Both The Progressive and the ACLU have stories up over on their sites about how the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have recruited tens of thousands of members of corporate America to be the “eyes and ears” of the government. In return, they receive secret briefings on terrorism. The program is called InfraGard, and from The Progressive story:

The members of this rapidly growing group, called InfraGard, receive secret warnings of terrorist threats before the public does-and, at least on one occasion, before elected officials. In return, they provide information to the government, which alarms the ACLU. But there may be more to it than that. One business executive, who showed me his InfraGard card, told me they have permission to “shoot to kill” in the event of martial law.

InfraGard is “a child of the FBI,” says Michael Hershman, the chairman of the advisory board of the InfraGard National Members Alliance and CEO of the Fairfax Group, an international consulting firm.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Invictus

I know there is another diary on Mukasey and waterboarding up, by BarbinMD. I recommend it. But this is not a duplicate diary. It covers today’s hearing (still in process as I write), and calls for Mukasey’s impeachment, giving the reasons why. It also goes into some detail on the legal points involved.

Actually, what Michael B. Mukasey said today at his Senate oversight hearing was that waterboarding, under non-specific certain circumstances, is not torture. Of course, he couldn’t say that outright; he said in legalese. In the obscurity of U.S. law, torture is defined as something that “shocks the conscience.” And Mukasey, squirming before Sen. Dick Durbin’s questioning, feels that after extensive review, piles of documents and opinions, the question of waterboarding is — sometimes — “unresolved.”

Here’s some of the testimony between Durbin and Mukasey (thanks to Firedoglake):

I’m sending a letter off to the American Psychological Association (APA) explaining my decision to resign membership from that organization, stimulated by APA’s failure to address the torture issue. The text of the letter follows below (with hypertext links added here to assist the reader with context).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++

January 27, 2008

Alan E. Kazdin, Ph.D.

President, American Psychological Association

750 First Street, NE

Washington, DC 20002-4232

Dear Dr. Kazdin,

I hereby resign my membership in the American Psychological Association (APA). I have up until now been working with Psychologists for an Ethical APA for an overturn in APA policy on psychologist involvement in national security interrogations, and I greatly respect those who are fighting via a dues boycott to influence APA policy on this matter. I hope to still work with these principled and dedicated professionals, but I cannot do it anymore from a position within APA.

“Whither I fly is Hell…”

Candace Gorman is reporting that her client, Guantanamo prisoner Abdul Hamid al-Ghizzawi, contracted AIDS at Guantanamo’s Camp Delta. He believes he was infected during a “routine blood test.”

Last October I wrote about Mr. al-Ghizzawi’s dire medical state, and the Amnesty International campaign to save him. At that time, all we knew is that he was seriously ill with hepatitis B and tuberculosis. While Guantanamo authorities deny it, he claims he is not receiving adequate medical care. Eyewitness accounts from the U.S. prison confirm his charges.

His attorney wrote the following at The Guantanamo Blog last Sunday:

OK, so the Washington Post article today doesn’t stay “steal.” The headline reads Dire Year on Wall Street Yields Gigantic Bonuses. And how big were these bonuses? Reportedly larger than the GNP of of Sri Lanka, Lebanon or Bulgaria, oar more precisely, $39 billion dollars in year-end bonuses for the top five Wall Street firms. Meanwhile, shareholders in three of these five firms lost $80 billion dollars.

Now I know that economics is supposed to be the “dismal science,” but who knew how dismal? The shareholders of these companies may want to pause and consider the math. The money out of shareholder pockets, much of which comes from institutional investments by union funds, IRA mutual funds, state retirement agencies, etc., goes directly into the pockets of a handful of the super-rich. Meanwhile these same firms plan to ax “at least 4,900 jobs as losses mount from the collapse of the subprime mortgage market.”

Ah, this is capitalism.

The story of the Iranian speedboats in the Strait of Hormuz that supposedly threatened U.S. warships has been pretty thoroughly debunked by now. Now Asia Times has an article that details how the disinformation was created and spread by the Pentagon, as the Pentagon planted stories with the press, starting with CBS and CNN. Even though the encounter at sea was “not that different from many others in the Gulf over more than a decade,” the Pentagon timed the news about the supposed provocation to a trip by Bush to the region.

The key line in the Asia Times piece is right at the beginning (my bold emphasis):

Senior Pentagon officials, evidently reflecting a broader administration policy decision, used an off-the-record Pentagon briefing to turn the January 6 US-Iranian incident in the Strait of Hormuz into a sensational story demonstrating Iran’s military aggressiveness, a reconstruction of the events following the incident shows.

Last week the D.C. Court of Appeals threw out a suit by three British former prisoners at Gitmo, and in their ruling legitimated the use of torture at Guantanamo’s Camp Delta, saying that such “seriously criminal” actions by the government was “foreseen”, and that no one could be held responsible for following orders. It also stated that Guantanamo prisoners were not legally “persons.” Could I be making this up?

No chance. Here’s Scott Horton’s take at Harper’s:

Three British detainees held at Gitmo, who were seized for bounty payments for no good reason and who were pried free by the British Government, filed suit alleging that they had been tortured and denied their religious freedom. They sought redress from the authors of the Gitmo system, including former Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, who crafted a series of once-secret orders directing the Guantánamo torture system. Among the practices introduced and used were waterboarding, hypothermia, long-time standing, sleep deprivation in excess of two days and the use of psychotropic drugs-each of which constitutes torture under American law and under international standards. These orders and their implementation were criminal acts under United States law….

The judges hearing the case, all movement conservative Republicans appointed by a President named Bush- Karen LeCraft Henderson, Janice Rogers Brown and A. Raymond Randolph-concluded that the plaintiffs were not “persons” for purpose of the relevant statute protecting religious freedom. They further concluded that acts of torture and contempt and abuse targeting religious belief were within the legitimate scope of conduct of an American cabinet officer, so that official immunity blocked the suit.

Tomorrow, a California State Senate Select Committee is holding a hearing on the Ridley-Thomas Resolution which would require California licensing agencies to send letters to their health professional licensees to inform them that participation in abusive detainee treatment and coercive interrogations could be subject to prosecution. I described this bill last week. Now, the president of Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has written to State Senator Ridley-Thomas offering full support for this important piece of legislation.

All opponents of state-sponsored torture and abusive interrogations should support this bill, and put maximum pressure on California legislators to vote this bill into law. Additionally, with the presidential campaign headed for a February primary showdown in 20 states, including California, all candidates should tell us where they stand on this potentially landmark bill.

Also posted at Invictus

The “dark nexus” of the world is where its most secretive business is conducted, such as the bribes and secret payoffs that Sibel Edmonds recently revealed were behind a nuclear proliferation ring that involved many top U.S. officials. According to a recent compelling article by Chris Floyd (whose descriptor above I have quoted), this “shadowlands” is “where covert operations, criminal networks, terrorism, high finance and state policy mingle, and battle, in profitable murk.” I believe Peter Dale Scott famously called this essential, if diabolical aspect of modern history, “deep politics.”

Floyd likens the recent Edmonds tale to that of the scandal around BCCI, “the ‘Bank of Credit and Commercial International,’ a supposed financial group that a U.S. Senate investigation called ‘one of the largest criminal enterprises in history'”.

In a turnabout, the CIA said “it would begin handing over documents to Congress about the destruction of videotapings showing the harsh interrogation of two terror suspects after the House Intelligence Committee threatened to subpoena two agency officials,” according to a breaking story from Associated Press.

This comes after the bombshell revelations earlier yesterday that at least four administration officials, including David Addington, Harriet Myers and Alberto Gonzales, were involved in discussions about what to do with these incriminating videotapes. dday had an excellent diary on this earlier.

The turnabout also comes after House Intelligence Committee Chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) said he was going to subpoena former and current CIA officials and attorneys if they didn’t agree to appear before the committee. The agreement by CIA apparently also includes agreement on the testimony of CIA general counsel John Rizzo, the official who is said to have ordered the destruction of the tapes, though CIA won’t commit him to a specific date.  

Crossposted at Invictus

Blogger Deep Harm over at Daily Kos did a nice job of writing up a review on Mark Benjamin’s recent article at Salon.com, Inside the CIA’s notorious “black sites”. Benjamin’s article details the case of CIA Yemeni prisoner (now released), Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah.

Mr. Bashmilah was held for 19 months in a succession of prisons, trapped inside the CIA’s secret worldwide gulag. Now the one-time CIA torture victim has filed a declaration as part of a lawsuit brought by the ACLU against Jeppesen Dataplan Inc., a subsidiary of Boeing Company, and implicated in secret CIA rendition flights.

According to Mark Benjamin, Mr. Bashmilah — a businessman who had travelled from his home in Indonesia to Jordan to help arrange a surgery for his mother — was subjected to extreme psychological torture and physical maltreatment, first by the Jordanians:

Crossposted at Invictus and Daily Kos

Notoriously (depending upon your point of view), this past weekend the Washington Post published an article revealing that a number of top Democrats and Republicans were briefed in September 2002 on CIA interrogation methods. They were “given a virtual tour of the CIA’s overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.” The reported techniques are said to have included waterboarding.

Yesterday, Pelosi released a statement clarifying what happened from her perspective. This must have shocked even a little those Democratic Party stalwarts, but no, as we’ll see, their Nancy can make no mistake. She was, you see… helpless.