Results tagged “human_rights” from SpyTalk

Spies Vs. Spies: How the ACLU Got the Photos

By Jeff Stein | August 26, 2009 9:36 PM | | Comments (0)

Someday somebody will make a thriller about human rights counterspies turning tables on the CIA, tracking down its interrogators and supplying dossiers on them to defense lawyers for the detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

According to reports in The Washington Post and New York Times, the Justice Department has launched an investigation of the attorneys and human rights sleuths, who even secretly photographed interrogators outside their homes and supplied pictures for the detainees to identify.

The Justice Department's implication, of course, is that something illegal was done by the John Adams Project, a collaborative effort by the American Civil Liberties Union and National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

But was it?

Tags: ACLU, CIA, counterespionage, counterrerrorism, counterspies, Dick_Cheney, human_rights, Intelligence_Identities_Protection_Act, international_law, interrogators, John_Adams_Project, John_Marks, Justice_Department, legal_affairs, National_Association_of_Criminal_Defense_Lawyers, spies, spooks, State_Department, the_dark_side, torture, Vietnam_War

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CIA Torture Scandal: Day Four

By Jeff Stein | August 25, 2009 6:34 PM | | Comments (0)

The opening salvos on the partially declassified CIA Inspector General's report on detainee abuses included hair-raising anecdotes about threatening captives with power drills, guns to the head and the mock deaths of other prisoners.

Now the story is the dogs under the porch: what's beneath all those blacked-out paragraphs in the still heavily redacted, 2004 report by the spy agency's IG.

Tags: ACLU, CIA, cover_up, detainee, human_rights, Inspector_General, interrogation, interrogators, legal_affairs, secret_sites, torture

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Spy Agencies Bump Heads Over Interrogations

By Jeff Stein | July 27, 2009 4:55 PM | | Comments (3)

The White House beat a strategic retreat last week on its ideas for a new multiagency interrogation unit, giving its task force another two months to come up with a plan everybody can live with.

But if initial reactions are any guide, the White House faces an uphill fight in creating an organization that can satisfy military, intelligence and law enforcement needs at once.

Tags: Amy_Zegart, CIA, CSIS, Defense_Department, FBI, human_rights, interrogation, military_intelligence, Pentagon, torture, White_House

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Should the CIA Meddle in Iran Now?

By Jeff Stein | June 15, 2009 6:13 PM | | Comments (1)

A half century ago the CIA could bring down an Iranian prime minister with a few rent-a-crowds, well placed payments to key generals and a pliable replacement.

Could it do the same today?

Not likely, but events in Iran have often contradicted the prognostications of Westerners, especially at the CIA.

Tags: Ahmadinejad, Ali_Khamenei, CIA, clandestine_services, human_rights, Iran, Iranian_election, Jimmy_Carter, Mossadegh, Operation_Ajax, Poland, Pope, propaganda, protest, shah, State_Department, Voice_of_America

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Georgetown Lawyers to Urge New Geneva Convention for Terrorism

By Jeff Stein | June 3, 2009 11:13 PM | | Comments (2)

U.S. and European officials have been at war over the wording of the Geneva Convention ever since American forces invaded Afghanistan in late 2001 and began rounding up terrorist suspects and Taliban fighters.

Maybe it's time for a new Geneva Convention for the age of terrorism.

Tags: Additional_Protocol_No._2, Afghanistan, Center_on_National_Security_and_the_Law, civilian_casualties, Common_Article_3, Geneva_Convention, Georgetown_University, human_rights, interrogation, Matthew_Gerke, Neil_Katyal, Pakistan, prisoners_of_war, Qaeda, Taliban, terrorism, torture, victims_of_war, war, war_crime

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Question for Cheney: How Come No Attacks After Torture Stopped?

By Jeff Stein | June 2, 2009 3:08 PM | | Comments (5)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney has taken to many stumps lately to proclaim that the CIA's "enhanced interrogation techniques" saved the United States from another terrorist attack.

That leaves the question of what prevented another terrorist attack after the torture, as some call it, of terrorist suspects stopped.

Tags: Cheney, CIA, detainee, enhanced_interrogation_techniques, human_rights, Milt _Bearden, Obama, Pakistan, torture

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Repetitive Interrogations Reveal CIA's Lack of Spies, Agency Veterans Say

By Jeff Stein | April 23, 2009 8:45 PM | | Comments (4)

In the continuing cacophony over what torture is and whether it "works," an important point has gone missing, say current and former counterterrorism operatives.

The CIA's reliance on repeated, and brutal, "enhanced" interrogation techniques shows how few spies the spy agency had before and after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

That made the agency's reliance on squeezing new information out of captured terrorist suspects all the more desperate, many say.

Tags: Afghanistan, case_officer, CIA, counterinsurgency, enhanced_techniques, human_rights, interrogators, Predator, protest, Qaeda, terrorism, torture, whistle_blower

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The Guantanamo Officers' Club

By Jeff Stein | April 14, 2009 9:58 PM | | Comments (2)

About 20 years ago I had the privilege to interview Gen. George L. Mabry, the second most decorated soldier in the history of the U.S. Army, at his home in Columbia, S.C.

Mabry had been awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroics in World War Two. The young captain had already earned a chestful of ribbons for his "Saving Private Ryan" performance at Utah Beach on June 6, 1944. Only the legendary Audie Murphy earned more medals.

But five months later, in the Huertgen Forest near Schevenhutte, Germany, Mabry, 27, raced past his forward observers to cut through some mine-rigged Concertina wire. 

Clearing a path for his soldiers, and he then captured three enemy bunkers in succession, killing three German soldiers, disabling another with his rifle butt and another with his bayonet. He captured nine other Germans.

You can read the entire citation at the Medal of Honor site, here.

What you will not read in his citation is what he told me in his quiet study, only months before he died in 1990.

Tags: Abu_Ghraib, Afghanistan, Audie_Murphy, Baghram, Cuba, Donald_H._Rumsfeld, enhanced_interrogation_techniques, _Evasion, George_ L._Mabry, human_rights, interrogation, Iraq, John_Yoo, Medal_of_Honor, military_training, Nazis, _Resistance_and_Escape, Robert_F._Kennedy, SERE, Sherry_Jones, Survival, torture

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The Mysterious Case of CIA Interrogator Mark Swanner

By Jeff Stein | April 8, 2009 11:09 PM | | Comments (0)

There are 14 names in the confidential Red Cross report that surfaced last week on the CIA's "ill treatment" of detainees.

But you will not find in it the name of Manadel al-Jamadi, an Iraqi who was picked up by U.S. Navy SEALS in Baghdad and interrogated by the CIA.

That's because Jamadi died in the care of Mark Swanner, a 44-year-old CIA interrogator who battered the prisoner at the ghastly Abu Ghraib in 2003. 

Tags: Abu_Ghraib, Baghram, CIA, CID, civil_liberties, Criminal_Investigations_Detachment, Geneva_Convention, ghost_prisoners, ghost_ prisoners, Guantanamo, homicide, human_rights, hypothermia, interrogation, Jane_Mayer, Justice_Department, Manadel_al_Jamadi, Mark_Danner, Mark_Swanner, Navy_SEALS, Nina_Ginsberg, secret_prisons, torture, U.S. Army

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What's the Big Deal About Hersh's 'Assassinations' Claim?

By Jeff Stein | April 2, 2009 3:06 PM | | Comments (6)

Ever since the CIA's counterterrorism chief in 2001 was famously quoted by a CIA agent as saying, "Capture Bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back in a box on dry ice,"  no one from President Bush on down has denied that U.S. agencies have full latitude to kill suspected terrorists. 
 
President George W. Bush himself said he wanted Osama Bin Laden and his cronies "dead or alive." Vice President Dick Cheney talked about going over to "the dark side" to get al Qaeda operatives. And during his campaign for the White House, Barack Obama declared, "We must take out Osama Bin Laden and his lieutenants."
 
But when famed investigative reporter Seymour Hersh talked a few weeks ago about "targeted assassinations" ordered up by an "executive assassination wing" centered in Cheney's office and carried out by the Joint Special Operations Command, much of the news media went into a tizzy.

Tags: Amy_Goodman, Cheney, CNN, counterinsurgency, counterterrorism, Frances_Fragos_Townsend, George_W._Bush, Harper's, human_rights, John_Hannah, Joint_Special_Operations_Command, JSOC, liberals, Obama, Scott_Horton, Seymour_Hersh

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Chinese Dissident Here Describes Attacks by Beijing's Secret Agents

By Jeff Stein | April 2, 2009 12:09 AM | | Comments (0)

A leading Chinese dissident in the Washington, D.C., area says in a forthcoming book that Beijing's secret agents in the United States are tapping her phones, intercepting her e-mail and trying to intimidate her.

Her accusations are backed up by other dissidents, the FBI and a Virginia congressman whose own files were infiltrated by Chinese hackers.

Tags: Chinese_Embassy, Chinese_Intelligence, CIA, dissident, Dragon_Fighter espionage, eavesdrop, Erping_Zhang, espionage, FBI, hackers, human_rights, Intelligence_Online, Kales_Press, Peoples_Liberation_Army, Rebiya_Kadeer, Rep._Frank_R._Wolf, repression, Turkmenistan, Uyghur, Uyghur_American_Association

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Spy Swap With Cuba May Be Off the Table

By Jeff Stein | March 31, 2009 2:56 PM | | Comments (0)

The political momentum toward détente with Cuba may be moving so fast that the idea of a spy swap as the first step in a thaw may already be passé.

Tags: Chamber of Commerce, CIA, Congress, Cuba, espionage, Florida, human_rights, PBS, Peter_Eisner, political_prisoners, Raul_Castro, spies, WorldFocus

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Nonpartisan Commission Urged as Court Blocks Gitmo Resettlement

By Jeff Stein | February 18, 2009 8:17 PM | | Comments (0)

With the latest attempt to resettle Guantanamo prisoners stymied in court, a group of prominent American law enforcement, military, diplomatic, judicial and religious figures is urging President Obama to appoint a non-partisan commission to study the detention, treatment, and transfer of terrorist suspects.

Tags: Abu Ghraib, Antonio_M._Taguba, Armando Spataro, Center_for_Constitutional_Rights, detainee, Emi MacLea, FBI, Guantanamo, human_rights, Italy, Juan_E._Méndez, Leo_Sisti, l'Espresso, Milan, Qaeda, rendition, Rev._John_H._Thomas, Silvio_Berlusconi, United_Church_of_Christ, William_Sessions

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