Obama releases secret Bush anti-terror documents

Tuesday 03rd March, 09:19 AM JST

WASHINGTON —

The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects.

The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants.

The Bush administration eventually abandoned many of the legal conclusions, but the documents themselves had been closely held. By releasing them, President Barack Obama continued a house-cleaning of the previous administration’s most contentious policies.

“Too often over the past decade, the fight against terrorism has been viewed as a zero-sum battle with our civil liberties,” Attorney General Eric Holder said in a speech a few hours before the documents were released. “Not only is that school of thought misguided, I fear that in actuality it does more harm than good.”

The Obama administration also acknowledged in court documents Monday that the CIA destroyed 92 videos involving terror suspects, including interrogations — far more than had been known. Congressional Democrats and other critics have charged that some of the harsh interrogation techniques amounted to torture, a contention President George W Bush and other Bush officials rejected.

The new administration pledged on Monday to begin turning over documents related to the videos to a federal judge and to make as much information public as possible.

The legal memos written by the Bush administration’s Office of Legal Counsel show a government grappling with how to wage war on terrorism in a fast-changing world. The conclusion, reiterated in page after page of documents, was that the president had broad authority to set aside constitutional rights.

Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combatting terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct 23, 2001, memo.

“First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: “The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

On Sept 25, 2001, Yoo discussed possible changes to the laws governing wiretaps for intelligence gathering. In that memo, he said the government’s interest in keeping the nation safe following the terrorist attacks might justify warrantless searches.

That memo did not specifically attempt to justify the government’s warrantless wiretapping program, but it provided part of the foundation.

Yoo, now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley School of Law, did not return messages seeking comment.

The memos reflected a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts. That stance, in one form or another, became the foundation for many policies: holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, using tough new CIA interrogation tactics and locking U.S. citizens in military brigs without charges.

Obama has pledged to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year. He halted the CIA’s intensive interrogation program. And last week, prosecutors moved the terrorism case against U.S. resident Ali Al-Marri, a suspected al-Qaida sleeper agent held in a military brig, to a civilian courthouse.

A criminal prosecutor is wrapping up an investigation of the destruction of the tapes of interrogations.

Monday’s acknowledgment of videotape destruction, however, involved a civil lawsuit filed in New York by the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The CIA can now identify the number of videotapes that were destroyed,” said the letter submitted in that case by Acting U.S. Attorney Lev Dassin. “Ninety-two videotapes were destroyed.”

It is not clear what exactly was on the recordings. The government’s letter cites interrogation videos, but the lawsuit against the Defense Department also seeks records related to treatment of detainees, any deaths of detainees and the CIA’s sending of suspects overseas, known as “extraordinary rendition.”

At the White House, press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters he hadn’t spoken to the president about the report, but he called the news about the videotapes “sad” and said Obama was committed to ending torture while also protecting American values.

ACLU attorney Amrit Singh said the CIA should be held in contempt of court for holding back the information for so long.

“The large number of videotapes destroyed confirms that the agency engaged in a systematic attempt to hide evidence of its illegal interrogations and to evade the court’s order,” Singh said.

CIA spokesman George Little said the agency “has certainly cooperated with the Department of Justice investigation. If anyone thinks it’s agency policy to impede the enforcement of American law, they simply don’t know the facts.”

The details of interrogations of terror suspects, and the existence of tapes documenting those sessions, have become the subject of long fights in a number of different court cases. In the trial of Sept 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, prosecutors initially claimed no such recordings existed, then acknowledged after the trial was over that two videotapes and one audiotape had been made.

The Dassin letter, dated March 2 to Judge Alvin Hellerstein, says the CIA is now gathering more details for the lawsuit, including a list of the destroyed records, any secondary accounts that describe the destroyed contents and the identities of those who may have viewed or possessed the recordings before they were destroyed.

But the lawyers also note that some of that information may be classified, such as the names of CIA personnel who viewed the tapes.

The separate criminal investigation includes interrogations of al-Qaida lieutenant Abu Zubaydah and another top al-Qaida leader. Tapes of those interrogations were destroyed, in part, the Bush administration said, to protect the identities of the government questioners at a time the Justice Department was debating whether or not the tactics used during the interrogations were legal.

Former CIA director Michael Hayden acknowledged that waterboarding — simulated drowning — was used on three suspects, including the two whose interrogations were recorded.

John Durham, a senior career prosecutor in Connecticut, is leading the criminal investigation, out of Virginia, and had asked that he be given until the end of February to wrap up his work before requests for information in the civil lawsuit were dealt with.

___

Associated Press Writers Pamela Hess and Philip Elliott contributed to this report.

Wire reports

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Latest 15 of 91 Total Comments Show All

smithinjapan at 11:47 PM JST - 3rd March

sailwind: He's decided that they all deserve fair trials and has decided to close Gitmo, which the former president refused to do, and cheney STILL says is a bad idea. He is looking into where the remaining -- as in those who have not yet been moved out of those Obama has already moved -- can be put and tried. They are getting more of the rights denied to them by bush and co., and they are clearly no longer being tortured like they were under... you guessed it... bush and co. What's more Obama has sworn that the US will NEVER use water boarding (unlike... ahem!), and has guaranteed the US will no longer reduce themselves to being like the terrorists.

No, you have stated flat out you are for suppression of their rights and for them remaining locked up without trial and what not, and with zero evidence that they have committed any wrong doing.

I notice you also could not refute the fact that you clearly don't care for the US constitution, nor for the rights and freedoms provided under it. You are, as such, no better than the enemy you pretend to be fighting, if you would gladly stoop to their level and call it 'democracy'.

Obama is taking you guys back from the edge of a very dark place -- which the previous government saw fit to leave you teetering on the edge of. Be it the economy, Gitmo, or just bush and co.'s torture in general, he is bringing it all to light and promising it won't be repeated, paving the way for improving on the situation and even making amends. Some of you may not like that he is against torture and wants the people in prison to have fair trials, but again those of you who honestly stand behind bush's abuse of power and his going against the constitution? well.... pretty hard to actually preach that you are Americans for a free and democratic country. Even harder to blab about how the constitution provides you with this and that right, since you so strongly believe those rights can be bypassed.

Come out and try again sometime, sailwind. Next time I recommend actually commenting on the thread, though.
smithinjapan at 11:49 PM JST - 3rd March

adaydream: "I think that one big reason that people don't want Gitmo closed down is maybe the truths about torture will get out. Instead of this information being sequestered and kept on Gitmo will get out."

Bingo! And yet, not to worry... when what happened to these men comes to light sailwind, sarge, and others will find a way to say it's Obama's fault and completely avoid the fact that bush took away their rights and spit on the idea of democracy and freedom.
SushiSake3 at 11:59 PM JST - 3rd March

Sailwind - "Keep em locked up with no charges while you 'study' the issue. The left here has no problem with that at all."

Heck, I never thought you would sink as low as you have today, sorry, I'm really disappointed. I thought you were worthy of respect.

I think I will have to change my opinion as of today.
SushiSake3 at 12:07 AM JST - 4th March

Here's a place thee Gitmo guys can be transferred to while justice is allowed to run its course -

A super-maximum prison in Florence, Colo., about 100 southwest of Denver.

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5383628

"The supermax prison was designed to incapacitate dangerous criminals by locking them down in stark isolation, sometimes for years ..."

Sounds just likie Gitmo.
grafton at 04:36 AM JST - 4th March

I will grant that not everybody posting here is American, but the issue really does concern us all, the shadow that is America really does fall over so many none Americans that it gives the world the right to comment.

I can’t bring my self to ignore the harm Bush has done to so many, that would be flying in the face of the obvious & as yet I think it far, far too soon to be talking about how wonderful Obama is, simply because we don’t know if that is going to be true.

People who write scripts for disaster films might have thought up a story line like the attack on the World Trade Centre & all else that went on that day, but no security service in the world would dream that such could happen. And maybe that was the mistake, nightmares can be warnings, & for so many people that day was a nightmare. To reason that Bush failed on that day is to say nothing, because in that we all failed, we all sat open mouthed not believing what we were watching. It is easy today with hindsight to say that America should have been better prepared. How, how can anybody ever be prepared for something so insane?

From that point on everything goes out of control, Bush could never have been master of the situation but others did see an opportunity to use what had happened to move forward their agendas. There was immense pressure to deal with what had happened, action, any action had to be seen to be taking place. This was a circus that had to put on a performance both for the domestic audience & the world audience, & for some running that circus there was a chance to make a serious profit. Sorry, but some Americans put profit before patriotism, & they did when AQ opened that window of opportunity for them.

The publicity game that followed was to keep the American people paranoid & angry so that they would agree to wars in places most didn’t even know existed. Bad guys had to be found & locked up, the boggy man needed to have some substance but he could never be brought into the US court system because then he would be see as a man & a man that has rights. Are these men in Gitmo innocent? 50/50 yes & no, but that is not the real issue, their innocence doesn’t matter, only what they have come to represent matters.

But this is where Obama comes along, to Bush these Gitmo bad guys where one thing, to Obama they are something different, they are the badge he wears to prove he really is a good man that can be trusted by all the people & he can best do that by pointing the finger of guilt at the last administration. THEY were bad & Obama is going to save America.

Let’s face a simple fact, Obama fought his way to the top of the heap & got elected, now that is not possible without a lot of pull in the right places. Getting elected can be done & stay clean, getting to the top of the heap is a really dirty game. Let’s not give that man too much of our trust until he has earned it & remember he is still a brand shiny new president who knows just the right words to say, because he has friends to help him say what they think needs to be heard.

This is not the time for Americans to be turning against other Americans in defence of their man. We have all seen what Bush did, more stupid than evil, but we haven’t yet seen what Obama can do or will do. WAIT.

Mr. Smith, thank you for your above comment. I now feel almost accepted, almost.
Sarge at 07:01 AM JST - 4th March

smithinjapan: "they were put in their ( there ) ( U.S. custody ) without cause"

LOL! Yes, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is innocent! As innocent a little lamb!
grafton at 07:13 AM JST - 4th March

Sarge at 07:01 AM JST - 4th March

“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is innocent! As innocent a little lamb!”

Sorry but until a legal constituted court of law says otherwise the very, very simple answer is “yes”.

You may not like it, I may not like it, but that is the law that protects you from being locked up without being found guilty. If you refuse that legal right to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed then you are taking it away from yourself. Are you so pure as the driven snow that no over zealous nutjob of a security man might not see you as being dangerous?
adaydream at 07:47 AM JST - 4th March

Sarge there are some 200 prisoners in Gitmo and there are a dozen possible bad guys. Keeping Gitmo open for a dozen bad guys is assinine.

You complain about earmarks this and wasting money there.

Gitmo is an embarrassment and a waste of money. < :-)
goodDonkey at 09:48 AM JST - 4th March

Too much torture occurred at Gitmo. Torture is not a reliable means of extracting information. Torture is not about extracting information then is it? It is about the pathetic person who gets their jollies from it.
smithinjapan at 10:56 AM JST - 4th March

sarge: “Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is innocent! As innocent a little lamb!”

grafton touched well enough on this. You cannot condemn them until they are tried and convicted. It can be tempting to simply do otherwise, but then you would be even more hypocritical than you are normally.

So, yes, the answer is yes.... he is innocent until proven guilty.
likeitis at 11:02 AM JST - 4th March

goodDonkey: Torture is not about extracting information then is it? It is about the pathetic person who gets their jollies from it.

True dat. It is precisely why some people joined up for our clandestine services; their own personal twisted jollies. They should be sharing cells with their victims.
rollonarte at 11:16 AM JST - 4th March

Obama's administration has already declared Gitmo is kosher.

Wash Times, Feb 2009 -

A Pentagon review of conditions in the Guantanamo Bay military prison has concluded that the treatment of detainees meets the requirements of the Geneva Convention but that prisoners in the highest-security camps should be allowed more religious and social interaction with each other, according to a government official who has read the 85-page document.

The shameless and stupid disclosure of these anti-terror docs however, mostly dating from the immediate aftermath of 9-11, was more about giving the media something with which to distract ordinary 'folks' attention, get them from dwelling on our imploding economy under our rookie president. And it was a sop to the radical, self-loathing far Left that helped put Obama in office. The Alinsky playbook worked to get Obama elected, but it doesn't outline how to rule...
apecNetworks at 07:32 PM JST - 4th March

Yes, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is innocent!

How common is the name, "Khalid" or "Khallid"? I was being followed just prior to the terrorist attempt in the late 1990's on the US West Coast, and the name came up during that period. Unexpected allies were involved.
onewrldoneppl at 11:05 AM JST - 5th March

republicans destroying recordings of illegal activities? unheard of?! preposterous!!! i joke. i joke. i keed. i keed .. ha ha ha.
smithinjapan at 07:34 PM JST - 9th March

rollanarte: "The shameless and stupid disclosure of these anti-terror docs..."

Is saving you and your country. You should be on your knees thanking a president who actually gives a damn about you and yours, instead of being an anti-patriot.