Comments on: Is Detainee 2 Abu Faraj al-Libbi?

By: freepatriot

freepatriot — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 04:43:59 +0000

geez, glad we never told ya about it then

here’s yer bill for last weeks losses …

btw, in these hard times, we’re uppin the Vig to 17.5 percent

thanks for your support

IBB (international brotherhood of bookmakers) local 1692

always look for the union label

By: bmaz

bmaz — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:34:45 +0000

I am shocked, shocked to find wagering at the blog!

By: WilliamOckham

WilliamOckham — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:33:27 +0000

But he did withdraw the really expansive August 2002 memo. Remember, we’re talking about combined techniques. The memo Goldsmith left in place was equivalent to the 2005 techniques and didn’t address the way they really waterboarded KSM.

By: WilliamOckham

WilliamOckham — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 02:30:55 +0000

Um, I’ll wager a six pack on this one. Beamish vs. Fuller’s ESB?

Seriously, I can see how you would come to that conclusion based on the reference on page 5 of the May 30 memo to the “August 2 Rizzo Letter”. However, if you’re right, there’s an Assistant General Counsel at the CIA with a very unusual first name. Look at the redactions for the January 4 fax. The full name of that Asst. General Counsel is at least 5 characters longer than “John A. Rizzo”, but the last name is shorter than “Rizzo”. Either the first name is 8-10 characters or the lawyer goes by “Billy Bob” or “Mary Sue”. It’s not impossible. It could be something like Alejandro A. Ruiz.

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 23:00:15 +0000

Which is not to say they’re not about individual detainees (though I’m not sure I buy that the April one is). Just that the title won’t tell you who they’re about, it’ll just tell you who it is from.

And I still don’t see any logic to an opinion written about a pre-June 15, 2004 treatment, since Goldsmith was very careful about not withdrawing stuff and leaving CIA totally exposed retroactively (and as much as said so to SASC). So I still insist that it has to be post June 15, 2004–something that happened before a new memo was written.

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 22:55:41 +0000

I think the redacted word there is the name of the CIA lawyer who wrote it–not about the detainee.

By: drational

drational — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:56:27 +0000

This is my opinion as well. I have suggested that the abstraction avoids prohibiting a specific bad outcome with combined techniques already completed. I speculate the Bradbury drafter pushback was from those in OLC who had hints of the bad outcome but not details, and Comey was after more. I think he knew they could not justify good faith in abstracting the combinations when a real “retrospective” example was floating around.

By: WilliamOckham

WilliamOckham — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:36:05 +0000

On second thought, I have a refinement to my theory. The Combined Memo is ostensibly about KSM. Here’s why. I believe that the faxes that are referred to in these memos are always about individual detainees. The citations in the memos are in this form:

{Date in dd mon format} {Detainee Surname} Fax

[The fact that they are italicized is important]

In the Combined Memo, the fax, from 2005, is referred to as

22 April [Redacted] Fax

The redacted area is enough for four letter name (one upper case and three lower case letters) or a three letter abbreviation (three upper case letters). As you’ve noted before, the Combined Memo largely relies on the Background Paper (Dec. 2004), except when it talks about waterboarding in combination with sleep deprivation. I think they needed a paper trail to cover the specific combination of torture they carried out on KSM because the CIA IG’s report raised particular questions about it. They used the Combined Memo to claim that what they did to KSM wasn’t torture and the CAT memo to claim that it wasn’t cruel, inhuman, or degrading.

By: emptywheel

emptywheel — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:44:00 +0000

Are you suggesting they used cover of Ghul’s torture to write it? THen why the pressure on the second memo–there’s nothing that isn’t already approved by the first?

And why did Comey believe it was about a particular detainee?

By: WilliamOckham

WilliamOckham — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 20:33:47 +0000

My theory is the Combined memo is exactly what Ullyot claimed it wasn’t:

He mentioned at one point that OLC didn’t feel like it could accede to my request to make the opinion focused on one person because they don’t give retrospective advice. I said I understood that, but that the treatment of that person had been the subject of oral advice, which OLC would simply be confirming in writing, something they do quite often.

The Combined Memo was a deliberate response to the CIA IG’s report. Under the guise of providing generalized advice going forward, it was really retrospectively re-authorizing the torture already carried out.