Liberals and Guantanamo Bay

They had their rights denied.  They were not treated well.  They were bloody killers who took every opportunity to get back to doing what they wanted to do - die killing Americans.  Every person who was instrumental in their release - demanding they receive rights, be released back into society - because they were innocent, and or no evidence existed as to their guilt ... if no evidence existed they would not have been incarcerated, but the source of the information may have been too secret to reveal for a petty killer regardless of consequences.  Yet the idea of pushing for the release otherwise does not prove the American system it simply recirculated men who wanted nothing more than to kill Americans. 


Freed Guantanamo inmates are heading for Yemen to join al-Qaeda fight




Tom Coghlan
The Times

January 5, 2010






At least a dozen former Guantánamo Bay inmates have rejoined al-Qaeda to fight in Yemen, The Times has learnt, amid growing concern over the ability of the country’s Government to accept almost 100 more former inmates from the detention centre.

The Obama Administration promised to close the Guantánamo facility by January 22, a deadline that it will be unable to meet. The 91 Yemeni prisoners in Guantánamo make up the largest national contingent among the 198 being held.

Six prisoners were returned to Yemen last month. After the Christmas Day bomb plot in Detroit, US officials are increasingly concerned that the country is becoming a hot-bed of terrorism. Eleven of the former inmates known to have rejoined al-Qaeda in Yemen were born in Saudi Arabia. The organisation merged its Saudi and Yemeni offshoots last year.

The country’s mountainous terrain, poverty and lawless tribal society make it, in the opinion of many analysts, a close match for Afghanistan as a new terrorist haven.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, voiced concern about the growing strength of al-Qaeda in Yemen. “Obviously, we see global implications from the war in Yemen and the ongoing efforts by al-Qaeda in Yemen to use it as a base for terrorist attacks far beyond the region,” she said.

A Yemeni, Hani Abdo Shaalan, who was released from Guantánamo in 2007, was killed in an airstrike on December 17, the Yemeni Government reported last week. The deputy head of al-Qaeda in the country is Said Ali al-Shihri, 36, who was released in 2007. Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, who was released in 2006, is a prominent ideologue featured on Yemeni al-Qaeda websites.

Geoff Morrell, the spokesman for the Pentagon, said: “This is a large question that goes beyond the issue of transferring detainees. The bulk of the remaining detainees are from Yemen and that has been the case for a long time. We are trying to work with the Yemeni Government on this.”

The US Government issued figures in May showing that 74 of the 530 detainees in Guantánamo were suspected or known to have returned to terrorist activity since their release. They included the commander of the Taleban in Helmand province, Mullah Zakir, whom the British Chief of the Defence Staff, Sir Jock Stirrup, called “a key and seemingly effective tactical leader”. Among others who returned to terrorism was Abdullah Saleh al-Ajmi, a Kuwaiti who killed six Iraqis in Mosul in 2008.

The number believed to have “returned to the fight” in the May 2009 estimate was double that of a US estimate from June 2008. US officials acknowledged that more detainees were known to have reoffended since, but the number has been classified.

“There is a historic trend and it continues. I will only say that we have said there is a trend, we are aware of it, there is no denying the trend and we are doing our best to deal with this reality,” Mr Morrell said.

Officials said that a higher proportion of those still being held were likely to return to terrorism because they were considered more of a security threat than those selected in the early stages of the release programme.

Chris Boucek, an expert on the region for the Carnegie Endowment think-tank, said that up-to-date figures for Saudi Arabia showed that 26 of the 120 Saudis released from Guantánamo were either in jail, wanted by the authorities or dead.

Gregory Johnsen, a Yemen expert at Princeton University, said evidence showed that al-Qaeda was seeking to use Yemen to mount a renewed campaign into Saudi Arabia. He cited a recent incident in which two Saudi militants, one the brother-in-law of alShihri, were killed while trying to cross the border in women’s clothing. Martyrdom videos were subsequently posted on militant websites.

The Saudi Government had boasted previously of a zero reoffence rate for Guantánamo detainees who were put through its widely praised rehabilitation programme for al-Qaeda members.

Robert Lacey, who writes about Saudi Arabia, made numerous visits to the Prince Mohammad bin Naif rehabilitation facility north of Riyadh.

“I know a number of young men from Guantánamo who were successfully reintegrated,” he told The Times. “The programme involves the whole family with a mixture of religious re-education, patriotism, guilt and co-opting in terms of being given a car, job and a nice wife.”

However, other analysts suggested that the claims for the Saudi programme were exaggerated. Mr Johnsen pointed out that an attack that nearly killed Prince Mohammad bin Naif, the Saudi head of counterterrorism, in August was mounted by a Yemen-based al-Qaeda terrorist who had offered to join the reintegration programme to get near his target.

“The Saudi programme is nothing but bureaucratised bribery. The ideologically committed terrorists simply won’t listen,” Mr Johnsen said.

The Yemen reintegration programme for terrorists was abandoned on December 10, 2005.





 
 
 
 
 
 
liberals

Valerie Plame, CIA, Democrats and Guantanamo Bay

Robert Novak wrote about Valerie Plame. Details of which were revealed to him by Richard Armitage.

Democrats for a year screamed that Karl Rove or Cheney or even Bush had committed treason or had violated the laws of the US and placed a CIA agents life in danger. They screamed and hissed (they do a lot of that). The hissing and spitting went on for the entire duration until Armitage was revealed to be the culprit. I am sure some far left loons still believe Bush put him up to it, but ...

Valerie Plame was a cubicle worker at CIA. Her past work was years behind her. She was known by many people to work for or be a part of CIA. She was not an agent, she was not doing secret stuff, she was ... a nobody.

Liberals would say - regardless, you can't reveal ....

(I don't hear any liberals calling for impeachment or arrest or investigations or their perfunctory outraged stance ...)

Detainees Shown CIA Officers' Photos

Justice Dept. Looking Into Whether Attorneys Broke Law at Guantanamo


By Peter Finn

Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, August 21, 2009


The Justice Department recently questioned military defense attorneys at Guantanamo Bay about whether photographs of CIA personnel, including covert officers, were unlawfully provided to detainees charged with organizing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to sources familiar with the investigation.

Investigators are looking into allegations that laws protecting classified information were breached when three lawyers showed their clients the photographs, the sources said. The lawyers were apparently attempting to identify CIA officers and contractors involved in the agency's interrogation of al-Qaeda suspects in facilities outside the United States, where the agency employed harsh techniques.

If detainees at the U.S. military prison in Cuba are tried, either in federal court or by a military commission, defense lawyers are expected to attempt to call CIA personnel to testify.

The photos were taken by researchers hired by the John Adams Project, a joint effort of the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, to support military counsel at Guantanamo Bay, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the inquiry. It was unclear whether the Justice Department is also examining those organizations.

Both groups have long said that they will zealously investigate the CIA's interrogation program at "black sites" worldwide as part of the defense of their clients. But government investigators are now looking into whether the defense team went too far by allegedly showing the detainees the photos of CIA officers, in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes.

If proved, the allegations would highlight how aggressively both military lawyers and their allies in the human rights community are moving to shed light on the CIA's interrogation practices and defend their clients. Defense attorneys, however, described the investigation as an attempt by the government to intimidate them into not exposing what happened to their clients.

When contacted about the investigation, the ACLU declined to discuss specifics.

"We are confident that no laws or regulations have been broken as we investigated the circumstances of the torture of our clients and as we have vigorously defended our clients' interests," said Anthony D. Romero, the group's executive director. "Rather than investigate the CIA officials who undertook the torture, they are now investigating the military lawyers who have courageously stepped up to defend these clients in these sham proceedings."

It is unclear whether the military lawyers under investigation identified the CIA personnel in the photographs to the al-Qaeda suspects or simply asked the detainees whether they had ever seen them. It is also unclear whether the inquiry involves violations of federal statutes prohibiting the identification of covert CIA officers or violations of military commission rules governing the disclosure of classified information, including to the defendants.

The investigation is being overseen by John Dion, head of the Justice Department's counter-espionage section, who has worked on many high-profile national security cases, including the prosecution of Aldrich H. Ames, the CIA mole who spied for the Soviet Union. The CIA reports security breaches to Dion's office. The Justice Department and the CIA declined to comment.
Air Force Col. Peter R. Masciola, chief military defense counsel at Guantanamo Bay, and his deputy, Michael J. Berrigan, also declined to comment.

The Washington Post could not determine how many and which CIA personnel were photographed, which photographs were shown to detainees, or when.

Romero said he does not know what laws the government thinks the military lawyers may have broken.

"That is the most vexing part of it," he said. "Usually when you're read your Miranda rights or visited by the Justice Department or the FBI, you are given some indication as to what laws are at stake."

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also declined to address the specifics of the inquiry but questioned its timing.

It is "customary in our experience that any kind of investigation like these are conducted after legal proceedings are finished in the case so as not to interfere with the defense function, not to interfere with the rights of defendants, not to give the appearance that the government is looking to chill the defense function," said Joshua L. Dratel, counsel for the John Adams Project and a former board member of the NACDL, who spoke on behalf of the group.

He added: "The lawyers have a duty to find out what happened to their clients, and to the extent that the government and certain agencies are resistant to that to protect themselves and to insulate themselves from accountability, there is a tension there, and to the extent that this investigation is part of that tension, it's most unfortunate. But the lawyers will not shirk their duty."

A wide variety of groups, including European investigators, human rights groups and news organizations, have compiled lists of people thought to have been involved in the CIA's program, including CIA station chiefs, agency interrogators and medical personnel who accompanied detainees on planes as they were moved from one secret location to another.

"It's a normal part of human rights research projects, and certainly in defense work, to compile lists of individuals who interacted with clients," Romero said.

Tracking international CIA-chartered flights, researchers have identified hotels in Europe where CIA personnel or contractors stayed. In some cases, through hotel phone records, they have been able to identify agency employees who jeopardized their cover by dialing numbers in the United States. Working from these lists, some of which include up to 45 names, researchers photographed agency workers and obtained other photos from public records, the sources said.

The government has largely cut off the airing of details about the CIA's interrogation program during proceedings at Guantanamo Bay, although many have been revealed in government documents.

At the courthouse at the prison, a court security officer, who is thought be in contact with CIA officials, can cut off the audio feed to the public gallery if there is any possibility of lawyers or defendants discussing CIA detention. At a hearing in July, the audio feed was cut when a lawyer for Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the alleged Sept. 11 conspirators, mentioned sleep deprivation, one of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used at the CIA's black sites.





















CIA