Across the pond–in the investigation of British complicity with the torture of Binyam Mohamed and others–the Supreme Court has told the government it can’t present secret evidence. The supreme court has outlawed the use of secret evidence in court by the intelligence services to conceal allegations that detainees were tortured. The decision will be seen [...]

Scott Horton’s revelation that the detainee described as “CAPTUS” in Glenn Carle’s book, The Interrogator, is an Afghan named Pacha Wazir reveals something else: in spite of the fact that Carle realized the CIA had been mistaken about Wazir’s ties to al Qaeda sometime in 2002, Wazir was not released from US custody until February [...]

So, is it truly the case that Awlaki is indeed the unnamed “national of the United States” here in the Warsame indictment? I don’t know for certain, but it sure as heck fits the facts as we know them and the depraved refusal of the American government to talk about or let the public know its basis for impunity in marking an American citizen for extrajudicial termination with prejudice.

When the Brits announced a year ago they’d hold an inquiry into torture, I suggested it was an attempt to get torture victims like Binyam Mohamed to settle so the British government could conduct a sham investigation. In November, Mohamed and others agreed to a settlement. And today we discover (shock!) that the investigation is [...]

As we’ve noted a couple times at EW, I will be hosting Glenn Carle to discuss his book, The Interrogator, at Saturday’s FDL Book Salon. As you no doubt know, his book describes his interrogation of what was described as a high level al Qaeda figure (the detainee wasn’t) and his objections to the government’s [...]

Goldman and Apuzzo have done good work on their story about the analyst who caught bin Laden, but the story is also an instructive primer on what didn’t work, to wit: torture.

As I suggested yesterday, the investigation into Gul Rahman’s death means there’s a chance–teeny, presumably, but a chance nevertheless–that the investigation might move beyond the formerly-low level people implicated in the death (remember, both the guy who headed the Salt Pit and the station chief have gone onto bigger and better things at the CIA, [...]

After the Osama bin Laden killing, Michael Mukasey rather shamelessly took the lead in claiming torture had some role in finding OBL. I thought then that the sheer volume of the torture apologists’ wails suggested that John Durham’s torture investigation might actually move forward in some way. But I was particularly struck by Mukasey’s prominence. [...]

In his announcement that John Durham is investigating the deaths by torture of two CIA detainee, Eric Holder suggested that John Durham reviewed information that had not been reviewed by the prosecutors who had earlier declined to prosecute the cases. That review included both information and matters that had never previously been examined by the [...]

Eric Holder just released an announcement revealing that John Durham has recommended criminal investigation of two detainees tortured to death. But cases of the remaining 99 detainees whose treatment Durham investigated will be dismissed. On January 2, 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed Assistant United States Attorney John Durham of the District of Connecticut to [...]