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The "Clean Team"
The Bush administration announced yesterday that it intends to bring capital murder charges against half a dozen men allegedly linked to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, based partly on information the men disclosed to FBI and military questioners without the use of coercive interrogation tactics....FBI and military interrogators who began work with the suspects in late 2006 called themselves the "Clean Team" and set as their goal the collection of virtually the same information the CIA had obtained from five of the six through duress at secret prisons.
To ensure that the data would not be tainted by allegations of torture or illegal coercion, the FBI and military team won the suspects' trust over the past 16 months by using time-tested rapport-building techniques, the officials said....
Prosecutors and top administration officials essentially wanted to cleanse the information so that it could be used in court, a process that federal prosecutors typically follow in U.S. criminal cases with investigative problems or botched interrogations. Officials wanted to go into court without any doubts about the viability of their evidence, and they had serious reservations about the reliability of what the CIA had obtained for intelligence purposes.
"It was the product of a lot of debate at really high levels," one official familiar with the program said. "A lot of people were involved in concluding that it may not be the saving grace, but it would put us on the best footing we could possibly be in. You can't erase what happened in the past, but this was the best alternative."
Josh
Zachary
Inquisition? Star Chamber? Bushland goes down in history as infamous torture.
February 12, 2008 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
Pathetic, and for political purposes the trials will be going on at the time of the november elections. I thought rove left the white house. I guess I was mistaken.
February 12, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Oh yea! No one in FBI white hats would glance at prior transcripts or follow leads provided by those black(ass)hats from the CIA. Pure as the driven snow.
February 12, 2008 10:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Ok, right. We torture the guys into making admissions. They tell us whatever they tell us. Then different guys go in, knowing what the suspects had said before under torture, and ask them the same questions. The guys we tortured into confessing before, having already confessed under torture, tell us the same thing again, this time without being tortured. This is clean, and can be used in court, because these guys had no reason whatever to fear being tortured again if they did not tell us what these new guys wanted to hear. Because the new interrogators were clean and articulate.
February 12, 2008 11:00 AM | Reply | Permalink
In regrids to the tribunals I am reminded of the following passages from the Declaration of Independace:
"For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury"....
"For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences"
"In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress...."
February 12, 2008 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
Seven years...ok. 6 1/2 after 9-11, the Bush regime found "half-dozen" guys they now want to charge,
guys they admit were tortured at some point THEN not tortured for a 16 months so "clean" evidence could be brought into court.
What happened to all that talk about "detaineees" not being eligible for a court trial?
there is no question that these poor smucks are going to be tried and prolly convicted in a Gestapo like show trial while the real perpetrators of 9-11 continue to be ignored.
wonder how many americans will buy this crap?
February 12, 2008 11:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
Poisonous tree, fruit of. Even if the "Clean Team" had no idea of what the torture victims had said to their torturers, the evidence is still tainted. The torture victims know what they said to their torturers, and no matter how thoroughly the nice cops "win their trust" it's an obvious supposition that "wrong" answers will bring the torturers back.
And regardless of their actual culpability, none of the folks who have been fingered for trials is likely to to have any serious expectation of going home free. Probably the best (from their point of view) that they can hope for is public martyrdom.
And from a US point of view the whole process is so tainted that going through a show trial and executing people will do nothing but prove to the rest of the world what a once-respected nation has sunk to.
February 12, 2008 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
We need a public oversight board for the Department of Justice, CIA, DoD which is independent of the lapdogs in Congress, the enablers in DoJ, and the rubber stampers like Scalia in the Judicial Branch; and charged with independently monitoring the US government's compliance/non-compliance with Geneva obligations.
Evidence, in theory, is removed from the pool of information the government can use when it is illegally obtained. The intent is to provide a punishment to the government for engaging in offensive conduct. Yet, the record suggests despite this known abuse and foreseeable loss of evidence, the POW abuse continued. It does not appear a "legal cost of losing evidence" was sufficient to constrain the US government's abuse of POWs. This disturbingly suggests the US government when it confronts American citizens would do the same: The abuse is imposed, regardless the "loss" of the evidence.
This "scrubbing" is an implicit admission there was illegal abuse of POWs, in breach of Geneva. We don't need any witnesses or admissions nor a tape. This assertion of "evidence scrubbing" needs to be considered in light of the revelations that the DoD leadership routinely reviewed ongoing POW mistreatment at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Not only did the leadership know about the abuse, but they knew the evidence could not be admitted to any court. Yet, the abuse continued despite that supposed legal consequence/punishment to the government.
- Where's the demanding letter calling for DOJ OPR and DOJ IG to review "who knew" the evidence was linked with illegal abuse; and when was this known?
- Was the court told about this scrubbing effort before or after the CIA tape destruction was disclosed?
- Did the "scrubbing" of evidence happen before or after the CIA tape was destroyed?
- What is the relationship between the "scrubbing" of data and the Supreme Court's ruling that the POWs were subject to Geneva protections?
- What kind of review was done on the procedures to interrogate after the JAGs raised their concerns at the POW working group meetings with DoJ and DoD that the POWs were being mistreated: Did the JAGs' concerns with the illegal POW abuse get squelched before or after the "evidence scrubbing" occurred?
- Who in the DOD chain of command knew about the illegal abuse and this evidence scrubbing, but continued to demand more abuse to gather information which they knew, or should have known was tainted?
- If this "abuse of POWs" yielded such "valuable" non-court/combat information, why is the US/NATO having such a difficult time in Afghanistan providing security?
- Putting aside the implicit admission of Geneva violations, if the information was not valuable for either court, combat, or subsequent uses, why was the POW abuse continuing?
The hens watching the foxhouse. FBI agents, supposedly doing the "scrubbing" are working for the government, not the court. They're not special masters nor independent, they're employees of the President, the alleged defendant of a war crimes indictment. Once a prisoner mentions any word, that word is used in subsequent interrogations. It's all tainted.
Why should anyone believe that information "gleaned through abuse" was segregated from the "other" information? This is a mockery of "justice".
Who is going to have a chance to independently review this evidence, challenge it, and have it removed if it was illegally obtained? A secret court that does not permit defendants/counsel to review evidence would not permit any independent review of the DOJ FBI's conclusions.
February 12, 2008 6:45 PM | Reply | Permalink
How does making these guys martyrs help in any way, shape or form help the situation? Violence begets violence, folks. Executing these men will not act as any kind of deterrent. Rather it will make things worse both long term and short term. This will certainly be a boon to recruitment efforts for violent Muslim extremist groups.
America cannot justify meting out capital punishment after such a perversion of justice due to our insatiable "need" for vengeance. Killing these men will not make us whole again. It makes us no better than those who attacked us on 9/11.
-AF
February 12, 2008 7:39 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Washington correspondent for al Arabia was interviewed on PRI's The World today, and he said that execution of these six will not be the big deal to the Arab world. The men don't have much support there, and the general belief is that they are guilty as charged.
However, the thing that matters is how they are tried, and the military tribunal thing is not good. He said that anything but an open, uncompromisingly fair trial will be used as more fodder against the US, and as one more "recruitment" tool for al Qaeda or the like. If it can't be an international court, it really should be in a public, criminal court that has established and clear procedures that can't be fudged.
One more really bad choice by and Administration that hasn't made a good one that I can see.
February 12, 2008 10:23 PM | Reply | Permalink