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Lithuania hosted secret CIA prisons

The World — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 21:45:04 +0000

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The CIA used at least two secret detention centers in Lithuania after the September 11th terrorist attacks, a Lithuanian inquiry has found. The report by a Lithuanian parliamentary committee says that in 2005 and 2006 CIA chartered planes were allowed to land in Lithuania. It says that no Lithuanian officials were allowed near the aircraft, nor were they told who was on board. Poland and Romania hosted similar CIA “black sites”, media reports say. In Lithuania, at least eight terror suspects were held at one center on the outskirts of the capital Vilnius (pictured), the investigation found. It was formerly a riding school and the suspects were reportedly held there between 2004 and 2005. Matthew Bell looks at the current practice of the CIA. (AP Photo: Mindaugas Kulbis)

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MARCO WERMAN: Hi, I’m Marco Werman, this is the World. During the Bush Administration, the CIA operated secret prisons to hold suspected terrorists. Today, Lithuania said its intelligence service helped the CIA operate at least two of those prisons. These so called black sites in Lithuania might have been used to hold Al Qaeda suspects, but a Lithuanian investigation found no evidence the country’s leaders knew what was going on there. Still, the controversy is making big waves in Lithuania, and as the world’s Matthew Bell reports, those waves could eventually be felt in Washington.

MATTHEW BELL: The investigation carried out by a parliamentary commission in Lithuania might have been sparked by ABC News. Back in August, it ran a story that said one of the secret sites used by the CIA for holding high value Al Qaeda suspects was outside the capital, Vilnius. Today, the head of the Lithuanian investigation said there were two sites used by the CIA between 2002 and 2005, and that Lithuanian intelligence knew about them and helped the CIA operate them.

MAN: LITHUANIAN]

BELL: Arvydas Anusauskas said that the facilities were there. The chance to avoid immigration checks for prisoners, they were there. And flights connected to the CIA, they were there, too. But he went on to say that political leaders were not briefed about this in any meaningful way. That’s important, because the big question in Lithuania is whether officials there broke the law by complying with practices associated with CIA black sites such as water boarding. Lithuanian investigators today said they found no evidence of human rights violations at these sites, and they went even further. They said they found no evidence that the facilities were ever used to hold any CIA detainees. But if Lithuanian officials were in the dark about what went on at those black sites, international law expert Scott Horton says it’s because they wanted to be.

SCOTT HORTON: That’s called deniability in a case like this. Certainly the report itself says that this is coordinated with the Lithuanian intelligence services, and certainly they would have briefed up the chain. But did the Lithuanian authorities know exactly who was being held there and what was being done to them? I think we could probably assume they didn’t want to know those things. But they could easily have found them out if they wanted to.

BELL: This controversy might have claimed one high level political casualty already. The head of Lithuanian’s intelligence agency resigned last week. Horton says there could be more to come.

HORTON: The fact that the CIA used torture is presenting a real complication for especially intelligence services in Europe and their collaboration. And we’ve already seen a number of senior Italian intelligence officers indicted and put on trial because of their collaboration with the CIA. We may see this in a number of other countries. Major criminal investigation going on right now in Spain; another in Germany; another one in the UK. And it shows really how dangerous this technique is from the perspective of our allies.

BELL: For the most part, Horton says CIA officials back in Langley, Virginia, are safe from any criminal charges that might be brought in Europe. Their European counterparts are not. And that’s a potential headache for the Obama administration as it seeks to increase cooperation on counterterrorism. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

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CIA agents guilty of Italy kidnap

The World — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:55:53 +0000

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An Italian judge has convicted 23 Americans – all but one of them CIA agents – and two Italian secret agents for the 2003 kidnap of a Muslim cleric. The agents were accused of abducting Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar (pictured), from Milan and sending him to Egypt, where he was allegedly tortured. The trial, which began in June 2007, is the first involving the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program. The Obama administration has expressed its disappointment at the convictions. Marco Werman talks with John Radsan, who served as the CIA’s assistant general counsel from 2002 to 2004.

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MARCO WERMAN: Twenty-three Americans were sentenced to prison today in Italy. All but one of them work for the CIA and all were convicted of kidnapping. The case involves the abduction of an Egyptian-born Muslim cleric who was snatched off a street in Milan in 2003 and flown to Egypt for interrogation. The cleric says he was tortured there. Though the Americans received prison terms they’re not likely to do any time. John Radsan served as a CIA’s assistant general counsel from 2002 to 2004. He now teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul. Now the case relates to the seizure and then extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric. Tell us who this man was – this cleric – and where is he now?

JOHN RADSAN: Based on the public record we believe that he was recruiting people to go and fight in Iraq against American forces. That he was a radical preacher in Milan. He’s of Egyptian origin. And he was stirring up people to fight against Americans and against western interests around the world. He’s not in prison right now. At the end of his rendition he was released and as I understand he’s in Egypt at this time.

WERMAN: And when he was extraordinarily rendered how actively do you think the US government actually participated in that?

RADSAN: From the public record it seems clear that the US was involved in his snatch in Italy. I don’t think there’s much doubt about that. And that he was transferred. One of the questions was whether the Italian government knew about this. Was this a unilateral operation or was it a bilateral operation in Italy. I think it stands to reason that the CIA would not do something that is completely unilateral in Italy. That would make it very dangerous for the CIA officers. It would complicate the intelligence relationship between the CIA and the various Italian services. It would be bad at a political level. Of course if the CIA notifies its counterparts in Italy, they’re taking it on some sort of faith that the Italian authorities will in turn notify the political leaders in Italy. And it’s one of the questions we had in the trial and we still don’t know the level of Italian involvement and we don’t know the level of American involvement. But I don’t think any of these defendants has said that this did not take place – that the abduction did not take place. The defendants say that this was an authorized operation by the United States government.

WERMAN: And at the time what was the legal opinion relating to these kinds of operations in 2003? You were assistant general counsel for the CIA at the time.

RADSAN: I was assistant general counsel. I didn’t advice on this program. But I can speculate what the advice was. We comply with American law. We have to make sure that we comply with the American constitution, with the various statutes that apply to the CIA. When we do espionage in covert action we accept, as an unfortunate consequence, that in many situations we’re going to be violating international law and we may in many situations be violating the laws of other countries.

WERMAN: And for these 23 individual Americans who were sentenced today, are they going to have to be careful where they travel now? I mean would they want to avoid going on vacation in Italy for example?

RADSAN: That’s for sure. They’re not going to be going to Italy. They’ll also have to be careful about other countries that they go to. They’ll probably get legal advice. If they don’t they should to figure out what sort of extradition arrangements may exist between France and Italy, Singapore and Italy. I suspect that most of these people will be limiting their travel to within the United States. They’re not going to take the risk. We have examples of other people that have fallen in the international target. Henry Kissinger was careful about his travel because of various allegations. So these defendants will be in a similar category.

WERMAN: So what next? Will the US try to appeal this in any way?

RADSAN: I think the lawyers that are representing these people, they will appeal. At the end even if these convictions stand I don’t think we’re going to have American officers serving sentences there. In that sense the sentences are symbolic. I think it’s possible the Italians will ask for the extradition but I think it’s next to impossible that the Americans will extradite CIA officers – these are people that were serving their country – back to Italy to serve prison sentences. There’s an irony in this case. And that is that the prosecutor, Armando Spataro, was one of our important colleagues in counterterrorism and continues to be. He might have been coordinating with other parts of the American government beyond the CIA but he is the one that has been leading the charge and getting over these hurdles to bring this case. So in that sense it’s one part of the counterterrorism community indicting and convicting another part of the international counterterrorism community.

WERMAN: That’s interesting. I mean briefly, if these sentences are symbolic as you say, what do you think is the one-line message from them?

RADSAN: The CIA got in trouble for arguably violating Italian law and the CIA lives in a murky world of having to violate the laws of other countries to do espionage and conduct covert action.

WERMAN: Well John Radsan, former assistant general counsel for the CIA. Thanks very much.

RADSAN: Thank you.

WERMAN: And the State Department said today it’s disappointed by the Italian court’s decision.

Europe’s own interrogation scandal

The World — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 19:59:58 +0000

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Human rights advocates in EUROPE are calling for countries there to look into their own role in CIA prisoner abuse. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush administration. The World’s Gerry Hadden has the story.

JEB SHARP: Human rights advocates in Europe are pressing for some action. They’re hoping the Obama Administration’s investigations into alleged CIA prisoner abuses will move Europe to do some self-examination of its own. Several countries are accused of abetting CIA prisoner programs during the Bush Administration. But so far no one’s been held accountable. The World’s Gerry Hadden reports.

GERRY HADDEN: Europe has been through all of this before. In 2007 Dick Marty, a Swiss member of the Council of Europe, led an investigation into Europe’s role in America’s fight against terrorism. His findings? Several EU states let the US use their airports to move terrorism suspects around the globe. Some helped the CIA abduct targets. And some countries likely hosted secret CIA prisons. But most European governments simply ignored Marty’s report. The question is whether that will change now that the Obama Administration has released an internal CIA report on the agency’s interrogations and with the Justice Department investigating. There’s been some movement in Europe this week. Lithuania says it will investigate reports that it, like Poland and Romania, may have hosted a secret prison during the Bush era. Guilietto Chiesa is a member of the European Parliament from Italy. He says Europe can no longer remain quiet.

GUILIETTO CHIESA: The question now is to have the list of the people who have been detained in Lithuania. And probably there there have been torture, illegal interrogation, and very serious violation of human rights there. That means there are political and penal responsibilities.

HADDEN: Lithuanian denies it hosted a CIA prison and says it’s only investigating to clear its name. Gabriele Betchkaypeeteh is an editor at the Lithuanian daily paper Lietuvos Rytas. She says there’s no way her country could have hosted such a prison without word getting out.

GABRIELE BETCHKAYPEETEH: Technically it’s very difficult to have that prison in a country which has 3.5 million people and the place mentioned of the possible prison is quite small and we believe that local residents probably would have noticed any secret activities.

HADDEN: Romania also denies it hosted a prison. Same with Poland. Although that country says it’s investigating. Reed Brody, with Human Rights Watch in Brussels, says he was hoping that the CIA’s internal report on prisoner abuse would shed some light on this but he says it hasn’t.

REED BRODY: There were 23 pages of information in the CIA report on detention sites that were completely redacted. And obviously the CIA or whoever was involved here was afraid that if information about those sites were disclosed it could lead to further criminal investigations and prosecutions.

HADDEN: There’s also new pressure this week on some European governments to come clean on secret rendition flights. Amnesty International in Ireland says Shannon International Airport was used to move suspects. It’s calling for the Irish government to look into it. Reed Brody says if Europe doesn’t own up to its own role in the US-led war on terrorism it will lose credibility. And worse, quipped someone at the council of Europe today, Europe this person said has been criticizing the States for years on this but not only did Europe aid the effort it may now fall behind the US in investigating it. For The World I’m Gerry Hadden.

CIA used Canada’s cold expertise

The World — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 19:58:03 +0000

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Scientists in Canada whose research in surviving cold water is aimed saving lives have learned that the CIA used their work to develop an interrogation technique. The World’s Carol Hills has details.

KATY CLARK: Canada has a scientific feather in its cap. That cold northern country boasts several world-renowned experts in surviving cold temperatures. Their groundbreaking research has improved the odds of survival for people like sailors, fishermen and those who happen to drive off of bridges into frigid water. So it came as some surprise to one of those experts that his research has been used by the CIA to develop an interrogation technique. The World’s Carol Hills reports.

CAROL HILLS: The report released this week by the Justice Department showed that in 2003, CIA officers began using a technique called ‘water dousing’. Not to be confused with water-boarding which is essentially controlled drowning, water dousing involves laying a detainee on a plastic sheet and pouring cold water over him for 10 to 15 minutes. According to the report, an interrogator believed this was an effective technique, and sent a cable back to CIA headquarters requesting guidelines. The return cable explained that a detainee, quote, “must be placed on a towel or sheet, may not be placed naked on the bare cement floor, and the air temperature must exceed 65 degrees,” if the detainee isn’t dried off immediately. Gordon Geezbrecht is a thermophysiology professor at the University of Manitoba. Yesterday he received an email from a colleague about how the report showed that the CIA had consulted Geezbrecht’s published research in developing the idea of water dousing

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: That was yesterday and today I’ve got a copy of this Red Cross, international Red Cross report, that actually interviews former detainees who actually report that some of these techniques were used on them. So it became, it moved from theoretical to actual.

CAROL HILLS: His reaction:

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: It is a bit disturbing, for sure.

CAROL HILLS: Geezbrecht knows what it’s like to be immersed in cold water; he’s rendered himself hypothermic more than 40 times in his career. His most famous immersion was on the David Letterman show in 2004, when he was plunged into a vat of ice water for 15 minutes. Since then he’s been known as Dr. Popsicle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: We were able to take a two or three-hour experiment and condense it into one hour on national television and tell people that yes, cold water is dangerous, but you can survive it as long as you don’t panic.

CAROL HILLS: What he’s demonstrated, on Letterman and in his experiments, is that people can survive longer than they think in cold water. He calls it the one-ten-one principle.

GORDON GEEZBRECHT: In ice water you have one minute to get your breathing under control, so don’t panic, and you have about ten minutes of meaningful movement, so you have time to figure out what to do to get out. But then you do have to get moving, and you have an hour or more, one hour or more before you become unconscious due to hypothermia.

CAROL HILLS: But he says he meant his advice to be used to save people, not interrogate them. For The World, I’m Carol Hills.

Ultimate responsibility for prisoner abuse

The World — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:20:53 +0000

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If the U.S. abused and tortured terrorist suspects, and broke the law, why shouldn’t the Obama administration expand its investigation into who was responsible? The World’s Matthew Bell looks at the implications of investigating a former president.>>>The BBC’s Kevin Connolly on President Obama’s dilemma

Entire program – August 26, 2009

The World — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:17:45 +0000

Download MP3 The possible presidential implications of the CIA interrogations probe; also, the story of a former student democracy activist in China; plus, remembering Ted Kennedy's fight against apartheid.

Following the chain of command

The World — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:12:36 +0000

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If the US broke the law by abusing terrorism suspects under President Bush, should the Obama Administration expand the investigation all the way to the former president? The World’s Matthew Bell reports on the implications of investigating a former president.

KATY CLARK: I’m Katy Clark. This is the World. An investigation is under way into alleged CIA abuses terrorism suspects. We’re still a long way from finding out whether the probe will produce any indictments, but the following question is already out there. How high up the chain of command will the investigation go? So far President Obama has appeared reluctant to start a process that could lead to his predecessor. Here’s more from The World’s, Matthew Bell.

MATTHEW BELL: Newly unclassified documents from the CIA show that the aggressive techniques used during the interrogations of terrorists suspects were closely monitored by officials back in Washington. These do not appear to have been the actions of a few rogue agents acting on their own. Former Vice President Dick Cheney has said as much. He has repeatedly defended so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. But President Obama disagrees. He has banned coercive interrogations. Back in April, the President was asked if he believes that the Bush administration sanctioned torture by green lighting the practice of water boarding which has long been considered an act of torture under international and U.S. law. The President began his answer with a heavy sigh. “What I’ve said and I will repeat is that water boarding violates our ideals and our values. I do believe that it is torture.” Boil it down and what the President was saying there was that people broke the law, but Mr. Obama went on to show how reluctant he is to open up an investigation that has the possibility of bringing criminal charges against a former president. “I believe that water boarding was torture, and I think that the – whatever legal rationales were used, it was a mistake.” In other words, the President seemed to suggest mistakes are things to be forgiven, not investigated. “There is no good reason not to launch an investigation.” Steven Waltz of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard says President Obama’s unwillingness has everything to do with politics. “Obama has lots of alligators to wrestle with right now, and any investigation is going to be you know, politically very charged. But the whole reason you have a criminal justice system and that you have the rule of law is precisely to prevent politics from interfering with the process of justice. You don’t want crimes to go uninvestigation or unprosecuted for purely political reasons because once you open that door you can drive an enormous amount of wrongdoing right through it.” There are two conflicting impulses at work here, says political scientist Robert Gervais of Columbia University. One is the principle that no one, not even a former president is above the law and the other, Gervais says is the idea that American leaders who made tough, on the spot decisions during wartime should not be second guessed years later. “You want to literally shot through. You don’t even want the public debating and discussing this. It not only weakens our resolve if we have to face you know, terrible situations in the future, but it sort of weakens the body politic – it implicates the whole country in crimes and you don’t want that. You want leaders who will take if you will the guilt on themselves.” Gervais says it’s not entirely Machiavellian to believe that bad things happen during wars and there’s a danger of creating paralysis by investigating mistakes of the past. Presidential historian Robert Dalleck says there’s another tradition in American politics that adds to the pressure on Mr. Obama to back away from investigating his predecessor. “As soon as a president leaves office, to some degree there’s a halo over his head and the incumbent president is very reluctant to point the finger at a former president and perhaps the most striking example of that was when John Ford excused Richard Nixon’s violations of the law in the Watergate scandal.” But there is no small amount of pressure to do more about torture allegations than just going after low-level officials. David Cole is a professor of law at Georgetown. “If we don’t acknowledge in some official way that what was done was wrong and illegal and not just a mistake and a policy difference, then torture becomes a policy option.” Cole says this might be accomplished with something less than a full blown criminal investigation. He suggests creating a 9/11 commission style panel to conduct an official enquiry and come up with recommendations for the future. For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

Cheney’s involvement in interrogation abuse

The World — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:07:08 +0000

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Anchor Katy Clark speaks with John Nichols, author of an unofficial biography of former Vice President Dick Cheney, about allegations of Cheney’s role in authorizing the CIA interrogation techniques now under investigation.

KATY CLARK: Many of the questions surrounding the use of enhanced interrogation techniques lead back to former Vice President Dick Cheney. John Nichols is the author of an unofficial Cheney biography. He’s also Washington correspondent of the magazine, The Nation. John Nichols what do you believe Cheney’s role was in authorizing or pushing these techniques?

JOHN NICHOLS: Well, there’s very little doubt at this point that Vice President Cheney, when he was in office, was a passionate advocate for an aggressive approach to gathering intelligence and he himself has said that he encouraged the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which is of course the euphemism used by members of the administration, or what an awful lot of people call torture. So, I think it would be almost comic at this point to suggest that he was anything but a driving force in initiating discussions about using enhanced interrogation. Promoting the authorization of that enhanced interrogation by the Whitehouse and by legal counselors, and finally making sure that it was implemented, encouraging the CIA to do so. So, I think it would be fair to say he was the central figure.

CLARK: As we hear more learn and learn more about these techniques they seem to have taken place as a result of the slow considered steps of a very vast bureaucracy. How fair is it to say that all roads lead back to Dick Cheney?

NICHOLS: Of course we have to be careful about assuming that he hatched every plan, came up with every plot. We don’t need to make him ino the ultimate Machiavelli. What we do need to find out is the extent to which he was actively engaged at many, many different levels of

bureaucratic and legislative, official and unofficial in promoting the use of what most people in the world would describe as torture.

CLARK: Mr. Cheney has been pretty vocal in defending the Bush administration’s record using enhanced interrogation techniques saying that they delivered intelligence success. How do you argue with that?

NICHOLS: Well, it’s always very, very important to look at Dick Cheney’s statements. He is a master communicator of ideas that he wants to get across, but that are carefully plotted so that he doesn’t necessarily have to take responsibility. And if you look at some of his recent statements about the successes of enhanced interrogation, they’re a little bit vague in the area of whether it was the enhanced interrogation that actually got the intelligence that people are talking about, and this is very, very important. There is no question that some people on whom enhanced interrogation techniques were practiced did provide intelligence that may have been quite useful to the United States, but neither Cheney nor anyone else that I’ve seen so far, has successfully made a clear linkage between the water boarding, the enhanced interrogation, the torture, and the accessing of that information.

CLARK: Would that be some of the information that would come out in an investigation. I mean do you think that would be more of what we would find out?

NICHOLS: Well, of course that’s what we want to find out. And the important thing about this discussion is that we have two roles. One, in an investigation let’s find out what the United States did. Were lines crossed, why were they crossed, how were they crossed, what was done that was irresponsible, wrong-headed, potentially illegal?. And then once you’ve discovered that the much more important question becomes, who made this the case. Those who promoted those actions are the ones who need to be held to account, and yet it’s very, very silly frankly to fret about the CIA operatives at the low level. If somebody did something that is grossly illegal, of course they should be held to account, but really what we want to know, who was telling that low level officer what to do, and again there’s an awfully lot of evidence that suggests that Dick Cheney or at least people around Dick Cheney had some role in that telling.

CLARK: Given how much Dick Cheney has really been out there speaking about things that the Bush administration did, do you get a sense that perhaps in some way he is setting himself up as the fall guy here.

NICHOLS: No, I don’t think he’s setting himself as the fall guy. I think there’s another strategy altogether and that is to win the public relations war, i.e. to keep pushing the idea that the use of these techniques gained intelligence that protected America, to fight, if you will, above the level of the investigation so that even if an inquiry ultimately does point fingers of blame at Dick Cheney, the average American may not view him as an evil player. They might view him as perhaps and overzealous defender of the safety and good of the nation.

CLARK: John Nichols is Washington correspondent of The Nation and author of Dick, the Man Who is President. Thanks.

NICHOLS: It’s a pleasure.

How to interrogate terrorism suspects

The World — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 21:30:40 +0000

Download MP3 The Obama administration is setting strict new standards for treatment of terror suspects, as the Justice Department launches a criminal probe of past interrogation tactics during the Bush administration. The publication of harsh CIA methods has raised questions about how U.S. authorities should best go about conducting interrogations of terrorism suspects. The World's Matthew Bell reports. (photo: Associated Press)>>>Click here for BBC coverage.

Entire program – August 25, 2009

The World — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:13:58 +0000

Download MP3 Today on The World: The CIA abuse scandal sparks a revamping of interrogation tactics, early election results in Afghanistan show a close race between the top two contenders, and Tracy Kidder's new book Strength in What Remains tells a gripping story of what happened to a man after he survived genocide in Burundi and Rwanda.

US interrogation dilemma

The World — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:03:56 +0000

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The CIA abuse scandal raises questions about how US authorities should go about conducting interrogations of terrorism suspects. The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp. This is The World. Special prosecutor John Durham is just starting his investigation into alleged CIA interrogation abuses. And in the end there may not be a single prosecution out of the case. But the Department of Justice has opened the door to the possibility that CIA officials could face criminal charges for their harsh treatment of terrorism suspects. The move coincides with yesterday’s release of documents on the handling of terrorism suspects by the CIA. Predictably these events have fueled a political fight in Washington over national security. And the Obama administration’s already planning changes in the interrogation procedures it will use. The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

MATTHEW BELL: One question the CIA documents do not answer is whether those so-called enhance interrogation techniques actually produced valuable intelligence.

PHILIP HEYMANN: Nobody knows whether highly coercive things were necessary or not necessary. But they’re going to go to.

BELL: Philip Heymann is a professor of law at Harvard. He’s advised the Obama administration on how to revamp the way it carries out interrogations of terrorism suspects. Heymann says the biggest change President Obama has made is to ban the kinds of coercive interrogation methods that were used during President Bush’s first term.

HEYMANN: If you’re going to renounce coercive ways you want to substitute something that would be the world’s best non-coercive interrogation.

BELL: Some professional interrogators will be uncomfortable with this change but they’re in the minority, says Mark Bowden of the Atlantic Monthly. He’s been writing about interrogations of high-level terrorism suspects since soon after the attacks of September 11.

MARK BOWDEN: Most of the people who work in these institutions and agencies I think understand that when we live in a democracy and the perception of what we do is sometimes more important than what we do and that there’s a huge downside to crossing the line in interrogating prisoners and I think recognize that the approach being taken by the Obama administration is probably a more sensible one for now.

BELL: Bowden says he supports President Obama’s decision to ban coercive interrogation techniques but he also sympathizes with those CIA interrogators who found themselves face-to-face with terrorist suspects back in 2002/2003.

BOWDEN: The kind of thing that I’m reading about today, you know having a gun shot go off in the next room to make a person believe that he might be executed or threatening him with physical torture. These are repellent things but they are, when you get right down to it, simply efforts to frighten the person that you’re talking to. And given the consequences of the sort of attacks that these terrorists make, I for one, am not going to lay awake at night worrying about them having been frightened during questioning.

BELL: What emerges from the CIA documents released yesterday was a lack of clarity early on about where to draw the line during interrogations. Some agents even expressed concerns about breaking the law. The Obama administration has decided to draw the line by using guidelines spelled out in the US Army field manual. But those are basic guidelines meant to be easily understandable to the average GI. The key to getting interrogations right say Mark Bowden will be to put the right people in charge.

BOWDEN: Interrogation is not a science. There’s no gimmicks. There’s no drug that you can give somebody that’ll make them tell the truth. There’s no you know manual that says you know do steps one, two, and three and the person will begin spilling his guts.

BELL: Bowden says most big police departments have one or two people that are recognized as great interrogators and they don’t tend to be the toughest or meanest of detectives. Rather he says they’re usually the most perceptive and the most clever. For The World I’m Matthew Bell.

Renditions to continue in Obama administration

The World — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 20:00:40 +0000

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The Obama Administration plans to continue using the controversial “rendition” program that received so much criticism during the Bush years. Anchor Jeb Sharp finds out what value the program still has from John Radsan, former assistant general counsel at the CIA during the Bush administration.

JEB SHARP: White House officials have acknowledged that the Obama Administration will continue to use rendition – that is moving suspects to foreign countries. The practice under the Bush Administration was controversial. Critics charged that rendition led to suspects being tortured in the countries they were sent to. The Obama Administration insists that it will use greater safe guards to make sure that suspects are not tortured. John Radsan was assistant general council at the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush. He’s in St. Paul, Minnesota. John Radsan the term rendition has almost become a four-letter word. You hear it and you think oh oh that’s bad. But what does rendition actually mean in legal terms?

JOHN RADSAN: Rendition means a transfer of a suspect and we then associate it with a regular rendition or extraordinary rendition and those terms have been viewed in a very negative light based on past experiences. But if rendition is done right it doesn’t have to be illegal. It doesn’t have to lead to any abuses. What we mean by rendition is something different from the transfer that goes on through an extradition treaty when you have the courts involved; you have the foreign ministries. So let’s call rendition informal transfer.

SHARP: So when the Obama Administration says it will continue to use rendition but it will put safeguards in place to prevent abuse what exactly does it mean and why does it need rendition?

RADSAN: I think the Obama Administration is talking about transfers for interrogation. This is some of what Leon Panetta covered during his confirmation hearings. I think the Obama Administration got this one just right. We should not be transferring people if we want them abused. That cannot be a legitimate reason for rendition. But there may legitimate reasons. The country may have more interrogators that speak the language of the suspect, speak it in the dialect or the variation that will get the suspects attention, and the best interrogation is an interrogation that doesn’t have interpreters. What goes on behind the scenes behind countries and intelligence services is that we trade people in the same way that liaison services trade information. This is not pleasant. I recognize we’re moving human beings between jurisdictions but this is something that has been going on before this administration and the Bush administration and it did go on in the Clinton administration. The question is to what extent should we be doing it and what sort of controls have been in place? And I think that’s a very important debate.

SHARP: And what do you suggest or what do you know the Obama Administration to be favoring in terms of safeguards. How could you actually maintain this system but check to make sure abuse is prevented especially since it’s, for most us, out of sight out of mind?

RADSAN: I think that we should be more transparent about why we’re doing it, where we’re doing it, how we’re doing it. I propose that we might even list the number of countries that are off the list. That we’re going to reassure the American public, the international public, that we will not be rendering people say to Syria. We’ll take them off the list. Another area is to get assurances from the receiving country that they will treat the suspect fairly. We’ve kept our assurances secret but there have been other countries in a more open way. The United Kingdom has written agreements with various countries about fair treatment. After transfer we could even put in place various monitoring mechanisms. We could let the receiving country agree to monitoring by the international committee of the Red Cross. If we wanted to we could even go further and do secret types of checks to make sure that the person is being treated fairly.

SHARP: Does the fact that the Obama Administration still wants to retain the capacity to transfer suspects to other countries point to some lack in our legal system? In other words are we missing rules and regulations and laws that should be helping us fight terrorism in some other way?

RADSAN: I think the Obama Administration’s continued use of this practice shows that there are some situations where we need secrecy, where we need to do things quickly. So we’re balancing this secrecy and accountability. And this is one area where the Obama Administration they need to continue to practice. This is something that’s gone on in other administrations and we haven’t been able to find a way to change the law so we accept this informal practice within the law.

SHARP: John Radsan teaches at the William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota. He’s also served as a federal prosecutor and as assistant general council at the CIA. John Radsan thanks very much.

RADSAN: Thank you.

Entire program – August 24, 2009

The World — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:17:21 +0000

Download MP3 Today on The World: The Obama administration plans to develop a new elite team for interrogating terrorism suspects; also, Haitian ex-pats get advice from another diaspora: the American Jewish community; and, the songs of Israeli President Shimon Peres.

Plans for new interrogation team

The World — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:14:03 +0000

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The Obama administration is creating a new system for conducting interrogation of terrorism suspects. It’s supposed to be a way to look forward, and avoid mistakes of the past, as The World’s Matthew Bell reports.

JEB SHARP: I’m Jeb Sharp, this is The World. Previously classified details of the CI-’s treatment of terrorism suspects were made public this afternoon. They are not pretty. One interrogator apparently told a suspect that, if any attacks happened in the U-S, quote, “We’re going to kill your children.” Another interrogator allegedly tried to convince a suspect that his mother would be sexually assaulted in front of him. We’ll have more on the implications of the report in a moment. First, The World’s Matthew Bell tells us about a related announcement from the Obama administration, on how it plans to revamp the system of interrogating detainees.

MATTHEW BELL: The White House says President Obama will create a new multi-agency unit for interrogating so-called high value terrorism suspects. The unit will be based at FBI headquarters in Washington, led by an FBI official, and it will include US intelligence officials. The team will be overseen by the White House. It will also follow the rules for interrogations laid out in the US Army Field Manual. Those rules prohibit torture, along with some of the harsh interrogation techniques used in the past, such as water boarding. White House spokesman, Bill Burton, made the announcement today.

BILL BURTON: The President’s view is that intelligence gathering is best left to the intelligence community, and this is a way that the intelligence community can best operate, especially in these high volume instances.

MATTHEW BELL: Former CIA official, Robert Baer, says the Obama administration has been slow to end bad intelligence practices from the Bush era. But he says this is a step in the right direction, because it would take the main responsibility for interrogations and give it to the FBI.

ROBERT BAER: You can count on FBI agents going into an interrogation, and following the rule of law. That’s what they do, that’s what they get hired for. There would also be closer supervision, direct supervision from the department of justice. So, any tendency to resort to torture, were morel likely not, that not to happen.

MATTHEW BELL: The White House said the new interrogation’s unit does not mean that the CIA is being cut out of the interrogations process. But Baer, who served in the CIA for 21 years, says the agency has no business being involved in the questioning of suspects.

ROBERT BAER: It’s not what the CIA does, is interrogations, police forces do that, foreign intelligence services do that. The CIA runs what we call Clandestine Sources, informants overseas, and that’s its core business, and that’s what it should’ve been doing all along. When you the CIA into some sort of pera-military organization that interrogates prisoners of war. So it was just a dumb idea in the first place.

MATTHEW BELL: According to former vice president Dick Cheney, however, the CIA’s enhanced interrogation program disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives. President Obama has said he would rather look forward than go back and examine whether or not harsh interrogation techniques during the Bush years amounted to torture. But that might be unavoidable, as new details of alleged CIA abuses are coming out. Today, the justice department announcement the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into those allegations. Political science professor, Michael Desch, at the University of Notre Dame says it’s understandable why the Obama administration would prefer to look forward, but Desch says, these issues should not be swept under the rug.

MICHAEL DESCH: Without making a version of the Nuremberg defense, you know it does seem to me that lower level people that were following orders, should not be the primary focus in our assessment to these abuses. I would focus at a much higher level, or at least prefer that the focus be there.

MATTHEW BELL: And when you say, higher level, what are you talking about?

MICHAEL DESCH: I’m, you know, talking about senior policy makers at the department of justice, and in the white house.

MATTHEW BELL: CIA director, Leon Panetta, today sent an email message to agency personnel to help relieve concerns they might have. Panetta said the latest allegations of CIA abuses are part of an old story, and that he intends to quote, “Stand up for those officers who did what their country asked and who followed the legal guidance they were given.” Panetta said “That is the president’s position, too.” For The World, I’m Matthew Bell.

Investigating prisoner abuse in the past

The World — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 20:12:02 +0000

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Anchor Jeb Sharp speaks with Columbia law school professor Scott Horton about the Attorney General’s reported plans to recommend re-opening nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases.

JEB SHARP: As we just heard, the Attorney General is recommending the re-opening of nearly a dozen prisoner-abuse cases, a reversal of Bush administration policy. Scott Horton is a Professor at Columbia University Law School. He says at this point, there aren’t too many details on those prisoner-abuse cases.

SCOTT HORTON: The best known, by far, comes out of Abu Ghraib, and it relates to a prisoner named Manadel al-Jamadi, who was also known as the Iceman. He’s someone who was delivered Abu Ghraib, [INDISCERNIBLE] was stored in ice. We know that he was handled by a group of navy seals, but that he died in CIA custody, and there was a military inquiry involving the fields that resulted in some disciplinary action, but certainly no homicide prosecution. And we know there are roughly a dozen other cases that involve people dying while they were in custody.

JEB SHARP: So, what are the implications of these cases being re-opened? And does it mean talking about only CIA interrogators being investigated, or could the investigation go further up the food chain?

SCOTT HORTON: Yeah, well those are the two major questions. First of all, why is a decision being taken now on the investigations? Well, we know that the CIA inspector general Henderson identified each of these cases, and insisted that they go to the justice department for proper criminal investigation. So, the CIA inspector general effectively did his work. What happened to the justice department? All these cases were sent to the eastern district of Virginia, which has a long special track record of dealing with CIA cases. And what happened there? Not much evidently. In fact, here we had one member of the staff there referring to their function as a dead leather office, that is, they received these complaints, but really didn’t take any action on them. And now, the justice department, after reviewing what happened, has decided that, you know, that’s really not acceptable. There does have to be a proper homicide investigation.

JEB SHARP: What do you think is at stake here in reopening these cases?

SCOTT HORTON: Well, I think the attorney general wants to put blinders on the special prosecutor, to vary narrowly circumscribe it. But can he do that? No, he can’t. A special prosecutor whose worth [INDISCERNIBLE], is going to go fully investigate these cases, and follow the factual leads wherever they take him. And that my very well wind up implicating senior officials, the administration indeed, even people in the White House. So, I think all of these questions will wind up being examined by the special prosecutor, which is not to say, necessarily, that charges are gonna be brought in the end of the day, but I think certainly there’s at least an outside chance that we’ll see prosecution of administration officials, based on advice they gave, or actions they took.

JEB SHARP: So, why is this change happening now? You know, is it simply a case of new administration, new people in positions making fresh decisions? I mean, how arbitrary is this?

SCOTT HORTON: I really don’t think it’s arbitrary at all, in fact it’s almost the other way around. It’s in the last administration, basically a stick was put in the wheel, to stop the wheel of justice from turning. Basically, political decisions were made to stop criminal investigations from happening. The ethics office at the justice department has looked into what happened, they’ve pretty clearly have made that call right now. And I think what Holder is saying, you really can’t do that, we have to take the stick out, and now the investigation has to occur.

JEB SHARP: And what about the new CIA Chief, Leon Pinneta? How’s he reacting to all of this?

SCOTT HORTON: Well, it’s clear that he didn’t wanna see a criminal investigation occur, but in fact today, he’s just issued a statement to his staff, in which he’s telling them that this report’s being issued, and he’s really preparing them to expect that there’s gonna be a criminal investigation coming out of this. So, while he’s working hard to build report within the organization, he’s also trying to reconcile them to a new regime, and a new way of doing things, and on much higher degree of accountability.

JEB SHARP: Scott Horton is a contributing editor at Harpers Magazine, and a law professor at Columbia University. Thanks so much for talking to us.

SCOTT HORTON: Great to be with you.