Thanks Marcy! If the craven summation by Holder isn’t a way to gracefully let him off the hook for some dirt the FBI managed to dig up, then “Vaughn Walker (the judge in this case, too)” needs a food taster.

Keep rattling the bushes Marcy, the snakes will have no choice but to run for deeper cover.

It’s like Bush Senior once said. If the American people knew what the government was doing they’d rise up and hang the leaders in the street.

National security=keep secret the fact that the middle class is being used to nourish and perpetuate the theft of its resources by the rich.

Oh, wait, Mowhoush IS dead……

I want to see someone nail down Obama or Holder (or both) on this “for the purpose of” vis a vis criminal acts in the Executive. I want them to have to specifically address, “If there is evidence of Executive branch crimes that have been committed, are you saying that they can be kept out of courts under a claim of “states secrets privilege” based on the same Executive branch that committed the crimes certifying to the court that they have reasons other than covering up the crimes for invoking the privilege?” Are you saying that the Executive branch can commit crimes, sit on evidence of those crimes or destroy the evidence of those crimes, and a court and the victims of those crimes can do nothing about that as long as the Executive branch claims in a declaration that privilege isn’t being invoked to cover up the crimes? Are you saying that the Executive branch isn’t above the law, it can just operate freely outside the law as long as it invokes states secrets and the courts refuse to protect victims? ‘Splain.”

If I understand it correctly, Garrity also comes in when someone isn’t necessarily told that they are immunized, but is told that they will lose their job if they don’t answer questions or take actions. I noticed several polygraph references too and wonder if someone was forced to take a polygraph or be fired, or if it is just a matter of other statements.

@34 – I’ve taken a quick look at Blair’s Declaration (I’m just flitting around without sequence or order today) and I notice that he is straying from the “sources and methods” to now using “intelligence activities, sources and methods” Um, like maybe there are ways to reveal what the activity is/was (mass, warrantless surveillance of US citizens) without revelaing sources and methods, but they’d really rathr not. I’m not sure he has an authority for “intelligence activities” generically separate from sources and methods, but maybe so.

@21 I know EW will pull together lots of threads, but for some context, in the earlier comments I linked to The Guardian piece that I think Leahy’s letter was about, which will leave some interesting elements open as to how forthright Muller was in his communications with Leahy.

Along a similar vein, it looks like one of the matters being reviewed was the Mowhoush sleeping bag killing (p. 16 “Iraqi gen goes to base” and p. 18 “late 11/03 homicide not referred yet IG working with Army, CID CIA assets w/detainee a couple of days before, Cong notified 1/29/04″)

It would be a bit interesting to figure out who in Congress was notified and about what. Some of the overall facts or alleged facts that no one has reviewed (most of these seem to have been left out of the public record for the court martial that ended up giving an extensive period of torture sessions resulting in a torture death a 60 day activities restriction **now go imagine if these same things had happened re: Gen Petraeus and his family) are surfacing some now in a civil suit brought by one of Mowhoush’s children.

EW did a good post a monthish or so ago with some of the prior releases
http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/21/mowhoush-and-al-jamadi/

One thing she notes there is that despite the note above re: “Cong. notified 1/29/04″ there were docs in that earlier dump indicating that SSCI and HSCI were asking for briefings on Mayish of 05 about the treatment of Mowhoush. Obviously, for war crimes and a death in military detention, you’d think that Armed Services and Levin etc. would be getting a briefing too,and it does look like a SAC staffer, Jennifer Chartrand, may have gotten on. In any event, it is a very grave violation of the Geneva Conventions to take someone and just hand them off to be worked over by adverse and hostile local gangs, which appears to be what was being done with Mowhoush – the allegations are that CIA had “assets” among locals who were happy to work over a Baathist general and the CIA arranged for and oversaw those torture sessions. Apparently the military thought their own torture sessions were pretty much excused bc it’s likely their suffocations and beatings wouldn’t have killed if the General hadn’t already had some broken ribs from his CIA torture sessions.

And all for – what? Well, apparently there was a lot of pressure to get WMDs info at the time. I’d guess maybe that General wasn’t “cooperative” since he didn’t “give us” the non-existant info. And how is it that he walked onto a base to start with (voluntarily handed himself over to be tortured to death). Well, we had taken hostages (also a violation of the Geneva Conventions) among his family, including his juvenile son. He turned himself in so he could see his children and possibly secure their release, and instead we allegedly used them in his “interrogation” by abusing and degrading them and degrading him in front of them to increase the humiliation; then performing a mock execution of the juvenile son while the Gen was in his final torture session, so he died thinking his son had just been murdered in the next room.

Nothing to pursue, there.

Anyway – on p. 15 it looks like some reference to a human pyramid (shades of Abu Ghraib) doesn’t it? With an arrow to a block that is blacked out.

p. 16 indicates how enmeshed DOJ was in not creating any further paper trail on the torture, by noting that the drill/gun interrogations (yeah, how could those have been a threat of imminent death, huh?) were only going to be referred for admin reveiw with the insertion of “oral” for the referred for admin action section. No one wanted to put that in writing – how, um, covery uppy.

Also on p. 18, you’ve already noted that the notes indicate that the Crim Div didn’t really do an independent review – instead they specifically say that a “GC referral (referral circled) blacked out line declined (circled)under OLC opns re general issue” IOW, they didn’t look into whether there was cruel, unusual, prolonged damage, etc. – they just said “OLC opn generally authorizes this stuff, okay goody, notourproblem” or something like that.

Back on p. 15 (I found the handwritten notes the most interesting stuff) under the reference to 2 open cases, I was wondering about this reference, “NC GJ 6/17/04 polygraph” Why would they be working with a GJ in NC? Is that the location of one of the alleged torturers/abusers/depraved persons?

I also have to say the references to the death of Haji Sher Mohammad are new to me. Garrett seems more up to snuff on those details – I hope they check in.

If MB Buchanan is going to run for office, now would be an ok time for it to come out how she was involved in the vendetta against Wecht bc of his certification of homicide for Jamadi. But that won’t happen and before you know it, Lieberman will be basking in the glow of a Buchanon along with Collins & Snowe.

Oh well – over & out.

Not that I’m very hopeful on that front, with the Democrats in Congress having now jumped in to say only detainees who we can actually take to trial can come to the US – the innocent ones have to stay in GITMO detention. Bill of Attainder, much? Probably not so much with this Sup Ct. I do wonder if that argument is even going to be raised.

That review determined that the DNI’s assertion satisfied all of the standards required for a defense of the state secrets privilege according to Section 1 of the Attorney General’s policy

I think that could be read as arguing that the DNI’s declaration covered all parts of section 1, including 1C. Maybe, fwiw.

I went right to your footnote and haven’t read the whole thing, but is there a Declaration from Holder? I don’t think dropping a footnote saying he looked at something meets the standards for putting that in the record.

bmaz @10 re: timing – I don’t really know, but taking a look at index and section headings, I’m wondering if they failed to make the same sovereign immunity claim earlier in Shubert that they are making now? Since they are framing that as a subject matter jurisdictional argument, IIRC (you litigators jump in if I’m misremembering) you can raise that kind of argument at any point in a proceeding, and maybe they think that giving appellate courts the ability to rule on a grounds separate from state’s secrets is worth something?