British Admit to Aiding CIA Rendition

While widely denied during Tony Blair's term as Prime Minister, apparently rendition of CIA terror suspects was aided by the British.

CNN reports that British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said British territory was used to transport two suspects in the CIA's rendition program.

David Miliband said two suspects in the CIA rendition program were transported
via British soil.

Miliband told the House of Commons that two flights,
each carrying a U.S. detainee, refueled in 2002 in Diego Garcia, a British
territory in the Indian Ocean.

The British government previously had
said it played no part in the program. The foreign secretary said Thursday's
revelations were the result of "new information" the United States gave to
Britain last Friday.

"I'm very sorry indeed, Mr. Deputy Speaker, to have
to report to the House the need to correct these and other statements on the
subject," Miliband said.

Alberto Gonzales Involved in CIA Tape Distruction Decision

Now here's a suprise from CNN:

Alberto Gonzales and other top White House lawyers took part in discussions about destroying CIA videotapes of interrogation of two al Qaeda suspects, the New York Times reported Tuesday night on its Web site.

Alberto Gonzales was White House counsel until early 2005, when he became U.S. attorney general.

At least four top White House lawyers discussed the issue with the CIA between 2003 and 2005, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials the newspaper did not identify.

Gonzales, the former attorney general who served as White House counsel until early 2005, was among those who took part, the officials said.

Also involved, according to the Times' sources, were David Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet Miers, who succeeded Gonzales as White House counsel.

One former senior intelligence official told the Times there had been "vigorous sentiment" among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes.

Other officials asserted that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes, the newspaper said. Those officials added that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy on Tuesday ordered Justice Department lawyers to appear before him at 11 a.m. Friday to discuss whether destroying the tapes, which showed two al Qaeda suspects being questioned, violated a court order.

US Government: Swinging Both Ways

The US and Great Britain, democracy-promoters in principle, do not practice it and support some fairly vile characters (some of whom they later track down spider holes and, in theory, bring to justice). In Pakistan, Gen. Musharraf is surviving an economy that is erratic to say the least and being pushed to share power with deposed PM Benazir Bhutto, a deal which the US and Britain brokered.

Musharraf, whose legality to be President is being challenged in Pakistan's high court, and whose victory cannot be officially validated until they decide, has been cagey about whether he would step down. Asked whether he would stand down if the court ruled him ineligible, Gen Musharraf said: “Let the decision come and then we will decide.”

Meanwhile in the Sudan, the US continues to dance supporting the government's intelligence efforts (and renditioning of presumed enemies) while challenging their peace efforts between north and south and despite the massacre in Darfur. The CIA operation center in Sudan is said to be the biggest spy operation center in the region.

And this is the way of the struggles between the need for intelligence and a desire to put on a face that suggests friendly relations, even with those who we fundamentally disagree. We are in a rock and a hard place, the bigger question is how did we get here.

Sen. Ron Wyden Says "No" to Torture Lawyer

From Talking Points Memo

A Democratic senator says he will block President Bush's nominee to become the CIA's top lawyer indefinitely over concerns that the agency's interrogation techniques may not be legal.

"I'm going to keep the hold until the detention and interrogation program is on firm footing, both in terms of effectiveness and legality," Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Wednesday.

Wyden said he was troubled that John Rizzo _ who is serving as the CIA's interim general counsel _ did not object to a 2002 memo authorizing interrogation techniques that stop just short of inflicting pain equal to that accompanying organ failure or even death.

Wyden also said he was concerned that an executive order Bush issued last month did not clarify legal guidelines regarding CIA detentions and interrogations.

"I am not at all convinced that the techniques outlined in these guidelines are effective, nor am I convinced that they stay within the law," said Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

"The last thing that I want to see is hardworking, well-intentioned CIA officers breaking the law because they have been given shaky legal guidance," he said.

Spokesman Mark Mansfield said CIA Director Michael Hayden strongly supports Rizzo's nomination, noting that Rizzo would be the first general counsel to come up through the ranks of the CIA. Rizzo has been with the agency for more than three decades and served as acting general counsel from 2001 to 2002 and again since August 2004.

"Mr. Rizzo's objective has been and continues to be to give the CIA the legal framework it needs to help protect our country in full and strict accord with the laws and treaty obligation of the United States," Mansfield said.

The agency's terrorist interrogation and detention program has been implemented lawfully and with great care, Mansfield said: "It has produced vital information that has helped our country disrupt terrorist plots and save innocent lives. The United States does not conduct or condone torture."

At a public hearing in June, Rizzo said he did not object to the 2002 memo that said for an interrogation technique to considered torture, it must inflict pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." He said he later found the document to be an "aggressive, expansive" reading of U.S. law.

Under Senate rules, a single senator, sometimes anonymously, can put a hold on legislative action for months. Wyden makes a practice of announcing his holds.

CIA...The Good Old Days

The BBC reports

The US Central Intelligence Agency is to declassify hundreds of documents detailing some of the agency's worst illegal abuses from the 1950s to 1970s.

The papers, to be released next week, will detail assassination plots, domestic spying and wiretapping, kidnapping and human experiments.

Many of the incidents are already known, but the documents are expected to give more comprehensive accounts.

It is "unflattering" but part of agency history, CIA chief Michael Hayden said.

"This is about telling the American people what we have done in their name," Gen Hayden told a conference of foreign policy historians.

The documents, dubbed the "Family Jewels", offer a "glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency".

The full 693-page file detailing CIA illegal activities was compiled on the orders of the then CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973.

He had been alarmed by accounts of CIA involvement in the Watergate scandal under his predecessor and asked CIA officials to inform him of all activities that fell outside the agency's legal charter.

'Skeletons'

Ahead of the documents' release by the CIA, the National Security Archive, an independent research body, on Thursday published related papers it had obtained.

These detail government discussions in 1975 of the CIA abuses and briefings by Mr Schlesinger's successor at the CIA, William Colby, who said the CIA had "done some things it shouldn't have".

Among the incidents that were said to "present legal questions" were:

* the confinement of a Soviet defector in the mid-1960s
* assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro
* wiretapping and surveillance of journalists
* behaviour modification experiments on "unwitting" US citizens
* surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971
* opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union; from 1969 to 1972 of mail to and from China

The papers also convey mounting concern in President Gerald Ford's administration that what were dubbed the CIA's "skeletons" were surfacing in the media.

Henry Kissinger, then both secretary of state and national security adviser, was against Mr Colby's moves to investigate the CIA's past abuses and the fact that agency secrets were being divulged.

Accusations appearing in the media about the CIA were "worse than in the days of McCarthy", Mr Kissinger said.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/americas/6229750.stm

Published: 2007/06/22 12:50:34 GMT