Such were the words of 'advice' given to military interrogators at GITMO from Jonathon Fredman, chief counsel to the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.
Carl Levin has held hearings yesterday and today into the Bush torture policies. Emptywheel has had coverage here, here, here and here
And McClatchey has been adding to their series on the innocent people at GITMO and in other US attainder facilities, the rampant abuse and the creation of radicals who learned to hate America through their treatment at those attainder facilities, with concurrent coverage of the hearings as well
What has emerged is the complete disregard for the innocence or guilt of the humans used for the interrogtion experiments using torture techniques, a disregard that pervaded the Dept of Justice, the military command and in particular, the Congress of the United States. Despite complaints being raised over and over, publically and privately, by whisteblowers, journalists and lawyers directly involved in raising objections (albeit, none of those lawyers being located at DOJ), beginning as early as January 2002, Congress has turned a deliberately blind eye.
With these hearings a small number of members of Congress began to ask some minimally serious questions, for the first time. Despite years and years of whistleblowers agreeing to have their stories printed in the press or in books, with direct attribution to them, and despite passing both the DTA and MCA while those stories were out in the press (Arar's Canadian investigation that cleared him of any terrorist ties when the US disappeared him to Syria was daily news in the weeks leading up to the passing of the MCA), and despite the calls by Taguba (who conducted the Abu Ghraib investigation of military police) for there to be an equally intensive investigation into military intelligence, where he said there were many more problems, Congress has sat idle.
Now, far too late into the proceedings to help those who have died at the American attainder facilities throughout the world, or those who have died because or the lies generated by torture interrogations (like the information from al-libi that was used to help take us to war in Iraq), or those who have died because of the recruitment to jihad engendered by America's abandonment of its principles, now a few on Congress are asking a few questions. And some of the questions asked are fairly good. Watch c-span for the repeats and McCaskill and Reed in particular.
But many of the questions go unasked, with a seeming reluctance in Congress to hear the answers. Everyone will have their own question that they wish had been asked. FOr me, it would be something along the lines of:
what did you do to insure someone was an ACTUAL illegal enemy combatant (and not protected person covered by the Geneva Conventions) when they were detained (shipped out of country, abused, disappeared from family, kidnapped, interrogated, purchased in a human trafficking transaction with overseas warlords, or whatever)?
For you it may be something else. But in general, I think the Congressional reaction to questioning for these and many other hearings has been, "if you use them to get actual information on crimes, you're doing it wrong."
UPDATED McClatchey's follow up story today, headlined "Documents Confirm U.S. Hid Detainees From Red Cross" adds some additional details from the meeting where Fredman supplied his helpful advice. At this meeting, Diane Beaver, who penned the legal opinion that soldiers could torture with advance immunity if they received an order from their superior officer to engage in depravity, also offered advice on hiding abuse from the ICRC.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques"
And we also had insight into how the military was handling torture in general. Asked about torture techniques (sleep deprivation) occuring at Bagram to "break" detainees,
"True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.
True - but officially deniable.
We have found Dana Perino's role model.