Spencer Ackerman Cuts Through The Hyperbole

What's so hard about saying someone is lying when they are.....lying?

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QOTD

Sure enough, Sen. Chris Bond (R-Mo.) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republicans on the congressional intelligence committees, insisted that Brennan never specifically told them the FBI would Mirandize Abdulmutallab. “If he had I would [have] told him the Administration was making a mistake,” Bond said. The entire Republican leadership, including fact-averse Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House GOP leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) echoed Bond’s claims in one form or another. Apparently these men, who claim leadership on national security, know less about FBI procedure than the average movie-goer. Obviously the FBI Mirandizes suspects in their custody.

Spencer Ackerman....featured prominently having been quoted by an Administration Official to Jake Tapper

The NCTC

Check out Spencer Ackerman's profile of the National Counterterrorism Center. There seems to be some structural problems over there that make analyzing intelligence harder than it already is. If I had to guess, that is where some head will end up rolling.

Spencer Ackerman PWNS Crazy Pete Hoekstra

Spencer catches Congressman Hoekstra fundraising off of fear mongering over the attempted terrorist attack on Northwest flight 253. Further he hits him over the head with the fact that the terrorist who attempted said attacked is being housed right there in Michigan with all his terrorist super powers and other worldly abilities.

Somebody better get the fainting couch ready! LOL

McChrystal Mashup

Spencer Ackerman covers the General McChrystal/Ambassador Eikenberry hearings today on Afghanistan.

A lot of must read stuff in there.

Update: More

Dithering Over Catching Bin Ladin

I can't wait to hear Dick Cheney come out and condemn the hell out of himself and the Bush administration for dithering over catching Bin Ladin when we had the chance.

Here is Spencer Ackerman yearning to read former Bushie Sec Def Don Rumsfield's memoir just to see how he tries to explain this away.

Because this is from page eight of the new Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigation into how bin Laden and al-Qaeda escaped from the U.S. and Afghan militia assault on Tora Bora in December 2001:

The decision not to deploy American forces to go after bin Laden or block his escape was made by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his top commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, the architects of the unconventional Afghan battle plan known as Operation Enduring Freedom. Rumsfeld said at the time that he was concerned that too many U.S. troops in Afghanistan would create an anti-American backlash and fuel a widespread insurgency. Reversing the recent American military orthodoxy known as the Powell doctrine, the Afghan model emphasized minimizing the U.S. presence by relying on small, highly mobile teams of special operations troops and CIA paramilitary operatives working with the Afghan opposition. Even when his own commanders and senior intelligence officials in Afghanistan and Washington argued for dispatching more U.S. troops, Franks refused to deviate from the plan.

The Case For The War Tax

Spencer Ackerman does the honors.

Here is the thing, its going to be awfully hard for President Obama and the Democrats to push an escalation in Afghanistan without a way to pay for it after they railed for years and years about President Bush and the Republicans doing the exact same thing in Iraq. If we can't pay for the escalation then, well, maybe we shouldn't be friggin doing it.

Something for folks to think about, especially those who CLAIM to give a shit about our deficit.

Do We Even Have 40 K Troops For Afghanistan???

Rachel Maddow hosts Spencer Ackerman to talk about how severely a troop increase will strain our troops worldwide.

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Spencer Breaks Some News

Want to know the latest on the Afghan strategy review by President Obama and his administration? Then check out this new piece by Spencer Ackerman about how Navy Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, the commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Ft. Bragg, N.C., and Vice Adm. Robert S. Harward, the deputy leader of the Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Va., are influencing the outcome.

Seriously, click the link dammit!

Sleeping With The Enemy?

Spencer Ackerman calls for congressional hearings into the revelations about Hamid Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, a long suspected drug dealer, being on the CIA's payroll according to yesterday's New York Times piece.

CIA money funds a politically connected drug dealer. Opium funds the Taliban. We are in Afghanistan to fight the Taliban. How much CIA money has indirectly funded the Taliban?

We definitely need to get some answers on this one.

Back Channels

I have been scratching my head over Congressman Robert Wexler's decision to resign his seat and take over as President of the Center for Mideast Peace and Economic Cooperation, but it seems like Spencer Ackerman is on to something.

Cut The Bullshit!

Why in the hell is Spencer Ackerman seemingly the only journalist pointing out the fact that General Stanley McChrystal did not try to call out President Obama in London which has now become conventional wisdom in the Village?!

For goodness sake PLEASE spread this link around so people aren't fooled by the mainstream media promoting a civilian/military split!

Rachel Talks Afghanistan

I have been meaning to post on the pissing match that is going on right now between President Obama and his White House and the Pentagon over our strategy and resources in Afghanistan but I got side tracked. Spencer Ackerman has a bunch of great posts at his blog on it starting with this one, and Rachel Maddow did a great job talking through it last night with Rajiv Chandrasekaran.

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Brutatlity

Spencer Ackerman has posted some pictures from the uprising in Iran after the bogus elections. Fair warning, many of the pictures are very graphic in showing the violence perpetrated on the Iranian people.

The Proper Way Of Whacking A Concern Troll

Spencer Ackerman does the honors on Joe LIEberman's concern trolling over the ballistic missle defense shield.

Truly a thing of beauty!

A The Torture Technique That Only David Vitter Could Love

Prolonged diapering!

Seriously.

Attackerman Ethers Dick Cheney

Thanks to Spencer Ackerman's fine work on the two torture documents that Dick Cheney sought to release, ostensibly to prove that torture worked, we now have it confirmed that Cheney is a lying sack of shit!

For months, former Vice President Dick Cheney has said that two documents prepared by the CIA, one from 2004 and the other from 2005, would refute critics of the Bush administration’s torture program. He told Fox’s Sean Hannity in April:

“I haven’t talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country,” Cheney said. “I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was.”

Those documents were obtained today by The Washington Independent and are available here. Strikingly, they provide little evidence for Cheney’s claims that the “enhanced interrogation” program run by the CIA provided valuable information. In fact, throughout both documents, many passages — though several are incomplete and circumstantial, actually suggest the opposite of Cheney’s contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA’s interrogations.

The first document, issued by the CIA in July 2004 is about the interrogation of 9/11 architect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times in March 2003 and whom, the newly released CIA Inspector General report on torture details, had his children’s lives threatened by an interrogator. None of that abuse is referred to in the publicly released version of the July 2004 document. Instead, we learn from the July 2004 document that not only did the man known as “KSM” largely provide intelligence about “historical plots” pulled off from al-Qaeda, a fair amount of the knowledge he imparted to his interrogators came from his “rolodex” — that is, what intelligence experts call “pocket litter,” or the telling documentation found on someone’s person when captured. As well, traditional intelligence work appears to have done wonders — including a fair amount of blundering on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s part:

In response to questions about [al-Qaeda's] efforts to acquire [weapons of mass destruction], [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] revealed that he had met three individuals involved in [al-Qaeda's] program to produce anthrax. He appears to have calculated, incorrectly, that we had this information already, given that one of the three — Yazid Sufaat — had been in foreign custody for several months.

This is a far cry from torturing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed into revealing such information. It would be tendentious to believe that the torture didn’t have any impact on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed — he himself said that he lied to interrogators in order to get the torture to stop — but the document itself doesn’t attempt to present a case that the “enhanced interrogation” program was a factor, let alone the determinant factor, in the intelligence bounty the document says he provided.

The second newly released document — a June 2005 overview of information extracted from detainees — is, if anything, more caveated. In making a case that “detainee reporting” was “pivotal for the war against [al-Qaeda],” it says that “detainee reporting is often incomplete or too general to lead directly to arrests; instead, detainees provide critical pieces to the puzzle, which, when combined with other reporting, have helped direct an investigation’s focus and led to the capture of terrorists.” Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is the prime example here.

The document also discusses unraveling the network of Indonesian al-Qaeda affiliate Hambali after Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s capture. There are repeated references to the value of “debriefings,” which the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report says are distinct from the “enhanced interrogation techniques” but can be used after they occur. For instance, “Debriefings of mid-level [al-Qaeda] operatives also have reported on specific plots against U.S. interests.” Indeed, in a section titled “Aiding Our Understanding [al-Qaeda],” a listed example is:

Abu Zubaydah’s identification early in his detention of [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] as the mastermind of 11 September and [al-Qaeda's] premier terrorist planner and of ‘Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri as another key [al-Qaeda] operational planner corroborated information [REDACTED].

Those revelations, as former Abu Zubaydah interrogator Ali Soufan has testified, came before Abu Zubaydah was tortured.

snip

Again, perhaps the blacked-out lines of the memos specifically claim and document that torture and only torture yielded this information. But what’s released within them does not remotely make that case. Cheney’s public account of these documents have conflated the difference between information acquired from detainees, which the documents present, and information acquired from detainees through the enhanced interrogation program, which they don’t.

I had to exerpt heavily because everything in the piece was tied together and notable but again this is all Spencer Ackerman who put the pieces of he puzzle together and he deserves all the credit. Hopefully there will be some Democrats on the Hill with balls big enough and spines strong enough to use his analysis to beat back the whinefest that we all know is now coming from the GOP.

Practicing The Art Of Journalism

Spencer Ackerman is one of the best and brightest young foreign policy and miltary affairs journalists in the business. Having said that the guy was having a rough time of it yesterday from the looks of his twitter feed. And then this morning it turns out he found out he had been scooped by the New York Times. But here is the thing, the reason why it appeared he had been scooped is because Spencer is actually a good journalist who believes in doing a thorough job of investigating before he puts something out. And when you watch this clip from Rachel Maddow's show you realize what the upside is for him of doing his job the way its supposed to be done.



Maybe the next time the New York Times will do their due diligence as well, lest they once again find themselves on that summer jam screen.

Hypothetical...

Ok I am not saying its for sure, but how likely is it that this story that Spencer Ackerman is working on, dovetails with the previous story about a CIA program that Leon Panetta had to recently brief Congress on?

Tainted By Torture

Many of us on the left applauded when FBI interrogator Ali Soufan came forward to refute some of the allegations by Dick Cheney and the rest of the pro torture crowd about Abu Zubaydah giving up critical information under torture. For some time there has been a general feeling that the FBI took the higher moral ground than the CIA when it came to interrogating enemy combatants. But Spencer Ackerman actually did some digging and unfortunately it would seem that neither Soufan nor the FBI in general were all that heroic either.

It is likely “Thomas” is Soufan. “Gibson,” the other FBI agent in the Abu Zubaydah interrogation, said he “did not have a ‘moral objection’” to Abu Zubaydah’s harsh treatment and “remained at the CIA facility until some time in early June 2002, several weeks after Thomas left.” Gibson did not object, he told the inspector general, because “he himself had undergone comparable harsh interrogation techniques as part of U.S. Army Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) training.” Soufan, according to an extensive profile by the New Yorker’s Lawrence Wright, does not have a history of military service. “Gibson’s” role in the harsh interrogation, moreover, suggests that there was no early FBI consensus against torture.

snip

One such interrogation involved “Thomas.” At Guantanamo Bay, beginning in late July or early August 2002 — very soon after being withdrawn from the Abu Zubaydah interrogation — “Thomas” interrogated Mohammed al-Qatani, who was suspected of being a part of the 9/11 conspiracy and who was detained in Afghanistan after he was unable to enter the U.S. through Orlando in the summer of 2001. “Thomas,” the report reads, “had already obtained confessions from several detainees” at Guantanamo; the commander of the detention facility called him “a national treasure.”

“Thomas” does not appear to have objected to the interrogation of al-Qatani, whatever his objections to the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah a few months prior. According to the report, “Thomas” recommended the use of non-FBI interrogation techniques on al-Qatani, including moving him “to a more remote location at GTMO so that he would not get social support from the other detainees.” The FBI case agent at Guantanamo, known by the pseudonym “Demeter,” noted to the inspector general that “isolation is not normally employed by law enforcement agencies” but could be “a very effective technique,” and so “Demeter” and “Thomas” received approval from unnamed “senior officials… up their chain of command” for use of the technique.”

In an interview with the inspector general in 2007, al-Qatani said that the place where “Thomas” interrogated him was “the worst place I was taken to.” His sense of time was displaced “because the window was covered up” and so he did not know when to pray in accordance with Muslim traditions. “The lights in his cell were left on continuously for the entire time he was there, which he said was half a year,” the report read. “Al Qatani also described the Brig as very, very cold.” (A 2005 Pentagon study, known as the Schmidt-Furlow report, found that the cold was so severe that it eventually gave al-Qatani an irregular heartbeat, for which he was hospitalized; it is not clear exactly when this took place.) “Thomas,” however, “spoke Arabic” (as Soufan does) and had “some sense of humanity,” al-Qatani told the inspector general. While he “never used aggression or physical violence” on the detainee, al-Qatani quoted “Thomas” as saying “You will find yourself in a difficult situation if you don’t talk to me” and “this is your place until you change your story.”

It is not clear when “Thomas” left Guantanamo Bay and the al-Qatani interrogation, and an interrogation log spanning 50 days between November 2002 and January 2003 published by Time magazine in mid-2005 suggests the harshest period of al-Qatani’s treatment later that year. But even before that — and before October 11, 2002, when Guantanamo officials sought approval of severe interrogation techniques based on CIA and SERE techniques, from their chain of command — al-Qatani was subjected to a snarling dog by military interrogators who had told two new FBI agents to “step aside” by early September 2002. The agents described al-Qatani being subject to “sleep deprivation, loud music, bright lights, and ‘body placement discomfort.’” They emailed superiors that these techniques had “‘negative’ results” and al-Qatani was “as fervent as ever not to cooperate.”

Yet through January 2003, the FBI remained at Guantanamo, despite Mueller’s apparent “decision” against FBI participation in the abusive interrogations, although its agents tried unsuccessfully to modify the harsh interrogation plan. Some other FBI officials, according to the inspector general’s report, joined with other agencies, including the CIA and the Defense Department, in proposing an interrogation regimen “used with subjects including [Abu Zubaydah]” in either late 2002 or early 2003. Few people would speak conclusively about this “alternative” regimen and few documents were made available to the inspector general about it. Fewer still admitted knowledge of specific techniques the plan proposed. But the report suggests that it played a role in weakening bureaucratic resistance to al-Qatani’s torture, and gives the bottom-line assessment that it “clearly would never have been permitted for FBI agents in the United States under any FBI policy.”

snip

It is unclear whether any such reports for criminal referral occurred. Literally hundreds of FBI agents reported to an inspector general-solicited survey that they either observed or heard about detainee abuses in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay. The report — as Marcy Wheeler blogged on Monday — however, notes “a total of five referrals” by the CIA’s inspector general to the Justice Department concerning detainee abuse “between February 6, 2003 and March 30, 2004.” It is less clear over whether FBI observations of institutionalized abuse resulted in any concrete action. “On a broader level,” the inspector general writes, “we were unable to determine definitely whether the concerns of the FBI and DOJ about DOD interrogation techniques were ever addressed by any of the structures created for resolving inter-agency disputes about antiterrorism issues.” Similarly, the report states, “We found it difficult to assess the response of FBI Headquarters and senior DOJ officials to reports from FBI agents about detainee issues,” largely due to “vague recollections” and the “paucity of written communications.”

It does not appear as if FBI agents who observed abuses stopped such abuses from occurring. The report chides FBI senior leadership for putting agents who witnessed detainee abuse “in a difficult position, because FBI agents were trying to establish a cooperative working relationship with the DOD… FBI agents had many reasons to avoid making reports regarding potential mistreatment of detainees.” Most trials for detainee abuse have occurred under the military, not civilian, justice system, with an exception being a CIA contractor named David Passaro, who was convicted of assault in reference to a 2003 detainee death in Afghanistan.

Much remains unclear from the inspector general’s report. When the now-retired Soufan testifies before Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse’s (D-RI) Senate Judiciary subcommittee on Wednesday, it will be the first time the public has heard a first-hand account from an FBI agent about torture — and what the bureau did and did not do about it.

That's a pretty sobering look at the the FBI's role in the torture program. This is exactly why torture should never be ordered in the first place. Because it spreads like a plague and ends up infecting every single aspect of our national security apparatus. The military, the CIA, and the FBI are all now tarred with the brush of torture. Hopefully one day someone will be held to account for that.