March 23, 2010
My Father's Unjust Incarceration
The Case of the Holy Land Five
By NOOR ELASHI
A decade before my father received a 65-year prison sentence, he handed me an unusual book, one that ultimately shifted the way I perceive the world. It was titled Magic Eye, and it contained pages of what seemed like simple multicolored patterns. But each page had a hidden gift, a sensational truth. By diverging your eyes, my father told me, you’ll see an unexpected image. It seemed to challenge everything I’d ever known. I stared at the flat, distorted artwork until it transformed into a faded silhouette and then a three-dimensional shape like a group of dolphins or a rose-filled heart. Years later, as I flip through the pages of my family’s narrative, I see images that are far less whimsical, and indeed, painful.
Last week, U.S. attorney Jim Jacks filed a motion asking the federal judge of the Holy Land Foundation case to transfer my father—Ghassan Elashi, the charity’s co-founder—and his colleagues to a prison that closely monitors its inmates. If transferred to either of these so-called “Communication Management Units” in Terre Haute, Indiana or Marion, Illinois, my father’s phone calls would be more limited than they are now, in Seagoville, Texas. His letters would be monitored, his visitation time would be reduced to four hours a month and his conversations would be restricted to English, which is his second language.
Perhaps this may seem like an illustration of an effective justice system at work. But if one diverges his or her eyes, the camouflaged truth will slowly unfold, until it comes into focus. I, for one, see a hazel-eyed girl with pale skin and soft dark curls losing her home uponIsrael’s creation in 1948. The young woman, now my paternal grandmother, often tells me about her banishment from Jaffa, a once vibrant Palestinian city known for its orange groves and turquoise beach. I also see a man who was expelled from his native Gaza City in 1967 and was not allowed to return. I grew up hearing stories from this man, my father, about the plight of Palestinians, whom he called “a voiceless population” suffering from occupation, starvation, demolished homes, uprooted trees, constrained movement and a devastated economy.
As I look deeper, I see the Holy Land Foundation rise to stardom in the eyes of human rights activists worldwide who had witnessed this charitable organization alleviate poverty in Occupied Palestine through bags of rice, boxes of medicine, conventional humanitarian aid. I see my family scrutinized throughout the 1990s due to agenda-driven reports linking my father to terrorism—reports written by individuals who saw the HLF’s strength as a threat, for they wanted Palestinians to remain weak and desolate. I see President Bush shutting down the Holy Land Foundation three months after Sept. 11, 2001, calling the action “another important step in the financial fight against terror.”
I see my father and his colleagues tried in 2007 and almost vindicated. I see him tried a second time and convicted in 2008, thereby receiving a life-long sentence. In both trials, prosecutors argued that the HLF gave money to Palestinian zakat (charity) committees that they claimed were controlled by Hamas, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 1995. To prove this, prosecutors called to the stand an Israeli intelligence agent testifying under the pseudonym of Avi who claimed he could “smell Hamas.” The prosecutors intimidated the jury by showing them scenes of suicide bombings completely unaffiliated with the HLF, and they used guilt by association by linking my father and the other defendants to relatives who are members of Hamas. The defense attorneys’ argument was simple: The Holy Land Five gave charity to the same zakat committees to which the American government agency USAID (United States Agency for International Development) gave money. Furthermore, none of the zakat committees included in the HLF indictment were named on any of the U.S. Treasury Department’s lists of designated terrorist organizations.
Nationally respected human rights law professors such as David Cole have associated the Holy Land case with McCarthyism, and other experts have called it a miscarriage of justice. The book that my father gave me had this subtitle: A New Way of Looking at the World. If one looks at our world with a fresh pair of eyes, he or she will see that Jim Jacks’ request for harsher prison conditions is unnecessarily cruel, and that supporting the appeal process is the only way to achieve justice. He or she will also see that the Holy Land Five arepolitical prisoners, and that we live in a twisted time, a time when humanitarians are pursued relentlessly for political purposes.
Noor Elashi is a Palestinian-American and writer based in New York City.
Showing posts with label Bush-Cheney. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bush-Cheney. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Monday, December 14, 2009
Webster Tarpley: Obama Declares War on Pakistan (after Bush declared war on Afganistan which Obama continues
Note: I'm sort of half a fan of Webster Tarpley. He comes up with more than his fair share of howlers. But this article is far and away the best I've read or heard about what the US is doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I've believed for some time that it was the Bush-Cheney plan to destabilize Pakistan and do something crazy about its nukes, but this article gives valuable details. --Ronald Bleier
Obama Declares War On Pakistan
Webster G. Tarpley
Infowars.com
December 14, 2009
http://www.infowars.com/obama-declares-war-on-pakistan/
Obama declared all-out war on Pakistan during his December 1, 2009,
West Point speech.
Obama's West Point speech of December 1 represents far more than the obvious
brutal escalation in Afghanistan - it is nothing less than a declaration of
all-out war by the United States against Pakistan. This is a brand-new war,
a much wider war now targeting Pakistan, a country of 160 million people
armed with nuclear weapons. In the process, Afghanistan is scheduled to be
broken up. This is no longer the Bush Cheney Afghan war we have known in the
past. This is something immensely bigger: the attempt to destroy the
Pakistani central government in Islamabad and to sink that country into a
chaos of civil war, Balkanization, subdivision and general mayhem. The
chosen strategy is to massively export the Afghan civil war into Pakistan
and beyond, fracturing Pakistan along ethnic lines. It is an oblique war
using fourth-generation or guerrilla warfare techniques to assail a country
which the United States and its associates in aggression are far too weak to
attack directly. In this war, the Taliban are employed as US proxies. This
aggression against Pakistan is Obama's attempt to wage the Great Game
against the hub of Central Asia and Eurasia or more generally.
US DETERRED FROM OPEN WAR BY PAKISTAN'S NUKES
The ongoing civil war in Afghanistan is merely a pretext, a cover story
designed to provide the United States with a springboard for a geopolitical
destabilization campaign in the entire region which cannot be publicly
avowed. In the blunt cynical world of imperialist aggression à la Bush and
Cheney, a pretext might have been manufactured to attack Pakistan directly.
But Pakistan is far too large and the United States is far too weak and too
bankrupt for such an undertaking. In addition, Pakistan is a nuclear power,
possessing atomic bombs and medium range missiles needed to deliver them.
What we are seeing is a novel case of nuclear deterrence in action. The US
cannot send an invasion fleet or set up airbases nearby because Pakistani
nuclear weapons might destroy them. To this extent, the efforts of Ali
Bhutto and A.Q. Khan to provide Pakistan a deterrent capability have been
vindicated. But the US answer is to find ways to attack Pakistan below the
nuclear threshold, and even below the conventional threshold. This is where
the tactic of exporting the Afghan civil war to Pakistan comes in.
The architect of the new Pakistani civil war is US Special Forces General
Stanley McChrystal, who organized the infamous network of US torture
chambers in Iraq. McChrystal's specific credential for the Pakistani civil
war is his role in unleashing the Iraqi civil war of Sunnis versus Shiites
by creating "al Qaeda in Iraq" under the infamous and now departed double
agent Zarkawi. If Iraqi society as a whole had lined up against the US
invaders, the occupiers would have soon been driven out. The counter-gang
known as "Al Qaeda in Iraq" avoided that possibility by killing Shiites, and
thus calling forth massive retaliation in the form of a civil war. These
tactics are drawn from the work of British General Frank Kitson, who wrote
about them in his book Low Intensity Warfare. If the United States possesses
a modern analog to Heinrich Himmler of the SS, it is surely General
McChrystal, Obama's hand-picked choice. McChrystal's superior, Gen Petraeus,
wants to be the new Field Marshal von Hindenburg - in other words, he wants
to be the next US president.
The vulnerability of Pakistan which the US and its NATO associates are
seeking to exploit can best be understood using a map of the prevalent
ethnic groups of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, and India. Most maps show only
political borders which date back to the time of British imperialism, and
therefore fail to reflect the principal ethnic groups of the region. For the
purposes of this analysis, we must start by recognizing a number of groups.
First is the Pashtun people, located mainly in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Then we have the Baluchis, located primarily in Pakistan and Iran. The
Punjabis inhabit Pakistan, as do the Sindhis. The Bhutto family came from
Sind.
PASHTUNISTAN
The US and NATO strategy begins with the Pashtuns, the ethnic group from
which the so-called Taliban are largely drawn. The Pashtuns represent a
substantial portion of the population of Afghanistan, but here they are
alienated from the central government under President Karzai in Kabul, even
though the US puppet Karzai passes for a Pashtun himself. The issue involves
the Afghan National Army, which was created by the United States after the
2001 invasion. The Afghan officer corps are largely Tajiks drawn from the
Northern Alliance that allied with the United States against the Pashtun
Talibans. The Tajiks speak Dari, sometimes known as eastern Persian. Other
Afghan officers come from the Hazara people. The important thing is that the
Pashtuns feel shut out.
The US strategy can best be understood as a deliberate effort at
persecuting, harassing, antagonizing, strafing, repressing, and murdering
the Pashtuns. The additional 40,000 US and NATO forces which Obama demands
for Afghanistan will concentrate in Helmand province and other areas where
the Pashtuns are in the majority. The net effect will be to increase the
rebellion of the fiercely independent Pashtuns against Kabul and the foreign
occupation, and at the same time to push many of these newly radicalized
mujaheddin fighters across the border into Pakistan, where they can wage war
against the central government in Islamabad. US aid will flow directly to
war lords and drug lords, increasing the centrifugal tendencies.
On the Pakistani side, the Pashtuns are also alienated from the central
government. Islamabad and the army are seen by them as too much the
creatures of the Punjabis, with some input from the Sindhis. On the
Pakistani side of the Pashtun territory, US operations include wholesale
assassinations from unmanned aerial vehicles or drones, murders by CIA and
reportedly Blackwater snipers, plus blind terrorist massacres like the
recent ones in Peshawar which the Pakistani Taliban are blaming on
Blackwater, acting as a subcontractor of the CIA. These actions are
intolerable and humiliating for a proud sovereign state. Every time the
Pashtuns are clobbered, they blame the Punjabis in Islamabad for the dirty
deals with the US that allow this to happen. The most immediate goal of
Obama's Afghan-Pakistan escalation is therefore to promote a general
secessionist uprising of the entire Pashtun people under Taliban auspices,
which would already have the effect of destroying the national unity of both
Kabul and Islamabad.
BALUCHISTAN
The other ethnic group which the Obama strategy seeks to goad into
insurrection and secession is the Baluchis. The Baluchis have their own
grievances against the Iranian central government in Tehran, which they see
as being dominated by Persians. An integral part of the new Obama policy is
to expand the deadly flights of the CIA Predators and other assassination
drones into Baluchistan. One pretext for this is the report, peddled for
example by Michael Ware of CNN, that Osama bin Laden and his MI-6 sidekick
Zawahiri are both holed up in the Baluchi city of Quetta, where they operate
as the kingpins of the so-called "Quetta Shura." Blackwater teams cannot be
far behind. In Iranian Baluchistan, the CIA is funding the murderous
Jundullah organization, which was recently denounced by Teheran for the
murder of a number of top officials of the Iranian Pasdaran Revolutionary
guards. The rebellion of Baluchistan would smash the national unity of both
Pakistan and Iran, thus helping to destroy two of the leading targets of US
policy.
OBAMA'S RUBE GOLDBERG STRATEGY
Even Chris Matthews of MSNBC, normally a devoted acolyte of Obama, pointed
out that the US strategy as announced at West Point very much resembles a
Rube Goldberg contraption. (In the real world, "al Qaeda" is of course the
CIA's own Arab and terrorist legion.) In the world of official US myth, the
enemy is supposed to be "Al Qaeda." But, even according to the US
government, there are precious few "Al Qaeda" fighters left in Afghanistan.
Why then, asked Matthews, concentrate US forces in Afghanistan where "Al
Qaeda" is not, rather than in Pakistan where "Al Qaeda" is now alleged to
be?
One elected official who has criticized this incongruous mismatch is
Democratic Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, who said in a television
interview that 'Pakistan, in the border region near Afghanistan, is perhaps
the epicenter [of global terrorism], although al Qaida is operating all over
the world, in Yemen, in Somalia, in northern Africa, affiliates in Southeast
Asia. Why would we build up 100,000 or more troops in parts of Afghanistan
included that are not even near the border? You know, this buildup is in
Helmand Province. That's not next door to Waziristan. So I'm wondering, what
exactly is this strategy, given the fact that we have seen that there is a
minimal presence of Al Qaida in Afghanistan, but a significant presence in
Pakistan? It just defies common sense that a huge boots on the ground
presence in a place where these people are not is the right strategy. It
doesn't make any sense to me.' Indeed. 'The Wisconsin Democrat also warned
that U.S. policy in Afghanistan could actually push terrorists and
extremists into Pakistan and, as a consequence, further destabilize the
region: "You know, I asked the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
Admiral Mullen, and Mr. Holbrooke, our envoy over there, a while ago, you
know, is there a risk that if we build up troops in Afghanistan, that will
push more extremists into Pakistan?" he told ABC. "They couldn't deny it,
and this week, Prime Minister Gilani of Pakistan specifically said that his
concern about the buildup is that it will drive more extremists into
Pakistan, so I think it's just the opposite, that this boots-on-the-ground
approach alienates the Afghan population and specifically encourages the
Taliban to further coalesce with Al Qaida, which is the complete opposite of
our national security interest."'1 Of course, this is all intentional and
motivated by US imperialist raison d'état. .
MALICK: "DID OBAMA DECLARE WAR ON PAKISTAN?"
Obama's speech did everything possible to blur the distinction between
Afghanistan and Pakistan, which are after all two sovereign states and both
members of the United Nations in their own right. Ibrahim Sajid Malick, US
correspondent for Samaa TV, one of the largest Pakistan television networks,
called attention to this ploy: 'Speaking to a hall full of cadets at the US
Military Academy of West Point, President Barack Obama almost seemed like he
might be declaring war on Pakistan. Every time he mentioned Afghanistan,
Pakistan preceded mention.. Sitting at the back benches of the hall at one
point I almost jumped out of my chair when he said: "the stakes are even
higher within a nuclear-armed Pakistan, because we know that al Qaeda and
other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe
that they would use them." I was shocked because a succession of American
officials recently confirmed that the Pakistani arsenal is secure.'2 This
article is entitled "Did Obama Declare War On Pakistan?", and we can chalk
the question mark up to diplomatic discretion. During congressional hearings
involving General McChrystal and US Ambassador Eikenberry, Afghanistan and
Pakistan were simply fused into one sinister entity known as "Afpak" or even
"Afpakia."
a.. A d v e r t i s e m e n t
b..
In the summer of 2007, Obama, coached by Zbigniew Brzezinski and other
controllers, was the originator of the unilateral US policy of using
Predator drones for political assassinations inside Pakistan. This
assassination policy is now being massively escalated along with the troop
strength: "Two weeks ago in Pakistan, Central Intelligence Agency
sharpshooters killed eight people suspected of being militants of the
Taliban and Al Qaeda, and wounded two others in a compound that was said to
be used for terrorist training.. The White House has authorized an expansion
of the C.I.A.'s drone program in Pakistan's lawless tribal areas, officials
said this week, to parallel the president's decision.to send 30,000 more
troops to Afghanistan. American officials are talking with Pakistan about
the possibility of striking in Baluchistan for the first time - a
controversial move since it is outside the tribal areas - because that is
where Afghan Taliban leaders are believed to hide."3 The US is now training
more Predator operators than combat pilots.
BLACKWATER ACCUSED IN PESHAWAR MASSACRE OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN
The CIA, the Pentagon, and their various contractors among the private
military firms are now on a murder spree across Pakistan, attacking peaceful
villages and wedding parties, among other targets. Blackwater, now calling
itself Xe Services and Total Intelligence Solutions, is heavily involved:
'At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations
Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite
division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they
plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives,
"snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside
and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The
Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help direct
a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the
well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source
within the US military intelligence apparatus.' 4
As shocking as Scahill's report is, it must nevertheless be viewed as a
limited hangout, since there is no mention of the persistent charges that a
large part of the deadly bombings in Peshawar and other Pakistani cities are
being carried out by Blackwater, as this news item suggests: "ISLAMABAD Oct.
29 (Xinhua) - Chief of Taliban movement in Pakistan Hakimullah Mehsud has
blamed the controversial American private firm Blackwater for the bomb blast
in Peshawar which killed 108 people, local news agency NNI reported
Thursday."5 This was blind terrorism designed for maximum slaughter,
especially among women and children.
US ALSO AT WAR WITH UZBEKISTAN?
Scahill's report also suggests that US black ops have reached into
Uzbekistan, a post-Soviet country of 25 million which borders Afghanistan to
the north: 'In addition to planning drone strikes and operations against
suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in Pakistan for both JSOC and the CIA,
the Blackwater team in Karachi also helps plan missions for JSOC inside
Uzbekistan against the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, according to the
military intelligence source. Blackwater does not actually carry out the
operations, he said, which are executed on the ground by JSOC forces. "That
piqued my curiosity and really worries me because I don't know if you
noticed but I was never told we are at war with Uzbekistan," he said. "So,
did I miss something, did Rumsfeld come back into power?"' 6 Such are the
ways of hope and change.
The role of US intelligence in fomenting the Baluchistan rebellion for the
purpose of breaking Pakistan apart is also confirmed by Professor
Chossudovsky: 'Already in 2005, a report by the US National Intelligence
Council and the CIA forecast a "Yugoslav-like fate" for Pakistan "in a
decade with the country riven by civil war, bloodshed and inter-provincial
rivalries, as seen recently in Baluchistan." (Energy Compass, 2 March 2005).
According to the NIC-CIA, Pakistan is slated to become a "failed state" by
2015, "as it would be affected by civil war, complete Talibanization and
struggle for control of its nuclear weapons". (Quoted by former Pakistan
High Commissioner to UK, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Times of India, 13 February
2005).. Washington favors the creation of a "Greater Baluchistan" which
would integrate the Baluch areas of Pakistan with those of Iran and possibly
the Southern tip of Afghanistan, thereby leading to a process of political
fracturing in both Iran and Pakistan.'7 The Iranians, for their part, are
adamant that the US is committing acts of war on their territory in
Baluchistan: "TEHRAN, Oct. 29 (Xinhua) - Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali
Larijani said .that there are some concrete evidences showing U.S.
involvement in recent deadly bomb explosions in the country's
Sistan-Baluchistan province, the official IRNA news agency reported. .. The
deadly suicide attack by Sunni rebel group Jundallah (God's soldiers)
occurred on Oct. 18 in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province near the border
with Pakistan when the local officials were preparing a ceremony in which
the local tribal leaders were to meet the military commanders of Iran's
Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).8
US GOAL: CUT THE PAKISTAN ENERGY CORRIDOR BETWEEN IRAN, CHINA
Why would the United States be so obsessed with the breakup of Pakistan? One
reason is that Pakistan is traditionally a strategic ally and economic
partner of China, a country which the US and British are determined to
oppose and contain on the world stage. Specifically, Pakistan could function
as an energy corridor linking the oil fields of Iran and possibly even Iraq
with the Chinese market by means of a pipeline that would cross the
Himalayas above Kashmir. This is the so-called "Pipelinestan" issue. This
would give China a guaranteed land-based oil supply not subject to
Anglo-American naval superiority, while also cutting out the 12,000 mile
tanker route around the southern rim of Asia. As a recent news report points
out: 'Beijing has been pressuring Tehran for China's participation in the
pipeline project and Islamabad, while willing to sign a bilateral agreement
with Iran, has also welcomed China's participation. According to an
estimate, such a pipeline would result in Pakistan getting $200 million to
$500 million annually in transit fees alone. China and Pakistan are already
working on a proposal for laying a trans-Himalayan pipeline to carry Middle
Eastern crude oil to western China. Pakistan provides China the shortest
possible route to import oil from the Gulf countries.. The pipeline, which
would run from the southern Pakistan port of Gwadar and follow the Karakoram
highway, would be partly financed by Beijing. The Chinese are also building
a refinery at Gwadar. Imports using the pipeline would allow Beijing to
reduce the portion of its oil shipped through the narrow and unsafe Strait
of Malacca, which at present carries up to 80% of its oil imports. Islamabad
also plans to extend a railway track to China to connect it to Gwadar. The
port is also considered the likely terminus of proposed multibillion-dollar
gas pipelines reaching from the South Pars fields in Iran or from Qatar, and
from the Daulatabad fields in Turkmenistan for export to world markets. Syed
Fazl-e-Haider, "Pakistan, Iran sign gas pipeline deal," Asia Times, 27 May
2009.9 This is the normal, peaceful economic progress and cooperation which
the Anglo-Americans are hell-bent on stopping.
Oil and natural gas pipelines from Iran across Pakistan and into China would
carry energy resources into the Middle Kingdom, and would also serve as
conveyor belts for Chinese economic influence into the Middle East. This
would make Anglo-American dominion increasingly tenuous in a part of the
world which London and Washington have traditionally sought to control as
part of their overall strategy of world domination.
US domestic propaganda is already portraying Pakistan as the new home base
of terrorism. The four pathetic patsies going on trial for an alleged plot
to bomb a synagogue in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx in New York
City had been carefully sheep-dipped to associate them with the shadowy and
suspicious Jaish-e-Mohammad, allegedly a Pakistani terrorist group. The same
goes for the five Moslems from Northern Virginia who have just been arrested
near Lahore in Pakistan.
INDIA AND IRAN
As far as the neighboring states are concerned, India under the unfortunate
Manmohan Singh seems to be accepting the role of continental dagger against
Pakistan and China on behalf of the US and the British. This is a recipe for
a colossal tragedy. India should rather make permanent peace with Pakistan
by vacating the Vale of Kashmir, where 95% of the population is Moslem and
would like to join Pakistan. Without a solution to this issue, there will be
no peace on the subcontinent.
Regarding Iran, George Friedman, the head of the Stratfor outlet of the US
intelligence community recently told Russia Today that the great novelty of
the next decade will be an alliance of the United States with Iran directed
against Russia. In that scenario, Iran would cut off oil to China
altogether. That is the essence of the Brzezinski strategy. It is urgent
that the antiwar movement in the United States regroup and begin a new
mobilization against the cynical hypocrisy of Obama's war and escalation
policy, which suprasses even the war crimes of the Bush-Cheny neocons. In
this new phase of the Great Game, the stakes are incalculable.
1
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/06/feingold-why-surge-where_n_381729.html
2 Ibrahim Sajid Malick, "Did Obama Declare War On Pakistan?," Pakistan for
Pakistanis Blog, 2 December 2009.
http://ibrahimsajidmalick.com/did-Obama-declare-war-on-pakistan/484/
3 Scott Shane, "C.I.A. to Expand Use of Drones in Pakistan," New York Times,
December 3, 2009. See also David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt, "Between the
Lines, an Expansion in Pakistan," New York Times, 1 December 2009.
4 Jeremy Scahill, "The Secret US War in Pakistan," The Nation, November 23,
2009
5 "Taliban in Pakistan blame U.S. Blackwater for deadly blast," Xinhua News
Agency, 29 October 2009,
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-10/29/content_12358907.htm
6 Jeremy Scahill, "The Secret US War in Pakistan," The Nation, November 23,
2009
7 Michel Chossudovsky, The Destabilization of Pakistan, Global Research,
December 30, 2007
8 "Iran says having evidences of U.S. involvement in suicide bomb attacks,"
Xinhua, 29 October 2009.
9 http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE27Df03.html
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Truthout: Jason Leopold: ACLU Blasts Obama for covering up Bush-Cheney Crimes
Blistering Indictment Leveled Against Obama Over His Handling of Bush-Era War Crimes
Saturday 12 December 2009
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report
http://www.truthout.org/12110911
During his 36-minute speech after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway Thursday, President Barack Obama explained to an audience of 1,000 how the United States has a "moral
and strategic interest" in abiding by a code of conduct when waging war - even one that pits the
US against a "vicious adversary that abides by no rules."
"That is what makes us different from those whom we fight," Obama said. "That is a source of
our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo
Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.
And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard."
To many human rights advocates, however, Obama's high-minded declaration rang hollow in
light of fresh reports that his administration continues to operate secret prisons in Afghanistan
where detainees have allegedly been tortured and where the International Committee for the
Red Cross has been denied access to the prisoners.
Obama has substituted words for action on issues surrounding torture since his first days in
office nearly one year ago. Last June, on the 25th anniversary of the Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Obama said the US
government "must stand against torture wherever it takes place" and that his administration
"is committed to taking concrete actions against torture and to address the needs of its victims."
But it's clear that his pledge does not apply to torture committed by Bush administration officials.
That's the point the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made shortly after Obama's
acceptance speech. Officials from the civil rights organization issued a withering indictment of
the Obama administration's handling of clear-cut cases of war crimes they say were committed
by former Bush officials who the Obama administration not only refuses to prosecute but has gone
to extraordinary lengths to cover up.
"We're increasingly disappointed and alarmed by the current administration's stance on
accountability for torture," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, during a conference call with reporters. "On every front, the [Obama] administration is actively obstructing accountability. This administration is shielding Bush administration officials from civil liability, criminal investigation and even public scrutiny for their role in authorizing torture."
Before leaving office, Dick Cheney said he approved waterboarding on at least three "high value" detainees and the "enhanced interrogation" of 33 other prisoners. President Bush made a somewhat vaguer acknowledgement of authorizing these techniques.
The ACLU and other civil rights groups said Bush and Cheney's comments amounted to an admission of war crimes.
Under the Convention Against Torture, the clear record that the Bush administration used waterboarding and other brutal techniques to extract information from detainees should have
triggered the United States to conduct a full investigation and to prosecute the offenders. In the
case of the
US's refusal to do so, other nations would be obligated to act under the principle of universality.
However, instead of living up to that treaty commitment, the Obama administration is resisting
calls for government investigations and going to court to block lawsuits that demand release of
torture evidence or seek civil penalties against officials implicated in the torture.
Jaffer said that while "the Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture, now the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity."
Defending John Yoo
Indeed, last week, Obama's Justice Department asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to dismiss a lawsuit filed against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who authored some
of the memos that justified torture largely by re-defining what the term means.
In seeking to quash that lawsuit filed by alleged "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla, Obama's
lawyers argued, in a friend-of-the-court brief that Justice Department lawyers who advise on
torture and other human rights issues are entitled to absolute immunity from lawsuits.
"The Holder Justice Department insists that they are absolutely not responsible, and that they are
free to act according to a far lower standard of conduct than that which governs Americans
generally," wrote Scott Horton, a human rights attorney and constitutional expert in a column published on the Harper's web site. "Indeed, this has emerged as a sort of ignoble mantra for the Justice Department, uniting both the Bush and Obama administrations."
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley went even further, asserting that the Obama administration's arguments reversed more than six decades of US legal precedents - dating back
to the post-World War II Nuremberg trials - which held that legal wordsmiths who clear the way
for war crimes share the guilt with the actual perpetrators.
The Obama administration "has gutted the hard-fought victories in Nuremberg where lawyers and judges were often guilty of war crimes in their legal advice and opinions," Turley said. "Quite a legacy for the world's newest Nobel Peace Prize winner."
What's remarkable about the Obama Justice Department's amicus brief in the Padilla case is that it didn't need to be filed to begin with. Yoo hired a private defense attorney, albeit one who is paid
for with taxpayer dollars, earlier this year when the Justice Department backed out of representing Yoo due to undisclosed conflicts.
"Qualified Immunity"
In court papers filed last week, the Obama administration took a hard line in another case, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling that gave detainees the right to challenge their indefinite imprisonment doesn't apply to the cases of Yasser Al-Zahrani and Salah Al-Salami, two Guantanamo prisoners who committed suicide in June 2006.
The fathers of the men, who were never charged with a crime, sued Bush administration Defense Department officials in federal court, arguing that the torture their sons endured drove them to hang themselves on June 10, 2006 after being detained for four years.
But the Obama administration said in a legal brief that the Military Commissions Act of 2006
stripped the courts of jurisdiction to hear lawsuits that challenged the "detention, transfer, treatment
or conditions of confinement" of "enemy combatants."
Moreover, in court papers filed in June, the Obama administration said, "Judicial intrusion into this politically sensitive area by creating a damages remedy for detainees could subvert these military
and diplomatic efforts and lead to 'embarrassment of our government abroad.'"
Besides, the Obama administration said, just as John Yoo is entitled to absolute immunity, Defense Department officials are entitled to "qualified immunity" because the "Fifth and Eighth Amendments do not extend to Guantánamo Bay detainees."
Earlier this week, a report prepared by the Seton Hall University School of Law Center for Policy
& Research called into question the veracity of the government's official version of the deaths of the two men and that of a third prisoner, who was also found hanging in his cell on June 10, 2006. The government attributed the suicides to "asymmetrical warfare."
"Both the time and exact manner of the deaths remain uncertain, and the presence of rags stuffed in the detainees' throats is unexplained," the report said.
CIA Renditions and State Secrets
The Obama administration also has mounted an aggressive defense in another high-profile case regarding the Bush administration's wrongdoing.
The Bush administration had invoked the state secrets privilege in a 2007 lawsuit filed against Jeppesen DataPlan, a subsidiary of Boeing, that is accused of knowingly flying people kidnapped by the CIA to secret overseas prisons where they were tortured. Bush's legal move was successful in getting the case tossed out, but the ACLU appealed the decision.
When that appeal came up last February, Obama's Justice Department shocked civil liberties and human rights advocates by dispatching attorneys to federal court in San Francisco, where they invoked the same state secrets privilege.
Even the judge was baffled, and asked a Justice Department attorney if the change in US government leadership would lead to a change in the legal position with regard to state secrets. The answer was a resounding "no."
Still, the appellate court ruled in April that the case could move forward, asserting that state secrets can only be cited with regard to specific evidence, and not used as a means to dismiss an entire lawsuit. Justice Department attorneys will be back in court next week to appeal that decision, carrying forward the Bush administration's legacy of secrecy.
Concealing Evidence
The Obama administration also has tried to block Binyam Mohamed, one of the victims named in Jeppesen lawsuit, from obtaining documentary evidence to support his claims that he was tortured while in US custody.
Terrorism-related charges against Mohamed were dropped last year when his attorneys sued to gain access to more than three dozen secret documents. He was released in February after being imprisoned for seven years and sent back to Great Britain.
In a legal brief, the ACLU said Mohamed was beaten so severely on numerous occasions that he routinely lost consciousness and during one gruesome torture session "a scalpel was used to make incisions all over his body, including his penis, after which a hot stinging liquid was poured into his open wounds."
Obama's determination to protect these dirty secrets of its predecessors even reached across the Atlantic. The Obama administration told British officials that intelligence sharing between the US and the UK might be disrupted if seven redacted paragraphs contained in secret US documents relating to Mohamed's torture allegations were made public by a British High Court.
Those threats were conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the CIA, and Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones, according to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
"The United States Government's position is that, if the redacted paragraphs are made public, then the United States will re-evaluate its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United Kingdom with the real risk that it would reduce the intelligence it provided," the High Court wrote in a ruling in February when it agreed to keep the paragraphs blacked out.
"There is a real risk, if we restored the redacted paragraphs, the United States Government, by its review of the shared intelligence arrangements, could inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains."
After the High Court's ruling, the Obama White House issued a statement thanking the British government "for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information" and added that the order would "preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."
Following the High Court's reversal, the New York Times published a sharply worded editorial criticizing the Obama administration's hard-line position in the Mohamed case.
"The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up," the Times wrote.
Torture Photos
Obama also reversed a commitment earlier this year to release photos of US soldiers torturing and abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama said his decision stemmed from his personal review of the photos and his concern that their release would endanger American soldiers in the field, but the reversal also came after several weeks of Republican and right-wing media attacks on him as weak on national security.
The Obama administration then appealed to the US Supreme Court to overturn a federal court order requiring release of the images, and Obama's aides worked with Congress to pass legislation giving the Defense Secretary the power to keep the photographs under wraps.
The legislation passed in November and was promptly signed by Obama. By blocking release of the photographs, Obama essentially killed any meaningful chance of opening the door to an investigation or independent inquiry of senior Pentagon and Bush administration officials who implemented the policies that led to the abuses captured in the images.
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, the ACLU also questioned the value of Obama's much-touted executive order - signed on his second day in office - demanding a shift away from excessive secrecy toward a presumption in favor of open government.
"We have not seen the presumption translated into the release of more information," Jaffer said. "There are several cases which we are just at a loss to understand why the information we are requesting is still being withheld."
Those documents include ones related to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program and transcripts of Combatant Status Review Tribunals where detainees "describe the abuse they suffered at the hands of their CIA interrogators."
However, the ACLU's Freedom of Information lawsuit continues to unearth bits of new evidence. For instance, the ACLU obtained hundreds of new documents, including a one-page questionnaire apparently from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to the CIA.
"How close is each technique to the 'rack and screw'?" the questionnaire asked, referring to a medieval torture device.
"Anytime you need to ask a question like that it is deeply disturbing and shows you've strayed from constitutional norms," said ACLU legal fellow Alex Abdo. "You're asking a question as to whether the conduct you're about to authorize relates to rack and screw and that in and of itself should be evidence enough that you're going too far. It never should get to that point."
Other newly disclosed documents show that the Bush White House was deeply involved in discussions about destroying 92 torture videotapes.
Obama and Congress
Perhaps, Obama's most positive act on behalf of open government came in April when he resisted pressure from the CIA and ordered the release of legal memorandums written by lawyers in Bush's Office of Legal Counsel, including Yoo and two former OLC chiefs, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury.
The memos used creative definitions regarding torture to authorize the CIA to apply a variety of torture techniques to so-called "high-value" prisoners, including beatings, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, placing insects inside a confinement box to induce fear, exposing naked detainees to extreme heat and cold, and shackling prisoners to the ceilings of their prison cells or in other painful "stress positions."
In the face of this evidence, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and his counterpart in the House, John Conyers, floated competing proposals early in the year for a 9/11-style "truth commission" or a blue-ribbon investigative panel to look into the circumstances that led the Bush administration to create its policy of torture.
Obama signaled that he was open to the idea of a "truth commission" but he said he was concerned "about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations."
After Republicans and neoconservative opinion writers went on the attack, Obama quickly retreated, calling lawmakers to the White House for a closed-door meeting in late April to talk them out of the idea of moving forward with independent investigations or even oversight hearings into the Bush administration's use of torture.
Underscoring Obama's concerns about a high-profile investigation, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at the time: "the President determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case."
Gibbs added, "The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth."
Hoping for bipartisanship on pressing issues like the economy and health care, Democrats scuttled the investigative plans. However, Republicans have shown no reciprocal interest in bipartisanship, voting as a virtual bloc against every significant bill that Obama and the Democrats have proposed.
Despite Obama's insistence of "looking forward, not backward," there remains a chance that hearings on Bush's torture practices might still be held next year.
Leahy and Conyers have indicated they intend to hold hearings next year once a long-awaited report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is released that delves into Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury's legal work surrounding torture, according to Christopher Anders, the ACLU's senior legislative counsel.
Leahy and Conyers "said a number of times that they would have hearings when the OPR report comes out," Anders said in an interview. "It would be a big surprise if they didn't conduct hearings. We fully expect them to hold hearings."
Spokespeople for Conyers and Leahy did not return calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment.
Upcoming Hearings on Torture?
However, according to Christopher Anders, the ACLU's senior legislative counsel, Leahy and Conyers have both said they intend to hold hearings next year once a long-awaited report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is released that delves into Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury's legal work surrounding torture.
Leahy and Conyers "said a number of times that they would have hearings when the OPR report comes out," Anders said in an interview. "It would be a big surprise if they didn't conduct hearings. We fully expect them to hold hearings."
Anders added that while there is a time and place for independent commissions, the issue of torture is really a matter for Congress to probe.
"These are the hard issues that Congress should really be tackling" Anders said. "It's squarely under their jurisdiction."
Spokespeople for Conyers and Leahy did not return calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment.
The ACLU said that as much as the Obama administration may hope that additional revelations related to the Bush administration's policy of torture will slip underneath the radar, numerous documents expected to be released in the weeks and months ahead will ensure the issue remains front and center for years to come, and calls for accountability will continue.
"The lesson that this is giving to the rest of the world is that countries do not have to be accountable for their actions even when torture and abuse occurs," the ACLU's Anders said. "That's going to make it much more difficult for the United States to push other countries on human rights issues across the board, and it's going to make it much easier for other countries to shirk their own duties to bring accountability for their own actions in the past."
Despite Obama's spotty record on the war crimes that grew out of the Bush's "war on terror," the President still focused his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on the altruism of US foreign policy and America's commitment to upholding human rights.
The ACLU's Jaffer said there is "an obvious tension on what the president is saying on the commitment to human rights and the work we're doing here in the United States to actually hold people accountable for the violations of both domestic and international law."
"A lot of what was authorized by senior Bush administration officials was illegal not only under international law but domestic law as well," Jaffer said. "Many of the methods that were approved by CIA and [Department of Defense] interrogators had previously been described by multiple US administrations as war crimes and some of them have been prosecuted as war crimes.
"Waterboarding in particular is something that has been prosecuted as a war crime before September 11. And yet we are not holding people accountable for having used those techniques, authorized those techniques. Increasingly, we're frustrated by the gap between the Obama administration's rhetoric on accountability and reality. We see the Obama administration actively obstructing accountability on every front."
--
For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com
Saturday 12 December 2009
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | Report
http://www.truthout.org/12110911
During his 36-minute speech after accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway Thursday, President Barack Obama explained to an audience of 1,000 how the United States has a "moral
and strategic interest" in abiding by a code of conduct when waging war - even one that pits the
US against a "vicious adversary that abides by no rules."
"That is what makes us different from those whom we fight," Obama said. "That is a source of
our strength. That is why I prohibited torture. That is why I ordered the prison at Guantanamo
Bay closed. And that is why I have reaffirmed America's commitment to abide by the Geneva Conventions. We lose ourselves when we compromise the very ideals that we fight to defend.
And we honor those ideals by upholding them not just when it is easy, but when it is hard."
To many human rights advocates, however, Obama's high-minded declaration rang hollow in
light of fresh reports that his administration continues to operate secret prisons in Afghanistan
where detainees have allegedly been tortured and where the International Committee for the
Red Cross has been denied access to the prisoners.
Obama has substituted words for action on issues surrounding torture since his first days in
office nearly one year ago. Last June, on the 25th anniversary of the Convention Against Torture
and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, Obama said the US
government "must stand against torture wherever it takes place" and that his administration
"is committed to taking concrete actions against torture and to address the needs of its victims."
But it's clear that his pledge does not apply to torture committed by Bush administration officials.
That's the point the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) made shortly after Obama's
acceptance speech. Officials from the civil rights organization issued a withering indictment of
the Obama administration's handling of clear-cut cases of war crimes they say were committed
by former Bush officials who the Obama administration not only refuses to prosecute but has gone
to extraordinary lengths to cover up.
"We're increasingly disappointed and alarmed by the current administration's stance on
accountability for torture," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project, during a conference call with reporters. "On every front, the [Obama] administration is actively obstructing accountability. This administration is shielding Bush administration officials from civil liability, criminal investigation and even public scrutiny for their role in authorizing torture."
Before leaving office, Dick Cheney said he approved waterboarding on at least three "high value" detainees and the "enhanced interrogation" of 33 other prisoners. President Bush made a somewhat vaguer acknowledgement of authorizing these techniques.
The ACLU and other civil rights groups said Bush and Cheney's comments amounted to an admission of war crimes.
Under the Convention Against Torture, the clear record that the Bush administration used waterboarding and other brutal techniques to extract information from detainees should have
triggered the United States to conduct a full investigation and to prosecute the offenders. In the
case of the
US's refusal to do so, other nations would be obligated to act under the principle of universality.
However, instead of living up to that treaty commitment, the Obama administration is resisting
calls for government investigations and going to court to block lawsuits that demand release of
torture evidence or seek civil penalties against officials implicated in the torture.
Jaffer said that while "the Bush administration constructed a legal framework for torture, now the Obama administration is constructing a legal framework for impunity."
Defending John Yoo
Indeed, last week, Obama's Justice Department asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to dismiss a lawsuit filed against former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo, who authored some
of the memos that justified torture largely by re-defining what the term means.
In seeking to quash that lawsuit filed by alleged "dirty bomb" plotter Jose Padilla, Obama's
lawyers argued, in a friend-of-the-court brief that Justice Department lawyers who advise on
torture and other human rights issues are entitled to absolute immunity from lawsuits.
"The Holder Justice Department insists that they are absolutely not responsible, and that they are
free to act according to a far lower standard of conduct than that which governs Americans
generally," wrote Scott Horton, a human rights attorney and constitutional expert in a column published on the Harper's web site. "Indeed, this has emerged as a sort of ignoble mantra for the Justice Department, uniting both the Bush and Obama administrations."
Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley went even further, asserting that the Obama administration's arguments reversed more than six decades of US legal precedents - dating back
to the post-World War II Nuremberg trials - which held that legal wordsmiths who clear the way
for war crimes share the guilt with the actual perpetrators.
The Obama administration "has gutted the hard-fought victories in Nuremberg where lawyers and judges were often guilty of war crimes in their legal advice and opinions," Turley said. "Quite a legacy for the world's newest Nobel Peace Prize winner."
What's remarkable about the Obama Justice Department's amicus brief in the Padilla case is that it didn't need to be filed to begin with. Yoo hired a private defense attorney, albeit one who is paid
for with taxpayer dollars, earlier this year when the Justice Department backed out of representing Yoo due to undisclosed conflicts.
"Qualified Immunity"
In court papers filed last week, the Obama administration took a hard line in another case, arguing that a Supreme Court ruling that gave detainees the right to challenge their indefinite imprisonment doesn't apply to the cases of Yasser Al-Zahrani and Salah Al-Salami, two Guantanamo prisoners who committed suicide in June 2006.
The fathers of the men, who were never charged with a crime, sued Bush administration Defense Department officials in federal court, arguing that the torture their sons endured drove them to hang themselves on June 10, 2006 after being detained for four years.
But the Obama administration said in a legal brief that the Military Commissions Act of 2006
stripped the courts of jurisdiction to hear lawsuits that challenged the "detention, transfer, treatment
or conditions of confinement" of "enemy combatants."
Moreover, in court papers filed in June, the Obama administration said, "Judicial intrusion into this politically sensitive area by creating a damages remedy for detainees could subvert these military
and diplomatic efforts and lead to 'embarrassment of our government abroad.'"
Besides, the Obama administration said, just as John Yoo is entitled to absolute immunity, Defense Department officials are entitled to "qualified immunity" because the "Fifth and Eighth Amendments do not extend to Guantánamo Bay detainees."
Earlier this week, a report prepared by the Seton Hall University School of Law Center for Policy
& Research called into question the veracity of the government's official version of the deaths of the two men and that of a third prisoner, who was also found hanging in his cell on June 10, 2006. The government attributed the suicides to "asymmetrical warfare."
"Both the time and exact manner of the deaths remain uncertain, and the presence of rags stuffed in the detainees' throats is unexplained," the report said.
CIA Renditions and State Secrets
The Obama administration also has mounted an aggressive defense in another high-profile case regarding the Bush administration's wrongdoing.
The Bush administration had invoked the state secrets privilege in a 2007 lawsuit filed against Jeppesen DataPlan, a subsidiary of Boeing, that is accused of knowingly flying people kidnapped by the CIA to secret overseas prisons where they were tortured. Bush's legal move was successful in getting the case tossed out, but the ACLU appealed the decision.
When that appeal came up last February, Obama's Justice Department shocked civil liberties and human rights advocates by dispatching attorneys to federal court in San Francisco, where they invoked the same state secrets privilege.
Even the judge was baffled, and asked a Justice Department attorney if the change in US government leadership would lead to a change in the legal position with regard to state secrets. The answer was a resounding "no."
Still, the appellate court ruled in April that the case could move forward, asserting that state secrets can only be cited with regard to specific evidence, and not used as a means to dismiss an entire lawsuit. Justice Department attorneys will be back in court next week to appeal that decision, carrying forward the Bush administration's legacy of secrecy.
Concealing Evidence
The Obama administration also has tried to block Binyam Mohamed, one of the victims named in Jeppesen lawsuit, from obtaining documentary evidence to support his claims that he was tortured while in US custody.
Terrorism-related charges against Mohamed were dropped last year when his attorneys sued to gain access to more than three dozen secret documents. He was released in February after being imprisoned for seven years and sent back to Great Britain.
In a legal brief, the ACLU said Mohamed was beaten so severely on numerous occasions that he routinely lost consciousness and during one gruesome torture session "a scalpel was used to make incisions all over his body, including his penis, after which a hot stinging liquid was poured into his open wounds."
Obama's determination to protect these dirty secrets of its predecessors even reached across the Atlantic. The Obama administration told British officials that intelligence sharing between the US and the UK might be disrupted if seven redacted paragraphs contained in secret US documents relating to Mohamed's torture allegations were made public by a British High Court.
Those threats were conveyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the CIA, and Obama's National Security Adviser James Jones, according to British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
"The United States Government's position is that, if the redacted paragraphs are made public, then the United States will re-evaluate its intelligence-sharing relationship with the United Kingdom with the real risk that it would reduce the intelligence it provided," the High Court wrote in a ruling in February when it agreed to keep the paragraphs blacked out.
"There is a real risk, if we restored the redacted paragraphs, the United States Government, by its review of the shared intelligence arrangements, could inflict on the citizens of the United Kingdom a very considerable increase in the dangers they face at a time when a serious terrorist threat still pertains."
After the High Court's ruling, the Obama White House issued a statement thanking the British government "for its continued commitment to protect sensitive national security information" and added that the order would "preserve the long-standing intelligence sharing relationship that enables both countries to protect their citizens."
Following the High Court's reversal, the New York Times published a sharply worded editorial criticizing the Obama administration's hard-line position in the Mohamed case.
"The Obama administration has clung for so long to the Bush administration's expansive claims of national security and executive power that it is in danger of turning President George W. Bush's cover-up of abuses committed in the name of fighting terrorism into President Barack Obama's cover-up," the Times wrote.
Torture Photos
Obama also reversed a commitment earlier this year to release photos of US soldiers torturing and abusing prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama said his decision stemmed from his personal review of the photos and his concern that their release would endanger American soldiers in the field, but the reversal also came after several weeks of Republican and right-wing media attacks on him as weak on national security.
The Obama administration then appealed to the US Supreme Court to overturn a federal court order requiring release of the images, and Obama's aides worked with Congress to pass legislation giving the Defense Secretary the power to keep the photographs under wraps.
The legislation passed in November and was promptly signed by Obama. By blocking release of the photographs, Obama essentially killed any meaningful chance of opening the door to an investigation or independent inquiry of senior Pentagon and Bush administration officials who implemented the policies that led to the abuses captured in the images.
In a conference call with reporters on Thursday, the ACLU also questioned the value of Obama's much-touted executive order - signed on his second day in office - demanding a shift away from excessive secrecy toward a presumption in favor of open government.
"We have not seen the presumption translated into the release of more information," Jaffer said. "There are several cases which we are just at a loss to understand why the information we are requesting is still being withheld."
Those documents include ones related to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping program and transcripts of Combatant Status Review Tribunals where detainees "describe the abuse they suffered at the hands of their CIA interrogators."
However, the ACLU's Freedom of Information lawsuit continues to unearth bits of new evidence. For instance, the ACLU obtained hundreds of new documents, including a one-page questionnaire apparently from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel to the CIA.
"How close is each technique to the 'rack and screw'?" the questionnaire asked, referring to a medieval torture device.
"Anytime you need to ask a question like that it is deeply disturbing and shows you've strayed from constitutional norms," said ACLU legal fellow Alex Abdo. "You're asking a question as to whether the conduct you're about to authorize relates to rack and screw and that in and of itself should be evidence enough that you're going too far. It never should get to that point."
Other newly disclosed documents show that the Bush White House was deeply involved in discussions about destroying 92 torture videotapes.
Obama and Congress
Perhaps, Obama's most positive act on behalf of open government came in April when he resisted pressure from the CIA and ordered the release of legal memorandums written by lawyers in Bush's Office of Legal Counsel, including Yoo and two former OLC chiefs, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury.
The memos used creative definitions regarding torture to authorize the CIA to apply a variety of torture techniques to so-called "high-value" prisoners, including beatings, waterboarding, sleep deprivation, placing insects inside a confinement box to induce fear, exposing naked detainees to extreme heat and cold, and shackling prisoners to the ceilings of their prison cells or in other painful "stress positions."
In the face of this evidence, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy and his counterpart in the House, John Conyers, floated competing proposals early in the year for a 9/11-style "truth commission" or a blue-ribbon investigative panel to look into the circumstances that led the Bush administration to create its policy of torture.
Obama signaled that he was open to the idea of a "truth commission" but he said he was concerned "about this getting so politicized that we cannot function effectively, and it hampers our ability to carry out critical national security operations."
After Republicans and neoconservative opinion writers went on the attack, Obama quickly retreated, calling lawmakers to the White House for a closed-door meeting in late April to talk them out of the idea of moving forward with independent investigations or even oversight hearings into the Bush administration's use of torture.
Underscoring Obama's concerns about a high-profile investigation, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters at the time: "the President determined the concept didn't seem altogether workable in this case."
Gibbs added, "The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth."
Hoping for bipartisanship on pressing issues like the economy and health care, Democrats scuttled the investigative plans. However, Republicans have shown no reciprocal interest in bipartisanship, voting as a virtual bloc against every significant bill that Obama and the Democrats have proposed.
Despite Obama's insistence of "looking forward, not backward," there remains a chance that hearings on Bush's torture practices might still be held next year.
Leahy and Conyers have indicated they intend to hold hearings next year once a long-awaited report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is released that delves into Yoo, Bybee, and Bradbury's legal work surrounding torture, according to Christopher Anders, the ACLU's senior legislative counsel.
Leahy and Conyers "said a number of times that they would have hearings when the OPR report comes out," Anders said in an interview. "It would be a big surprise if they didn't conduct hearings. We fully expect them to hold hearings."
Spokespeople for Conyers and Leahy did not return calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment.
Upcoming Hearings on Torture?
However, according to Christopher Anders, the ACLU's senior legislative counsel, Leahy and Conyers have both said they intend to hold hearings next year once a long-awaited report by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is released that delves into Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury's legal work surrounding torture.
Leahy and Conyers "said a number of times that they would have hearings when the OPR report comes out," Anders said in an interview. "It would be a big surprise if they didn't conduct hearings. We fully expect them to hold hearings."
Anders added that while there is a time and place for independent commissions, the issue of torture is really a matter for Congress to probe.
"These are the hard issues that Congress should really be tackling" Anders said. "It's squarely under their jurisdiction."
Spokespeople for Conyers and Leahy did not return calls or respond to e-mails seeking comment.
The ACLU said that as much as the Obama administration may hope that additional revelations related to the Bush administration's policy of torture will slip underneath the radar, numerous documents expected to be released in the weeks and months ahead will ensure the issue remains front and center for years to come, and calls for accountability will continue.
"The lesson that this is giving to the rest of the world is that countries do not have to be accountable for their actions even when torture and abuse occurs," the ACLU's Anders said. "That's going to make it much more difficult for the United States to push other countries on human rights issues across the board, and it's going to make it much easier for other countries to shirk their own duties to bring accountability for their own actions in the past."
Despite Obama's spotty record on the war crimes that grew out of the Bush's "war on terror," the President still focused his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech on the altruism of US foreign policy and America's commitment to upholding human rights.
The ACLU's Jaffer said there is "an obvious tension on what the president is saying on the commitment to human rights and the work we're doing here in the United States to actually hold people accountable for the violations of both domestic and international law."
"A lot of what was authorized by senior Bush administration officials was illegal not only under international law but domestic law as well," Jaffer said. "Many of the methods that were approved by CIA and [Department of Defense] interrogators had previously been described by multiple US administrations as war crimes and some of them have been prosecuted as war crimes.
"Waterboarding in particular is something that has been prosecuted as a war crime before September 11. And yet we are not holding people accountable for having used those techniques, authorized those techniques. Increasingly, we're frustrated by the gap between the Obama administration's rhetoric on accountability and reality. We see the Obama administration actively obstructing accountability on every front."
--
For more News From Underground, visit http://markcrispinmiller.com
Saturday, November 28, 2009
David Ray Griffin Reviews The Assassination of Paul Wellstone
American Assassination: The Strange Death Of Senator Paul Wellstone
by Four Arrows (Author), James H. Fetzer (Author)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2BTXHV65XDHKY/ref=cm_cr_dp_auth_rev?ie=UTF8&sort_by=MostRecentReview
Reviewed for Amazon.com by Prof David Ray Griffin (December 5, 2004)
Abundant and Compelling Evidence,
The authors of this important book argue that Senator Paul Wellstone's death, 10 days before the 2002 elections, was an assassination, most likely ordered by the Bush administration.
Directly confronting the widespread tendency to reject all "conspiracy theories," the authors point out that "the idea that every theory that implies the existence of conspiracy ought to be rejected out of hand" is no more rational than the idea that every such theory should be accepted. Rather, "each case has to be evaluated on the basis of the evidence that is relevant and available in that case." On that basis, they argue, if we look at ALL the relevant evidence and employ the scientific method of inference to the best explanation, we must conclude that the theory that Wellstone was assassinated is far more probable than the official theory, according to which his airplane crash was an accident.
The evidence includes several facts suggesting that the NTSB (National Transportation Safety Board) colluded with the FBI in a cover-up:
1. FBI agents from Minneapolis arrived at the crash site within 2 hours after the crash, even though the trip from Minnesota to Duluth to the crash site would have taken at least 3 hours--so they must have departed before the plane crashed.
2. When asked for the times at which private flights had arrived in Duluth that morning, the FAA said the records had been destroyed.
3. Considerable disinformation about weather conditions was quickly given to the press.
4. Although regulations called for the investigation to be carried out by the NTSB, not the FBI (because the crash site was not designated a crime scene), the FBI agents were there for 8 hours before the NTSB team arrived.
5. The FBI, even though there illegally, prevented the local "first responders" from taking photographs.
6. Although it was the NTSB's responsibility to determine the cause of the crash and although the FBI's prior presence was illegal, the NTSB leader publicly accepted the FBI's declaration, made before the NTSB's investigation, that there was no evidence of terrorism.
7. When the NTSB team finally carried out its own investigation, it was unable to find either the cockpit recorder, which it assumed the plane had had, or the black box.
8. The NTSB held no public hearings, claiming that it was not a sufficiently "high-profile" case.
9. The NTSB's final report concealed the fact of the FBI's participation.
10. The NTSB investigation was headed by Acting Director Carol Carmody, a Bush appointee who had earlier ruled that there was no foul play in the small airplane crash in 2000 that took the life of Governor Mel Carnahan of Missouri, the Democratic candidate for the Senate who was killed 3 weeks before his expected victory (over John Ashcroft).
The evidence also includes some facts strongly suggesting the falsity of the NTSB's official conclusion, which was that the plane crashed because the pilot failed to maintain proper speed, causing the plane to stall.
1. The plane would have stalled only if it slowed to below 70 knots, yet it was equipped with a device that emitted a loud warning at 85 knots.
2. The plane was being flown by two experienced and fully certified pilots, a fact--obfuscated in the NTSB report-that makes this kind of pilot error very unlikely.
3. The NTSB's theory fails to explain why, about two minutes before the crash, all communication was abruptly terminated and the plane began going off course.
The evidence also includes facts suggesting that the plane was instead brought down by an EMP (electromagnetic pulse) weapon:
1. The plane's fuselage burned, although it was separated from the wings, which contained the fuel.
2. The plane's electrical system, which would be affected by an EMP, was in the fuselage, and the fire from the fuselage gave off blue smoke, which is indicative of an electrical fire.
3. An EMP could explain why the plane simultaneously went off course and lost its radio about two minutes before the crash.
4. At the same time, cell phones and garage doors in the area behaved in a way consistent with the occurrence of an EMP.
5. An NTSB spokesman professed ignorance about the existence of EMP weapons that could have brought down the plane, although the existence of such weapons had been known for several years.
An important part of the authors' case is the fact that the Bush administration would have had several motives:
1. Wellstone's defeat would return control of the Senate to the Republicans.
2. Wellstone's death 10 days before the election meant that $700,000 in the Republican campaign chest could be transferred, the very next day, to the (successful) effort to defeat Max Cleland in the Senate race in Georgia.
3. Wellstone was the biggest obstacle in the Senate to several Republican policies, such as those involving Iraq, Colombia, the SEC, tax cuts, and Homeland Security, and he was the strongest voice in Congress calling for a full investigation into 9/11.
4. Two days before his death, Wellstone reported that Cheney had told him: "If you vote against the war in Iraq, the Bush administration will do whatever is necessary to get you."
5. Wellstone had developed a 7-point lead in the polls over Norm Coleman, the Bush administration's hand-picked candidate.
Finally, with regard to the question whether the Bush administration would commit such a heinous act, the authors argue that an administration that "compounded lie upon lie to . . . send hundreds of thousands of young American men and women into harm's way [in Iraq] is not an administration that would hesitate to kill a single senator."
The authors conclude that the evidence shows beyond reasonable doubt that Wellstone was assassinated. They have, in my view, made a convincing case.
David Ray Griffin, author of "The New Pearl Harbor" and "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions & Distortions"
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Pam Martens: Federals team up with Wall St to foreclose on families
October 5, 2009
A CounterPunch Special Investigation: Part One of a Series
Wall Street Titans Use Aliases to Foreclose on Families While Partnering With a Federal Agency
By PAM MARTENS
http://counterpunch.org/martens10052009.html
A federal agency tasked with expanding the American dream of home ownership and affordable housing free from discrimination to people of modest means has been quietly moving a chunk of that role to Wall Street since 2002. In a stealth partial privatization, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) farmed out its mandate of working with single family homeowners in trouble on their mortgages to the industry most responsible for separating people from their savings and creating an unprecedented wealth gap that renders millions unable to pay those mortgages. This industry also ranks as one of the most storied industries in terms of race discrimination. Rounding out its dubious housing credentials, Wall Street is now on life support courtesy of the public purse known as TARP as a result of issuing trillions of dollars in miss-rated housing bonds and housing-related derivatives, many of which were nothing more than algorithmic concepts wrapped in a high priced legal opinion. It’s difficult to imagine a more problematic resume for the new housing czars.
To what degree this surreptitious program has contributed to putting children and families out on the street during one of the worst economic slumps since the ’30s should be on a Congressional short list for investigation. HUD’s demand for confidentiality from all bidders and announcement of winning bids to parties known only as “the winning bidder” deserves its own investigation in terms of obfuscating the public’s right to know and the ability of the press to properly fulfill its function in a free society.
Despite three days of emails and phone calls to HUD officials, they have refused to provide the names of the winning bidders or the firms that teamed as co-bidders with the winning party. Obtaining this information independently has been akin to extracting a painful splinter wearing a blindfold and oven mitts.
That a taxpayer-supported Federal agency conducts a competitive bid program of over $2 billion and then refuses to announce the names of the winning bidders is beyond contempt for the American people. If the Obama administration does not quickly purge this Bush mindset from these Federal agencies, he is inviting a massive backlash in the midterm elections.
The HUD program was benignly called Accelerated Claims Disposition (ACD) and was said to be a pilot program. A pilot program might suggest to those uninformed in the ways of the new Wall Street occupation of America a modest spending outlay; a go slow approach. In this case, from 2002 to 2005, HUD transferred in excess of $2.4 billion of defaulted mortgages insured by its sibling, the FHA, into the hands of Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns while providing the firms with wide latitude to foreclose, restructure or sell off in bundles to investors. HUD retained a minority interest of 30 to 40 percent in each joint venture. Citigroup was awarded the 2002 and 2004 joint ventures; Lehman Brothers the 2003; Bear Stearns the 2005. I obtained this information by reconciling the aliases used by these firms in foreclosures of HUD properties to the addresses of the corporate parents. I further confirmed the information by checking the official records at multiple Secretaries of State offices where the firms must register their subsidiaries to do business within the state.
What the program effectively did was allow the biggest retail banks in the country to get accelerated payment on their defaulted, FHA-insured, single family mortgage loans while allowing another set of the biggest investment banks to make huge profits in fees for bundling and selling off the loans as securitizations. Once the loans were securitized (sold off to investors) they were no longer the problem of HUD or the Wall Street bankers. The loans conveniently disappeared from the radar screen and the balance sheet. The family’s fate had been sold off by HUD to Wall Street in exchange for a small piece of the action. Wall Street then sold off the family’s fate to thousands of investors around the world for a large piece of the action.
HUD has attempted to spin this program as a win-win for everyone with the suggestion that families would have more options under this program. In a HUD February 17, 2006 report titled “Evaluation of 601 Accelerated Claims Disposition Demonstration,” a few kernels of truth emerged. It was noted on page 4 that the private partners “determine how best to maximize the return on the loan…Loans liquidated through note sales generally earn a higher return than property sales, so the JV [joint venture] has an incentive to maximize the share of note sales relative to property sales.” Rather than evaluating the success of the program on how many families were able to get a loan modification and remain in their homes, the report notes that “The benchmark for progress is the share of loans that have reached resolution.”
From its 2002 joint venture, Citigroup dumped en masse 2,599 loans in one securitization alone in August 2004. It sold another 1,177 at other unknown times. From its 2004 joint venture, it dumped 1,814 in one fell swoop. The 2006 HUD report notes that following securitization “there is no information available on the [home] retention after the sale.”
According to HUD’s web site, another major award of $400 million to $800 million in defaulted mortgages was slated for October 23 of last year in the midst of a foreclosure and eviction crisis. Lemar Wooley, in HUD’s Office of Public Affairs, advises that the deal never happened as a result of “no acceptable bids being received.” Given that we have been promised change we can believe in, I would have much preferred to hear: “We’ve sacked this program as an abhorrent example of privatizing profits and socializing losses while turning our backs on the neediest of our society.”
While this was clearly not a win-win for families in financial distress, two other red flags come to mind. The 2006 HUD report notes that to be eligible for this program, loans had to be four full payments past due (five full payments past due for the 2005 Bear Stearns deal). But to securitize the loans, the Wall Street firms had to bring the loans into performing status, that is, up to date in their payments. The question arises as to whether the investors in the securitizations were advised that these were heretofore defaulted HUD loans. One might be forgiven for pondering that as a material fact required in a prospectus since there is much data available showing that loans once in default tend to redefault. Some of these investors might unknowingly be you and your family members. The loans could be sitting right now in public employee pension funds, mutual funds held in 401(k)s, etc.
The second concern is that many of the homes in the deals were foreclosed on in 2006, 2007 and 2008. By HUD not keeping these loans and insisting on its legal mandate for lenders to attempt loan modifications, special forbearance or partial claims to bring the loans current, what impact did this program have on the foreclosure glut and overall property value declines.
It is worth noting what happened to the firms that HUD deemed qualified for this program: Lehman Brothers collapsed on September 15, 2008. Bear Stearns required a weekend rescue by JPMorgan Chase and the Fed on March 16/17, 2008. Citigroup, which got the lions share of the HUD deals, exists today only because of a $45 billion direct infusion from unwilling taxpayers (overruled by their Congress) and hundreds of billions of dollars more in various other government backstop operations – some still undisclosed despite Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation.
Future articles in this series will look at how these deals started under the Clinton administration with awards to Goldman Sachs, GE Capital, Blackrock and others, with the dubious protection of Merrill Lynch as the overseer for HUD. This program also went virtually unnoticed until charges of rigged computers and bid rigging erupted in headlines. We will also look at the human suffering resulting from this macabre rewriting of the social contract in America. The series begins today with the most unlikely candidate of all for helping people in need: Citigroup.
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Read More: http://counterpunch.org/martens10052009.html
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Mike Whitney: Bernanke/Paulsen deliberately created the Panic of Sept 2008 So that AIG and Goldman Might Live
September 15, 2009
The Real Lesson of Lehman's Fall
Lehman Died So TARP and AIG Might Live
By MIKE WHITNEY
http://counterpunch.org/
"Lehman's fate was sealed not in the boardroom of that gaudy Manhattan headquarters. It was sealed downtown, in the gloomy gray building of the New York Federal Reserve, the Wall Street branch of the U.S. central bank."
-- Stephen Foley, U.K. Independent
Stephen Foley is on to something. Lehman Bros. didn't die of natural causes; it was drawn-and-quartered by high-ranking officials at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Most of the rubbish presently appearing in the media, ignores this glaring fact. Lehman was a planned demolition (most likely) concocted by ex-Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson, who wanted to create a financial 9-11 to scare Congress into complying with his demands for $700 billion in emergency funding (TARP) for underwater US banking behemoths. The whole incident reeks of conflict of interest, corruption, and blackmail.
The media have played a critical role in peddling the official "Who could have known what would happen" version of events. Bernanke and Paulson were fully aware that they playing with fire, but they chose to proceed anyway, using the mushrooming crisis to achieve their own objectives. Then things began to spin out of control; credit markets froze, interbank lending slowed to a crawl, and stock markets plunged. Even so, the Fed and Treasury persisted with their plan, demanding their $700 billion pound of flesh before they'd do what was needed to stop the bleeding. It was all avoidable.
Lehman had potential buyers--including Barclays--who probably would have made the sale if Bernanke and Paulson had merely provided guarantees for some of their trading positions. Instead, Treasury and the Fed balked, thrusting the knife deeper into Lehman's ribs. They claimed they didn't have legal authority for such guarantees. It’s a lie. The Fed has provided $12.8 trillion in loans and other commitments to keep the financial system operating without congressional approval or any explicit authorization under the terms of its charter. The Fed never considered the limits of its "legal authority" when it bailed-out AIG or organized the acquisition of Bear Stearns by JP Morgan pushing $30 billion in future liabilities onto the public's balance sheet. The Fed's excuses don't square with the facts.
Here's how economist Dean Baker recounts what transpired last September 15:
"Last September, when he (Bernanke) was telling Congress that the economy would collapse if it did not approve the $700 billion TARP bailout, he warned that the commercial paper market was shutting down.
This was hugely important because most major companies rely on selling commercial paper to meet their payrolls and pay other routine bills. If they could not sell commercial paper, then millions of people would soon be laid off and the economy would literally collapse.
What Mr. Bernanke apparently forgot to tell Congress back then is that the Fed has the authority to directly buy commercial paper from financial and non-financial companies. In other words, the Fed has the power to prevent the sort of economic collapse that Bernanke warned would happen if Congress did not quickly approve the TARP. In fact, Bernanke announced that the Fed would create a special lending facility to buy commercial paper the weekend after Congress voted to approve the TARP." ("Bernanke's bad Money", Dean Baker, CounterPunch)
The reason Bernanke did not underwrite the commercial paper market was, if he had, he wouldn't have been able to blackmail congress. He needed the rising anxiety from the crisis to achieve his goals.
Here's a clip from an editorial in the New York Times (admitting most of what has already been stated) that tries to put a positive spin on the Fed's behavior:
"Mr. Nocera says that almost everyone he’s ever spoken to in Hank Paulson’s old Treasury Department agrees that without the immediate panic caused by the Lehman default, the government would never have agreed to make the loans needed to save A.I.G., a company it knew very little about. In effect, the Lehman bankruptcy caused the government to panic, which in turn caused it to save the firm it really had to save to prevent catastrophe. In retrospect, if you had to choose one firm to throw under the bus to save everyone else, you would choose Lehman.....it is quite likely that the financial crisis would have been even worse had Lehman been rescued. Although nobody realized it at the time, Lehman Brothers had to die for the rest of Wall Street to live. ("Lehman Had to Die So Global Finance Could Live", Sept 14, 2009, New York Times)
So, according to the muddled logic of the NY Times, everything worked out for the best so there's no need to hold anyone accountable. (Tell that to the 7 million people who have lost their jobs since the beginning of the meltdown) This latest bit of spin is pure cover-your-ass journalism, an attempt to rewrite history and absolve the guilty parties. The fact is, Paulson and Bernanke deliberately created the crisis in order to jam their widely-reviled TARP policy down the public's throat. The Times thinks the public should be grateful for that because, otherwise, the crooked insurance giant, AIG, would not have been bailed out and Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street heavies would not have been paid off.
The reason panic spread through the markets after Lehman filed for bankruptcy, was because the Reserve Primary Fund, which had lent Lehman $785 million (and recieved short-term notes called commercial paper) couldn't keep up with the rapid pace of withdrawals from worried clients. The sudden erosion of trust triggered a run on the money markets. Here's an excerpt from a Bloomberg article, "Sleep-At-Night-Money Lost in Lehman Lesson Missing $63 Billion":
"On Tuesday, Sept. 16, the run on Reserve Primary continued. Between the time of Lehman’s Chapter 11 announcement and 3 p.m. on Tuesday, investors asked for $39.9 billion, more than half of the fund’s assets, according to Crane Data.
“Reserve’s trustees instructed employees to sell the Lehman debt, according to the SEC.
“They couldn’t find a buyer.
“At 4 p.m., the trustees determined that the $785 million investment was worth nothing. With all the withdrawals from the fund, the value of a single share dipped to 97 cents.
“Legg Mason, Janus Capital Group Inc., Northern Trust Corp., Evergreen and Bank of America Corp.’s Columbia Management investment unit were all able to inject cash into their funds to shore up losses or buy assets from them. Putnam closed its Prime Money Market Fund on Sept. 18 and later sold its assets to Pittsburgh-based Federated Investors.
“At least 20 money fund managers were forced to seek financial support or sell holdings to maintain their $1 net asset value, according to documents on the SEC Web Site.
“When news that Reserve Primary broke the buck hit the wires at 5:04 p.m. that Tuesday, the race was on" (Bloomberg)
This is what a run on the shadow banking system looks like. Bernanke and Paulson pinpointed the trouble in the commercial paper market and used it to put more pressure on Congress to approve their bailout bill.
Bloomberg again:
"It was commercial paper and the $3.6 trillion money market industry that traded the notes that came close to sinking the global economy -- not a breakdown in credit-default swaps or bank-to-bank lending....
“Like ice-nine, the fictitious substance in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s 1963 novel Cat’s Cradle, a single seed of which could harden all the world’s water, commercial paper was the crystallizing force that froze credit markets, choking off the ability of companies and banks to borrow money and pay bills." (Sleep-At-Night-Money Lost in Lehman Lesson Missing $63 Billion, Bob Ivry, Mark Pittman and Christine Harper, Bloomberg News)
Bernanke could have fixed the problem in an instant. All he needed to do was provide explicit government guarantees on money markets and commercial paper. That would have ended the bank-run pronto. But he chose not to. He chose to wait until Congress capitulated so he could net $700 billion for his banking buddies.
According to the UK Telegraph:
"On Thursday night, the Treasury went literally down on his knees before Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the House of Representatives, begging her to agree taxpayer money to bail out the financial system. Bernanke, a scholar of the financial panic that caused the Great Depression, told fearful lawmakers there wouldn't be a banking system in place by Monday morning if they didn't act. Paulson talked openly about planning for martial law, about how to feed the American people if banking and commerce collapsed."
Despite their dire warnings, on Monday morning, the banking system was still in tact, just as it was a full month later when the first TARP funds were handed out to the big banks. It was all a hoax. The problem wasn't the banks toxic assets at all, but the commercial paper and money markets. The Fed and Treasury knew that they could count on Congress's abysmal ignorance of anything financial; and they weren't disappointed. On October 3, 2008, Congress passed the Financial Rescue Plan (TARP) Paulson's fear-mongering had triumphed.
Here's a quick look at the Lehman chronology:
On Sept 15, 2008, Lehman Bros filed for bankruptcy sending the Dow plummeting 504 points.
On Sept 17, the Dow falls 449 points in reaction to AIG bailout.
On Sept 29, the Dow tumbles 777 points after House votes "No" on TARP.
On Oct 3, the House passes Financial Rescue Plan (TARP) The Dow falls 818 points.
On Oct 7, the Fed creates the Commercial Paper Funding Facility to backstop the commercial paper market. Two weeks later, Bernanke announces the Money Market Investor Funding Facility to make loans of longer maturities.
These are the two facilities which relieved the tension in the markets, not the TARP funds. It's clear that Bernanke knew exactly how to fix the problem, because he did so as soon as the TARP was passed. Here's economist Dean Baker in The American Prospect:
"Bernanke was working with Paulson and the Bush administration to promote a climate of panic. This climate was necessary in order to push Congress to hastily pass the TARP without serious restrictions on executive compensation, dividends, or measures that would ensure a fair return for the public's investment.
“Bernanke did not start buying commercial paper until after the TARP was approved by Congress because he did not want to take the pressure off, thereby leading Congress to believe that it had time to develop a better rescue package. ("Did Ben Bernanke Pull the TARP Over Eyes?", Dean Baker, The American Prospect)
The American people have been ripped off by industry reps working the policy-levers from inside the government. That's the real lesson of the Lehman bankruptcy. Happy anniversary.
Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Democracy Now: Jeremy Keenan: West's Manufactured Terror extends to Africa
August 06, 2009
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/6/keenan
British Anthropologist Jeremy Keenan on “The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa”
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues her seven-nation tour of Africa, we hear from British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. He traces AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, to a 2003 kidnapping of European tourists. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones responsible. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Jeremy Keenan, Professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His latest book is The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa. Its sequel, The Dying Sahara, will be released next year.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has emphasized that her seven-country tour of Africa is intended to promote democracy, fight corruption, and boost US investments in African trade and agriculture.
We turn now to another issue that’s widely expected to be discussed on every stop: AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, which has been publicly opposed by every country on the continent except Liberia.
Now Secretary Clinton will not be visiting the countries in and around the oil- and gas-rich Sahara desert—Mali, Niger, Chad, Algeria and Mauritania. But a new book by British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan argues this area is crucial to understanding the birth of AFRICOM and the Bush administration’s expansion of the global war on terror into Africa.
Keenan is a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has spent over four decades working in and writing about this region. He traces AFRICOM and the US military concern over al-Qaeda’s presence in Africa back to the February 2003 kidnapping of thirty-two European tourists in Algeria’s Sahara desert. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Professor Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones to blame.
His latest book is called The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa. Its sequel is called The Dying Sahara, will be released next year.
Anjali Kamat and I spoke with Professor Keenan last week and asked him to lay out the story.
JEREMY KEENAN: Really, the story begins in 2002. That, you will remember, is after the Americans had thought they had successfully defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. So we move from Afghanistan at the end of 2001 with the America now sort of launching its global war on terror. And there was a feeling—there was very little evidence for this, but at least the American military felt, and they were saying, that the terrorists that they thought they had dislodged from Afghanistan had moved across through that part of Asia, across the Horn of Africa, into the Sudan and across into the Sahara, and from there, they were going to attack Europe. There was absolutely no evidence for that, and that, of course, is really a figment of imagination. And that was in sort of 2002.
And what America was trying to do or the Bush administration was trying to do was to justify the militarization of Africa. In other words, the early seeds, the growth of AFRICOM. It wanted a reason, an excuse, to, if you like, secure Africa, primarily for its oil resources, the gradually increasing threat of China on the continent. But it hadn’t got a reason, or it hadn’t got an excuse or a justification to do so. And the war on terror provided just such a reason. It provided the justification for the Bush administration, if you like, to get a grip on Africa and to launch the war on terror in Africa.
The problem was, there was very little terror in Africa. In fact, if we exclude the incidents in Mombasa in the hotels in 1998, a few incidents in Egypt, in North Africa and the Algerian coast, all of which are rather marginal to the main oil areas of Africa, which are around Nigeria and West Africa, there was effectively no terrorism on the continent.
And so, what happened was they fabricated it. And what they did was to kidnap, hijack and take hostage seven different groups of tourists, Europeans, traveling in the Central Sahara in Algeria, the Central Algerian Sahara. And over a period of about three to four weeks, seven different groups literally just disappeared into thin air. There were all sorts of stories of sort of Bermuda Triangles in the Sahara and so forth. Gradually, the idea or the news came out that these had been taken by Islamist or Islamic terrorists. But there was no certainty. It was being manipulated by Algeria, the Algerian secret services, working with the Americans.
And the name of the leader gradually sort of percolated out, only after about three or four months, as a man called El Para. That was his pseudonym or his war name. He had twelve—he has at least twelve aliases that I know of. There’s even a rumor that he was trained as a Green Beret in America in the 1990s. Certainly, he was working for the Algerian DRS. That’s the Algerian security services, secret military intelligence services. He was in charge of a group of so-called terrorists who kidnapped, took hostage these thirty-two European hostages. That was the beginning of the story.
That incident itself ran on for six months. The tourists were held in two different hideouts in the Algerian Sahara, literally hundreds of miles—thousands of miles from anywhere. One group was released under a rather theatrically established attack, a sort of false attack, by the military after three months. Then the second group were taken all the way south into Mali. That’s two, two-and-a-half thousand miles, sort of—or kilometers south of the Mediterranean coast, right into bottom half of the Sahara. And eventually, they were released, after six months in captivity.
Now, by this time, America was talking, or the Bush administration was talking about the Sahara being a swamp of terror. “We’ve got to drain it.” El Para was being described as Osama bin Laden’s man in the Sahara. And so on and so forth. And there were lots of little incidents along the way, so to speak. El Para, himself, over the next six months was allegedly chased by combined forces of American Special Forces along with the Mali army, Algerian army, the Nigerian army, into Chad, a story which all the evidence suggests never even ever took place. This lasted for almost two years, a year and a half. And it provided the Bush administration with, if you like, the information or the disinformation to launch a new front in the war on terror, what they call the Saharan front or a second front. And I should say the word “second front” was used by the Americans for almost every new phase in the war on terror, every part of the world where they launched a new front was usually called a “second front.” So there were lots of second fronts—in Latin America, in the Far East, in Southeast Asia, and, of course, in the Sahara. And that was really the story.
What is extraordinary is that, by a thousand-to-one chance, million-to-one chance, I was sort of there in the region for two or three years, more or less continuously, before this incident took place. I was there for much of the time while it happened and afterwards. And I’ve been working there for a long time, so I knew—I had a network of very close friends all through this region, local people. I mean, I talk about this region, we’re talking about a very large sort of chunk of the Sahara, much of the Central Sahara and what we call the Sahel. That’s the southern shore. So, all this region, I had a sort of network of close friends, people I’d been working with, local people, mostly Tuareg, Tuareg tribesmen, who were able to provide me with details of what didn’t happen in the area. You know, we’re talking about events which were being fabricated.
But it provided the basis for launching this new front in the war on terror, and that has become, if you like, the base for more or less everything that has happened in Africa since then. When I say everything that’s happened, in terms of the development of AFRICOM and much of the ideology, if you like, that propaganda, if you want to call it that, that the Americans have used to justify much of the military action that they have taken in the rest of the continent. And when they talk about the threat of terrorism in Africa, various countries to the south, the justification for this, the argument is, “Look what happened in the Sahara. This is where al-Qaeda was, and now is. And these vast, ungoverned spaces, these are the dangerous areas, the failed states, the areas which aren’t being governed. This is where terrorists are lurking, where they’re hanging out. They’re threatening Europe. They’re threatening the rest of Africa.” So, this story, which was fabricated over this period of time, 2003 and 2004, has become, if you like, the base, the fact, the truth behind what is really an enormous lie.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Keenan, who ordered the kidnapping?
JEREMY KEENAN: The leader was a man called El Para. We know that he is—there is overwhelming evidence that he is an agent for the DRS. So the question is who—the DRS is the Algerian—
AMY GOODMAN: The DRS being…?
JEREMY KEENAN: That’s the Department of Renseignement et Sécurité, the Department of Information and Security, so the secret military intelligence services in Algeria. The head of that, or the operational head, was a man called General Smain Lamari. His boss, the overall command, is General Mohamed Mediène. Mediène is still alive. He still holds that job. Smain Lamari, who almost certainly managing the operation, died in August two years ago. So he was managing it, and it is almost certain that he would have been ordering it and controlling it from Algiers itself.
ANJALI KAMAT: You talk about how Algeria colluded with the United States, but what’s in it for Algeria?
JEREMY KEENAN: With 9/11, Algeria saw an opportunity, and the President, Bouteflika, President Bouteflika—I think I’m right in saying—was the first foreign president to visit George Bush in the States. And I think I’m correct in saying he probably undertook more visits than almost any other at that time. Anyhow, the development of a very close relationship between Algeria and America.
I should say, at that time, it was Algeria being a bit pushy. And what they wanted, in essence, was a deal with America, the deal being that Algeria was saying, “Look, you’ve had this horrific atrocity happen in America, 3,000 people killed, but we know this. We understand this. We’ve been the front line against terrorism for the last ten years. We’ve had 200,000 people killed. You know, we are in the same boat together.” So, Algeria wanting to, if you like, get into bed with America. What America—what Algeria wanted, of course, was high-tech equipment for its army, surveillance equipment, communications equipment. Ideally, they wanted attack helicopters and night-vision equipment and so forth.
America, for its turn, was saying, “Look, it’s all very well, you know, you saying these things about us, but, you know, you’re on top of the terrorist situation. You know, really, you don’t need this sort of equipment. You know, the country is the best it’s been now for well over—you know, for ten years. There’s very little terrorism left. There are a few incidents up in the east in the mountains, but, by and large, you know, you’re in control of the situation.” So this was the American excuse, if you like, for not delivering, you know, what Algeria was wanting. That was in September.
Literally a month later, there was the first kidnap attempt on European hostages in the Sahara. And what Algeria was saying, to itself, was, “Look, you know, we’ve got to show to the Americans that we’re not on top of terrorism. We’ve got to show that it exists and it’s a problem.” And also, at that same time, the Algerians knew that the Americans were sort of imagining, if you like, this movement of Taliban terrorists from Afghanistan through the southern Sahara, weaving across and getting up into Europe in that way, which is a crazy idea. So the Algerians were saying, “Well, if we can sort of get some terrorism in that area, we can hopefully win the argument that we’re not on top of it, and also we can sort of give the Americans some concrete evidence to bolster their own theory,” which was based on no intelligence at all.
ANJALI KAMAT: Let me fast-forward to the present. In your book, you talk about the role of General Jim Jones, who is now national security adviser to President Obama. Can you talk about current US policy in Africa and what the current status of AFRICOM is, now that you’ve set up for us the story of what created the rationale for AFRICOM?
JEREMY KEENAN: Yes, certainly. General Jim Jones plays an interesting role in this. He was, if you like, at the beginning of the story, and he’s at the end of it, or if you talk about the present, now, as of course Obama’s head of national security, national security adviser. At the beginning of this story, in 2002, 2003, he was head of EUCOM, so the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and head of EUCOM, and EUCOM, that’s European Command, of course covered Africa. Africa was minute; it took up very little attention from EUCOM. But that has changed. And so, in a sense, the growth of AFRICOM out of EUCOM, European Command, sort of covers this period. So it began with General Jones, when he was in charge, and the story that I’ve just told you, that was under his—on his watch, so to speak. And, of course, now he is Obama’s national security adviser.
So what is happening with American policy in Africa now? There was a huge amount of optimism, of course, with Obama coming to power. I think now, a few months further on, we are a little bit more cautious and uncertain of what is actually happening, particularly on the AFRICOM front. At the sort of time of Obama’s election, I think there was a feeling amongst or within AFRICOM that it might well get the chop. There was certainly political pressure, and still is, in Washington not to use a military presence in this way. But what we’ve seen in the last few months suggests, and it’s still early days for Obama, that in fact he is following rather in the lines—in the footsteps of his predecessor in promoting and pushing AFRICOM.
And this, I think, is very serious for Africa, and it is not going to do American foreign policy any good at all, because what we’re seeing at the moment, in the last few months there’s been almost a replay of the story I’ve just told you and the same individuals concerned. That is, the people who took the hostages in 2003, the same people, have been taking hostages again now—a very complicated story; I won’t go into the details of it—but since last December, that’s December 2008, and up until last month. So more hostage takings again by the same people who kidnapped them in 2003. So we know that there is some involvement of the Algerian security forces, and the question is, is America involved again?
Now, in what I have written on this in the last few weeks and so forth, I have been very careful to say that I have no evidence, direct evidence, of America being involved in the way that it was in 2003 and during the Bush period. However, I do not know if the odd phone call took place. Just because I don’t have evidence doesn’t mean to say there is no involvement.
What is worrying is that the AFRICOM and America now, the American government, is now talking, again, in the same language as in 2003, ’04: “Yes, we’ve got al-Qaeda all over the Sahara. This is a security threat, and need AFRICOM,” etc. So, this is very worrying. Again, as I emphasize, it’s the early days in the Obama administration. I don’t think he’s being particularly well advised on this, the what’s going on in Africa in this particular context. But it does—it sounds very, very familiar: the same place, exactly the same people, the people who assassinated the hostage who was killed on the 31st of May, a man called Edwin Dyer, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a tourist. He happened to be British, living in Austria. The person who assassinated him and beheaded him was the same person who took—who was El Para’s number two, who took the hostages in 2003, the same people.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Keenan, I wanted to ask you about Hillary Clinton’s trip to Africa, seven countries. She’ll be going to Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, Cape Verde. The significance of these countries and US policy in Africa?
JEREMY KEENAN: Well, I remain a little reserved. Trips and words are one thing; actions are another. And while, of course, one obviously welcomes this apparent change in policy between the Bush administration and the Obama administration, and, if you like, the attempts to reconstruct better relations between America and the rest of the world, as long as America is peddling the AFRICOM idea and, if you like, giving primacy to the military, because this is what is happening, AFRICOM is the front line, if you like, of American policy in Africa. As long as that line is being pushed, we’re not going to have really much change in Africa.
The present line of giving primacy to AFRICOM, given its history and given what it is doing, is not what Africa itself wants. And I think the question is quite self-evident: why is it that, so far, every single country in Africa has said, “We do not want AFRICOM?” What could be clearer than that? So no matter what Hillary is doing running around Africa, the message from Africa has been, even from rulers who are fairly despotic and certainly by no means very democratic. Authoritarian rulers who have done the bidding of the United States over these years are saying, “We do not want AFRICOM in our country,” as at least a base for it.
So, until America gets that message onboard, loud and clear, and it sees and understands the history of how AFRICOM has developed from this very, very murky past, which I document in this volume—then the second volume will be out in the beginning of the year, that covers the last two or three years of what is happening—American-African policy is—sure, it will improve, because it can’t get any worse, but it’s going to be very suspect. And it is not, in my view, the right path.
AMY GOODMAN: British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. His latest book, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/6/keenan
British Anthropologist Jeremy Keenan on “The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa”
As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues her seven-nation tour of Africa, we hear from British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. He traces AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, to a 2003 kidnapping of European tourists. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones responsible. [includes rush transcript]
Guest:
Jeremy Keenan, Professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. His latest book is The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa. Its sequel, The Dying Sahara, will be released next year.
AMY GOODMAN: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has emphasized that her seven-country tour of Africa is intended to promote democracy, fight corruption, and boost US investments in African trade and agriculture.
We turn now to another issue that’s widely expected to be discussed on every stop: AFRICOM, the US military command in Africa, which has been publicly opposed by every country on the continent except Liberia.
Now Secretary Clinton will not be visiting the countries in and around the oil- and gas-rich Sahara desert—Mali, Niger, Chad, Algeria and Mauritania. But a new book by British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan argues this area is crucial to understanding the birth of AFRICOM and the Bush administration’s expansion of the global war on terror into Africa.
Keenan is a professor of social anthropology at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and has spent over four decades working in and writing about this region. He traces AFRICOM and the US military concern over al-Qaeda’s presence in Africa back to the February 2003 kidnapping of thirty-two European tourists in Algeria’s Sahara desert. The hostage taking was widely blamed on Islamic militants thought to be affiliated with al-Qaeda, but Professor Keenan argues that the Bush administration and the Algerian government were the ones to blame.
His latest book is called The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa. Its sequel is called The Dying Sahara, will be released next year.
Anjali Kamat and I spoke with Professor Keenan last week and asked him to lay out the story.
JEREMY KEENAN: Really, the story begins in 2002. That, you will remember, is after the Americans had thought they had successfully defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. So we move from Afghanistan at the end of 2001 with the America now sort of launching its global war on terror. And there was a feeling—there was very little evidence for this, but at least the American military felt, and they were saying, that the terrorists that they thought they had dislodged from Afghanistan had moved across through that part of Asia, across the Horn of Africa, into the Sudan and across into the Sahara, and from there, they were going to attack Europe. There was absolutely no evidence for that, and that, of course, is really a figment of imagination. And that was in sort of 2002.
And what America was trying to do or the Bush administration was trying to do was to justify the militarization of Africa. In other words, the early seeds, the growth of AFRICOM. It wanted a reason, an excuse, to, if you like, secure Africa, primarily for its oil resources, the gradually increasing threat of China on the continent. But it hadn’t got a reason, or it hadn’t got an excuse or a justification to do so. And the war on terror provided just such a reason. It provided the justification for the Bush administration, if you like, to get a grip on Africa and to launch the war on terror in Africa.
The problem was, there was very little terror in Africa. In fact, if we exclude the incidents in Mombasa in the hotels in 1998, a few incidents in Egypt, in North Africa and the Algerian coast, all of which are rather marginal to the main oil areas of Africa, which are around Nigeria and West Africa, there was effectively no terrorism on the continent.
And so, what happened was they fabricated it. And what they did was to kidnap, hijack and take hostage seven different groups of tourists, Europeans, traveling in the Central Sahara in Algeria, the Central Algerian Sahara. And over a period of about three to four weeks, seven different groups literally just disappeared into thin air. There were all sorts of stories of sort of Bermuda Triangles in the Sahara and so forth. Gradually, the idea or the news came out that these had been taken by Islamist or Islamic terrorists. But there was no certainty. It was being manipulated by Algeria, the Algerian secret services, working with the Americans.
And the name of the leader gradually sort of percolated out, only after about three or four months, as a man called El Para. That was his pseudonym or his war name. He had twelve—he has at least twelve aliases that I know of. There’s even a rumor that he was trained as a Green Beret in America in the 1990s. Certainly, he was working for the Algerian DRS. That’s the Algerian security services, secret military intelligence services. He was in charge of a group of so-called terrorists who kidnapped, took hostage these thirty-two European hostages. That was the beginning of the story.
That incident itself ran on for six months. The tourists were held in two different hideouts in the Algerian Sahara, literally hundreds of miles—thousands of miles from anywhere. One group was released under a rather theatrically established attack, a sort of false attack, by the military after three months. Then the second group were taken all the way south into Mali. That’s two, two-and-a-half thousand miles, sort of—or kilometers south of the Mediterranean coast, right into bottom half of the Sahara. And eventually, they were released, after six months in captivity.
Now, by this time, America was talking, or the Bush administration was talking about the Sahara being a swamp of terror. “We’ve got to drain it.” El Para was being described as Osama bin Laden’s man in the Sahara. And so on and so forth. And there were lots of little incidents along the way, so to speak. El Para, himself, over the next six months was allegedly chased by combined forces of American Special Forces along with the Mali army, Algerian army, the Nigerian army, into Chad, a story which all the evidence suggests never even ever took place. This lasted for almost two years, a year and a half. And it provided the Bush administration with, if you like, the information or the disinformation to launch a new front in the war on terror, what they call the Saharan front or a second front. And I should say the word “second front” was used by the Americans for almost every new phase in the war on terror, every part of the world where they launched a new front was usually called a “second front.” So there were lots of second fronts—in Latin America, in the Far East, in Southeast Asia, and, of course, in the Sahara. And that was really the story.
What is extraordinary is that, by a thousand-to-one chance, million-to-one chance, I was sort of there in the region for two or three years, more or less continuously, before this incident took place. I was there for much of the time while it happened and afterwards. And I’ve been working there for a long time, so I knew—I had a network of very close friends all through this region, local people. I mean, I talk about this region, we’re talking about a very large sort of chunk of the Sahara, much of the Central Sahara and what we call the Sahel. That’s the southern shore. So, all this region, I had a sort of network of close friends, people I’d been working with, local people, mostly Tuareg, Tuareg tribesmen, who were able to provide me with details of what didn’t happen in the area. You know, we’re talking about events which were being fabricated.
But it provided the basis for launching this new front in the war on terror, and that has become, if you like, the base for more or less everything that has happened in Africa since then. When I say everything that’s happened, in terms of the development of AFRICOM and much of the ideology, if you like, that propaganda, if you want to call it that, that the Americans have used to justify much of the military action that they have taken in the rest of the continent. And when they talk about the threat of terrorism in Africa, various countries to the south, the justification for this, the argument is, “Look what happened in the Sahara. This is where al-Qaeda was, and now is. And these vast, ungoverned spaces, these are the dangerous areas, the failed states, the areas which aren’t being governed. This is where terrorists are lurking, where they’re hanging out. They’re threatening Europe. They’re threatening the rest of Africa.” So, this story, which was fabricated over this period of time, 2003 and 2004, has become, if you like, the base, the fact, the truth behind what is really an enormous lie.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Keenan, who ordered the kidnapping?
JEREMY KEENAN: The leader was a man called El Para. We know that he is—there is overwhelming evidence that he is an agent for the DRS. So the question is who—the DRS is the Algerian—
AMY GOODMAN: The DRS being…?
JEREMY KEENAN: That’s the Department of Renseignement et Sécurité, the Department of Information and Security, so the secret military intelligence services in Algeria. The head of that, or the operational head, was a man called General Smain Lamari. His boss, the overall command, is General Mohamed Mediène. Mediène is still alive. He still holds that job. Smain Lamari, who almost certainly managing the operation, died in August two years ago. So he was managing it, and it is almost certain that he would have been ordering it and controlling it from Algiers itself.
ANJALI KAMAT: You talk about how Algeria colluded with the United States, but what’s in it for Algeria?
JEREMY KEENAN: With 9/11, Algeria saw an opportunity, and the President, Bouteflika, President Bouteflika—I think I’m right in saying—was the first foreign president to visit George Bush in the States. And I think I’m correct in saying he probably undertook more visits than almost any other at that time. Anyhow, the development of a very close relationship between Algeria and America.
I should say, at that time, it was Algeria being a bit pushy. And what they wanted, in essence, was a deal with America, the deal being that Algeria was saying, “Look, you’ve had this horrific atrocity happen in America, 3,000 people killed, but we know this. We understand this. We’ve been the front line against terrorism for the last ten years. We’ve had 200,000 people killed. You know, we are in the same boat together.” So, Algeria wanting to, if you like, get into bed with America. What America—what Algeria wanted, of course, was high-tech equipment for its army, surveillance equipment, communications equipment. Ideally, they wanted attack helicopters and night-vision equipment and so forth.
America, for its turn, was saying, “Look, it’s all very well, you know, you saying these things about us, but, you know, you’re on top of the terrorist situation. You know, really, you don’t need this sort of equipment. You know, the country is the best it’s been now for well over—you know, for ten years. There’s very little terrorism left. There are a few incidents up in the east in the mountains, but, by and large, you know, you’re in control of the situation.” So this was the American excuse, if you like, for not delivering, you know, what Algeria was wanting. That was in September.
Literally a month later, there was the first kidnap attempt on European hostages in the Sahara. And what Algeria was saying, to itself, was, “Look, you know, we’ve got to show to the Americans that we’re not on top of terrorism. We’ve got to show that it exists and it’s a problem.” And also, at that same time, the Algerians knew that the Americans were sort of imagining, if you like, this movement of Taliban terrorists from Afghanistan through the southern Sahara, weaving across and getting up into Europe in that way, which is a crazy idea. So the Algerians were saying, “Well, if we can sort of get some terrorism in that area, we can hopefully win the argument that we’re not on top of it, and also we can sort of give the Americans some concrete evidence to bolster their own theory,” which was based on no intelligence at all.
ANJALI KAMAT: Let me fast-forward to the present. In your book, you talk about the role of General Jim Jones, who is now national security adviser to President Obama. Can you talk about current US policy in Africa and what the current status of AFRICOM is, now that you’ve set up for us the story of what created the rationale for AFRICOM?
JEREMY KEENAN: Yes, certainly. General Jim Jones plays an interesting role in this. He was, if you like, at the beginning of the story, and he’s at the end of it, or if you talk about the present, now, as of course Obama’s head of national security, national security adviser. At the beginning of this story, in 2002, 2003, he was head of EUCOM, so the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe and head of EUCOM, and EUCOM, that’s European Command, of course covered Africa. Africa was minute; it took up very little attention from EUCOM. But that has changed. And so, in a sense, the growth of AFRICOM out of EUCOM, European Command, sort of covers this period. So it began with General Jones, when he was in charge, and the story that I’ve just told you, that was under his—on his watch, so to speak. And, of course, now he is Obama’s national security adviser.
So what is happening with American policy in Africa now? There was a huge amount of optimism, of course, with Obama coming to power. I think now, a few months further on, we are a little bit more cautious and uncertain of what is actually happening, particularly on the AFRICOM front. At the sort of time of Obama’s election, I think there was a feeling amongst or within AFRICOM that it might well get the chop. There was certainly political pressure, and still is, in Washington not to use a military presence in this way. But what we’ve seen in the last few months suggests, and it’s still early days for Obama, that in fact he is following rather in the lines—in the footsteps of his predecessor in promoting and pushing AFRICOM.
And this, I think, is very serious for Africa, and it is not going to do American foreign policy any good at all, because what we’re seeing at the moment, in the last few months there’s been almost a replay of the story I’ve just told you and the same individuals concerned. That is, the people who took the hostages in 2003, the same people, have been taking hostages again now—a very complicated story; I won’t go into the details of it—but since last December, that’s December 2008, and up until last month. So more hostage takings again by the same people who kidnapped them in 2003. So we know that there is some involvement of the Algerian security forces, and the question is, is America involved again?
Now, in what I have written on this in the last few weeks and so forth, I have been very careful to say that I have no evidence, direct evidence, of America being involved in the way that it was in 2003 and during the Bush period. However, I do not know if the odd phone call took place. Just because I don’t have evidence doesn’t mean to say there is no involvement.
What is worrying is that the AFRICOM and America now, the American government, is now talking, again, in the same language as in 2003, ’04: “Yes, we’ve got al-Qaeda all over the Sahara. This is a security threat, and need AFRICOM,” etc. So, this is very worrying. Again, as I emphasize, it’s the early days in the Obama administration. I don’t think he’s being particularly well advised on this, the what’s going on in Africa in this particular context. But it does—it sounds very, very familiar: the same place, exactly the same people, the people who assassinated the hostage who was killed on the 31st of May, a man called Edwin Dyer, who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, a tourist. He happened to be British, living in Austria. The person who assassinated him and beheaded him was the same person who took—who was El Para’s number two, who took the hostages in 2003, the same people.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Keenan, I wanted to ask you about Hillary Clinton’s trip to Africa, seven countries. She’ll be going to Kenya, South Africa, Angola, Congo, Nigeria, Liberia, Cape Verde. The significance of these countries and US policy in Africa?
JEREMY KEENAN: Well, I remain a little reserved. Trips and words are one thing; actions are another. And while, of course, one obviously welcomes this apparent change in policy between the Bush administration and the Obama administration, and, if you like, the attempts to reconstruct better relations between America and the rest of the world, as long as America is peddling the AFRICOM idea and, if you like, giving primacy to the military, because this is what is happening, AFRICOM is the front line, if you like, of American policy in Africa. As long as that line is being pushed, we’re not going to have really much change in Africa.
The present line of giving primacy to AFRICOM, given its history and given what it is doing, is not what Africa itself wants. And I think the question is quite self-evident: why is it that, so far, every single country in Africa has said, “We do not want AFRICOM?” What could be clearer than that? So no matter what Hillary is doing running around Africa, the message from Africa has been, even from rulers who are fairly despotic and certainly by no means very democratic. Authoritarian rulers who have done the bidding of the United States over these years are saying, “We do not want AFRICOM in our country,” as at least a base for it.
So, until America gets that message onboard, loud and clear, and it sees and understands the history of how AFRICOM has developed from this very, very murky past, which I document in this volume—then the second volume will be out in the beginning of the year, that covers the last two or three years of what is happening—American-African policy is—sure, it will improve, because it can’t get any worse, but it’s going to be very suspect. And it is not, in my view, the right path.
AMY GOODMAN: British anthropologist Jeremy Keenan. His latest book, The Dark Sahara: America’s War on Terror in Africa.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Roger Shuler: Memo to Eric Holder: Don Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Roger Shuler's piece, below, lays out in harrowing detail the gross instances of
prosecutorial misconduct in Don Siegelman's case.
Read it, send it out--and call/fax/email Eric Holder and the White House,
calling on to dispense some justice at long last (as that would be a "change" indeed).
MCM
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking firm steps to deal with prosecutorial misconduct during the George W. Bush era. And that's a good thing.
But the beneficiaries of Holder's reviews, so far, have all been Republicans. And that is not a good thing--especially when you consider that perhaps the most egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bush years came in the case against Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.
How corrupt were the actions of prosecutors in the Siegelman case? We can point Mr. Holder and his staff in several directions:
* The Paul Weeks affidavit--Holder's reviews have focused largely on Alaska corruption cases involving former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott. In each case, federal prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. And William M. Welch, chief of the U.S. Public Integrity Section, was involved in each case.
Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson says Welch also was involved in the Siegelman case. And as happened in Alaska, Welch apparently withheld key information from the defense. Simpson says Welch came to Alabama when defense attorneys in the Siegelman case moved for the recusal of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller. Welch's role, Simpson says, was to defend Fuller--and he succeeded in keeping the judge on the case.
But Simpson says Welch should have been aware of an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Weeks, charging Fuller with misconduct, perhaps of a criminal nature. A copy of the affidavit was hand delivered to the Public Integrity Section, and Simpson says Welch had a duty to disclose the contents of the affidavit to the Siegelman defense team. Simpson says there is no indication that the affidavit ever was disclosed.
* The Nick Bailey notes--Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey was the key prosecution witness, testifying essentially that Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy had struck a deal where Scrushy would be appointed to a hospital-regulatory board in exchange for his contribution to an education-lottery campaign. But 60 Minutes reported that prosecutors interviewed Baily some 70 times in order to get his testimony straight--and even had him write down key portions of his statement. Bailey's notes should have been turned over to the defense, but they were not.
Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, reported that Bailey even mentioned the notes during the trial:
In fact, Bailey brought the proceedings to a stop by referring openly to the written notes he prepared at the prosecutor?s behest. The defense demanded to see them, and in a chambers hearing, Judge Fuller directed the prosecutors to turn them over. The prosecutors denied their existence. Bailey stated that he was required to prepare the notes on paper supplied by the prosecutors, and they were placed in a binder that the prosecutors or an FBI agent working with them retained.
* The mysterious check exchange--Nick Bailey testified that he saw a check change hands at a meeting involving Siegelman and Scrushy. But there was a slight problem with Bailey's story: The check was cut days after the meeting. It could not have changed hands the way Bailey testified. Scott Horton sums up this episode succinctly:
Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy?s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.
* The Lanny Young bombshells--Another key witness for the prosecution was former lobbyist and landfill operator Lanny Young. According to a report in Time magazine, Young provided some damaging information about Siegelman. But Young also told prosecutors that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to prominent Alabama Republicans Jeff Sessions and William Pryor. That information should have been turned over to the Siegelman defense team. It was not.
* Leura Canary's "recusal"--According to Justice Department whistleblower Tamarah T. Grimes, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary remained involved in the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes supported her story with e-mails showing that Canary was involved in the case well after her "recusal."
* Hanky Panky Between Jurors and Prosecutors--Grimes also provided e-mails that revealed previously undisclosed contact between jurors and the prosecution.
As we reported here at Legal Schnauzer:
Grimes also provided e-mails that show previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and the Siegelman jury.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans.
And that was not the only hanky panky between jurors and the prosecution:
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct ? apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
The prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case clearly dwarfs that in the Alaska cases. So why has Eric Holder, so far, refused to look in the direction of Alabama?
prosecutorial misconduct in Don Siegelman's case.
Read it, send it out--and call/fax/email Eric Holder and the White House,
calling on to dispense some justice at long last (as that would be a "change" indeed).
MCM
Attorney General Eric Holder 202.514.2001; fax: (202) 307-6777; E-mail: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov
White House 202-456-1111; toll free number: 800-833-6354; E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov
Memo to Holder: Siegelman Prosecution Was Riddled With Misconduct
Attorney General Eric Holder is taking firm steps to deal with prosecutorial misconduct during the George W. Bush era. And that's a good thing.
But the beneficiaries of Holder's reviews, so far, have all been Republicans. And that is not a good thing--especially when you consider that perhaps the most egregious example of prosecutorial misconduct in the Bush years came in the case against Don Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama.
How corrupt were the actions of prosecutors in the Siegelman case? We can point Mr. Holder and his staff in several directions:
* The Paul Weeks affidavit--Holder's reviews have focused largely on Alaska corruption cases involving former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens and state legislators Victor Kohring and Peter Kott. In each case, federal prosecutors failed to disclose evidence to the defense. And William M. Welch, chief of the U.S. Public Integrity Section, was involved in each case.
Alabama attorney and GOP whistleblower Jill Simpson says Welch also was involved in the Siegelman case. And as happened in Alaska, Welch apparently withheld key information from the defense. Simpson says Welch came to Alabama when defense attorneys in the Siegelman case moved for the recusal of U.S. District Judge Mark Fuller. Welch's role, Simpson says, was to defend Fuller--and he succeeded in keeping the judge on the case.
But Simpson says Welch should have been aware of an affidavit from Missouri attorney Paul Weeks, charging Fuller with misconduct, perhaps of a criminal nature. A copy of the affidavit was hand delivered to the Public Integrity Section, and Simpson says Welch had a duty to disclose the contents of the affidavit to the Siegelman defense team. Simpson says there is no indication that the affidavit ever was disclosed.
* The Nick Bailey notes--Former Siegelman aide Nick Bailey was the key prosecution witness, testifying essentially that Siegelman and former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy had struck a deal where Scrushy would be appointed to a hospital-regulatory board in exchange for his contribution to an education-lottery campaign. But 60 Minutes reported that prosecutors interviewed Baily some 70 times in order to get his testimony straight--and even had him write down key portions of his statement. Bailey's notes should have been turned over to the defense, but they were not.
Scott Horton, of Harper's magazine, reported that Bailey even mentioned the notes during the trial:
In fact, Bailey brought the proceedings to a stop by referring openly to the written notes he prepared at the prosecutor?s behest. The defense demanded to see them, and in a chambers hearing, Judge Fuller directed the prosecutors to turn them over. The prosecutors denied their existence. Bailey stated that he was required to prepare the notes on paper supplied by the prosecutors, and they were placed in a binder that the prosecutors or an FBI agent working with them retained.
* The mysterious check exchange--Nick Bailey testified that he saw a check change hands at a meeting involving Siegelman and Scrushy. But there was a slight problem with Bailey's story: The check was cut days after the meeting. It could not have changed hands the way Bailey testified. Scott Horton sums up this episode succinctly:
Bailey testifies that he saw a check change hands at a meeting at which Scrushy?s appointment to the oversight board was decided. This is the evidence that landed Siegelman in prison. And it was false. And the prosecutors knew that it was false.
* The Lanny Young bombshells--Another key witness for the prosecution was former lobbyist and landfill operator Lanny Young. According to a report in Time magazine, Young provided some damaging information about Siegelman. But Young also told prosecutors that he had paid tens of thousands of dollars in apparently illegal campaign contributions to prominent Alabama Republicans Jeff Sessions and William Pryor. That information should have been turned over to the Siegelman defense team. It was not.
* Leura Canary's "recusal"--According to Justice Department whistleblower Tamarah T. Grimes, U.S. Attorney Leura Canary remained involved in the Siegelman case long after she had supposedly recused herself. Grimes supported her story with e-mails showing that Canary was involved in the case well after her "recusal."
* Hanky Panky Between Jurors and Prosecutors--Grimes also provided e-mails that revealed previously undisclosed contact between jurors and the prosecution.
As we reported here at Legal Schnauzer:
Grimes also provided e-mails that show previously undisclosed contacts between prosecutors and the Siegelman jury.
A key prosecution e-mail describes how jurors repeatedly contacted the government's legal team during the trial to express, among other things, one juror's romantic interest in a member of the prosecution team. "The jurors kept sending out messages" via U.S. marshals, the e-mail says, identifying a particular juror as "very interested" in a person who had sat at the prosecution table in court. The same juror was later described reaching out to members of the prosecution team for personal advice about her career and educational plans.
And that was not the only hanky panky between jurors and the prosecution:
Further undisclosed evidence of prosecution team members speaking with jurors following the verdict emerges in Grimes' written statement to the DoJ. In it, she says a member of the team prosecuting Siegelman had spoken with a juror suspected of improper conduct ? apparently at the time the judge was due to question the juror about that conduct. Grimes quotes the lead prosecutor in the case as saying someone had "talked to her. She is just scared and afraid she is going to get in trouble."
The prosecutorial misconduct in the Siegelman case clearly dwarfs that in the Alaska cases. So why has Eric Holder, so far, refused to look in the direction of Alabama?
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