"Gallows politics"

Except for that term, used by Leon Panetta to describe Dick Cheney's dark warnings about an impending attack brought on by the Obama administration decision not to torture people, Jane Mayer's long article about the new CIA chief hasn't gotten much attention. It should. While it doesn't add a lot that's new, it brings to the fore a lot of disparate threads that are making things complicated for the administration and threaten the agency directly.

One of the takeaways is that the Obama administration, while trying to cover for Bush era abuses at the agency and in the White House OLC in order to avoid "political destractions," may find those distractions oozing out over a longer period of time.

Ken Gude, an associate director at the Center for American Progress, who specializes in national-security issues, and who has close ties to the White House, believes that Obama’s instinct, like Panetta’s, was to set up a truth commission of some sort. “I think the political staff walked it back,” he says. “They said it would be a distraction.” Obama’s political advisers dread any issue that could trigger a culture war and diminish his support among independent voters. They also see little advantage in picking a fight with the C.I.A. But the decision to discourage an accountability process, Gude says, has backfired. The Administration has lost control of the story, as revelations about C.I.A. misdeeds have continued to emerge through lawsuits and the press. “It’s now become the distraction they wanted to avoid,” Gude says. “The White House briefings have been dominated by questions about releasing documents and photos.” It’s understandable, he says, that Obama wouldn’t want to spend his energy on Bush’s mistakes. But, he warns, “they can’t leave the impression that they’re trying to cover it up.”

Indeed.

[...] Other legal actions threaten to expose yet more secrets of the C.I.A.’s torture program. A prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department, John Durham, has convened a grand jury in Washington to weigh potential criminal charges against C.I.A. officers who were involved in the destruction of ninety-two videotapes documenting the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and other detainees. Mickum told me that he has met several times with Durham, and believes that the scope of his inquiry may have expanded to include a review of whether the C.I.A. began using brutal methods on Zubaydah before it received written authorization from the Justice Department. (This would provide an extra motive for destroying the videotapes.) Mickum said, “I got the sense he was very serious.” (Durham declined to comment.) The A.C.L.U., meanwhile, is suing to get access to classified descriptions of what was on the destroyed videotapes. Last week, Panetta filed an affidavit opposing the disclosure, which he said “could be expected to result in exceptionally grave damage to the national security.” Once again, he was protecting Bush-era interrogation secrets.

Pressure is also coming from abroad. In Italy, two dozen C.I.A. officers are on trial in absentia for participating in a 2003 rendition. Robert Seldon Lady, the agency’s station chief in Milan at the time, can no longer travel to Italy without danger of arrest, nor can the other C.I.A. officers named in the case. Spain has opened a criminal investigation of six Bush Administration officials in connection with torture. And in London a former rendition victim is suing the British authorities. After a British judge ruled that the plaintiff, Binyam Mohammed, should be given access to C.I.A. intelligence documents that the agency shared with British authorities, the Obama Administration surprised liberals by pressuring the British government to stop the disclosures.

Obama no doubt prefers to let the judges in this country and abroad lead the charge to shine a light on Bush era abuses, so as not to have his administration be accused of a political vendetta. It could get very messy, though, particularly if other countries start indicting members of the Bush legal team.

And Sonia Sotomayor may be ruling on more national security issues then she might otherwise have expected. It will be interesting to see how she testifies about those issues in her confirmation hearings.

Where we learned "enhanced interrogation"

One can only wonder what Harold E. Fischer Jr., a Korean War ace whose engine stalled over North Korea, thought of current events.

Col. Harold E. Fischer Jr., an American fighter pilot who was routinely tortured in a Chinese prison during and after the Korean War, becoming — along with three other American airmen held at the same prison — a symbol and victim of cold war tension, died in Las Vegas on April 30. He was 83 and lived in Las Vegas.

The cause was complications of back surgery, his son Kurt said.

From April 1953 through May 1955, Colonel Fischer — then an Air Force captain — was held at a prison outside Mukden, Manchuria. For most of that time, he was kept in a dark, damp cell with no bed and no opening except a slot in the door through which a bowl of food could be pushed. Much of the time he was handcuffed. Hour after hour, a high-frequency whistle pierced the air.

[...]

Captain Fischer was an ace. By April 7, 1953, the day his Sabre Jet crashed north of the Yalu River, he had already shot down 10 MIGs. That day, he downed his 11th. Then his engine stalled, emitting smoke. He ejected.

On the ground, after unbuckling his parachute, the captain realized that he was north of the Yalu, “the boundary over which no Air Force pilot was allowed to cross,” he told Life magazine in a first-person account soon after his release.

Peasants surrounded him; then Chinese soldiers pulled up in a jeep. Ten days later, he was taken to the prison near Mukden. Days after a cease-fire was declared on July 27, 1953, guards told Captain Fischer that the Korean War was over. His hopes that he and the others would soon be released faded as weeks and months passed.

Nine months into his captivity, Captain Fischer managed to escape by digging a hole through the wall of his cell. He was re-captured at a railroad station. Relentless interrogation, led by a guard named Chong, began.

“He wanted me to admit that I had been ordered to cross the Manchurian border,” Captain Fischer told Life magazine. “I was grilled day and night, over and over, week in and week out, and in the end, to get Chong and his gang off my back, I confessed to both charges. The charges, of course, were ridiculous. I never participated in germ warfare and neither did anyone else. I was never ordered to cross the Yalu. We had strict Air Force orders not to cross the border.”

“I will regret what I did in that cell the rest of my life,” the captain continued. “But let me say this: it was not really me — not Harold E. Fischer Jr. — who signed that paper. It was a mentality reduced to putty.”

Rumsfeld authorized torture

While the Obama administration demurs on whether or not war crimes and violation of torture statues by Bush administration officials will beinvestigated, more and more evidence will bubble to the surface and the pressure to act will grow.

"We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani," said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. "His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that's why I did not refer the case" for prosecution.

From Michael Scherer's blog today.

Previously an Army investigation found that the treatment of Qahtani was "abusive and degrading," but not quite "torture." As I reported with Mark Benjamin back in 2006, Qahtani was also "forced to stand naked in front of a female interrogator, was accused of being a homosexual, and was forced to wear women's underwear and to perform 'dog tricks' on a leash. He received 18-to-20-hour interrogations during 48 of 54 days."

As Benjamin and I also reported, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was closely monitoring the interrogation, according to Army investigator Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt. Rumsfeld was "talking weekly" with Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who was in charge at Guantanamo. "The secretary of defense is personally involved in the interrogation of one person [Qahtani], and the entire General Counsel system of all the departments of the military," Schmidt said, in a statement that Benjamin and I obtained. Of Miller's claim that he did not know all the grisly details of the Qahtani interrogation, Schmidt added, "There is just not a too-busy alibi there for that."

Whatever you think of the effectiveness of torture in gaining information, it is against U.S. law and evidence from it is inadmissible in U.S. courts. Because of the Bush administration's penchant for torturing suspects, it's unlikely a single person responsible for the deaths of 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001 will face American justice. Maybe, at least, those responsible for that, will.

The torture imperative

K-Lo helpfully informs us precisely what's wrong with McCain.

To Senator McCain, congratulations. But he has not got this thing wrapped up by any stretch. It’s less than a year since he tried to push a disastrous immigration bill into law — one as manipulative as any pork-laden appropriations bill — with vigorous opposition from talk radio, conservative bloggers, think tanks, and the grassroots. I don’t see how such a man wins the Republican nomination. I’m second to none in praising him on his surge leadership. But on a whole host of issues — including water boarding, tax cuts, and the freedom of speech — he’s not one of us. Rush Limbaugh has emphatically stated that McCain is not a conservative — and he has more than a few listeners with similar instincts. McCain’s not going to be handed this nomination. Conservatives suspect that he’s a recipe for heartache. Sure, they may not be enthused about anyone else in a united way, but I still can’t imagine that they’ll settle for McCain.

Has torture as a requirement become a central plank for the GOP's party platform? Lincoln would be so proud.

Via Hilzoy.

The vermin-like Ron Paul aside, is there a more misunderstood man in American politics? Maverick McCain is considered "ok" by too many liberals, and unacceptable by conservatives? McCain is a consistent conservative vote and has been for his entire career.

But he opposes torture and favors sane immigration policies. Unfit for the conservatism of National Review. Great.

Personally, I'm for K-Lo's love object. I want Romney to win the nomination if for no other reason than to watch his head snap as he suddenly re-embraces his centrist views on healthcare, gun control, and immigration.

What ifs and buts

Dahlia Lithwick and Emily Bazelon wonder what it would have meant had the CIA not destroyed the torture tapes.

Kevin Drum started asking the questions we are posing over the weekend. He pointed out that the tapes would have revealed "not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical 'confessions' under duress." Those confessions, and others like them, have been the underpinning for much of the government's legal assault on the rule of law in recent years, from free and open trials, to secret expansions of executive powers. Certainly Drum is speculating, just like we are. It's impossible to say for sure what the tapes would have revealed, much less how such revelations might have changed all these recent events. But it's worth trying to refit the pieces, because this evidence was deliberately obliterated. Otherwise, the CIA's act of destruction wins.

Like so many crimes committed over the past seven years, I'm not holding my breath that anyone will be held to account on this.

Kevin Drum continues to ask interesting questions.

Refuge

May have to start a new feature here: Adam Liptak Mondays, or something.

A judge in Canada has ruled that the United States has violated international conventions on torture and the rights of refugees.

n his studiously technical 124-page decision, Justice Phelan found that a one-year deadline for filing asylum claims here, enacted by Congress in 1996, had been applied in recent years in ways that violated the international convention on refugees.

He found a similar flaw in a provision of the USA Patriot Act that, as interpreted by the Bush administration’s immigration courts, allows people to be excluded for providing material support to terrorists — even if the support was coerced or under duress.

In other words, providing food at gunpoint may be material support of terrorism, as is paying ransom for a kidnapped relative.

Justice Phelan’s decision also cited the findings of a Canadian commission in the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian whom the United States sent to Syria, where the commission said he was tortured.

Canada has paid him more than $10 million, which is one way to respond to his ordeal. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently conceded in general terms that the matter had not been “handled as it should have been,” which is another.

Justice Phelan said the “real life” example of Mr. Arar made the contention that the United States does not comply with the torture convention “credible.”

Over/under -- how many years will it take for the U.S. to regain its status in the world?