

Former Vice President's Verbal Broadsides Against Obama Over Interrogation of Terror Suspects and Planned Shutdown of Guantanamo Prison Camp May Be Aimed at Preventing President From Declassifying and Making Public CIA Inspector General's Report That's Expected to 'Seriously Undermine' Cheney's Justification for Alleged Torture Tactics







Critics have long compared former Vice President Dick Cheney to Darth Vader -- the black-helmeted villian in George Lucas' now-classic "Star Wars" film series -- as the real power behind the Bush administration. But it now appears that Cheney had a reason to go on his aggressive public-relations offensive against President Obama: To prevent the president from declassifying and making public a 2004 report by the CIA's inspector general of his investigation into the agency's use of alleged torture tactics against so-called "high-value" detainees at Guantanamo -- an investigation that the former vice president tried to stonewall. (Image courtesy SF Weekly)







(Posted 5;00 a.m. EDT Monday, May 25, 2009)



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SPECIAL REPORT

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By JASON LEOPOLD

The Public Record



Former Vice President Dick Cheney intervened in CIA Inspector General John Helgerson's investigation into the agency's use of torture against "high-value" detainees, but the watchdog was still able to prepare a report that concluded the interrogation program violated some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture.



The report, which the Obama administration may soon declassify, was completed in May 2004 and implicated CIA interrogators in at least three detainee deaths in Afghanistan and Iraq and referred eight criminal cases of alleged homicide, abuse and misconduct to the Justice Department for further investigation, reporter Jane Mayer wrote in her book, The Dark Side, and in an investigative report published in The New Yorker magazine in November 2005.



In The Dark Side, Mayer described the report as being "as thick as two Manhattan phone books" and contained information, according to an unnamed source, "that was simply sickening."



"The behavior it described, another knowledgeable source said, raised concerns not just about the detainees but also about the Americans who had inflicted the abuse, one of whom seemed to have become frighteningly dehumanized," Mayer wrote. "The source said, 'You couldn't read the documents without wondering, "Why didn't someone say, 'Stop!'""



CHENEY VIOLATED CIA INSPECTOR GENERAL'S INDEPENDENCE



Mayer added that Cheney routinely "summoned" Helgerson to meet with him privately about his investigation, launched in 2003, and soon thereafter the probe "was stopped in its tracks." Mayer characterized Cheney's interaction with Helgerson as highly unusual.



Cheney's "reaction to this first, carefully documented in-house study concluding that the CIA's secret program was most likely criminal was to summon the Inspector General to his office for a private chat," Mayer wrote. "The inspector general is supposed to function as an independent overseer, free from political pressure, but Cheney summoned the CIA inspector general more than once to his office."



"Cheney loomed over everything," the former CIA officer told Mayer. "The whole IG's office was completely politicized. They were working hand in glove with the White House."



But Mayer said Cheney's intervention in Helgerson's probe proved that as early as 2004 "the vice president's office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in the [torture] program." Helgerson has denied that he was pressured by Cheney.



In October 2007, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden ordered an investigation into Helgerson's office, focusing on internal complaints that the inspector general was on "a crusade against those who have participated in [the] controversial detention program."



INSPECTOR GENERAL'S REPORT EXPECTED TO SHOW TORTURE WAS 'INEFFECTIVE'



News reports have suggested that when Helgerson's report is declassified it will seriously undercut claims made by Cheney in numerous interviews that the systematic torture of "high-value" detainees produced valuable intelligence, thwarted pending terrorist plots against the United States and saved "hundreds of thousands of lives."



In addition to showing the inconclusive nature of the value of intelligence gleaned through torture, the report will likely show that Helgerson warned top CIA officials that the interrogation techniques administered to detainees "might violate some provisions of the International Convention Against Torture."



A November 9, 2005, report published in The New York Times said Helgerson's report "raised concern about whether the use of the [torture] techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability."



Sources quoted by the Times said "the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.



"The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world."



The American Civil Liberties Union filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to gain access to Helgerson's report. Portions of the report have already been turned over to the organization, but they were heavily censored.



SUSPICIONS OF A COVER-UP MOUNT AFTER 92 TORTURE TAPES ARE REPORTED DESTROYED . . .



Mayer also suggested that the CIA may have decided to destroy 92 interrogation videotapes in November 2005, after Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) began asking questions about the tapes referenced in the report. Helgerson had viewed the tapes at one of the CIA's "black site" prisons.



"Further rattling the CIA was a request in May 2005 from Senator Rockefeller, the ranking Democrat on the [then-Republican-controlled] Senate Intelligence Committee, to see over a hundred documents referred to in the earlier Inspector General's report on detention inside the black prison sites," Mayer wrote in her book. "Among the items Rockefeller specifically sought was a legal analysis of the CIA's interrogation videotapes.



"Rockefeller wanted to know if the intelligence agency's top lawyer believed that the waterboarding of [alleged al-Qaida operative Abu] Zubaydah and [alleged 9/11 mastermind] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, as captured on the secret videotapes, was entirely legal. The CIA refused to provide the requested documents to Rockefeller. But the Democratic senator's mention of the videotapes undoubtedly sent a shiver through the Agency, as did a second request he made for these documents to [then-CIA Director Porter] Goss in September 2005."



. . . BUT AT LEAST TWO OF THE SUPPOSEDLY DESTROYED TORTURE VIDEOS MAY STILL EXIST



[However, The 'Skeeter Bites Report, in an exclusive story posted on December 10, 2007, reported that a letter by a Virginia-based U.S. attorney to a federal appeals court appeared to contradict Hayden's public statements on the destruction of the hundreds of hours of video footage of "extreme" interrogations of suspected al-Qaida operatives by strongly indicating that at least two of the videos still existed.



[Charles Rosenberg, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, wrote that his office viewed two videotapes of CIA interrogations of al-Qaida suspects as recently as September 19, 2007 and October 18, 2007 -- contrary to Hayden's statement that the tapes were destroyed in 2005.



[Rosenberg's five-page letter, addressed to Judge Karen Williams, chief judge of the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia and to Judge Leonie Brinkema of the U.S. District Court in nearby Alexandria, was referring to the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui, the lone suspect convicted in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.



[Brinkema was the presiding judge in the Moussaoui trial. A copy of the letter, dated October 27, 2007, was obtained by The 'Skeeter Bites Report.



[Rosenberg wrote that his office was informed on September 13, 2007 by the CIA that the agency "obtained three recordings -- two videotapes and one short audiotape -- of interrogations" of suspected al-Qaida terrorists.



[Moussaoui, the so-called "20th hijacker," pleaded guilty in 2006 to charges of conspiring to hijack planes and crash them into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, admitting that he knew about the attacks and did nothing to stop them. Ironically, Moussaoui was in jail in Minnesota as the September 11 attacks unfolded. He's now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole at the federal Supermax prison in Florence, Colorado.]



INSPECTOR GENERAL'S REPORT IS HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER



Helgerson's report has been highly sought after by members of Congress and civil liberties organizations for some time. Justice Department torture memos released last month contain several footnotes to the inspector general's report noting the watchdog's concerns about the fact that interrogators strayed from the legal limits set forth in the memos on how specific interrogation methods could be used.



For example, a footnote in a May 2005 Justice Department legal opinion says Helgerson found that, "in some cases," the "waterboard was used with far greater frequency than initially indicated ... and also that it was used in a different manner."



According to court papers in a contempt lawsuit the American Civil Liberties Union filed against the CIA over the destruction of 92 interrogation videotapes, "at the conclusion of [Helgerson's] special review in May 2004, [CIA Office of Inspector General] notified [the Justice Department] and other relevant oversight authorities of the review's findings."



A month later, according to documents released last month by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Helgerson's report was made available to top lawmakers on the committee.



CIA REPORTEDLY ASKED FOR WHITE HOUSE OK ON TORTURE



That same month -- June 2004 -- then-CIA Director George Tenet asked the White House to explicitly sign off on the agency's torture program with a memo that authorized specific techniques, such as waterboarding. A similar request was also made by the agency at the start of Helgerson's probe in 2003, according to a front-page story published in The Washington Post last October.



"The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public," the Post reported.



"The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed (and remain classified), were requested by then-CIA Director Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents," the newspaper said. "Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing."



It's unknown whether Helgerson's report led Tenet to request the later memo from the White House. According to the Post, "the CIA's anxiety was partly fueled by the lack of explicit presidential authorization for the interrogation program" and "Tenet seemed ... interested in protecting his subordinates" from legal liability.



In July 2004, "the CIA briefed the [Senate Intelligence Committee's] Chairman and Vice Chairman on the facts and conclusions of the Inspector General special review," the Post reported.



[Editor's Note: A direct link to the article on The Washington Post Web site could not be established because it is over six months old and available only for purchase.]



HELGERSON ZEROES IN ON MURDERS OF SEVERAL DETAINEES



In an interview last August on Public Radio International's "To The Point," Mayer said Helgerson "investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees" and forwarded several of those cases "to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution."



"Why have there been no charges filed? It's a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers," Mayer said. "Sources suggested to me that ... it is highly uncomfortable for top Bush Justice officials to prosecute these cases because, inevitably, it means shining a light on what those same officials sanctioned."



In The Dark Side, Mayer wrote that Helgerson was "looking into at least three deaths of CIA-held prisoners in Afghanistan and Iraq."



One of those prisoners was Manadel al-Jamadi, who was captured by Navy SEALs outside Baghdad in November 2003.



"The CIA had identified him as a 'high-value' target, because he had allegedly supplied the explosives used in several atrocities perpetrated by insurgents, including the bombing of the Baghdad headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in October 2003," Mayer reported in The New Yorker.



"After being removed from his house, Jamadi was manhandled by several of the SEALs, who gave him a black eye and a cut on his face; he was then transferred to CIA custody, for interrogation at Abu Ghraib," Mayer reported. "According to witnesses, Jamadi was walking and speaking when he arrived at the prison. He was taken to a shower room for interrogation. Some forty-five minutes later, he was dead."



At the time of his death, Jamadi's head was covered with a plastic bag, he was shackled in a crucifixion-like pose that inhibited his ability to breathe and according to forensic pathologists who have examined the case, he suffocated.



The CIA interrogator implicated in his death was Mark Swanner, who was never charged with a crime despite a recommendation by investigators working for Helgerson that the Justice Department launch a criminal investigation into the matter.



The Swanner/Jamadi case was forwarded in 2004 to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, where the file remained. McNulty is under scrutiny by a special prosecutor investigating the role he and other Bush administration officials played in the controversial firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.



Helgerson also "had serious questions about the agency's mistreatment of dozens more, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed," Mayer wrote in her book, adding that there was a belief by some "insiders that [Helgerson's investigation] would end with criminal charges for abusive interrogations."



(Additional reporting by Skeeter Sanders.)



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Volume IV, Number 41

Special Report Copyright 2009, The Public Record.

The 'Skeeter Bites Report Copyright 2009, Skeeter Sanders. All rights reserved.





































