Since 9/11, it's been extremely difficult to gather evidence on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of recent torture tactics. For the record, I'm a big fan of 24. But tonight there's new evidence that things still don't work the same way in real life as on TV. The LA Times says "Accused Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing punishing bouts of interrogation, according to documents made public Monday.
"His claim will probably intensify the debate over the George W. Bush administration's use of harsh techniques to gain information from terrorism suspects....'I make up stories,' Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA that concerned the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.... Monday's disclosure, representing a rare allegation by a detainee that he lied while subjected to harsh practices, also could raise new questions about whether the techniques worked. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, said the statements raised questions about the effectiveness of the CIA's interrogation program. 'It underscores the unreliability of statements obtained by torture,' said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project.
But the CIA took issue with the description of the techniques as methods of torture that were not useful. 'The CIA plainly has a very different take on its past interrogation practices -- what they were and what they weren't -- and on the need to protect properly classified national security information,' said Paul Gimigliano, an agency spokesman. "
Obama isn't exactly the poster child for transparency, either. ACLU's Ben Wizner, part of the National Security Project, appeared tonight (Monday) on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show. He showed statements that had previously been released by the Bush Administration, consisting of a page with the entire text blacked out -- um, "redacted" -- and then showed the same page as released by the Obama administration, with just a few words made visible (un-redacted?). Wizner said it made him feel like the Obama team was just saying "keep the change". According to the Public Record, "'The documents released today provide further evidence of brutal torture and abuse in the CIA's interrogation program and demonstrate beyond doubt that this information has been suppressed solely to avoid embarrassment and growing demands for accountability,' said Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project and lead attorney on the FOIA lawsuit. 'There is no legitimate basis for the Obama administration's continued refusal to disclose allegations of detainee abuse, and we will return to court to seek the full release of these documents.'"
how lovely, the report resembles my latest favorite art form: blackout poems.
too bad it was unintentional. :(
Posted by: drew | Tuesday, 16 June 2009 at 03:43 PM