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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."
Bush?
Do you REALLY think this just started with Bush? Or just this century?
All that's happened recently is it's now harder to hide things, and easier to leak anonymously. Politician hiding information they don't like is far, far older.
Bush didn't teach them shit about corruption - see J. Edgar Hoover.
-- Ravensfire
"But we decide which is right, and which is an illusion"
It reminds me of the Jim Morin cartoon last week. That was about another case of "national security" being used to suppress information that was embarrassing to the government, but the basic idea is the same.
There's lots of historic evidence now that official secrecy in the US (and all other governments) rarely has anything to do with "national security". The primary reason for secrecy has always been to prevent a government's own citizens from knowing about the inner workings of their own government.
Suppression of evidence that would exonerate a defendant in a criminal court case is the most egregious sort of misuse of official secrecy, true, and it's routinely used for things much less important than this. Occasionally, it is actually used to prevent a nation's external enemies to learn something embarrassing. But mostly it's just to keep internal enemies (aka "citizens") from learning things that the government doesn't want you or me (or a judge) to know.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
OK, a search on Google News on "Higazy" when the story broke showed a whole SIX hits, went down to zero for a while, then went back up to one. Any idea what's going on here?
This kind of thing is why the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice made recommendations to reduce wrongful convictions including:
- mandatory recording of confessions made while in custody of law enforcement
- corroboration of jailhouse informant testimony
- standards for eyewitness identification procedures
The Commission is made up of law enforcement, prosecutors and defense attorneys. Their recommendations were embodied in three California Senate bills (SB511, SB609, SB756) and were passed by the Senate.
Governor Schwarzenneger vetoed all three bills. About the bill requiring the recording of confessions he said: "This bill would place unnecessary restrictions on police investigators."
Cheney, on the other hand, is widely well regarded as an evil mastermind.
A completely undeserved reputation. His big plan in '91, for example, was to parachute the 82nd Airborne behind Iraqi lines, capture an Iraqi city and hold for ransom. Schwartzkopf, sane human that he was, didn't think much of it and said so, but Cheney kept insisting on it for weeks.
Bush may be garden variety dumb, but Cheney is truly demented.
Play Command HQ online
A lot of people like to make this comparison because Nixon often came off as a unilateral dick, he was in many ways. However, he at least was a functional president. Hell, he was more than a functional president; he even had several net positives like repairing relations with China. If I had the chance to go back and magically make it so we had Nixon as president for the last 7 years, I think I would literally jump for joy.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
I disagree that Nukes would solve anything.
If we pay attention to the legitimate grievances of the local population, and behave ourselves, the local population, who fear and despise the Jihadist movements as a rule, will turn the Jihadists in (those that remain Jihadist in outlook).
Even a bare minimum regard for the economic well-being of the general population nips these movements in the bud, which is why they are absent in Turkey (which has religious conservatives, but they are not at all the same) and Libya (hardly a paradigm example in other respects) but so prevalent in Algeria and Egypt.
In fact, in the wake of 9/11, this is what began to happen. The Jihadist movements were on the run and would have been destroyed.
Except that we invaded Iraq, religitimizing these movements in the eyes of the general population to a significant extent, and saving them from destruction at the hands of their own populations, who are also their primary victims. So while Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, the invasion of Iraq contributed immensely the possibility that we'll see further attacks.
As for nuking Saudi Arabia - we'd see a similar effect. The rest of the world would see attacks against the US as legitimate, and they'd unite against us. US-friendly regimes in Turkey, the Balkans and Indonesia would become unviable. It would be an absolute disaster.
There are two basic things that we could do to reduce the threat of terror, and they would work:
1) Police work, as you say.
and
2) Basic honor and decency.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
Well, one word from FBI to the Egyptian police, and the family will be taken in for questioning. And by questioning I mean full-body-contact questioning.
/ The Arrow
"How lovely you are. So lovely in my straightjacket..." - Nny
Templeton later admitted that he knew how the Egyptian security forces operated: "that they had a security service, that their laws are different than ours, that they are probably allowed to do things in that country where they don't advise people of their rights, they don't - yeah, probably about torture, sure."
Don't let this pawn distract you. The US perceives Egypt as rank amateurs in their torture methodology. America's secret prison rendition system sends lower-ranking captives to Egypt for torturing, while using the CIA-operated secret prisons for higher-level suspects.
From the Washington Post:
Ten years ago, we used to talk about the existence of Black Helicopters and people would laugh at these conspiracy theories. Now people wonder why we're making such a big deal about them.
Seth
$5 / month hosted VPS on linux = awesome!
As much as I hate to say it, I agree and would much rather take Nixon over Bush. Nixon was at least clever enough about waging his wars to at least try to keep the domestic population happy. For example, creating the Environmental Protection Agency, creating the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, and that thing he did to fix social security for inflation. Bush doesn't seem to care much for people abroad or at home. Not that I want Bush to be cleverer about waging wars or anything, but you know what I mean.