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A career civil servant with that kind of money ought to be surprising, especially in lieu of his subsequent outreach efforts to proven Muslim Brotherhood outfits. UPDATE: During the years when Republicans controlled the levers of power, Johnson worked for a law firm that represented the Guantanamo Bay detainees — very vigorously. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison attorneys went so far as to smuggle in materials to the detainees. “If I’d gotten caught passing war news to detainees,” one former DOD official said, “my security clearance would have been pulled.” This week has seen the release of many incriminating...

Two psychologists who devised the CIA’s brutal interrogation program have settled a lawsuit with several victims less than three weeks before a jury trial was set to begin in a federal court in Spokane, Wash. The settlement, reached Wednesday, caps a remarkable case in which for the first time former top CIA officials were forced to testify about their roles in the program launched after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The case unearthed CIA records that shed new light on the program’s creation and how controversial it was within the agency.

War in the White House: attorney general Eric Holder and top Obama adviser David Axelrod 'had to be separated' Eric Holder, Barack Obama's attorney general and David Axelrod, his top political adviser had to be separated after squaring up during a furious row over attempts to impose White House operatives in the justice department. By Jon Swaine, Washington 6:22PM BST 03 Jun 2012 Eric Holder, who heads Mr Obama's justice department, is said to have become "incensed" after being accused by David Axelrod of complaining publicly about political interference in his office. "That's bull****," Mr Holder said in a confrontation...

A busy Supreme Court on Monday ruled, in a vote of 4-2, that former September 11 detainees do not have the right to sue government officials for money damages. This is an issue for Congress, not the judiciary, Justice Anthony Kennedy argued in the court’s opinion. Furthermore, he said, the Second Circuit “erred” in allowing respondents’ detention policy claims to move forward under the context of Bivens v. Six Unknown Fed. Narcotics Agents, which determined that federal officers would need to pay damages to compensate individuals who were subjected to unconstitutional conditions. Expanding Bivens is a “disfavored” judicial activity,...

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s email scandal didn’t stop the head of the CIA from using his own personal AOL account to stash work-related documents, according to a stoner high school student who claims to have hacked into them. CIA Director John Brennan’s private account held sensitive files — including his 47-page application for top-secret security clearance — until he recently learned that it had been infiltrated, the hacker told The Post. Other emails stored in Brennan’s non-government account contained the Social Security numbers and personal information of more than a dozen top American intelligence officials, as well as a government letter...

What happened in Uzbekistan? The government and opposition protesters are sharply at odds in Uzbekistan days after the eastern city of Andijan exploded into violence. A May 15 AP report claimed some 500 bodies had been laid out in a school in Andijan for identification by relatives, "corroborating witness accounts of hundreds killed" when soldiers opened fire on street protests. Medical authorities also reported some 2,000 wounded in local hospitals. However, a May 18 account on Russia's MosNews.com quotes Uzbek officials denying this very death toll. “Not a single civilian was killed by government forces there,” Prosecutor General Rashid Kadyrov...

Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer said he spent several hours at Los Angeles International Airport on Saturday night into Sunday morning, but was repeatedly denied access to federal detainees or an attorney who could discuss the situation with him. "My goals in going were to get information as to whether customs officials were complying with the federal order ... and to try and secure the release of the detainees," he said on Sunday morning. Feuer said he was concerned that federal officials were not complying with an emergency stay granted by a federal judge on Saturday night that was...

Whole title:EXCLUSIVE: At least 18 MORE Guantanamo detainees to be freed within days as Obama starts mass transfer of fanatics who have threatened to bomb and behead AmericansPresident Obama is planning to transfer at least 18 more Guantanamo Bay detainees within days after announcing that four prisoners are being sent to Saudi Arabia, DailyMail.com has learned. snip FREED DETAINEES WHO RETURNED TO TERROR A series of those already freed from the Cuban facility have gone straight back to jihad. They include:Ibrahim Sen: Held in Guantanamo Bay from February 2002 until November 8, 2003. Released to Turkey because U.S. officials reportedly...

Four Gitmo detainees are slated to be transferred to Saudi Arabia in the next 24 hours, the first of the final wave of up to 20 transfers expected before Inauguration Day, two U.S. officials tell Fox News. The identities of the four detainees are not immediately known. The transfers are proceeding despite renewed opposition from President-elect Donald Trump, who tweeted on Tuesday: “There should be no further releases from Gitmo. These are extremely dangerous people and should not be allowed back onto the battlefield.”

The Department of Defense and the Office of Military Commissions will allocate seats for news media aboard military chartered aircraft for travel from Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland to Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to cover military commission pre-trial proceedings scheduled for United States v. Khalid Shaikh Mohammad et. al., Jan. 25 - Feb. 3, 2017. Travel originates at Andrews AFB, Maryland on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017; return flight from Guantanamo to Andrews AFB, Saturday, Feb. 4, 2017. Due to a limited number of seats aboard the flight and limited accommodations at Guantanamo Bay, selection is not guaranteed. However, there...

The tiny Pacific island of Nauru has spent weeks completely cut off from the outside world after its telecommunications network collapsed. Its isolation is so complete that no one is even sure who the country's president is any more. Nauru, an isolated speck in the southwest Pacific with a population of 12,000, is in a "critical situation", according to the last message received by the outside world. That came via an address given three weeks ago by the man last believed to be running the country, President Bernard Dowiyogo, details of which were given on Friday by Radio Australia....

British spies will be cleared in a number of cases of alleged complicity in the torture of detainees abroad, the BBC understands. Scotland Yard and the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) are to issue a joint statement on Thursday. It follows an investigation into the conduct of officers from MI5 and MI6. Although it is expected that no charges will be brought in some cases it is understood the statement will contain other significant information. The BBC's home affairs correspondent, Danny Shaw says the fact that the statement has been prepared by the DPP, together with Scotland Yard, is highly...

State Department: ‘Very Few’ Freed Gitmo Detainees Return to Terrorism David Rutz BY: August 16, 2016 5:02 pm State Department spokesman Mark Toner said Tuesday that “very few” released Guantanamo Bay detainees return to terrorism while addressing the transfer of 15 Gitmo prisoners by the Obama administration. President Obama, who has sought to close Gitmo since he took office, sent 15 detainees to the United Arab Emirates this week, the largest single transfer of prisoners from the detention facility of his presidency. Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R., N.H.) said the 12 Yemenis and three Afghans in the transfer are “among the...

The U.S. transferred 15 Guantanamo Bay detainees to the United Arab Emirates on Monday, the largest such movement yet in President Barack Obama’s push to remove most prisoners from the offshore prison before he leaves office in January. The transfer of 12 Yemenis and three Afghans from the Cuba facility to the U.A.E. leaves 61 detainees, a significant drop from the 242 men imprisoned there in 2009 when Mr. Obama took office but short of the president’s longtime goal of closing the lockup. The Obama administration has faced persistent resistance from Congress and the Pentagon to closing the prison.

A board reviewing the status of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay has decided against releasing a Saudi who U.S. authorities believe narrowly avoided becoming one of the hijackers in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack. Lawyers for prisoner Mohammed al-Qahtani asked the Periodic Review Board last month to send the prisoner to a rehabilitation center in Saudi Arabia for treatment of severe mental illness. The board, made up of representatives of six government agencies, turned down the request in a statement released Wednesday. …

There are always long-shot candidates in any political race, but Democrat Scott Fenstermaker may take it to a whole new level, and I’m not talking about in a “the rent is too damn high” kind of way. Fenstermaker, a criminal defense and tax litigation attorney, made recent comments about 9/11 in a “Humans of New York” profile that has the New York Daily News referring to him as “deranged.” In the profile piece, Fenstermaker argued that the U.S. “got what it deserved” on September 11. "I think the people in those towers died as representatives for the rest of us,...

WASHINGTON -- GOP lawmakers are asking for a freeze on transfers from Guantanamo Bay and more information about past transfers after one detainee released to Uruguay went missing and another was named a Specially Designated Global Terrorist by the State Department. As Congress blocks President Obama's efforts to close the prison facility, the White House is trying to quickly deplete Gitmo's population. The transfer of two detainees to Serbia was announced Monday, bringing the population down to 76. There were 242 terror suspects at Guantanamo when Obama took office. On Wednesday, the State Department issued the designations of Aslan Avgazarovich...

A Republican sends over this video of the State Department press briefing today, in which Assistant Secretary P.J. Crowley calls Gitmo detainees "refugees" at about the 24-minute mark. QUESTION: Talk to us a little bit about response and talks and any commitments that you may have gotten from our European and other friends in the international community about taking in Guantanamo detainees as the camp in Guantanamo is expected to close at some point in the near future. Have you gotten any commitments from our European friends and anybody else? CROWLEY: Ambassador Dan Fried continues his efforts to resettle, you...

Federal immigration authorities plan to build a separate unit for transgender detainees in a new facility under construction in Alvarado, Texas .... One other facility in Santa Ana, California also has a separate unit for transgender women and gay men. The Human Rights Watch report notes that transgender women have previously faced violence and been subject to attacks when they were housed alongside men.

DALLAS (AP) -- A detention facility for immigrants set to open later this year in Texas will include a special unit for transgender people, the second of its kind in the federal system. The privately-run facility under construction in Alvarado, Texas, southwest of Dallas, will include 36 beds for transgender detainees, according to a statement Monday from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The facility is expected to open in November.