REPORT NAMES 30 BUSH OFFICIALS COMPLICIT IN TORTURE

REPORT NAMES 30 BUSH OFFICIALS COMPLICIT IN TORTURE

President Bush and his aides repeatedly ignored warnings that their
torture plans were illegal from high State Department officials as well
as the nation’s top uniformed legal officers, the Judge Advocates
General of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines, a new published report
states.

“These warnings of illegality and immorality given by knowledgeable and
experienced (government) persons were ignored by the small group of high
Executive officers who were determined that America would torture and
abuse its prisoners and who had the decision-making power to secretly
require this to be done,” said Lawrence Velvel, chairman of the
“Steering Committee of the Justice Robert H. Jackson Conference On
Planning For The Prosecution of High Level American War Criminals.”
Velvel is a noted reformer in the field of American legal education.

“Far from American officials and lawyers authorizing or engaging in
torture because it was lawful, they authorized and engaged in it because
they wanted to (and) kept their actions secret from interested officials
for as long as they could lest there be strong opposition to the torture
and abuse they were perpetrating,” Velvel said. “They deliberately
ignored repeated warnings that the torture and abuse were illegal and
could lead to prosecutions, and they ignored these warnings even when
they came from high level civilian and military officers.”

A preliminary Report by the Steering Committee seeking Federal
prosecution of American officials “who ordered, authorized, approved or
committed war crimes,” released January 9th, 2009, says they are guilty
of “wholesale” violations of statutes that include Common Article 3 of
the Geneva Conventions, the Federal War Crimes Act, the Convention
Against Torture, plus numerous other violations of U.S. and
international laws.

The Report said prisoners were subjected to savage beatings, sleep
deprivation, slow drowning, hanging by chains, being slammed head-first
into concrete walls, temperature extremes, food deprivation, burial
alive in coffin-like boxes for extended periods, and even threats
against their families.

Among other things, the Report charges the General Counsel of the
Central Intelligence Agency(CIA), knowingly approved of at least 117
renditions to torture and that such renditions were “personally
encouraged by President George W. Bush…”

In addition to President Bush, those named for prosecution by the
Steering Committee include:

Vice President Dick Cheney and his former chief of staff and legal
counsel David Addington, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld,
Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice and her predecessor Colin Powell,
former Attorneys-General John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Department
of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and his aide Alice
Fisher, former deputy assistant Attorney General; and Tim Flanigan, a
deputy White House attorney.

Also named by the Steering Committee is I. Lewis (“Scooter”) Libby,
former assistant to President Bush. Libby was convicted of perjury,
obstruction of justice and making false statements to Federal
investigators in the Valerie Plame affair. President Bush commuted
Libby’s 30-month prison sentence. Additionally, Douglas Feith, former
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy; Defense Undersecretary Stephen
Cambone, General Michael Dunlavey, and Major General Geoffrey Miller,
former commander of Guantanamo prison, Cuba.

CIA officials cited in the Report are former Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet; Cofer Black, head of the CIA’s
Counterterrorist Center; James Pavitt, former CIA Deputy Director for
Operations; General Counsel Scott Muller; Acting General Counsel John
Rizzo; David Becker; contract officer James Mitchell, and an
unidentified woman that formerly headed the CIA’s Al Qaeda unit and also
briefed President Bush.

Among the lawyers guilty of war crimes are former Assistant Attorneys
General Jay Bybee and John Yoo; Defense Department chief legal officer
Jim Haynes; Robert Delahunty, special counsel with Office of Legal
Counsel, Department of Justice; Patrick Philbin, deputy assistant
Attorney General; Steven Bradbury, head of the White House’s Office of
Legal Counsel; Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a former Staff Judge at
Guantanamo; Mary Walker, General Counsel of the Air Force and Jack
Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, Department of
Justice.

“Torture and abuse were discussed at meetings of the so-called
Principals Committee, where George Tenet presented graphic details of
interrogations to a Committee which included some of Bush’s highest
associates, including Rice, Powell, Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Cheney and,
at times, John Yoo.

The above-mentioned Bush officials were involved in shaping or carrying
out torture policies despite written and/or verbal warnings given by
high government officials in the Pentagon, State Department, FBI, and
other agencies. Among these objectors were:

# William Howard Taft IV, the Legal Advisor to the State Department
whose 40-page memo of January 11, 2002 warned Bush’s claim the Geneva
Conventions were not applicable to prisoners held by the U.S. could
subject Bush to prosecution for war crimes. State Department lawyer
David Bowker further warned “there is no such thing” as a person that is
not covered by the Geneva Conventions.

# The Defense Department’s own Criminal Investigative Task Force headed
by Col. Brittain Mallow warned Haynes that tactics used at Guantanamo
could be illegal. His warning were ignored by Haynes, whose position was
based on statements of Yoo and Chertoff.

# FBI Director Robert Mueller barred FBI agents from participating in
coercive CIA interrogations, “a warning-fact well known to many in the
Executive,” the Steering Committee Report said. Also, Marion Bowman,
head of the FBI’s national security law section in Washington called
lawyers in Jim Haynes’ office in the Pentagon to express his concern but
said he never heard back.

# David Brant, head of the Naval Criminal Investigative Service learned
about the torture and abuse at Guantanamo and took the position that “it
just ain’t right” and expressed his concern to Army officials in command
authority over military interrogators at Guantanamo but “they did not
care,” the Report said.

# A senior CIA intelligence analyst that visited Guantanamo in 2002
reported back that the U.S. was committing war crimes there and that
one-third of the detainees had no connection to terrorism. The report
alarmed Rice’s lawyer John Bellinger and National Security Council
terrorism expert General John Gordon but their concerns were “flatly
rejected and ignored” by Addington, Flanigan and Gonzales, as well as by
Rumsfeld’s office.

# Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora carried his concern over Guantanamo
torture to Haynes and to Mary Walker, head of a Pentagon working group
that was drafting a DOD memo based on Yoo’s work that authorized
torture. Mora said what was occurring at Guantanamo was “at a minimum
cruel and unusual treatment, and, at worst, torture.” His warning was
ignored.

“The Judge Advocates General of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines
are the country’s top uniformed legal officers,” appointed to Walker’s
working group, “were appalled at what they were seeing, and each wrote a
memo of dissent to torture and abuse,” the Steering Committee’s Report said.

“Their memos warned not just that what was being approved was contrary
to the legal and moral training American servicemen have always
received, and not just that there would be international criticism, but
also that interrogators and the chain of command were being put at risk
of criminal prosecutions abroad.” But these warnings by the nation’s top
uniformed legal officers were ignored.

“If Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and others are not prosecuted,”
Velvel said, “the future could be threatened by additional examples of
Executive lawlessness by leaders who need fear no personal consequences
for their actions, including more illegal wars such as Iraq.”

Besides Velvel, members of the Steering Committee include:

Ben Davis, a law Professor at the University of Toledo College of Law,
where he teaches Public International Law and International Business
Transactions. He is the author of numerous articles on international and
related domestic law.

Marjorie Cohn, a law Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San
Diego, Calif., and President of the National Lawyers Guild.

Chris Pyle, a Professor at Mount Holyoke College, where he teaches
Constitutional law, Civil Liberties, Rights of Privacy, American
Politics and American Political Thought, and is the author of many books
and articles.

Elaine Scarry, the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the
General Theory of Value at Harvard University, and winner of the Truman
Capote Award for Literary Criticism.

Peter Weiss, vice president of the Center For Constitutional Rights, of
New York City, which was recently involved with war crimes complaints
filed in Germany and Japan against former Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and others.

David Swanson, author, activist and founder of
AfterDowningStreet.org/CensureBush.org coalition, of Charlottesville, Va.

Kristina Borjesson, an award-winning print and broadcast journalist for
more than twenty years and editor of two recent books on the media.

Colleen Costello, Staff Attorney of Human Rights, USA, of Washington,
D.C., and coordinator of its efforts involving torture by the American
government.

Valeria Gheorghiu, attorney for Workers’ Rights Law Center.

Andy Worthington, a British historian and journalist and author of books
dealing with human rights violations.

Initial actions considered by the Steering Committee, Velvel said, are
as follows:

# Seeking prosecutions of high level officials, including George Bush,
for the crimes they committed.

# Seeking disbarment of lawyers who were complicitous in facilitating
torture.

# Seeking termination from faculty positions of high officials who were
complicitous in torture.

READ THE FULL REPORT:
http://afterdowningstreet.org/...

*To arrange for interviews, please contact Sherwood Ross at
**sherwoodr1@yahoo.com* * or (305)205-8281.
Chair Velvel may be reached at **velvel@mslaw.com*
* or (978) 681-0800.*

–

David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book “Daybreak: Undoing the
Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories
Press and of the introduction to “The 35 Articles of Impeachment and the
Case for Prosecuting George W. Bush” published by Feral House and
available at Amazon.com. Swanson holds a master’s degree in philosophy
from the University of Virginia. He has worked as a newspaper reporter
and as a communications director, with jobs including press secretary
for Dennis Kucinich’s 2004 presidential campaign, media coordinator for
the International Labor Communications Association, and three years as
communications coordinator for ACORN, the Association of Community
Organizations for Reform Now. Swanson is Co-Founder of
AfterDowningStreet.org, creator of ConvictBushCheney.org and Washington
Director of Democrats.com, a board member of Progressive Democrats of
America, the Backbone Campaign, and Voters for Peace, a member of the
legislative working group of United for Peace and Justice, and convener
of the accountability and prosecution working group of United for Peace
and Justice.

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