harsh interrogation

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CIA Agents Who Bungle Missions Get Promoted

Some involved in high-profile mistakes now in key positions

(Newser) - An AP investigation finds that CIA officers involved in high-profile gaffes—including the 5-month detention and interrogation of the wrong man and the freezing to death of another detainee—keep getting promoted into senior positions. The upshot is that as the Obama administration tries to distance itself from the agency's...

Rove: 'I'm Proud' of Waterboarding

Technique helped break terrorists' will, 'Bush's brain' says

(Newser) - Karl Rove is proud of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques used under the Bush administration, he said in an interview. He is "proud we used techniques that broke the will of these terrorists," the memoir-touting Bush adviser told a BBC reporter, boasting that harsh interrogation tactics had...

Ethics Report Clears Bush Lawyers in Torture Memo

John Yoo and Jay Bybee accused only of 'poor judgment'

(Newser) - Good news for the Bush lawyers who provided the legal rationale for waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics: An upcoming Justice Department report clears them of serious misconduct charges, reports Newsweek . The report's final reviewer softened an earlier version that accused John Yoo, now a law professor, and Jay Bybee,...

Brits Waterboarded Irish Prisoners in '70s

Evidence of torture may overturn man's 1973 conviction

(Newser) - The British Army used waterboarding on prisoners in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, according to lawyers for a man appealing his 1973 conviction. Liam Holden was convicted of killing a British soldier on the basis of a confession which he says was extracted by torture: Holden, who spent 17 years...

Teen Afghan Prisoners Claim Abuse at US Site

Say they were beaten, photographed naked at Bagram

(Newser) - Two Afghan teenagers held prisoner by the US at the Bagram air base say American interrogators beat them, deprived them of sleep, photographed them naked, and made them look at porn to humiliate them sexually. The teens' accounts to the Washington Post have not been substantiated, but they have the...

CIA Officer: We 'Broke the Law' With Kidnapping

She's one of 23 Americans convicted in Italy for 2003 rendition

(Newser) - One of the CIA agents convicted in Italy today of kidnapping a Muslim cleric in 2003 says the mission "broke the law" and that she feels "abandoned and betrayed" by the US government. The case involving ex-officer Sabrina DeSousa and 22 other Americans is the first challenge to...

Metallica Singer 'Proud' of Music's Role in Torture

Tunes represented something detainees didn't like: Hetfield

(Newser) - Metallica frontman James Hetfield is rather proud his band's music was played at top volume to break down the resistance of Guantanamo detainees under interrogation. "It’s strong, it’s music that’s powerful,” he told an interviewer from a German TV network. “It represents something that...

Justice Department Narrows Inquiry Into CIA Tactics

Lead investigator will probe only a handful of cases

(Newser) - Eric Holder continues to take heavy flak from critics who think he should leave the CIA alone, and the Washington Post has news that should give them at least a bit of satisfaction: The Justice Department's preliminary investigation will be smaller than anticipated. The lead investigator will look at only...

CIA Docs Accused of 'Human Experimentation'

Report from ethics groups says docs in interrogation program guilty of war crimes

(Newser) - CIA doctors who monitored the agency's "enhanced interrogation" of terror suspects may be guilty of war crimes linked to human experimentation, according to a new report from a medical ethics group. The report from Physicians for Human Rights accuses the doctors and psychologists of being involved at every stage...

'Monstrous Liar' Cheney Manipulates the Media
'Monstrous Liar' Cheney Manipulates the Media
OPINION
Aug 31, 2009 4:42 PM CDT

'Monstrous Liar' Cheney Manipulates the Media

Former VP's defense of torture full of half-truths, falsehoods: Froomkin

(Newser) - Since leaving government, Dick Cheney has realized that TV and newspapers will report anything he says, writes Dan Froomkin for the Huffington Post, even though "he is a monstrous liar”—remember Saddam's WMDs? "After years of speaking in whispers, operating by proxy, and leaving as few fingerprints...

Cheney: Learn From CIA, Don't Investigate Interrogators

Probes are 'outrageous political act,' says ex-VP

(Newser) - The Obama administration should be asking CIA interrogators how they managed to ward off terrorist attacks for 8 years rather than investigating possible breaches of law while doing so, former Vice President Dick Cheney told Fox News today. Investigating interrogators is an "outrageous political act" that will do long-term...

Memos: CIA Kept Prisoner Awake, Chained for 6 Days

(Newser) - In late 2007, a year after the Bush administration abandoned its harshest interrogation methods, CIA operatives used severe sleep deprivation tactics against a terror detainee twice, keeping him awake for 5 and then 6 straight days, with permission from government lawyers to go over the 4-day limit. Interrogators kept the...

Obama Replaces CIA With Special Interrogators

(Newser) - Barack Obama has ordered the creation of an elite squad that will take over terror interrogations from the CIA, senior officials tell the Washington Post. Dubbed the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or HIG, the unit will be housed with the FBI, but overseen by the White House through the National...

Justice Report Recommends Prisoner Abuse Investigations

(Newser) - A report by the ethics office of the Justice Department recommends reopening a dozen cases of alleged prisoner abuse, a move that would expose CIA employees to prosecution if it's determined they tortured terrorism suspects, reports the New York Times. Legal experts predict Attorney General Eric Holder will launch a...

First Obama Rendition Says FBI Starved, Threatened Him

(Newser) - When military contractor Raymond Azar was arrested in Afghanistan, he was hooded, shackled, stripped, photographed naked, then flown to Alexandria, Va., in the first known rendition of the Obama administration. But Azar isn’t accused of terrorism. The Lebanese citizen is accused of bribery, a charge he pleaded guilty to...

Holder Warns of Homegrown Terror Risk

AG: 'American people would be surprised'

(Newser) - The chilling big picture suggests that “the radicalization of Americans” who leave the country and return wanting to do “harm to the American people” is a growing threat, Eric Holder tells ABC News. It’s “something that didn’t loom as large a few months ago as...

Torture Photos Should Be Secret—for Detainees' Sake

(Newser) - Human rights groups may be upset that President Obama is classifying photos of detainee abuse, but former Army staff sergeant William Quinn thinks it’s a good thing—for the detainees’ sake. When Quinn was assigned as an interrogator at Abu Ghraib, he discovered that the detainees took a very...

Holder Mulls Political A-Bomb: Bush Torture Probe

(Newser) - Attorney General Eric Holder is "leaning toward" naming an independent prosecutor to probe Bush-era interrogation policies, even if it means war with the Obama administration, writes Daniel Klaidman in Newsweek. Such a probe would likely trigger partisan hostilities and threaten key Obama policies like health care and energy reform—...

Former Gitmo Prisoner Fights to Save Torture Photo

Says Pentagon wants to kill 'abuse evidence'

(Newser) - A Guantanamo prisoner released to Britain after seven years in detention is fighting to keep the Pentagon from destroying a photograph he says proves he was abused, reports the Guardian. Binyam Mohamed does not have copies of the image, taken after he was brutally beaten, but he knows it exists...

Gitmo Prisoners: We Lied to CIA to Stop Torture

Khalid Mohammed 'made up stories' on bin Laden's whereabouts after torture

(Newser) - Guantanamo prisoners fabricated information to give CIA interrogators after being physically and mentally abused, they told a 2007 military tribunal in transcripts released yesterday under the Freedom of Information act. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and one of the prisoners who was repeatedly waterboarded, said he...

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