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."

Comments

Google News question

[Insightfill]

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?

Re:Can't Have It Two Ways

[Boronx]

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.

Re:Ha!

[feed_me_cereal]

surpassing even Nixon

...waaaaay surpassing Nixon.

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.

(un)secret US torture prisons

[SethJohnson]

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:

"A second tier -- which these sources believe includes more than 70 detainees -- is a group considered less important, with less direct involvement in terrorism and having limited intelligence value. These prisoners, some of whom were originally taken to black sites, are delivered to intelligence services in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Afghanistan and other countries, a process sometimes known as "rendition." While the first-tier black sites are run by CIA officers, the jails in these countries are operated by the host nations, with CIA financial assistance and, sometimes, direction."

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