Two Prosecutors Faulted Trials for Detainees

Posted on August 2, 2005 by Team VCS

As the Pentagon was making its final preparations to begin war crimes trials against four detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, two senior prosecutors complained in confidential messages last year that the trial system had been secretly arranged to improve the chance of conviction and to deprive defendants of material that could prove their innocence.

The electronic messages, obtained by The New York Times, reveal a bitter dispute within the military legal community over the fairness of the system at a time when the Bush administration and the Pentagon were eager to have the military commissions, the first for the United States since the aftermath of World War II, be seen as just at home and abroad.

During the same time period, military defense lawyers were publicly criticizing the system, but senior officials dismissed their complaints and said they were contrived as part of the efforts to help their clients.

The defense lawyers’ complaints and those of outside groups like the American Bar Association were, it is now clear, simultaneously being echoed in confidential messages by the two high-ranking prosecutors whose cases would, if anything, benefit from any slanting of the process.

In a separate e-mail message, the chief prosecutor flatly rejected the accusations by his subordinates. And a military review supported him.

Among the striking statements in the prosecutors’ messages was an assertion by one that the chief prosecutor had told his subordinates that the members of the military commission that would try the first four defendants would be “handpicked” to ensure that all would be convicted.

The same officer, Capt. John Carr of the Air Force, also said in his message that he had been told that any exculpatory evidence – information that could help the detainees mount a defense in their cases – would probably exist only in the 10 percent of documents being withheld by the Central Intelligence Agency for security reasons.

Captain Carr’s e-mail message also said that some evidence that at least one of the four defendants had been brutalized had been lost and that other evidence on the same issue had been withheld. The March 15, 2004, message was addressed to Col. Frederick L. Borch, the chief prosecutor who was the object of much of Captain Carr’s criticism.

The second officer, Maj. Robert Preston, also of the Air Force, said in a March 11, 2004, message to another senior officer in the prosecutor’s office that he could not in good conscience write a legal motion saying the proceedings would be “full and fair” when he knew they would not.

Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway of the Air Force, a senior adviser to the office running the war crimes trials who provided a response from the Defense Department, said that the e-mail messages had prompted a formal investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general that found no evidence to support the two officers’ accusations of legal or ethical problems.

Colonel Borch, who has since retired from the military, sent his own e-mail message to Captain Carr and Major Preston on March 15, 2004, with copies to several other members of the prosecution team the same day, outlining his response.

In his message, Colonel Borch said he had great respect and admiration for Captain Carr and Major Preston. But their accusations, he said, were “monstrous lies.” He did not, however, address any specifics, like stacking the panel.

“I am convinced to the depth of my soul that all of us on the prosecution team are truly dedicated to the mission of the office of military commissions,” he wrote, “and that no one on the team has anything but the highest ethical principles.”

Colonel Borch did not respond to telephone messages left at his home. Captain Carr, who has since been promoted to major, declined to comment when reached by telephone, as did Major Preston. Both Captain Carr and Major Preston left the prosecution team within weeks of their e-mail messages and remain on active duty.

General Hemingway said the assertions in the e-mail messages had been “taken very seriously and an investigation was conducted because of the allegations about potential violations of ethics and the law.”

He said in an interview that the Defense Department’s inspector general spent about two months investigating the accusations and reviewing the operations of the prosecutor’s office. “It disclosed no evidence of any criminal misconduct, no evidence of any ethical violations, and no disciplinary action was taken against anybody,” the general said. He also said that no evidence had been “tampered with, falsified or hidden.”

General Hemingway declined to discuss any specifics of the two prosecutors’ accusations, but he said he now believed that the problems underlying the complaints were “miscommunication, misunderstanding and personality conflicts.” The inspector general’s report has not been made public but was sent to the Pentagon’s top civilian lawyer, he said.

Copies of the e-mail messages were provided to The Times by members of the armed forces who are critics of the military commission process. The documents’ authenticity was independently confirmed by other military officials.

The Bush administration and the Pentagon have faced criticism about the legitimacy of the military commission procedures almost since the regulations describing them were announced in 2002.

The rules, which in essence constitute a new body of law distinct from military and civilian law, allow, for example, witnesses to testify anonymously for the prosecution. Also, any information may be admitted into evidence if the presiding officer judges it to be “probative to a reasonable person,” a new standard far more favorable to the prosecution than anything in civilian law or military law. It is unclear whether information that may have been obtained under coercion or torture can be admissible.

The trials of the first four defendants began last August in a secure courtroom in a converted dental clinic at the naval base at Guantánamo. Before they could start in earnest, the trials were abruptly halted in November when a federal judge ruled they violated both military law and the United States’ obligations to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

But a three-judge appeals court panel that included Judge John G. Roberts, President Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, unanimously reversed that ruling on July 15.

Defense Department officials have said they plan to resume the trials in the next several weeks. They said they also planned soon to charge an additional eight detainees with war crimes.

The two trials expected to resume shortly are those of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who was a driver in Afghanistan for Osama bin Laden; and David Hicks, an Australian who was captured in Afghanistan, where, prosecutors say, he had gone to fight for the Taliban government.

In his March 2004 message, Captain Carr told Colonel Borch that “you have repeatedly said to the office that the military panel will be handpicked and will not acquit these detainees and we only needed to worry about building a record for the review panel” and academicians who would pore over the record in years to come.

Captain Carr said in the message that the problems could not be dismissed as personality differences, as some had tried to depict them, but “may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements or other criminal conduct.”

He added that “the evidence does not indicate that our military and civilian leaders have been accurately informed of the state of our preparation, the true culpability of the accused or the sustainability of our efforts.” The office, he said, was poised to “prosecute fairly low-level accused in a process that appears to be rigged.”

He said that Colonel Borch also said that he was close to Maj. Gen. John D. Altenburg Jr., the retired officer who is in overall charge of the war crimes commissions, and that this would favor the prosecution.

General Altenburg selected the commission members, including the presiding officer, Col. Peter S. Brownback III, a longtime close friend of his. Defense lawyers objected to the presence of Colonel Brownback and some other officers, saying they had serious conflicts of interest. General Altenburg removed some of the other officers but allowed Colonel Brownback to remain.

In his electronic message, Captain Carr said the prosecution team had falsely stated to superiors that it had no evidence of torture of Ali Hamza Ahmed Sulayman al-Bahlul of Yemen. In addition, Captain Carr said the prosecution team had lost an F.B.I. document detailing an interview in which the detainee claimed he had been tortured and abused.

Major Preston, in his e-mail message of March 11, 2004, said that pressing ahead with the trials would be “a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people.”

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U.S. Weighs Military Transfer; 7 Marines Are Killed in Iraq

Posted on August 2, 2005 by Team VCS

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Aug. 2 – As Iraqi leaders on Monday reaffirmed their decision to finish writing the country’s constitution by the middle of the month, the American ambassador here publicly outlined the process for a gradual American troop withdrawal. And today, the American military said seven more American troops were killed in Iraq.

Speaking in his first news conference here, the new ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Monday that the American military would hand over control of specific areas to Iraqi forces and “withdraw its own units from these areas.” He declined to say which Iraqi cities American soldiers would leave first but said he had formed a committee with Iraqi leaders to draw up a detailed withdrawal plan.

“After this transfer occurs in more and more areas, there will be a smaller need for coalition forces, and elements of the multinational forces will leave Iraq,” the ambassador said. Iraqi forces have been given sole control over very few areas of the country. A recent report prepared by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld concluded that only a small percentage of Iraqi military units were capable of fighting on their own.

Mr. Khalilzad’s remarks were a public reminder to Iraqis that the Bush administration is moving ahead with plans to reduce the number of foreign troops here. And they were the latest demonstration of the highly visible role that he has played in the weeks since his arrival. Before then, Mr. Khalilzad was the ambassador to Afghanistan, where he was deeply engaged in the affairs of the country. He seems to be bringing that philosophy to Iraq as well, departing from American officials’ recent custom of staying in the background while Iraqis increasingly take the lead.

He played an active part in pushing Iraqi leaders toward their decision on Sunday to stick to an Aug. 15 deadline for drafting a new constitution, urging them to set aside any issues that could not be resolved by that date.

The Bush administration has been keen to keep the democratic process here on track, as a means to drain anger from the insurgency and also to help set the conditions for an American troop draw-down.

Sectarian violence continued to punctuate the country’s political tensions.

Today, an American military spokesman, Staff Sgt. Don Dees, said in a telephone interview that seven American marines were killed on Monday, six of them during operations in the restive Al Anbar province west of Baghdad and one in a suicide car bomb attack in the town of Hit. Also on Monday, eleven bodies were found in southwest Baghdad, most shot but two beheaded. Their identities were not immediately clear, though the men were of varying ages and many had the long beards worn by conservative Muslims. One weeping relative of a victim was photographed holding the decapitated head of a man as it lay on the back of a flatbed truck, according to Reuters.

An Interior Ministry official, Brig. Abdul Salam Abdul Latif, was killed and two of his guards wounded when gunmen attacked his car on a highway in eastern Baghdad, the ministry said. About 40 miles south of Kirkuk, an Iraqi soldier was killed and six others were wounded by a roadside bomb.

In another appearance on Monday, Mr. Khalilzad urged the members of the constitutional drafting committee to set aside their differences and strike a deal. “I encourage them to move forward in a spirit of compromise, flexibility and good will,” he said in a speech before Iraq’s National Assembly.

Under a framework agreed to by Iraqis last year, the constitution will be put to a vote of the National Assembly, followed by a nationwide referendum on Oct. 15. Nationwide elections to elect a new National Assembly to a full term are scheduled for Dec. 15.

The danger, expressed by some Iraqi leaders, is that there is not enough time until Aug. 15 for the constitutional committee to resolve several contentious issues that are central to Iraq’s identity. A flawed constitution, they say, could open the door to civil war.

Some of the trickiest issues involve the future of the Kurds, who predominate in the mountains of northern Iraq. The Kurds have enjoyed a wide degree of autonomy since the end of the Persian Gulf war in 1991, and they are eager to preserve — and even expand — their prerogatives against what they view as a potentially predatory central government.

On Monday, Kurdish leaders said they were prepared to withdraw their support of an Iraqi charter if it does not satisfy their concerns on a range of difficult issues, including expanding the geographic breadth of their autonomy and reversing years of expulsions and ethnic killings in areas of Iraq that were formerly Kurdish.

“If the constitution does not respect the basic rights of the Kurdish people in Iraq, the Kurdish region will vote against the referendum,” said Barham Salih, a senior Kurdish leader and Iraq’s planning minister.

It is not an idle threat. Under the rules set up last year, the Iraqi constitution would fail if two-thirds of the voters in 3 of Iraq’s 18 provinces vote against it in October — and Kurds are a majority in exactly three provinces.

Among the other unresolved issues is the role of religion in public and political life. Some Shiite leaders want the country to be called the Iraqi Islamic Republic, and they want to designate Islam as the main source of the country’s legislation. Some Kurdish and other secular Iraqi leaders want to make sure that such language is not used to strip women and others of their basic rights.

It is such fundamental disagreements that prompted American diplomats to try to persuade the Iraqis to hold fast to the Aug. 15 deadline, even at the cost of leaving some of those big issues out of the constitution altogether.

But Mr. Salih, the Kurdish leader, suggested that some of those disagreements may be too large to paper over.

Without acceptance of the Kurds’ basic demands, “there will be no agreement,” he said. “You cannot camouflage it.”

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All Fall Down

Posted on August 2, 2005 by Team VCS

In visiting Gaza and Israel a few weeks ago, I realized how much the huge drama in Iraq has obscured some of the slower, deeper but equally significant changes happening around the Middle East. To put it bluntly, the political parties in the Arab world and Israel that have shaped the politics of this region since 1967 have all either crumbled or been gutted of any of their original meaning. The only major parties with any internal energy and coherence left today are Hamas, Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood, and they are scared out of their minds – scared that if all the secular parties collapse, they may have to rule, and they don’t have the answers for jobs, sewers and electricity.

In short, Iraq is not the only country in this neighborhood struggling to write a new social contract and develop new parties. The same thing is going on in Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Gaza. If you like comparative politics, you may want to pull up a chair and pop some popcorn, because this sort of political sound and light show comes along only every 30 or 40 years.

How did it all happen? The peace process and the large-scale immigration of Jews to Israel (aliyah) were the energy sources that animated the Israeli Labor Party, and their recent collapse has sapped its strength. Meanwhile, Ariel Sharon’s decision to pull out of Gaza unilaterally and uproot all the Jewish settlements there, settlements that his Likud Party had extolled as part of its core mission, has fractured that party.

Likud’s vision of creating a Greater Israel “collapsed because of Palestinian demography and terrorism, and Labor’s vision of peace collapsed with the failure at Camp David,” said the former Likud minister Dan Meridor.

The death of Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian intifada – which was as much a revolt by Palestinian youth against Fatah’s corrupt old guard as against Israel – and Israel’s crushing response have broken Fatah and its animating vision of “revolution until victory over the Zionist entity.”

“Fatah never made the transition from a national liberation movement to civil society,” said the Palestinian reformist legislator Ziad Abu Amr. Iraq’s Baath Party was smashed to bits by President Bush. Syria’s Baath – because of the loss of both its charismatic leader, Hafez al-Assad, and Lebanon, its vassal and launching pad for war on Israel – has no juice anymore. Lebanon’s Christian Phalange Party and Amal Party, and the other ethnic parties there, are all casting about for new identities, now that their primary obsessions – the Syrian and Israeli bogymen – have both left Lebanon. Egypt’s National Democratic Party, which should be spearheading the modernization of the Arab world, can’t get any traction because Egyptians still view it as the extension of a nondemocratic regime.

Intensifying these pressures is the big change from Washington, said the Palestinian political scientist Khalil Shikaki: “As long as Washington was happy with regimes that offered only stability, there was no outside pressure for change. Now that the Bush administration has taken a bolder position, the public’s expectations with regard to democratization are becoming greater. But the existing parties were not built to deliver that. So unless new ones emerge, either Hamas or anarchy could fill the vacuum.”

The big challenge for all these societies is obvious: Can they reconstitute these old parties or build new ones that can make the task and narrative of developing their own countries – making their people competitive in an age when China and India and Ireland are eating their lunch – as emotionally gripping as fighting Israel or the West or settling the West Bank?

Can there be a Baath Party or a Fatah that has real views on competition, science and the environment? Will Labor and Likud (which, though badly hobbled, are still more like real political parties than those in the Arab world) ever have a defining debate over why nearly one in five Israelis live below the poverty line?

“For decades, people in the region were only interested in political parties that offered national liberation,” remarked Jordan’s deputy prime minister, Marwan Muashar, whose country is in the midst of a huge overhaul. “But now all the existential threats to the different states are gone. Now the focus has shifted from national liberation to personal liberation, but in all spheres: more equality, less corruption, better incomes, better schools. … Governments are talking differently, but up to now people are still skeptical. They have heard so much talk. … The first country or party that really shows results will have a big effect on the whole region because everyone is looking for a new vision.”

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US Army Deserter Fled Iraq for New Life in Canada

Posted on August 2, 2005 by Team VCS

US Army Deserter Fled Iraq for New Life in Canada

Joshua Key grew to hate his army’s chaotic brutality. In BC, he seeks legal refuge and a home.

“All we want is to find a home so our kids can grow up in a stable environment and go to school and make friends,” Brandi Key says as she towels off her six month old baby in the front seat of the Dodge Caravan which has recently become the family’s temporary home. Brandi is the wife of Joshua Key, a 27-year-old former soldier who deserted the US Army. The pair, in Nelson last week, are driving across Canada with their four kids in search of a home, and Canadian refugee status.

The Keys are living in a van because of Joshua Key’s opposition to the US-led war in Iraq. While many opponents of the Iraq war base their opposition on media reports, Key’s opinion is based on what he witnessed when he fought for eight months in Iraq’s Sunni Triangle.

Key never thought he’d end up in Iraq in the first place. When he first enlisted, he signed up to be a bridge builder in a non-deployable unit. Despite this, the Army trained him in explosives and landmines, and sent him to Iraq in April of 2003.

‘All-American values’

Key describes himself as a patriotic citizen who grew up learning “all-American values.” Raised by his grandparents in a small town in Oklahoma, Key became a welder and was earning $7.25 an hour before he joined the Army. With a rapidly growing family, he desperately needed a better job to make ends meet. After a visit to the local military recruiting office and then a score of 50 percent on an aptitude test, Key was told he could pick between three different jobs.

“I decided on a bridge builder in a non-deployable unit,” he explains with a slight southern drawl. “This was my incentive to join the Army. I wanted to be close to my family. Other guys were offered money incentives.”

Key felt that his situation was so desperate that he signed a contract with the US military even though his wife was pregnant with their third child. “They don’t usually let guys in who have three kids. They told me they were hiding the fact that my wife was pregnant. After I signed the paper it didn’t matter anymore. The Army was the only option we had.”

During basic training in May 2002, Key learned that his legally binding contract could be changed by the military at any time. “In the first few days of basic training, you learn that you are just a number and to keep your mouth shut unless spoken to. We were told that we were going to learn how to be the worst damn killers in the battlefield. I was already thinking; what the hell are you talking about?”

‘Breaking you down’

Key’s first duty station was in Fort Carson, Colorado where he was put on a rapid deployment unit. “This meant I could be sent anywhere in the world in just a day’s notice. This wasn’t what I had signed up for. I was mad and decided to ask my platoon leader what was going on.”

According to Key, even after going through the proper procedure to ask a question, the response from the platoon leader was to “get the hell out of his office. For two weeks after that I was punished severely. They call it ‘breaking you down’ so they can rebuild you to military conformity,” he explained.

This was the first experience of many that made Key want to quit. “I knew that if I quit I would be sent to jail and the Army would take all my money. When you’ve got a wife and kids to support, you just stick with it and keep going.”

In February, 2003 all the equipment from Key’s unit was being loaded onto trains to send to Iraq. “We were told that Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant and he had to be crushed. I believed there were weapons of mass destruction and war was justified. I felt like I better get it over with now so that my kids don’t have to deal with him (Hussein) in the future.”

Raiding and stealing

Key’s unit was the second to enter Iraq after the invasion. Soon after arriving, Key saw evidence of an extremely disorganized U.S military. “There wasn’t enough food or water for the troops. We were told to steal water from other troops before we left on a mission so we’d have enough.”

They were in Ramadi for three weeks before it got violent. Key’s job was to patrol streets and raid homes. “We’d use explosives to blow up the front door, then six of us would run in, grab the males and send them off for interrogation and hold the women and children at gunpoint while we completely destroyed their home. Soldiers could steal whatever they wanted.”

It was an adrenaline rush at first, but after a while Key couldn’t figure out why they were raiding homes. “I started seeing the mothers faces screaming and hollering; they don’t look at it as though it’s your government who is doing this to them, they see you as being the enemy. They look at you as though they would slit your throat at any minute if they could,” he explains.

When Key’s unit moved to Fallujah, he saw the enemy fighting back for the first time. “We went from not knowing what a mortar attack was to being under attack every single night.” Even though he was being shot at, Key felt that the Iraqis were just fighting for their country.

Plagued by sympathy

According to Key, sympathy for the Iraqi people was one of his downfalls. “You’re told to treat the enemy as though they’re guilty until proven innocent, and to have no remorse and no regret.” During a traffic control point that Key was part of, an American tank blew up a car that passed through without permission. There was a father and his child inside. The father was dead and the boy was badly injured. Key bandaged him up and took him to the closest hospital.

“I wasn’t supposed to do this as it showed sympathy to the enemy.” Key and other U.S soldiers searched the car afterwards and there were no signs of contraband anywhere. “They just didn’t understand what stop meant,” he says sadly. There were signs everywhere that showed the military’s lack of control. At a scene in Ramadi, Key realized that no soldier was going to be held accountable for their actions. “We turned a corner and all I saw were heads and bodies. It shocked us all. There were American troops in the middle saying they had lost it. My squad leader told me to go and see if I could find evidence of a firefight and what went on. As soon as I stepped out of the tank I saw American soldiers kicking a head around like a soccer ball.

“That disgusted me and I told my platoon leader that I wanted no part of it,” says Key. “He couldn’t do anything about it, even with his authority, and told me to sit down in the tank. The next day I asked him if anything had been followed up on the incident. I was told to shut the hell up, that it wasn’t my concern.”

Feeling expendable

As a combat engineer, Key felt he was expendable. After seven months of fighting in the red zones, sleeping in bombed places, eating canned food, and showering once every three weeks, Key was sent to a green zone for two weeks of relief. It was here he experienced the feeling of being only a number. “They had a really nice chow hall. Me, my team leader who was a sergeant, and one other guy went to get some food. The colonel at the door stopped us and told us we couldn’t go in. We weren’t allowed to go in until we had pressed our uniforms. This was the way we were treated by our own people, I couldn’t believe it.”

One of Key’s friends received a book in the mail from his mother titled, America Sold it’s Soul for Saudi Crude. His opinion on the war started to change after he read that book. “When I got to Iraq I asked the people why there was so much trash everywhere. They told me it was from us. I didn’t believe it until I started reading. We’ve destroyed that country in the last 14 years. The U.S government planned, organized and orchestrated the whole thing. We’re just there for the oil.”

People criticize Key for abandoning the war and not honoring his contract with the military. Key’s response to this is that he was sent to fight an illegal war for his country and that it was the military who didn’t uphold their side of the contract. “I thought I was there to promote democracy, but I think I was there to prevent it.”

During a brief leave of absence in December, 2003, Key asked a military lawyer if there were any other options besides going back to Iraq. The lawyer told him he had to get back on the plane or go to prison. He decided he couldn’t justify going back to Iraq. Key packed up his family and moved to Philadelphia where they lived in hiding for 14 months.

Escaping the US Army

Key used his military training to plan an escape route if it was needed. “The military taught us how to evade terrorists and I knew my escape routes to Canada. I was always on alert, and I started to go a little crazy. I wanted something better for my kids.” Key talked to Jeffrey House—the Toronto lawyer who has represented other Iraq war deserters—who said he could help. The Key family arrived in Toronto in March of this year by crossing the border at Niagara Falls. “We had lots of luggage, and they wanted to know why. We told them we had four kids. They let us through and told us to have a nice time in Canada,” he says.

Now Key is touring Canada, telling his story to whoever will listen. “I have taken some major risks in leaving the military and I know that if people listen to my stories, they can’t tell me I have to go back and spend ten years in jail.”

In fact Key could face five or more years in jail if he returns to the United States. He recently applied for refugee status and is hopeful the Canadian government will grant his request. Despite that optimism, federal immigration officials ruled against the first claim by an Iraq war deserter. Jeremy Hinzmanhad his first refugee application denied last March.

While Key packs up his Dodge Caravan to move on to the family’s next destination, his 6-year-old son Zachary hops into the driver’s seat of the car. “Can I drive Dad?” he asks innocently. Key plucks him from the front seat of the car and tells him he can when he’s older. For now Key is in the driver’s seat, heading towards an uncertain future.

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Bush Appoints Bolton as U.N. Envoy, Bypassing Senate

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Team VCS

President Bush bypassed the Senate confirmation process today and appointed John R. Bolton as the new United States ambassador to the United Nations.

The appointment, while Congress is in recess, ends a months-long standoff between the White House and Senate Democrats who deem Mr. Bolton unfit for the job and have been holding up his confirmation.

“I chose John because of his vast experience in foreign policy, his integrity and his willingness to confront difficult problems head on,” Mr. Bush said in making the announcement at the White House.

Referring to the difficulty of the confirmation process, the president said that “partisan delaying tactics by a handful of senators,” had denied Mr. Bolton “the up-and-down vote that he deserves.”

The president has the power to fill vacancies without Senate approval while Congress is not in session, an action known as a recess appointment. Mr. Bolton’s term will expire at the beginning of the next session of Congress, in January 2007.

The move comes after 36 senators signed a letter to the president last week, saying that Mr. Bolton was “not truthful” while answering questions by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March, and should not be given a recess appointment. Some Republicans have said the approval of Mr. Bolton is long past due and that Mr. Bush is well within his rights to make the recess appointment.

Some senators, including some key Republicans, have also raised questions about Mr. Bolton over his history of criticizing the United Nations and over charges that he has tried to influence intelligence assessments to conform to his views.

His nomination has the support of the majority of senators, but fewer than 60 – the number needed to forestall a filibuster that Democrats had threatened until Mr. Bolton answered questions, particularly about his use of classified intelligence about conversations involving administration colleagues.

Democrats had also been seeking more documents from the White House regarding Mr. Bolton’s past service, a request that some Republicans say is not necessary.

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Spy’s Notes on Iraqi Aims Were Shelved, Suit Says

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Team VCS

The Central Intelligence Agency was told by an informant in the spring of 2001 that Iraq had abandoned a major element of its nuclear weapons program, but the agency did not share the information with other agencies or with senior policy makers, a former C.I.A. officer has charged.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court here in December, the former C.I.A. officer, whose name remains secret, said that the informant told him that Iraq’s uranium enrichment program had ended years earlier and that centrifuge components from the scuttled program were available for examination and even purchase.

The officer, an employee at the agency for more than 20 years, including several years in a clandestine unit assigned to gather intelligence related to illicit weapons, was fired in 2004.

In his lawsuit, he says his dismissal was punishment for his reports questioning the agency’s assumptions on a series of weapons-related matters. Among other things, he charged that he had been the target of retaliation for his refusal to go along with the agency’s intelligence conclusions.

Michelle Neff, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, said the agency would not comment on the lawsuit.

It was not possible to verify independently the former officer’s allegations concerning his reporting on illicit weapons.

His information on the Iraqi nuclear program, described as coming from a significant source, would have arrived at a time when the C.I.A. was starting to reconsider whether Iraq had revived its efforts to develop nuclear weapons. The agency’s conclusion that this was happening, eventually made public by the Bush administration in 2002 as part of its rationale for war, has since been found to be incorrect.

While the existence of the lawsuit has previously been reported, details of the case have not been made public because the documents in his suit have been heavily censored by the government and the substance of the claims are classified. The officer’s name remains secret, in part because disclosing it might jeopardize the agency’s sources or operations.

Several people with detailed knowledge of the case provided information to The New York Times about his allegations, but insisted on anonymity because the matter is classified.

The former officer’s lawyer, Roy W. Krieger, said he could not discuss his client’s claims. He likened his client’s situation to that of Valerie Wilson, also known as Valerie Plame, the clandestine C.I.A. officer whose role was leaked to the press after her husband publicly challenged some administration conclusions about Iraq’s nuclear ambitions. (The former officer and Ms. Wilson worked in the same unit of the agency.)

“In both cases, officials brought unwelcome information on W.M.D. in the period prior to the Iraq invasion, and retribution followed,” said Mr. Krieger, referring to weapons of mass destruction.

In court documents, the former officer says that he learned in 2003 that he was the subject of a counterintelligence investigation and accused of having sex with a female contact, a charge he denies. Eight months after learning of the investigation, he said in the court documents, the agency’s inspector general’s office informed him that he was under investigation for diverting to his own use money earmarked for payments to informants. He denies that, too.

The former officer’s claims concerning his reporting on the Iraqi nuclear weapons program were not addressed in a report issued in March by the presidential commission that examined intelligence regarding such weapons in Iraq. He did not testify before the commission, Mr. Krieger said.

A former senior staff member of the commission said the panel was not aware of the officer’s allegations. The claims were also not included in the 2004 report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on prewar intelligence. He and his lawyer met with staff members of that Senate committee in a closed-door session last December, months after the report was issued.

In his lawsuit, the former officer said that in the spring of 2001, he met with a valuable informant who had examined and purchased parts of Iraqi centrifuges. Centrifuges are used to turn uranium into fuel for nuclear weapons. The informant reported that the Iraqi government had long since canceled its uranium enrichment program and that the C.I.A. could buy centrifuge components if it wanted to.

The officer filed his reports with the Counter Proliferation Division in the agency’s clandestine espionage arm. The reports were never disseminated to other American intelligence agencies or to policy makers, as is typically done, he charged.

According to his suit, he was told that the agency already had detailed information about continuing Iraqi nuclear weapons efforts, and that his informant should focus on other countries.

He said his reports about Iraq came just as the agency was fundamentally shifting its view of Iraq’s nuclear ambitions.

Throughout much of the 1990’s, the C.I.A. and other United States intelligence agencies believed that Iraq had largely abandoned its nuclear weapons program. In December 2000, the intelligence agencies issued a classified assessment stating that Iraq did not appear to have taken significant steps toward the reconstitution of the program, according to the presidential commission report concerning illicit weapons.

But that assessment changed in early 2001 – a critical period in the intelligence community’s handling of the Iraqi nuclear issue, the commission concluded. In March 2001, intelligence indicating that Iraq was seeking high-strength aluminum tubes from China greatly influenced the agency’s thinking. Analysts soon came to believe that the only possible explanation for Iraq’s purchase of the tubes was to develop high-tech centrifuges for a new uranium enrichment program.

By the following year, the agency’s view had hardened, despite differing interpretations of the tubes’ purposes by other intelligence experts. In October 2002, the National Intelligence Estimate, produced by the intelligence community under pressure from Congress, stated that most of the nation’s intelligence agencies believed that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, based in large part on the aluminum tubes.

The commission concluded that intelligence failures on the Iraqi nuclear issue were as serious and damaging as any other during the prelude to the Iraqi war. The nation’s intelligence community was wrong “on what many would view as the single most important judgment it made” before the Iraq invasion in March 2003, the commission report said.

Mr. Krieger said he had asked the court handling the case to declassify his client’s suit, but the C.I.A. had moved to classify most of his motion seeking declassification. He added that he recently sent a letter to the director of the F.B.I. requesting an investigation of his client’s complaints, but that the C.I.A. had classified that letter, as well.

Most of the details of the case, he said, “were classified by the C.I.A., not to protect national security but to conceal politically embarrassing facts from public scrutiny.”

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Comments Off on Spy’s Notes on Iraqi Aims Were Shelved, Suit Says

Interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Team VCS

MR. KESSLER: Well, I’ll start off. One thing that struck me when we were in Japan in March is there was a Japanese reporter that said, “Gee, being secretary of state must be really tough.” And you kind of laughed and said, “No, it’s wonderful.” And I’m just wondering, briefly, why is it wonderful? What makes it wonderful?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, because it’s such a remarkable time. First of all, it is a really good job. George Shultz once told me that he thought it was the best job in government; and since he’s held several — OMB and secretary of treasury — he had some comparative perspective. And I think it’s the combination of being able to work to effect policy but also to be able to represent those policies for the United States. I enjoy very much the diplomacy. I like the one-on-one diplomacy with other foreign ministers and with other people representing other governments. I really enjoy strategic problem solving, trying to get to a solution on difficult issues.

So that’s part of it, but I also like going abroad and talking about our policies and talking about our principles and representing the United States. It’s a great country and I’m proud to represent it. So it’s a great job.

MR. KESSLER: Just a quick follow-up. One of your friends said that as national security adviser you were playing with 24 keys of the keyboard, and now you have the whole keyboard.

SECRETARY RICE: Wow, what a wonderful, great metaphor.

MR. KESSLER: Do you feel that way? I mean —

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the jobs are really very different. There is no doubt. When you’re national security adviser, you really are the president’s staff and the responsibility there is very different. It’s to prepare the president for his role. It’s to — a fair amount of it is making certain that the paperwork is right, making sure that all views are seen. It’s a very different job. And here, not only is it important — different because it’s representational and because I act as secretary of state, but this is also a big organization that I’m trying to lead. And I like that. I’ve always liked kind of line responsibility to lead a big organization. When I was provost at Stanford I enjoyed everything about it, including I’ve sat in here at the State Department on a fair number of our budget reviews, what we call our high-level management reviews, because I intend to be able to connect personally in my decision making what we’re trying to do in terms of principle to how we implement that through policy, to what resources we’re putting to the problem, to how our people are executing the problems. And I can’t do that if I’m uninterested in the details of how this place works. And I really enjoy that. Some of my favorite times here have been my budget and high-level management reviews.

MR. KESSLER: You don’t want us to quote you on that? (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, sure. It’s a big part of being secretary. I think it’s important.

MS. WRIGHT: You’ve defined your approach as “practical idealism.” Can you, in non-policy wonk terms, explain what practical idealism is and how that’s used on a specific issue that you’ve faced?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, American foreign policy has always had, and I think rightfully had, a streak of idealism, which means that we care about values, we care about principle. It’s not just getting to whatever solution is available, but it’s doing that within the context of principles and values. And at a time like this, when the world is changing very rapidly and when we have the kind of existential challenge that we have with terrorism and extremism, it’s especially important to lead from values. And I don’t think we’ve had a president in recent memory who has been so able to keep his policies centered in values.

The responsibility, then, of all of us is to take policies that are rooted in those values and make them work on a day-to-day basis so that you’re always moving forward toward a goal, because nobody believes that the kinds of monumental changes that are going on in the world or that we are indeed seeking are going to happen in a week’s time frame or a month’s time frame or maybe even a year’s time frame. So it’s the connection, the day-to-day operational policy connection between those ideals and policy outcomes.

MS. WRIGHT: Can you think of a specific instance? Sudan? India? Iran? Any of the —

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let me take the broader Middle East issues, you know, concerning democracy and — like, you know, we’ve had a number of discussions — I think each of us has — about the fact that we have enunciated — the president enunciated in his second inaugural — a strong center for American policy that says democracy is and, in effect, always is the right choice, and that the values of freedom and liberty are universal values that are not exceptional or cannot be cordoned off in any part of the world under any culture, and the Middle East is included.

Obviously, countries are moving at different speeds toward that fundamental state and countries start at different places. Saudi Arabia is not Egypt. Egypt is not Jordan. The circumstances in a place like Iraq are different because there Saddam Hussein, you know, an international tyrant, international outlaw, was overthrown.

And so part of the challenge is to take in each of those cases the circumstances as you find them, not accept them to be the circumstances that will prevail, but find workable ways to move toward that goal.

So in a place like Egypt, it means going to Egypt and meeting with the opposition and having programs that support what is being done there, but in the context of a place where you have had the president — Mubarak — take a step, an important step, forward toward a more open system.

MR. KESSLER: Pop quiz. What are your four emotional highlights in the last six months? What are your four —

SECRETARY RICE: Emotional highlights?

MR. KESSLER: Yeah. And also your four political policy highlights.

SECRETARY RICE: Geez, I’m not all that self-reflective. You know, I’m really not.

Emotional highlights. The speech in Cairo. I think going to Iraq for the first time. There have been a lot of them, you know. There really have been a lot. Going — they’re images, you know. Going into a place and seeing for the first time that — when I say going to Iraq — that Baghdad is a great city and that Iraq is a great civilization. Of course, I had read that. I knew that. But it means that an Iraq that is democratic and stable is going to be a fundamental pillar of change in the Middle East.

I think seeing Afghanistan for the first time. I had never been to Afghanistan. You know, I was a Soviet specialist. I probably knew every piece of territory in Afghanistan by map and by history. But I remember saying to people that when 9/11 happened and we went to Camp David a few days after 9/11, and the map rolled out and people realized that it was Afghanistan, I mean, finally, something dawns on you. This place that has been described as, you know, the arc of crisis, the place that great powers go to die, and thinking how difficult this region was; but then being in Afghanistan and then being in Pakistan and being in India and seeing the promise of that salvation arc as imagining a world in which you have not just an Indian democracy, which is a natural ally, but also a Pakistan that is stable and has rooted out extremism and is democratic, and an Afghanistan that is stable, that has good relations with Pakistan.

I think that part of this for me has been that when you go to these places, the kind of strategic significance of achieving the goals that are being laid out comes into pretty sharp relief. And it is true that there are a lot of ups and downs. There are days when nothing seems to go right and there are days when you have spikes when something goes very right, like the day of the Iraqi elections, the street protests in Lebanon.

But the goal has to be to keep a fairly even keel and to recognize that big historical changes have a lot of ups and downs … and that you’re just trying to work daily toward putting in place some fundamental pillars for the kind of world that you’re trying to leave. We are not going to achieve all that is on the plate. It’s not possible in three and a half years. But if the administration has laid the foundation, then successive American administrations with successive American allies will be able to realize these outcomes at a later date.

MR. KESSLER: Just on that, you mentioned the speech in Cairo. Why was that an emotional highlight? Is that because it’s setting the stakes or the pillars or —

SECRETARY RICE: Well, because I really believe that it was important to give it, for an American official to give that speech in the heart of the Arab world. And it was — there was an energy in the crowd and I knew not everybody would like everything about it. I’m an academic. I grew up in a world where debate and controversy and disagreement is the mother’s milk of what we do. So I’m not concerned when somebody says, “Well, I didn’t like that line in that speech.” But there was an energy there and I think a recognition that the United States meant what it had — what the president had said in his inaugural address.

MS. WRIGHT: A variation on that question. What do you see as your greatest success so far, and not necessarily the greatest failure but the place that you have the most work to do? With a footnote: It’s quite striking that you, as a Russia specialist — Russia seems to be one of the countries where we’re less engaged or have had less impact than in some of the other parts of the world.

SECRETARY RICE: First of all, it is way too early for me to start counting successes or chalking up failures.

MS. WRIGHT: So far.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, Robin, I don’t think in those terms. I am a political scientist who has spent most of my life trying to understand why big events unfold as they do. And my scope of — my time scale is just maybe different. I understand —

MS. WRIGHT: But what’s the —

SECRETARY RICE: You know, I understand that you have to write on a daily basis so this is difficult. But —

MS. WRIGHT: We’re giving you an opportunity to help craft our piece. Anyway, on the issue of Russia, you’re deeply engaged in many parts of the world and I realize you’re involved in Russia, too. It is just striking that at the moment —

SECRETARY RICE: I think the good thing is actually we’re engaging with the Russians on a number of issues. You know, not every country has to just be seen as a target of your policies. Sometimes you actually have partners in your policies. And I speak a lot with the Russians. The Russians are part of the quartet. They’ve been a very active and constructive member of the quartet in dealing with the Middle East problem. We and the Russians have been engaged with the Europeans on Iran. We’ve been very engaged with the Russians on nonproliferation policy, including the Russians’ agreement to be part of the Proliferation Security Initiative.

So I think that the interesting thing here is the degree to which we and the Russians work together. Yes, there are disappointments about the current course of some of the internal policies of Russia, and I have had an opportunity to not just raise this publicly, which I did when I was in Russia, but to have extensive discussions with the entire range of people in the Russian government, including the president, about the future course of democratic development in Russia. But do I expect in six months to have changed the course of development in Russia? No. No, I don’t. That is a — it’s a big and complicated place and over time I think that Russia will find that democratic development is the only way that Russia becomes what Russia wants to be.

So I know that it’s hard for people to believe when I say I really am not sitting and chalking up successes and failures, but it’s just not how I see this job. When I look at the — have you ever looked at the secretaries along my wall? Jefferson. He was the first secretary. Everybody has Jefferson on the wall. But Marshall. I think if you looked at what Marshall faced in ’46 and ’47 and ’48 or ’49, or what — how it looked — I’m sorry — how the outcomes looked at that point in time of what Marshall put in place in ’47, they might not have looked so great; or Dean Acheson, who I think is an underrated secretary of state.

So what I’ll try to do while I’m here is to make progress toward big strategic goals, lay some foundation, hopefully resolve some problems and leave it to the next secretary of state to keep moving forward.

MS. WRIGHT: Can we switch to some of the hot spots?

SECRETARY RICE: Sure.

MS. WRIGHT: Specific hot spots. Syria is one that’s —

SECRETARY RICE: But do I get to answer the other part of Glenn’s question?

MS. WRIGHT: Sure.

SECRETARY RICE: You asked me about policy.

MR. KESSLER: Yeah, we — yeah. Good.

SECRETARY RICE: I do think that what we — that we have been able to unify our policies with the Europeans on Iran. I think that’s very important. I think there is a new centering of the five parties around a common approach to North Korea for the six-party talks to restart. I think we have with the appointment of Jim Wolfensohn and General Ward engaged the Gaza withdrawal in a way that gives international support to what is going to be obviously a very difficult process. And probably, to my mind, the most important thing is that we had to do this, and I think we have, on the transatlantic relationship side, moved from analyzing how the transatlantic relationship is doing today to actually putting the transatlantic relationship to work on behalf of some great goals. It’s pretty remarkable that you’ve got NATO airlifting into Darfur and you’ve got the kind of support that we’ve been able to garner with the French, a very strong relationship with the French on Lebanon, for instance. So I think, you know, there’s been some progress.

MR. KESSLER: Planting the seeds?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, let’s see if Robin gets the reference: “Three yards and a cloud of dust.”

MS. WRIGHT: Oh.

(Laughter).

MS. WRIGHT: Oh, that’s not fair.

MR. SEAN MCCORMACK, STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN: It’s all right. You’re in good company.

SECRETARY RICE: It’s all right. But Ohio State won a lot of championships.

MS. WRIGHT: No, I know.

(Laughter).

MS. WRIGHT: Just rub it in. (Laughter). The editor of the paper is from Ohio State. (Laughter). Okay, back to the specifics.

SECRETARY RICE: Yes.

MS. WRIGHT: Syria: A problem still with Lebanon; the economic boycott still on Iraq; obviously, with the radical groups. What is the United States doing on Syria? Are there messages being sent? Do you plan to take tougher action, go to the Security Council because of violations of 1559?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, the first thing that we’ve done is to, together with France, mobilize international opinion so that the Syrians had to get out of Lebanon. There is no doubt that the Syrians continue to try to influence events in Lebanon in ways that are unseemly, including, I think, the pressure that they’re putting on the Lebanese on the border.

We are going to continue to work with the international community to convince the Syrians that this is not an acceptable course. And I think it’s — I don’t need to try and forecast where we’ll be in a month or six weeks. But this is a daily proposition for me and for others in the administration to continue to press, not just the Syrians who hear our messages publicly but through multiple channels that Syrian behavior is hurting the Palestinians, hurting the Iraqis and hurting the Lebanese, and that they’re out of step with what’s going on in the international system.

MS. WRIGHT: But is there a moment in which you say, “Enough”? We’ve sent out, first administration, Powell, Armitage, Burns. We’ve sent messages, we’ve — in united action. The Lebanese are against — is there a moment in which you say, “Enough is enough,” and you do something?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we — well, I think —

MS. WRIGHT: I mean —

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think it’s not a small accomplishment that Syrian forces are out of Lebanon.

MS. WRIGHT: No, no, no, but it’s still in violation of what you called for.

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, but let’s remember that, again, a lot has happened in the period of time since the Hariri assassination. And Syrian forces are out of Lebanon and there is a new government in Lebanon. And now, the next step is to make certain that the Syrians respect Lebanese sovereignty, and so we’ll work on that step. But when you say, “Are you going to do something,” well, I think Syrian forces out of Lebanon is a good thing.

MS. WRIGHT: And you now believe that all intelligence and military forces are out?

SECRETARY RICE: No, I don’t. But I do believe that Syrian military forces are out of Lebanon. There’s a verification team that will tell us what other elements there might be there. We still await the investigation into the assassination of Prime Minister Hariri. So there are a number of steps —

MR. KESSLER: Which will probably be out soon, isn’t it?

SECRETARY RICE: Fairly soon, but I don’t have a date in mind. We don’t have a date that we’ve been given yet.

MR. MCCORMACK: You have about five minutes, guys.

MS. WRIGHT: Uzbekistan. Are you sending an envoy out or someone to see Karimov soon?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, we’ll see. What we’re doing on Uzbekistan is, first of all, we’re trying to deal with some of the near-term problems, like the refugee problem. And we’re getting good cooperation internationally on that problem.

We also are making pretty clear to the Uzbeks that relations with the United States do depend on the clarity in the investigation into what happened in Andijan. And you know, we’ll see whether or not we have somebody go out to talk to talk to the Uzbeks. We’re talking to all kinds of people in the neighborhood, not just the Uzbeks. There are other states in that region that have relations with the United States at stake and would like to have good relations with the United States.

MS. WRIGHT: But we still want to hang on to the Uzbek K-2 base.

SECRETARY RICE: Well, of course, the use of the base would be a good thing. But, of course, the United States also does not believe that its strategic interests and its interest in democracy are divisible in some way. And I don’t think the Uzbeks are at all confused by that. Don Rumsfeld’s in Kryzsgstan today. Or yesterday.

MR. KESSLER: Yesterday.

SECRETARY RICE: Yesterday.

MR. KESSLER: I don’t know where he is today.

The six-party talks. Chris Hill’s predecessor, Jim Kelly, was always frustrated that he didn’t have the flexibility, the negotiating flexibility that he thought he needed. Chris Hill seems to have a fair amount of flexibility to try to push this process forward. What accounts for the difference? What has changed here?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I don’t know — I mean, I’ve never talked to Jim about what he felt. The important thing is the six-party talks to unite — keep united about what we’re trying to achieve there and I think we’ve done a lot over the last several months to do that. It has in part to do with the fact that North Korean behavior after February 10th really created a situation in which the international community, and particularly the other five parties, had to decide that they were going to unite around, not just getting the North back to the table, but getting the North back to the table ready to negotiate. So I think we’re in a somewhat different position than we were a couple of tries ago at the six-party talks.

But Chris is a — we sent Chris there because he’s a good, tough negotiator. Chris knows where the principals are. He knows where our concerns are with the North Koreans. And I think everybody trusts him to get this done, if possible, within those constraints. I talk to him every morning. I talked to him this morning at 5:45, yesterday morning at 5:45. That’s our appointed time for him to give me a call.

MR. KESSLER: So what did he — what did he say today?

(Laughter).

SECRETARY RICE: He said that, you know, that there had been some getting everything out on the table that the North Koreans wanted to get out on the table, but that was to be expected, but that he found the atmosphere really businesslike. And that is good because the atmosphere has not always been businesslike. He also has had a series of bilaterals with all the other parties. I think we feel we’re very linked up on what we’re trying to achieve. And then he’ll — they’ll have plenaries starting their time tomorrow. So, yeah, I think he has — he has flexibility. He’s a good negotiator.

MR. KESSLER: You know, there’s been some grumbling within the State Department, lower ranks, that you have a very powerful 7th floor staff that tends to push policy down from the upper levels as opposed to letting policy come up. How do you respond to that?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, first of all, I have the most open door policy of anybody you would want to see. You know, I’ve seen — I’ve had desk officers in to talk to me. I’ve gone — I go by the bureaus and talk to people and say, you know, thanks for what you’re doing.

I have very strong line officers who are my assistant secretaries. That’s the real focus for policy in this building. And so if something is going to come up or go down, it’s going to go through those assistant secretaries. And I expect the assistant secretaries to decide what can be decided at that level, their level, and what needs to come up for Bob [Zoellick’s] attention or Nick [Burns’s] attention or my attention.

I can’t, in a world like we live in with so much swirling around, take every issue that might come up from every desk in the State Department. I just can’t do it. I’m not going to try. I think people understand that now. But I do expect that if there is an assistant secretary who has something that needs to get resolved, that they’re going to be in this office within hours. Not days, within hours. Sometimes within minutes. Sometimes immediately after we have staff meetings. So that’s the way that I operate. I’ve always operated very strongly through my line officers, not through my staff. But this staff is not to cut off the assistant secretaries. They are the line of responsibility. So I see David Welch and Chris Hill and Connie Newman and Dan Fried and, you know, Christina Rocca and Sean all the time, and that’s the way I expect it to always be.

MS. WRIGHT: Karen Hughes went through a confirmation hearing. We know what you want to do philosophically. Now that she’s coming into office, can you describe for us in very specific, tangible ways what programs you expect her to introduce?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think you probably want to have this conversation with Karen.

MS. WRIGHT: I do.

SECRETARY RICE: When she gets here.

MS. WRIGHT: I do, as a matter of fact. (Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: Karen and I have had long discussions about the importance of being able to get our message out and to, you know, to deal with a lot of the myths that are out there and so forth. I really am a big, big proponent of exchange programs and I hope that we’re going to have as active as possible exchange programs, specialized exchange programs, civil society, business groups, women’s groups. Some of what we’re doing but perhaps even more.

I think Karen will try and operationalize the idea that this is a conversation, not a monologue, and to see if there are ways that we can listen better. And so it’s not my job to design programs. That’s why I got one of the best people, I think, out there to design the programs. But those are some of the things that we’d like to achieve.

MS. WRIGHT: But how? I mean —

SECRETARY RICE: My responsibility is to get the best person to run public diplomacy and to say, “Karen, here are the things we need to achieve.” You know when you — I’ve managed big organizations before and there are two things that you learn, especially when I was 38-year-old provost. I had never been a department chair before. And suddenly I found myself doing everybody else’s job and thought there are two problems with that.

First of all, if you do everybody else’s job, you won’t do it very well. Secondly, good people won’t work for you because people who are very senior and have come from — I’ve assembled here a very senior team of people who have had enormous responsibility in their lives. And my responsibility is to say to them, “Here’s what we’re trying to achieve.” And I’ve tried to assemble a team of people who agree on what it is we’re trying to achieve and then to say to those people, “All right, go at it. Let’s put together the very best program in the Middle East, David Welch.” Or in public diplomacy, Karen Hughes. Or in economic policy when — if the Senate confirms Josette Shiner. I mean that’s how you manage a big organization like this and that’s what we’re trying to do.

MR. MCCORMACK: The last question, Glenn.

MR. KESSLER: All right. I’m tempted to do a 27-part Japanese question. (Laughter.)

MS. WRIGHT: Yeah, I just — I want it to be one of those — one by — yeah, it can be one of those that the Japanese journalists did, you know.

SECRETARY RICE: Just one other point, though, on the assistant secretaries. The other reason that the assistant secretaries are so important is not just managing what happens here, but these are very senior people who can walk into a foreign minister or a head of state and who are, therefore, an extension of Bob or of me. The fact is I can’t be everywhere all the time.

MR. KESSLER: You have been.

(Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: It only may seem like that, Glenn, because you’re traveling with me. And, you know, you have to have really empowered people who can do these things.

Now, last question.

MR. KESSLER: Well, there are only 10 issues to choose from. What do you say to people who assert, in both the case of Iran and North Korea, that the administration is simply showing greater flexibility because it is convinced neither country will really give up its nuclear programs; and then, when the talks inevitably fail, the administration can return to isolating those countries without being blamed for the failure of those talks?

SECRETARY RICE: I think those people think too much. Would we like to resolve the Iran problem? Would we like to resolve the North Korea problem? Absolutely. And we have a strategy that says that the only way that those get resolved is if you are clear on what it is that you’re trying to achieve; that is, you know, an Iran that doesn’t have the capability, the technological capability for the fuel cycle, a North Korea that abandons its nuclear weapons programs and ambitions and begins to — and dismantles them.

But what we put a lot of emphasis on is the diplomacy of that, which is pulling together with the Europeans in the case of the Iranian case, and with the others in the six-party talks in the case of North Korea, to first of all come to a common purpose and then just keep pressing that common purpose forward until, eventually, North Korea or Iran realize that there’s no out.

You know, I do think that in — when we first — when I first went to Europe, I found that somehow we’d gotten into a position where it was the United States that was the problem in the Iranian situation, and so you actually had a strange situation in which the Iranians — in which the Europeans were trying to broker between the United States and Iran. That was not a good place to be.

And so through that trip and then the president’s trip to Europe and then my return trip to Europe, we worked hard to come to a common position so that we could leave Iran effectively no way out except to go through the EU-3 talks. That’s what diplomacy is really all about and that’s how I spend most of my time in trying to solve a problem is to try and create a circumstance in which that’s the only course for a Syria or an Iran or a North Korea. Because when one of those states can get into a situation where it’s a problem between the United States and Iran, or the United States and North Korea, or the United States and Syria, then the possibility of trying to cherry-pick a little bit from this side, a little bit from that side, exists. That’s not where you want to be.

Somebody said that, you know, the art of diplomacy is getting everybody to the place that your policies are their policies. Well, some of diplomacy is finding a place where your policies and their policies come together. And I think that’s what we’ve been spending a lot of time on.

MR. KESSLER: So how did the U.S. get in that place that you found when you went to Europe? Just, I do want to understand that. I mean, you were kind of part of the group —

SECRETARY RICE: Yeah, I don’t know when. Over time, that’s — it had eroded to that place. And sometimes that happens and then you have to go back and fix it.

MS. WRIGHT: One last — just one question. Is there anything that you think is important in terms of what’s happening right now that you’d like to use The Washington Post to make clear a position or a development?

SECRETARY RICE: No, but I’ll call you if there is.

MS. WRIGHT: Promise?

(Laughter.)

SECRETARY RICE: Great.

MR. KESSLER: Thanks so much.

Posted in Veterans for Common Sense News | Tagged | Comments Off on Interview with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice

White House Redefines The Meaning Of “Torture”

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Team VCS

Last week, we wrote of the Bush Faction’s increasingly successful drive to establish the principle of unlimited presidential authority — beyond the reach of any law or constitutional restriction — as the new foundation of a militarist American state. This relentless push toward autocracy gained even more strength in recent days, in two cases centering on what has emerged as the very core of President George W. Bush’s authoritarian philosophy: torture.

Vice President Dick Cheney was dispatched to Congress last week to strong-arm three Republican senators seeking to place the mildest limitations imaginable on Bush’s power to do whatever he wants with his captives in “the war on terror,” The Washington Post reports. The proposed amendments to the defense budget would simply require interrogators to follow whatever procedures the Pentagon establishes for questioning prisoners and to register all captives with the International Red Cross. A third provision would take the radical step of prohibiting “cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment” of anyone in custody — behavior that is already expressly forbidden in U.S. law.

But Cheney brought hard words from on high for the tepid trio: Bush will veto any attempt by Congress to place any fetters on his arbitrary power over the captives in his worldwide gulag. The grim-visaged veep put it plainly: Such legislation would “restrict the President’s authority” to conduct the terror war as he sees fit, and thus cannot be tolerated. The whole defense budget will be tossed into the toilet if the amendments are attached, Cheney thundered.

This would be the first veto of Bush’s presidency: a mark of the supreme importance he places on his ability to seize people without charges, hold them indefinitely, break their bodies and their minds, then dispose of them as he pleases. This power is obviously more important to him than the defense of the nation itself. But what’s most striking about this case is the fact that the amendments — sponsored by ersatz “maverick” John McCain, among others — are actually part of the process of establishing an open, “legal” structure for Bush’s unrestricted “commander-in-chief state.”

The measure is an attempt to lend congressional legitimacy to the Bush gulag, as co-sponsor Lindsey Graham made clear. “We need congressional buy-in to Guantanamo,” Graham said bluntly. He also noted that the amendments would recognize and support Bush’s power to establish his own private judicial system: the rigged “military tribunals” for anyone Bush has arbitrarily designated an “enemy combatant.” What’s more, the measure exempts the CIA — which runs the gulag’s most secret quadrants — from almost all of its provisions.

As for “cruel punishment,” recent history shows that current U.S. laws against such practices have hardly deterred the Bush Faction’s yen for torture. The White House simply redefines the meaning of “torture” to suit its needs of the moment. In 2002, a series of memos crafted by Bush’s legal minions virtually defined torture out of existence. Only the deliberate attempt to murder a prisoner or maim him for life was considered beyond the pale, they said; everything else was fair game. Later, when the Abu Ghraib atrocities drew some brief media heat in an election year, the Pentagon issued a few new restrictions on barbarity for public consumption — although once again, the CIA was pointedly exempted from restraint. McCain’s redundant and rather pathetic proposal, asking the Bushists to please obey laws that already exist, would doubtless be subjected to the same weasel-wording treatment.

So why put the kibosh on this gutless, toothless bill? It’s simple. The autocratic principle cannot accept any institutional infringement on the Leader’s arbitrary power — not even a craven accommodation like McCain’s measure. Yes, Congress may rubber-stamp the gulag (“a buy-in to Guantanamo”); that’s allowed. And Congress may approve funding for the gulag. But the people’s representatives must have no say whatsoever in the gulag’s operations. To give way on this point would reintroduce the rule of law and genuine democracy to U.S. government. And the Bush militarists have gone too far, waded through too much blood, to return to such “quaint” notions now.

Likewise, the idea of judicial oversight of the executive must also be refuted. Even as Cheney was chastising Congress, the Bushists were blatantly defying a federal court order to release 87 photographs and four videos of last year’s Abu Ghraib mayhem. These depict barbarities that even Pentagon warlord Don Rumsfeld once described as “blatantly sadistic, cruel and inhumane,” Editor & Publisher reports. A Republican senator who saw the material spoke of “rape and murder.” Bush simply refused to obey the federal court, saying he would provide an explanation for his actions — in secret — at some later date.

But there is more. Eyewitnesses have said the pictures show the rape and brutal abuse of young teenagers and children. The filmed evidence is corroborated by the Pentagon’s own investigators. Yet in all this time — and in all the show trials of low-ranking “bad apples” the Bushists have staged — not a single person has been charged or even reprimanded for these abominations.

This is the power that Bush declares cannot be restricted by courts or Congress or any law on earth: the power to torture, to murder, to terrorize — and to rape children. This is the dark, filthy heart of his militarist state.

With each new atrocity on every side in the hydra-headed “war on terror,” you think that now, perhaps, we’ve reached the bottom. But never believe that comforting notion. The evil that has opened up beneath our feet is bottomless, and we are falling deeper, fathom by fathom, into the pit. The worst, far worse, is yet to come.

Annotations

White House Aims to Block Legislation on Detainees
The Washington Post, July 23, 2005

Pentagon Blocks Release of Abu Ghraib Images: Here’s Why
Editor and Publisher, July 23, 2005

US Defies Order to Give Up Abu Ghraib Photos
New York Times, July 23, 2005

Iraq’s Child Prisoners
Scotland Sunday Herald, Aug. 1, 2004

Bush’s Torture Policies: Suffer the Little Children-
Corrente.com, July 24, 2005

Introducing Judge Dread: The Affable Accomplice of a Coup d’etat
Empire Burlesque, July 20, 2005

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Worry Grows as Foreigners Flock to Iraq’s Risky Jobs

Posted on August 1, 2005 by Team VCS

For hire: more than 1,000 U.S.-trained former soldiers and police officers from Colombia. Combat-hardened, experienced in fighting insurgents and ready for duty in Iraq.

This eye-popping advertisement recently appeared on an Iraq jobs website, posted by an American entrepreneur who hopes to supply security forces for U.S. contractors in Iraq and elsewhere.

If hired, the Colombians would join a swelling population of heavily armed private military forces working in Iraq and other global hot spots. They also would join a growing corps of workers from the developing world who are seeking higher wages in dangerous jobs, what some critics say is a troubling result of efforts by the U.S. to “outsource” its operations in Iraq and other countries.

In a telephone interview from Colombia, the entrepreneur, Jeffrey Shippy, said he saw a booming global demand for his “private army,” and a lucrative business opportunity in recruiting Colombians.

Shippy, who formerly worked for DynCorp International, a major U.S. security contractor, said the Colombians were willing to work for $2,500 to $5,000 a month, compared with perhaps $10,000 or more for Americans.

But where Shippy sees opportunity, others see trouble.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, worries that U.S. government contractors are hiring thousands of impoverished former military personnel, with no public scrutiny, little accountability and large hidden costs to taxpayers.

The United States has spent more than $4 billion since 2000 on Plan Colombia, a counter-terrorism and counter-narcotics program that includes training and support for the Colombian police and military. Last month, Congress moved toward approval of an additional $734.5 million in aid to the Andean region in 2006, most of it for Colombia.

“We’re training foreign nationals … who then take that training and market it to private companies, who pay them three or four times as much as we’re paying soldiers,” Schakowsky said.

“American taxpayers are paying for the training of those Colombian soldiers,” she said. “When they leave to take more lucrative jobs, perhaps with an American military contractor … they take that training with them. So then we’re paying to train that person’s replacement. And then we’re paying the bill to the private military contractors.”

An estimated 20,000 Iraqis and about 6,000 non-Iraqis work in private security in Iraq, said Doug Brooks, president of International Peace Operations Assn., a trade group representing the burgeoning industry.

Security accounts for as much as 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of reconstruction costs in Iraq, eating a substantial portion of an $18.4-billion rebuilding package funded by the U.S.

Fijians, Ukrainians, South Africans, Nepalese and Serbs reportedly are on the job in Iraq. Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution, author of a book on the private military industry, said veterans of Latin American conflicts, including Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Nicaraguans, also had turned up.

“What we’ve done in Iraq is assemble a true ‘coalition of the billing,’ ” Singer said, playing off President Bush’s description of the U.S.-led alliance of nations with a troop presence in Iraq as a “coalition of the willing.”

There are no reliable figures on the number of guards from Colombia or other countries. According to Shippy, private military experts and news reports, North Carolina-based Blackwater USA has sent 120 Colombians to Iraq. In addition, the firm reportedly has hired 122 Chileans.

The reports are difficult to verify because many large companies, including DynCorp, which is based in Texas and operates in 40 countries, have policies against speaking to the media. Gary Jackson, president of Blackwater USA, said he had no comment.

Shippy, an Air Force veteran whose work for private military contractors has included stints in Saudi Arabia, Ecuador and Iraq, extolled the Colombians’ virtues.

“These forces have been fighting terrorists the last 41 years,” he wrote in his web posting seeking work. “These troops have been trained by the U.S. Navy SEALs and the U.S. [Drug Enforcement Administration] to conduct counter-drug/counter-terror ops in the jungles and rivers of Colombia.”

The Colombians would join the lucrative private military industry in Iraq even as the U.S.-funded war against drug traffickers continues to rage in their homeland. Experts are divided on the effect that would have on U.S. national interests.

“It’s not necessarily self-defeating, but it’s not optimal,” Singer said.

The recruitment of Colombians shows that although “there’s still a local demand” for high-end military services in Colombia, “the global demand is far higher,” he said.

Two experts on the Colombian military said highly trained officers were constantly being retired from the armed forces to face low wages and widespread unemployment in the nation’s troubled economy.

There is no hemorrhage of manpower in the 200,000-strong Colombian army, which relies on a draft and a plentiful supply of volunteers, said Thomas A. Marks, a specialist on the country’s military.

Colombians who have completed their military service are entitled to seek higher-paying private-sector jobs when their stints are up, as are U.S. soldiers, he said.

“What’s wrong with them using their skills, their know-how in Iraq?” asked David Spencer, a Washington-based security consultant who has spent nine years working in Colombia.

“It’s good for the Colombian because he makes more money than he could make in Colombia, and it’s good for the [U.S.] contractor because he has to pay less than he’d pay an American.”

Colombia has no law discouraging citizens from going to work in Iraq, in contrast to attempts in Nepal and the Philippines to ban or regulate such work after some of their citizens were killed or kidnapped in Iraq.

Sanho Tree, a Latin America specialist at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington who spotted Shippy’s job posting, said the availability of high-paying private security jobs could drain talent from the Colombian military, just as it had from the U.S. military.

Moreover, he noted, there is no way to guarantee the loyalty of even U.S.-trained troops once they go to work for private companies.

“One of the real red-flag issues here is these people are free to do as they choose — not only to work for U.S.-aligned objectives in Iraq, but also to work for the bad guys,” Tree said.

Shippy said he had been in business for only three months and had yet to land a contract for the Colombians.

He said he was interested in recruiting only Colombians who had been thoroughly vetted for criminal or human rights problems, to work for companies with U.S. government contracts.

Shippy said a trip to Baghdad had convinced him there was plenty of opportunity.

“The U.S. State Department is very interested in saving money on security now,” Shippy said. “Because they’re driving the prices down, we’re seeking Third World people to fill the positions.”

But Rep. Schakowsky argued that the Colombian military had a poor human rights record, and she questioned how thoroughly Colombian troops headed for Iraq could be vetted, given that many violators had not been pursued by Colombian authorities.

Some Democrats in Congress and other critics say the increase in private military contracts raises important ethical and financial questions — and that laws governing these transactions have yet to keep up.

Schakowsky, who is a longtime critic of private military contractors, said she had asked repeatedly for copies of Defense Department contracts with the private military firms, but “it’s fighting tooth and nail to get them.”

She said she planned to write to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for details about private companies’ hiring of Plan Colombia veterans for work in Iraq.

“Our relationship with those contractors, the amount of money we’ve paid to them, is going to be one of the biggest stories of this war,” Schakowsky said.

“It’s all very murky, and Congress certainly has not done a great deal of oversight.”

After the gruesome killings of four Blackwater contractors last year in Fallouja, Rep. David E. Price (D-N.C.) proposed legislation to require private military firms working under federal contract to disclose their pay structures, benefits, insurance and employee casualties.

The bill died, but Price plans to try again this year.

It is unclear what legal responsibility, if any, the United States or other foreign governments may have to foreign nationals who are killed, wounded or kidnapped while working for U.S.-paid contractors in Iraq, or to any Iraqis they harm.

In May, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to provide more information about the authority of private companies working under U.S. contracts in Iraq.

“What are the rules governing the use of lethal force by private security contractors?” Leahy asked.

“What happens when a private security contractor paid by the State Department deployed overseas runs over somebody with a vehicle, shoots an innocent person or otherwise causes harm on the job or off the job? Who is responsible? Are they, or are we?”

Rice promised to supply the information, but Leahy’s office said this month that it had not received the answers.

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The Roots of Prisoner Abuse

Posted on July 31, 2005 by Team VCS

The Roots of Prisoner Abuse

This week, the White House blocked a Senate vote on a measure sponsored by a half-dozen Republicans, including Senator John McCain, that would prohibit cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment of prisoners. Besides being outrageous on its face, that action served as a reminder of how the Bush administration ducks for cover behind the men and women in uniform when challenged on military policy, but ignores their advice when it seems inconvenient.

Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican who has shown real political courage on this issue, recently released documents showing that the military’s top lawyers had warned a year before the Abu Ghraib nightmare came to light that detainee policies imposed by the White House and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld violated American and international law and undermined the standards of civilized treatment embedded in the American military tradition.

In February 2003, Maj. Gen. Jack Rives, the deputy judge advocate general of the Air Force, reminded his civilian bosses that American rules on the treatment of prisoners had grown out of Vietnam, where captured Americans, like Mr. McCain, were tortured. “We have taken the legal and moral ‘high road’ in the conduct of our military operations regardless of how others may operate,” he wrote. Abandoning those rules, he said, endangered every American soldier.

General Rives and the other military lawyers argued strongly against declaring that Mr. Bush was above the law when it came to antiterrorism operations. But the president’s team ignored them, offering up a pretzel logic that General Rives and the other military experts warned would not fool anyone. Rear Adm. Michael Lohr, the Navy’s judge advocate general, said that the situation at the American prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba might be so legalistically unique that the Geneva Conventions and even the Constitution did not necessarily apply. But he asked, “Will the American people find we have missed the forest for the trees by condoning practices that, while technically legal, are inconsistent with our most fundamental values?”

General Rives said that if the White House permitted abusive interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, it would not be able to restrict them to that single prison. He argued that soldiers elsewhere would conclude that their commanders were condoning illegal behavior. And that is precisely what happened at Abu Ghraib after the general who organized the abuse of prisoners at Guantánamo went to Iraq to toughen up the interrogation of prisoners there.

The White House ignored these military lawyers’ advice two years ago. Now it is trying to kill the measure that would define the term “illegal combatants,” set rules for interrogations and prohibit cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners. The president considers this an undue restriction of his powers. It’s not only due; it’s way overdue.

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