VIDEO: On CNN, Nasser Al-Awlaki Demands “Accountability” for U.S. Drone Strike That Killed His Grandson
By Josh Bell | ACLU | December 5, 2012
Speaking passionately in an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Nasser al-Awlaki talked on television for the first time about the drone strike that killed his 16-year-old grandson, Abdulrahman. The teenager, an American citizen born in Denver, was killed by a U.S. missile in 2011.
“I want to know why Abdulrahman was killed,” al-Awlaki said via satellite from Cairo. You can watch the full interview here:
http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/05/grandfather-grieves-teenage-grandson-killed-by-u-s-drone/
The ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights represent Nasser al-Awlaki in a lawsuit challenging the targeted killing of Abdulrahman as well as two other Americans killed by a drone strike two weeks earlier: Abdulrahman’s father Anwar and Samir Khan.
Later in the show, the ACLU’s Hina Shamsi debated Columbia Law School Professor Matthew Waxman, a former Bush administration official.
“There are extraordinary circumstances in which the government may use lethal force in response to an actual, concrete, and imminent threat – and those circumstances were not met in the case of any of the three citizens that we brought the lawsuit regarding,” said Shamsi.
“They are specifically called into question when you look at the case of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a 16-year-old boy eating dinner outside. No one has made any allegation that he was engaged in wrongdoing, and his case is representative of either a wrongful targeting or the case of a civilian bystander being killed…the lawsuit is an effort to provide transparency about the vague legal criteria the government is using and the basis on which it is carrying out that program.”
You can watch the full debate here:
http://amanpour.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/05/grandfather-grieves-teenage-grandson-killed-by-u-s-drone/
Related articles
- Denver Teen’s Death by Drone Remains Shrouded in Secrecy (alhittin.com)
- Obama Adviser Robert Gibbs Blames Denver Teen’s ‘Terrorist’ Father for His Drone Death (dissenter.firedoglake.com)
- How Team Obama Justifies the Killing of a 16-Year-Old American (theatlantic.com)
- Top Obama Adviser: Awlaki’s 16-Year-Old Son “Should Have Had a More Responsible Father” If He Wanted Us Not to Kill Him! (socioecohistory.wordpress.com)
Easily Abused, Domestic Drones Raise Enormous Privacy Concerns
By Linda Lye, ACLU of Northern California | October 19, 2012
Shortly before next week’s one-year anniversary of the Oakland Police Department’s brutal crackdown on Occupy Oakland, Alameda County Sheriff Greg Ahern announced that he was seeking funds to purchase a drone to engage in unspecified unmanned aerial surveillance. One of the many unfortunate lessons of OPD’s Occupy crackdown is that when law enforcement has powerful and dangerous tools in its arsenal, it will use them. Drones raise enormous privacy concerns and can easily be abused. Before any drone acquisition proceeds, we need to ask a threshold question – are drones really necessary in our community? – and have a transparent and democratic process for debating that question. In addition, if the decision is made to acquire a drone, do we have rigid safeguards and accountability mechanisms in place, so that law enforcement does not use drones to engage in warrantless mass surveillance? The ACLU of Northern California has sent the Sheriff a Public Records Act request, demanding answers to these crucial questions.
Drones should never be used for indiscriminate mass surveillance, and police should never use them unless there are legitimate grounds to believe they will collect evidence related to a specific instance of criminal wrongdoing or in emergencies.
One of the reasons cited by Sheriff Ahern in support of drones is that they are much cheaper than other forms of aerial surveillance; by his account, a helicopter costs $3 million to purchase and a drone less than 1/30 of that. But the relative inexpensiveness of electronic surveillance is also precisely why strong safeguards need to be in place. When the police have to mount elaborate and costly foot and squad patrols to follow a suspect 24/7, the expenditure of resources serves as a deterrent to abuse; it forces the police to limit their surveillance to instances when it is actually necessary. Drones permit the police to surveil people at all hours of the day and, apparently, at 1/30 the cost of other forms of aerial surveillance. The natural deterrent to abuse goes away, and invites abuse. This makes strong safeguards absolutely essential.
Before Sheriff Ahern proceeds with the drone acquisition, the community deserves answers to the questions we raised in our Public Records Act request: Why are drones necessary? How much will they cost? And what safeguards will be in place to prevent abuse?
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Police “Google Searches” Through Our Location History? No Thanks
By Kade Crockford | ACLU | October 16, 2012
Imagine a searchable database that would enable police or federal agents to instantly track everywhere you’ve ever driven in your car, like a “Google search” of your location over a period of months or even years. According to a law enforcement data manager speaking at a 2010 National Institute of Justice conference, that’s where the government is headed.
A driver location “Google search” is not available to police today because there aren’t enough license plate readers to ensure total information awareness about our driving habits. But if the federal government’s seed funding of the surveillance camera boom over the past ten years is any indication of where we are headed with license plate readers—and we have evidence to suggest a similar process is unfolding—we will get there soon enough.
The police are preparing for it, too. Dale Stockton, Program Manager of the “Road Runner” project at the Automated Regional Justice Information System in San Diego spoke on a panel on license readers at the 2010 conference and explained to police and prosecutors in attendance how best to share license plate data. Mind you, he was talking about the location information of people never accused of any crime.
Aware that a “centralized national giant bucket of license plate reader data…probably wouldn’t stand the court of public opinion,” he suggested a number of backdoor alternatives that would grant the government the same power to spy on us retroactively and with frightening precision. No such centralized data system exists and probably won’t, he said, but he described other paths towards total information awareness regarding license plate data, among them a “regional sharing capability” that in 2010 already existed in San Diego and L.A. Another option is informal data sharing between police departments, Stockton said, encouraging “anyone involved in LPR in the interim to establish an e-mail group and do an e-mail blast when you have a vehicle of interest. This is working in the southwest area of the United States,” he said.
But the regional data sharing and the informal e-mail systems Stockton described pale in comparison to the real endgame, what he called “something akin to a Google.” Not “a storage unit” per se—because remember, such a centralized database “wouldn’t stand the court of public opinion”—but a “pointer system” that would enable agencies to store their own data locally while making it readily available to police departments and federal agencies nationwide at the click of a button.
Central storage of data vs. distributed storage indexed via a pointer system? When it comes to privacy, that’s a distinction without a difference.
As license plate scanners proliferate nationwide, boring questions regarding data retention and sharing take on great importance. Unfortunately, it appears as if the government is taking us in precisely the wrong direction, from the top, down.
We’ve been making a lot of noise about location tracking of late. License plate readers rank high among the technologies that are threatening our privacy with respect to our travel patterns. Where we go says a lot about who we are, and law enforcement agencies nationwide are increasingly obtaining detailed information about where we go without any judicial oversight or reason to believe we are up to no good. Stockton says we have nothing to worry about with respect to license plate reader data and privacy, that that’s all “hocus pocus.” But he’s wrong.
We must ensure license plate readers do not become license plate trackers.
Law enforcement’s advancement of the position that agencies should be able to access data willy-nilly from other departments illustrates precisely why we’ve been worried about this technology. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised to read such a position on the Department of Justice’s website; after all, it’s the same DOJ that told a court last week that Americans have “no privacy interest” in our location information as it pertains to our cellphones.
We disagree, and we intend to make sure that a license plate data system “akin to a Google” doesn’t take shape. Nothing less than our freedom on the open road is at stake.
Related articles
- License-plate readers create ‘massive intelligence database’ (gazette.com)
- License plate readers and the rise of a surveillance industry (theverge.com)
- Smile! You’re being photographed by a license plate reader (digitaltrends.com)
- ACLU files suit for information on automatic license plate readers (jurist.org)
Federal court calls FBI to account for the unlawful imprisonment of U.S. citizen Abdullah al-Kidd
By Dror Ladin and Kate Desormeau | ACLU | October 9, 2012
Abdullah al-Kidd is a Kansas-born American citizen, a father, and a graduate of the University of Idaho where he was a star football player. And in 2003, he became the victim of the FBI’s misuse of a little-known federal law to imprison him without charges. He was arrested and imprisoned under harsh conditions for more than two weeks—even though the FBI had no probable cause to believe he had done anything wrong. The ACLU represents Mr. al-Kidd in his effort to hold the government accountable for its violation of his rights. Last week, the federal district court in Idaho issued two long-awaited decisions calling the FBI to account for Mr. al-Kidd’s unlawful arrest.
Mr. al-Kidd’s ordeal began after 9/11 when the FBI started investigating Muslims in Idaho—including Mr. al-Kidd, who converted to Islam in college. The FBI spoke with Mr. al-Kidd on multiple occasions, and he always voluntarily cooperated with their requests for interviews. Yet in March 2003, as he was preparing to travel to Saudi Arabia to study abroad on a scholarship, the FBI arrested him without warning. For 16 days, he was imprisoned under extremely harsh conditions. He was held in high-security cells that were kept lit 24 hours a day. He was stripped naked in full view of criminal inmates and guards. He was shackled, humiliated, and subjected to multiple body-cavity inspections. Although he was treated like a dangerous criminal, he was never charged with any wrongdoing. Finally, the court released him from jail on the condition that he relinquish his passport, live with his in-laws, and limit his travel to four states. Mr. al-Kidd lived under these conditions for more than a year. During this time, he lost his scholarship, had difficulty finding work and saw his marriage disintegrate.
How did this happen? Mr. al-Kidd’s imprisonment was the result of the FBI’s misuse of a little-known federal law called the “material witness” statute. This statute allows the government to arrest a witness who is needed to testify in the criminal case against someone else. It is intended only to allow for the brief detention of witnesses who are truly necessary to the trial and who otherwise would not cooperate with a subpoena. In the wake of 9/11, however, the government began abusing this limited power in an alarming new way. As the ACLU and Human Rights Watch found, the government began using the statute to arrest, preventively detain, and interrogate scores of people—almost all Muslim men—whom the government viewed with suspicion, but against whom they had no probable cause to justify a traditional arrest. Calling these people“witnesses” was a pretext. In Mr. al-Kidd’s case, the government never even called him to testify at the trial for which he was supposedly needed.
What’s more, in Mr. al-Kidd’s case, the FBI agents misled the court in order to get the arrest warrant they wanted. There was simply no reason to believe Mr. al-Kidd wouldn’t voluntarily show up to testify if asked. On the contrary, he was a U.S. citizen with a wife and child in Idaho and strong community ties, who had previously cooperated with the FBI on every occasion. So instead, the FBI submitted a warrant application riddled with omissions and falsehoods. The FBI did not tell the court that Mr. al-Kidd was an American citizen with family members living in the United States; instead, the application strongly implied that he was a Saudi national leaving the United States for good. Nor did they tell the court about Mr. al-Kidd’s past cooperation with the FBI. The FBI’s warrant application even falsely claimed that Mr. al-Kidd had purchased a one-way ticket to Saudi Arabia—when in fact, he had a round-trip ticket with an unscheduled return date, exactly what you’d expect of a student going to study abroad.
Last week, the court in Idaho—the very same court that granted the FBI’s request for a warrant in 2003—took the FBI to task for this “misleading and highly suggestive” warrant application. Judge Edward J. Lodge, adopting the recommendations of Magistrate Judge Mikel H. Williams, ruled that the FBI agent who sought Mr. al-Kidd’s arrest violated the Fourth Amendment by recklessly misleading the court. Judge Lodge also ruled that the United States was liable for false imprisonment, and that Mr. al-Kidd’s “abuse of process” claim—his claim that the government had misused the material witness statute “for a purpose other than to secure testimony”—deserves a trial.
As national commentators have recognized, the court’s rulings are a “big deal.” It’s the first time that a court has found on the merits that the government violated the constitutional rights of a person wrongfully arrested as a material witness after 9/11. It’s a reaffirmation of the judiciary’s role in preventing unjustified imprisonment. And most importantly, it’s a reminder that the FBI isn’t above the law.
Last year, the Supreme Court decided that former Attorney General John Ashcroft can’t be held liable for directing a policy of using the material witness statute to preventively detain and interrogate people after 9/11. But four out of the eight Justices considering the case (Justice Kagan was recused) agreed that there were serious questions about “whether the Government’s use of the Material Witness Statute in [Mr. al-Kidd’s] case was lawful.” Magistrate Judge Williams and Judge Lodge have now answered this question decisively in Mr. al-Kidd’s favor. As Justice Ginsburg wrote in her concurring opinion in last year’s case against Ashcroft, Mr. al-Kidd’s “ordeal is a grim reminder of the need to install safeguards against disrespect for human dignity, constraints that will control officialdom even in perilous times.” Mr. al-Kidd’s victory last week is an important step towards holding the government accountable for its abuses of power, and preventing them from ever happening again.
Related articles
- Is torturing “material witnesses” constitutional? (digbysblog.blogspot.com)
Photographers in Los Angeles considered terrorists under official LAPD policy
RT | September 7, 2012
The next time a tourist snaps a picture of the famous Hollywood sign, their photo won’t be the only item added to the annals. The LAPD considers photography a suspicious activity, and trying to take certain shots may add a page to your personal file.
A memo released last month by Police Chief Charlie Bucks re-categorizes certain behaviors — including photo shoots in public spots — to constitute suspicious activity, which is enough to have cops file a report, open an investigation and forward any further information about a suspect to the federal authorities — all over just an itchy shutter finger.
In an interdepartmental statement dispatched on August 16, Beck writes, “Taking pictures or videos of facilities/buildings, infrastructures or protected sites in a manner that would arouse suspicion in a reasonable person” is enough of a red flag to have authorities file a suspicious activity report, or SAR. According to departmental policies, those SAR files are then sent into a Consolidated Crime and Analysis Database (CCAD), where they are occasionally added to a Crime Analysis Mapping System (CAMS) for further investigation. From there, intelligence can be stored in a Information Sharing Environment (ISE) Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Shared Space and accessed at fusion centers across the country, such as the LA area’s Joint Regional Intelligence Center, where other intel is interpreted, dissected and divulged by agencies like the FBI and the US Department of Homeland Security.
In a 2010 evaluation conducted by the US Justice Department, the DoJ writes, “Ultimately, the ISE-SAR EE, through the use of the Shared Spaces concept, provides a solution for law enforcement agencies to share terrorism-related suspicious activity information, while continuing to maintain control of their data through a distributed model of information sharing.”(.pdf)
Further in the report, the Justice Department determined that “The FBI and DHS should continue to support the interface with the Shared Space environment to allow continue ease of sharing SAR data with all law enforcement agencies,” which now includes any reports written up for something as boring as a blurry snapshot. Under the LAPD’s 2008 guidelines, taking photographs or video footage “with no apparent esthetic value” could warrant filing a SAR, but the department has now broadened what they considered potential terroristic activity.
According to the latest LAPD memo, the office notes that the suspicious behavior included on their updated list is “generally protected by the First Amendment” and should not be reported in a SAR, but could be considered if the witness thinks the action in question is “reasonably indicative of criminal activity associated with terrorism,” an explanation that is as broad and open ended as the NDAA, the federal legislation signed last year that lets the government imprison Americans without charge over suspected ties with affiliates of al-Qaeda.
On the official website of the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU writes, broadly speaking, “Taking photographs of things that are plainly visible from public spaces is a constitutional right… Unfortunately, there is a widespread, continuing pattern of law enforcement officers ordering people to stop taking photographs from public places, and harassing, detaining and arresting those who fail to comply.”
University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone tells the Center for Investigative Reporting that just as any civilian can shoot photos in public spaces, though, surveillance from the authorities is allowed as well. “This would be constitutional under existing law, as long as the government is not doing this in a discriminatory manner,” Stone says. “There may be some constitutional limitations on the government’s use or preservation of such information, but at present, such limitations do not exist, except perhaps in truly egregious circumstances.”
In the days after the latest memo was made public, a backlash directed at the LAPD forced the police commission to establish a five-member civil oversight panel to decide on a set of guidelines for when SARs can be written. The Los Angeles Times reports that the panel unanimously approved an order that will continue to allow officers to write up SARs on any activity that can be interpreted, somehow, as a terroristic threat, however, and things don’t end there either.
Trying to take a picture isn’t the only action being elevated to the level of potential-terrorism in LA. In last month’s memo, Chief Bucks writes, “Demonstrating unusual interest in facilities/buildings, infrastructures or protected sites beyond mere casual or professional (e.g., engineers) interest, such that a reasonable person would consider the activity suspicious.” Examples, he adds, include observations through binoculars, taking notes and attempting to measure distances.
Days after the LAPD memo was made public, Deputy Chief Michael Downing, commanding officer of the LAPD’s counter-terrorism unit, told members of the media, “In this region we have active terrorist plots, in this region, right now,” although authorities have not corroborated those claims with details for the public yet. Chief Downing later told the Times that he was unaware of any specific terrorism plot aimed at targeting the city, but was adamant that law enforcement should be on the ready to handle any reports.
The lengths at which they will go to in an effort to stay ahead of the game has others worried scared, though.
“We ought to be ashamed of ourselves,” National Lawyers Guild attorney Jim Lafferty tells the Times.
In an op-ed published this week in the Huffington Post, Yaman Salahi of the American Civil Liberties Union says the LAPD’s latest memo makes it so that cops can consider “Anyone snapping a photograph or taking notes in a public place [as] a potential threat to public safety.”
“This kind of information sharing might sound good in theory, but a recent study from George Washington University, co-authored by the LAPD’s very own Deputy Chief Michael Downing, the head of the LAPD’s Counter-Terrorism and Special Operations Bureau, found that suspicious activity reporting has ‘flooded fusion centers, law enforcement, and other security entities with white noise.’ In practice, the profusion of SAR reports ‘complicates the intelligence process and distorts resource allocation and deployment decisions,’” Salahi writes. “The head of LAPD’s own counterterrorism bureau knows that low value SAR reports hurt counterterrorism efforts more than they help. So we should ask the LAPD to take the simple steps necessary to protect our free speech and privacy rights, and to stop harassing people engaged in perfectly lawful – and often, constitutionally protected – activities.”
Because the LAPD is now narrowing their eyes to focus in on suspicious activity at critical infrastructure sites, seemingly normal behavior anywhere — from power plants and theme parks to even a basketball game — can get you in trouble. In 2004, then Mayor Jim Hahn said, “Los Angeles’ critical infrastructure goes beyond power plants and water mains and includes facilities like Staples Center, which generates millions of dollars for our economy and is, thanks to the Lakers, an internationally-known symbol of Los Angeles.”
LA was awarded $3 million that year through the Urban Area Security Initiative Operation Archangel grant to protect its infrastructure, including the Staples Center, Disneyland and Hollywood Boulevard, and began their involvement in the Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting (SAR) Initiative (NSI) a few years later.
As RT wrote earlier this year as part of their ongoing investigation into the TrapWire surveillance system, the portal on the LAPD’s website that allows for civilians to contribute anonymous SARs is linked with an international intelligence database, as are surveillance cameras across the city. The iWatch reporting program has also been picked up in Washington, DC, where emails perpetrated to have been hacked from the servers of Strategic Forecasting last year suggest that the police department and closed-circuit cameras across the nation’s capital are tied to TrapWire as well. Intelligence collected in those instances are also fed to nationally-run fusion centers.
Related articles
- LAPD Now Arresting Photographers (poorrichards-blog.blogspot.com)
- Photographers in Los Angeles considered terrorists under official LAPD policy (EndtheLie.com)
Torture with Impunity
By Zachary Katznelson, ACLU National Security Project | August 31, 2012
Yesterday, a dark chapter in American history got that much more disgraceful. Attorney General Holder announced the closure of the last two open criminal inquiries into abusive interrogations by CIA officials. The pronouncement means that not a single CIA official will be prosecuted in federal courts for any of the abuse, torture or even death that took place at the hands of CIA officers and contractors.
Since 9/11, dozens of terrorism suspects have been held incommunicado by the CIA in secret prisons around the world and subjected to repeated brutality in the name of extracting information. The White House and its lead legal advice team, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), approved the use of these previously illegal tactics based on profoundly flawed legal reasoning and a complete lack of interrogation or law enforcement experience.
CIA interrogators were told that they could waterboard suspects, even though the Reagan administration and its predecessors prosecuted Americans and others for using the tactic. Interrogators were told they could use, among other tactics, extended sleep deprivation; “stress positions” such as forced-standing, handcuffing in painful crouched positions and shackling people to the ceiling, usually for hours or even days; confining prisoners to small, coffin-like boxes with air and light cut off; extended forced nudity; sensory bombardment; extreme temperatures; hooding; and physical beatings, including slamming prisoners into walls. Each and every one of these techniques had been declared torture at some point by US courts, Israeli courts, European Courts, the UN Committee on Torture or other foreign courts. But the OLC’s approval of the techniques meant the Obama Justice Department refused to investigate their use. Instead, in 2009, Attorney General Holder ordered a preliminary review of 101 cases where the CIA allegedly went even beyond the approved torture techniques. In June 2011, the Justice Department closed 99 of those cases and opened full investigations into the remaining 2, both of which involved prisoners who died while in US custody. Now, those last two investigations have also ended.
It is simply unacceptable that torture can be treated with impunity, no matter the goal of the torturers. Doing so gravely undermines the prohibition against torture worldwide and sends the dangerous message to US and foreign officials that there will be no consequences for future abuses.
So, the ACLU is taking the long view of this struggle. Despite the Justice Department’s refusal to enforce the law, we will continue to press for true accountability – both in the United States and overseas – for the designers, facilitators, overseers and perpetrators of torture and abuse. We will continue to work for the day when officials hear a resoundingly different message than the one delivered by Attorney General Holder: torture and abuse are never legitimate, but if you do make the egregious error of crossing that line, fear the law, for you will be held be to account.
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Judge sides with FBI in Orange County Muslim spying suit
RT | August 15, 2012
A US federal judge dismissed a lawsuit against the FBI over the agency’s controversial practice of spying on California Muslims, arguing the disclosure of a potentially unconstitutional domestic spy program might reveal sensitive state secrets.
District Judge Cormac J. Carney ruled that “the state secrets privilege may unfortunately mean the sacrifice of individual liberties for the sake of national security,” the LA Times reported.
Judge Carney claims to have reached his conclusion after reviewing confidential statements by top FBI officials. The judge ruled that the domestic espionage program – dubbed Operation Flex – involved “intelligence that, if disclosed, would significantly compromise national security.”
The lawsuit against the FBI was filed jointly by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) in 2011, on behalf of the Muslim community in Orange Country, California.
The litigants claim the FBI violated their civil liberties by employing an undercover informant, identified as Craig Monteilh, in a dragnet operation that targeted individuals on the basis of their religious beliefs. Monteilh infiltrated local mosques and installed bugging devices in offices, homes and places of worship.
ACLU attorney Peter Bibring said the ruling is “terribly unfortunate that there’s a doctrine in the law that allows courts to throw out cases that allege serious constitutional violations based on secret evidence the judge reviews behind closed doors that never sees the light of day,” the LA Times cited him as saying. “That shouldn’t be in a democratic society.”
The plaintiffs vowed to appeal the decision.
Monteilh previously admitted to spying on the Islamic Center of Irvine from July 2006 to October 2007, as well as ten other Southern California mosques.
Financial incentives and pressure from his FBI handler led him to use entrapment and other unethical tactics to ensnare targets “on a daily basis for over a year,” Monteilh said to RT in April. He also described how blackmail was used to force other Muslims to turn informant.
“That was part of my role in Operation Flex,” he said. “For example, in my conversations, or in their private conversations, certain things would come up. Like if a Muslim man was married and he had a girlfriend, a mistress, the FBI would use that information to blackmail that individual to become an informant. Or someone, perhaps, had a different sexual orientation. Or a certain youth had recreational drug use or desire to use certain narcotics. The FBI would use this information to blackmail them to become an informant.”
Montelih explained how the FBI supplied him with ‘fobs’ – sophisticated surveillance devices the size of a car remote – which he routinely planted at “the Imams’ offices, in certain board members’ offices, certain worshipers’ cars, in their homes” and “around the mosques where I would frequently pray.” He also described using a secret video recorder that had been sewn into his shirt.
He claims the operation eventually expanded abroad, and grew to involve the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Monteilh was previously convicted and served time for cashing fraudulent checks. He also filed a suit against the government, alleging that his rights had been violated and his life was endangered while employed by the FBI. His case was dismissed earlier this year.
A portion of the case may still go to trial, with Judge Carney branding some of the civil liberties violations of Operation Flex “disturbing.”
Judge Carney permitted the suit to stand against five individual FBI agents – though not the entire bureau – under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. The act, signed into law in 1978, imposed certain procedures for the physical and electronic surveillance and collection of “foreign intelligence information” between “foreign powers” and “agents of foreign powers,” which in some cases may include American citizens and permanent residents suspected of being engaged in espionage.
The FBI admitted that Monteilh was used during the operation, but has denied engaging in any unconstitutional practices, claiming that the bureau was investigating credible evidence of potential terrorist activity.
Attorneys representing two of the agents being charged say there is little they can do to defend their clients against Monteilh’s accusations, as the information surrounding their investigation was classified.
“Our clients literally are defenseless to defend themselves,” attorney David Scheper said. “It’s just not a fair fight.”
~~~
Civil rights attorneys to appeal FBI Muslim spying lawsuit decision
FBI ‘Primer’ Instructs Interrogators to Break Detainees Through Isolation
By Kevin Gosztola | FireDogLake | August 2, 2012
A “primer” from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) seems to encourage the use of isolation to break down prisoners in overseas prisons. Published in 2011, it advocates the use of this coercive measure to break detainees ahead of interrogations, which violates or runs contrary to FBI policy.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) obtained the “primer” through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Devon Chaffee, Legislative Council for the ACLU, says it is the first document she has seen “that’s written by an FBI agent” and “explicitly recommends that FBI agents recommend that detainees be put in isolation.”
Here is part of the primer that led the ACLU to be concerned:
…For the safety of other detainees in the facility, detainees fresh from the battlefield should be detained in individual cells until complete assessment can be made. The assessment can be considered to be complete when the decision has been made whether to release the detainee or send him to long term detention facility. Additionally, access to anything above the baseline level of treatment provided to all detainees should be strictly controlled by the assigned Interrogator. Granting this authority and control to the Interrogator places the Interrogator in a position of power that can provide an advantage when crafting an approach strategy.
Isolation of the detainee not only ensures the safety of other detainees but also prevents the individual detainee from drawing strength from the support and companionship of other detainees It also prevents collusion on cover stories between detainees. A large part of the Interrogators advantage is the natural fear of the unknown that the detainee will be experiencing. Exposure to other detainees will mitigate that fear. You may not be in a position to influence how your subject is held, but at a minimum you should know if he has been held in a communal cell prior to interrogation…
Chaffee considers this to be problematic because “isolation was component of many of the abusive interrogations that took place” after the September 11th attacks. Isolation can lead to serious abuses in interrogation. The FBI also has a policy that prohibits the “use of coercion in interrogation” and the FBI and Supreme Court have recognized that “isolation in interrogation is an indication of coercion.” [For these reasons, the ACLU sent a letter to FBI director Robert Mueller.]
The FBI would presumably contend the isolation is only done for so-called security purposes, however, additional language in the “primer” makes it clear the isolation is intended to inflict a psychological impact on detainees so they are essentially in a state of “learned helplessness” (like what the CIA has done to detainees in their custody whom they’ve tortured).
…[D]etainees should not be held in the clothing they are captured in. Detaining a subject in his own clothing could impact negatively on the health and safety of detention facility personnel and other detainees in the facility. Having the detainee change into hospital pajamas, or some other generic clothing, and flip flops has the added benefit of removing a potential source of comfort and an anchor to the world outside the detention facility. This is an important step in the process of detaching the detainee from the outside world and replacing his concern for his cause and his colleagues with a concern for his own fate…
…In order to create the optimum conditions for a productive interview, if the policy of the facility permits, consider having your detainee placed in an individual cell several days before you begin interrogation. If you are conducting law enforcement interviews in a DOD facility, a formal request from the FBI must be made to isolate a detainee. This request must be approved by the first O-6 in the chain of command.
Keep in mind that a thorough interrogation may be a multi-session, multi-day process. Having your subject return to a communal cell between sessions is completely counterproductive. A subject returning to a communal cell will feel pressure from fellow detainees based on the duration of his absence from the cell and the knowledge that he will be questioned by his peers upon his return. Isolation of your subject removes this intangible, but extremely powerful, influence from your subject. [emphasis added]
Chaffee notes, ”There are some legitimate administrative reasons why a detainee for a limited amount of time would need to be isolated, potentially at his request or for his protection from other detainees in the facility, for instance.” But, “the way that it is described and the language that is being used” suggests the isolation is being employed to “break a detainee’s will” and that to the ACLU “seems inherently coercive.”
Also, there is no need to “separate the detainee from the entire population” if collusion is suspected. Just separate the detainee from the detainee(s) he is suspected of colluding with. And, if a decision to separate detainees needs to be made, the head of the facility should make that decision. Why should an FBI interrogator be in a position to make this decision?
It is unclear if this encouragement for isolation is re-emerging in policy. However, Chaffee argues the FBI should not be asking foreign governments or other agencies to engage in conduct that the FBI agents are prohibited from engaging in, especially when this conduct could potentially lead to human rights abuses.
A final note: creating a state of “learned helplessness” in a prisoner, a concept developed by positive psychologist Martin Seligman, can deliberately make that prisoner ill.
This post by David Dobbs over at ScienceBlogs.com (a partner with National Geographic) explains that “some studies have shown ‘learned helplessness’ to be an apt model for major depression from both a behavioral and even a neurological perspective. In a sense, then, to intentionally produce it in someone by causing them pain and distress in a situation they are powerless to change is to inflict on them a mental illness.” Inducing a state of helplessness or depression in a person through isolation—which is torture—will likely make a human very ill.
Given this scientific reality, the FBI’s ‘primer’ unmistakably encourages the cruel and inhuman treatment of prisoners.
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Provoking a Path to Persia
The Saban Center’s prescient paper on war with Iran
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | October 20, 2011
In June 2009, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy published “Which Path to Persia?—Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran.” Writing in a tone strikingly reminiscent of the Project for a New American Century’s infamous pre-9/11 paper “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the six co-authors noted that, “It seems highly unlikely that the United States would mount an invasion without any provocation or other buildup.” For a think tank specifically established by media mogul Haim Saban to protect Israel, this could prove to be a formidable obstacle impeding their desired march—of U.S. troops—to Tehran.
“In fact, if the United States were to decide that to garner greater international support, galvanize U.S. domestic support, and/or provide a legal justification for an invasion, it would be best to wait for an Iranian provocation, then the time frame for an invasion might stretch out indefinitely,” Saban’s think-tankers ruefully observed.
“With only one real exception, since the 1978 revolution, the Islamic Republic has never willingly provoked an American military response, although it certainly has taken actions that could have done so if Washington had been looking for a fight. Thus it is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion. And it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocative move, which Iran has been wary of doing most times in the past, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.”
Seemingly undeterred by Iran’s frustrating unwillingness to provide the requisite provocation, the analysts continued to examine this option… continue
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