Gjelten for the Prosecution

NPR has joined with much of the corporate media in the US in vilifying Julian Assange and ignoring the significant (and damning) material contained in the various WikiLeaks releases - and has been silent on the inhumane and extrajudicial punishment imposed upon Pfc. Bradley Manning in his military confinement as a suspect for the source of many of the WikiLeaks revelations.

You might think that a news organization would focus on the well-documented and internationally infamous abuses of power by the US state security organs (as in the case of Manning), or on the extrajudicial attempts at silencing WikiLeaks and targeting its founder Assange for a sham prosecution under the US Espionage Act (even the Columbia School of Journalism has denounced the US effort).

Then again if you are NPR's Tom Gjelten - and your primary allegiance is to the security apparatus of the United States regardless of its aims or tactics - you cobble together a piece of misinformation aimed at covering up the abuses of Manning and promoting the case for prosecuting Assange. Gjelten's report aired on Thursday's ATC (1/27/11).

Regarding Manning, Gjelten never mentions the UN investigation and Amnesty International's condemnation of Manning's detention, instead describing it himself - telling listeners that Manning

"is held in what the military calls Prevention of Injury status, supposedly because he's a threat to himself. According to some reports, Manning has been depressed. He's held alone in his cell for 23 hours a day under constant surveillance. His lawyer last weekend filed a complaint objecting to Manning's treatment."

In contrast to this euphemistic gloss, Gjelten brings on Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell, to give us the unchallenged Pentagon description of Manning's incarceration:

"He's being provided well-balanced, nutritious meals three times a day. He receives visitors and mail, and can write letters. He routinely meets with doctors, as well as his attorney. He's allowed to make telephone calls. And he is being treated just like every other detainee in the brig."

Done with Manning, Gjelten then turns his sights on Julian Assange. Noting that no direct connection has been found between Manning and Assange, Gjelten - friend of the CIA - states,

"If Assange were himself not a party to the theft of the classified U.S. files, he'd presumably have to be charged simply for publishing them. Difficult but not impossible, says Jeffrey Smith, a former CIA general counsel."

We then get CIA reinforcement, Smith to tell us,

"It would arguably be made easier if they could establish a link between the removal of the documents by Manning and the transmission of those documents to Assange, but I don't think the absence of that link is fatal to the prosecution of Assange."

And just in case any actual journalists might find Gjelten's "case" unsettling (and unseemly), Gjelten closes his report by turning to the New York Times to bolster his case:

"If government lawyers go after WikiLeaks, they'll probably say it's not a news organization. And they'll have the New York Times to back them up. In an article released on its website, Times editor Bill Keller writes that the newspaper has regarded Assange, quote, as a source, not as a partner or collaborator."

At least one can say that Gjelten is an expert on what is "not a news organization."

NPR Black Sites ***Updated***

(source of photo)

UPDATED below [1-26-11]

Just checking in on the torture and authoritarian-watch clock at NPR.

Remember Gulet Mohamed - that young US citizen held, probably tortured, illegally prevented from travelling, and grilled and harassed by the FBI? A week ago I posted on NPR's silence regarding his treatment. Since then, the ACLU sued to get Mohamed off the no-fly list and succeeded in getting him home. Even the Washington Post covered his return. How's NPR doing with on-air coverage? Still nothing, not a word...

And what about Bradley Manning, the young army private - convicted of no crime - who is being held in conditions that are so atrocious that even Amnesty International has weighed in on his case. NPR's on-air coverage? Absolutely nothing about his ill treatment - zilch.

UPDATE

As if to prove that it is nothing but a pro-torture mouthpiece for the new, enhanced Yes We Can Security States of America, NPR finally gets around to covering Gulet Mohamed by covering up his torture, and providing FBI disinformation as a bonus! On Wednesday ME [1-26-11] Jamie Tarabay discusses Gulet Mohamed's situation of being on the no-fly zone - but the fact that he was tortured by the Kuwaitis (with likely US approval) and then grilled relentlessly by the FBI is NEVER mentioned! Tarabay also states as fact that the numbers on Big Brother's no-fly list are "smaller than you think." She's speaking with FBI propagandist, Timothy Healy, director of its Torture Screaming Center Terrorist Screening Center :

Tarbay: "The actual number of people on the no-fly list isn't as high as you might think."

Healy: "About ten thousand. And then the U.S. citizens on the no-fly list is even much smaller, between 500 and 1,000."

Several commenters at the NPR site noted that there are mainstream news reports that show these numbers are probably off by a factor of about 50!

Asymmetric Accomplices to Murder

(source of graphic)

Remember back in June of 2006 when three Guantanamo detainees allegedly killed themselves? At the time I opined that "reports should say 'the alleged suicides' of three captives with no access to due process." And a few days later when Dan Schorr allowed John Ydstie to report the deaths as suicides, I noted that "it is essential that when prisoners are seized and held extrajudicially and die in custody, one must be skeptical about the conditions of the deaths..."

My skepticism was justified. On January 18, 2010, Harper magazine published a stunning investigative piece documenting (with FOUR named military sources) the apparent murders of those three detainees by US agents at the Guantanamo Prison Camp - and the subsequent coverup of the murders at the highest levels (e.g. war criminal Admiral Harris). The news of these likely murders is not completely unexpected, because as Scott Horton pointed out over a month ago (Dec. 7, 2009), a professor and Seton Hall students poured over the 503 page redacted military investigation (huge PDF file here) and found not only glaring inconsistencies (e.g. the victims had rags stuffed in their throats - the victims had no rags stuffed in their throats), but ludicrous assumptions underlying the official military story (i.e. under intense prison surveillance all three had to simultaneously bind themselves and hang themselves and go undetected for two hours!)

So how did NPR react to this damning news? So far absolutely nothing in the on-air news shows. This is completely inexcusable given the things that NPR reported (repeated) as facts regarding the detainee deaths:

• June 10, 2006 ATC (first major report on the deaths) - Jackie Northam: "the military says that the men hanged themselves....everything is coming from the Pentagon at this point, and they're saying that the suicides were planned and were coordinated....They described them all as dangerous members of terrorists organizations....they described this as an act of warfare...."
• June 11, 2006 Weekend Edition Sunday- Jackie Northam: "All three of the men had made nooses out of their bedclothes and out of the sheets and that, and that's how they hanged themselves.....[the US military] said it was well planned out by these men, who they called dangerous prisoners.....the military called this, not an act of desperation, Liane, but an act of warfare. The Guantanamo commander...Navy Rear Admiral Harry Harris said that these men were committed Jihadists....And this falls in line with what the military has always said, that anytime that these suicide attempts are made, it's a tactic used by al-Qaida to garner support..."
• June 12, 2006 ME - Jackie Northam: "...a prison guard at Guantanamo Bay discovered one of the detainees had hanged himself....Shortly after, guards discovered two more prisoners in the same area of the detention camp, had also hanged themselves.....Harris called the three men committed jihadists....Harris said the suicides were an act of what he called asymmetric warfare..."
• June 12, 2006 ATC - Jackie Northam: "Military officials at Guantanamo say the three detainees who committed suicide were ardent Jihadists who were willing to kill Americans and others....The Pentagon says he was a mid- to high-level al-Qaida operative. [The second] is described as a frontline fighter for the Taliban....Guantanamo Bay spokesman Commander Robert Duran said today that [the third] also had links to a terrorist group."
• May 31, 2007 ME [almost a year later] reporting on another supposed suicide Northam again states, "We're expecting to hear later today...whether he hanged himself like the other three prisoners did last summer, or whether it was something else." Renee Montagne adds, "And those of three prisoners who succeeded in killing themselves last year, they hanged themselves. What does the military do to try to prevent suicides?"

As you can see, not only did NPR repeat all the claims of the Pentagon as fact, but also repeated verbatim the US military's completely unsubstantiated claims about the detainees being dangerous terrorists. It's really tragic that it took a law professor and his students to slog through the military's sloppy coverup and that one reporter at Harper's magazine manages to get four former military men to go on the record with their revelations. It's funny that no one at NPR knows how to read long PDF files or how to get in touch with whistleblowers... If NPR had a shred of integrity, it would quickly and forcefully revisit it's coverage of the detainee deaths, issue an apology and remind listeners that there was never any proof for the statements that it repeated again and again as fact.

I should mention that - with grotesque timing (and typical obliviousness) - NPR did have a related story on the same day that the Horton story broke: June 19th's Morning Edition featured the inept Madeline Brand interviewing torture lawyer, and dynamic professor, John Yoo who was on to pimp his book and his slimy reputation. Brand flailed about, mentioning water boarding once and pointing out the unending nature of the "war on terror," but never pursued Yoo's evasions with follow-up questions and never brought up the obvious criminal behaviors sanctioned by Yoo and his Office of Legal Counsel - forced nudity, wall slamming, forced coldness, sleep deprivation, enforced painful stress positions, etc. Needless to say, she made no mention of the numerous detainee deaths by torture which have followed from Yoo's determinations that US "terror" detainees are outside the protections of US and international laws.

The Art of Enhanced Distraction

On Friday I was staying late at work and before leaving heard this promising start to a story on All Things Considered:

"This week, we've been reading a vivid narrative in the New York Times by the journalist David Rohde. He was held captive for seven months by the Taliban. He was moved frequently from house to house all over remote parts of Pakistan. And one detail in this story made us particularly curious."

Holy cow! I thought, NPR is going to allude to the three rather stunning observations contained in Rohde's articles which Glenn Greenwald so aptly wrote about a few days ago:

1. The actions of the US in killing countless civilians (especially Muslims) in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine have "galvanized the Taliban."
2. The US practice of holding detainees in abusive conditions "for years without being charged" has also has strengthened the Taliban.
3. How much more humanely Rohde was treated by his captors compared to the treatment meted out to similarly innocent captives at the hands of US military and intelligence agencies. As Rohde notes, his captives gave him bottled water, let him walk outside, and "never beat me."
   

In my head I was already composing the positive post I'd put up on this blog about NPR taking on this obvious - but still controversial - angle.

Alas, I couldn't have been more wrong. What was that "one detail" which made the collective "us" at NPR so curious?

"Rhode got a letter from his wife through the International Red Cross. How in the world did the Red Cross deliver him a letter when no one knew where he was? Well, the online magazine Slate found out for its "Explainer" column. Here's Andy Bowers with the answer."

Granted, the operations of the Red Cross in trying to contact hostages is pretty interesting - as The Guardian noted way back in 2004 (and MSNBC) and McClatchy detailed in 2008. And it's not a closed issue as this 2009 Newsweek article on ghost detainees reveals. Seems like those stories never gained much traction for the journalists at NPR news.

Interestingly, another Red Cross angle found its way into a Greenwald analysis today - Netanyahu's declaration that hiding prisoners from the Red Cross is a war crime (!?). Could there be two more polar opposite attitudes revealed by comparing Greenwald's work to NPR's? In one the focus is on the hypocrisy of those in power and the ways in which their deceit and misdeeds make the world more violent and dangerous for all of us. In the other, there is a perverse effort to focus on the most trivial and distracting details - even when such details are painfully ironic.

Creative Assassinations - For NPR's Shapiro It's Elementary

Consider these two screen shots from NPR's website:

From a story on Thursday's Morning Edition:

and from Thursday's All Things Considered

Any grade schooler with a rudimentary understanding of the innocent until proven guilty concept could figure out what is wrong with the titles of these web articles: both refer to TERRORISTS, when what is at issue are detainees of the US government suspected of involvement in terrorism (or guerrilla warfare) who have NEVER faced any semblance of legitimate due process that would justify calling them "terrorists." In fact, someone with just a bit more knowledge of recent US detention policies would suspect that most detainees in the US "war on terror" are probably innocent.

Unfortunately, instead of a grade schooler, NPR's two pieces on US rogue detention are led by "a magna cum laude graduate of Yale," Ari Shapiro. During the Morning Edition piece Shapiro claims that "[d]uring one incident late in the Bush administration, OFFICIALS SAY, a terrorist from Somalia was brought to Afghanistan...." Setting up listeners for his ATC follow-up, Shapiro states, "...the Bush administration used Guantanamo, the United States and Bagram to hold detainees. Because all of those possibilities are problematic, the Obama administration is now thinking more creatively about this issue....and we'll explore those possibilities tonight on All Things Considered.

NPR certainly does explore certain possibilities. Ari's Morning Edition story seems positively innocuous compared to his All Things Considered feature which Melissa Block introduces with the observation that "government lawyers are exploring more creative options." In the piece Shapiro completely embraces the terrorist-until-proven-innocent meme:

• "...virtually everyone interviewed for this story agreed: the United States would rather not be in the terrorist detention business."
  
• "President Obama has said that he will continue - rendition...would continue sending terrorists to foreign countries."
• "...says the Obama State Department is playing a major role in finding places to put terrorists..."

and makes his report an apologia for (US government approved) assassinations/extrajudicial executions:

"So if the US picks up twenty al-Qaeda members tomorrow and they cannot be held...where can they go? [Ken Anderson voiceover] 'To be perfectly blunt, I don't think they'll pick them up at all.' Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution has written about these issues. [Anderson] 'I think we've actually allowed the courts to arrange the incentives to kill rather than capture.' Many national security experts interviewed for this story agree. It has become so difficult for the US to detain people that in many instances the US government is killing them instead."

It floored me to transcribe reread this. Shapiro and Anderson are blaming the courts (!) because some have actually upheld the law. Well, given those harsh restrictions, when the US suspects people of involvement in terrorism outside the US, what "creative" options does it have - except to kill them. Though appalling, it's not surprising that these NPR stories have such a mafia ethic; consider the sources that Shapiro assembled for his ATC work:

1. "Columbia law professor Matthew Waxman handled detainee affairs at the Pentagon UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH."
2. "CIA SPOKESMAN Paul Gimigliano"
3. "Cardozo law professor Vijay Padmanabhan was an attorney adviser at the State Department IN THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION."
4. "John Bellinger, who was legal adviser to State UNDER PRESIDENT BUSH."
5. "Ken Anderson of the Hoover Institution"
6. "University of Michigan law professor Monica Hakimi worked at the State Department IN THE LAST ADMINISTRATION."

Now that is some creative journalism.

Putting Out Reliable Information

On her blog Alicia Shepard recently made an enhanced response to her initial harsh defense of not using "coded language" like the word torture, Alicia Shepard makes the following bold claim:

"But I am shilling for strong, credible journalism that is as objective as humanly possible. I am shilling for NPR to practice journalism based on putting out reliable information, to the best of its ability -- without taking sides -- so the public can make its own informed decisions."

Hey that's a noble thing to shill for, eh? Let's see how her employer's doing in "putting out reliable information" about some major news stories of the past week.

• On June 24, 2009 the BBC released a damning report on the torture and abuse of detainees at the US-run Bagram airbase from 2002-2008.
• On June 29, 2009 the International Committee of the Red Cross released a report detailing the Israeli imposed poverty, despair, economic collapse, infrastructure failures, etc. being imposed on the population of the Gaza Strip.
• Yesterday, the Israeli Defense Forces hijacked used enhanced boarding techniques to commandeer a boatload of humanitarian supplies in international waters, kidnapped used harsh removal tactics against its crew - including a Nobel Peace Prize Winner and a former (not lifetime) US Representative - and placed them in detention in Israel.
• Today, Amnesty International released a report documenting multiple war crimes committed by Israel in its December assault on Gaza (and denounced the war crimes of rocket fire by Hamas).

How did NPR do?

• On the BBC detainee abuse story, CBS picked it up...but NOT NPR.
• On the Red Cross humanitarian disaster in Gaza, Voice of America got it...but NOT NPR.
• On the Israeli seizure of humanitarian supplies on the high seas, the Salem-News got it...but NOT NPR.
• On the Amnesty war crimes report, CBS again...but NOT NPR.

How's that for "strong, credible journalism"? My math might be a bit weak, but I'd say that's 0-for-4. At least Shepard was right about the shilling part.

NPR and the Pragmatic Police State

This morning NPR features "an exclusive first look at a legal proposal....a detailed plan for holding terrorism suspects without trial, and it comes from two experts outside of the government." Inspite of the two "experts" mentioned by David Greene, Ari Shapiro only interviews one of them, Benjamin Wittes of the Brookings Institution.

According to Shapiro "Wittes occupies a relatively unique position in national security. He has studied and written books on pragmatic approaches to fighting terrorism." [Actually he has written only one book on terrorism - Law and the Long War.]

I don't have any problem with NPR interviewing Wittes. Unfortunately, he is an important fish in circles of state power in Washington, DC, though - not surprisingly - his ideas are not particularly fresh or inspiring, and he heartily supports for projections of US military and foreign policy hegemony. Consider the Publisher's Weekly and Booklist reviews of his book:

• PW: "Both a defense and critique of the Bush administration, the book argues in favor of many of the measures taken by the executive branch while condemning its failure to secure congressional cooperation and the necessary legal architecture to back policies that were bound to be unpopular."
• Booklist: "Wittes remains highly sympathetic to the administration’s aims, giving them the benefit of the doubt on matters that other critics of the administration have not. Ultimately, his hope is that innovative legal structures will be forthcoming and seen as legitimate in a way that current efforts are not."

As Wittes himself states in an article on the seventh anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, "we have no choice but to continue the war on terror in some form."

My problem with NPR's coverage of Wittes is that it is an endorsement of Wittes' viewpoint. In spite of his utter lack of credentials in the area of human rights, international, or Constitutional law and his rather conventional apologist approach to torture, he is a "expert" with "pragmatic approaches." As Glenn Greewald notes, Wittes can't even get the most basic Constitutional points correct when he argues for "legal" dictatorial powers for the President.

And what is the thinking behind Wittes' expert, pragmatic approaches? Consider this excerpt of the report:

(Shapiro) "So why push for indefinite detention at all? Well, Wittes says we already have it. People have been at Guantanamo for years. There are thousands more in Afghanistan...." (Wittes) "And so there's no question that we're detaining people outside of the criminal justice system. The question is what the rules are for those detentions and who makes those rules."

Look closely at the logic of this.

So why push to codify and legalize practice __________?
Because __________ is already being done!

All you have to do is put any debased government abuse of power in the blank - torture, rape, murder, rendition, illegal surveillance, etc. to see where this can lead. In Wittes' world (and NPR's by extension) the problem is not with the practice itself and a craven and complicit Congress that refuses its constitutional role of holding the executive office perpetrators accountable. Instead, the problem is that Congress has been slow to enact legislation to codify the practices. And according to Wittes, this reluctance to legislate away basic Constitutional values - and this is where he becomes a hero of the Weekly Standard security state devotees - opens up the possibilty of serious judicial oversight -OMG!

As Grumpy Demo points out on his blog - this is the kind of logic would please anyone who is hoping that our three branches of government would get "pragmatic" and realize that what we really need in the "war on terror" is a Unitary Benevolent Authoritarian Strong Man in the mold of Pinochet, Peron, or Castro.

Some Journalists are More Equal Than Others

(graphic by Jim Conte - used with permission )

In the post below regarding a letter to the Ombudsman, I noted that Simon referred to former Vice President Al Gore in a story on the two US journalists detained in North Korea. The detention deserves coverage, as did some coverage of Saberi's arrest in Iran (though not the wall to wall attention given by NPR).

In the May 23rd open thread comments, a reader posted a link to this LA Times article on another irregular (illegal?) detention of a journalist. In this case the journalist was seized by US forces and its allies. The reader noted the lack of NPR coverage on the abduction/detention of Ibrahim Jassam, complaining that NPR has voiced "not a word" - which this search of NPR proves.

A glance at the Committee to Protect Journalists report for "Attacks on the Press in 2008: United States" reveals that Jassam's case is not an anomaly (e.g. Jawed Ahmad). What is not an anomaly is NPR's utter disregard for, and refusal to investigate, attacks against journalists that are initiated by the United States government / military. Jeremy Schahill has written incisively about the US strategy of violence and intimidation against critical media and the complicity of mainstream US media outlets (such as NPR) in covering it up.

On NPR Supermax is Super Funny

Considering whether Guantanamo detainees might end up in the Florence, Colorado Supermax prison, NPR put Melissa Block on the phone with Bob Wood. According to Block "He's publisher of the Florence Citizen; his newspaper was active in helping bring Supermax to Florence and he says the prison is good for the local economy." Essentially, Wood tells block that bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the Supermax in Florence is not a controversial issue at all.

Block glibly closes the interview with this anecdote:

"By the way we also called the mayor of Florence, Colorado - Bart Hall - who told us this: 'Florence is used to having very bad boys at the Supermax. We weren't expecting it to house a bunch of kindergartners."

Oh man, that is so funny. Unlike those bitter, humorless Quakers, I just laughed and laughed to think of "more than twenty thousand prisoners in the United States...in special super-maximum security facilities....locked in small, sometimes windowless, cells....A few times a week...let out for showers and solitary exercise....[with] almost no access to educational or recreational activities...." What a riot! Ho! and kindergartners....yes, the idea of children in inhumane detention is just so clever and witty....

I just hope that NPR will hurry up and call up some of America's finest torturers enhanced interrogators so they can regale us with torture humor. Oh Melissa, you certainly are a very bad girl!

Perpetrators Rule

Whew, am I ever relieved. I used to think that US POWs were tortured in Vietnam, that Pinochet's government inflicted horrific tortures on dissidents, and even that Saddam Hussein operated torture chambers in Iraq. Silly me, actually the stories and reports of torture in these places were probably just made up by the "alleged" victims. In fact, I'll bet US POWs in Vietnam sat together and concocted all those stories about rope torture and beatings as part of a big propaganda campaign.

I'm basing my new conclusions on what I'll call the Michele Norris Standard: if the torturers are not interviewed and don't corroborate the allegations of the supposed victims, then it's nothing but hearsay. Don't take it from me. Let's hear Michele as she interviews Mark Danner who has published the full ICRC report on US torture of ghost detainees :

"Now we should say that the allegations in this report are based on interviews with these fourteen detainees. Has the information been confirmed or corroborated by the people who allegedly participated in these sessions?"

Danner reminds Norris that the conclusions were "based on lengthy interviews conducted by Red Cross professionals" and that the similarities and details of torture would have been impossible to concoct since the fourteen detainees were never together and were always isolated - to which Norris responds,

"Though because they have not actually interviewed or do not include in this report information from either the health professionals or others that participated in the CIA interrogations is that potentially problematic in terms of the credibility of the report?"

It is truly mind boggling, but Michele is not done. From trying to discount the Red Cross report, Norris moves on to shred the rule of law. Now that there is overwhelming evidence of torture from the highest levels of the US government down to CIA operatives the law is very clear. No one states it better than Glenn Greenwald:

"The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)). And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute: "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)). By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations."

Norris doesn't see it this way. She states, "The findings in the report point to a very thorny question and that is, 'What happens to the people who participated in these interrogations or who helped develop the policy that led to the conditions that have now been described as inhumane. The question of whether they should be subject to justice or adjudication or some sort of punishment..."

Unfortunately, Danner is not a Constitutional law expert and so goes along with Norris, claiming that, "the question of what should be done is a very complicated one...it's very complicated because the responsibility for this is very widespread in the former administration...have an authoritative account of what was done and what was gained if anything...yield from this stuff was very, very meager..."

Actually what should be done, is not complicated at all; what is complicated is what will be done, since the Obama justice department seems as hostile as the Bush administration when it comes to upholding the rule of law regarding the US practice of torturing detainees.

Mission: Whitewash #1

A reader noted in the Q Tips section below that the AP reported (and the NYT and the Voice of America and...) on the Senate Report on Torture which tied the US torture of detainees to Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon officials. The reader noted having searched NPR's site for coverage of the report, but come up empty handed!

Also, as I noted in a post on Wednesday, NPR relegated the damning testimony of a leading US interrogator to its Talk of the Nation program. In contrast, a spot on Friday's Morning Edition is given to US Army interrogator, Eric Maddox, who has co-authored a book (Mission: Blacklist #1) about his role in capturing Saddam Hussein. Maddox makes the US interrogations in Iraq from the summer through December of 2003 sound like they were being run by the Boy Scouts.

Inskeep: "Did you end up like those detectives on television with a bulletin board of some kind covered with photographs and names and lines connecting...?"

Maddox: "We did."

On a positive note, in the interview, Maddox advocates non-brutal interrogations ("...does me no good to be threatening or to be brutal...") - although he does use the threat of unending detention as pressure ("the situation of undetermined, long term detention" as he puts it.) But given the the disgusting and systematic US torture and abuse of detainees during that time period, any fool claiming to be a journalist would have a few questions for Good Cop Maddox.

Inskeep could have asked, "What did you know of the torture and abuse that was occurring in Iraq at the time you were stationed there?" If denied, a follow-up might be "You say you 'interrogated several hundred prisoners' and yet you never found evidence of abuse?" In fact what Jack Bauer Inkseep asks reveals a lot about his character:

"There must have been people who immediately cooperated with you and people who were extremely uncooperative - which makes me wonder if you ever did get close to a moment where you really wanted to hit the guy?"

Yep, nothing about rampant torture by US forces (noted by AI as early as June 2003), nothing about massive roundups of innocent Iraqis, nothing about the very tactics that were inflaming the insurgency - no consideration of the possibility that what made Maddox's prisoners so malleable was the knowledge of what awaited them during that "undetermined, long term detention" facing the uncooperative. Instead just Inskeep fantasizing about hitting detainees and a comic book portrayal of the good guys getting their man.

Open Season on Afghanis

Yesterday's ATC featured one baby step forward, followed by a huge stride backwards. Robert Siegel was talking with Globe and Mail correspondent Colin Freeze discussing the released video of Omar Khadar.

Siegel deserves credit for asking the obvious -but rarely asked - question. Discussing the capture of the teen fighter Khadar in Afghanistan he says:

"....a story about a firefight...he allegedly throws a hand grenade...that sounds to be as close to the capture of a POW and as different from capturing somebody who's hatching a plot to bomb an airplanes let's say as I can imagine. I just wonder if that's a point of contention that his lawyers have raised?"

It's a well stated question, and his guest, Freeze, responds:

"Oh certainly and it's also something we got to ask John Bellinger of the US State Department - a legal adviser there; he gave a briefing to Canadian media on that one. Bellinger's answer was by our laws, al-Qaeda, Taliban were illegal enemy fighters. By UN resolutions we were okay to fire at them, but because they were by nature illegal fighters, anything they fired back was illegal. So therefore what Omar Kadar did was a war crime."

When I heard this stunning response, I thought. Please follow up, please... No chance. Here's just a few possible follow-ups that any journalist might have made:

• Doesn't John Bellinger represent the Bush Administration anyway? Why would his interpretation be decisive? [Bellinger is a complete Bush tool. As his bio notes, "From February 2001 to January 2005, ....he provided legal advice to the President, the National Security Adviser, NSC Principals, and NSC and White House staff on a broad range of national security and international legal matters."]

• What UN resolutions are you referring to?

• Are you suggesting that a UN resolution backed the US military attack on Afghanistan in 2001, and also prohibited any military response by the Afghanis?

Seriously, the UN had plenty of condemnation and sanctions against the Taliban, but nothing like Bellinger and Freeze claim. I came across one coherent argument for denying Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters POW status here, but it's conclusion is interpretive at best.

Velvet Gloves

This morning Ari Shapiro talks with Benjamin Wittes (of the Brookings Institute - ugh) about the "need" for new laws to codify detention in the eternal GWOT. It's a brilliantly repulsive interview in which the entire sham of the "War on Terror" is accepted and extolled - and in which the US is the exceptional nation, blessed with the responsibility for waging this "war" exclusive of any international laws or obligations.

Here's a taste of the interview:

• Shapiro: "So it needs to be a new set of laws crafted by Congress. Describe what those laws would look like."
• Wittes: "In a military conflict in which, you know, Congress has authorized the use of force against an enemy that has declared war against the United States, the nature of that conflict necessitates some kind of a detention authority, that is a detention power that is not connected to necessarily a pending indictment in US Federal court."
• Shapiro: "And so when you say a detention authority, you mean conceivably for that person's lifetime."
• Wittes: "You know one would hope that it would never have to go on that long but you know there are a certain group of people that you're going to be holding for a very long time."
• Shapiro (interjecting one vague critique): "If as you propose, Congress creates a system of military commissions or national security courts...human rights groups say that opens the door to harsh interrogations, secret evidence, and things that the US really doesn't and shouldn't condone."
• Wittes: Responds that though he has "a lot of sympathy with a lot of human rights groups complaints," he is "a little bewildered" by critiques of his proposals. Given how extremely bad the current system is he just can't understand how his own authoritarian system is "retrogressive."

Listening to these two, you'd never know that there is something called International Law which is meant to prevent just this kind of legal morass in which the most powerful nation makes up the rules that only it is allowed to follow and which only it gets to enforce. It's easy to find information on international laws (unless one is committed to US exceptionalism) : the American Society on International Law, the UN, and the Red Cross for example.

I'm struck by how often NPR turns to these soft-authoritarian types like counterinsurgency promoters and torture apologists. In many ways they are a perfect fit for NPR news which also promotes, celebrates, and justifies the iron fist of US military, economic, and political hegemony in the world, but always with a velvet touch.

Like Royalty

How times have changed. Seems like just yesterday that the US was rounding up mostly innocent Iraqis, packing them into disgusting prisons, torturing and humiliating them and then just wondering how come the battle for hearts and minds was going so bad. Not any more! I know because Corey Flintoff went to Camp Bucca in southern Iraq and talked to the outgoing and incoming commanders of the prison camp. Col. James Brown, the outgoing commander, tells him of the new waiting area, "We want to bring them here, treat them like royalty, make them know how welcome they are." According to Flintoff, Brown wants "Camp Bucca to reflect the American values of fairness and generosity."

We do hear that some visitors are upset at searches and guards that yell at them, but the incoming commander, Brig. Gen. Robert Hipwell, "says he's just as committed to making the visitation program as successful as it can be. But like Brown, he will face the difficulties of running a volatile detention camp and the cultural barriers between Iraqis and Americans." As Flintoff explains, "It may be that no amount of good will and hard work can make the experience a happy one."

Yep, all that good will and hard work just might not cut it...

I Am Padilla

(source of Padilla photos)

"I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene V. Debs

I've been thinking a lot about NPR's coverage - or lack thereof - of the Padilla case. I can barely stand to listen to NPR's treatment of Padilla's latest sham trial as if it were a typical criminal case notable only for "the circuitous route the government took in bringing Padilla's case to trial." What NPR never takes head-on is the fundamental assault on our most cherished Constitutional protections that the Padilla 3 year and 8 month detention and torture represents.

As I listen to the latest drivel from Greg Allen and Liane Hansen and hear them consider how strong the government's current "case" against Padilla is, I keep wondering when will they ask the most crucial question: "Why aren't people being held accountable and brought to trial for the illegal detention and torture of this innocent citizen?" And yes, I assert forcefully that Mr. Padilla is innocent until proven guilty (a quaint position I'll admit).

I think what disgusts me most about NPR is their utter moral relativism and servility to the government framing of issues. Do they give a crap about our Constitutional protections against arbitrary detention and guarantees of a trial by jury? Is there any depravity they will categorically denounce, even if it is sanctioned by one or all of the branches of the US government? Will they ever just call torture torture without qualifying and minimizing it? What is clear is that NPR clearly believes in maintaining standards such as giving the Office of President undeserved deference and respect - repeatedly playing without challenge speeches by and assertions of Bush as if he hadn't already proven himself a sociopath and liar.

I remember the utter shock and horror I felt when I learned of Padilla's seizure and subsequent disappearance. As the falseness of the "dirty bomb" claims have proven, there was no reason for such draconian actions, except to establish the precedent of allowing US citizens to be detained, disappeared and abused at the whim of the President--a precedent which NPR buttresses with its silence and timidity.

Truth - Goggled and Gagged

I was hopeful when I heard Steve Inskeep say, "Human Rights Watch has put out a new report. It focuses on the treatment of terror detainees." Was I ever wrong! NPR's story was a one minute, eleven second blurb, of which a full thirty seconds was allotted to the voice of George Bush describing - as Inskeep put it - "what he called an alternative set of procedures for detainees." We get to hear the liar-in-chief say, "These procedures were designed to be safe...lawful...I cannot describe the specific methods used...."

Then instead of noting the details of the Human Rights Watch report - its thoroughness, its corroborated testimony, and the physical evidence supporting it - Inskeep relegates it to the realm of hearsay trivia: "The report attempts to document at least one account of what those procedures mean. It details the story of an accused Jihadist...he claims to have been tortured...”

No wonder NPR news doesn't want to give the details of the report, because they reveal the vision that motivates US leaders and agents in the "War on Terror." Here are just a few of the "safe" and "lawful" procedures used on kidnapped people (not formally accused of anything):

said that the Americans appeared to be in charge of the facility. They would question him during the day...and after midnight the Pakistanis would take over....the Pakistanis beat me almost every night.

After they put him in a cell, by himself, they cut off all his clothes, leaving him naked. They released one of his hands from the handcuffs, and cuffed the other hand to a ring in the cell wall. It wasn’t possible for him to stand because the ring was near the floor, and he was attached to it via a short chain.

[H]e was paraded around naked in front of a group of men and women....received his clothes back piece by piece over time. First, after a month and a half at the prison, he was given a pair of pants. Then, after about three-and-a-half months, he was given a tee-shirt.

Well you get the picture. Oh and in light of yesterday's moralistic tone regarding children and teens in the Iraqi insurgency (see previous post), the report mentions "that one cell held a 16-year-old boy named Khalid," that "[a]nother 16-year-old who was held in the facility was an Iraqi named Tha’er" and finally evidence of "a boy named Talha, who appeared to be nine or ten years old."

Funny how NPR seems to be just like Bush and just can't "describe the specific methods used."

(The Washington Post gives the story the attention that it is due.)

Tough Ship

Yesterday Nina Totenberg did a fairly good job of letting the lawyers for Jose Padilla lay out the evidence of the barbaric treatment that their client suffered at the hands of the US government while being held incommunicado for over two years in a US Navy brig. The details were chilling (tortured with absolute sensory deprivation, shackling, no bedding, no human contact, etc. for TWO full years). The report concluded with Totenberg's noting that a source within the government affirmed that the goal of the government was to render Padilla so mentally damaged that he could be remanded to a psychological prison - apparently forever. See this post at Daily Kos for more on Totenberg's report.

Also yesterday, the ACLU made news with the FBI reports on torture at Guantanamo. If you read the reports you'll find descriptions of the treatment meted out to prisoners there: prisoners shackled in fetal position to a bolt in the floor in their urine and feces for over 24 hours (in extreme cold and heat), a prisoner with his bearded head heavily duct taped, a prisoner with an Israeli flag draped on him, a Quran squatted on and straddled by an interrogator, guards and interrogators bragging about lap dancing on a prisoner, and baptizing a prisoner, etc.)

This constext made it grotesque, but in character for NPR (see posts of Sept. 9th and Sept. 7th) to interview Jackie Northam with her upbeat, admiring tone as she assessed conditions at Guantanamo. She says "Each commander has his own way of doing business and leaves his own imprint at Guantanamo" (I'll say!) Of the current war criminal running Guantanamo, Rear Adm. Harry Harris, she says "things have tightened up since he arrived last spring" and "he runs a tough ship down there." Regarding the hundreds of uncharged, un-indicted prisoners who have no legal rights to even challenge their detention, Northam says, "Adm. Harris told me the last time I was there that there are no medium-security terrorists, only maximum-security terrorists." She, of course, fails to mention that there is not one shred of independent, legitimate, verifiable evidence to support this Orwellian claim.

A Glimpse

It was refreshing that NPR aired the Guantanamo tapes this morning and evening and let them stand for the mockery of justice they represent. Finally a audio-glimpse into the Kafkaesque world of GWOT justice. I do think it would be more responsible for journalists to call the prisoners extrajudicial detainees, or arbitrary detainees instead of "terror suspects." Given that there is no impartial, verifiable evidence on which to base suspicion of these prisoners, calling them "suspects" gives an undeserved legitimacy to the whole sham. That being said, the audiotapes are a powerful indictment of the legal fraud being perpetrated by the US government and military on these prisoners and on our Constitutional liberties and principles -- and NPR should be proud of airing them.

Tactics

I'll say right at the start of this post, that I have a bias about torture. I think it's disgusting, immoral, and destructive to the human community in both the short and long term. Frankly the "ticking time bomb" theory that apologists like Mark Bowden and Alan Dershowitz use, is the sloppiest bit of logic imaginable. It would be more honest for these hacks to ask "Would you be willing to be savagely tortured as an innocent caught up in a hunt for intelligence on terrorism?" That is after all the track record of interrogative torture in recent history--as Amnesty International so eloquently relates.

This brings me to this morning's "talk" on NPR between Linda Wertheimer, John Hendren and David Greene. In discussing Bush's recent admissions on the CIA secret prisons and the "harsh tactics" (the Bushspeak term for "torture") used there, Greene and Wertheimer give credence to Bush's claims of how successful the torture has been. Wertheimer says of Bush, "he talked about how much the country has learned from these people and how valuable it has been. He said that some of the things they’ve learned from these prisoners actually stopped future attacks." To this Greene responds, "That's exactly right." Greene goes on to restate Bush's speech: "a lot of these very harsh tactics produced results, and the crux of his message was that this kind of interrogation is effective – he said that these tactics produced vital information and acually broke up some terror attacks and saved innocent lives."

These journalists offer no challenge to these claims, which is inexcusable, especially since rebutting Bush's lies is not terribly difficult as Leigh Pomeroy of Minnesota Monitor shows.

Quite Fascinating

I consider it big news: our president not only acknowledging, but flaunting a policy of kidnapping, secret prisons, incommunicado detention, and indefinite secretive interrogations--a policy which violates international laws and the very principles of our republic. Given the gravity of this kind of revelation I would expect any news organization to carefully analyze and scrutinize all public statements of the president. Take a look at Juan Cole's post today for a passionate, informed analysis of the story (note his reference to the WaPo story on Zubaida).

Instead NPR rebroadcasts as facts Bush's mix of statements, lies, and misinformation. On Morning Edition, Renee Montagne interviews NPR's Mary Louise Kelly who is breathless about the Bush statements: "interesting detail," "remarkable details," and "really quite fascinating." She then quotes unnamed sources who affirm that the secret detainees were "treated in a safe manner" and given regular medical treatment, Korans, dvds, and even gym equipment! This in spite of direct evidence that Zubaida was denied medical treatment for gunshots as a form of torture and years of corroborated testimony of torture and abuse from other captives in the "war on terror."