Maybe they could torture them into signing a non-disclosure agreement…

November 4, 2006

I suspect we’ve reached the pinnacle of through-the-looking-glass Bush policies. The president’s lawyers believe administration officials should have the power to seize suspects, put them in secret CIA prisons, torture them, and then, upon release, censor their ability to tell anyone about what happened to them. Kleiman called this “brutally insane.” I can’t think of a better description.

The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that their captors used to get them to talk.

The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.

The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the “black” sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him.

The government, in trying to block lawyers’ access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees’ experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public.

In other words, by torturing someone, administration officials are inadvertently sharing state secrets (i.e., the “alternative” interrogation methods themselves). Therefore, the Bush gang believes they have the power to torture suspects and the power to stop detainees from talking about it, even after the suspect has been released.

Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners “can’t even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn’t do it justice. This is ‘Alice in Wonderland.’ ”

I’m hesitant to give the Bush gang any ideas, but I don’t know why it hasn’t occured to them to simlpy torture detainees into signing a non-disclosure agreement.

I think the tortures should be prosecuted lfor releasing classified information to unauthorized persons.

  • And that’s why they need to keep these people in indefinite confinement in Guantanamo. After all, if they ever do get out, the stories they might have…

  • This is what I call Stalinist. Next, they they will airbrush these captives’ pictures from the public record, only trotting them out when they want to show how they’ve caught Al-Qaeda’s No.3 man, again.

  • We may have to equip each court room with a battery and some clips and hook up the defendants’ testicles to the thing so that when they start to improperly testify to something not allowed, they get a zap. It’ll be routine in no time. Then perhaps we can move the device into the schools under the No Child Left Behind program (I’m sure Neil could market the devices).

    No longer will people be allowed to misbehave. That’s the American I dream of!

  • #1 beat me to it, but I can’t let it go.
    Sharing such critical state secrets with suspected terrorists? None dare call it treason.

  • “He used… sarcasm. He knew all the tricks, dramatic irony, metaphor, bathos, puns, parody, litotes and… satire. He was vicious.”

  • And what does the child molester say to his victim when he’s done?

    If you tell anyone I’ll kill you.

    I’m surprised there’s any discussion of what will happen when ShrubCo’s victims get out. I thought they were going with the one hole, one bullet, no waiting strategy. Or is their idea of “compassionate conservatism”?

    Worst. Waste of oxygen. Ever.

  • It is a bit unfortunate to see Mr. Bush usher in the Dark Ages here in the early 21st century. Wait, that sentence may land me in detention. It let out the secret interrogation techniques just embraced and practiced by an Administration whose AG believes in Medieval remedies. It ain’t over til it’s over folks – vote on November 7th as if our democracy is under attack, for it is in full-fledged red alert with Mr. Bush and his minions trying to keep the helm at all costs. -Kevo

  • At the moment, they’re not releasing anyone. At the moment, they’re just negotiating the terms of the trials (tribunals, whatever) — no promise not to share the “techniques”, no access to *any* legal process, however curtailed. They can’t afford to let the poor bastards go up in front of a judge and describe what happened to them, because they’d be let go, even if they’re guilty of terrorism (no assurance of it).

    I wonder… On the scale of 1-10, where does disclosure of secret interrogating techniques stand vs disclosure of building plans for nukes?

    I also wonder… If they think that terrorists can prepare themselves to withstand those techniques… are they preparing our soldiers to withstand them also? And where is that US soldier of Iraqi descent who left the Green Zone to visit his wife and been kidnapped recently?

    These people have the imagination and the morality of a plasma cell but the tenacity of a cornered rat.

  • Remember the disappeared in Argentina, Chile, and elsewhere. After torture, the prisoners can’t be released, as they would be witnesses to their torture, so they were murdered (among other reasons). We seem to be a little less blood-thirsty, so I guess they will be held in communicado for life. Once Guantanamo prison was established, the actions of the Administration were inevitable and predicted.

  • ” … I don’t know why it hasn’t occured to them to simply torture detainees into signing a non-disclosure agreement.”

    Actually, it has occurred to them already. Just ask John Walker Lindh. As part of the good deal he got from Bush administration prosecutors, he is enjoined from revealing all the fun things the CIA goons did to him.

    • Comments are closed.