THE TORTURE OF ABU ZUBAYDAH,
AND THE PROSECUTION OF KIRIAKOU,
A CASE OF DUAL INJUSTICE
Why does Obama continue to shield law-breakers in the Bush Administration?
In Pakistan's border provinces, in 2002, a Saudi Arabian national of Palestinian descent, one Abu Zubaydah was reported to be hiding at a safe-house in a rural area. The CIA knew that their target had left his native land to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan. They also had information that he was in charge of a training camp in the district. What they did not know was that during the Soviet-Afghan conflict Zubaydah had suffered a serious head wound which left him speechless and with near total memory loss. Though he was considered a top official of al Qaida by the Bush Administration, at the time, now we know that because of his head injuries and mental limitations Zubaydah was considered be worthless to al Qaida and he was never a member of that organization. In fact Dan Coleman, the FBI's senior expert on al Qaida, stated in 2009 that Zubaydah's importance was exaggerated by the Bush White House and that Zubaydah was only a "safehouse keeper" with mental problems, who "claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did." (the quotes are from Wikipedia's Abu Zubaydah page)
During the CIA-insurgent firefight at the safe-house, Zubaydah was again severely wounded. After the final rush into the compound by CIA and Pakistani agents, the Pakistanis found a grievously injured Zubaydah, having been shot in the groin, stomach and thigh. They tossed the insensate man into a pick-up truck with the dead and wounded, where he would have died from his untended wounds. But the chief CIA agent, John Kiriakou, who led the assault on the safe house, recognized Zubaydah by his appearance and by the fact that a search of his pockets revealed he carried bank books from Saudi and Kuwaiti institutions rather than cash or untraceable funds as simple foot-soldier might have. Kiriakou, assuming that the near-dead man would be valuable if he could be kept alive, made sure his wounds were tended by the Pakistanis, then he flew in a surgeon from Johns Hopkins in the United States to further treat the man's serious wounds so that he would survive his passage out of Pakistan to a place where he could be adequately interrogated. When Kiriakou reported the capture to his superiors they were elated. Abu Zubaydah was considered a top-ranking al Qaida operative by the Bush administration, and a big catch for Kiriakou and the CIA. John Kiriakou was lauded for his work at the safe house fire-fight and for his investigative prowess in recognizing the captive's importance, and actions to save his life.
Unfortunately, Kirakou was disappointed when he was subsequently passed up for promotion. Zubaydah's supposed importance was based on the limited knowledge the USA had of him at that time, and the fact that President Bush was in need of some positive news about progress being made against al Qaida. Thus this badly wounded man, still suffering memory loss from his old head injury was, without further investigation, subsequently moved from Pakistan and sent on to severalnCIA "black" sites in Thailand, Poland, Garcia Diego, Guantanamo and elsewhere where he was subjected to fourteen different types of torture as well as water-boarding. (There is no question about whether Zubaydah was tortured, the descriptions of the series of "harsh" treatments he was subjected to makes disgusting reading.) It is well known that this prisoner was subjected to water boarding 83 times.
At the time, the actual transportation (rendition) of a US captive from a battle field to a place where that person would be tortured during interrogation was strictly illegal in the USA---that is until just before Zubaydah's rendition to Thailand. To facilitate this rendition, two of George Bush's attorneys in Washington, John Yoo and Jay Bybee conjured up legal cover, which, for the period of the Bush presidency, allowed the President and his team to claim that what they were doing to Zubaydah during his rendition and torture -was "legal".
About this time, back in Washington, top US officials including President Bush, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Ashcroft having learned of Zubaydah's capture met to discuss the question of how to interrogate him to get the maximum amount of information. The setting for the meeting was a short period after 9-11, the President and his team were eager for any information about al Qaida, however tenuous and whatever means was used to obtain it. The CIA had proposed a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" for Zubaydah which included forced nudity, loud music, sensory deprivation, temperature extremes, beatings, physical stress positions, such as forcing individuals into a "cramp" box where they could not stand upright or lie down, as well as water-boarding (a form of slow asphyxiation, using water to close off the passage of air to the lungs). Government documents now reveal that all these government officials (and high level Congressional leaders) were briefed about the proposal. Finally, with all of Bush's team in agreement, his national security advisor at the time, Condi Rice, finally told the CIA that the so called "harsh treatments" or "enhanced interrogation methods" we're acceptable to the President and they could go ahead.
Later, Dick Cheney, stated, "I signed off on it, so did the others." But John Ashcroft, the Attorney General at the time, perhaps concerned with the way the administration was running rough-shod over international agreements and the nation's laws warned: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”
[An interesting comment President Bush made at the time is illustrative of his thinking. A few days after Bush signed off on the CIA's torture proposal, Bush eagerly asked of one of his advisers "What information did you get out of him?" The advisor reported that little new information had been forthcoming, and the reason offered was that Zubaydah's unhealed wounds were causing him great pain and he had been given pain killers. (This may have occurred during the time he had been placed in a "cramp" box where his bent over positions for long periods had caused his unhealed wounds to open and to bleed again.) The interrogators claimed that the pain killers made Zubaydah drowsy and were slowing the interrogation process. Bush responded: "Pain killers? Why give him pain killers?" Zubaydah's drugs were immediately withdrawn and the harsh treatments continued. ]
Mr Ashcroft was perfectly right. History will not judge the Bush inner group of torturers kindly. Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice and Ashcroft all signed off on a process too horrible to envision and totally alien to American traditions of behavior--we are not torturers. Whatever various euphemisms they coined and used to describe it, "harsh treatment" or "enhanced interrogation" what was done to Zubaydah was torture. The old saw, stating : If it walks like a duck, quacks and flies like a duck--- it is a duck!" holds true. Today, we know (as did the vast majority of us who harbor some sense of morality and justice) that torture, aside from its moral repulsiveness, and legal prohibitions, was and remains ineffective and counter productive as a means of gathering information, and that any information "tainted" by torture is inadmissible as evidence in a trial. But then again we must recall that these people of the Bush Administration were the "great thinkers and deciders" who thought up the Bush tax cuts for the rich, the bank bailouts and the invasion of Iraq and other "boners". They are and remain an embarrassment to the USA.
The Bush administration sanctioned torture as a method of interrogation..bringing the USA down to the level of other torture states: the Nazis, Red Chinese, North Koreans, Soviet Russia and the Spanish Inquisition. History will remember them and those in the CIA and their contractors, physicians, psychologists and others who followed their illegal and immoral directions. The names Bush and all those others of his group will remain infamous like that of Dr. Josef Mengele of another age. Finally, the guilty should reflect on that ancient saying of the Greek philosopher, Sextus Empiricus (160-210 AD) "the stones of justice turn only very slowly but they grind exceedingly fine". So perhaps, like the war criminals of WW II, these criminals will worry to the end of their days if some one will come knocking on their door, with an arrest warrant from the international court.
But today, these miscreants are busily attempting to rewrite the history of their time in office, to protect their now shaken reputations. Bush, Cheney, Rice and Rumsfeld have all made attempts at history-revising memoirs, but to no avail. There is too much evidence to whitewash away. They are patently guilty.
With the change of administration in 2010 one had hoped these practices of rendition and torture, the black sites, Guantanamo and the miscreants who developed this nightmare of torture cells would be exposed and punished. But the Obama Administration has continued to shield these former officials from the law. Were it not for the timidity and failure of those in the Obama White House, Bush, Cheney, Tenet, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice, Ashcroft, Yoo and Bybee would have been condemned and perhaps be serving prison sentences rather than being free to publish their attempts at contrition an self-serving histories. Obama, and his Attorney General Eric Holder, has as he has in other areas, timidly shielded these guilty individuals from legal prosecution. The White House hides the crimes of its predecessors. Why? Timidity? Fear of reprisal?
Which brings us to the recent case of former CIA officer John Kiriakou. In the last few days the Obama Administration has proceeded with the case against former CIA officer Kiriakou who is charged with passing information, to journalists regarding the illegal torture of Zubaydah. He is also charged with providing the identity of a covert agent to a journalist, i.e. "outing" an agent (as Ambassador Wilson's wife Valery Plame was outed by VP Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby). The agent Kiriakou "outed" may have been involved in the torture of Zubaydah. Thus in this case the Obama Administration is pursuing a whistleblower while shielding wrong doers.
Here is the background on that case:
On January 23, 2012 Agence France reported that the CIA had charged John Kirakiou, former CIA agent and hero of the firefight with Abu Zubaydah, with espionage. As noted above he was the agent who "arrested a top al Qaida operative" and alerted his superiors in the CIA. But for some unknown reason Obama's White House turned its guns on this particular CIA agent. Why? Kiriakou has been charged with the most serious crime the CIA could throw at him, i.e. violation of the very rarely used Espionage Act of 1917, the very law used to convict the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Conviction could land him in jail for 2o years. The CIA also fired his pregnant wife, who worked as an analyst for the agency.
What did Kiriakou do? First, he retired from the CIA after fourteen years and wrote a book about his experiences. This probably did not ingratiate him with his former supervisors. Second, in 2007 he made the grievous error of actually stating on ABC News in December, 2007 that Abu Zubaydah was "tortured." Whether he actually explicitlybspoke out the "t" word, rather than using the euphemism "enhanced interrogation techniques" is not important. Because he was the first CIA official to actually describe the water-boarding process in such great detail on public TV, so that even if he had not used the "t" word, any observer, even an addicted Fox News regular, would have understood that it WAS torture.
Thus had Kirikou actually tortured Zubaydah, perhaps gouging out an eye or attaching battery cables to his testicles, he would now be in the clear and would never have been indicted. Today he would not be sweating out how to pay for a top-notch defense attorney and fearing possible conviction and incarceration for 20 years. Then there is the financial impact, with his pregnant wife out of work too, both are living off their possibly meager savings. The actual torturers, their legal supporters and the former officials in government who gave the orders for torture have been consistently protected from prosecution by Attorney General Holder and President Obama. But one who was not involved in these despicable acts, but simply described what the actual torturers were doing, is the one they chose to chase down and hit with the Espionage Act. Perhaps it is because John Kiriakou, the person who has fourteen years of experience with the CIA, and was actually present when Abu Zubaydah was captured, has the credibility to speak about the subject as well as the crimes of his superiors--which he witnesed--that level of exposure is unwanted by the Obama Administration. Such an individual can do a great deal of harm to a timid administration, determined to sweep past misdeeds under the rug.
Thus former CIA hero John Kiriakou was fed to the sharks (or pushed under the bus) most likely to put a deep fear into anyone else in the CIA who might have the idea to expose wrong-doing in high places, and in the particularly embarrassing Zubaydah case.
Sadly, with this action, President Obama and Eric Holder are themselves sullied by shielding and protecting the Bush torture team. I had hoped for so much more from our young President. I had hoped for a change of course from that of the Bush Administration, but the President has only moved around the deck chairs. The ship is still on the same course Bush set. He kept much of the same Bush crew and they have continued to hold tight to the tiller. Except for some minor shifts in decor, Obama sits in the captain's chair on deck but has left the crew to mange the course and sails. Our ship of state still need a drastic course correction. But our hope that Obama will be able to make that transformation is slowing passing away like sea foam.
This case of Kiriakou underscores that fact. The President has directed his Attorney General to attack Kiriakou (a man who served his nation in his way honorably) rather than turn the power of the law and of the Presidency against those who have actually broken with our traditions, undermined our reputation as guarantors of international agreements, ignored our laws, soiled our reputations, and made hypocrites of us all. Add it to the list of disappointments, timid actions, no action, and reversals this young, intelligent and formerly promising President has rung up during his first three and a half years in office.
What we are all looking for is some sign that things will be different if he is re elected.
Get the picture?
rjk
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