NEW YORK — One little-noticed consequence of this week’s sensational release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA detention program was a telephone call that a human rights lawyer, Meg Satterthwaite, placed to a client in Yemen.
For eight years since Mohamed Bashmilah, 46, was released from CIA custody, Satterthwaite and other advocates had been trying without success to get the US government to acknowledge that it had held him in secret prisons for 19 months and to explain why.
In the phone call Wednesday, she told him that the Senate report listed him as one of 26 prisoners who, based on CIA documents, had been “wrongfully detained.”
“Na’am,” he answered simply in Arabic. “Yes.” He said he had had faith that someday his ordeal would be acknowledged. Then he thanked the lawyers who have taken up his case over the years, Satterthwaite said.
Bashmilah has told them of being tortured in Jordan before he was handed over to the CIA, which at times kept him shackled alone in freezing-cold cells in Afghanistan, subjected to loud music 24 hours a day.
He attempted suicide at least three times, once by saving pills and swallowing them all at once; once by slashing his wrists; and once by trying to hang himself. Another time, he cut himself and used his own blood to write “this is unjust” on the wall.
After learning the news, Bashmilah pressed Satterthwaite, who heads the global justice program at New York University Law School, to tell him what might follow from the Senate’s recognition. Would there be an apology? Would there be some kind of compensation?
While the details of torture and the dispute over its results have drawn the greatest media coverage, the Senate report also represents the fullest public account by any branch of government of the CIA’s secret prison program.
It exposes some of the mistakes made in the agency’s rush to round up people with possible links to Al Qaeda in the first years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Until 9/11, the United States had officially condemned secret imprisonment as a violation of the basic international standards of human rights. But like the prohibition on torture, it was set aside in the frantic effort to stop another attack.
The Senate Democratic staff members who wrote the 6,000-page report counted 119 prisoners who had been in CIA custody. Of those, the report found that 26 were either described in the agency’s own documents as mistakenly detained, or released and given money, evidence of the same thing.
The CIA told the Senate in its formal response that the real number of wrongful detentions was “far fewer” than 26, but did not provide a number. Human rights advocates who have tracked the CIA program believe the number is considerably more than 26.
Another Yemeni client of Satterthwaite, for instance, Mohammed al-Asad, was left out of the Senate’s count, even though he languished for months in CIA prisons without being questioned, was sent home to Yemen, and was never charged with a terrorism-related crime.
“The US caused a great deal of suffering to people who posed no threat,” said Anne FitzGerald, director of research and crisis response at Amnesty International, who visited Yemen eight times to talk to Bashmilah, al-Asad, and others who appeared to be former CIA detainees. “International standards are there for a reason — they protect everyone.”
Among those the report found to have been wrongfully imprisoned were some whose cases had already drawn public attention. Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen, was mistaken for someone with the same name, grabbed in Macedonia, and flown to Afghanistan, where he spent four months in the CIA jail known as the Salt Pit.
Laid Saidi, an Algerian, identified in the Senate report as Abu Hudhaifa, was held in Afghanistan for 16 months, and his case became the subject of a New York Times article in 2006 after el-Masri called it to public attention.
The Senate report says that Saidi “was subjected to ice water baths and 66 hours of standing sleep deprivation before being released because the CIA discovered he was not the person he was believed to be.”
Among the others mistakenly held for periods of months or years, according to the report, were an “intellectually challenged” man held by the CIA solely to pressure a family member to provide information; two people who were former CIA informants; and two brothers who were falsely linked to Al Qaeda by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the 9/11 planner, who “fabricated” the information after being waterboarded 183 times.
In addition, the report says, “CIA records provide insufficient information to justify the detention of many other detainees.”
In practice, the report says, many prisoners were seized by CIA rendition teams or turned over by friendly foreign intelligence agencies based on thin evidence.
“You have an agency that has been presenting itself to Congress and the public as very professional, on top of everything,” said John Sifton, an advocacy director at Human Rights Watch. “The report shows they were flying by the seat of their pants. They were making it up as they went along.”
Related: Not Seeing the CIA Torture
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"Bush officials gave CIA latitude" by Ken Dilanian, Associated Press December 20, 2014
WASHINGTON — In July 2004, despite growing internal concerns about the CIA’s brutal interrogation methods, senior members of George W. Bush’s national security team gave the agency permission to employ the harsh tactics against an Al Qaeda facilitator the agency suspected was linked to a plot to disrupt the upcoming presidential election.
After weeks of torture that included being subjected to prolonged stress positions and sleep deprivation at a secret site in Romania, the prisoner, Janat Gul, begged to be killed.
But he steadfastly denied knowledge of any plot, CIA records show, leading interrogators to conclude he was not the hardened terrorist they thought he was, and that the informant who fingered him was a liar.
Yet there is no evidence the CIA relayed that information to the White House and the Justice Department, which continued to cite the case in legal justifications for the use of the brutal techniques.
In subsequent correspondence and testimony, the agency called the interrogation of Gul a success on the grounds that it helped expose their original source as a fabricator.
The Gul case is an example of what a Senate investigation portrays as a dysfunctional relationship between the Bush White House and the CIA regarding the brutal interrogation program. The White House did not press very hard for information, and the agency withheld details about the brutality of the techniques while exaggerating their effectiveness, the report shows.
Alberto Gonzales, the former attorney general who was White House counsel when harsh CIA interrogations were approved, said it was not the White House’s responsibility to manage the program. Gonzales was the only former senior Bush administration official who agreed to speak on the record about the matter.
It sure as hell was! They are the administration!
Once executive branch lawyers declared it legal for the CIA to use harsh methods on Al Qaeda prisoners in secret facilities, Gonzales said, it was up to the spy agency to oversee the mechanics, punish abuses, and keep policymakers informed.
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Did Gonzales really say ‘War is a dirty business, and human beings, sometimes they do things that they shouldn’t do.’?
Bush kept in dark on techniques, report says
Yeah, he only authorized them.
Dick Cheney’s defense of CIA torture shows how low we can go
CIA’s poisonous legacy starts with who we are
Whose "we?" I never authorized or tortured anyone, and it was done without my approval or permission.
CIA’s torture tactics must never be repeated
Unshackling the truth: CIA and torture
Whatever it is, it is not a cartoon!
"Panel to advise against penalty for CIA’s computer search" by Matt Apuzzo, New York Times December 20, 2014
WASHINGTON — A panel investigating the CIA’s search of a computer network used by staff members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who were looking into the CIA’s use of torture will recommend against punishing anyone involved in the episode, according to current and former government officials.
(Blog editor just shakes his head)
The panel will make that recommendation after the five CIA officials who were singled out by the agency’s inspector general this year for improperly ordering and carrying out the computer searches staunchly defended their actions, saying that they were lawful and in some cases done at the behest of John O. Brennan, the CIA director.
While effectively rejecting the most significant conclusions of the inspector general’s report, the panel, appointed by Brennan and composed of three CIA officers and two members from outside the agency, is still expected to criticize agency missteps that contributed to the fight with Congress.
But its decision not to recommend anyone for disciplinary action is likely to anger members of the Intelligence Committee, who have accused the CIA of trampling on the independence of Congress and interfering with its investigation of agency wrongdoing. The computer searches occurred late last year while the committee was finishing an excoriating report on the agency’s detention and interrogation program.
See: CIA Spied on Senate
That's only because the Senate tortured them.
The computer search raised questions about the separation of powers and caused one of the most public rifts in recent history between the nation’s intelligence agencies and the Senate oversight panel, which conducts most of its business in secret.
It led to an unusually heated and public rebuke by Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is the committee’s chairwoman, who accused the CIA of trampling on the independence of Congress and interfering with its investigation into agency wrongdoing.
Three CIA technology officers and two lawyers faced possible punishment. In their defense, some pointed to documents — including notes of a phone call with Brennan — that they said indicated that the director supported their actions, according to interviews with a half dozen current and former government officials and others briefed on the case.
The panel’s chairman is Evan Bayh, a former Democratic senator from Indiana who served on the Intelligence Committees. Its other outside member is Robert Bauer, who served as White House counsel during President Obama’s first term.
The panel’s specific conclusions are still being finalized, and it could be weeks before they present a report to the CIA. But officials said that the five agency employees have been informed that the panel will recommend they not be disciplined.
The results of such investigations, known as accountability boards, are not normally released. But given the public nature of the dispute, it is expected that some of the conclusions will eventually become public.
“The process is ongoing,” said Dean Boyd, the CIA spokesman. “We haven’t seen what it says, so it’s impossible to comment on it.”
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Related: Panel says CIA’s search of Senate network was proper
