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Seymour Hersh is the journalist who broke the story of the My Lai massacre, a Pulitzer prize winner. He’s got a new book out. Expect to see it rubbished extensively on TV.

Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation published exclusively in the Guardian today.

The investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, quotes one former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which guards would “fuck with [detainees] as much as we could” by inflicting pain on them.

[...]

Hersh provides details of how President George Bush signed off on the establishment of a secret unit that was given advance approval to kill or capture and interrogate “high-value” suspects—considered by many to be in defiance of international law—an officially “unacknowledged” programme that was eventually transferred wholesale from Guantánamo to the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

[...]

A CIA analyst visited Guantánamo in summer 2002 and returned “convinced that we were committing war crimes” and that “more than half the people there didn’t belong there. He found people lying in their own faeces,” a CIA source told Hersh.

[...]

A senior intelligence official told Hersh: “I was told [by FBI agents] that the military guards were slapping prisoners, stripping them, pouring cold water over them and making them stand until they got hypothermia.”

The secret “special access programme” facilitating much of the mistreatment of prisoners—widely held to have contravened the Geneva convention—was established after a direct order from the president.

Hersh reports that a secret document signed by Mr Bush in February 2002 stated: “I determine that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or elsewhere throughout the world.”

—Guardian

But in case there’s anyone out there thinking “Well, Americans raping Iraqi children is OK if it makes America safer”, consider the following insightful comments from a CIA analyst about Guantánamo Bay:

Two former administration officials who read the analyst’s highly classified report told me that its message was grim. According to a former White House official, the analyst’s disturbing conclusion was that “if we captured some people who weren’t terrorists when we got them, they are now”.

—Guardian

So, who’s going to vote for torture this November?

The 9/11 Commission recommended setting up an organization to help safeguard civil liberties. Sure enough the Bush administration has gone ahead and created a President’s Board on Safeguarding Americans’ Civil Liberties.

Ignoring for the moment the issue that civil liberties should, constitutionally, be protected for everyone and not just US citizens, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at the people who are being put in charge of safeguarding your freedoms.

• The Deputy Attorney General, James B. Comey.

  Quote from Comey: A court of the United States has no jurisdiction…to enjoin the president in the performance of his official duties.

  He also explained at length why he thought it was right that Jose Padilla was thrown in a military jail indefinitely and not allowed to talk to a lawyer, even though he is a US citizen and was not officially charged with any crime. Comey’s position was overruled by the Supreme Court, thank goodness.

• The Assistant Attorney General (Civil Rights Division), R. Alexander Acosta.

  Acosta seems to be one of the Good Guys, having (amongst other things) defended a Muslim student’s right to wear her head scarf at school.

• The Assistant Attorney General (Office of Legal Policy), Daniel J. Bryant.

  Bryant is a strong supporter of a Constitutional amendment to ban flag-burning. Need I say more?

• The Under Secretary for Border and Transportation Security at the Department of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson.

  Hutchinson was formerly head of the DEA, that bastion of concern for the civil liberties of the individual. He pushed the “drugs support terrorism” angle, and favored intensifying the War On (Selected) Drugs. He also supports Constitutional Amendments to ban flag burning and allow official school prayer, and supports banning abortion and gay adoption.

• The Assistant Secretary for Information Analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, General Patrick Hughes. He was a member of the 9/11 Commission, and wrote a series of articles on the theme of global threats to the USA and its interests abroad, for various audiences. His major focus in recent years has been building a massive information sharing network to ensure that law enforcement, homeland security and private contractors at federal, state and local level share information freely, so I’m sure he’ll have something to say about preserving your privacy.

• The Assistant Secretary (Policy), Directorate of Border and Transportation Security, part of the Department of Homeland Security; that would be a Mr C. Stewart Verdery, I believe.

  Quote from his nomination speech: We all remember well the bipartisan effort which spawned a host of responses to the terrorist attacks, including the PATRIOT Act and the creation of the Transportation Security Administration. Those days exemplified the kind of public service which is truly gratifying.

  His department is responsible for visa policy, and is pushing biometric passports—including forcing foreign countries to use biometric passports if they wish to take part in US visa waiver programs.

• The Officer for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties at the Department of Homeland Security, Daniel W. Sutherland. He’s another of the good guys, having written in favor of immigration reform and against mandatory biometric national IDs.

• The Privacy Officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Nuala O’Connor Kelly. She was the Chief Privacy Officer for…wait for it…DoubleClick. Joking aside, though, she seems to be on the side of light.

• The Counsel for Intelligence Policy, Department of Justice, James A. Baker III. You might recognize that name if you’ve seen Farenheit 9/11. He’s the Senior Counsel for the Carlyle Group, the 10th largest defense contractor in the US, heavily tied to ENRON and the Bin Laden family. He even has a bio page on the George Bush Foundation web site.

• The Under Secretary for Enforcement, Department of the Treasury, Stuart Levey. Coincidentally, he’s was a partner in James Baker’s law firm.

• The Assistant Secretary (Terrorist Financing), Department of the Treasury, Juan Zarate. His job focus has been on stopping the flow of cash to terrorists—while assuring Muslim charities that Bush administration policies were not intended to hurt them.

• The General Counsel, Office of Management and Budget. I think that’s Raymond J. McKenna. His office is part of the General Services Administration, responsible for helping to improve government efficiency by providing office space, office supplies, technology, and services.

  I must confess to being unclear why he’s on this particular committee.

• The Deputy Director of Central Intelligence for Community Management, Larry C. Kindsvater. He’s strongly in favor of reorganizing the US intelligence system, which is probably why he was picked.

• The Chair of the Privacy Council at the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I can’t find any record of a Privacy Council at the FBI; a search of their web site produces 0 hits.

• The General Counsel for the Central Intelligence Agency. These are the people who advise the CIA on the legality of their assassinations, foreign government coup attempts, and drug running.

  The CIA OGC web site doesn’t provide any information naming anyone who works there. They do mention that you can’t work for the CIA OGC in any capacity without a Top Secret clearance, polygraph test, and 6 month background screening. I believe the current General Counsel is still Scott W. Muller. Interestingly, Muller had no intelligence background before getting the job; his background was investigating white collar crime.

  Muller apparently thinks the PATRIOT Act didn’t go far enough. As he said at his nomination hearing:

  Well, let me start, Senator, by saying that I think the changes that were made in the U.S.A. Patriot Act were clearly necessary in light of the events of September 11 and I think have gone a long way toward creating at the operational level the kind of sharing and collaboration that this Committee and the Intelligence Community and the Bureau and law enforcement think need to occur. There’s a lot of work left to be done.

• The General Counsel for the National Security Agency. I believe this is still Vito T. Potenza, though obviously it’s very hard to find any information on who the NSA’s General Counsel is, or even who Mr Potenza is.

• The Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, Stephen Cambone. The Center for American Progress describe his qualifications as a fierce loyalty to Donald Rumsfeld and an unshakeable right wing ideology and note that he was responsible for sending Major General Geoffrey Miller to Iraq with orders to find more effective ways to interrogate prisoners.

• The General Counsel of the Department of Defense, William J. Haynes II

  Mr Haynes is the man who wrote the infamous memo listing “interrogation techniques” (i.e. torture) authorized for use at Guantanamo Bay, and was also involved in numerous other dubious legal arguments.

• The Legal Adviser at the Department of State, James H. Thessin. I can’t find much of anything about him.

• The Director of the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, John O. Brennan, a 23 year CIA veteran. His is the department which is supposed to glue together all the other departments and make sure that the left hand knows what the right hand is doing. It’s also the department that was blamed for embarrassing inaccuracies in the 2003 “Patterns of Global Terrorism” report. It was initially released to a fanfare of congratulation, as it showed that deaths from terrorist activity had fallen thanks to the Bush “War on Terror”. Then, the spurious figures were quietly revised to show that things had actually gotten worse. Brennan explained the errors by saying that their computers were too old and they were understaffed.

So, there we have it. Not a totally one sided panel, but definitely stacked carefully in a particular direction.

US News:

On the evening of February 1, two dozen American officials gathered in a spacious conference room at the Central Intelligence Agency in Langley, Va. The time had come to make the public case for war against Iraq. For six hours that Saturday, the men and women of the Bush administration argued about what Secretary of State Colin Powell should—and should not—say at the United Nations Security Council four days later. Not all the secret intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s misdeeds, they found, stood up to close scrutiny. At one point during the rehearsal, Powell tossed several pages in the air. “I’m not reading this,” he declared. “This is bullshit.”

[…]

Today, the mystery is what happened to Iraq’s terror weapons. “Everyone believed they would find it,” says a senior official. “I have never seen intelligence agencies in this government and other governments so united on one subject.”

Were they right? Powell and Tenet were convinced that chemical agents had been deployed to field units. None have been found. War planners used the intelligence when targeting suspected weapons of mass destruction sites. Yet bomb-damage assessments found that none of the targets contained chemical or biological weapons. “What we don’t know at this point,” says an Air Force war planner, “is what was bad intelligence, what was bad timing, what was bad luck.”

[…]

Senior administration officials say they remain convinced that weapons of mass destruction will turn up. The CIA and the Pentagon reported last week that two trucks seized in Iraq were apparently used as mobile biological weapons labs, though no biological agents were found.

Sydney Morning Herald:

Condoleezza Rice was smart enough to attempt her U-turn weeks ago. According to the US National Security Adviser, WMD bombs, missiles and drones are out. Dual-use technology and just-in-time manufacturing are in. Find a pesticide factory, for instance, and you find a chemical warfare facility. And don’t be concerned about looters. The more the place is trashed, the more difficult will be any dispute about the evidence. More recently, the US Secretary of Defence, Donald Rumsfeld, has said publicly that Iraq may have destroyed its WMDs prior to the war.

[…]

This is not to say that Iraq was of no concern or that some WMD-related materials will never be found in Iraq. Iraq had what’s known in the business as a breakout WMD capability in its many dual-use facilities. The Fallujah III castor oil production plant near Baghdad, for example, was, like similar plants elsewhere in the world, suitable for conversion to a ricin toxin factory.

And Iraq, again like many countries including Australia, probably still has stockpiles of potential WMD ingredients - the chlorine needed for clean water, for example, can also be used to make deadly chemical agents.

Moreover, Iraq almost certainly had other WMD-related materials. US claims about mobile biological warfare facilities could yet prove true, though the implication that Iraq’s biological weapons program relied on a handful of trailers tends to confirm the program was limited.

The trailers, and any other finds, will remain irrelevant until scrutinised by independent officials. The same goes for the interrogation reports of former Iraqi scientists, including those now detained in Morocco. With so much at stake, the possibility can’t be ruled out that a zealous coalition official might attempt to tamper with the evidence.

Claims by Iraqis in custody that the WMD program was dismantled before the war could be true, especially if Saddam thought he could survive the war and achieve some sort of moral victory. But that would mean the program must have been much smaller than US assessments. Just as elusive is hard evidence of active co-operation with al-Qaeda. This was always an extraordinary proposition, not least because Saddam was a secular dictator intent on eradicating Islamic fundamentalism.

[…]

One of the major concerns about the war now is the way it will encourage the proliferation of WMDs. America’s adversaries are being encouraged to acquire WMDs to deter US aggression.