{"id":1515872,"date":"2024-02-23T07:01:39","date_gmt":"2024-02-23T07:01:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.counterpunch.org\/?p=314169"},"modified":"2024-02-23T07:01:39","modified_gmt":"2024-02-23T07:01:39","slug":"cias-torture-and-abuse-americas-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/02\/23\/cias-torture-and-abuse-americas-shame\/","title":{"rendered":"CIA\u2019s Torture and Abuse: America\u2019s Shame!"},"content":{"rendered":"\"\"<\/a>\n
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Photograph Source: Poster Boy – CC BY 2.0<\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

The legacy of the CIA\u2019s torture and abuse program continues to obstruct the Guantanamo trials of those responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000; the 9\/11 bombings in 2001; and the nightclub bombing in Indonesia in 2002.\u00a0 The various defendants were subjected to waterboarding in CIA secret prisons; painful shackling; and solitary confinement in darkened dungeon-like conditions for years.\u00a0 The CIA has classified the relevant documentation to avoid embarrassment and not to protect legitimate secrets.\u00a0 Moreover, there was never any accountability for the key individuals involved in these shameful acts.<\/p>\n

John Yoo and Jay Bybee<\/u><\/em>: Yoo was assigned to the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Bybee was the assistant attorney general.\u00a0 They were most responsible for a series of torture memoranda between 2002 and 2005.\u00a0 These memoranda approved the techniques of \u201cenhanced interrogation\u201d and claimed to determine the legal limits for the torture of detainees.\u00a0 They make for excruciating reading.\u00a0 The CIA ignored the limits from day one.<\/p>\n

The torture measures were used in the systematic abuse of detainees at Guantanamo Bay detention camp beginning in 2002 and at the Abu Ghraib facility following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. These actions have been considered war crimes by other former members of the Bush administration.\u00a0\u00a0<\/sup><\/p>\n

The DoJ\u2019s Office of Professional Responsibility recommended that Yoo be referred to his state bar association for disciplinary proceedings, but a senior DoJ lawyer concluded that Yoo and Bybee merely exercised \u201cpoor judgment,\u201d and that the department lacked a clear standard to conclude misconduct.<\/p>\n

Yoo currently is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California in Berkeley.\u00a0 Bybee is a jurist serving as a senior circuit judge of the Court of Appeals for the 9th circuit.\u00a0 He has published numerous articles in law journals and has served as a senior fellow of constitutional law at the William S. Boyd School of Law.<\/p>\n

CIA Director John Brennan<\/u><\/em>:\u00a0 Brennan was personally responsible for trying to stop the Senate\u2019s investigation of the torture program.\u00a0 He lied when he denied authorizing the penetration of Senate computers in order to find the documentation in the hands of congressional investigators.\u00a0 His actions were a violation of the separation of powers, and he should have been removed by President Barack Obama. When asked about the CIA hacking of the Senate computers, he offered that such charges were \u201cbeyond the scope of reason.”<\/p>\n

Then chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D\/CA), persevered, and her committee published a 549-page book that concluded torture produced no useful intelligence; that the CIA hid its worst practices; and that torture began before the DoJ memoranda were drafted.\u00a0 The CIA regularly lied to the White House on these issues.<\/p>\n

When questioned about his role in the CIA\u2019s torture and abuse program, Brennan response was that \u201cThe president told us to do it, and we did what we were told.\u201d\u00a0 This classic response has a neat Nuremberg ring to it, which somehow eluded a constitutional scholar such as President Obama.<\/p>\n

CIA Director Gina Haspel and Jose Rodriguez<\/u><\/em>:\u00a0 Haspel deserves a special niche in the Hall of Shame.\u00a0 Not only did Haspel escape any accountability or responsibility for a special leadership role in the CIA\u2019s torture program, but in 2018 she became the CIA\u2019s director.\u00a0 Sadly, even Senator Feinstein (D\/CA) referred to Haspel in the confirmation hearings as a \u201cgood deputy director,\u201d who has the \u201cconfidence of the agency.\u201d President Trump\u2019s support for Haspel is particularly ironic since he once compared the CIA to Nazi Germany\u2019s Gestapo.\u00a0 CIA\u2019s \u201cenhanced interrogation program\u201d was right out of the Nazi playbook.<\/p>\n

Haspel was known at the CIA to many as \u201cbloody Gina\u201d for her leading role in the torture program.\u00a0 She was a deputy and protege to Jose Rodriguez, the former director of the Center for Counterterrorism.\u00a0 If the CIA\u2019s torture program had a godfather, it was Rodriguez, the director of interrogations.\u00a0 Haspel was his most devoted acolyte.\u00a0 She currently directs King & Spalding\u2019s risk advisory service to advise the very rich on protecting their wealth.<\/p>\n

Haspel commanded the CIA\u2019s most notorious secret prison in Thailand, where she oversaw the waterboarding of Abd al-Rahim al-Nishri, who took part in the attack on the USS Cole in 2000.\u00a0 Abu Zubaida was waterboarded at this prison 83 times, although she may not have been the commander at that time.\u00a0 Haspel drafted the CIA cable that ordered the destruction of the torture tapes.\u00a0 President Obama made no attempt to make sure there was accountability for either Haspel or Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

Rodriguez claimed that he had to destroy the tapes to protect the identity of the torturers.\u00a0 There has never been a time in modern history when torturers weren\u2019t hooded.\u00a0 Even the torturers in Hollywood\u2019s \u201cZero Dark Thirty\u201d were hooded.\u00a0 And so were the CIA torturers.<\/p>\n

ACLU\u2019s David Cole<\/u><\/em>:\u00a0 Cole is an unlikely member for the Hall of Shame in view of his current role as the ACLU\u2019s National Legal Director.\u00a0 In 2015, however, while serving as the Hon. George J. Mitchell Professor in Law and Public Policy at Georgetown University\u2019s Law Center, Cole concluded that the CIA got a \u201cbum rap\u201d from the Senate Intelligence Committee\u2019s report on torture and abuse.\u00a0 His exculpatory brief for the CIA was published in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, and never mentioned the sadistic nature of the program; that the program began before the Department of Justice sanctioned certain measures; and that it incorporated measures that were never permitted by the DoJ.<\/p>\n

Cole never mentioned that sadistic techniques were performed on totally innocent victims, who were known to be innocent by many at the CIA.\u00a0 Nor did Cole mention some of the more bizarre and unconscionable aspects of the CIA program, such as \u201crectal feeding\u201d and \u201crectal hydration\u201d that involved a pureed blend of hummus and raisins that was \u201crectally infused.\u201d\u00a0 These aspects should have bothered Cole, the first recipient of the ACLU\u2019s prize for contributions on civil liberties in 2013.<\/p>\n

Lawrence Wright, the special counsel who investigated the Iran-contra scandal, concluded that the \u201cfailure to punish governmental lawbreakers feeds the perception that public officials are not wholly accountable for their actions.\u00a0 It also may lead the public to believe that no real wrongdoing took place.\u201d\u00a0 This certainly applies to all those involved in CIA\u2019s torture program.<\/p>\n

An appropriate punishment for all members of the Hall of Shame would be forcing them to watch the 92 torture tapes that recorded the CIA\u2019s sadistic techniques.\u00a0 Fortunately for them, the tapes were destroyed under Rodriguez\u2019s orders. \u00a0He faced no punishment for defying orders from the White House to protect the tapes.<\/p>\n

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The post CIA\u2019s Torture and Abuse: America\u2019s Shame!<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

This post was originally published on CounterPunch.org<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The legacy of the CIA\u2019s torture and abuse program continues to obstruct the Guantanamo trials of those responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000; the 9\/11 bombings in 2001; and the nightclub bombing in Indonesia in 2002.\u00a0 The various defendants were subjected to waterboarding in CIA secret prisons; painful shackling; and solitary confinement in darkened dungeon-like conditions for years.\u00a0 The CIA has classified the relevant documentation to avoid embarrassment and not to protect legitimate secrets.\u00a0 Moreover, there was never any accountability for the key individuals involved in these shameful acts.\u00a0 More<\/a><\/p>\n

The post CIA\u2019s Torture and Abuse: America\u2019s Shame!<\/a> appeared first on CounterPunch.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":200,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,266],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/200"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1515872"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1518916,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1515872\/revisions\/1518916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1515872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1515872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1515872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}