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US Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration's "enhanced interrogation" program. Ironically, though, it is Mr. Holder himself who should be investigated for the role he played in the Clinton administration's extraordinary rendition program. Mr. Holder served as Deputy Attorney General during the Clinton years from 1997 until 2001. Last month, I cited two instances of extraordinary renditions that occurred during the Clinton presidency. One of them took place while Mr. Holder was serving as Deputy Attorney General [undoubtedly, there were many more such instances]: Talaat Fuad Qassim, a leader of al-Gamaa...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terrorism suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but pledges to closely monitor their treatment to ensure that they are not tortured, administration officials said Monday. Human rights advocates condemned the decision, saying that continuing the practice, known as rendition, would still allow the transfer of prisoners to countries with a history of torture. They said that promises from other countries of humane treatment, called “diplomatic assurances,” were no protection against abuse. “It is extremely disappointing that the Obama administration is continuing the Bush administration practice...

ABC's Brian Ross and NBC's Andrea Mitchell on Tuesday night each listed some al Qaeda plots uncovered via CIA interrogations, but both balked when it came to vindicating former Vice President Dick Cheney on whether “enhanced interrogation techniques” (EITs) led to information which prevented attacks. “Nowhere in the reports...does the CIA ever draw a direct connection between the valuable information and the specific use of harsh tactics,” Ross declared on World News in citing reports Cheney requested be released. NBC's Andrea Mitchell cited only Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and related how “administration officials say there is no way to know whether...

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects to third countries for detention and interrogation, but will monitor their treatment to ensure they are not tortured, administration officials said on Monday. The administration officials, who announced the changes on condition that they not be identified, said that unlike the Bush administration, they would give the State Department a larger role in assuring that transferred detainees would not be abused. “The emphasis will be on insuring that individuals will not face torture if they are sent over overseas,” said one administration official, adding that...

CIA interrogators used a handgun and an electric drill to try to frighten a captured al-Qaeda commander into giving up information, according to a long-concealed agency report due to be made public next week, former and current U.S. officials who have read the document said Friday. The tactics -- which one official described Friday as a threatened execution -- were used on Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, according to the CIA's inspector general's report on the agency's interrogation program. Nashiri, who was captured in November 2002 and held for four years in one of the CIA's "black site" prisons, ultimately became one...

Contractor Raymond Azar is arrested in Afghanistan, hooded, stripped and flown to the U.S. His alleged crime? Bribery. A human rights activist calls the case 'bizarre.' ......... Reporting from Alexandria, Va. - A Lebanese citizen being held in a detention center here was hooded, stripped naked for photographs and bundled onto an executive jet by FBI agents in Afghanistan in April, making him the first known target of a rendition during the Obama administration. Unlike terrorism suspects who were secretly snatched by the CIA and harshly interrogated and imprisoned overseas during the George W. Bush administration, Raymond Azar was flown...

"Irresponsible" To Identify Secret Sites, Says CIA; Lithuania Denies Allegation A third European country has been identified to ABC News as providing the CIA with facilities for a secret prison for high-value al Qaeda suspects: Lithuania, the former Soviet state. Former CIA officials directly involved or briefed on the highly classified program tell ABC News that Lithuanian officials provided the CIA with a building on the outskirts of Vilnius, the country's capital, where as many as eight suspects were held for more than a year, until late 2005 when they were moved because of public disclosures about the program. Flight...

The Obama administration is fighting on multiple fronts - in courts in San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and London - to keep an official veil of secrecy over the treatment of a former prisoner who says he was tortured at Guantanamo Bay. The administration has asked a federal appeals court in San Francisco to reconsider its ruling allowing Binyam Mohamed and four other former or current prisoners to sue a Bay Area company for allegedly flying them to overseas torture chambers for the CIA. Obama administration lawyers also argued that Mohamed's attorneys had violated secrecy procedures by writing a letter to...

Objecting to the Obama administration's refusal to use waterboarding and other interrogation procedures put into place by the Bush administration, former vice president Dick Cheney said that the U.S. should be "prepared to sacrifice American lives." Unlike former President George W. Bush, who (like many of his predecessors) has demurred from making public comments or criticisms about his successor and his policies, Cheney has been vocal in his attacks on the new president. (CBS) "The reason I have been speaking," Cheney (left) said on CBS News' Face The Nation, is because "the issues that are at stake here are so...

Holder says he approved Clinton-era renditionsCannot be posted, due to FR rules.

A panel of judges from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco today overturned a lower court ruling that put a halt to a controversial lawsuit concerning extraordinary rendition, the practice of flying suspected terrorists to their home (or other) countries. Click here for the story, from the San Jose Mercury News; here for the AP story. The lawsuit was filed by the ACLU on behalf of five men who say they were subjected to the government’s extraordinary rendition program — that they were kidnapped and sent to overseas prisons where they were tortured. The...

The US Defense Department said Tuesday it is weighing how best to manage the imminent release of photos showing abuse of detainees amid concern about an international backlash. The Pentagon announced last week it had agreed to release hundreds of photos from US-run prisons in Iraq and elsewhere in response to a long-running lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The photos were used as evidence in criminal investigations of US soldiers accused of abusing detainees in the "war on terror" during president George W. Bush's administration. "There is an extensive effort underway in this building, and in Central...

Marine Confesses He Witnessed Torture My fellow veterans please forgive me. But I must purge my soul. I only ask that you reserve judgment until you read all of if. I only want peace for all and a world free of torture. What I saw in the military was much worse than water boarding. The prisoners were taken to a 12 foot deep pool. Feet weighted they were forced into the pool. Those who hesitated, were moved onto a plank high above the pool and forced off. They were to stay in this deep water for over an hour feet...

The Bush Administration approved the use of "insects placed in a confinement box" during the interrogation of top Al Qaeda official Abu Zubaydah, according to a 2002 document that President Obama declassified for release Thursday. The legal memorandum for the CIA, prepared by Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, reviewed 10 enhanced techniques for interrogating Zubaydah, and determined that none of them constituted torture under U.S. criminal law. The techniques were: attention grasp, walling (hitting a detainee against a flexible wall), facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, stress positions, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box, and waterboarding.(View...

WASHINGTON -- It's no longer possible to mince words, or pretend we didn't know. The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced" interrogation methods, used on "high-value" terrorism suspects, plainly constituted torture. The time for euphemisms is over and the time for accountability has arrived. The Red Cross report -- published this week in its entirety for the first time by The New York Review of Books -- is a stunning account of how the Bush administration spat on our laws, traditions and ideals. I realize that many Americans, given...

Facing budget cuts like every other agency, the CIA is hoping to sell equipment from the now defunct Black Sites to recoup whatever revenue possible. Intelligence gathering and interrogation tools are being sold by CIA operatives at yard sales throughout the Eastern Bloc. Of particular popularity are the water-boarding setups, which are being sold as above ground pools. A high school in Richmond, VA, even ordered one from the CIA’s Craigslist posting to use in their production of The Crucible.

It's no longer possible to mince words, or pretend we didn't know. The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's so-called "enhanced" interrogation methods, used on "high-value" terrorism suspects, plainly constituted torture. The time for euphemisms is over, and the time for accountability has arrived. The Red Cross report -- published this week in its entirety for the first time by the New York Review of Books -- is a stunning account of how the Bush administration spat on our laws, traditions and ideals. I realize that many Americans, given the scope...

About Italian Jurisprudence and American National Security by a pro-American judge in Catania Italy http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=31133

The confidential report, published Sunday, could bolster calls for legal action against the Bush administration. By Jonathan Adams posted March 16, 2009 at 10:35 am EST•A daily summary of global reports on security issues.The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) concluded in 2007 that US methods to extract information from prisoners at secret CIA jails as part of the "war on terror" amounted to torture, according to excerpts from a confidential report published on the website of the The New York Review of Books on Sunday.With US President Barack Obama on record as backing the prosecution of officials involved...

The counter counterterrorism campaign is getting drubbed in Italy too. The Italians did the same thing a federal judge in California did to the ACLU. http://www.thebulletin.us/articles/2009/03/16/news/world/doc49bde8ec84d3d795876361.txt