U.S. won't release exonerating documents to free ex-Gitmo prisoner held by Morocco

The following is a press release, dated January 6, 2016, from the international human rights organization, Reprieve, which has been advocating for former Guantanamo prisoner Younous Chekkouri. Further background on Chekkouri's case is available here.

Ex-Gitmo prisoner to remain in Moroccan jail despite assurances

A Moroccan judge has today refused to release a former Guantanamo prisoner who has been imprisoned, despite diplomatic assurances provided to the US, since his transfer last year.

At a hearing today in Rabat – where former prisoner Younous Chekkouri has been held since his transfer out of Guantanamo in September 2015 – the judge postponed the court proceedings, and extended Younous’ detention for a fourth time, setting a new hearing date of January 26th.

This decision comes amid speculation over the Obama Administration’s efforts to close Guantanamo, which is a process dependent on diplomatic agreements between the US and recipient countries. By the time of the next hearing, Younous will have been held for 129 days longer than was stipulated in the US-Moroccan assurances.

Younous spent 13 years at Guantanamo without charge or trial, and was cleared for release in 2010 by six US federal agencies, including the CIA and the FBI. The Department of Justice has admitted to Younous’ lawyers at the human rights organization Reprieve – who have been barred from seeing him since his transfer – that some years ago, it “withdrew all reliance” on evidence that now appears to be the basis of his detention in Morocco. Despite this, it appears the Moroccan court may still decide to bring charges against Younous on the basis of the discredited former US allegations.

In the course of US court proceedings, the US government is refusing to provide Younous' lawyers with documents that could help secure his release. Last month, the Obama Administration submitted a secret filing to the court, which it is refusing to share with Younous' Reprieve lawyers. Reprieve has said, in a recent submission to the court, that the government “should be working in an open and cooperative manner to correct a manifest injustice” in Younous’ case.

Commenting, Joe Pace, one of Younous’ Reprieve attorneys, said: "Its hard to take seriously President Obama's stated commitment to righting the wrongs of Gitmo when the Administration hasn't lifted a finger to enforce the Moroccans' assurances that Younous would not be detained at length. The US government has known for years that the allegations underlying Younous' detention in Morocco are baseless, and they could secure his release with a simple phone call. It's bad enough that the US took 13 years of Younous' life at Gitmo without a shred of credible evidence justifying his detention; now the government seems content to let him languish in a Moroccan jail indefinitely."

The Chekkouri case demonstrates the sham commitment to human rights practiced by the Democratic Party administration of Barack Obama. The servile Congress does nothing, or even worse, further demonizes the many innocent men still held captive in the torture prison at Guantanamo. The "alternative" political party, the Republicans, are as bad or even worse, which means the political system has left very little wiggle room for justice to even take place.

The case also demonstrates the bankruptcy of the system of diplomatic "assurances" that surrounds the ongoing U.S. policy of conducting renditions. The inadequacy of such "protections" against torture and injustice was documented in a December 2010 report from the Columbia Law School Human Rights Institute, "Promises to Keep: Diplomatic Assurances Against Torture in US Terrorism Transfers" (PDF).

For many years, the U.S. State Department was in charge of getting such "assurances" from other countries in regards to rendition. As Secretary of State for many years in the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton bears responsibility for running this system for a number of years. Today she is a major Presidential candidate, but no one in the press will question her about her actions surrounding rendition. This inattention to crucial questions of human rights when it comes to holding politicians responsible for their actions is one reason why millions in the United States will never vote, as they know the system here is a con.

For Younous Chekkouri, sold to the Americans for a bounty and shipped to Guantanamo, held without charge for 14 years before finally being released to his native Morocco in September 2015, the system has been a horror and a nightmare.

I close with a quote from Chekkouri's 2014 Valentine Day letter sent to his wife from Guantanamo, reprinted in full at the Reprieve website:

12 years of agony. I live like a frightened child or an animal waiting for the unknown. I pray from my heart that my sadness and anxiety will come to an end. I pray to see my wife again, and to be able to tell her everything that I have kept bottled up in my heart for more than a decade.

I dare not believe that I will ever see my sweetheart again. There is only one face that comes to me in my dreams. It is her face, the one who has been crying day and night, waiting for me to hug her and say “Don’t worry my love, it was all a nightmare and now it’s over”.

In every letter I write to her, I tell her that we will never be apart again. I don’t know if she believes me or not, but I imagine her eyes shining and her lips parting in her magical smile. I do know that neither of us ever imagined we would be in this situation. Destiny is a very strange thing.

President Obama and his wife have adorable children, whose future they guard jealously. I’m sure the President’s greatest fear is that he will be apart from his wife or children. Well, I have just the same feeling because I’m human just like them.

I do not blame President Obama though for these long years, I don’t blame anyone. I want no vengeance for the 12 years I have spent in Guantánamo, never having committed any crime. I want only to feel human again, to hug my soulmate and tell her that we will never again be apart.

Did Richard Zuley Participate in Renditions to Guantanamo?

If one did not know who Richard Zuley was from reporter Jess Bravin's account, or from my article linking Zuley, the interrogation leader in the torture of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, with a history of alleged Chicago police frame-up and coerced confessions (reported at The Dissenter last November), the splash of notoriety from a recent series of articles by Spencer Ackerman at The Guardian certainly made the former Chicago detective a near-household name.

While Ackerman himself, and others, have concentrated in follow-up stories on revelations of the existence of a so-called police "black site" at Homan Square, where cops reportedly lock-up suspects "off the books," and torture them, or on the larger issue of police abuse in Chicago or other major American cities, Zuley's links to military and other possible intelligence agencies have remained largely unexamined.

The lingering question remains: how did Zuley get from the Chicago precinct house to the interrogation booths at Guantnamo? Why was someone like him put in charge of the Special Projects Team responsible for the interrogation of an ostensible high-value detainee like Slahi, answering in the chain-of-command directly to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld?

If we follow the story down that rabbit hole, we will see that Zuley's background links to the role played by the Pentagon's European Command (EUCOM) in renditioning prisoners to Guantanamo. While we don't know if Zuley played any role in these renditions, it seems highly likely he knew of them, as he apparently worked for what Washington Post reporter Dana Priest once called the "super-secret" Joint Analysis Center (JAC) at EUCOM headquarters in England.

RAF Molesworth and EUCOM's Joint Analysis Center

In Ackerman's in-depth story on Zuley, he noted that the former Chicago policeman had links to "naval intelligence" going back to the 1980s. Ackerman found a court transcript that stated Zuley had been "mobilized for the war on terror in November of 2002.”

Ackerman continued, referencing Zuley's testimony in the court transcript, "Initially assigned to a Royal Air Force base in Molesworth, his superiors 'sent me to Cuba as the liaison officer for the European Command. And that job has evolved to what I’m doing now' – that is, 'assigned to the Joint Task Force Guantanamo as an officer in charge of one of the teams down there for the intelligence collection.'”

The tasking to Molesworth is key, especially when linked to Zuley's own admission that he was a liaison officer for EUCOM (reported first in my November 2014 Dissenter article). Ackerman didn't follow up the Molesworth link, but the RAF base at Molesworth is the headquarters for EUCOM's Joint Analysis Center.

According to a "Studies in Intelligence" report (PDF) by Adam D.M. Svendsen (liberated by the late Aaron Swartz), "The US Military European Command (EUCOM) Joint Analysis Center (JAC) based at RAF Molesworth, the US Visiting Forces base in Cambridgeshire, UK, also features as an important location where UK–US military intelligence liaison takes place" (p. 18).

Robert L. Davis, who had been a Naval Analyst at JAC in the 1990s, described the agency: "JAC Molesworth is the European Theater's multiservice, JCS [Joint Chiefs of Staff] sponsored all source intelligence production facility. It provides intelligence support for contingency operations, special exercises, and ongoing combined Joint Task Force missions...", including special operations forces.

The Role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: Release of the "Custer Report"

The role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is worth noting. In a September 2002 "external review" of Guantanamo Bay Intelligence Operations tasked by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, under the guidance of the Director JCS and "a team of subject matter experts from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint staff, and the US Army Intelligence Center and School, Fort Huachuca AZ" -- known as the "Custer Report" -- stated formally that "Joint Task Forces [at Guantanamo] are subordinate to SOUTHCOM and report thorugh Commander US Southern Command to the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, to the Secretary of Defense."

The Custer Report, which was prominently discussed in the 2008 Senate Armed Services Report on Detainee Abuse, was obtained by me via FOIA, and is released here for the first time (PDF). Unfortunately, it is way too heavily censored, and I've appealed the amount of censorship. Meanwhile, this is what we have.

The JAC is obviously an important if little-known intelligence center. According to one of its former leaders, even back in the 1990s, it consisted of numerous divisions and was a "1,000-personnel intelligence organization" with a $60 million budget.

According to a page at the Federation of American Scientists website, JAC is EUCOM's version of a Joint Intelligence Center, which centers exist as "the principal element for ensuring effective intelligence support for combatant commanders in chiefs and theater forces." The same site notes, "Men and women in the U.S. European Command's Joint Analysis Center (JAC) process, analyze and consolidate data to produce fused intelligence information focusing on an area of responsibility consisting of more than 77 countries across Europe, Africa and the Middle East."

We can presume that, given Zuley's assignment to the head of a "special projects" team, that his posting at Molesworth was related to an intelligence function, most likely for JAC. According to Dana Priest's account back in 1999, however, JAC was a place where "Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and others collect and analyze information...communications intercepts and overhead imagery."

Given recent revelations, such as those by former Guantanamo guard Joseph Hickman in his new book on the 2006 deaths of detainees at Camp Delta, that interrogations at Guantanamo were part of a highly-secret Special Access Program, it is not out of the question that Zuley worked closely with CIA, DIA, or other personnel that were read into to the secret, experimental torture program.

Zuley's appearance at Guantanamo, then, was no fluke. His intelligence background can be presumed to be far greater than we otherwise currently know. Zuley himself has refused to speak thus far to the press. But his claim in a court document that he was a EUCOM liaison to Guantanamo is quite intriguing. The posting could have been a cover for a special access program position, or possibly he was involved in the processing of detainees sent via rendition though the EUCOM theater of operations, or both, or, we must acknowledge, in some other capacity yet to be discovered.

EUCOM and Guantanamo Renditions

The EUCOM-renditions link that could concern Zuley has to do with revelations of early renditions to Guantanamo of Bosnian and Algerian detainees that used EUCOM assets and US Air Force bases in Germany. These renditions took place in January 2002, a few months after Zuley went to work, presumably, for JAC at EUCOM.

The news about EUCOM and German government collusion with renditions of detainees to Guantanamo arose from reports in summer 2006 that EUCOM's German headquarters Stuttgart was involved in arranging CIA renditions to Guantanamo. The charges were reported by Germany's ARD television and by the newspaper Die Zeit.

Indeed, a January 2007 report by the European Parliament (EP) said it was "deeply concerned at information contained in an unclassified document made available to the Temporary Committee which shows that the illegal rendition of at least six Algerians from Tuzla via Incirlik to Guantánamo was planned at the US European Command (USEUCOM) military base near Stuttgart..."

The EP called on the German Bundestag to investigate without delay whether those alleged renditions involved breaches of the Forces Status Agreement or other agreements or treaties concluded with US military forces on German territory, whether further illegal renditions were planned by USEUCOM and whether German liaison officers were involved in any way." (At least one report mentioned the presence of German officers at EUCOM headquarters.)

Unfortunately, the investigation went nowhere, stonewalled by recalcitrant German officials, even as EUCOM officials admitted the transportation of prisoners. German officials, meanwhile, denied any CIA renditions from German territory. The story, which never evidently made much headway in the U.S., dropped off the world press radar. In any case, it seems likely that EP officials were unaware in Jan. 2007 that German prosecutors had already a month earlier declined investigating EUCOM for alleged renditions.

"Kidnapping in the framework of fighting terrorism" is not criminal

According to a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks and dated December 29, 2006, from the US Embassy in Berlin to the Secretary of State's office, with copies to various military sites, including EUCOM's Washington DC Liaison Office, the National Security Council and the Secretary of Defense, "German Federal Prosecutor Monika Harms has decided that she is not responsible for investigating six EUCOM officers in Stuttgart for allegedly planning the kidnapping and rendition of six Algerian nationals from Sarajevo to Guantanamo Bay via Germany in 2002, according to December 29 German news reports. According to her spokesman, 'kidnapping in the framework of fighting terrorism does not fall under the criminal offense of abduction, for which political persecution is presumed.'"

Contacts from the office of the US Army in Europe and EUCOM told the Embassy officer that "this is 'good news' for the U.S. Forces in Europe. The EUCOM contact said the federal prosecutor's decision not to pursue an investigation in this particular case clarifies a general principle that should be applied to similar cases in the future."

In the name of clarifying the "general principle" of extraordinary rendition, the US had kidnapped Bensayah Belkacem, Hadj Boudellaa, Saber Lahmar, Mustafa Ait Idir, Boumediene Lakhdar and Mohamed Nechle, all of whom would be subsequently released from Guantanamo.

While CIA rendition has had most of the attention of human rights groups and press, U.S. military renditions swept up many prisoners itself.

According to a 2007 European Parliament report, at least two US military aircraft transported the six Bosnians/Algerians from the US base at Tuzla in Bosnia to the the Naval Base prison at Guantanamo Bay. "At least one of the aircraft originated at the U.S. Base at Ramstein, Germany, before departing for Tuzla," the investigators stated. The report quoted a Situation Report that said as early as January 18, 2002, the military had transported 110 prisoners to Guantanamo.

The Algerians were taken first from Tuzla to a US base at Incirlik, Turkey -- "a hub for the transportation of prisoners to Guantanamo" -- where they were joined by 28 prisoners from Qandahar, Afghanistan, delivered by US Central Command, and then flown to Guantanamo. They were all shackled. "Their eyes were covered by opaque goggles, and their hands were covered by mittens." In other words, they were subjected to profound sensory deprivation as part of their transport.

We know from other SOPs released via FOIA on Guantanamo procedures that scopolamine patches were put on the prisoners, ostensibly to prevent flight sickness, but possibly for the dizziness and nausea and disorientation often produced by the drug. When they arrived in Guantanamo, they were given a very large dose of the antimalarial drug mefloquine, also ostensibly for medical purposes, but most likely, as detailed in Hickman's book, for purposes of chemical disorientation and "softening" for interrogation.

The entire rendition took 30 hours.

According to documents released via statewatch.org, the prisoners were accompanied by a medical team, which included a flight surgeon and an aeromedical technician.

The documents clearly state that a situation report on the rendition was to be disseminated "to deployed forces across USEUCOM AOR [area of operation]." Hence, if Zuley was working with EUCOM at Molesworth, as seems likely, then he at the very least was aware of the renditions that took place.

A secret memo states, "Based on a forthcoming message from JS and coord with EUCOM - plan to pick-up 6 Algerians in Incirlik moved by EUCOM assets." The same memo notes the arrival of at least 17 detainees at Guantanamo via litters, and the need for an ambulance upon arrival.

"JS" refers to Joint Staff, i.e., the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the main Pentagon military authority.

Congressional oversight committees' "emergency intelligence appropriation" for Guantanamo

Over 13 years since the rendition of the first prisoners to Guantanamo, there is much we still don't know about the organization of that prison, the parameters of the secret programs that operated there, or why or who was put in charge of such programs.

The identification of Richard Zuley as the man in charge of the interrogation of Mohamedou Ould Slahi, and the background to his military intelligence career, has opened a door into the wide-ranging operations of the entire military apparatus, with its various military commands and far-flung bases, that along with the CIA ran a worldwide renditions operation and to this day still holds in indefinite detention and a state of torture, over a hundred human beings at Guantanamo.

What we have learned from this is not that Guantanamo is an aberration, but that Guantanamo is itself a manifestation of US military power, from the NSC and the Oval Office, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all the way down to subsidiary commands and "joint" task forces. We have seen before how the military works hand-in-hand with the CIA in this apparatus of control and torture, as described by Douglas Valentine in his extraordinary history of the U.S. government's Phoenix Program in Vietnam.

The Congressional reports are have come and gone and little has changed. The full story is still not public. The Congressional oversight committees are too compromised to do more than arrange limited hang-outs of the full scandal.

Indeed, the Custer Report, released here for the first time, describes how the military worked with the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to obtain "an emergency intelligence appropriation to fund construction" of new detention and intelligence operations facilities at Guantanamo. If the "oversight" committees are themselves involved in funding the torture, then who operates oversight on them? Certainly not the various human rights groups who have never reported on the intelligence funding role of these same Congressional oversight groups.

The "rabbit hole" has carried us very, very far down a dark abyss. Only radical social change holds any hope of affecting the regime of torture and worldwide imperial hubris and war-making that has descended upon us all.

New Revelations Suggest DoD Cover-Up Over Detainee Drugging Charges

Two new revelations, and a critical analysis of the recent Department of Defense (DoD) Inspector General (IG) report on the drugging of DoD-held detainees, reveals a cover-up of such drugging by the Pentagon and possibly other government agencies.

A recent attorney's affidavit charges that at least one Guantanamo detainee was involuntarily drugged before his plea hearing at the military commissions. In addition, a declassified Guantanamo medical standard operating procedure (SOP) describes how scopolamine was administered to all detainees rendered to the US Cuban-based prison. Scopolamine has a long history as a supposed "truth drug."

The IG report held that it could not find evidence that detainees were administered "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation of detainees." However, as reported in a July 2012 article at Truthout, which obtained the report by the Freedom of Information Act, the IG held that some detainees had been drugged with powerful antipsychotics and other medications that "could impair an individual's ability to provide accurate information."

Some of these detainees were interrogated even though they were "diagnosed as having serious mental health conditions, and being treated with psychoactive medications on an ongoing basis," the IG said.

The IG also concluded that some detainees had been involuntarily administered drugs as "chemical restraints ... used to control behavior or restrict the patient's freedom of movement." In addition, at least one prisoner, supposed "dirty bomber" José Padilla, held in isolation at a Navy brig in South Carolina, was tricked into believing he had been given a "truth drug."

But while the IG report was spurred by a June 2008 Washington Post article reporting a number of former detainees' complaints of drugging and a subsequent letter to the IG from three US senators, the IG report never interviewed any of the detainees mentioned in the Post story.

The IG interviewed only three detainees, all of whom were still held at Guantanamo. "We did not attempt to interview detainees who had been repatriated," the IG stated, which would include any of the detainees who had previously made public statements to the press that they had been forcibly drugged.

Drugs Placed in Detainees' Food

One of the detainees making such accusations was former Australian detainee David Hicks. Hicks detailed those charges in a book published last year, "Guantanamo: My Journey." The book is not for sale in the United States and the Australian government went to court to seize any profits Hicks could make from book sales in Australia.

In July 2012, the Australian government dropped its case against Hicks. Possibly this was because of revelations that could have come out in court over Hicks' torture in US custody.

One such document that had been prepared for by Hicks' defense team has been released. According to an affidavit by New York attorney Josh Dratel, who represented Hicks with military commission authorities, DoD "periodically sedated [Hicks] for non-therapeutic reasons."

A military prosecutor in Hicks' case confirmed one example of such drugging to Dratel in July 2007.

"David says the guards forced him to eat a meal which contained a sedative before you read him the charges," Dratel said he told the government prosecutor. To which the latter replied, "That was done to protect the officers reading the charges from any of the detainees' reactions."

Dratel's affidavit was first reported by Natalie O'Brien at the Sydney Morning Herald. Truthout has obtained a copy of Dratel's affidavit, which can be downloaded.

Human rights attorney and contributing editor to Harper's Magazine Scott Horton told Truthout, "The administration of drugs for non-medical purposes on prisoners held in wartime raises very serious issues under the Geneva Conventions - which establish a presumption that such use of drugs is generally unlawful and may rise to the level of a grave breach, or war crime - as well as other international agreements."

"The disclosure surrounding Hicks appears at first blush to be a criminal violation by US authorities," Horton said, "but it would be important to ascertain the reasons the US had for doing this before making any final judgment."

An Australian senator from South Australia has said that the new revelations backing Hicks' claims of forced drugging mean the government "can no longer put off" a formal inquiry into Australia's role in Hicks' incarceration and treatment by US authorities.

Scopolamine Patches for Rendition

While it has been assumed that some sort of medication was given to detainees who were subjected to the Bush-era program of extraordinary rendition, an October 2003 nursing SOP declassified a few years ago documented the use of scopolamine patches on all detainees rendered to Guantanamo.

The SOP describes the sequential steps of medical in-processing on all detainees. Only at step ten are nurses instructed to "remove the scopolamine behind each ear (used to prevent airsickness during transit)."

The stated rationale for the use of scopolamine - that is, for airsickness - is not repeated for other medical instructions in the SOP, including the administration of two other drugs during in-processing, mefloquine and Albendazole, raising questions as to why nurses had to be informed of the use of the scopolamine patches.

A separate SOP for "Out-processing Procedures" for detainees being flown out of Guantanamo Bay prison camp (revised July 2005) states, "A scopolamine patch will be placed on each detainee 4 hours before the flight" out of Cuba. There is no indication that any medical reasons might contravene this procedure.

The IG report on drugging of detainees never mentioned the use of scopolamine.

While DoD has studied scopolamine patches for motion sickness in military personnel, they are not the first-line medication used by DoD for this purpose. As far back as 1956, a military study complained that scopolamine: "gave the most distressing side effects of all the prophylactics used. For continued use, meclizine was the most satisfactory."

US Army psychiatrist, Brigadier General Stephen Xenakis (retired) confirmed military policy as regards medications for motion sickness.

“Military doctors recommended meclizine for motion sickness during my career & not scopolamine because of the side effects,” Xenakis told Truthout. “I have seen psychotic reactions to the drug," he said.
At times, the military has noted the effectiveness of scopolamine for some people in treating motion sickness. One NATO study described scopolamine's "high variability between subjects in both effectiveness and incidence of side effects." The side effects included lowered heart rate, blurred vision, impaired attention and alertness, and memory problems.

According to US Coast Guard instructions on "Antimotion Sickness Medications," the scopolamine patch is contraindicated in patients due to variability of effectiveness and associated medical precautions for some users. Scopolamine patches "should be used only after other methods of motion sickness control have proven unsatisfactory," the Coast Guard directive states.

The Coast Guard instruction, still in effect today, further states, "Uncommon but potentially severe side-effects [of scopolamine] include disorientation, hallucinations, and urinary retention."

Scopolamine has a very long history of consideration as a potential truth drug, going back over 80 years. Readers of 1960s military thrillers may remember discussion of the drug for interrogations in old Alistair MacLean novels.

According to a CIA account, the drug was ultimately rejected for use as a "truth drug." The reasons given for such rejection are interesting given the later use of the drug on "war on terror" detainees.

"Because of a number of undesirable side effects, scopolamine was shortly disqualified as a 'truth' drug," the 1961 CIA document states. "Among the most disabling of the side effects are hallucinations, disturbed perception, somnolence, and physiological phenomena such as headache, rapid heart, and blurred vision, which distract the subject from the central purpose of the interview. Furthermore, the physical action is long, far outlasting the psychological effects."

According to government documents, scopolamine was one of a number of drugs, including mescaline and LSD, which were investigated as part of a US Navy research program called Project Chatter. Chatter ran from 1947 until 1953 and "focused on the identification and testing of such drugs for use in interrogations and in the recruitment of agents."

Mefloquine as "Pharmacological Waterboarding"

The nursing SOP that mentioned scopolamine was first noted by Army public health physician Remington Nevin in an August 2012 article in a peer-reviewed medical journal examining DoD's purported medical rationale for another use of another drug, mefloquine.

The "empiric" use of mefloquine - an antimalarial drug that has long been controversial for its serious neurological and psychological side effects - on all incoming detainees at Guantanamo was the subject of a series of Truthout articles by Jason Leopold and this author.

Mefloquine has been connected to a number of serious side effects, including damage to the vestibular system, depression, anxiety, panic attacks, hallucinations, bizarre dreams, nausea, vomiting, sores, and homicidal and suicidal thoughts and behaviors. The drug was previously sold under the brand name Lariam.

Nevin told Truthout in December 2010 that the high dosage of mefloquine Guantanamo detainees were forced to take upon arriving at the prison facility was akin to "pharmacologic waterboarding."

In Nevin's article for the August 2012 edition of Tropical Medicine and International Health, he wrote, "the troubling possibility that the use of mefloquine at Guantánamo may have been motivated in part by knowledge of the drug's adverse effects ... points to a critical need for further investigation to resolve unanswered questions regarding the drug's potentially inappropriate use."

As in the case of scopolamine, the IG report never mentioned the use of mefloquine.

Limiting the Investigation

One reason scopolamine, mefloquine or even the drugs put in David Hicks' food were never mentioned by the DoD inspector general was that the investigation was carefully limited to the purported use of "mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogations."

The IG report states that its report was a response to "a tasking to the Inspector Generals of DoD and the Central Intelligence Agency from Senators Biden, Hagel and Levin." DoD's IG does not reproduce the April 24, 2008, letter from the senators, though an online version of the letter still extant at TPM Muckraker clearly describes the tasking precisely.

"We are deeply concerned about the allegations reported in the April 23rd Washington Post article entitled Detainees Allege Being Drugged, Questioned regarding the alleged use of drugs on detainees to facilitate interrogations," the senators wrote. "They are the most recent in a series of allegations relating to the abuse and mistreatment of detainees in United States custody."

Pointing out as well that John Yoo, working for the Department of Justice's (DOJ) Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), had apparently approved of the legality of "the forced administration of mind-altering drugs to facilitate interrogation," Sens. Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and Carl Levin wrote, "The allegations reported in the Washington Post article warrant a thorough investigation by the Inspectors General of the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency."

The letter twice mentions the use of drugs "to facilitate interrogations," but the 2008 Washington Post article, written by Joby Warrick, did not limit itself to the use of drugs during interrogations. Warrick explained, "Other detainees, in interviews or in statements provided by their attorneys, described pills and injections being forcibly administered for reasons that were not always clear to them."

But an analysis of government documents shows that the dichotomy between using drugs to facilitate interrogations and using drugs to shape the detention environment are not counterpoised.

In a "Background Paper on the CIA's Combined Use of Interrogation Techniques," sent to the OLC in December 2004, the CIA explained that detention conditions "may be a factor in interrogation."

The CIA document noted, "Detention conditions are not interrogation techniques, but they have an impact on the detainee undergoing interrogation."

The DoD's own 2003 Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures describe the detention environment to which incoming prisoners are to be exposed. New prisoners are to adhere to a "Behavioral Management Plan" for at least the first six weeks, whose purpose is to "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization felt by a newly arrived detainee in the interrogation process. It concentrates on isolating the detainee and fostering dependence of the detainee on his interrogator."

While the 2003 SOP never mentions the use of drugs to "enhance and exploit the disorientation and disorganization" of detainees, certainly the use of drugs such as scopolamine and mefloquine, among others, could help accomplish this purpose, and do so without technically being used to "facilitate interrogation." This would be one purpose, for instance, of Yoo's argument for the use of mind-altering drugs.

The DoD IG never mentions Yoo or his recommendation in their report. Nor do they mention that the current Army Field Manual (AFM) on interrogation allows for the use of drugs for interrogation-related purposes.

The AFM, revised in 2006, states that the only drugs forbidden for use are those "that may induce lasting or permanent mental alteration or damage." The earlier version of the AFM had prohibited drugs that caused "chemically induced psychosis," but this language was dropped in the new manual.

Pentagon spokesperson Lt. Col. Todd Breasseale told Truthout that no further changes have been made to the AFM since its last rewrite in 2006, meaning the changes in drugging prohibitions still stands.

CIA and Drugging of Detainees

The DoD IG report was clear it was not addressing charges of CIA drugging, which was to be investigated by the CIA Inspector General. Truthout has filed a FOIA request for the CIA IG report.

Claims of the CIA's use of drugs on detainees rendered to its secret black site prison and "enhanced interrogation" torture program have been the subject of foreign investigations, even as in the United States, the DOJ has closed the book, it claims, on prosecuting CIA crimes.

But the truth about what was done under the CIA's program has leaked out over the years. In terms of its use of drugs, at Harper's Horton reported in November 2010 that German prosecutors told him that torture victim Khaled El-Masri, himself a German citizen who was kidnapped and rendered to a CIA prison in Afghanistan, had been given drugs by CIA jailers.

"By studying El-Masri's hair and skin samples," Horton wrote, German prosecutors "were able to confirm allegations that he was drugged and subjected to a bizarre starvation regimen."

The investigation into the illegal CIA kidnapping was shut down after a deputy US ambassador intervened with German Foreign and Justice ministry officials to register Washington's disapproval of any prosecution of its CIA torturers, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

"I expect this would have figured in the prosecution that the German prosecutors were preparing before the United States shut down the case through threats and political manipulation," Horton told Truthout.

Historically, the CIA had approved the use of drugs in interrogations and to influence detention conditions that bear upon interrogation. In a declassified interrogation manual from the early 1960s, the CIA explained that the function of using drugs, "is to cause capitulation, to aid in the shift from resistance to cooperation."

"Once this shift has been accomplished," the manual reads, "coercive techniques should be abandoned both for moral reasons and because they are unnecessary and even counter-productive" for interrogation purposes.

Special Operations Command and the IG Report

In an interesting aside to the IG report, a letter to the DoD Inspector General from Col. William Melendez, deputy director for intelligence, US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) noted that USSOCOM "cannot agree or disagree with the report findings" because its forces involved in any interrogations in Iraq and Guantanamo were under authority of Central or Southern military commands (CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM, respectively). The letter was included in an appendix to the IG report itself.

According to Colonel Melendez, SOCOM "did not contribute to the completion" of the IG report, raising questions as to what degree Special Operations forces' interrogation practices were investigated by DoD's inspector general.

Speaking of the recent reports concerning the drugging of detainees, Horton told Truthout: "The new evidence points to the use of drugs for nonmedical purposes as a far broader practice, which is troubling. It is hard to imagine this practice being undertaken without high-level authorization, particularly because it is at least arguably illegal, and the medical personnel involved would not likely have risked their professional licenses without getting some formal assurances that they would be protected."

Copyright, Truthout. Reprinted without permission. Original URL: http://truth-out.org/news/item/11640-new-revelations-suggest-dod-cover-up-over-detainee-drugging-charges

The Significance of HRW's New Call to Prosecute Bush Administration Officials for Torture

Cross-posted from MyFDL/Firedoglake

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a new report Tuesday. As they stated in the press release announcing the 107-page report, "Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees" (HTML, PDF), there is "overwhelming evidence of torture by the Bush administration." As a result, President Barack Obama is obliged "to order a criminal investigation into allegations of detainee abuse authorized by former President George W. Bush and other senior officials."

In particular, HRW singled out "four key leaders" in the torture program. Besides former President George W. Bush, the report indicts former Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet. But others remain possible targets of investigation and prosecution. According to the report:

Such an investigation should also include examination of the roles played by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and Attorney General John Ashcroft, as well as the lawyers who crafted the legal “justifications” for torture, including Alberto Gonzales (counsel to the president and later attorney general), Jay Bybee (head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC)), John Rizzo (acting CIA general counsel), David Addington (counsel to the vice president), William J. Haynes II (Department of Defense general counsel), and John Yoo (deputy assistant attorney general in the OLC).

But the key passage in the HRW report concerns the backing for international prosecutions, under the principle in international law of "universal jurisdiction," which was used back in 1998 by Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón to indict former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet for genocide and murder.

Unless and until the US government pursues credible criminal investigations of the role of senior officials in the mistreatment of detainees since September 11, 2001, exercise universal jurisdiction or other forms of jurisdiction as provided under international and domestic law to prosecute US officials alleged to be involved in criminal offenses against detainees in violation of international law. [emphasis added]

Indeed, in an important section of the report, HRW details the failures and successes of pursuing such international prosecutions in the face of U.S. prosecutors' failure to act and investigate or indict high administration officials for war crimes. This is even more important when one considers that the Obama administration has clearly stated its intention to not investigate or prosecute such crimes, going after a handful of lower-level interrogators for crimes not covered by the Bush administration's so-called "legal" approvals for torture provided by the infamous Yoo/Bybee/Levin/Bradbury memos issued by the Office of Legal Counsel.

Nor has Congress shown even a smidgen of appetite for pursuing further accountability: not one Congressman or Senator has stepped forward as yet to endorse HRW's new call. Instead, they demonstrated their obsequiousness by approving Obama's nomination of General David Petraeus as new CIA director 94-0, despite the fact that Petraeus has been implicated in the organization of counter-terror death squads in Iraq, and was in charge of training Iraqi security forces who repeatedly were documented as engaging in widespread torture. It was during Petraeus's tenure as chief of such training for the coalition forces, that the U.S. implemented the notorious Fragmentary Order (FRAGO) 242, which commanded U.S. forces not to intervene in cases of Iraqi governmental torture should they come across such it (which they often did). No one during Petraeus's testimony in his nomination hearings even questioned him about this.

Why this report now?

I asked Andrea Prasow, a senior counsel at Human Rights Watch, why this report was issued now, noting that some on the left had already questioned the timing of HRW's action.

"Because it really needed to be done," Prasow explained. She noted the recent admissions by former President Bush and Vice President Cheney that they had approved waterboarding. Furthermore, "following the killing of [Osama] Bin Laden, we saw the immediate response by some that torture and the enhanced interrogation techniques led to the capture of Bin Laden. And it became a part of normal debate about torture. It shows how fragile is the current commitment not to torture."

Prasow also noted the recent closure of the Durham investigation, which resulted in the decision to criminally investigate the deaths of two detainees in CIA custody, while 99 other cases referred to his office were closed. I asked her whether she felt, as I do, that the announcement of the two investigations were meant to forestall attempts by European (especially Spanish) prosecutors to pursue "universal jurisdiction" prosecutions of U.S. officials for torture.

"I don't see how there's a defensible justification that the investigations Durham announced can do that," Prasow said. "It's pretty clear that there should be an investigation into the deaths of these detainees," she added, "but it's so clear the investigation is very limited. The scope of the investigation is the most important part. Even if Durham had investigated the 100 or so cases that exceeded the legal authorities, it wouldn't be sufficient. What about the people who wrote the legal memos? Who told them to write the memos?" she said, emphasizing the fact that Durham's investigation was limited by Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder to only CIA crimes, and only those that supposedly exceeded the criteria for "enhanced interrogation" laid out in a number of administration legal memos. The torture, Prasow noted, was "throughout the military" as well, including "hundreds or thousands" tortured at sites in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo.

Prasow noted that the Obama administration has made it policy to block attempts by torture victims to get compensation for torture, asserting a policy of protecting "state secrets" to shut down court cases. "But there are other ways of providing redress," she said, adding that "providing redress is part of international laws." The HRW report itself states, "Consistent with its obligations under the Convention against Torture, the US government should ensure that victims of torture obtain redress, which may include providing victims with compensation where warranted outside of the judicial context."

The new HRW report comes on the heels of a controversy roiling around a proposed United Kingdom governmental inquiry into torture. A number of British human rights and legal agencies have said they would boycott the UK proceedings as a "whitewash." As Andy Worthington put it the other day:

As a result of pandering to the Americans’ wishes, the terms of reference are “so restrictive,” as the Guardian described it, that JUSTICE, the UK section of the International Commission of Jurists, warned that the inquiry “was likely to fail to comply with UK and international laws governing investigations into torture.” Eric Metcalfe, JUSTICE’s director of human rights policy, said that the rules “mean that the inquiry is unlikely to get to the truth behind the allegations and, even if it does, we may never know for sure. However diligent and committed Sir Peter [Gibson] and his team may be, the government has given itself the final word on what can be made public.”

Andrea Prasow echoed Metcalfe's fears, saying HRW had "some concerns about how much information [in the UK inquiry] was going to be kept secret. I think transparency, making it as public as possible, is most important."

The fight for transparency also makes HRW's call for prosecutions of high government officials, along with "an independent, nonpartisan commission, along the lines of the 9-11 Commission, [that] should be established to examine the actions of the executive branch, the CIA, the military, and Congress, with regard to Bush administration policies and practices that led to detainee abuse," very timely. In a column the other day at Secrecy News -- Pentagon Tightens Grip on Unclassified Information -- Steven Aftergood reported on a Department of Defense proposed new rule regarding classification. While the Obama administration is supposedly on record for greater governmental transparency, the new rule imposes "new safeguard requirements on 'prior designations indicating controlled access and dissemination (e.g., For Official Use Only, Sensitive But Unclassified, Limited Distribution, Proprietary, Originator Controlled, Law Enforcement Sensitive).'"

According to Aftergood, "By 'grandfathering' those old, obsolete markings in a new regulation for defense contractors, the DoD rule would effectively reactivate them and qualify them for continued protection under the new Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) regime, thereby defeating the new policy." Even worse (if possible), "the proposed rule says that any unclassified information that has not been specifically approved for public release must be safeguarded. It establishes secrecy, not openness, as the presumptive status and default mode for most unclassified information."

Much of what we know about the Bush-era torture program is due to the work of the ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, who have used the Freedom of Information Act to gather hundreds of documents, if not thousands, that document the paper trail surrounding the crimes of the Bush administration. Reporters and investigators like Jane Mayer, Philippe Sands, Alfred McCoy, and Jason Leopold have also contributed much to our understanding of what occurred during the Bush years. The work of investigators going back years demonstrates that U.S. research into and propagation of torture around the world goes back decades.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has also produced an impressive, if still partially redacted, investigation (large PDF) into detainee abuse by the Department of Defense. Their report, for instance, concluded regarding torture at Guantanamo that “Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's authorization of interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay was a direct cause of detainee abuse there."

When one puts together the accelerated emphasis on "state secrets"; the Obama political program of "not looking back" in regards to U.S. war crimes (while supposedly pursuing accountability for torture and war crimes committed by other countries); the political passivity, if not cowardice of Congress; the fact that Obama "has not been transparent on the rendition issue, not even saying what its policy is," according to Andrea Prasow; and finally the lies and propaganda spewed forth by the former Administration's key figures and their proxies, one can only agree with HRW that enough is enough. The time for investigations and prosecutions into torture and rendition is now.

And if they won't listen in Washington, D.C., perhaps they will in Madrid. Or some other intrepid prosecutor in -- who knows? -- Brazil or Argentina or Chile will pay back America, as a matter of poetic but also real justice for the crimes endured by their societies when the U.S. helped organize torture and terror in their countries only a generation ago. There were no U.S. investigations into actions of government figures then, and now we are faced with another set of atrocities produced by our own government. If we do not act now, what will our children face?

U.S. Revokes Visa of Irish Anti-Renditions Activist

Originally posted at Firedoglake

The North Carolina News Observer reports in a March 15 article that the co-founder of ShannonWatch, Edward Horgan, a well-known Irish activist and former Irish Defense Force officer, has had his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa revoked without explanation. Horgan and others believe it is because of his principled stand against the U.S. use of renditions, and in particular, the use of Shannon Airport in western Ireland as a stopover for U.S. rendition flights. ShannonWatch has documented the use of the airport as a stopover for CIA rendition flights (see their page documenting such flights).

As the NO article by Christina Cowger and Robin Kirk notes, Horgan is no long-haired radical, or bomb-making terrorist. He has been a UN peace keeper, and monitored "elections in places like Ghana, Armenia, Zimbabwe, East Timor and Ukraine." According to his online resume, he has worked with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Union. He is getting his Ph.D. in international relations at the University of Limerick. He is also now persona non grata in Barack Obama's supposedly more open and transparent United States.

According to Cowger and Kirk:

Last year, Horgan visited the United States to see family and attend the presidential inauguration. But this year, while observing elections in frigid Kiev, he learned that his 10-year, multiple-entry U.S. visa had been revoked.

The reason? No official will say, though Horgan is scheduled to attend an April conference at Duke University to speak about his opposition to extraordinary rendition.

In fact, Horgan is still listed on the speakers panel for the Duke conference -- "Weaving a Net of Accountability: Taking on extraordinary rendition at the state and regional level" -- along with Scott Horton; rendition victim and CIA black site torture survivor and Guantanamo prisoner, Bisher al-Rawi; psychologist-activist, and president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, Stephen Soldz; ACLU Senior Staff Attorney Steven Watt; Co-director of the International Human Rights Clinic, Margaret Satterthwaite; and others. Christina Cowger, who, I should note, wrote the NO article referenced here, is also listed as a speaker, affiliated with North Carolina Stop Torture Now.

It seems reasonable to assume, lacking any other evidence, that Horgan is being politically targeted by the Obama administration. This is the kind of behavior we came to expect in the days of Bush and Cheney. But it goes with the territory. Barack Obama decided in the first weeks of his administration to maintain the previous administration's rendition program, complete with fig-leaf assurances that U.S. authorities would receive no-harm promises from Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, and other rendition destination sites known for wide-spread use of torture. No human rights organization believes that promise, and U.S. State Department Human Rights Country Reports have strongly criticized many of these countries for their use of torture, arbitrary detention and prison conditions.

In Working Document No. 8 (PDF), the European Union (EU) last year summarized its investigation into CIA use of European countries for the Bush rendition program. The report notes, by the way, "It is worth to remind that, in many occasions, it is not only the CIA the single organiser of the flights included in this working document... but also other entities of US administration, among [them] the Department of Defence..."

Documenting U.S. Rendition Flights in Europe

The Working Document reports over 1000 rendition flights between the end of 2001 and the end of 2005, including the "extraordinary renditions" of Abu Omar, Maher Arar, Khaled el-Masri, Ahmed al-Giza, Mohamed El-Zari, Binyam Mohammed, Bisher al Rawi, Jamil El-Banna, Abou Elkassim Britel, among others. With destinations in Jordan, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, Egypt, Morocco, Iraq, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Guantanamo and elsewhere, these flights had stopovers in all 25 EU countries, as well as Romania, Iceland, Switzerland, Albania, Turkey, and elsewhere.

Truly, the scope of the U.S. rendition program was world-wide, and no one really knows the full extent of the massive kidnapping and torture operation. One of the airlines associated with CIA renditions, Aero Contractors, is based in Smithfield, North Carolina.

The Obama administration has done its best, as well, to keep the lid on accountability for these crimes, using legal maneuvers to keep suits by rendition victims out of the courts, citing expanded views of "state secrets" privilege to shut down such cases. The ACLU suit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan is one of the key legal cases the U.S. has tried to squelch by the use of such tactics.

As one example, the EU report documents that the plane used for the "extraordinary renditions" of German citizen Khaled el-Masri from Skopje to Afghanistan on 24 January 2004, and Ethiopian citizen and British resident Binyam Mohammed from Rabat to Kabul on 22 January 2004 -- a Boeing 737-7ET aircraft registered as N313P (and later N4476S) -- stopped numerous times at "civilian-military airports including Frankfurt (72 times), Shannon (24), United Kingdom (23), Palma de Mallorca (7), Poland, Romania, Check [sic] Republic, Malta, Cyprus and Geneva."

The mention of Shannon brings us back to the case of Edward Horgan. An outspoken opponent of torture, Horgan made political waves in Ireland when he publicly resigned last year from the Green Party. In 2007, the Green Party entered the Irish government of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats. Since that time, they have been criticized for failing to keep to their ideals. Horgan's open letter spoke to his disenchantment on the renditions issue (emphasis in original):

The Green Party, led by John Gormley claimed to be staunch opponents of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and opponents of the abandonment of Irish neutrality at Shannon airport. They have even abandoned the pretence that the programme for Government would impose searches on CIA associated aircraft at Shannon airport.

Not only have no such planes been searched and no investigations carried out on the use of Shannon airport in the US torture rendition programme, but whistle blowers such as Edward Horgan and Conor Cregan have been unjustifiable arrested, charged and spuriously brought before the courts several times for daring to ask the Gardai to investigate the presence of CIA aircraft at Shannon. Both have been repeatedly vindicated by the Irish courts for their whistle blowing actions at Shannon airport.

Who will vindicate those lives lost and those prisoners tortured with the active complicity of the present Irish Government at Shannon airport?

Rather than being kept out of the United States, Horgan should be given a medal for his outstanding courage and forthrightness in not abandoning the battle for accountability for one of the most incredible human rights crimes perpetrated by so-called democratic state in our lifetime. The Obama administration should be ashamed for its behavior in keeping Mr. Horgan from entering this country. And Americans should be ashamed for letting this happen, as the struggle for accountability for torture is shunted aside for political expediency, or staggers under the blows of right-wing propaganda and media indifference.

For further information, see the Amnesty International report, Breaking the Chain: Ending Ireland's Role in Renditions (PDF), or if you are in Durham, NC, April 8-10, you might want to attend the public conference noted in the article, Weaving a Net of Accountability.

Fight for Justice for Maher Arar

I'm forwarding to my readers an important message from Center for Constitutional Rights regarding the Maher Arar case. I highly encourage readers to write to Attorney General Holder, as explained below:

Dear CCR Supporter:

Many of you have closely followed Maher Arar's case since it was filed 5 years ago. Today, in the hopes of finally seeing justice, we are petitioning the United States Supreme Court to hear Mr. Arar's extraordinary rendition case and we urgently need you to take action.

In 2002, Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was detained at JFK airport while on his way home to Canada from abroad. He was interrogated, detained in the U.S. for 2 weeks, denied his right to go to court and then secretly rendered to Syria where he was tortured and held in a grave-like underground cell for over ten months. He was never charged with a crime. You can learn more about Mr. Arar's case on our website.

In a disturbing decision last November, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed CCR's civil case Arar v. Ashcroft in a 7-4 decision. In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Guido Calabresi wrote, "I believe that when the history of this distinguished court is written, today's majority decision will be viewed with dismay." We are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review Maher Arar's case and allow him his day in court. No one should ever be rendered to torture and those who have suffered at the hands of the U.S. government are entitled to redress.

You can help CCR fight for justice for Maher Arar. Tell Attorney General Eric Holder to stop defending the Bush administration's wrongs and urge him to:

• Acknowledge the wrong done to Maher Arar in a public apology;
• Remove Maher Arar from the US Terror Watch List;
• Appoint outside special counsel to investigate and prosecute crimes relating to Maher Arar's rendition;
• Remedy the harm done to Maher Arar; and
• Ensure that the US does not send anyone to torture or arbitrary detention.

Click here to write to Attorney General Holder. Thank you for standing with us in the ongoing fight against torture and impunity.

Yours truly,

Annette Dickerson
Director of Education and Outreach

Arar Decision Cripples Torture Rendition Suits

Originally posted at Firedoglake

The Toronto Globe and Mail succinctly summed up the November 2 decision to dismiss the Maher Arar case, delivered en banc by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit:

Victims of extraordinary rendition have no recourse to sue Washington for torture suffered overseas, appellate court rules

"No recourse." Americans should ponder the meaning of this decision, which explicitly places state interests above individual rights, even when such rights include not being sent to a country that will torture that individual. That such torture was done at the behest of the U.S. government, with written questions given to the torturers, only exacerbates the issue.

Maher Arar was a Syrian-born Canadian who was seized by U.S. authorities at Kennedy International Airport (following upon a bogus RCMP tip), held for thirteen days, and then, with U.S. connivance, and despite the fact Canada said it would accept Mr. Arar, rendered via a CIA jet to Syria for interrogation and torture. He was released in 2003, and the Canadian government, which ascertained Mr. Arar had no connections with terrorism, apologized and forked over a multi-million dollar settlement.

Mr. Arar has tried to find justice in the U.S. courts, and released the following statement after the Second Circuit decision:

“After seven years of pain and hard struggle it was my hope that the court system would listen to my plea and act as an independent body from the executive branch. Unfortunately, this recent decision and decisions taken on other similar cases, prove that the court system in the United States has become more or less a tool that the executive branch can easily manipulate through unfounded allegations and fear mongering. If anything, this decision is a loss to all Americans and to the rule of law.”

Air Force Doctor Gets Medal for Serving on Rendition Torture Flights

Originally posted at Firedoglake

Maxwell-Gunther Dispatch.com, the web news site for personnel and interested partisans of Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, reported on September 17 that Col. (Dr.) James W. Walter has been awarded the Air Medal "for his meritorious service on delicate assignments providing medical care to enemy detainees."

From January 2007 to 2009 as the senior detainee movement flight surgeon, he provided 106 combat hours of support to the 14 Joint Task Force Detainee Movement Operations missions in the C-17A. His service included travel into 15 different countries, some of them in an active enemy fire zone.

The article goes into great detail about "self-professed military brat" Walter's career as a NASA space shuttle launch and recovery physician, and says nothing more about the service for which he was awarded a medal. That's because the military's rendition program is highly secret. Stephen Grey in his 2006 book, Ghost Plane, noted the existence of the military's rendition program, and proclaimed it was larger than the CIA's. But Grey's research concentrated on the CIA's program. The Pentagon's rendition program received its first major outing in the pages of the New York Times only in August 2008:

WASHINGTON - The United States military has secretly handed over more than 200 militants to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia, Egypt and other countries, nearly all in the past two years, as part of an effort to reduce the burden of detaining and interrogating foreign fighters captured in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to American military officials.

The system is similar in some ways to the rendition program used by the Central Intelligence Agency since the Sept. 11 attacks to secretly transfer people suspected of being militants back to their home countries to be jailed and questioned.

And tortured? The United States supposedly seeks "assurances" that the prisoners will not be tortured when sent back to countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.