Hawkeye Area ACLU

Interrogations and Prosecution

U.S. operatives who went beyond Bush-approved methods in questioning detainees must be held accountable.
Editorial from The Washington Post

IN APRIL, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. declared that it "would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department." He was speaking, of course, of CIA operatives and other government interrogators who complied with the "torture memos" authored by the George W. Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel (OLC).

Guantanamo's Immediate Reaction Force still terrorizing detainees

Jeremy Scahill of WikiLeaks

As the Obama administration continues to fight the release of some 2,000 photos that graphically document U.S. military abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, an ongoing Spanish investigation is adding harrowing details to the ever-emerging portrait of the torture inside and outside Guantánamo. Among them: "blows to [the] testicles;" "detention underground in total darkness for three weeks with deprivation of food and sleep;" being "inoculated … through injection with 'a disease for dog cysts;'" the smearing of feces on prisoners; and waterboarding. The torture, according to the Spanish investigation, all occurred "under the authority of American military personnel" and was sometimes conducted in the presence of medical professionals.

More significantly, however, the investigation could for the first time place an intense focus on a notorious, but seldom discussed, thug squad deployed by the U.S. military to retaliate with excessive violence to the slightest resistance by prisoners at Guantánamo.

The force is officially known as the the Immediate Reaction Force or Emergency Reaction Force, but inside the walls of Guantánamo, it is known to the prisoners as the Extreme Repression Force. Despite President Barack Obama's publicized pledge to close the prison camp and end torture -- and analysis from human rights lawyers who call these forces' actions illegal -- IRFs remain very much active at Guantánamo.

Showdown in NSA Wiretap Case: Judge Threatens Sanctions Against Justice Department

David Kravets of Wired

SAN FRANCISCO — The Obama administration has until Friday to convince a federal judge not to levy sanctions against the government for “failing to obey the court’s orders” in a key NSA wiretapping lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker is threatening (.pdf) to summarily decide the 3-year-old lawsuit in favor of the plaintiffs, and award unspecified monetary damages to two American lawyers who claim their telephone calls were illegally intercepted by the NSA under the Bush administration. The lawyer represented a now-defunct Saudi charity that the Treasury Department claimed was linked to terrorism.