The Rendition Project suggests aircraft associated with secret detention operations landed at British airports 1,622 times

US warplanes at their base in the British territory of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Photograph: Usaf/AFP

The UK’s support for the CIA’s global rendition programme after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US was far more substantial than has previously been recognised, according to a new research project that draws on a vast number of publicly available data and documentation.

Evidence gathered by The Rendition Project – an interactive website that maps thousands of rendition flights – highlight 1,622 flights in and out of the UK by aircraft now known to have been involved in the agency’s secret kidnap and detention programme.

While many of those flights may not have been involved in rendition operations, the researchers behind the project have drawn on testimony from detainees, Red Cross reports, courtroom evidence, flight records and invoices to show that at least 144 were entering the UK while suspected of being engaged in rendition operations.

While the CIA used UK airports for refuelling and overnight stopovers, there is no evidence that any landed in the UK with prisoners on board. This may suggest that the UK government denied permission for this. In some cases, it is unclear whether the airline companies would have been aware of the purpose of the flights.

Some 51 different UK airports were used by 84 different aircraft that have been linked by researchers to the rendition programme. Only the US and Canada were visited more frequently. The most used UK airport was Luton, followed by Glasgow Prestwick and Stansted. There were also flights in and out of RAF Northolt and RAF Brize Norton.

The CIA’s use of UK airports was first reported by the Guardian in September 2005. Jack Straw, the then foreign secretary, dismissed the evidence, telling MPs in December that year that “unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the United States … there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition.”

Straw told the same MPs that media reports of UK involvement in the mistreatment of detainees were “in the realms of the fantastic”. Documentation subsequently disclosed in the high court in London showed that Straw had consigned British citizens to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba after they were detained in Afghanistan in 2001.

…

New light shed on US government’s extraordinary rendition programme

22 May 2013

Online project uncovers details of way in which CIA carried out kidnaps and secret detentions following September 11 attacks

• The Rendition Project interactive
• CIA rendition flights explained

22 May 2013

US rendition map: what it means, and how to use it

22 May 2013

US rendition: every suspected flight mapped

21 May 2013

Abdel Hakim Belhaj torture case may be heard in secret court

UK funds poll in Pakistan on US drone attacks

18 May 2013

Foreign Office sponsored surveys investigating impact of CIA drone campaign in Pakistan, minister Alistair Burt tells MPs

Ian Cobain and James Ball
The Guardian, Wednesday 22 May 2013 12.02 BST

Find this story at 22 May 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

SEOUL, South Korea — State prosecutors raided the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service of South Korea on Tuesday to investigate accusations that the spy agency used its agents and hired bloggers to influence the presidential election in December.

The raid, which started on Tuesday morning and continued into the evening, was highly unusual, dealing a blow to the reputation of the spy agency. Such a raid would have been unthinkable decades ago when the agency had served as the main tool of political control for South Korea’s military dictators.

Even after South Korea was democratized in the early 1990s, prosecutors raided the secretive agency only once — in 2005, when it was revealed that the agency illegally ran an extensive operation of bugging the telephones of politicians, businessmen, journalists and others.

Although the intelligence agency has repeatedly vowed not to meddle in politics, accusations of wrongdoing by its agents resurfaced during the campaign for the Dec. 19 presidential election. The main opposition, the Democratic United Party, and government critics accused the agency of trying to influence online debates in favor of President Park Geun-hye, the governing party’s candidate at the time. Ms. Park beat her opposition rival, Moon Jae-in, by a million votes.

Last month, the police said that at least two agents from the National Intelligence Service illegally posted comments online criticizing the political opposition ahead of the election. But they said they could not determine whether the two were part of a much bigger operation by the leadership of the agency to influence the election, as the opposition party alleged.

A chief police investigator, who had been replaced in the middle of the investigation, said in interviews with domestic news media that her bosses had intervened in an effort to whitewash the inquiry. The National Police Agency denied the accusation.

Prosecutors have since taken over the investigation.

They themselves faced a long-running accusation from the political opposition and other critics that they shied away from offending the top political power. Because of that mistrust, the political parties have agreed to begin a separate parliamentary investigation.

On Tuesday, prosecutors raided the psychological intelligence bureau in the spy agency’s sprawling compound in the southern edge of the South Korean capital, Seoul.

Their action came a day after prosecutors summoned the former intelligence service director, Won Sei-hoon, a close ally of former President Lee Myung-bak, for questioning. Two other senior intelligence officials were questioned in the past few days.

The spy agency had no comment on the raid, a spokesman said by telephone. But it had earlier denied interfering in the election. The agency said its officers’ online activities had been part of its normal psychological operations aimed at North Korea.

…

April 30, 2013
By CHOE SANG-HUN

Find this story at 30 April 2013

© 2013 The New York Times Company

In 1982, investigative journalist Allan Nairn interviewed a Guatemalan general named “Tito” on camera during the height of the indigenous massacres. It turns out the man was actually Otto Pérez Molina, the current Guatemalan president. We air the original interview footage and speak to Nairn about the U.S. role backing the Guatemalan dictatorship. Last week, Nairn flew to Guatemala where he had been scheduled to testify in the trial of former U.S.-backed dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, the first head of state in the Americas to stand trial for genocide. Ríos Montt was charged in connection with the slaughter of more than 1,700 people in Guatemala’s Ixil region after he seized power in 1982. His 17-month rule is seen as one of the bloodiest chapters in Guatemala’s decades-long campaign against Maya indigenous people, which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands. The trial took a surprising turn last week when Guatemala President Gen. Otto Pérez Molina was directly accused of ordering executions. A former military mechanic named Hugo Reyes told the court that Pérez Molina, then serving as an army major and using the name Tito Arias, ordered soldiers to burn and pillage a Maya Ixil area in the 1980s. Click here to hear our live update of the trial from Nairn in Guatemala City. [includes rush transcript]
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. We continue our coverage of the historic trial of former U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Allan Nairn joined us in our studio last week before he flew to Guatemala. I began by asking him to describe just who Ríos Montt is.

ALLAN NAIRN: Ríos Montt was the dictator of Guatemala during 1982, ’83. He seized power in a military coup. He was trained in the U.S. He had served in Washington as head of the Inter-American Defense College. And while he was president, he was embraced by Ronald Reagan as a man of great integrity, someone totally devoted to democracy. And he killed many tens of thousands of civilians, particularly in the Mayan northwest highlands. In this particular trial, he is being charged with 1,771 specific murders in the area of the Ixil Mayans. These charges are being brought because the prosecutors have the names of each of these victims. They’ve been able to dig up the bones of most of them.

AMY GOODMAN: Talk about how this campaign, this slaughter, was carried out and how it links to, well, the current government in Guatemala today.

ALLAN NAIRN: The army swept through the northwest highlands. And according to soldiers who I interviewed at the time, as they were carrying out the sweeps, they would go into villages, surround them, pull people out of their homes, line them up, execute them. A forensic witness testified in the trial that 80 percent of the remains they’ve recovered had gunshot wounds to the head. Witnesses have—witnesses and survivors have described Ríos Montt’s troops beheading people. One talked about an old woman who was beheaded, and then they kicked her head around the floor. They ripped the hearts out of children as their bodies were still warm, and they piled them on a table for their parents to see.

The soldiers I interviewed would describe their interrogation techniques, which they had been taught at the army general staff. And they said they would ask people, “Who in the town are the guerrillas?” And if the people would respond, “We don’t know,” then they would strangle them to death. These sweeps were intense. The soldiers said that often they would kill about a third of a town’s population. Another third they would capture and resettle in army camps. And the rest would flee into the mountains. There, in the mountains, the military would pursue them using U.S.-supplied helicopters, U.S.- and Israeli-supplied planes. They would drop U.S. 50-kilogram bombs on them, and they would machine-gun them from U.S. Huey and Bell helicopters, using U.S.-supplied heavy-caliber machine guns.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s turn to a clip of you interviewing a soldier in the highlands. This is from a Finnish documentary—is that right? And when was this done? When were you talking to soldiers there?

ALLAN NAIRN: This was in September of 1982 in the Ixil zone in the area surrounding the town of Nebaj.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s go to a clip of this interview.

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] This is how we are successful. And also, if we have already interrogated them, the only thing we can do is kill them.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] And how many did you kill?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] We killed the majority. There is nothing else to do than kill them.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] So you killed them at once?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] Yes. If they do not want to do the right things, there is nothing more to do than bomb the houses.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Bomb? With what?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] Well, with grenades or collective bombs.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] What is a collective bomb?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] They are like cannons.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Do you use helicopters?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] Yes.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] What is the largest amount of people you have killed at once?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] Well, really, in Sololá, around 500 people.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] And how do they react when you arrive?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] Who?

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] The people from the small villages.

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] When the army arrives, they flee from their houses. And so, as they flee to the mountains, the army is forced to kill them.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] And in which small village did the army do that kind of thing?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] That happened a lot of times.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Specifically, could you give me some examples where these things happened?

GUATEMALAN SOLDIER: [translated] In Salquil, Sumal Chiquito, Sumal Grande, Acul.

AMY GOODMAN: When did you interview this soldier, Allan?

ALLAN NAIRN: This was in September of ’82.

AMY GOODMAN: What were you doing there?

ALLAN NAIRN: Making a documentary for Scandinavian television.

AMY GOODMAN: So you have soldiers talking about killing civilians, the brutal interrogations that they were engaged in. Why would they be telling you this? You’re a journalist. They’re talking about crimes they’re committing.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, because this is their everyday life. They do this all the time. They do it under orders from the top of the chain of command, at that time Ríos Montt. And they had hardly ever seen journalists at that time. It was very rare for an outside journalist or even a local journalist to go into that area.

AMY GOODMAN: So let’s take this to the current day, to the president of Guatemala today, because at the same time you were interviewing these soldiers, you interviewed the Guatemalan president—at least the Guatemalan president today in 2013.

ALLAN NAIRN: Yes, the senior officer, the commander in Nebaj, was a man who used the code name “Mayor Tito,” Major Tito. It turns out that that man’s real name was Otto Pérez Molina. Otto Pérez Molina later ascended to general, and today he is the president of Guatemala. So he is the one who was the local implementer of the program of genocide which Ríos Montt is accused of carrying out.

AMY GOODMAN: This is a huge charge. I mean, right now, it’s an historic trial when it’s 25 years after a past president is now being charged. Let’s go to a clip of Otto Pérez Molina, the current president of Guatemala, but this is 1982 in the heartland area of Quiché in northwest Guatemala, northwest of Guatemala City. In this video clip, Otto Pérez Molina is seen reading from political literature found on one of the bodies. This is your interview with him.

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] “The poor artisan fights alongside the worker. The poor peasant fights alongside the worker. The wealth is produced by us, the poor. The army takes the poor peasants. Together, we have an invincible force. All the families are with the guerrilla, the guerrilla army of the poor, toward final victory forever.” These are the different fronts that they have.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] So here they are saying that the army killed some people.

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, this is astounding. This is the current president of Guatemala standing over these bodies. Tell us more.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, as one of the soldiers says in the sound in the background, the—Pérez Molina interrogated these men. And soon after, they were—they were dead. And one soldier told me off camera that in fact after Pérez Molina interrogated them, they finished them off.

AMY GOODMAN: This man, Pérez Molina, the president, actually was going by a code name at the time. When was it clear that this is Pérez Molina? Though we have a very clear shot of him.

ALLAN NAIRN: For a long time, Pérez Molina was trying to obscure his past and apparently hide the fact that he played this role in a supervisory position during the highland massacres. During the Guatemalan presidential campaign, which Pérez Molina eventually won, about two years ago, I got calls while I was in Asia from the Guatemalan press, from The Wall Street Journal, asking whether I could vouch for the fact that Mayor Tito, the man in the video who I encountered in the northwest highlands in the midst of the massacres—whether I could vouch for the fact that Mayor Tito was in fact General Otto Pérez Molina, the presidential candidate. And I said that I couldn’t, just from looking at the current videos. You know, people can change a lot visually over 30 years, so I said I couldn’t be sure. It turns out that—and during the campaign, when reporters would ask the Pérez Molina campaign, “Is Pérez Molina Mayor Tito?” they would dodge the question. They would evade. They were running from it. It turns out, though, we just learned this week, that Pérez Molina had admitted back in 2000 that he was Mayor Tito. But then, apparently afterward, he thought better of it and was trying to bury it. And now, this is potentially trouble for him. He’s currently president, and so, under Guatemalan law, he enjoys immunity. But once he leaves the presidency, he could, in theory, be subject to prosecution, just as Ríos Montt is now being prosecuted.

AMY GOODMAN: That could be a serious motivation for him declaring himself president for life.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Ríos Montt seized power by a coup, but one of the important facts about the situation now is that the military men don’t have the power that they used to. The fact that this trial is happening is an indication of that. This trial is happening because the survivors refused to give up. They persisted—the survivors have been working on this for decades, pushing to bring Ríos Montt and the other generals to justice. They refused to give up. They got support from international—some international human rights lawyers. And within the Guatemalan justice system, there were a few people of integrity who ascended to positions of some authority within the prosecutorial system, within the judiciary. And so, we now have this near-political miracle of a country bringing to trial its former dictator for genocide, while the president of the country, who was implicated in those killings, sits by.

AMY GOODMAN: Allan, this video that we have of you interviewing Pérez Molina—again, as you said, he admitted to the Guatemalan newspaper, Prensa Libre, in 2000 that he used the nickname Tito—is quite astounding. So let’s go to another clip, where you’re talking to him about the kind of support that he wants.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] The United States is considering giving military help here in the form of helicopters. What is the importance of helicopters for all of you?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] A helicopter is an apparatus that’s become of great importance not only here in Guatemala but also in other countries where they’ve had problems of a counterinsurgency.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Like in Vietnam?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] In Vietnam, for example, the helicopter was an apparatus that was used a lot.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Can you also use it in combat?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Yes, of course. The helicopters that are military types, they are equipped to support operations in the field. They have machine guns and rocket launchers.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] What type of mortars are you guys using?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] There’s various types of mortars. We have small mortars and the mortars Tampella.

ALLAN NAIRN: Tampella.

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Yes, it’s a mortar that’s 60 millimeters.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Is it very powerful? Does it have a lot of force to destroy things?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Yes, it’s a weapon that’s very effective. It’s very useful, and it has a very good result in our operation in defense of the country.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Is it against a person or…?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Yes, it’s an anti-personnel weapon.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Do you have one here?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] It’s light and easy to transport, as well.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] So, it’s very light, and you can use it with your hand.

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] Exactly, with the hand.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] Where did you get them?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] These, we got from Israel.

ALLAN NAIRN: [translated] And where do you get the ammunition?

MAYOR OTTO PÉREZ MOLINA: [translated] That’s also from Israel.

AMY GOODMAN: So, this is, again, the current president, Pérez Molina, of Guatemala, the general you met in the highlands in 1982, asking for more aid. Talk about the relationship between Guatemala then and the United States.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, the U.S. was the sponsor of the Guatemalan army, as it had been for many decades, as the U.S. has and continues to sponsor dozens and dozens of repressive armies all over the world. In the case of Guatemala, if you go into the military academy and you see the pictures of the past presidents of military academy, some of them are actually Americans. They’re actual American officers there who were openly running the Guatemalan military training. By the ’80s, when the Ríos Montt massacres were being carried out, the U.S. Congress was under the impression that they had successfully stopped U.S. military aid to Guatemala. But in fact it was continuing. The CIA had an extensive program of backing the G-2, the G-2, the military intelligence service, which selected the targets for assassination and disappearance. They even—they even built a headquarters for—a secret headquarters for the G-2 near the Guatemala City airport. They had American advisers working inside the headquarters. Out in the field, Guatemalan troops were receiving from the U.S. ammunition, weapons.

And most importantly, the U.S., beginning under the Carter administration but continuing under Reagan and after, asked the Israelis to come in and fill the gap that was caused by congressional restrictions. So Israel was doing massive shipments of Galil automatic rifles and other weapons. And Pérez Molina, as you saw in the video, actually had one of his subordinates come over and show me an Israeli-made mortar. That mortar and the helicopters he was asking for from the U.S., those were the kind of weapons they would use to bomb villages and attack people as they were fleeing in the mountains. In listening to the testimony in the trial up to this moment, I was struck by the fact that almost every witness mentioned that they had been attacked from the air, that either their village had been bombed or strafed or that they were bombed or strafed as they were fleeing in the mountains. This testimony suggests that the use of this U.S. and Israeli aircraft and U.S. munitions against the civilians in the Ixil highlands was actually much more extensive than we understood at the time.

Beyond that, beyond the material U.S. support, there’s the question of doctrine. Yesterday in the trial, the Ríos Montt defense called forward a general, a former commander of the G-2, as an expert witness on the defense side. And at the end of his testimony, the prosecution read to this general an excerpt from a Guatemalan military training document. And the document said it is often difficult for soldiers to accept the fact that they may be required to execute repressive actions against civilian women, children and sick people, but with proper training, they can be made to do so. So, the prosecutor asked the Ríos Montt general, “Well, General, what is your response to this document?” And the general responded by saying, “Well, that training document which we use is an almost literal translation of a U.S. training document.” So this doctrine of killing civilians, even down to women, children and sick people, was, as the general testified, adopted from the U.S. Indeed, years before, the U.S. military attaché in Guatemala, Colonel John Webber, had said to Time magazine that the Guatemalan army was licensed to kill guerrillas and potential guerrillas. And, of course, the category of potential guerrillas can include anyone, including children.

And the point of guerrilla civilians is actually very important to understanding this. Those bodies that Pérez Molina was standing over in Nebaj in 1982 in the film we saw, those were actually an exception to the rule, because the truth commission which investigated the massacres in Guatemala found that 93 percent of the victims were civilians killed by the Guatemalan army. But there was also some combat going on between the army and guerrillas. And in that case, in the video we saw, the bodies Pérez Molina was standing over were guerrillas, guerrillas that the army had captured. And one of them in captivity had set off a hand grenade as a suicide act, but apparently, from what I saw and what the soldiers told me, apparently they survived the blast, and they were then turned over to Pérez Molina for interrogation. He interrogated them, and then, as we saw, they turned up dead. But in the vast majority of cases, they were civilians, completely unarmed people, who were targeted by Ríos Montt’s army for elimination.

And I asked Ríos Montt about this practice on two different occasions, first in an interview with him two months after he seized power in 1982, and then later, years later, after he had been thrown out of power. And when I asked him in ’82 about the fact that so many civilians were being killed by the army, he said, “Look, for each one who is shooting, there are 10 who are standing behind him,” meaning: Behind the guerrillas there are vast numbers of civilians. His senior aide and his spokesman, a man named Francisco Bianchi, who was sitting next to him at this interview, then expanded on the point. Bianchi said the guerrillas—well, the indigenous population—he called them “indios,” which is a slur in Guatemalan Spanish—

AMY GOODMAN: For Indians.

ALLAN NAIRN: Yes—were collaborating with the guerrilla, therefore it was necessary to kill Indians. “And people would say,” Bianchi continued, “‘Oh, you’re massacring all these innocent Indians”—”innocent Indios,” in his words. But Bianchi then said, “But, no, they are not innocent, because they had sold out to subversion.” So this is the—this is the doctrine of killing civilians, and particularly Mayans, because the army saw them collectively as a group. They didn’t view them as individuals, but they saw them collectively as a group as sold out to subversion. And this was a doctrine that the U.S. supported.

AMY GOODMAN: Journalist Allan Nairn. The interview we did was recorded last week just before he left for Guatemala to testify in the trial against the Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt. But at the last minute, his testimony was canceled late yesterday. The trial was canceled. We’ll continue with the interview in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: Mercedes Sosa, here on Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, as we continue our coverage of the historic trial of former U.S.-backed Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt on charges of genocide and crimes against humanity. Allan Nairn joined us in our studio last week before he flew to Guatemala. His testimony was canceled. The trial was canceled last night. But I asked Allan to talk about how he managed to interview the Guatemalan dictator, Ríos Montt, two months after he seized power in the 1980s.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, he was—he was giving press interviews. This was an interview in the palace. I was there with a couple of other reporters. Ríos Montt was very outspoken. He would go on TV and say, “Today we are going to begin a merciless struggle. We are going to kill, but we are going to kill legally.” That was his style, to speak directly. And it’s in great contrast to what he’s doing today. I mean, it’s very interesting from point of view of people who’ve survived these kind of generals who live on the blood of the people, not just in Guatemala but in Salvador, in East Timor, in Indonesia, in countless countries where the U.S. has backed this kind of terror. You have the spectacle now of this general, who once made poor people tremble at the sight of him, at the mention of him, now he’s hiding. In the trial, he refuses to talk. He will not defend himself. He’s like a common thug taken off the streets who invokes his Fifth Amendment—invokes his Fifth Amendment rights. But back then, when he had the power, when no one could challenge him, he would speak fairly openly. In fact, the second time I spoke to him, a number of years after, I asked Ríos Montt whether he thought that he should be executed, whether he should be tried and executed because of his own responsibility for the highland massacres, and he responded by jumping to his feet and shouting, “Yes! Put me on trial. Put me against the wall. But if you’re going to put me on trial, you have to try the Americans first, including Ronald Reagan.”

AMY GOODMAN: Allan Nairn, at the time in Guatemala, you not only were interviewing, well, now the current president, Pérez Molina, who was in the highlands at the time standing over dead bodies, but you were also talking to U.S. officials, and I want to go to this issue of U.S. involvement in what happened in Guatemala. Tell us about U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Stephen Bosworth, a man you got to interview at the time during the Ríos Montt years.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, Bosworth was, at the time, an important player in U.S. Central American policy. And he, along with Elliott Abrams, for example, attacked Amnesty International when Amnesty was trying to report on the assassinations of labor leaders and priests and peasant organizers and activists in the Mayan highlands. And he also was denying that the U.S. was giving military assistance to the Guatemalan army that was carrying out those crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s turn to the interview you did with then U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Stephen Bosworth.

STEPHEN BOSWORTH: Well, I think the important factor is that there has been, over the last six months, evidence of significant improvement in the human rights situation in Guatemala. Since the coming into power of the Ríos Montt government, the level of violence in the country, politically inspired violence, particularly in the urban areas, has declined rather dramatically. That being said, however, I think it’s important also to note that the level of violence in the countryside continues at a level which is of concern to all. And while it is difficult, if not impossible, to attribute responsibility for that violence in each instance, it is clear that in the countryside the government does indeed need to make further progress in terms of improving its control over government troops.

AMY GOODMAN: You also, Allan Nairn, asked the then-U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Stephen Bosworth precisely what was the U.S. military presence and role in Guatemala. This is how Bosworth responded.

STEPHEN BOSWORTH: We have no military presence or role. We have, as a part of our diplomatic establishment, a defense attaché office and a military representative. But that is the same sort of representation that we have in virtually all other countries in the world. We do not have American trainers working with the Guatemalan army. We do not have American military personnel active in Guatemala in that—in that sort of area.

ALLAN NAIRN: There are no American trainers there?

STEPHEN BOSWORTH: No.

ALLAN NAIRN: None performing the types of functions that go on in El Salvador, for instance?

STEPHEN BOSWORTH: No, there are not.

AMY GOODMAN: That was then-U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs Stephen Bosworth. Respond to what he said, and tell us who he later became, who he is today in the U.S. government.

ALLAN NAIRN: Well, first, just about everything that Bosworth said there was a lie. He said that the killings were down. In fact, they increased dramatically under Ríos Montt. He said, quite interestingly, that it was impossible to know and attribute responsibility for what was happening. Well, the Conference of Catholic Bishops had no difficulty knowing and attributing responsibility. They said that the killings have reached the extreme of genocide. They were saying this at the moment that the massacres were happening and at the moment that Bosworth was denying it. And they and the survivors and the human rights groups were all clearly blaming it on the army.

And then, finally, he said that the army has to be careful to maintain control over its troops. Well, there was a very strict control. In fact, the officers in the field in the Ixil zone that I interviewed at the time said they were on a very short leash and that there were only three layers of command between themselves in the field and Ríos Montt. And, in fact, a few weeks earlier, there had been only two layers of command between themselves and Ríos Montt.

Then, Bosworth went on to say that the U.S. was not giving any military assistance to Guatemala, but I guess it was a couple weeks after that interview when we went down to Guatemala, I met a U.S. Green Beret, Captain Jesse Garcia, who was training the Guatemalan military in combat techniques, including what he called how—in his words, “how to destroy towns.” This was apart from the weapons and U.S. munitions that I mentioned before, apart from the CIA trainers who were working in the CIA-built headquarters of the G-2, the military intelligence service that was doing the assassinations and disappearances.

AMY GOODMAN: The G-2 being the Guatemalan G-2. Now, today Stephen Bosworth is the dean of the Fletcher School at Tufts University. But before that, in 2009, well, he played a key role in the Obama administration.

ALLAN NAIRN: Yes, rather than being—you know, in what you might consider to be a normally functioning political system, if a high government official lied like that about matters of such grave, life-and-death importance and was involved in the supply of arms to terrorists, in this case the Guatemalan military, you would expect him at the minimum to be fired and disgraced, or maybe brought up on charges. But Bosworth was actually promoted. And under the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton chose him as the special envoy to North Korea. He’s been in the news a great deal in recent times because of his very prominent role there.

AMY GOODMAN: In 1995, Allan Nairn was interviewed on Charlie Rose about his piece in The Nation called “CIA Death Squad,” in which he described how Americans were directly involved in killings by the Guatemalan army. He was interviewed alongside Elliott Abrams, who challenged what he was saying. Abrams had served as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs under President Reagan from 1981 to 1985. This clip begins with Elliott Abrams.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: Wait a minute. We’re not here to refight the Cold War. We’re here to talk about, I thought, a specific case in which an allegation is being made that—of the husband of an American and, another case, an American citizen were killed, and there was a CIA connection with—allegedly with the person allegedly involved in it. Now, I’m happy to talk about that kind of thing. If Mr. Nairn thinks we should have been on the other side in Guatemala—that is, we should have been in favor of a guerrilla victory—I disagree with him.

ALLAN NAIRN: So you’re then admitting that you were on the side of the Guatemalan military.

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: I am admitting that it was the policy of the United States, under Democrats and Republicans, approved by Congress repeatedly, to oppose a communist guerrilla victory anywhere in Central America, including in Guatemala.

CHARLIE ROSE: Alright, well, I—

ALLAN NAIRN: A communist guerrilla victory.

CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, I—

ALLAN NAIRN: Ninety-five percent of these victims are civilians—peasant organizers, human rights leaders—

CHARLIE ROSE: I am happy to invite both of you—

ALLAN NAIRN: —priests—assassinated by the U.S.-backed Guatemalan army. Let’s look at reality here. In reality, we’re not talking about two murders, one colonel. We’re talking about more than 100,000 murders, an entire army, many of its top officers employees of the U.S. government. We’re talking about crimes, and we’re also talking about criminals, not just people like the Guatemalan colonels, but also the U.S. agents who have been working with them and the higher-level U.S. officials. I mean, I think you have to be—you have to apply uniform standards. President Bush once talked about putting Saddam Hussein on trial for crimes against humanity, Nuremberg-style tribunal. I think that’s a good idea. But if you’re serious, you have to be even-handed. If we look at a case like this, I think we have to talk—start talking about putting Guatemalan and U.S. officials on trial. I think someone like Mr. Abrams would be a fit—a subject for such a Nuremberg-style inquiry. But I agree with Mr. Abrams that Democrats would have to be in the dock with him. The Congress has been in on this. The Congress approved the sale of 16,000 M-16s to Guatemala. In ’87 and ’88—

CHARLIE ROSE: Alright, but hold on one second. I just—before—because the—

ALLAN NAIRN: They voted more military aid than the Republicans asked for.

CHARLIE ROSE: Again, I invite you and Elliott Abrams back to discuss what he did. But right now, you—

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: No, thanks, Charlie, but I won’t accept—

CHARLIE ROSE: Hold on one second. Go ahead. You want to repeat the question, of you want to be in the dock?

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: It is ludicrous. It is ludicrous to respond to that kind of stupidity. This guy thinks we were on the wrong side in the Cold War. Maybe he personally was on the wrong side. I am one of the many millions of Americans who thinks we were happy to win.

CHARLIE ROSE: Alright, I don’t—

ALLAN NAIRN: Mr. Abrams, you were on the wrong side in supporting the massacre of peasants and organizers, anyone who dared to speak, absolutely.

CHARLIE ROSE: What I want to do is I want to ask the following question.

ALLAN NAIRN: And that’s a crime. That’s a crime, Mr. Abrams, for which people should be tried. U.S. laws—

ELLIOTT ABRAMS: Why don’t you—yes, right, we’ll put all the American officials who won the Cold War in the dock.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Elliott Abrams—he served as assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs under President Reagan from ’81 to ’85—debating investigative journalist Allan Nairn on the Charlie Rose show. Actually, Congressmember Robert Torricelli, then from New Jersey, before he became senator, was also in that discussion at another point. Allan, the significance of what Mr. Abrams was saying? He went on, Abrams, to deal with the Middle East.

ALLAN NAIRN: Yes. Well, he—when I said that he should be tried by a Nuremberg-style tribunal, he basically reacted by saying I was crazy, that this was a crazy idea that you could try U.S. officials for supplying weapons to armies that kill civilians. But people also thought that it was crazy that Ríos Montt could face justice in Guatemala. But after decades of work by the survivors of his Mayan highland massacres, today, as we speak, Ríos Montt is sitting in the dock.

AMY GOODMAN: Award-winning journalist Allan Nairn, speaking last week before he flew to Guatemala. On Thursday, a landmark genocide trial against former Guatemalan dictator Ríos Montt was suspended after the trial threatened to implicate the current president of Guatemala in the mass killings of civilians. Allan reports Guatemalan army associates had threatened the lives of case judges and prosecutors and that the case had been annulled after intervention by Guatemala’s president, General Otto Pérez Molina. Some of the video footage used in the show comes from a 1983 documentary directed by Mikael Wahlforss. We’ll link to it at democracynow.org and to Allan Nairn’s website, allannairn.org.

That does it for our show. Juan González will be speaking tonight in Chicago at 8:15 at the Gene Siskel Film Center at North State Street and tomorrow at noon at Wayne State University [in Detroit] at noon.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Find this story at 19 April 2013

Guatemala City (CNN) — The soldiers killed Jacinto Lopez’s teenage daughter Magdalena by repeatedly stabbing her in the neck.

His in-laws were not spared. Barely anyone in the village was.

These atrocities, which took place in the remote Guatemalan town of Santa Maria Nebaj in July of 1982, have never been described in a courtroom.

Until now.

For the first time, Lopez has shared his terrifying story in the nation’s highest court.

And for the first time “anywhere in the world,” according to the United Nations, a former head of state is being tried for genocide by his own nation’s justice system. That man is Efrain Rios Montt, an ex-military dictator who ruled Guatemala from 1982 to 1983.

“They killed my family and destroyed our crops,” Lopez testified. “They took even my cows.”

The attack against the Lopez family was just one of countless assaults in the early 1980s during the war between the Guatemalan government and leftist rebels.

The military used the rebel threat as a guise to exterminate rural Ixil Mayan villages accused of harboring insurgents, prosecutors say. According to prosecutors, the campaign led to the genocide of more than 1,700 Ixil Mayans.

Previous accusations of genocide, such as in Rwanda or against Serbia, have been presided over by international judges. The Guatemala attacks are considered by many experts as the only incident of genocide in the Western Hemisphere during the modern era.

Map: Guatemala
Map: Guatemala

Map: Guatemala

The trial reignites debate over the United States’ controversial pro-government policies in the region during the 1980s. It also offers a fascinating look in real time at how a nation is choosing to face its own demons. Painful public testimony could help heal the national betrayal reflected in the faces of many Mayan victims.

Lopez, now 82 years old, is among dozens of witnesses who have testified at the trial being heard by the nation’s three-judge Supreme Court.

Guatemala begins first genocide trial

Rios Montt, 86, is accused of authorizing a military strategy so brutal that it was labeled “scorched earth.” His attorneys say the former dictator did not order any of the atrocities.

The genocide charges rest on the assertion that the army, under Rios Montt’s orders, specifically targeted the Ixil because of their ethnicity, and not just because they were suspected of harboring rebels. The charge has been made before, but not in court. A 1999 report by a Guatemalan truth commission concluded that “agents of the state committed acts of genocide against groups of Mayan people.”

During the opening remarks of the trial, an attorney for Rios Montt laid the foundation for the argument that no such ethnic targeting took place.

“I never heard a speech that said ‘kill the Ixil, exterminate the Ixil,'” defense lawyer Francisco Garcia Gudiel said. Rios Montt “never gave an order, written or spoken, to exterminate a single Ixil in this country.”

The United States stands accused in the court of public opinion. Critics say Washington turned a blind eye to the abuses, and worse. The Reagan administration claimed violence was decreasing during Rios Montt’s tenure, and in 1983, lifted a U.S. arms embargo. But there are bookends for this dark chapter of Central American history. More recently, the United States has pushed for Guatemalan judicial reform that has made this trial possible.

Horrific memories

For generations, the Ixil have lived in mountainous villages in the country’s northwest, mostly isolated from the rest of Guatemala and the world. According to the country’s 2002 census, Guatemalan Ixil number around 95,000, less than 1% of the nation’s population.

They still speak primarily the Ixil language, and most of the witnesses called to the stand so far have spoken through a translator. The horrific stories that more than 70 prosecution witnesses have revealed so far have been hard to hear in any language.

“I was 12 years old,” said one woman, whose identity was protected by the court. “They took me with the other women and they tied my feet and hands. They put a rag in my mouth … and they started raping me … I don’t know how many took turns. … I lost consciousness … and the blood kept running. … Later I couldn’t even stand or urinate.”

Stories about rape were so widespread that the trial set aside an entire day of testimony just for rape victims.

Their shocking stories prompted many of the hundreds of Guatemalans sitting in the courtroom to use their hands to cover their mouths. The powerful proceedings often wrapped the courtroom in profound silence, only to be broken by the sound of sobbing.

Pedro Chavez Brito was 6 or 7 years old when the military attacked his village in November 1982. Soldiers killed his mother, he told the court. In a frantic bid to escape, he hid with his pregnant sister and her two children among the family’s chickens.

It didn’t work.

When soldiers found them, they lashed Chavez’s sister to the stairs of their home, he testified. The soldiers then set the house on fire, killing her and her two children, Chavez testified. Seven other family members may have died in the fire, he said.

Chavez, like many other survivors, lived to share his story because he fled into the unforgiving mountains.

That’s how Maria Cruz Raymundo and her family escaped, too. But conditions there were so harsh that her husband, daughter and son starved to death, she told the court.

More than 100 witnesses have taken the stand so far — a marathon of gruesome stories.

Another witness, Nicholas Bernal, testified that he, too, escaped to the mountains.

Bernal told the court he had watched soldiers kill his neighbors and then rip out their hearts and burn their bodies.

Each passing day of the trial reveals similar nightmarish stories. Human rights organizations such as the Center for Legal Action in Human Rights and Association for Justice and Reconciliation are broadcasting the trial live on the Internet. In addition, the U.S.-based Open Society Justice Initiative is providing daily summaries on a dedicated website. Testimony in this report is culled from all these sources and state news media.

Shifting U.S. behavior

When Rios Montt assumed power in a coup in 1982, Guatemala was already in the throes of a violent civil war that would last 36 years. The insurgency, and extrajudicial killings by the military, had been going on for two decades as part of the broader conflicts between leftist rebels and hardline governments across the region.

By the time a peace accord was reached in 1996, an estimated more than 200,000 had perished.

Photos: Searching for the ‘disappeared’ in Guatemala

Rios Montt faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity connected to his 16 months as dictator. He is being tried together with his then-chief of military intelligence, Mauricio Rodriguez Sanchez.

Sanchez is accused of designing and executing the army’s strategy.

When Rios Montt became president, human rights violations had already prompted the United States to cut off aid to the Guatemalan government. But a political scandal in the U.S. in the 1990s revealed that in fact the CIA continued to provide money to Guatemalan military intelligence sources for years during the civil war.

Now-declassified secret CIA cables indicate that the United States had knowledge of the atrocities being committed against the Ixil Mayans, but did little about them, according to Victoria Sanford, director of the Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies at the City University of New York.

“At best they chose to look away, but often they were covering it up,” Sanford said.

In one CIA document, from February 1983, the agency reports to Washington that an increase in violence against civilians is because of “right-wing violence.”

But the U.S. ambassador at the time added a note to the same memo with a distinct explanation: “I am firmly convinced that the violence described … is government of Guatemala ordered and directed violence.”

Another CIA memo shows the U.S. government may have had knowledge of the violent tactics being used against the Ixil Mayans.

“When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed,” the 1982 document states. “The well-documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is (pro-rebel) has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike.”

Critics blame the United States, in its anti-communist zeal, of standing by during these atrocities by denying them and lifting the arms embargo. Then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan went as far as to say that Rios Montt was being given a “bum rap” by critics. At the same time, the United States was backing other strongmen in Latin America against leftists.

But if the United States deserves criticism for openly supporting Rios Montt’s rule, it also should be credited for supporting Guatemalan efforts to put the former dictator on trial, said Anita Isaacs, a professor of political science at Haverford College whose research focuses on Guatemalan politics.

She is a fierce critic of the U.S. role in the 1980s, but adds that “this trial wouldn’t be occurring were it not for the role played by the United States pushing for reform in Guatemala’s judicial system.”

In her view, the U.S. ambassador to Guatemala from 2008 to 2011, Stephen McFarland, was “single-handedly” responsible for shifting the country’s perception of the United States from meddling to supportive.

McFarland listened to survivors’ stories of the civil war and attended hearings in support of the victims, she said.

The trial

The historic nature of the trial isn’t lost on the nation’s public, although some say too much time has passed for the process to be fair.

Even current President Otto Perez Molina, a former general who once commanded troops in the Ixil lands, has said he believes there was no genocide. Instead, some see the attacks as a kind of national defense campaign.

The Guatemalan military viewed the Ixil Mayans as rebel collaborators who threatened the government.

This view is shared by protesters with military ties who have stood outside the courthouse, holding signs demanding respect for the military and a fair trial. One demonstrator, Victor Manuel Argueta, told the state-run AGN news agency that the soldiers are “proud of what we did during the civil war.”

The army in the early 1980s, he said, “was dedicated to defending the people from those who wanted to usurp power.” The trial, he said, is nothing more than a “political lynching.”

Declassified U.S. documents repeated the Guatemalan military’s assertion that the Ixil were protecting the rebels.

But dozens of studies by anthropologists have indicated that it was much more complex than that, said Kate Doyle, director of the Guatemala Documentation Project at the National Security Archive, a leading research institute.

Some Ixil Mayans joined the guerrillas as combatants and others provided food or protection, but still others were not connected to the rebels. Some even actively opposed the rebels, she said.

Since the trial began, Rios Montt has fired his attorneys and then rehired them.

Defense attorneys have argued there’s no evidence proving that Rios Montt ordered any of the abuses.

His lawyers have repeatedly and unsuccessfully demanded that the chief judge recuse herself. They say the judge violated Rios Montt’s rights by pressing on with the trial when his attorneys were not prepared.

A victory, no matter the outcome?

The victims’ stories are haunting, and the desire for justice strong, but the task of proving genocide isn’t easy.

Prosecutors must prove the attacks targeted a specific ethnic group with the intention of destroying it, said Naomi Roht-Arriaza, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of Law.

To convict Rios Montt, prosecutors must also convince the judges that he was responsible.

What’s at stake is less clear. The genocide charges are without precedent. If Rios Montt and Rodriguez Sanchez are convicted, their maximum possible sentences are unknown.

In 2011, a Guatemalan court sentenced four soldiers to 6,060 years in prison each for their role in the 1982 massacre at Dos Erres, a village where 201 people were killed. Thirty years for each death. A fifth soldier was sentenced to the same last year. The unheard-of sentences were for crimes against humanity, not genocide.

Given Rios Montt’s age, many assume that he will serve little, if any, time in prison if convicted.

For the moment, legal observers say the trial itself stands as a huge triumph.

A national conversation

…

CNN’s Mariano Castillo reported and wrote this story from Atlanta. Journalist Miguel Salay contributed from Guatemala City.

April 11, 2013 — Updated 1243 GMT (2043 HKT) CNN.com

Find this story at 11 April 2013

© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc.

When police carried out a routine stop-and-search of her boyfriend on the London Underground, Gemma Atkinson filmed the incident. She was detained, handcuffed and threatened with arrest. She launched a legal battle, which ended with the police settling the case in 2010. With the money from the settlement she funded the production of this animated film, which she says shows how her story and highlights police misuse of counterterrorism powers to restrict photography.

Find this story at 29 April 2013

Bestrijding van de criminaliteit door het afsluiten van snelwegen lijkt een uitvloeisel van de aanpak van nodale controle en informatiegestuurde politie. De redenering is eenvoudig. Boeven en andere slechteriken in de woorden van overheidsfunctionarissen gebruiken snelwegen als aan- en afvoerroutes van criminele waar. Door de snelweg af te sluiten en iedereen te controleren wordt de criminaliteit bestreden. Deze ongerichte controle acties gericht tegen niet verdachte burgers lijken proeftuinen voor het samenwerken van tientallen opsporingsdiensten en meer dan honderd functionarissen. Het denken binnen het opsporingsapparaat is duidelijk gekanteld. Iedereen is verdachte op de rijkswegen. Het Kwaad beweegt zich. In het verleden vooral in het oosten van het land, waar de operatie Ochtendgloren zijn oorsprong kent, maar de laatste jaren ook in het westen en zuiden, waar inmiddels vergelijkbare operaties onder de naam Avondlicht worden gehouden.
Kritische kanttekeningen, vragen, evaluaties, analyses, het is allemaal niet nodig. Twijfelaars van de maatregel worden net zolang onder druk gezet tot ze instemmen en een kritische beschouwing van dit zware middel is nergens in de stukken te vinden. Dat is verontrustend in een rechtstaat waar politie en justitie steeds meer middelen en mogelijkheden krijgen. Zonder nuances worden rechten van burgers alleen maar meer ingeperkt.

Meerdere keren per jaar worden snelwegen in Nederland door meer dan honderd functionarissen afgesloten om vele honderden automobilisten systematisch te controleren. Alhoewel het formeel om verkeerscontroles gaat blijkt de werkelijke motivatie de bestrijding van de middencriminaliteit te zijn; inbrekers en overvallers die zich per auto verplaatsen. Analyse van deze criminaliteit en de effectiviteit van de kostbare operaties ontbreekt echter. Cijfers laten duidelijk zien dat er aan de veiligheid in de gemeenten langs de snelwegen weinig verandert. De incidentele successen die er tijdens de operaties worden geboekt lijken meer op toevalstreffers dan serieus politiewerk. Waarom er gemikt wordt op grote logge operaties die dagen van te voren en van kilometers afstand zijn te zien, roept vooral vragen op. In de woorden van iemand die post op flitsservice.nl onder de nick-name ‘vw-driver’: “Vanavond weer een actie Ochtengloren langs de A1 bij parkeerplaatsen Boermark en De Hop nabij Holten. Hoezo? Staat er weer het bekende materiaal opgesteld op de parkeerplaatsen?” En een andere bijdrage is van een persoon die zich uitgeeft als ‘classpool’ voegt er aan toe dat er ruime ervaring is bij het omzeilen van de controles: “Het blijft werkelijk een amateuristisch opgezette actie. In beide richtingen kon je voor de controle de snelweg af, stukje binnendoor van 5 minuten en de snelweg weer op.”
Ondertussen leveren de operaties volgens de betrokken instanties zelf een dusdanig risico voor ambtenaar en burger op dat de locaties als veiligheidsrisicogebied moeten worden aangemerkt. Deze aanmerking biedt gelijk de juridische basis om automobilisten nog eens extra te verwennen door ze preventief te fouilleren. Gestart als reactie op een schietpartij van bekenden van de politie worden nu duizenden Nederlanders onderworpen aan criminaliteitscontroles, terwijl zij niet verdacht zijn van het plegen van een misdrijf. En het resultaat. Cijfers van het Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek laten vooral zien dat het aantal diefstallen en inbraken stijgt. Rijssen-Holten, de gemeente die het fanatiekst is bij het inzetten van Ochtendgloren vertoont een stijging van het aantal inbraken met 25%. Als de politie na het ochtendgloren huiswaarts keert, hebben de “slechteriken uit het westen” in alle rust de huizen van brave burgers leeg kunnen halen. Niet de samenleving verhardt, maar het ongerichte optreden van overheidsdiensten gericht op 100% repressief optreden laat zien wie er nu werkelijk verhardt in zijn standpunt. Of het veiliger wordt is allang geen issue meer.

Find this story at 24 November 2010

Operatie Ochtendgloren – Buro Jansen & Janssen

24 april 2013 – De Nationale ombudsman, Alex Brenninkmeijer, is van oordeel dat de politie Oost Nederland misbruik van haar bevoegdheden heeft gemaakt bij acties van preventief fouilleren langs de A2 bij Geldermalsen en op een camping in Kerkdriel. De gemeente Geldermalsen en het OM hebben geen oog gehad voor de waarborgen voor de burger. In beide gevallen was geen sprake van een veiligheidsrisico waarbij preventief fouilleren zou kunnen worden ingezet. Brenninkmeijer: ‘Ik kan me niet aan de indruk onttrekken dat uit opportunisme is geprobeerd om preventief fouilleren aan het reeds beschikbare arsenaal opsporings- en controlemogelijkheden toe te voegen.’

De ombudsman deed een onderzoek uit eigen beweging naar een grootschalige preventief fouilleeractie in de nacht van 25 op 26 oktober 2012 op twee locaties langs de A2 bij Geldermalsen. Ook onderzocht hij een preventief fouilleeractie op de camping ‘Maaszicht’ in Kerkdriel. De actie langs de A2 werd gerechtvaardigd onder verwijzing naar een groot aantal inbraken. En de actie in Kerkdriel had als achtergrond de politiemensen te beschermen bij hun zoekactie. Allebei geen reden waarvoor preventief fouilleren is toegestaan, want preventief fouilleren is gericht op openbare orde en niet op opsporen van strafbare feiten.

Gelet op wat in het voortraject van beide acties is gebeurd, komt het de ombudsman voor dat de burgemeester en de officier van justitie marionetten van de politie Oost Nederland (voorheen politiekorps Gelderland-Zuid) zijn geweest. Brenninkmeijer: ‘Ik ben bezorgd over het gemak waarmee de bestuurders en de officieren van justitie in beide gevallen aan de waarborgen voor de burger voorbij zijn gegaan.’ De Nationale ombudsman doet de aanbeveling om het middel preventief fouilleren niet meer in combinatie met andere controleacties in te zetten, dit om misbruik van het middel preventief fouilleren te voorkomen.
In een eerder rapport (2011/252) waarschuwden de Nationale ombudsman en de gemeentelijke ombudsmannen van Amsterdam en Rotterdam voor het gevaar dat preventief fouilleren oneigenlijk wordt gebruikt voor de opsporing van strafbare feiten.

Find this story at 24 April 2013

On May 1, 2011, CIA Director Leon Panetta was in command of the single most important U.S. military operation since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: the Navy SEAL Team 6 assault on a mysterious compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where Osama bin Laden was suspected to be hiding. The SEALs were sneaking into Pakistan without the permission of its government on a covert “deniable” mission in a country that was supposedly allied to the United States. Because U.S. law forbids the military to do this kind of work, the SEALs were turned over to the control of the CIA and were “sheep-dipped” to become, in effect, spies under Panetta’s nominal control.

Yet isn’t the CIA’s real job to steal other countries’ secrets, rather than to carry out targeted killings?

A few years before the bin Laden operation, Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, then the head of Joint Special Operations Command, had turned the Army’s Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team 6 into a fighting machine in Iraq and Afghanistan that increasingly mounted operations to gather intelligence — what McChrystal termed “a fight for knowledge.”

Yet aren’t Special Operations forces the “door kickers” whom you send in to kill or capture terrorists rather than the guys who collect intelligence?

Since the 9/11 attacks, a dramatic shift has occurred in the way the United States deploys its military and intelligence forces. In his new book, “The Way of the Knife,” Mark Mazzetti documents the militarization of the CIA and the stepped-up intelligence focus of Special Operations forces. As Mazzetti observes in his deeply reported and crisply written account, over the past decade “the CIA’s top priority was no longer gathering intelligence on foreign governments and their countries, but man hunting.” The bin Laden operation was far from the only deadly mission that Panetta presided over.

Panetta’s tenure at CIA, Mazzetti writes, was known for its “aggressive — some would come to believe reckless — campaign of targeted killings.” He authorized 216 CIA drone strikes in Pakistan that killed at least 1,196 people, mostly militants, but also a smaller number of civilians, according to a count by the New America Foundation. Panetta, a devout Catholic, observed that he had “said more Hail Marys in the last two years than I have in my whole life.”Conversely, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was deeply irritated when the CIA rather than the military led the ground operation in late 2001 that ejected the Taliban from power in Afghanistan. He came to the conclusion that “the only answer was to make the Pentagon more like the CIA.”

The emergence of a “military-intelligence complex” has proved devastating to al-Qaeda and its affiliates. The CIA drone campaign in Pakistan has killed much of the terror network’s leaders and largely eliminated Pakistan’s tribal regions as the key training ground for the group; as a result, al-Qaeda hasn’t been able to mount a successful assault on the West since the suicide attacks on the London transportation system in 2005.

Meanwhile, the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) not only killed bin Laden, but also largely destroyed the vicious leadership of al-Qaeda’s Iraqi affiliate, which had precipitated the civil war in Iraq by its numerous attacks on the Shia community. JSOC’s campaign against al-Qaeda played a key role in tamping down the Iraqi civil war and helped enable a steady decline in violence in Iraq since 2007.

Until recently this history had not been well understood because units like SEAL Team 6 that make up Joint Special Operations Command aren’t even officially acknowledged. McChrystal’s recent authoritative memoir, “My Share of the Task,” has done much to illuminate this important chapter in the evolution of American military operations.

If there is an “Obama doctrine,” it is to fight the war against al-Qaeda and its allies with drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen and with small numbers of clandestine Special Operations forces on the ground in countries such as Somalia. This new kind of fighting gives Mazzetti the title of his book, “The Way of the Knife.” It’s a form of warfare that avoids “messy, costly wars that topple governments and require years of American occupation.”

The benefits of the way of the knife are obvious: Few Americans are put at risk, and the costs are relatively low in a time of budgetary constraints. But as Mazzetti points out, this type of knife fighting is not as surgical as some of its proponents think, for it “creates enemies just as it has obliterated them.” It also has “lowered the bar for waging war, and it is now easier for the United States to carry out killing operations at the ends of the earth than at any other time in its history.”

CIA drone strikes are emblematic of this point. In Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons, drone attacks are deeply unpopular, angering many of the 180 million Pakistanis. This is a high cost to pay. In 2010, a record 122 strikes occurred in Pakistan, yet few of the victims were leaders of al-Qaeda, suggesting that this tactic was being used without much thought for the larger strategic picture. The CIA drone program, which was conceived of as a way to kill the leaders of militant groups, had evolved into a counterinsurgency air force that killed mostly lower-level members of the Taliban in Pakistan.

But some big payoffs emerge from the blending of the roles of the military and the CIA that are well illustrated by the execution of the bin Laden raid. The first 15 minutes of the raid were consumed in killing bin Laden’s two bodyguards, his son and the al-Qaeda leader himself. But during the next 23 minutes, the SEALs picked up every computer, thumb drive and file they could lay their hands on in bin Laden’s compound. More than half of the time that the SEALs were on the ground in Pakistan they were performing what is known among intelligence professionals as SSE, or sensitive site exploitation.

As a result, the CIA was able to launch drone strikes — presided over by Panetta, not the military — that killed a number of al-Qaeda leaders, such as Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, who had appeared prominently in the documents the SEALs had recovered at the Abbottabad compound. The documents revealed that Rahman was not the middle-tier al-Qaeda official he had originally been pegged, but bin Laden’s chief of staff.

While the “The Way of the Knife” recounts the important shifts in the architecture of the U.S. military and intelligence communities, it also reveals the many eccentric characters who emerged during this era of shifting portfolios and illustrates another important theme of the book: the privatization of intelligence operations, which were traditionally a core government function.

In this new environment, ambitious individuals take on outsize roles. Consider Michele Ballarin, a former Republican candidate for Congress and socialite living on a 100-acre farm in Virginia’s horse country who became obsessed with Somalia at the same time that the CIA and JSOC were increasingly focusing on the rise of al-Shabab, a Somali al-Qaeda affiliate that had taken control of much of the country. Simultaneously, al-Shabab was recruiting dozens of U.S. citizens, predominately from the Somali diaspora in Minnesota.

Following a chance meeting with a group of Somali Americans, Ballarin became intrigued by their country and soon was traveling regularly to Somalia, outfitted in Gucci and toting Louis Vuitton bags, and so dazzling that the Somalis dubbed her “Amira,” Arabic for princess. Soon the Virginia socialite was embroiled in hostage negotiations with Somali pirates who had seized a ship carrying clandestine cargo of Russian tanks worth many millions. And Ballarin was put on the Pentagon’s payroll to provide intelligence about Somalia’s many armed groups, although it is unclear from Mazzetti’s account whether she discovered anything very useful.

Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, a CIA legend who had played a starring role during the Iran-contra scandal, also seized an opportunity in the new world of government-sponsored private intelligence collection. In 2009, the 77-year-old Clarridge, long retired and dismissive of the CIA as risk-averse, was running his own private spying operation along the Afghan-Pakistani border. He hatched a plan to dig up evidence that Afghan President Hamid Karzai was a heroin addict, a rumor that was floating around Kabul. Under the scheme, Clarridge would insert an agent into Karzai’s palace to collect his beard trimmings and then would run drug tests on them. He dropped the plan when it became obvious that the Obama administration had no intention of pushing Karzai from power.

Working the phones late at night from his home in the San Diego suburbs, Clarridge maintained a network of spies who were gathering information on Taliban groups such as the Haqqani network. Through a Pentagon contract overseen by Lockheed Martin, Clarridge and his team were paid $22 million for their work and filed “hundreds of intelligence reports to military commanders in Afghanistan.” The CIA had always been unhappy about Clarridge’s freelance spying operation, and his contract was not renewed in 2010. He was angry that his former employer “seemed to be the reason that the operation had been shut down.”

Mazzetti, a national security correspondent for the New York Times, asserts that the “war on terror” has damaged the CIA’s ability to understand the really important political developments in the Muslim world, such as the Arab Spring. As a senior Obama official explained, noting the agency’s emphasis on drone strikes and hunting down al-Qaeda leaders: “The CIA missed Tunisia. They missed Egypt. They missed Libya.”

…

THE WAY OF THE KNIFE The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth By Mark Mazzetti Penguin Press. 381 pp. $29.95

By Peter Bergen, Published: April 5

Find this story at 5 April 2013

© The Washington Post Company

On the eve of the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the global justice activist and author Arundhati Roy joins us to discuss the war’s legacy. Roy is the author of many books, including “The God of Small Things,” “Walking with the Comrades,” and “Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers.” Roy argues the imperial mentality that enabled the United States to invade Iraq continues today unabated across the world. “We are being given lessons in morality [by world leaders] while tens of thousands are being killed, while whole countries are shattered, while whole civilizations are driven back decades, if not centuries,” Roy says. “And everything continues as normal.” [includes rush transcript]
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: March 19th marks the 10th anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. According to a new report by Brown University, a decade of war led to the deaths of roughly 134,000 Iraqi civilians and potentially contributed to the deaths of many hundreds of thousands more. According to the report, the Iraq War has cost the U.S. more than $2 trillion, including half-a-trillion dollars in benefits owed to veterans. The report says the war has devastated rather than helped Iraq, spurring militant violence, setting back women’s rights and hurting the healthcare system. Most of the more than $200 billion supposedly set aside for reconstruction in Iraq was actually used for security or lost amid rampant fraud and waste. Many in Iraq continue to suffer the consequences of the invasion. This is Basma Najem, whose husband was shot dead by U.S. forces in Basra in 2011.

BASMA NAJEM: [translated] We expected that we would live in a better situation when the occupation forces, the U.S. forces, came to Iraq. We expected that the situation would be improved. But contrary to our expectation, the situation deteriorated. And at the end, I lost my husband. I have no breadwinner in this world now, and I have six kids. I could not imagine my life would be changed like this. I do not know how it happened.

AMY GOODMAN: The consequences of the war are still visible here in the United States, as well. Military veterans continue to face extremely high levels of unemployment, traumatic brain injury, PTSD and homelessness. Almost a quarter of recent veterans come home injured either physically or emotionally, and an estimated 18 veterans commit suicide every day. This is Ed Colley, whose son, Army Private Stephen Colley, took his own life in 2007.

EDWARD COLLEY: We lost our son shortly after he returned from Iraq. He had asked for help, but he didn’t get the help that he needed. And clearly, he was trying to do what he could for himself and could think of no other cure, obviously, than to take his own life.

AMY GOODMAN: To talk more about this 10th anniversary, we’re joined by the award-winning writer and activist Arundhati Roy, one of the most vocal critics of the Iraq War. In a moment, she’ll join us from Chicago. But first let’s go back to 2003 to a speech she gave at Riverside Church here in New York.

ARUNDHATI ROY: When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC News poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. None of this opinion is based on evidence, because there isn’t any. All of it is based on insinuation or to suggestion and outright lies circulated by the U.S. corporate media, otherwise known as the “free press,” that hollow pillar on which contemporary American democracy rests. Public support in the U.S. for the war against Iraq was founded on a multitiered edifice of falsehood and deceit, coordinated by the U.S. government and faithfully amplified by the corporate media.

Apart from the invented links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent—went to the extent of saying it would be suicidal for Iraq—for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries. Earlier, there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Granada, Panama. But this time it wasn’t just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was frenzy with a purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the doctrine of preemptive strike, also known as the United States can do whatever the hell it wants, and that’s official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found, not even a little one.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati Roy, speaking in October of 2003 at Riverside Church here in New York, seven months after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Arundhati has written many books, including The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize. Her other books include Walking with the Comrades and Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers, among others. She now joins us from Chicago.

Arundhati Roy, welcome to Democracy Now! As you watch yourself 10 years ago and reflect back 10 years ago to this week when the U.S. invaded Iraq, your thoughts today?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, Amy, before that, we remember how—I think it was 50 million people across the world who marched against the war in Iraq. It was perhaps the biggest display of public morality in the world—you know, I mean, before the war happened. Before the war happened, everybody knew that they were being fed lies. I remember saying, you know, it’s just the quality of the lies that is so insulting, because we are being—used to being lied to.

But, unfortunately, now, all these years later, we have to ask ourselves two questions. One is: Who benefited from this war? You know, we know who paid the price. I heard—I heard you talking about that, so I won’t get into that again. But who benefited from this war? Did the U.S. government? Did the U.S. people benefit? Did they get the oil contracts that they wanted, in the way that they wanted? The answer is no. And yet, today you hear Dick Cheney saying he would do it all over again in a second.

So, unfortunately, we are dealing with psychosis. We are dealing with a psychopathic situation. And all of us, including myself, we can’t do anything but keep being reasonable, keep saying what needs to be said. But that doesn’t seem to help the situation, because, of course, as we know, after Iraq, there’s been Libya, there’s Syria, and the rhetoric of, you know, democracy versus radical Islam. When you look at the countries that were attacked, none of them were Wahhabi Islamic fundamentalist countries. Those ones are supported, financed by the U.S., so there is a real collusion between radical Islam and capitalism. What is going on is really a different kind of battle.

And, you know, most people are led up a path which keeps them busy. And in a way, all of us are being kept busy, while the real business at the heart of it—I mean, apart from the people who suffered during the war. Let’s not forget the sanctions. Let’s not forget Madeleine Albright saying that a million children dying in Iraq because of the sanctions was a hard price but worth it. I mean, she was the victim, it seems, of the sanctions; you know, her softness was called upon, and she had to brazen herself to do it. And today, you have the Democrats bombing Pakistan, destroying that country, too. So, just in this last decade, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria—all these countries have been—have been shattered.

You know, we heard a lot about why—you know, the war in Afghanistan was fought for feminist reasons, and the Marines were really on this feminist mission. But today, all the women in all these countries have been driven back into medieval situations. Women who were liberated, women who were doctors and lawyers and poets and writers and—you know, pushed back into this Shia set against Sunnis. The U.S. is supporting al-Qaeda militias all over this region and pretending that it’s fighting Islam. So we are in a situation of—it is psychopathic.

And while anyone who resisted is being given moral lessons about armed struggle or violence or whatever it is, at the heart of this operation is an immorality and a violence and a—as I keep using this word—psychopathic violence, which even the people in the United States are now suffering for. You know, there is a connection, after all, between all these wars and people being thrown out of their homes in this country. And yet, of course we know who benefits from these wars. May not be the oil contracts, but certainly the weapons industry on which this economy depends for—you know, for a great part. So, all over, even between India and Pakistan now, people are advocating war. And the weapons industry is in with the corporations in India.

So, we are really being made fools of. You know, this is what is so insulting. We are being, you know, given lessons in morality while tens of thousands are being killed, while whole countries are shattered, while whole civilizations are driven back decades, if not centuries. And everything continues as normal. And you have—you have people, like criminals, really, like Cheney, saying, “I’ll do it again. I’ll do it again. I won’t think about it. I’ll do it again.” And so that’s the situation we are in now.

AMY GOODMAN: Arundhati, a decade after the invasion of Iraq, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair stood by his decision to go to war, saying it saved Iraq from a fate worse than Syria’s at the moment.

TONY BLAIR: I think if we’d—if we’d backed off and we’d left him in power, you just imagine, with what is happening in Syria now, if you’d left Saddam in charge of Iraq, you would have had carnage on an even worse scale in Syria and with no end in sight. So, you know, this was the most difficult decision I ever took and the most balanced decision. But I still—personally, I still believe we were better to remove him than leave him.

AMY GOODMAN: That was British Prime Minister Tony Blair, former prime minister. Arundhati Roy, your response?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, you know, I don’t know. Maybe they need to be put into a padded cell and given some real news to read, you know? I mean, how can you say this, after creating a situation in Iraq where no—I mean, every day people are being blown up? There are—you know, mosques are being attacked. Thousands are being killed. People have been made to hate each other. In Iraq, women were amongst the most liberated women in the world, and they have been driven back into having to wear burqas and be safe, because of the situation. And this man is saying, “Oh, we did such a wonderful thing. We saved these people.” Now, isn’t that like—isn’t it insane? I mean, I don’t know how to respond to something like that, because it’s like somebody looking at somebody being slaughtered and saying, “Oh, he must be enjoying it. We are really helping him,” you know? So, how do you argue rationally against these people?

AMY GOODMAN: Can you—

ARUNDHATI ROY: We just have to think about what we need to do, you know? But we can’t have a conversation with them in this—at this point.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you see President Obama going in a different direction?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Of course not. I don’t see him going in a different direction at all. I mean, the real question to ask is: When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It’s lost in Afghanistan. It’s lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now—you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army—not America, not anybody—can control. And it’s just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world.

And Obama just goes on, you know, coming out with these smooth, mercurial sentences that are completely meaningless. I was—I remember when he was sworn in for the second time, and he came on stage with his daughters and his wife, and it was all really nice, and he said, you know, “Should my daughters have another dog, or should they not?” And a man who had lost his entire family in the drone attacks just a couple of weeks ago said, “What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to think of this exhibition of love and family values and good fatherhood and good husbandhood?” I mean, we’re not morons, you know? It’s about time that we stopped acting so reasonable. I just don’t feel reasonable about this anymore.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back and talk about what’s happening in Kashmir, a place you’ve been focusing on recently, Arundhati. Arundhati Roy is the award-winning writer, renowned global justice activist. Among her books, The God of Small Things, her most recent book, Walking with the Comrades, and Field Notes on Democracy: Listening to Grasshoppers. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

Display full version
Monday, March 18, 2013

Find this story at 18 March 2013

As John Brennan moved into the CIA director’s office this month, another high-level transition was taking place down the hall.

A week earlier, a woman had been placed in charge of the CIA’s clandestine service for the first time in the agency’s history. She is a veteran officer with broad support inside the agency. But she also helped run the CIA’s detention and interrogation program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and signed off on the 2005 decision to destroy videotapes of prisoners being subjected to treatment critics have called torture.

The woman, who remains undercover and cannot be named, was put in the top position on an acting basis when the previous chief retired last month. The question of whether to give her the job permanently poses an early quandary for Brennan, who is already struggling to distance the agency from the decade-old controversies.

Brennan endured a bruising confirmation battle in part over his own role as a senior CIA official when the agency began using water-boarding and other harsh interrogation methods. As director, he is faced with assembling the CIA’s response to a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee that documents abuses in the interrogation program and accuses the agency of misleading the White House and Congress over its effectiveness.

To help navigate the sensitive decision on the clandestine service chief, Brennan has taken the unusual step of assembling a group of three former CIA officials to evaluate the candidates. Brennan announced the move in a previously undisclosed notice sent to CIA employees last week, officials said.

“The director of the clandestine service has never been picked that way,” said a former senior U.S. intelligence official.

The move has led to speculation that Brennan is seeking political cover for a decision made more difficult by the re-emergence of the interrogation controversy and the acting chief’s ties to that program.

She “is highly experienced, smart and capable,” and giving her the job permanently “would be a home run from a diversity standpoint,” the former senior U.S. intelligence official said. “But she was also heavily involved in the interrogation program at the beginning and for the first couple of years.”

The former official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in discussing internal agency matters, said that Brennan “is obviously hesitating” at making the chief permanent.

CIA officials disputed that characterization. “Given the importance of the position of the director of the National Clandestine Service, Director Brennan has asked a few highly respected former senior agency officers to review the candidates he’s considering for the job,” said Preston Golson, a CIA spokesman.

The group’s members were identified as former senior officials John McLaughlin, Stephen Kappes and Mary Margaret Graham.

Golson said Brennan will make the decision but added that “asking former senior agency officers to review the candidates will undoubtedly aid the selection process by making sure the director has the benefit of the additional perspectives from these highly experienced and respected intelligence officers.”

Other candidates to run the clandestine service include a former station chief in Pakistan and the director of the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center . Neither person can be named because they are undercover.

The service is the most storied part of the CIA. It sends spies overseas and carries out covert operations including running the agency’s ongoing drone campaign.

The service has also long been perceived as a male bastion that has blocked the career paths of women even while female officers have ascended to the top posts in other divisions, including the directors of analysis and science.

No woman has held the job of CIA director or led the clandestine service until now.

The acting chief, who according to public records is in her 50s, is part of a generation that over the past two decades has pushed through many obstacles confronting women. The CIA refused to comment on her background, but former colleagues said she mastered several languages and served multiple tours in Moscow and other cities overseas. She also held senior posts at CIA headquarters.

After the Sept. 11 attacks, she took on a senior assignment at the Counterterrorism Center, which put her in the chain of command on the interrogation and detention program, former officials said.

In a fateful decision, the CIA set up a video camera at its secret prison in Thailand shortly after it opened in the months after the attacks. The agency recorded more than 90 tapes of often-brutal interrogations, footage that became increasingly worrisome to officials as the legal basis for the program began to crumble.

When the head of the Counterterrorism Center, Jose Rodriguez, was promoted to head of the clandestine service in 2004, he took the female officer along as his chief of staff. According to former officials, the two repeatedly sought permission to have the tapes destroyed but were denied.

In 2005, instructions to get rid of the recordings went out anyway. Former officials said the order carried just two names: Rodriguez and his chief of staff.

The officer went on to hold top positions in London and New York before returning to Langley as deputy chief of the clandestine service. She became acting director on Feb. 28, when the previous head of the service, John Bennett, retired.

The Justice Department has twice investigated the tapes’ destruction and brought no charges against anyone at the CIA.

Former senior CIA officials said that outcome should clear any obstacles to the acting director getting the job permanently. But the seemingly dormant controversy over the interrogation program was revived by Brennan’s nomination and completion of a 6,000-page report from the Senate Intelligence Committee that accuses the agency of exaggerating the program’s results.

The acting director is mentioned in several passages of the report, according to officials familiar with its contents, although they declined to provide more details.

Amid calls for the public release of the report, Brennan faces having to devise a response that doesn’t alienate his workforce or the lawmakers who confirmed him for his job.

…

By Greg Miller and Julie Tate, Published: March 27

Find this story at 27 March 2013

© The Washington Post Company

During the George W. Bush years, two of the most controversial elements of what was then called the Global War on Terror were the CIA’s rendition, detention and interrogation (RDI) program and the creation of the prison camps at Guantanamo Bay. The RDI program included waterboarding and other forms of torture, as well as so-called black site prisons where detainees were held incommunicado after being abducted by the CIA, and sometimes tortured by members of the host country’s security forces.

Guantanamo Bay and the RDI program are both back in the news now, each for their own unsavory reasons, and their reemergence should be a reminder of how fully the Obama administration has embraced the logic underpinning the Bush regime’s response to 9/11. The Pentagon is now requesting nearly $200 million for Guantanamo Bay infrastructure upgrades, including $49 million for a new unit for “special” prisoners – likely the so-called high-value detainees currently housed at Camp 7, which include self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. The Pentagon’s reasoning is that neither the president nor Congress have any plans to close the prison anytime soon, so these repairs are necessary.

This massive capital request comes as detainees are engaged in an increasingly dire hunger strike to protest their indefinite detention and to signal their lack of hope for transfer or release. Instead of closing Guantanamo Bay, the Obama administration stands poised to do the very opposite – pour more money into what is already the country’s most expensive prison.

Meanwhile, participation in the CIA’s controversial RDI program has resulted for at least one person not in prosecution or professional sanctions, but rather in a promotion. For the last several weeks, an unnamed woman has been acting director of the National Clandestine Service – the part of the CIA that runs spying and covert operations, including the CIA’s drone program – as first reported by the Washington Post. This is the first time a woman has held that position. But this particular woman was a major figure in the RDI program, once ran a black site prison, and has been linked to the destruction of interrogation tapes that almost certainly documented the CIA’s use of torture.

In 2005, the unnamed woman was chief of staff for Jose Rodriguez, then the acting director for the clandestine service. Rodriguez ordered the destruction of at least 92 tapes CIA agents made of the interrogations of two high-value detainees, Abu Zubayah and Abd Al-Rahim Al-Nashiri – at least some of which included waterboarding, which is widely regarded as a form of torture. The New York Times reported that the woman “and Jose were the two main drivers for years for getting the tapes destroyed” – an anonymous quote they attributed to a “former senior CIA officer.” In his memoir, Rodriguez said that the woman drafted the cable allowing the destruction of the tapes after meeting with CIA lawyers.

…

by John Knefel
APRIL 02, 2013

Find this story at 2 April 2013

Copyright ©2013 Rolling Stone

Claims over Patrice Lumumba’s 1961 assassination made by Labour peer in letter to London Review of Books
Ben Quinn

Congo premier Patrice Lumumba waves in New York in July 1960 after his arrival from Europe. Photograph: AP

Congo’s first democratically elected prime minister was abducted and killed in a cold war operation run by British intelligence, according to remarks said to have been made by the woman who was leading the MI6 station in the central African country at the time.

A Labour peer has claimed that Baroness Park of Monmouth admitted to him a few months before she died in March 2010 that she arranged Patrice Lumumba’skilling in 1961 because of fears he would ally the newly democratic country with the Soviet Union.

In a letter to the London Review of Books, Lord Lea said the admission was made while he was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park, who had been consul and first secretary from 1959 to 1961 in Leopoldville, as the capital of Belgian Congo was known before it was later renamed as Kinshasa following independence.

He wrote: “I mentioned the uproar surrounding Lumumba’s abduction and murder, and recalled the theory that MI6 might have had something to do with it. ‘We did,’ she replied, ‘I organised it’.”

Park, who was known by some as the “Queen of Spies” after four decades as one of Britain’s top female intelligence agents, is believed to have been sent by MI6 to the Belgian Congo in 1959 under an official diplomatic guise as the Belgians were on the point of being ousted from the country.

“We went on to discuss her contention that Lumumba would have handed over the whole lot to the Russians: the high-value Katangese uranium deposits as well as the diamonds and other important minerals largely located in the secessionist eastern state of Katanga,” added Lea, who wrote his letter in response to a review of a book by Calder Walton about British intelligence activities during the twilight of the British empire.

Doubts about the claim have been raised by historians and former officials, including a former senior British intelligence official who knew Park and told the Times: “It doesn’t sound like the sort of remark Daphne Park would make. She was never indiscreet. Also MI6 never had a licence to kill.”

…

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 April 2013 01.23 BST

Find this story at 2 April 2013

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

British spies admitted helping to organise the detention and execution of the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1960s, a peer has claimed.
British spies admitted helping to organise the detention and execution of Patrice Lumumba the first prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo in the 1960s, a peer has claimed. Photo: AP

Baroness (Daphne) Park of Monmouth, who was the senior MI6 officer in the African country at the time, said she had “organised it”, according to the Labour peer Lord Lea.

Independence leader Patrice Lumumba was arrested, tortured and executed just months after becoming the first democratically elected prime minister of the DRC in 1960.

Although rebel forces carried out the killing, it has long been claimed that foreign intelligence agencies played a part.

Belgium, from which Lumumba won independence, apologised in 2002 for having some responsibility by failing to prevent his death, while in 2006 documents showed the CIA had plotted to assassinate him but the plot was abandoned.

However, Lord Lea of Crondall, claims he was told by Baroness Park herself that MI6 had also played a role.

He made the revelation in response to a review of a book by Calder Walton in to British intelligence in the London Review of Books.

Lord Lea wrote: “Referring to the controversy surrounding the death of Patrice Lumumba in1960, Bernard Porter quotes Calder Walton’s conclusion: ‘The question remains whether British plots to assassinate Lumumba ever amounted to anything. At present, we do not know’ .

“Actually, in this particular case, I can report that we do. It so happens that I was having a cup of tea with Daphne Park – we were colleagues from opposite sides of the Lords – a few months before she died in March 2010.

…

By Tom Whitehead

6:46PM BST 01 Apr 2013

Find this story at 1 April 2013

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2013

Patrice Lumumba was the first democratically elected Prime Minister of Congo AFP/Getty Images

MI6 should open its archives to reveal the truth behind Britain’s alleged involvement in the assassination of African leader Patrice Lumumba in the 1960s, the author of a new book on intelligence said yesterday.

…

Michael Evans, Francis Elliott and Charles Bremner
Last updated at 12:25AM, April 3 2013

Find this story at 3 April 2013

© Times Newspapers Limited 2013

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Lumumba’s pan-Africanism and his vision of a united Congo gained him many enemies. Both Belgium and the United States actively sought to have him killed. The CIA ordered his assassination but could not complete the job. Instead, the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power and arrested Lumumba. On January 17, 1961, after being beaten and tortured, Lumumba was shot and killed. [includes rush transcript]
Transcript

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

JUAN GONZALEZ: This week marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. He was the first democratically elected leader of what is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Congo had been a colony of Belgium since the late 1800s, which ruled over it with brutality while plundering its rich natural resources. Patrice Lumumba rose as a leader of the Congo’s independence movement and, in 1960, was elected as the first prime minister of the country.

AMY GOODMAN: Lumumba’s pan-Africanism and his vision of a united Congo gained him many enemies. Both Belgium and the United States actively sought to have Lumumba overthrown or killed. The CIA ordered his assassination but could not complete the job. Instead, the United States and Belgium covertly funneled cash and aid to rival politicians who seized power and arrested President Lumumba. This is how it was reported in a Universal Studios newsreel in December of 1960.

UNIVERSAL STUDIOS NEWSREEL: A new chapter begins in the dark and tragic history of the Congo with the return to Leopoldville of deposed premier Lumumba, following his capture by crack commandos of strongman Colonel Mobutu. Taken to Mobutu’s headquarters past a jeering, threatening crowd, Lumumba — Lumumba, but promised the pro-red Lumumba a fair trial on charges of inciting the army to rebellion. Lumumba was removed to an army prison outside the capital, as his supporters in Stanleyville seized control of Orientale province and threatened a return of disorder. Before that, Lumumba suffered more indignities, including being forced to eat a speech, which he restated his claim to be the Congo’s rightful premier. Even in bonds, Lumumba remains a dangerous prisoner, storm center of savage loyalties and equally savage opposition.

AMY GOODMAN: On January 17th, 1961, after being beaten and tortured, the Congolese prime minister, Patrice Lumumba, was shot and killed.

For more, we go to Adam Hochschild. He’s the author of King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa and the forthcoming book To End All Wars: A Story of Loyalty and Rebellion. He teaches at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, is co-founder of Mother Jones magazine, had an op-ed in the New York Times this week called “An Assassination’s Long Shadow.” Adam Hochschild is joining us from San Francisco.

Explain this “long shadow,” Adam.

ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Well, Amy, I think the assassination of Lumumba was something that was felt by many people to be a sort of pivotal turning point in the saga of Africa gaining its independence. In the 1950s, there were movements for independence all over Africa. There was a great deal of idealism in the air. There was a great deal of hope in the air, both among Africans and among their supporters in the United States and Europe, that at last these colonies would become independent. And I think people imagined real independence — that is, that these countries would be able to set off on their own and control their own destiny economically as well as politically. And the assassination of Lumumba really signaled that that was not to be, because, for Belgium, as for the other major European colonial powers, like Britain and France, giving independence to an African colony was OK for them as long as it didn’t disturb existing business arrangements. As long as the European country could continue to own the mines, the factories, the plantations, well, OK, let them have their politics.

But Lumumba spoke very loudly, very dramatically, saying Africa needs to be economically independent, as well. And it was a fiery speech on this subject that he gave at the actual independence ceremonies, June 30th, 1960, where he was replying to an extremely arrogant speech by King Baudouin of Belgium. It was a speech he gave on this subject that I think really began the process that ended two months later with the CIA, with White House approval, decreeing that he should be assassinated.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, of course, for most Americans, who — we’re not, perhaps, as familiar with African colonialism, since that was basically a European project throughout the 19th century — the role of Belgium and the importance of the Congo as really the jewel of Africa in terms of its wealth and resources — how did the Congo suffer before Lumumba came to power?

ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Well, the story really begins, in the modern era, in 1885, when — or 1884 to ’85, when all the major countries of Europe led — preceded by the United States, actually; we were the very first — recognized the Congo not as a Belgian colony, but as the private, personally owned colony of King Leopold II of Belgium, a very greedy, ambitious man who wanted a colony of his own. At that point, Belgium was not sure that it wanted a colony. Leopold ruled this place for 23 years, made an enormous fortune, estimated at over a billion in today’s American dollars. Finally, in 1908, he was forced to give it up to become a Belgian colony, and then he died the following year. And the Belgians ran it for the next half-century, extracting an enormous amount of wealth, initially in ivory and rubber, then in diamonds, gold, copper, timber, palm oil, all sorts of other minerals. And as with almost all European colonies in Africa, this wealth flowed back to Europe. It benefited the Europeans much more than the Africans.

And the hope that many people had when independence came all over Africa, for the most part, you know, within a few years on either side of 1960, people had the hope that at last African countries would begin to control their own destiny and that they would be the ones who would reap the profits from the mines and the plantations and so on. Lumumba put that hope into words. And for that reason, he was immediately considered a very dangerous figure by the United States and Belgium. The CIA issued this assassination order with White House approval. And as was said at the beginning, they couldn’t get close enough to him to actually poison him, but they got money under the table to Congolese politicians who did see that he was assassinated, with Belgian help. It was a Belgian pilot who flew the plane to where he was killed, a Belgian officer who commanded the firing squad.

And then, the really disastrous thing that followed was this enthusiastic United States backing for the dictatorial regime of Mobutu, who seized total power a couple years later and ran a 32-year dictatorship, enriched himself by about $4 billion, and really ran his country into the ground, was greeted by every American president, with the sole exception of Jimmy Carter, who was in office during those 32 years. And he left the country a wreck, from which it has still not recovered.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Hochschild, I want to play a clip of the former CIA agent John Stockwell talking about the CIA’s plans to assassinate the prime minister of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba.

JOHN STOCKWELL: The CIA had developed a program to assassinate Lumumba, under Devlin’s encouragement and management. The program they developed, the operation, didn’t work. They didn’t follow through on it. It was to give poison to Lumumba. And they couldn’t find a setting in which to get the poison to him successfully in a way that it wouldn’t appear to be a CIA operation. I mean, you couldn’t invite him to a cocktail party and give him a drink and have him die a short time later, obviously. And so, they gave up on it. They got cold feet. And instead, they handled it by the chief of station talking to Mobutu about the threat that Lumumba posed, and Mobutu going out and killing Lumumba, having his men kill Lumumba.

INTERVIEWER: What about the CIA’s relationship with Mobutu? Were they paying him money?

JOHN STOCKWELL: Yes, indeed. I was there in 1968 when the chief of station told the story about having been, the day before that day, having gone to make payment to Mobutu of cash — $25,000 — and Mobutu saying, “Keep the money. I don’t need it.” And by then, of course, Mobutu’s European bank account was so huge that $25,000 was nothing to him.

AMY GOODMAN: That was former CIA agent John Stockwell talking about the CIA’s plans to assassinate Lumumba. Juan?

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Adam, I’d like to ask you — you were in the Congo shortly after Lumumba’s death. Could you talk about — we have about a minute — could you talk about your personal experiences there and what you saw?

ADAM HOCHSCHILD: Yes, I was there. I was just a college student at the time. And I wish I could say that I was smart and politically knowledgeable enough to realize the full significance of everything I was seeing. I was not, and it was really only in later years that I began to understand it. But what I do remember — and this was, as I say, six months or so after he was killed — was the sort of ominous atmosphere in Leopoldville, as the capital was called then, these jeeps full of soldiers who were patrolling the streets, the way the streets quickly emptied at dusk, and then two very, very arrogant guys at the American embassy who were proudly talking over drinks one evening about how this person, Lumumba, had been killed, whom they regarded, you know, not as a democratically elected African leader, but as an enemy of the United States. And so, of course, I, as a fellow American, they expected to be happy that he had been done away with. There was something quite chilling about that, and it stuck with me. But I think it’s only in much later years that I fully realized the significance.

AMY GOODMAN: Adam Hochschild, I want to thank you very much for being with us, author of several books, including King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Find this story at 21 January 2013