A close review of the documents released by the FBI in response to the Freedom of Information Act requests relating to what went on at Guantanamo, makes it possible to conclude a number of things.
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/052605/
1) Even three years after taking office, the highest levels of the Justice Department had not been appropriately staffed by the Bush Administration. At least, that's what I conclude from the fact that the Integrity in Government/Civil Rights Section was still headed by an Acting Chief.
Moreover, the fact that this person, having little clout in an "acting" position, was responsible for supervising prison abuse, contract fraud and oil for food, provides clear evidence that the Department of Justice was not serious about problems in any of these areas.
2) The FBI, as an arm of the Department of Justice, makes it clear in its training of agents and investigators that they understand the following:
a) Information is not to be extracted by force because experience has shown that coerced information leads almost automatically to aborted prosecutions and cases being thrown out of court.
b) Information that is extracted by force has been proven to be largely unreliable. Which, of course, is why it leads to cases being thrown out.
c) Since the primary mission of the Department of Justice is to bring the prosecution of law breakers to a successful conclusion, any behavior which subverts this effort has to be considered as official misconduct and imposes an obligation on those who witness or become aware of such misconduct to report it up the chain of command.
Note that these considerations are driven entirely by the needs of the organization. They have nothing to do with human or civil rights considerations.
3) When members of the National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime were dispatched to Guantanamo to evaluate the operation and make recommendations to improve data collection, they found themselves between a rock and a hard place.
Because what they witnessed and were informed about was behavior that clearly conflicted with their training and would, under normal conditions, require the filing of misconduct reports.
However, they were also informed or made aware of an Executive Order, issued by the President of the United States, which appeared to make prohibited behaviors legal, at least when the behaviors were engaged in by representatives of the Department of Defense. So, the question arose whether this Executive Order issued to the DoD was sufficient to relieve representatives of the Department of Justice of the obligation to report the misconduct they observed.
For the record, according to the information provided in the redacted emails, the behaviors that led to these concerns included the following:
sleep management (a euphemism for sleep interruption?)
military working dogs (a euphemism for being threatened by snarling dogs?)
stress positions (obviously including being hung by one's wrists, as some dead prisoners in Afghanistan attest)
environmental manipulation (excessive heat, cold, noise)
sensory deprivation (solitary confinement and being hooded)
stripping (removal of all clothing for other than medical reasons)
That the Executive Order which permitted these behaviors and appeared to provide legal cover for representatives of the DoD was subsequently rescinded did not make the FBI's position any easier. That behaviors were illegal one day, legal (for some people) the next, and then suddenly illegal again provided no guidance about when and by whom misconduct was to be reported, and TO whom.
Talk about a flip-flop. This one obviously left agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigations in an impossible situation. Because, of course, reporting is one of their primary tasks and a failure to report is misconduct itself, if not a crime. (Compare to Catholic Bishops who have failed to report that their subordinates are habitual abusers of boys and girls).
The question we seem to be left with is whether the gross incompetence demonstrated by this Administration at the highest levels is to be dismissed as simple inexperience or should it be considered as an intentional violation of the law?
Posted by Hannah at May 28, 2005 06:36 AM