July 05, 2022:
Information Clearing
House
--
Quite likely a
majority of Americans would agree that
it is wrong for the government or police
to torture someone, though some would
surely accept the “ticking time bomb”
exemption, where a detainee is
withholding information that could save
many lives. It is in fact illegal to
torture someone as well as it being
morally wrong. Indeed, it could
constitute a crime against humanity or a
war crime depending on circumstances.
The United States, which has signed the
United Nations Convention Against
Torture and is bound by it, has thereby
accepted legal sanctions to back up the
view that torture is never permissible.
Under US law, torture committed by
“government officials and their
collaborators upon a person restrained
by the government is a felony punishable
by up to 20 years in federal prison, and
its fruits are inadmissible in all
courts.” Given that background, one is
astonished to learn that some in the
government have not taken the obligation
seriously. To be sure, the US has been
quick to react when lower ranking
officials, contractors and ordinary
soldiers have reportedly been involved
in torturing prisoners, as occurred with
Abu Ghraib prior to 2004, but the higher
one goes up the ladder of power the less
do laws apply to even the most egregious
misbehavior.
It has long been
known that the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA), in the wake of 9/11,
resorted to torture in its overseas
“black” prisons, but details of what
took place and anything that would stand
up in court as evidence has been
difficult to discern as it has been easy
for the Agency to shroud its more
nefarious deeds through claims of
protecting “states secrets.” But now
some more details have emerged. The news
that former Donald Trump appointed CIA
Director Gina Haspel during her tour
overseeing a prison in Thailand in 2002
personally observed at least one
terrorist suspect being tortured by
waterboarding, which simulates being
drowned repeatedly until a confession is
obtained. Waterboarding was used by the
Japanese on prisoners of war in the
Second World War and was subsequently
considered to be torture, a war crime.
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The new
information came from one of the
creators of the Agency’s “enhanced
interrogation techniques” program,
psychologist James E. Mitchell, who was
testifying in a May pretrial hearing at
Guantanamo Prison relating to the
treatment of Saudi al-Qaeda linked
terrorist suspect Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri,
who has been accused of being complicit
in the
bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 that
killed 17 American sailors. Al-Nashiri,
who was shipped to Gitmo in 2006 and who
has been waiting sixteen years for his
trial, could face the death penalty if
he is convicted. His defense is seeking
to demonstrate that the evidence against
him was obtained by torture and should
therefore be inadmissible.
Al-Nashiri was
subjected to four months of
waterboarding as well as to what have
been described as “other coercive
techniques” during his questioning in
Thailand. According to testimony, the
hooded interrogators repeatedly slammed
al-Nashiri’s head into a wall and forced
him naked into a small confinement box.
When he briefly went on a hunger strike
due to his treatment he was fed
rectally. It is not known how frequently
Gina Haspel, the senior officer in
charge of the base, observed the
torture, which she allegedly watched but
did not participate in, but she drafted
up the classified cables detailing what
had occurred and what information had
been developed. Oddly, al-Nashiri was
freely answering the questions from the
interrogators, who recommended that the
extreme measures be stopped, but CIA
Headquarters insisted that the torture
continue in the belief that nothing is
“true” until it is verified under
torture. Rather than resigning to
demonstrate her disagreement, Haspel
allowed the process to continue, which
is why in part some of her former Agency
colleagues regularly refer to her as
“Bloody Gina.”
Videotapes were
made of the torture but they were
subsequently destroyed.
Haspel participated in the November
2005 destruction of hundreds of hours of
recordings contained on 92 tapes showing
at least two interrogations of Abu
Zubaydah and al-Nashiri. She did so
while serving as chief of staff to the
Director of the National Collection
Service
Jose A. Rodriguez Jr. At her Senate
confirmation hearing as Director in
2018,
she said “I would also make clear
that I did not appear on the tapes.”
Rodriguez, who made the decision to
destroy the tapes,
also reportedly determined how to
handle a suspected terrorist detainee
Gul Rahman. Rahman was chained, nearly
naked, to a concrete floor for an
extended time and then froze to death.
There was an internal CIA investigation
but no officer on-site nor at the Agency
headquarters was punished – let alone
prosecuted. In fact, Rodriguez, who was
in charge of the detention site,
received a $2,500 bonus for his
“consistently superior work.”
The Agency
currently regards the existence of the
black prisons and the procedures used to
elicit information as a “state secret”
even though the existence of the sites
is widely known and has been reported on
extensively. After serving as Director
of Central Intelligence Haspel retired
from CIA in January 2021. She
currently works for a major
Washington law firm King & Spalding
L.L.P., a typical transition for senior
officials who are able to exploit the
revolving door between government and
the private sector. She reportedly is
part of the firm’s Government Matters
practice where she “advise[s] clients on
cybersecurity and information
technology, among other issues.”
Every instance of
torture by the federal government or its
agents is by law a separate felony.
Beyond that, what went on in the
Agency’s black overseas prisons is
shocking even in a Washington where no
crime is too low to the contemplated by
the governments we have unfortunately
placed into power. Some might object
that Gina’s actions amounted to
oversight of a dreadful necessity, but
there is something particularly
loathsome about a powerful
Administration intelligence officer
finding time to watch the horrors
performed on a suspect who undoubtedly
was not afforded any due process before
he arrived in his cell to be
experimented on by a team of modern-day
Torquemadas.
The unfortunate
fact is the Gina Haspel is not alone.
She committed what are undeniably
felonies and now enjoys a well-paid
sinecure with a law firm that deals
extensively with the government. One
might recall similar trajectories
relating to the former CIA Director
George Tenet who lied America into a war
with Iraq that is regarded as the
greatest foreign policy failure since
the Second World War. He was rewarded
with a professorship at Georgetown. And
then there is his partner in crime Paul
Wolfowitz, he of the fabricated
intelligence, who was named head of the
World Bank only to subsequently step
down after an unacceptable sexual
relationship with a subordinate whom he
rewarded with promotions was exposed. He
is now a Senior Fellow at the neocon
affiliated American Enterprise Institute
think tank. George and Paul just might
consider how the Nuremberg Trials
regarded starting a war of aggression as
“the ultimate war crime.” And they might
suggest a bit of retrospection from
their friends George Bush, Doug Feith,
Scooter Libby, and Condi Rice, all of
whom have been complicit in the same
infamy. And then there is Donald Trump’s
assassination of Iranian General Qassem
Soleimani based on a lie that he was
seeking to kill Americans. They are all
doing quite well, thank you, either
still active or ensconced in highly
respected retirement positions, shielded
by their wealth and power.
As long as there
is no accountability in Washington the
farce of government “of the people, and
for the people” will continue. That a
government can use the “secrets
privilege” to conceal and avoid any
consequences when killing people without
any due process is despicable. If you
use government resources to murder
someone, you should be tried and go to
prison. If you start a war through
deliberate lying, you should stay in
prison forever. Those who make the
decisions to commit crimes are wired
into the system and are in a sense
bullet-proof, while the public has been
completely brainwashed and the beat goes
on. Another
recent story tells how the CIA was
apparently planning to kill currently
imprisoned journalist Julian Assange in
London. It reportedly included scenarios
for a possible shoot-out in the heart of
the city, the ramming of Russian
diplomatic vehicles and the disabling of
any airplane that might be involved in
an escape attempt. Who came up with that
one? It dates back to 2010, when the
noted constitutional lawyer Barack Obama
was president. Didn’t he or his advisers
know that murder is against the law?
Philip M.
Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of
the Council for the National Interest, a
501(c)3 tax deductible educational
foundation (Federal ID Number
#52-1739023) that seeks a more
interests-based U.S. foreign policy in
the Middle East. Website is
councilforthenationalinterest.org,
address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville
VA 20134 and its email is
inform@cnionline.org.