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FBI Coerced Confession Deemed "Classified"
Steve Bergstein is one of several who have blogged about a recent court ruling that reads like most any bestselling crime novel. Apparently, when the court originally posted their decision (complete with backstory) it detailed how a coerced confession was obtained by the FBI from Abdallah Higazy in relation to the 9/11 attacks. The details, however, were later removed and deemed "classified". "As I read the opinion I realized it was a 44 page epic, too long for me to print out. I blogged about the opinion while I read it online and then posted the blog as I ate lunch. Then something strange happened: a few minutes after I posted the blog, the opinion vanished from the Court of Appeals website! [...] The next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For some reason, this information is classified."
If by "classified" they mean mean "stuff that makes us look bad". Gotta love politics and public image. Perhaps Bush taught them a few too many unwholesome lessons of corruption?
Imagine the radio really did belong to a terrorist... By coercing a confession from this guy, the FBI basically would be letting the *actual* terrorist go free and clear. If this doesn't make sense to you, imagine the case of a rapist on the loose. Imagine that every time a woman was raped, the police chose from a hat and arrested and tried a random person. Would that make your wife safer on the streets alone at night? Having a random guy in jail while the real rapist is still out on the hunt? What's more, thinking that the rapist is in jail, she might be MORE inclined to enter into riskier situations.
This kind of "law enforcement" actually makes us LESS safe than simply doing nothing at all. Is the FBI *really* staffed by living, thinking humans? How could they possibly do this kind of thing and not be incredibly ashamed of themselves!?
This is a perfect example of why I always, always, always get a local copy of anything I find hot and interesting. Court decisions are also always in PDF. Just download the puppy and hold onto it.
If it is a web page, and you have the full Acrobat, then use the web capture facility to get a copy of it and store it away.
The web is wonderful. But it has more opportunities to be "corrected" than the Soviet Union did during the Stalin's purges of the 30s and 40s.
Yours,
Jordan
I thought we were meant to be the good guys that don't do this kind of thing. We should do the right thing even if it is harder otherwise what are we fighting for?
How can you rely on a confession extracted by force anyway? At least I know I'd say/admit to anything to just stop having my fingernails pulled out with pliers or whatever.
You know, this story is appalling, for several reasons: 1. Some information gets classified, that probably shouldn't be, and the fact that 2. The horse is out of the barn and shows that data, once posted, is impossible to recall, and then they further heighten interest in it by classifying it and raising a stink about it. Their actions have almost ensured world-wide dissemination.
What is worse is that their reaction to this will mostly likely make reasonable public access to information, rulings, testimony, almost impossible to get to.
On a side note, and dealing with my subject line: Guys, you can't have it both ways. Reading /. and listening to Air America, George Bush is either an evil genius able to mastermind these great conspiracies, or, he's dumb as a rock. How about not inserting him into the situation at all. It would serve not to marginalize the discussion and keep blame where it needs to be, the beureaucrats that make these decisions.
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
This is why a confession should never be trusted on its own — without other evidence. Nor is it really trusted on its own by the courts in free countries, such as ours — as evidenced by this very case.
They may have coerced an admission from him, that it was his device, but without details on where he got it, and how he used it, that admission is quite worthless even if he were scared for his family's life enough to not backpaddle from the addmission in court... I'm quite proud, that he was not sufficiently scared, though...
And, finally, we only know the details of the coercion from one side. The FBI agent, according to the article, merely "did not contest" the fact of coercion. That's not an admission of guilt by any measure...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
So when is this guy gonna start blogging about what happens to American soldiers captured alive by Islamists?
I think what you meant to ask was, "When is the U.S. government going to start classifying and redacting stories of what happens to American soldiers caught alive by Islamists?"
And why would you say that is relevant? We can't control what happens to soldiers once they are captured. We do control what happens to people we capture, and the laws are fairly explicit and used to be viewed as quite clear cut.
The fact that American soldiers can be tortured or killed is not sufficient cause to threaten to torture and kill the families of terrorism *suspects*.
And of course in this case, the FBI had to admit that this guy was innocent all along.
Or perhaps you think that the people who do torture or kill our soldiers will see how we are mistreating our own prisoners and be moved to change their behavior?
For all of the bashing the left does about Bush, what is more telling is that Bush didn't really create the modern government that is capable of doing this. Everyone has had a hand in this. A police state machine is a police state machine, all the time, not just when a "good guy" is driving it. Stop attacking Bush, and start looking at the machine!
Had there been no secretive FBI, no secretive CIA, no emphasis on the Federal power from the get go, none of this could have happened. Everyone looks at Bush / Cheney as if he were the mastermind of some vast conspiracy, when the practical matter is that we have had almost 75 years of a massive federal government on a wartime footing, just waiting for the next enemy to arrive. These agents don't need orders to torture people or to kill perceived enemies. They have been waiting to do this their whole lives. They need orders NOT TO, and they really need to be not employed at all.
Instead, what the left wing is arguing for is a banana republic type of government - rule by personality, when instead, the best lesson to learn is that the government is the problem, and the solution to ensure our freedom is to deconstruct the government from the get go. If we could only put the "good guy" in charge of the police state, everything will be ok. Except that, we will still have a police state.
Look at the facts. What Democrats opposed passage of the full 9/11 commission recommendations - essentially turn the USA into a police state. What Democrat has offered to repeal USA PATRIOT? What Democrat has volunteered to narrow the scope of CIA and FBI? There will be more Federal terror, not less, before this unfortunate behavior winds its course. We have to learn to discipline ourselves as voters - that, every time we panic and ask our government to protect us - we are really just empowering a bunch of thugs to enslave us.
This is my sig.
That is entirely the point. If you talk to any member of the JAG corps about torture they will tell you that the reason the US did not permit its troops to torture others is that it is the only way that the US could protect its own troops.
Of course there are always enemies that do not respect the rules of war, that is why the Nurenberg trials were held.
Te Abu Graihb photographs and more importantly the conspicuous decision not to hold anyone in the chain of command accountable for them has demonstrated that the US does torture. And as a result US servicemen who are captured by Jihadis can expect to be treated as brutally as the Abu Graihb photographs.
More importantly the US has conceeded the moral case in the war on terror. It is the same mistake made by the British at the start of the IRA terrorist campaign. Internment without trial did nothing to stop the violence and the future leadership of the IRA emerged from the internees. Gerry Adams wrote his famous series of monographs under the name 'Brownie' which developed the Ballot-Bomb strategy.
As a result many US politicians who should have known better supported the IRA even as they were murdering civilians in the UK. People like Rudy Giuliani were attending IRA fundraisers right up to 9/11. Giuliani even gave Gerry Adams a 'humanitarian award' on behalf of NYC and expressed the hope that he would force Clinton to speak to Adams even without the renunciation of violence that Clinton demanded. A few months later Adams and Co blew up a shopping mall.
In the days after 9/11 everything changed. It was no longer hip to support the IRA. Rudy attended a NORAID fundraiser immediately after 9/11 but only after the IRA agreed the money would go to the 9/11 victims. After that US funding for NORAID disappeared entirely and the IRA finally accepted the demands that they had long resisted to disarm.
The reason the IRA had to pack it in was precisely because they had finaly lost the moral case that had been carelessly handed to them in the opening years of the troubles.
The model that HMG followed in defeating the IRA was to copy the West German authorities strategy for dealling with the Baader-Meinhof gang. The Germans refused to treat the RAF as political prisoners, they were always treated as common criminals.
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Government secrecy will *always* be used to hide incompetence and evil.
There is *no* reason for secrecy within our government. There are *no* reasons for classified material at all. Not any more.
We live in a unipolar world. We are the "strong". There isn't any more reason for us to play cloak and dagger, all we have to do is sit back, have proper, up-front security measures, utilize common sense public surveillance (i.e. patrol officers in problem areas, surveillance inside airports, monitoring of known "bad guy" websites), and we'll be safe.
I cannot, for the life of me, imagine why any of the secrecy provisions pushed forth by the Bush administration contribute to our security.
For that matter, I don't believe that any of the other CIA/FBI "black ops" contribute either. Rendition might make some warhawks in the executive branch feel good, but it is nonsensical that it helps to protect our nation. Better XRAY machines, and locks on cockpit doors protect our nations. Paying our troops more money protects our nation, as would federal marshalls on planes, and a whole bunch of other measures.
But taking our suspected enemies to Libya and beating the crap out of them? What does that accomplish?
WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
Ah, the "other people do bad things, so our government should be able to do whatever it likes!' argument.
Even if it isn't as bad as what the Islamics do, I don't think that the US government holding that behavior up as something to do it'self is a good thing. We are supposed to be FIGHTING this behavior, not emulating it.
This is a perfect example of the Streisand effect. Note how much attention gets drawn to the two or three paragraphs (or pages?) that were redacted. Through censorship, something that's not of interest to very many people suddenly becomes much more interesting!
You do realize that the story is how a GOOD GUY was arrested mistakenly, and had his family threatened with torture and possibly death? And then, to cover up their mistake, they made the whole thing classified. So the FBI used the law to cover up the fact that they acted like jackasses. Or like terrorists.
Having been in New York on 9/11, I could personally give a shit what happens to Al Quaeda collaborators. Nothing is bad enough for them. Being an American, however, I know that threating the life of an innocent guy (or even a guy we think is guilty) is a major fuck-up on our part. Say it with me- Torture does not elicit useful evidence. Torture makes enemies out of friends. Torture accomplishes the aims of the terrorists.
You're trollin', it's true, but it can't be said often enough. The FBI fucked up, put American lives in danger. The only way to fix FBI fuckups is to know about them. The more the FBI hides from us, the worse it works, and the better off the bad guys are.
Of course there are always enemies that do not respect the rules of war, that is why the Nurenberg trials were held.
The Nuremberg (and Tokyo) trials were examples of victor's justice: allied war crimes and crimes against humanity (the Dresden bombing, the nuclear bombs on Japanese civilian targets, the firebombing of Japanese cities, and so on...) were out of scope. It's quite ok to commit war crimes, as long as you win the war.Um...what?
Name the last enemy we've fought against that *didn't* torture prisoners.
No, no, no, before anyone starts blathering about what I'm not saying, I am *not* saying "They tortured ours so we can torture theirs." I'm saying that that idea you expressed right there, that we refrain from torture because it's the "only way" we can protect our own troops, is utter nonsense.
If our troops got captured in central America, they got tortured. If they got captured in the Gulf War, they got tortured. If they got captured in Vietnam, oh boy did they get tortured. If they got shot down over the Soviet Union, they got tortured. If they got captured in Korea, they got tortured. If they got captured in the Pacific, they got tortured. They occasionally got tortured even by the Germans, and even more typical treatment of American POWs would be considered "torture" today:
So, seriously, who are these people out there who think highly enough of our signature on the G.C. to not torture our soldiers? Only the people that we *wouldn't be fighting in the first place*.
And as a result US servicemen who are captured by Jihadis can expect to be treated as brutally as the Abu Graihb photographs.
Riiiight. Because US servicement captured by Jihadis would have been treated in full accord with the Geneva convention, were it not for Abu Ghraib. That's why US airmen shot down over Iraq in the first Gulf War were treated humanely, and didn't have the shit beat out of them by Hussein's thugs. That's why Daniel Pearl was treated to tea and cupcakes when he was taken prisoner: he didn't have anything to do with Abu Ghraib.
Oh, wait...
Dissent is not treason. People like you are the reason open democracies turn into dictatorships. I guess you'd better take advantage of the First Amendment while it still exists, as it looks like it will be going the way of the Fourth quite soon.
I use friend/foe to signal strong [dis]agreement instead of mod points. What else are f/f good for?
If you think that's the worst that has happened by American hands, you're sadly ill informed. People have *died* at Abu Graihb as a result of US torture techniques. There is no serious doubt that physical torture was (and is) regularly practiced.
If that's partly aimed at me, are you asking why I feel it's relevant to compare Bush to the FBI? Even if little encouragement was needed, do you believe that he's, oh, I don't know, defended the right of the public to know what really goes on? There's a Dune quote that I feel is appropriate for this situation.
"We witness a passing phase of eternity. Important things happen but some people never notice. Accidents intervene. You are not present at episodes. You depend on reports. And people shutter their minds. What good are reports? History in a news account? Preselected at an editorial conference, digested and excreted by prejudice? Accounts you need seldom come from those who make history. Diaries, memoirs and autobiographies are subjective forms of special pleading. Archives are crammed with such suspect stuff."
Certainly, it's difficult for 'something corrective' to be done about this. That isn't what I'm suggesting. I was stating my discontent with such phenomena in general. Of course there isn't a whole lot I can do about it, but that doesn't mean I have to pretend to like it. It saddens me to see even part of the nasty things that have come about from the selfishness of those in power. As for me, I'm just another blabbering face in the crowd shouting my opinions as if they really mattered (gotta love ego).
There were some very good points made regarding the way the FBI already was before Bush became involved and encouraged/empowered them to become even more invasive. I'd quote more Dune/Herbert stuff at you guys but frankly, there's too much that could be applied here (so I won't burden your poor eyes, my comrades).
"There are *no* reasons for classified material at all."
Really? REALLY?
So all those troops on location in hot zones that will get massacred just don't matter anymore?
God, could you be any more wrong...
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
How the hell did this get to +4 informative? I would have thought you were trolling or being sar-car-stic about the Saudia Arabia comment but then you go and say, factually, correctly, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9-11 (which it didn't) and very simplistically that Pakistan is not our ally(sic). Lets be charitable and suggest you should have emoted to make this clear. Just in case (and I pray to god I've got this wrong) you meant that straight, it would show a breath-taking lack of understanding of the pro-American stance Saudi Arabia the nation takes (and for whom Bin Laden is a massive dissident) and a breath-taking lack of understanding of the same point in Pakistan. Do you think that Bhutto went back for non-democratic reasons or that those 140 people died because the people doing the bombing were not trying to fuck up the democratic imperative? These are complex countries with complex dynamics and the proportion of people in them who represent the extremists are very low.
'Joking' (great joke - are you here all week?) about dropping a nuke on anyone is just stupid. But you know that right because you were only kidding. Right? Right???!
Not for anyone actually involved, no—but they certainly lost us a lot of sympathy (not to mention respect) from the rest of the world where our own people are concerned.
Dan Aris
Fun. Free. Online. RPG. BattleMaster.
And this is the shiny new example of why torture doesn't work. It certainly doesn't work in the Jack Bauer style, where you just need to apply a little more pressure to get the evil guy to give up the detonation codes. And it scares me to death that some people (Slick Willy, I'm looking at you) think that this is the right approach.
Here's what 24 doesn't tell you: You don't know who you have. If you did, you wouldn't need to interrogate them, because you'd already pretty much know everything about them. Or at the very least, you'd know the broad strokes and just want to fill in the details. However, as demonstrated during the interrogation of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, even when you know who you have and want to get some more details about past operations, torture is misguided. According to congressional hearings on the matter, it is thought that most of his confessions were nothing but attempts to get through the interrogation and protect his family. This is the second thing that 24 doesn't tell you: torture elicits probably results in more disinformation than regular interrogation techniques. Why? Because the interrogators are being told what they want to hear. Combined with the drive to show success, confirmation bias and a whole host of other human failings, this can send investigators on a far more dangerous goose chase than a detainee just telling random stories.
What really pisses me off is that the US military knew all this and this codified in their interrogation handbook: torture doesn't work, so there's no point in attempting it. But some criminally inept politicians - all without a day of military or covert experience - decided that they knew better and created new rules from scratch. The end result? Nothing but our loss of the moral high ground. Oh, and a whole bunch of information that is most likely wrong.
Congrats, US leaders: you managed to completely hose one of our main advantages in the "war" on terror. Sadly, the next crop (Hillary or Guliani, most likely) will be just as bad. Why? Because the majority of the voters buy into the 24 approach to terror. Which means we get the leaders we deserve.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Sadly, I was not kidding.
Saudi Arabia was - and today is - the source of more than 95 percent of all funding and volunteers for al-Qaeda.
Pakistan has played us for decades, getting effective pardons for building nuclear bombs and our continual looking the other way as they basically dangle the odd al-Qaeda sacrificial lamb in front of us.
And, as you well know, Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9-11.
Facts are just that. Facts.
Torturing people also doesn't work. Another fact.
Now, I don't wish to digress further - the main question was torture and it's effectiveness in revealing Truth.
If by Truth you mean, will a tortured person tell you what they think you want to hear? Sure.
But that will usually not be the truth.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Have been reading about the way that Germany slipped into fascism. In a milder, slower way the USA seems to be following the same path. The USA seems to be heading towards the belief that the government must make decisions for the populace because 'the people will make irrational decisions'. You can see where that leads. Stop it now, I suggest.
Unicorn Setu. "Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines".
Perhaps the issue is that what happened violates the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties Man: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/oasinstr/zoas2dec.htm
"Every person has the right to the protection of the law against abusive attacks upon his honor, his reputation, and his private and family life."
And the American Convention on Human Rights: http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/oasinstr/zoas3con.htm
"Every person has the right to be compensated in accordance with the law in the event he has been sentenced by a final judgment through a miscarriage of justice."
And thus might come under the jursidiction of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights.
From wikipedia:
The United States assumed territorial control over Guantánamo Bay under the 1903 Cuban-American Treaty, which granted the United States a perpetual lease of the area.
1903...before Vietnam, before Gulf...hell, before WWII.
Don't fool yourself into thinking the US is any better than any other country. The only difference I see is that while middle eastern countries rely on old (and babaric) techniques of torture, the US military has honed its skills to a point of excruciation that you have not even the slightest idea of. Ask a woman, she might know, at least for a few hours...now extend that for months and years and you just scratch the surface of the mental and physical abuse that is performed and the hands of US military personnel in the name of Justice. Until Guantánamo Bay is well and truly closed never to be populated by an American "justice fighter" I will consider America as the top most contravening Geneva convention and humans rights abusers this planet has ever seen. The mere fact that a US person ignores the perils of such a place is tantamount to assistance. I will take no lectures, thoughts or beliefs or even believe in the American dream or future until such a shameful place no longer exists.
Going of topic now...stop here if you want to...
Americans should, and are, rightfully ashamed of their current president, I know I am of my prime ministers of the last countless years.
In fact the whole world security is just a shameful mess right now. Iran building nukes, US building more nukes and a Star Wars programme. UK building more nuke filled submarines, Russia building nukes and starting to fly reconnaissance flights again. Middle east in absolute turmoil, China in crisis, India in an almost nuclear deal of the centure (we build nukes but do not sign the non-disclosure). Oil and Gas running out, companies dragging their heals on alternatives, free speech being impeded. Oh God, I am gonna stop before I want to kill myself.
A whole mess...all because the UN has become a joke and dialog is no longer considered useful.
end of off-topic, end of rant.
When all is said and done, nothing changes...
So let's see, a middle-Eastern guy happens to be in a New York hotel room on 9/11, and it happens to be a room that some legitimate pilot happened to leave a transponder that could communicate with planes?
...but it turns out that's a big, fat lie as there is no real reason it should be classified.
Ok, so far so good.
Then comes 9/11 and they find this thing and someone wants to question him.
So far so good.
They threaten his family with bad stuff, nudge nudge, wink wink, unless he confesses.
It's later broken up as the real pilot tells about the transponder.
So far so good.
Guy goes to sue, and has the right to.
So far so good.
Government claims the suit cannot go foreward because the details are classified due to national security.
Distasteful in the extreme, but so far so good, as (true) national security should outweigh a lawsuit.
So far so good.
Whew! I'm glad they don't do that in the US. What the hell country was this?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Traitor? Uh, no, that would be the little turd who ripped the guts out of the constitution and started a war to make his friends rich. Hey, I hear he's starting another. We'll be expecting you to enlist this time.
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
In that culture it is worse.
Killing a person might begin a blood feud with their relatives. But pissing on the Koran is starting a feud with a whole religion.
Debating normative ethics with people who fly airplanes into buildings is pointless. But understanding the basis on which they form ethical judgements is essential if you are going to defeat them.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
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Yes, you can have perfect moral clarity and know there is a ticking time bomb when you're part of a TV audience that saw the bad guy setting the bomb, but in reality you don't get to see the bomb--people are being tortured to see if there is a bomb, to see if this guy knows a guy who knows if there's a bomb, and so on...reality lacks the perfect god-like clarity that the neocons think they have.
When you're dealing with someone who thinks that they have this moral clarity that only exists in fictional scenarios, you're dealing with someone very stupid, very arrogant, with a power fetish, or any combination of the three. Opposition to torture is grounded not just in the idea that torture is wrong, but in the recognition that we're fallible, our knowledge is limited, and basically that people can't be trusted with that level of power. This grounding humility is what is lacking in the neocons. They may be humble in other ways, praying to God and so forth, but they believe so strongly in their own vision that they feel that normal morality doesn't apply.
This isn't strictly confined to the neocons--some leftists have tortured for the Marxist/Stalinist/whatever cause, no doubt, but they are long gone. The neocons may not have a monopoly on hubris, but they're the problem we're dealing with today.
Actually, both the "west" and the "east" modded you into oblivion because they think those soldiers were worse than scum, and not only did they destroy any credibility we had in the war and strengthened the support for radicals, they pretty much proved the enemy's point for them. It is your point of view that is disgusting and anomalous, not everybody else's. And yes, sexual torture methods are used to "defeat" the subjects' ego utterly leading to emotional breakdown and -the torturer hopes- hopelessness (hence ease of deriving info). People can get past an electric shock session and beatings pretty easily..this is far, far more difficult to get over. I guess if you don't realize that by yourself then neither I nor the moderators nor the whole world can get you to understand. Suffice to say that the soldiers who did this would not defend themselves as you defend do. Rhetoric like yours is what gives al-qaeda the upper hand, your voiced opinion is all they need.