02/24/10 – Matthew Harwood – The Scott Horton Show

For Antiwar.com and Chaos Radio 95.9 in Austin, Texas, I'm Scott Horton.
This is Antiwar Radio.
And now on to our next guest, it's Matthew Harwood.
He's been writing for The Guardian, including this one, Torture is a Crime, Not a State Secret.
Welcome back to the show, Matt, how are you doing?
I'm doing good, Scott, how are you?
I'm doing great, appreciate you joining me on the show today.
Anytime.
Alright, so everybody needs to know about Binyam Mohamed.
Who's Binyam Mohamed and why does everybody need to know about him?
Binyam Mohamed was someone that was detained in Guantanamo, but he was first picked up along the Aztec border in 2002, and then he was rendered many places, but eventually he wound up in Morocco, where he was viciously tortured.
According to his complaints, he had basically a scalpel taken to his penis.
So it was pretty horrific stuff that he's claiming.
Well, and that's just because those Moroccans are that evil and the CIA had dropped him off there, or they were standing there overseeing all this?
I don't think any Americans would say they were standing right there, but it was definitely under the American regime.
I mean, the Moroccans said that basically they would do anything that the Americans told them to do.
Right.
Well, like Hosni Mubarak over there in Egypt.
Exactly.
Okay, so, well, this guy's guilty, al-Qaeda, friends of Osama, so who cares about his rights?
He doesn't have any, right?
Well, no.
He did admit to training in a militant camp, but he said he was only training to go to fight the Russians in Chechnya, and it was in no way connected to al-Qaeda or its plot against New York City and Washington, D.C.
All right, so there's been a big scandal going on for months now, actually.
Yeah.
I guess there's been a question as to whether, well, the scandal of the torture has been going on for years now, but the scandal that's been going on for months is whether the legal process in England provides for the truth about what happened to this guy to be published, and the Americans' public threat that we will cut the British out of our intelligence stream and, what, cease to warn them of any impending attacks in their country if they go so far as to release this information.
Is that right?
And then now the information's been released, hasn't it?
Well, first, I don't think the American intelligence community would say that they would completely cut it off, but Foreign Secretary David Miliband of Britain was basically saying, look, you're going to hurt our intelligence-sharing relationship with the United States, and it could lead to a loss of lives.
I mean, he's not directly saying it, but of course he's inferring it.
You know, there's a scandal going over in Britain where basically people are alleging that David Miliband went to the United States and said, look, you need to give me an excuse that I can say, you know, to give a reason why we should not release this intelligence.
Just giving Gordon Brown a cover story.
Yeah, I mean, I don't want to connect Gordon Brown, but, you know, of course it is, that's what we're going under, we're going under a labor government there, you know, Tony Blair's government, you know, beforehand with Bush.
But there's two really important things to remember when they're talking about this so-called intelligence leak, and that's because it was only a seven-paragraph summary of what the Americans had given them, given to MI5.
And, you know, the first thing was it's not a secret that the American, you know, that the U.S. foreign policy and intelligence community had been torturing people.
That's the first thing.
It's basically just relating what had happened to Mohammed during his captivity, especially before he arrived, or only before he arrived at Guantanamo.
The second was that the information had already been released in the United States.
There was a habeas corpus petition that was granted in November, and it basically recounted everything that had happened to Mohammed.
These allegations that, you know, this is secret intelligence and it's going to reveal sources and methods, it just doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Well, so what's all the hubbub?
Because you're right, we've known about the scalpel in Morocco and all that for years now.
I forget when it first came out or where, but it was certainly reported more than a couple of years ago.
I mean, it's interesting.
It's probably, in a lot of ways, it's just the intelligence community from both in America and Britain saying, stay out of our affairs.
These are secret things.
We get to do what we want.
Oh, that's interesting.
I guess that's just the bottom line, huh?
It's sort of like when America was a colony of England and England was an empire and the king could do whatever he want and he had his little star chamber courts to pretend to have law, that kind of thing.
Yeah, it just seems, you know, it's the inverse now.
Yeah.
You just flipped the power center across the ocean there.
The pond, as they call it.
Yeah, I think what's really important to express to people is that you don't want governments that can just, whenever they want, hide behind national security concerns.
I mean, I think it's a fundamental concern, especially in liberal democracy, that you're not going to hand that power over to the government, that every time something bad happens that they can just scream, and everyone calms down because they're afraid that they're going to be labeled a terror sympathizer or liberal on national security, things like that.
Well, and you guys have an official secrets act there in England over here.
No, you're an American, right?
Yeah, I am an American.
You're riding for the Guardian, though.
That's what threw me off.
They got the official secrets act.
We have a court decision that says that they have the state secrets privilege, but then there's also, and I forget whether it's only under that doctrine or whether it's a separate doctrine that says that in certain cases, judges can exclude certain pieces of evidence in the name of state secrets.
If, say, a defendant who's being accused of espionage is trying to graymail the government by basically saying, you know, I can prove I'm innocent, but you have to release all this classified information or whatever, and then judges can, have been able to, at least since the end of the second world war, exclude certain pieces of evidence from a trial.
But what's new in the Bush-Obama era is that they can just refuse to allow any of this stuff in court at all.
They can tell, like in the case of Cybele Edmonds, they can tell the judge that she and her lawyers can't even be in the room when they explain to the judge why this case cannot go to court at all.
Well, obviously there's no defense to that, is there?
Yeah, well, it's absolutely out of control.
And, you know, it's funny, too.
I'll just go ahead as long as I'm ranting and raving about this.
The state secrets privilege was created by a federal court in a case where a wife was suing over her dead husband from the crappy plane that the Air Force had put him in, and they said, oh, well, it's top secret and classified and this and that.
Well, when the truth came out, there was nothing classified and top secret and this and that, other than they were willfully criminally negligent in causing the death of this guy by putting him in a plane that they knew was a death trap.
There was nothing else secret about it other than their responsibility.
So that's where the actual doctrine came from, was a big bogus case of the government lying to protect themselves.
Well, I'm not aware of that, but, you know, and then it comes down to what we're talking about when we get down to, again, terrorism in civilian courts, what you're saying.
So judges have the power now to basically say, this is not going to be public information.
This is a state secret.
We're going to keep it out of it.
And so when you hear now a lot of the pushback against civilian trial for terrorists, you need to keep that in mind, that there are processes in place to protect confidential information and still give these guys due process.
And then if they are guilty, and, you know, we really need to remember it's an if.
If they're guilty, then they go to prison, and they usually go to prison for a really, really long time.
Yeah, well, of course.
You can ask Ramzi Yousef.
He's sitting in the Supermax right now.
You know what's funny?
I had forgotten about this, but I'm sitting here clicking through my Binyam Mohamed notes, and I'm reminded that he was part of the Dirty Bomb plot, supposedly, with Jose Padilla.
He was the guy.
You're right, and this connects, again, to that hippie escort hearing that Gladys Kessler decided in favor of in November.
It was also another Mohamed.
It makes it confusing, and I forget his, you know, the first couple names in his full name.
But, yeah, it was basically conspiring that they were going to unleash a Dirty Bomb attack on American civilians, and there just doesn't seem to be anything to it.
Well, yeah, and we even know now that they actually, I think it was Mohamed, Binyam Mohamed, who was the one who was tortured so brutally, he finally came up with, well, once years ago I read this satire in Rolling Stone magazine about how to make a nuclear bomb out of ingredients in your kitchen.
And it included, I guess, I don't know where you're supposed to get it, like Bugs Bunny, just reach off screen and grab some uranium and then put it in a bucket and swing it around over your head, and then that'll enrich it.
I mean, and this was a satire that was written.
In fact, I think somebody even wrote in the L.A.
Times about, yeah, that was my mom that wrote that article.
That was a joke that got this guy tortured.
He got Jose Padilla tortured as well.
It can never be said enough.
If you're tortured, you'll say anything to stop the torture.
And that really is incredible.
I mean, that that was the accusation against these worst terrorists who, you know, the law can't protect us from them.
They've got to be turned over to the Moroccans or to the U.S. Navy or whoever to protect us from them.
And that, they're literally, that was the plot, was a joke, a satire piece from Rolling Stone from 20 years ago.
Wow.
I guess I'm past the point of being shocked, but I should be shocked.
No, I don't think really anyone's shocked anymore.
It's just scary stuff.
Yeah, it just keeps coming and coming on.
All right, so, well, what's the effect of this in England right now?
Do you know?
Are they shocked anymore?
Is this just one more news story about one more bad thing that happened that gets?
You know, it's funny, especially, you know, I write these things and you go back and you look through comments.
It's usually a lot of virulent anti-Americanism, and I guess you can understand that to a certain extent.
You know, it gets between two things.
It's one of the, you know, virulent anti-Americanism, like the British Empire never did anything wrong either, and it's not to condone anyone's practices.
And then second, it's that same type of idea that once you're accused of a terrorist, of being a terrorist, you are a terrorist and you deserve anything that happens to you.
Again, and that's more the public mood.
What's going on necessarily going further?
I'm really not sure, to be honest with you.
Yeah, well, I guess it's already been announced, right?
Or maybe this was just a leak that the Durham investigation is going nowhere.
Maybe they might indict a couple of the CIA people who destroyed the videotapes of their torture.
But none of the memo authors, they've just been cleared by the Justice Department's inspector general.
There's no real reason to believe that anybody responsible for the torture regime in America or in Britain is really going to be held accountable for it, right?
I don't think so.
I mean, we know from Obama we're looking forward.
We're not looking backward.
Yeah.
Well, and that really is, well, you're doing a little bit of looking backward over there with the Chilcot thing.
Except I forgot who it was on the show that said that's mostly an exercise in let's get the Iraq war behind us rather than let's actually do anything about the lies they told.
Well, I mean, until there are actual prosecutions and people go to jail, I don't see how any justice is done.
What specifically is this case, the Binyamohamma case?
Is it a civil lawsuit?
Well, to be honest with you, I never really got into the legal and the civil or criminal.
I believe it is civil, but don't take my word on that.
When I wrote the article, I was basically just concentrating on what would happen to the intelligence communities and whether or not information sharing would actually be harmed.
Well, there was something about – I don't want to stray outside of my expertise or anything.
Yeah, I understand.
There was a little something about some kind of police review being ordered as to the MI5's cooperation with the CIA and the Moroccans on this, and that was why it was such a big deal.
I do believe there's going to be public – or at least there's a push for public inquiries absolutely into this and accountability.
But again, since September 11th and all the horrible things that we've seen that's come out in the war on terror, everyone should be skeptical that anything is going to get done.
Well, at the very least, maybe your essay, the little bit of coverage you get on this show, that kind of thing can help a little bit.
Ripples in the pond of just getting people – getting the idea through people's skull that like, hey man, how many is this in a row?
Where these people were just innocent people.
I mean, on one hand, we have an entire debate centered around, as you said, once somebody calls you a terrorist, you're guilty, you're a terrorist, you don't have rights, and how dare somebody stick up for the rights of a terrorist and all this stuff.
And yet on the other hand, we have case after case after case of innocent people.
Or the worst guilt they've been able to get so far as far as the military commissions was they convicted Osama bin Laden's driver.
I mean, what a joke.
Yeah, I believe the other one was the – I'm trying to remember his name, but the Australian – Yeah, David Hicks.
Yeah, David Hicks.
And he was only in jail for two years.
And I don't know the details of the case with David Hicks, so I don't want to get too much into that.
But then, you know, you can always bring up John Walker Lynn and American Taliban.
You know, apparently he had nothing to do with al-Qaeda.
He was fighting for the Taliban.
However confused or we think crazy he is, it doesn't justify any enemy combatant status, especially since he was never really a threat to the United States.
Yeah.
Well, and they just tortured him, but then they indicted him.
That's one of the funny things, right, is that he was kidnapped the same time as Yasser Hamdi or captured on the battlefield the same time as Yasser Hamdi.
And Hamdi was declared an enemy combatant.
And then there was a Supreme Court case about him and everything, and then he was free to go.
They let him go.
And then – but Lynn, because he was a white kid, I guess, got benefit of civil process, pled out to 20 years.
Yeah.
The whole thing is just – it's crazy.
Well, I guess I like to believe that since, you know, as we discussed, the capital of the empire really is on this side of the ocean, and England has been reduced to sort of a airstrip one level of complicity in American policy, that perhaps the, you know, pressure by people in England for the rule of law to be applied in a case, such an egregious case as the Binyam Mohamed thing, could actually, you know, be useful in getting something done.
I mean, I guess that's my hope, is that, you know, at the very least the precedent will be set that, look, they're indicting and prosecuting people in England because the people are demanding it.
And so then we can compare ourselves to that.
Are we really worse than the English when it comes to being a lawless empire?
Gosh, I hope not.
I hope not, too, Scott.
All right.
Well, man, I really appreciate your time on the show today.
This is some good work.
Torture is a crime, not a state secret.
It's at theguardian.co.uk by Matthew Harwood.
Thanks a lot, man.
Great.
Thanks, Scott, man.
Anytime.