[Reader-list] 13 People who made torture the American way

[Vivek Narayanan]

Well, at least with this list, we're finally starting at the top.

Paul D. Miller wrote:
> interesting article. I actually think that there were alot more people over the course of the 20th century - one of the bloodiest epochs of human history - that dealt with alot more "volume" of people, but hey... this is just the sideshow of the spectacle of imperial decline. Ladies and gents, we present "The Torture 13."
>
> Paul/Dj Spooky
>
> The 13 People Who Made Torture Possible 
> The Bush administration's Torture 13. 
>
> They authorized it, they decided how to implement it,
> and they crafted the legal fig leaf to justify it.
>
> by Marcy Wheeler
>
> Published on Monday, May 18, 2009 by Salon.com 
> Distributed by Common Dreams
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/18-13
>
> On April 16, the Obama administration released four
> memos that were used to authorize torture in
> interrogations during the Bush administration. When
> President Obama released the memos, he said, "It is our
> intention to assure those who carried out their duties
> relying in good faith upon legal advice from the
> Department of Justice that they will not be subject to
> prosecution."
>
> Yet 13 key people in the Bush administration cannot
> claim they relied on the memos from the DOJ's Office of
> Legal Counsel. Some of the 13 manipulated the federal
> bureaucracy and the legal process to "preauthorize"
> torture in the days after 9/11. Others helped implement
> torture, and still others helped write the memos that
> provided the Bush administration with a legal fig leaf
> after torture had already begun.
>
> The Torture 13 exploited the federal bureaucracy to
> establish a torture regime in two ways. First, they
> based the enhanced interrogation techniques on
> techniques used in the U.S. military's Survival,
> Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) program. The
> program -- which subjects volunteers from the armed
> services to simulated hostile capture situations --
> trains servicemen and -women to withstand coercion well
> enough to avoid making false confessions if captured.
> Two retired SERE psychologists contracted with the
> government to "reverse-engineer" these techniques to
> use in detainee interrogations.
>
> The Torture 13 also abused the legal review process in
> the Department of Justice in order to provide
> permission for torture. The DOJ's Office of Legal
> Counsel (OLC) played a crucial role. OLC provides
> interpretations on how laws apply to the executive
> branch. On issues where the law is unclear, like
> national security, OLC opinions can set the boundary
> for "legal" activity for executive branch employees. As
> Jack Goldsmith, OLC head from 2003 to 2004, explains
> it, "One consequence of [OLC's] power to interpret the
> law is the power to bestow on government officials what
> is effectively an advance pardon for actions taken at
> the edges of vague criminal statutes." OLC has the
> power, Goldsmith continues, to dispense
> "get-out-of-jail-free cards." The Torture 13 exploited
> this power by collaborating on a series of OLC opinions
> that repeatedly gave U.S. officials such a
> "get-out-of-jail-free card" for torturing.
>
> Between 9/11 and the end of 2002, the Torture 13
> decided to torture, then reverse-engineered the
> techniques, and then crafted the legal cover. Here's
> who they are and what they did:
>
> 1. Dick Cheney, vice president (2001-2009)
>
> On the morning of 9/11, after the evacuation of the
> White House, Dick Cheney summoned his legal counsel,
> David Addington, to return to work. The two had worked
> together for years. In the 1980s, when Cheney was a
> congressman from Wyoming and Addington a staff attorney
> to another congressman, Cheney and Addington argued
> that in Iran-Contra, the president could ignore
> congressional guidance on foreign policy matters.
> Between 1989 and 1992, when Dick Cheney was the elder
> George Bush's secretary of defense, Addington served as
> his counsel. He and Cheney saved the only known copies
> of abusive interrogation technique manuals taught at
> the School of the Americas. Now, on the morning of
> 9/11, they worked together to plot an expansive grab of
> executive power that they claimed was the correct
> response to the terrorist threat. Within two weeks,
> they had gotten a memo asserting almost unlimited power
> for the president as "the sole organ of the Nation in
> its foreign relations," to respond to the terrorist
> attacks. As part of that expansive view of executive
> power, Cheney and Addington would argue that domestic
> and international laws prohibiting torture and abuse
> could not prevent the president from authorizing harsh
> treatment of detainees in the war against terror.
>
> But Cheney and Addington also fought bureaucratically
> to construct this torture program. Cheney led the way
> by controlling who got access to President Bush -- and
> making sure his own views preempted others'. Each time
> the torture program got into trouble as it spread
> around the globe, Cheney intervened to ward off legal
> threats and limits, by badgering the CIA's inspector
> general when he reported many problems with the
> interrogation program, and by lobbying Congress to
> legally protect those who had tortured.
>
> Most shockingly, Cheney is reported to have ordered
> torture himself, even after interrogators believed
> detainees were cooperative. Since the 2002 OLC memo
> known as "Bybee Two" that authorizes torture premises
> its authorization for torture on the assertion that
> "the interrogation team is certain that" the detainee
> "has additional information he refuses to divulge,"
> Cheney appears to have ordered torture that was illegal
> even under the spurious guidelines of the memo.
>
> 2. David Addington, counsel to the vice president
> (2001-2005), chief of staff to the vice president
> (2005-2009) David Addington championed the fight to
> argue that the president -- in his role as commander in
> chief -- could not be bound by any law, including those
> prohibiting torture. He did so in two ways. He advised
> the lawyers drawing up the legal opinions that
> justified torture. In particular, he ran a "War
> Council" with Jim Haynes, John Yoo, John Rizzo and
> Alberto Gonzales (see all four below) and other trusted
> lawyers, which crafted and executed many of the legal
> approaches to the war on terror together.
>
> In addition, Addington and Cheney wielded bureaucratic
> carrots and sticks -- notably by giving or withholding
> promotions for lawyers who supported these illegal
> policies. When Jack Goldsmith withdrew a number of OLC
> memos because of the legal problems in them, Addington
> was the sole administration lawyer who defended them.
> Addington's close bureaucratic control over the legal
> analysis process shows he was unwilling to let the
> lawyers give the administration a "good faith"
> assessment of the laws prohibiting torture.
>
> 3. Alberto Gonzales, White House counsel (2001-2005),
> and attorney general (2005-2008)
>
> As White House counsel, Alberto Gonzales was nominally
> in charge of representing the president's views on
> legal issues, including national security issues. In
> that role, Gonzales wrote and reviewed a number of the
> legal opinions that attempted to immunize torture. Most
> important, in a Jan. 25, 2002, opinion reportedly
> written with David Addington, Gonzales paved the way
> for exempting al-Qaida detainees from the Geneva
> Conventions. His memo claimed the "new kind of war"
> represented by the war against al-Qaida "renders
> obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of
> enemy prisoners." In a signal that Gonzales and
> Addington adopted that position to immunize torture,
> Gonzales argued that one advantage of not applying the
> Geneva Convention to al-Qaida would "substantially
> reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution
> under the War Crimes Act." The memo even specifically
> foresaw the possibility of independent counsels'
> prosecuting acts against detainees.
>
> 4. James Mitchell, consultant
>
> Even while Addington, Gonzales and the lawyers were
> beginning to build the legal framework for torture, a
> couple of military psychologists were laying out the
> techniques the military would use. James Mitchell, a
> retired military psychologist, had been a leading
> expert in the military's SERE program. In December
> 2001, with his partner, Bruce Jessen, Mitchell
> reverse-engineered SERE techniques to be used to
> interrogate detainees. Then, in the spring of 2002,
> before OLC gave official legal approval to torture,
> Mitchell oversaw Abu Zubaydah's interrogation. An FBI
> agent on the scene describes Mitchell overseeing the
> use of "borderline torture." And after OLC approved
> waterboarding, Mitchell oversaw its use in ways that
> exceeded the guidelines in the OLC memo. Under
> Mitchell's guidance, interrogators used the waterboard
> with "far greater frequency than initially indicated"
> -- a total of 183 times in a month for Khalid Sheikh
> Mohammed and 83 times in a month for Abu Zubaydah.
>
> 5. George Tenet, director of Central Intelligence
> (1997-2004)
>
> As director of the CIA during the early years of the
> war against al-Qaida, Tenet had ultimate management
> responsibility for the CIA's program of capturing,
> detaining and interrogating suspected al-Qaida members
> and briefed top Cabinet members on those techniques.
> Published reports say Tenet approved every detail of
> the interrogation plans: "Any change in the plan --
> even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added
> -- was signed off on by the Director." It was under
> Tenet's leadership that Mitchell and Jessen's SERE
> techniques were applied to the administration's first
> allegedly high-value al-Qaida prisoner, Abu Zubaydah.
> After approval of the harsh techniques, CIA
> headquarters ordered Abu Zubaydah to be waterboarded
> even though onsite interrogators believed Zubaydah was
> "compliant." Since the Bybee Two memo authorizing
> torture required that interrogators believe the
> detainee had further information that could only be
> gained by using torture, this additional use of the
> waterboard was clearly illegal according to the memo.
>
> 6. Condoleezza Rice, national security advisor
> (2001-2005), secretary of state (2005-2008)
>
> As national security advisor to President Bush, Rice
> coordinated much of the administration's internal
> debate over interrogation policies. She approved (she
> now says she "conveyed the authorization") for the
> first known officially sanctioned use of torture -- the
> CIA's interrogation of Abu Zubaydah -- on July 17,
> 2002. This approval was given after the torture of
> Zubaydah had begun, and before receiving a legal OK
> from the OLC. The approval from the OLC was given
> orally in late July and in written form on Aug. 1,
> 2002. Rice's approval or "convey[ance] of
> authorization" led directly to the intensified torture
> of Zubaydah.
>
> 7. John Yoo, deputy assistant attorney general, Office
> of Legal Counsel (2001-2003)
>
> As deputy assistant attorney general of OLC focusing on
> national security for the first year and a half after
> 9/11, Yoo drafted many of the memos that would
> establish the torture regime, starting with the opinion
> claiming virtually unlimited power for the president in
> times of war. In the early months of 2002, he started
> working with Addington and others to draft two key
> memos authorizing torture: Bybee One (providing legal
> cover for torture) and Bybee Two (describing the
> techniques that could be used), both dated Aug. 1,
> 2002. He also helped draft a similar memo approving
> harsh techniques for the military completed on March
> 14, 2003, and even a memo eviscerating Fourth Amendment
> protections in the United States. The Bybee One and DOD
> memos argue that "necessity" or "self-defense" might be
> used as defenses against prosecution, even though the
> United Nations Convention Against Torture explicitly
> states that "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever,
> whether a state of war or a threat or war ... may be
> invoked as a justification of torture." Bybee Two,
> listing the techniques the CIA could use in
> interrogation, was premised on hotly debated
> assumptions. For example, the memo presumed that Abu
> Zubaydah was uncooperative, and had actionable
> intelligence that could only be gotten through harsh
> techniques. Yet Zubaydah had already cooperated with
> the FBI. The memo claimed Zubaydah was mentally and
> physically fit to be waterboarded, even though Zubaydah
> had had head and recent gunshot injuries. As Jack
> Goldsmith described Yoo's opinions, they "could be
> interpreted as if they were designed to confer immunity
> for bad acts." In all of his torture memos, Yoo ignored
> key precedents relating both specifically to
> waterboarding and to separation of powers.
>
> 8. Jay Bybee, assistant attorney general, Office of
> Legal Counsel (2001-2003) As head of the OLC when the
> first torture memos were approved, Bybee signed the
> memos named after him that John Yoo drafted. At the
> time, the White House knew that Bybee wanted an
> appointment as a Circuit Court judge; after signing his
> name to memos supporting torture, he received such an
> appointment. Of particular concern is the timing of
> Bybee's approval of the torture techniques. He first
> approved some techniques on July 24, 2002. The next
> day, Jim Haynes, the Defense Department's general
> counsel, ordered the SERE unit of DOD to collect
> information including details on waterboarding. While
> the record is contradictory on whether Haynes or CIA
> General Counsel John Rizzo gave that information to
> OLC, on the day they did so, OLC approved
> waterboarding. One of the documents in that packet
> identified these actions as torture, and stated that
> torture often produced unreliable results.
>
> 9. William "Jim" Haynes, Defense Department general
> counsel (2001-2008) As general counsel of the Defense
> Department, Jim Haynes oversaw the legal analysis of
> interrogation techniques to be used with military
> detainees. Very early on, he worked as a broker between
> SERE professionals and the CIA. His office first asked
> for information on "exploiting" detainees in December
> 2001, which is when James Mitchell is first known to
> have worked on interrogation plans. And later, in July
> 2002, when CIA was already using torture with Abu
> Zubaydah but needed scientific cover before OLC would
> approve waterboarding, Haynes ordered the SERE team to
> produce such information immediately.
>
> Later Haynes played a key role in making sure some of
> the techniques were adopted, with little review, by the
> military. He was thus crucial to the migration of
> torture to Guantanamo and then Iraq. In September 2002,
> Haynes participated in a key visit to Guantanamo (along
> with Addington and other lawyers) that coincided with
> requests from DOD interrogators there for some of the
> same techniques used by the CIA.
>
> Haynes ignored repeated warnings from within the armed
> services about the techniques, including statements
> that the techniques "may violate torture statute" and
> "cross the line of 'humane' treatment." In October
> 2002, when the legal counsel for the military's Joint
> Chiefs of Staff attempted to conduct a thorough legal
> review of the techniques, Haynes ordered her to stop,
> because "people were going to see" the objections that
> some in the military had raised. On Nov. 27, 2002,
> Haynes recommended that Secretary of Defense Donald
> Rumsfeld authorize many of the requested techniques,
> including stress positions, hooding, the removal of
> clothing, and the use of dogs -- the same techniques
> that showed up later in the abuse at Abu Ghraib.
>
> 10. Donald Rumsfeld, secretary of defense (2001-2006)
>
> As secretary of defense, Rumsfeld signed off on
> interrogation methods used in the military, notably for
> Abu Ghraib, Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo Bay.
> With this approval, the use of torture would move from
> the CIA to the military. A recent bipartisan Senate
> report concluded that "Secretary of Defense Donald
> Rumsfeld's authorization of interrogation techniques at
> Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse
> there." Rumsfeld personally approved techniques
> including the use of phobias (dogs), forced nudity and
> stress positions on Dec. 2, 2002, signing a one-page
> memo prepared for him by Haynes. These techniques were
> among those deemed torture in the Charles Graner case
> and the case of "20th hijacker" Mohammed al-Qahtani.
> Rumsfeld also personally authorized an interrogation
> plan for Moahmedou Ould Slahi on Aug. 13, 2003; the
> plan used many of the same techniques as had been used
> with al-Qahtani, including sensory deprivation and
> "sleep adjustment." And through it all, Rumsfeld
> maintained a disdainful view on these techniques, at
> one point quipping on a memo approving harsh
> techniques, "I stand for eight to 10 hours a day. Why
> is standing limited to four hours?"
>
> 11. John Rizzo, CIA deputy general counsel (2002-2004),
> acting general counsel of the Central Intelligence
> Agency (2001-2002, 2004-present)
>
> As deputy general counsel and then acting general
> counsel for the CIA, John Rizzo's name appears on all
> of the known OLC opinions on torture for the CIA. For
> the Bybee Two memo, Rizzo provided a number of
> factually contested pieces of information to OLC --
> notably, that Abu Zubaydah was uncooperative and
> physically and mentally fit enough to withstand
> waterboarding and other enhanced techniques. In
> addition, Rizzo provided a description of waterboarding
> using one standard, while the OLC opinion described a
> more moderate standard. Significantly, the description
> of waterboarding submitted to OLC came from the Defense
> Department, even though NSC had excluded DOD from
> discussions on the memo. Along with the description of
> waterboarding and other techniques, Rizzo also provided
> a document that called enhanced methods "torture" and
> deemed them unreliable -- yet even with this warning,
> Rizzo still advocated for the CIA to get permission to
> use those techniques.
>
> 12. Steven Bradbury, principal deputy assistant
> attorney general, OLC (2004), acting assistant attorney
> general, OLC (2005-2009)
>
> In 2004, the CIA's inspector general wrote a report
> concluding that the CIA's interrogation program might
> violate the Convention Against Torture. It fell to
> Acting Assistant Attorney General Steven Bradbury to
> write three memos in May 2005 that would dismiss the
> concerns the IG Report raised -- in effect, to affirm
> the OLC's 2002 memos legitimizing torture. Bradbury's
> memos noted the ways in which prior torture had
> exceeded the Bybee Two memo: the 183 uses of the
> waterboard for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in one month, the
> gallon and a half used in waterboarding, the 20 to 30
> times a detainee is thrown agains the wall, the 11 days
> a detainee had been made to stay awake, the extra
> sessions of waterboarding ordered from CIA headquarters
> even after local interrogators deemed Abu Zubaydah to
> be fully compliant. Yet Bradbury does not consider it
> torture. He notes the CIA's doctors' cautions about the
> combination of using the waterboard with a physically
> fatigued detainee, yet in a separate memo approves the
> use of sleep deprivation and waterboading in tandem. He
> repeatedly concedes that the CIA's interrogation
> techniques as actually implemented exceeded the SERE
> techniques, yet repeatedly points to the connection to
> SERE to argue the methods must be legal. And as with
> the Bybee One memo, Bradbury resorts to precisely the
> kind of appeal to exceptional circumstances -- "used
> only as necessary to protect against grave threats" --
> to distinguish U.S. interrogation techniques from the
> torture it so closely resembles around the world.
>
> 13. George W. Bush, president (2001-2009)
>
> While President Bush maintained some distance from the
> torture for years -- Cheney describes him "basically"
> authorizing it -- he served as the chief propagandist
> about its efficacy and necessity. Most notably, on
> Sept. 6, 2006, when Bush first confessed to the
> program, Bush repeated the claims made to support the
> Bybee Two memo: that Abu Zubaydah wouldn't talk except
> by using torture. And in 2006, after the CIA's own
> inspector general had raised problems with the program,
> after Steven Bradbury had admitted all the ways that
> the torture program exceeded guidelines, Bush still
> claimed it was legal.
>
> "[They] were designed to be safe, to comply with our
> laws, our Constitution and our treaty obligations. The
> Department of Justice reviewed the authorized methods
> extensively, and determined them to be lawful."
>
> With this statement, the deceptions and bureaucratic
> games all came full circle. After all, it was Bush who,
> on Feb. 7, 2002, had declared the Geneva Conventions
> wouldn't apply (a view the Supreme Court ultimately
> rejected).
>
> Bush's inaction in torture is as important as his
> actions. Bush failed to fulfill legal obligations to
> notify Congress of the torture program. A Senate
> Intelligence timeline on the torture program makes
> clear that Congress was not briefed on the techniques
> used in the torture program until after Abu Zubaydah
> had already been waterboarded. And in a 2003 letter,
> then House Intelligence ranking member Jane Harman
> shows that she had not yet seen evidence that Bush had
> signed off on this policy. This suggests President Bush
> did not provide the legally required notice to
> Congress, violating National Security Decisions
> Directive-286. What Bush did not say is as legally
> important as what he did say.
>
> Yet, ultimately, Bush and whatever approval he gave the
> program is at the center of the administration's
> embrace of torture. Condoleezza Rice recently said, "By
> definition, if it was authorized by the president, it
> did not violate our obligations in the Convention
> Against Torture." While Rice has tried to reframe her
> statement, it uses the same logic used by John Yoo and
> David Addington to justify the program, the shocking
> claim that international and domestic laws cannot bind
> the president in times of war. Bush's close allies
> still insist if he authorized it, it couldn't be
> torture. (c) 2009 Salon.com
>
> Marcy Wheeler writes her blog, emptywheel, for
> FireDogLake.com
>
>
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