, 2009

National Lawyers Guild Calls for Reasoned Analysis of Sotomayor Nomination

New York–In the wake of President Obama’s nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court, the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) encourages a reasoned analysis of Sotomayor’s candidacy. Critics are focusing on accusations of judicial activism and identity politics rather than engaging in sound examination of her legal qualifications. Comments of this nature serve only to distract from meaningful discussion surrounding the judicial confirmation process.

“When Judge Sotomayor was nominated, conservative pundits immediately leveled allegations of judicial activism against her. That charge is not only hypocritical, but is also disingenuous. Bush v. Gore, supported by these same commentators in 2000, is the most vivid example of judicial activism ever displayed by the highest court,” said Marjorie Cohn, President of the National Lawyers Guild.

Critics have increasingly questioned the role that Sotomayor’s race and gender played in her nomination. Changing the discourse from one of judicial qualifications to one of identity politics detracts from a proper evaluation of her suitability for the job.

The Guild encourages an analysis that focuses on Sotomayor’s credentials and ability to interpret the Constitution of the United States. These are the criteria by which any judicial nominee should be evaluated.

May 25, 2009

Obama’s Guantánamo Appeasement Plan

Two days after his inauguration, President Obama pledged to close Guantánamo within one year. The Republicans, led by Senators John McCain, Mitch McConnell and Pat Roberts, immediately launched a concerted campaign to assail the new president. They claimed his plan would release dangerous terrorists into U.S. communities and allow released terrorists to resume fighting against our troops. Fox News agitator Sean Hannity and Bush team players like torture-memo lawyer John Yoo filled the airwaves and print media with paranoia.

The Republican attacks were bogus. A 2008 McClatchy investigation revealed that the overwhelming majority of Guantánamo detainees taken into custody in 2001 and 2002 in Afghanistan and Pakistan were innocent of wrongdoing or bit players with little intelligence value. A substantial number of those prisoners were literally sold to U.S. officials in exchange for bounty payments offered by the U.S. military. A Seton Hall Law Center report has debunked Pentagon claims that many released detainees have “returned to the fight.” And no one has ever escaped from one of the U.S. super-max prisons, which house hundreds of people convicted of terrorist offenses.

The Republicans have continued to oppose the effort to close Guantánamo. In an attempt to burnish his image and forestall war crimes charges, Dick Cheney now leads the charge, making ubiquitous attacks on Obama. Keeping Guantánamo open is “important,” Cheney declares. He claims that closing Guantánamo would endanger Americans, and warns that if detainees are brought to the United States, they would “acquire all kinds of legal rights.” Obama is also taking heat from the intelligence community. Those officials, like Cheney, seek to justify what they did under the Bush regime.

And now even the Democrats are piling on the bandwagon. Reacting defensively to the Republican attack campaign, the Senate voted 90 to 6 to deny Obama funds to close Guantánamo until he comes up with a “plan” for relocating the detainees there. “We spent hundreds of millions of dollars building an appropriate facility with all security precautions on Guantánamo to try these cases,” said Democratic Senator Jim Webb on ABC News. “I do not believe they should be tried in the United States,” he added.

The pressure has caused Obama to buckle. Timed to coincide with a Cheney speech to the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, Obama announced an appeasement plan to deal with the 240 remaining Guantánamo detainees. Parts of his plan would threaten the very foundation of our legal system – that no one should be held in custody if he has committed no crime. These are Obama’s five categories for disposition of detainees once Guantánamo is closed:

1) Those who violated the laws of war will be tried in military commissions.

Obama’s plan would backtrack on an early promise to shut down the military commissions. Obama now claims that such commissions can be fair because they will no longer permit the use of evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading interrogation methods. He fails to mention, however, that the Pentagon is using “clean teams” to re-interrogate people who were previously interrogated using the prohibited methods. When they once again give the same information, it miraculously becomes untainted. Obama also fails to acknowledge that those tried in the military commissions are forbidden from seeing all the evidence against them, a violation of the bedrock principle that the accused must have an opportunity to confront his accusers.

Even the U.S. Supreme Court has disagreed with this part of Obama’s proposed plan of action. In Ex parte Milligan, the Supreme Court declared military trials of civilians to be unconstitutional if civil courts are available.

Prisoners falling in this category should be tried in the courts of the United States, because the laws of war are actually part of U.S. law. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says that treaties shall be the supreme law of the land. The Geneva Conventions and the Hague Convention, which the United States has ratified, contain the laws of war.

2) Those who have been ordered released from Guantánamo will remain in custody.

Seventeen Uighurs from China were ordered released after they were found not to be enemy combatants. But they continue to languish in custody because they would be imperiled if returned to China, which considers them enemies of the state. Suggestions that they be brought to the United States have been met with paranoid NIMBY (not in my backyard!) protestations. So, under Obama’s plan they will remain incarcerated in a state of legal limbo.

3) Those who cannot be prosecuted yet “pose a clear danger to the American people” will remain in custody with no right to legal process of any kind.

These are people who have never been charged with a crime. Obama did not say why they cannot be prosecuted. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates claims as many as 100 people may fall into this category. Included in this group are those who have “expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden.” They will suffer “prolonged detention.”

Obama’s plan for “prolonged detention” is nothing more than a newly-coined phrase for “preventive detention,” a policy that harks back to the bad old days of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 and the internment of people of Japanese extraction in the 1940’s. If Obama succeeds in convincing Congress to legalize “prolonged detention,” the United States will continue to be a pariah state among justice-loving nations. The U.S. Congress, still rendered catatonic by post-9/11 rhetoric, will probably capitulate along with Obama.

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, noted that Obama’s new system of preventive detention will just “move Guantánamo to a new location and give it a new name.”

4) Those who can be safely transferred to other countries will be transferred.

Obama noted that 50 men fall into this category. It is unclear what will happen to them when they reach their destinations.

5) Those who violated U.S. criminal laws will be tried in federal courts.

Obama cited the examples of Ramzi Yousef, who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was identified as the 20th 9/11 hijacker. Both were tried and convicted in U.S. courts and both are serving life sentences.

This is the only clearly acceptable part of Obama’s plan. All detainees slated to remain in custody should be placed into this category. The federal courts provide due process as required by the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, which does not limit due process rights to U.S. citizens: “No person . . . shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.”

The federal courts are well suited to deal with accused terrorists. Indeed, federal judges who have presided over such cases say that the Classified Information Procedures Act can effectively protect classified intelligence in federal court trials.

If Mr. Obama proceeds with the plan he announced this week he will empower those who point to U.S. hypocrisy on human rights as a justification to do us harm. Obama’s capitulation to the intelligence gurus and the right-wing attack dogs will not only imperil the rule of law; it will actually make us more vulnerable to future acts of terrorism.

May 6, 2009

Stanford Anti-War Alumni, Students Call for Condi War Crimes Probe

During the Vietnam War, Stanford students succeeded in banning secret military research from campus. Last weekend, 150 activist alumni and present Stanford students targeted Condoleezza Rice for authorizing torture and misleading Americans into the illegal Iraq War.

Veterans of the Stanford anti-Vietnam War movement had gathered for a 40th anniversary reunion during the weekend. The gathering featured panels on foreign policy, the economy, political and social movements, science and technology, media, energy and the environment, and strategies for aging activists.

On Sunday, surrounded by alumni and students, Lenny Siegel and I nailed a petition to the University President’s office door. The petition, circulated by Stanford Says No to War, reads:

“We the undersigned students, faculty, staff, alumni, and other concerned members of the Stanford community, believe that high officials of the U.S. Government, including our former Provost, current Political Science Professor, and Hoover Institution Senior Fellow, Condoleezza Rice, should be held accountable for any serious violations of the Law (included ratified treaties, statutes, and/or the U.S. Constitution) through investigation and, if the facts warrant, prosecution, by appropriate legal authorities.”

I stated, “By nailing this petition to the door of the President’s office, we are telling Stanford that the university should not have war criminals on its faculty. There is prima facie evidence that Rice approved torture and misled the country into the Iraq War. Stanford has an obligation to investigate those charges.”

After the petition nailing, I cited the law and evidence of Condoleezza Rice’s responsibility for war crimes – including torture – and for selling the illegal Iraq War:

As National Security Advisor, Rice authorized waterboarding in July 2002, according to a newly released report of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Less than two months later, she hyped the impending U.S. invasion of Iraq, saying, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” Her ominous warning was part of the Bush administration’s campaign to sell the Iraq war, in spite of the UN International Atomic Energy Agency’s assurances that Saddam Hussein did not possess nuclear weapons.

A week before the nailing of the petition, Rice made some Nixonian admissions in response to questions from Stanford students during a campus dinner designed to burnish Rice’s image on campus.

In October 1968, Stanford anti-war activists had nailed a document to the door of the trustees’ office which demanded that Stanford “halt all military and economic projects concerned with Southeast Asia.”

If you have had any affiliation with Stanford, please sign the petition at http://www.stanford.edu/group/antiwar/crpetition.html.

April 30, 2009

Condi Channels Nixon: If the President Says So, It’s Not Illegal

On April 27, Condoleezza Rice had a brief Q & A with some Stanford students:

Condi was extremely uncomfortable, defensive and nervous. She was rude to the first student, interrupted him and yelled at him.

When asked by another student about a recent report that she authorized waterboarding, Condi said, “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency [CIA] that they had policy authorization subject to the Justice Department’s clearance.”

The kicker was when she was asked whether waterboarding is torture. She replied, “By definition, if it was authorized by the President, it didn’t violate our obligations under the Convention against Torture.”

Richard Nixon: “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.”

John Yoo, in a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel: There is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child’s testicles.

April 24, 2009

Torture Used to Try to Link Saddam with 9/11

When I testified last year before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties about Bush interrogation policies, Congressman Trent Franks (R-Ariz) stated that former CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed that the Bush administration only waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashirit for one minute each. I told Franks I didn’t believe that. Sure enough, one of the newly released torture memos reveals that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times and Zubaydah was waterboarded 83 times. One of Stephen Bradbury’s 2005 memos asserted that “enhanced techniques” on Zubaydah yielded the identification of Mohammed and an alleged radioactive bomb plot by Jose Padilla. But FBI supervisory special agent Ali Soufan, who interrogated Zubaydah from March to June 2002, wrote in the New York Times that Zubaydah produced that information under traditional interrogation methods, before the harsh techniques were ever used.

Why, then, the relentless waterboarding of these two men? It turns out that high Bush officials put heavy pressure on Pentagon interrogators to get Mohammed and Zubaydah to reveal a link between Saddam Hussein and the 9/11 hijackers, in order to justify Bush’s illegal and unnecessary invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a newly released report of the Senate Armed Services Committee. That link was never established.

The Senate Intelligence Committee revealed that Condoleezza Rice approved waterboarding on July 17, 2002 “subject to a determination of legality by the OLC.” She got it two weeks later from Jay Bybee and John Yoo. Rice, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales and George Tenet reassured the CIA in spring 2003 that the abusive methods were legal.

Team Bush claimed – and still claims – that it had to use harsh techniques to protect us from the terrorists. They really sought to create evidence to rationalize an illegal, unnecessary, and tragic war.

April 22, 2009

Bush Memos Reveal Policy of Cruelty; Obama Refuses to Enforce the Law

In response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the ACLU, President Obama released four Bush-era memos that describe unimaginably brutal techniques and provide “legal” justification for clearly illegal acts of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. In the face of monumental pressure from the CIA to keep them secret, Obama demonstrated great courage in deciding to make the grotesque memos public. At the same time, however, in an attempt to pacify the intelligence establishment, Obama said, “it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution.” He guaranteed free legal representation for CIA employees investigated by Congress or international tribunals, and indemnification for any financial judgments rendered against them.

Obama’s intent to immunize those who violated our laws banning torture and cruel treatment violates the President’s constitutional duty to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

The memos

The memo dated August 1, 2002 was signed by Jay Bybee, and the other three memos, dated May 10, 2005, were signed by Stephen Bradbury.

In startlingly clinical and dispassionate terms, the authors of the newly-released torture memos describe and then rationalize why the devastating techniques the CIA sought to employ on human beings do not violate the Torture Statute (18 U.S.C. sec. 2340).

The memos justify 10 techniques, including banging heads into walls 30 times in a row, prolonged nudity, repeated facial and abdominal slapping, dietary manipulation, and dousing with cold water as low as 41 degrees. They allow shackling in a standing position for 180 hours, sleep deprivation for 11 days, confinement of people in small dark boxes with insects for hours, and waterboarding to create the perception they are drowning. Moreover, the memos permit many of these techniques to be used in combination for a 30-day period. They find that none of these techniques constitute torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

Waterboarding, admittedly the most serious of the methods, is designed, according to Bybee, to induce the perception of “suffocation and incipient panic, i.e. the perception of drowning.” But although Bybee finds that “the use of the waterboard constitutes a threat of imminent death,” he accepts the CIA’s claim that it does “not anticipate that any prolonged mental harm would result from the use of the waterboard.” As psychologist Jeffrey Kaye points out, the CIA and the Justice Department “ignored a wealth of other published information” that indicates dissociative symptoms, changes greater than those in patients undergoing heart surgery, and drops in testosterone to castration levels after acute stress associated with techniques that the memos sanction.

The Torture Statute punishes conduct, or conspiracy to engage in conduct, specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering. “Severe mental pain or suffering” means the prolonged mental harm caused by or resulting from either the intentional infliction or threatened infliction of severe physical pain or suffering, or from the threat of imminent death.

Bybee asserts that “if a defendant acts with the good faith belief that his actions will not cause such suffering, he has not acted with specific intent.” He makes the novel claim that the presence of personnel with medical training who can stop the interrogation if medically necessary “indicates that it is not your intent to cause severe physical pain.”

Now a federal judge with lifetime appointment, Bybee concludes that waterboarding does not constitute torture under the Torture Statute. However, he writes, “we cannot predict with confidence whether a court would agree with this conclusion.”

The Bush administration claimed it only used waterboarding three times. But a footnote in one of Bradbury’s memos says waterboarding was utilized “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” with “large volumes of water” rather than small quantities as required by the CIA’s rules.

Bybee’s memo explains why the 10 techniques could be used on Abu Zubaydah, who was considered to be a top Al Qaeda operative. “Zubaydah does not have any pre-existing mental conditions or problems that would make him likely to suffer prolonged mental harm from [the CIA’s] proposed interrogation methods,” the CIA told Bybee. But Zubaydah was a low-ranking Al Qaeda operative, according to leading FBI counter-terrorism expert Dan Coleman, who advised a top FBI official, “This guy is insane, certifiable, split personality.” This was reported by Ron Suskind in his book, The One Percent Doctrine.

The CIA’s request to confine Zubaydah in a cramped box with an insect was granted by Bybee, who told the CIA it could place a harmless insect in the box and tell Zubaydah that it will sting him but it won’t kill him. Even though the CIA knew that Zubaydah had an irrational fear of insects, Bybee found there would be no threat of severe physical pain or suffering if it followed this procedure.

Another noxious aspect of these memos is the use of medical professionals to enable the torture and cruel treatment. They are on hand to monitor the victims to make sure they come close to death, but don’t actually die. But the medical personnel may well allow the abuse to cause severe physical pain and do nothing to stop it until the victim reaches the point of impending death. One of Bradbury’s memos requires that a physician be on duty during waterboarding to perform a tracheotomy in case the victim doesn’t recover after being returned to an upright position.

Employing a standard used to measure due process violations, Bradbury concluded that “the CIA interrogation techniques, with their careful screening procedures and medical monitoring, do not ‘shock the conscience,’” and thus were not cruel, inhuman or degrading. It is difficult to imagine how the techniques described above would fail to shock the conscience of any human being.

Obama’s refusal to faithfully execute the law

The Constitution requires the President to enforce the law against both the petty thief who stole salmon from the market, and the CIA agent who tortured or abused a prisoner.

Our law prohibits torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, and requires that those who subject people to such treatment be prosecuted. The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment compels us to refer all torture cases for prosecution or extradite the suspect to a country that will undertake a criminal investigation. The Geneva Conventions proclaim an “obligation” to bring those who have committed torture and cruel treatment before our “own courts.” The Torture Convention and the Geneva Conventions are both part of U.S. law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says, “all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” Two federal statutes – the Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act (torture is a war crime) – provide for life imprisonment and even the death penalty if the victim dies from torture.

Obama has made a political calculation to seek amnesty for the CIA torturers. He expressed his “intention” to protect people who relied in good faith on Justice Department advice. However, good faith reliance on superior orders was rejected as a defense at Nuremberg and in Lt. Calley’s Vietnam-era trial for the My Lai Massacre. The Torture Convention provides unequivocally, “An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification for torture.”

There is evidence that the CIA was using the illegal techniques as early as April 2002, three to four months before the August memo was written. That would eliminate “good faith” reliance on Justice Department advice as a “defense” to prosecution. And Obama did not say he favored amnesty for those who set the policy – which would include Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, Ashcroft and Gonzales who comprised the Principals Committee that authorized the torture and Bush who approved of it. Nor did Obama include in his intended amnesty the lawyers – like Yoo, Bybee, Bradbury, Addington and Haynes – whose opinions under girded the policy.

When ABC’s George Stephanopoulos asked Rahm Emanuel on Sunday, “What about the people who designed the policies?”, Emmanuel said the President doesn’t support their prosecution either.

But the decision about whether and who to prosecute is up to the Attorney General, Eric Holder. If Holder continues to carry out Obama’s political agenda by resisting investigations and prosecution, Congress can, and should, authorize the appointment of a special independent prosecutor to do what the law requires.

The Watergate scandal led to the enactment of the Ethics in Government Act. Three years after Richard Nixon resigned rather than face impeachment, President Carter asked Congress to pass a law authorizing the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute unlawful acts by high government officials. The bill empowered the attorney general to conduct a preliminary 90-day investigation when serious allegations arose involving a high government official.

Under the act, the attorney general could drop the investigation if he determined it was unsupported by the evidence. But if he found some merit to the charges, he was required to apply to a three-judge panel of federal court judges who would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate, prosecute, and issue a report. This procedure was used to appoint Kenneth Starr, whose witch hunt led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. In reaction, Congress allowed the independent counsel statute to expire by its own terms in 1999. It’s time for the people to demand that Congress enact an independent counsel statute.

Universal jurisdiction

What happens if the United States government refuses to prosecute those who ordered, justified and carried out the torture and abuse? Other countries will launch criminal investigations of U.S. nationals under universal jurisdiction. See Spain Investigates What America Should [http://marjoriecohn.com/2009/04/spain-investigates-what-america-should.html].

Indeed prosecutors in Spain decided to file criminal charges against Yoo, Bybee, Gonzales, Haynes, Addington and Feith for torture. But in a rare move, Candido Conde-Pumpido, Spain’s attorney general, overruled the prosecutors’ decision, saying the case had “no merit” because the six men were not present when the abuse took place and it was up to the United States to prosecute.

Universal jurisdiction is used to prosecute foreign nationals when their own country refuses to prosecute. Adoph Eichmann, often called “the architect of the Holocaust,” was tried, convicted and executed by Israel for crimes unconnected to Israel. He orchestrated the deportations but was not necessarily present at the gas chambers when millions were murdered.

Curiously, Conde-Pumpido’s decision followed discussions between the U.S. and Spanish governments in which the Obama administration strongly suggested that charges against the six would be “inconvenient,” according to Scott Horton of Harpers. Apparently and unfortunately, Obama is following the same tack Bush took by pressuring countries to back down on universal jurisdiction prosecutions.

The Spanish case is not dead, however. Judge Baltasar Garzon, who issued the arrest warrant for Augusto Pinochet in 1998, still has the power to determine whether the case will proceed.

Ultimately, it is up to Obama to fulfill his constitutional duty to ensure that the laws are faithfully executed. As he seems inclined to shirk that duty, it is up to us to pressure him, and Congress to hold accountable, those who violate our laws. Obama said that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.” He is wrong. There is more to gain from upholding the rule of law. It will make future leaders think twice before they authorize the cruel, illegal treatment of other human beings.