Bombshell Report Ties Gonzo to Torture, Months before "Authorization"

[ProSense]

Bombshell Report Ties Gonzo to Torture, Months before "Authorization"

by mcjoan
Wed May 20, 2009

NPR is reporting today that significant new information has emerged per an ACLU FOIA request directly tying Alberto Gonzales, in his role at White House Counsel, to the torture of Abu Zubaydah. This confirms ex-FBI agent Ali Soufan's account in last week's Senate hearing that Zubaydah was subject to torture from at least April to June of 2002 (when Soufan left the interrogation team).

NPR reports that contractor James Mitchell was in regular contact with the White House in the spring of 2002.

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source's account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah's black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

"At the very least, it's clear that CIA headquarters was choreographing what was going on at the black site," says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who sued to get the document. "But there's still this question about the relationship between CIA headquarters and the White House and the Justice Department and the question of which senior officials were driving this process."

As Spencer points out, Gonzales wasn't in the DOJ, the CIA, State, or any other agency where he would have had the power to direct the actions of any other agency. He was the president's lawyer, period. And yet, he appears to have been the point of decision-making for torture pre-torture memos. But, obviously, he wasn't acting alone.

We have at least a hint of which senior officials (besides Gonzales) were driving this process from a description in Barton Gellman's Angler, in which he describes how legal policy was shaped early on after 9/11, and the individuals involved:

more

Edited to underline key detail.

[G_j]

1. right on.. K&R

[annabanana]

2. And the filth keeps bubbling up until it threatens to drown us all. . n/t

[snappyturtle]

3. I heard NPR report this late this afternoon and I am aghast.

Can the legislative branch call in the CIA?

[liberalmuse]

4. Not surprising, but it seems everyone is being outed but the fucker in charge.

Bush is just as guilty as Gonzales, Cheney and Rumsfeld, yet I am not really hearing his name being tied with his war crimes as much as I'm hearing about the atrocities committed by members of his hand-picked cabal. What the fuck was he doing for 8 years, picking his nose and playing his Gameboy?

[saltpoint]

5. This man might have done himself and his kids proud by adhering

to the ethical codes by which he very likely was raised.

Instead he played errand boy for the Bush administration and it appears that his reputation has been almost completely destroyed.

When someone, even a president, asks for a context for the rationalization of the torture of others, the proper response is 'No.'

[ProSense]

6. "He was the president's lawyer,"

He was actually the president's tool.

[saltpoint]

7. Hi, ProSense. Yes. It is a sordid narrative, right from the start.

I should say 'Far Right from the start,' I suppose.

Grisly and repellent abandonment of an ethical code.