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Brian Beutler

Senate Report Accidentally Reveals SERE Instructors Trained CIA Officials In Torture

Brian Beutler | April 24, 2009, 11:24AM

One of the big revelations to come out of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on so-called aggressive interrogation techniques is an early July 2002 training session where officials from the military's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA)--the agency that oversees the SERE training program--provided "assistance to another government agency." Much of this section of the report is blacked out, so I'll connote blacked out sections with asterisks [***], but the report says JPRA was assisting this agency "on topics such as '*** deprivation techniques,' 'exploitation and questioning techniques,' and 'developing countermeasures to resistance techniques.'" According to the report, "[t]he training was intended to "prepare *** officers for rotations in Afghanistan and elsewhere."

Spencer Ackerman reported on this section in detail when the report was first released, noting what has long been reported, but never officially acknowledged. Spencer writes, "a JPRA team assisted a squad from 'another government agency' during the first six months of 2002 that would be 'sent to interrogate a high level al Qaeda operative.'"

"'Another government agency'," Spencer writes, "is a widespread euphemism for the CIA."

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Topics: Torture

Guantanamo

Levin: DOJ Should Decide On Investigation For 'Abominable' Bush-era Memos

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 4:15PM

Earlier today, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) spoke to MSNBC about the mammoth report his Armed Services Committee released last night. The report details the evolution of a brutal interrogation policy within the Department of Defense, and implicates, for the most part, a different set of officials than the familiar folks of the Bush Justice Department. Watch:

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Topics: Guantanamo, Torture

Jane Harman

Rep. Harman Wiretapped? Or Overheard On A Wiretap?

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 4:03PM

Was Rep. Jane Harman wiretapped? Or was she simply overheard in a conversation with somebody whose phone was wiretapped? If the former, it would be a bombshell, and if you read this piece from Roll Call--titled "Pelosi Knew About Harman Wiretap--you might infer that she was. The article reports that, at Christian Science Monitor lunch with reporters, "Pelosi said she was not told what federal eavesdroppers picked up on the call -- and never alerted Harman to it."

"It was not my position to raise it with Jane Harman," Pelosi told reporters at the Christian Science Monitor lunch. "In fact, I didn't even know if what they were talking about was real. All they said was that she was wiretapped."

That emphasis is mine, but it may not be necessary.

Though the full truth is hard to ascertain, the entire context of Pelosi's remarks suggest this was more a case of slipped tongue than spilled beans.

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Topics: Jane Harman, Nancy Pelosi

Torture

Administration, Military, Knew Techniques Were Torture, Ineffective--Pressed Ahead Anyhow

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 2:57PM

One of the key takeaway's of the Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainee treatment is the extent to which administration and military officials were warned that a). some SERE techniques amounted to torture and b). that they would be extremely ineffective at acquiring intelligence from prisoners. They were, after all, based on techniques used by Chinese Communists to elicit false confessions.

But the people who nonetheless approved of or supported the techniques weren't swayed.

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Topics: Torture

Torture

Trio Of Senators Ask Obama Not To Prosecute Bush Attorneys

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 2:02PM

Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman have sent a letter to President Obama urging him not to prosecute Bush Justice Department officials who wrote legal rationales for torture. "[T]he Department of Justice is currently conducting an internal ethics review of the OLC memos," the trio write, "but that is a quite a different matter from making legal advice with which we may disagree into a crime."

This has been a common refrain from these three for some time, but this letter belies the facts that the use of torture predated the memos that were written to retroactively justify it, and that the Attorney General has independent authority to investigate and, possibly, prosecute their authors. I've pasted the full text of the letter below the fold.

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Topics: Joe Lieberman, John McCain, Torture

Torture

House Member Asks Sec. State To Intervene On Torture Prosecutions

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 12:21PM

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee today. She's appearing to testify on the administration's foreign policy but earlier Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), a senior Republican on the committee, gave her an earful about torture prosecutions. Watch:

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Topics: Torture

Torture

Levin's Torture Report: A Round-Up

Brian Beutler | April 22, 2009, 10:05AM

Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) has picked up where he left off almost a year ago last night by unveiling an unclassified report (PDF) detailing the origins of U.S. torture policies and the route those policies took through the government and into the darkened rooms where military interrogators put them into practice.

The release of this report is coincidental to last week's release, by the Obama Justice Department, of a series of Bush-era memos written to justify a number of torturous CIA interrogation techniques.

Levin got this process rolling in June of last year, releasing a shorter report and a series of Pentagon memos--the fruits of a two year investigation--which painted a more skeletal picture than last night's report does.

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Topics: Torture

Jane Harman

Why Did The NSA--And Not The FBI--Conduct The Wiretap Which Snagged Harman?

Brian Beutler | April 21, 2009, 1:56PM

Sunday's bombshell article by Jeff Stein--and the New York Times' helpful follow up piece--open up so many new lines of inquiry it's hard to know where to begin. But a few things definitely stuck out at us. One question we had is why, according to Stein's story, did the NSA (and not the FBI) conduct the wiretaps? (Yesterday afternoon a couple reports emerged indicating that perhaps the FBI, and not the NSA had done the surveillance, but the Times story seems to confirm what Stein wrote).

Why the curiosity? Well, for one thing, at the time Harman's conversation was supposedly recorded, the FBI had long been investigating the conduct of AIPAC officials under suspicion of passing on classified information and the Harman conversation allegedly involves an attempt to obstruct the DOJ's case. Harman has strenuously denied any wrongdoing, but assuming the taps were conducted in conjunction with the AIPAC investigation, this was certainly the FBI's bailiwick, and, for that matter, the FBI has real investigative capability whereas the NSA, though equipped with robust interception capability, does not. NSA furthermore is almost largely in the business of foreign intelligence surveillance, so why would they become involved?

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Topics: Jane Harman