Alright, y'all, welcome back to the show.
It's Anti-War Radio on Liberty Radio Network, LRN.
FM.
And boy, oh boy, other Scott Horton is here, no relation, but I'm a big fan.
He's, well, he's all kinds of things.
He's got 15 letters after his name that he earned, advanced degrees.
He lectures the law at Columbia University.
He's the former chair of the New York Bar Association's Committee on Human Rights and International Law.
And he is a crusading anti-torture hero in this society.
You can read what he writes at harpers.org slash subjects slash no comment.
Welcome to the show, Scott.
How are you?
Hey, great to be with you.
Well, you know, I'm a little jet-lagged.
I'm just back from being in Central Asia for a week, and the 28-hour plane flight back is pretty exhausting.
My goodness, well, you didn't have a layover or anything?
In Istanbul, actually.
I had a layover going in and going out in Istanbul.
And I was in Istanbul the day of that flotilla, you know, going down to the Gaza Strip.
So I was sitting there for a day watching people fume.
Wow.
I think maybe I should be quiet and let you go on about that for a minute.
Well, the whole thing is just extremely disturbing.
I mean, I just start by saying that one of the things we always look at very closely in judging a state is how they use lethal force with civilians.
And, you know, the conduct of Israel in dealing with that flotilla, quite aside from the question of their right to have a blockade and to interdict ships, to interdict ships was very, very distressing.
And I think with our own government, you know, when we have an American citizen killed, you know, with four bullet wounds to the head, and our government has essentially nothing to say about it, that's also pretty disturbing.
Indeed.
Well, in fact, I was trying to get a hold of you on your cell phone as you were getting on the plane to go to Central Asia last week, because either you or Doug Bandow, I don't know anyone else who could possibly answer this question.
I'm sure that you can.
And that is about something called the RIMO Memorandum, which regardless of, like you said, the moral question of how they're treating civilians here, the legality of the seizure of that boat in international waters.
Apparently, there's something called the RIMO Memorandum that says, well, if you know they're heading to your waters to do something illegal, regardless, again, of whether the blockade itself is legal, then you have the right to seize the boat.
Can you help clear that up?
Well, that's right.
There is the Sam RIMO rules do apply to naval warfare, and they do make clear that in times of war, one state has the right under law to blockade an enemy with which it is at war.
It's not really clear that the Sam RIMO rules apply to this case, however, because Israel is a state, but the Gaza Strip is not a state.
And in fact, it's a territory which was under the occupation of Israel for a long time.
And the Israeli right to blockade the Gaza Strip, I would say, is legally quite doubtful.
And I'd say, you know, there's certainly some people in the international law community who say, yeah, the Sam RIMO rule applies and they can do it.
There are a number of others who say it doesn't.
But let's get down to the real issue.
The real issue, I think, is not the blockade, because most people would say they have the right to interdict the shipment of munitions or arms, things that can be used militarily, into Gaza.
The question is their right to block the shipment of food, medicine, construction supplies, and things of that sort.
And they've been really aggressive in the things that they have been blocking from coming in.
I mean, food products, frozen food, dried food, spices, seasonings, construction materials necessary to deal with the damage from the last war.
So their blockade has made life miserable for the people in Gaza.
And it's, I think, reasonably clear that that's their intention.
Well, a former aide to Ehud Olmert said, we don't want to make them hungry.
We just want to put them on a diet.
Yeah, I think they want to make life there miserable with the objective of getting a lot of people to leave.
I think that's quite clearly their objective, and that is not proper.
I'm looking at TheEconomist.com right now, and they have a short list here.
This is not the complete list, I don't believe.
This is just a kind of, you know, sample of what is banned from the Gaza Strip.
Coriander, ginger, nutmeg, canned fruit, dried fruit, fresh meat, seeds and nuts, fishing rods, ropes for fishing, fabric for clothing, chicken hatcheries, chickens, donkeys, horses, goats, cattle, musical instruments, newspapers, wood for construction, of course, concrete.
That's an aggressive weapon because you can make a bunker out of it, too, Scott.
Absolutely right.
Or you could actually use it to repair buildings that were damaged in the Israeli assault about two years ago, which I think is what they really want to block.
In fact, you know, we had an article about this in Harper's about five months ago, in which we, you know, went over very carefully the things that have been intercepted and interdicted.
And, you know, our sense is that they really are, they're not trying to absolutely starve people to death there, but they're trying to make life unpleasant and restrict the amount of calories that people will have.
And they really are trying to destroy any kind of business operation in Gaza.
They're trying to destroy the economy of the area, reduce people to absolute poverty, and put them in this position where they'll want to leave if they have the option.
So evacuate that space.
I think that's the Israeli strategy.
That's horrible.
I mean, and for the people who are left, you don't have to be Ron Paul to see the intended or unintended consequences of making every market black.
You end up, as you just said, shutting down the reasonable regular businesses, the above-board businesses, and you turn everything over to the worst criminals in the place.
I think that's right.
But, you know, I have to balance that by saying that, you know, missiles were raining onto Israel from Gaza.
Well, rockets.
Right, rockets.
And Israel did have clearly a right to step in and deal with that situation.
So, you know, I'm not going to say that their position is entirely without justification, but I'd say from the perspective of most who've studied it, they are way overreacting.
Well, and don't I have this right, though, that in the fall of 2008, Hamas killed the people who were shooting a couple of rockets over the wall.
And said, no, you don't.
And then Israel took advantage of that to do missile strikes into Gaza and break the ceasefire.
And then when Hamas retaliated for that, they said, oh, see, more aggression from Hamas from inside the walls of their prison.
Well, you know, I think it's very clear that, you know, Israel takes the position that anything that strikes Israel from within that territory is the responsibility of the Hamas government.
And, you know, whether the Hamas government is really behind it or not, as a matter of international law, Israel's right on that.
I mean, you can't hold another government to account for those sorts of attacks that begin on its territory.
So they have a technical basis there.
But, you know, we also have in international law today a concept of humanitarianism where you're really supposed to target your military enemy and you're supposed to avoid the consequences of warfare for civilians.
And that's an area where Israel's developing a really bad reputation.
Well, you know, yesterday or the day before, they accused one of the American citizens that survived of being a terrorist.
So does that mean they have the right to attack New York now?
Well, in fact, you know, they put out that accusation very early on.
They said that IVV, this Turkish group, was supporting Al-Qaeda.
They said the entire flotilla was organized by and supporting Al-Qaeda.
And they were forced to, you know, to retake that back because they really had no evidence for it.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's really...
And I guess we can talk about the media a little bit here after this break, too.
But it really seems like around the world, everyone in the world, 6 billion people, well, 5.5 billion people know, plus, that, you know, who's David and who's Goliath in this situation?
Come on.
And yet, in America, and obviously in most of the Israeli media, everything's just the other way around.
I guess we do have a break coming up here pretty quick, probably before I could give you a chance to answer the question.
But I'll go ahead and ask it now, which is about your view of what's happened to the dean of the White House Press Corps, Helen Thomas, who said something politically incorrect and was forced almost immediately to resign.
Well, I have to say, the first thing I agree with her on is that it's stupid to have said that people in Israel should go back to Poland and Russia and the United States.
That's just insensitive and dumb.
It's a terrible way for her to end her career and retire on that.
But beyond that, I've got to say, I love Helen Thomas.
I mean, she's been great.
She's been an independent, ornery, feisty voice, just where you want to hear it for a long time.
She's been one of the few reporters who has been prepared to stand up and question the zeal for warfare over and over again.
And she's been a gadfly within the White House Press Corps.
I mean, constantly, and I think very correctly, criticizing them for not asking tough questions, for not getting to the bottom of the stories, for placating the administration too much, and for playing this game of constantly seeking attention and delivering the bone to their masters, so to speak, in order to get some sort of inside connection.
She's right on all that.
So she's really, I think she's been a great figure to have in Washington and the Washington media.
A saving grace.
Yeah, as Greenwald writes today, well, we know the Washington press briefings will all be much more peaceful affairs now.
We'll have a room full of Chuck Todds and nobody to ask a tough question.
She's the only lady who said, why did you invade Iraq anyway, to George Bush?
All the rest of them were pushing her aside to ask the next question, change the subject completely.
They don't even want to know.
Yeah, she's consistently been the one reporter who's been prepared to stand up and say, the emperor has no claws.
I mean, that's just what you're saying is ridiculous.
And the ethic of the balance of the press corps is you just don't challenge people who are in power.
Yeah, and you know, here's the thing too.
She's said controversial stuff in the past, and I agree with you that the whole, well, there shouldn't be Israel, go back to Germany or whatever is ridiculous.
But why should anyone have to resign over saying that?
Seems to me like the only real sin that she committed was implying the fact that the population of Israel ain't from there.
Somebody else is, and they're not allowed to live there anymore.
Well, you know, I think reporters make mistakes and they get slapped down for it.
I think it's hard to see how this justifies being fired.
On the other hand, we do have to remember that Helen Thomas is 90 years old.
I mean, who else is active and not retired at that age?
No one.
Yeah, sure.
I mean, but the idea that there would be such a strong reaction that basically forces her to just throw up her hands and go home, you know, it is a sad thing.
It is.
I think that is unfortunate.
And, you know, I think she's going to continue to be a figure on the stage and is going to be sought after and listened to and, I think, deservedly.
Yeah.
Well, if only she'd said something bad about Arabs or something, she'd have been fine.
Well, you know, she's a Lebanese-American, you know.
All right.
And, you know, I actually have more points we could develop along those lines, but much more important is this, you know, say it ain't so.
We read about it in Mother Jones.
I talked with the reporter from Mother Jones yesterday about it.
His article, Nick Bauman, his article is Did the Bush Administration Experiment on Detainees?
Your article here today at No Comment, or yesterday, is called Bush-Era CIA Human Experimentation Program Revealed and, quoting the New York Times, Medical Ethics Lapses Cited in Interrogations.
And all of this is in reference to the torture papers from the Physicians for Human Rights.
That's P-H-R torturepapers.org What's going on here?
Well, it's a huge story.
And we've had little bits of this for a long time.
But I guess if we unfold it chronologically, it looks about like this.
The Bush Administration directed the use of enhanced interrogation techniques, which is to say torture techniques, including waterboarding, long-time standing hypothermia, stress positions, and on and on and on.
And when this was first directed, and it really clearly now, we know it was an initiative of Vice President Cheney, there was actually pushback from inside the CIA.
They didn't want to do it.
They thought it was not legal.
In fact, that was the view of the General Counsel's Office and senior people there.
And Cheney then went and said, Not legal?
Well, I'll get you legal.
So he went to the Justice Department, Office of Legal Counsel, specifically to John Yu and Jay Bybee, and had them start writing these memos.
Now, we've known all that before.
What we didn't know is that one specific aspect of these memos had to do with what's called a good-faith defense.
And it seems that Yu and Bybee decided that the CIA and the CIA officers would have a good-faith defense against prosecution if they were to deal with these techniques as a sort of medical experiment.
They would gauge what happened, they would have medical officials present, medical doctors, psychologists, and others present, constantly observing what was happening, testing what was happening, and forming professional judgments along the way as to whether what was being done actually constituted torture.
So what actually developed over the course of years is that these medical professionals were involved in the process of experimentation and assessing how many hours can you deprive someone of sleep before they go crazy?
How much hypothermia can a body withstand before it suffers long damage?
What are the consequences of standing for the kidneys, for the heart rate, and so forth?
So, essentially they were judging on the basis of individual human beings, their ability to withstand these techniques and the pain that they endured as a result of the techniques.
So, for instance, we know from some documentation that has emerged that some of these medical professionals concluded that the amount of pain someone suffered from one of the techniques was just the same as the pain they would suffer from the simultaneous application of a large number of techniques.
There was a sort of body pain saturation point.
You would feel this amount of pain and you could suffer all these other techniques and it really wouldn't be any more pain than one.
So that was used to justify the simultaneous application of a large number of torture techniques.
However, as this study points out, that was hooey.
That was nonsense junk science that didn't understand the science of pain and the health care of pain and moreover it was exactly the kind of conduct that is criminalized under U.S. criminal law dealing with human subject experimentation and under international law that was written and made by the United States at the end of World War II particularly what we call the Nuremberg Code because remember at Nuremberg there was a trial of doctors who were accused of having experimented on prisoners and we took the position that's against the law.
Yeah, David Addington should have just this isn't all just in violation of international law this is all in violation of international law that America wrote this is our legacy to the world is trying to, you know, kind of push our Bill of Rights way of doing things on everybody in the old world, right?
Absolutely right, because at the end of World War II you know, when we started these prosecutions, it really wasn't clear that in wartime a nation seizes prisoners and they start experimenting on them medically was that illegal?
Everybody would have agreed it was unethical but we, the United States, established the proposition that this was a serious crime, a war crime even when it was just civilians, not people who were entitled to POW treatment and we prosecuted a bunch of these doctors I mean, remember the case of Dr. Mingala but let's just start by noting nobody doubts, you know, what happened in those prosecutions at the end of World War II involving both the Japanese and the Germans involved absolutely sadistic brutal, horrible practices.
Now what we're dealing with now, I'd say so far we don't really have clear evidence that it is the same level of brutality and we don't have anything to suggest that it was sadistic, but it's still medical experimentation on people and it's medical experimentation that's connected directly with the tolerance of torture.
Absolutely no question that that is unethical and illegal and the amazing thing is we've got Department of Justice memoranda written here, advising the CIA to engage in this medical experimentation, saying that'll give you a good faith defense and nobody at the Justice Department who's putting this together seems to recognize that human experimentation is a crime so you've got the Department of Justice advocating criminal conduct on the part of the CIA and promising them that if you do it we won't prosecute you it's staggering yeah, it really is amazing it's, uh, it, okay so make sure I understand this they went about this project of experimenting all these torture techniques on I don't even know if we know who, right, and then they did that in order that they could say well now we have expert experience in what amounts to torture that amounts to or equates to the same pain that you would feel during organ failure or death so now we know as long as we stay on this side of that line we're okay but like you're saying right there they had to break the law and torture people in order to come up with the memorandums to justify torturing people anyway right, I mean just to be very clear we're talking about America, right?we're talking about the United States of America where all this happened our Justice Department in D.C. what you got here is the Justice Department saying we'll have a doctor take a look at it and we'll have that doctor give us a certification that it's not torture that it's every time just ever so slightly just on the short side of torture and if they judge cases to actually be torture well then we've got a precedent we know we shouldn't go beyond that point in the future so they're constantly testing the outermost perimeters of what constitutes torture using legal criteria which have been rejected by everyone as completely absurd as preposterous in fact so in fact they are using techniques and standards that are really judged by just about everybody in the legal community now as in fact torture so it's a horrible case we have terrible precedents for this you know the precedents are at the end of World War II the precedents go on after that I mean we know in the Soviet Union the KGB engaged in practices like this and they had exactly the same sort of concerns and they also used medical personnel to ensure that the brutality to which people were exposed never went beyond certain levels the NKVD in fact had had a rule which was no blood no harm just don't spill any blood so use techniques that damage people but don't leave any signs on the surface ah Scott I should be over it by now but you're breaking my heart man this is just you know it's the officialness of it all and of course complete and total lack of accountability and I think we have a tie back here to some deaths in fact well now hold on a second because I certainly want to know all about that and we do have one more segment hopefully it won't take till then to get to that part but I still want clarification on something here now okay so there's the international treaties the convention against torture there's the federal laws that enforce that there's all the civil rights laws that say like for example local sheriff is not allowed to waterboard you all those kinds of things there's all kinds of American laws as well as international agreements against torture the Geneva conventions the convention against torture but at the same time now we've had revisions in the law and so you know I wonder you know does appendix M cancel the law that mandates what is in the army field manual for interrogation does that negate the convention against torture legally now it doesn't negate it that's for certain but what we have to go back to that the amendment of the war crimes act that occurred in 2006 and one of the other things that the physicians here have documented is that it appears in 2006 the Bush administration suddenly realized that people who were involved in this program faced criminal prosecution for human experimentation so one of the things they did in revising the war crimes act in 2006 was scrap all those provisions that would have allowed prosecution for human experimentation but they didn't do a comprehensive job because you know this prohibition exists in other criminal parts of the American criminal law and in fact Ronald Reagan and George Bush have both championed prohibition on human subject experimentation and brought in legislation to do that which was violated here so I think they tried to create a safe harbor for themselves but I think it's quite doubtful whether or not they in fact did it ok now here's the deal I'm looking at the clock and we have about three minutes so if you could please give us the maybe two and a half minute version of your story in Harper's Magazine the Guantanamo suicides and what we've already kind of discussed in a nutshell and then when we come back from the break we'll talk all about how this story relates to that one well four years ago on Thursday three prisoners at Guantanamo died under circumstances that were described almost immediately by the United States as suicide the U.S. said that they hung themselves in their cells and it blocked really any independent opportunity to investigate this and now in the course of this year we've learned that the guards who were on duty that evening essentially none of these guards believed that these people committed suicide and they're quite convinced that they died in fact not in their own cell block but at a super secret CIA facility located just outside Camp America at Guantanamo and now we have the question was this a site for human experimentation as revealed by the positions for human rights in the report and I put that question to some of the report authors and they respond to me they are certain in fact that Camp No was used by the CIA and that it was a site for human experimentation so that presents us now with a rather direct question did these people die and we know they died from strangulation as a result of ingesting cloth did they die as a result of these experimental programs in which some technique was being tried out on them that's the question yeah well there's actually a lot to go over there my first one I'm writing it down so I don't forget is the chronology here as far as these memos being written and what happened there but we'll go over some more of that if anybody wants to know all about that story go to my blog thestressblog.com and page down and there's a link to everything other Scott Horton has written about it so far we'll be right back after this anti-war radio Liberty Radio Network alright y'all welcome back to the show it's anti-war radio on chaos nope not on chaos on Liberty Radio Network LRN.
FM we're talking with the other Scott Horton about George Bush's and the CIA's torture experimentation and how it might connect to Scott's article in Harper's Magazine Guantanamo suicides and the rest of the great coverage on his blog no comment of the story of the three men who supposedly committed suicide back in July of 2006 so connect these stories for me here Scott well I think we sort of go back and we note we've got roughly 100 deaths in detention we have of that number a couple of dozen where the detention has at least some connection to either JSOC or the CIA and in all these cases one thing we find out uniformly is that when somebody dies or is seriously injured and they're in the custody of the CIA there doesn't seem to be a serious investigation and there's never any sort of prosecution brought out of it and one of the questions a lot of people have been asking about that is why you know prosecutions were brought in Abu Ghraib and Bagram against Grunt who were involved but there's never been any prosecution for these cases including cases where there was clearly a homicide that occurred involving the CIA and it seems or at least I'd say one thing to be explored is whether this has to do with the advice that was given by the Justice Department saying go ahead and use all these techniques and if you do use them you're clear we're giving you a golden shield you won't be prosecuted the Justice Department having done that then feels it can't conduct an investigation or bring any charges that's a fundamental dilemma here now let's go back and look at what happened in 2006 where the situation really is quite bizarre because the government was immediately announcing very loudly these people committed suicide.
The evidence the case for them committing suicide is essentially evaporated right now.
I mean the government's case is a joke to the contrary we know now pretty clearly they actually died in this secret CIA center camp.
No.
And the question is and we also know that they died as a result of having cloth stuffed down their throats.
They suffocated or choked on that cloth.
That's pretty clearly the cause.
So the question is how did that come to pass?
How did this and why?
And if we look at the information that's come out today we know about experimentation as a part of the process.
We have other cases at least one other case with a prisoner who's being held by the intelligence service also died as a result of having cloth stuffed down their mouth.
It appears to have been a procedure that was applied.
We don't know exactly why or what purpose it served but in this case it appears it was used on three people.
They died and then what happens?
Justice Department will not investigate it.
There will be no consideration of this being a possible homicide even a negligent homicide and they work over time including putting out false statements continuously trying to close the door on any serious investigation.
Having read the PHR report I think there's a reasonable case to be put here that this may be connected with human experimentation.
I've asked you this before but I forget what you said.
I still can't figure out how you murdered three people in a row accidentally even with rags down the throat.
I mean after you just killed two you're doing it wrong.
That's right in the memo.
I think first of all it's clear that they were all being subjected to the same procedure and remember Chakramar who was the fourth person who was held that evening described how this procedure was applied to him and described the cloth being stuffed down his throat.
So I think this would have to be fully investigated but I'd have to say it could be negligent homicide it could be that the technique was not properly applied but now we come to another point and that is the PHR report says that the physicians who were following this weren't necessarily always in the room and that it appears that there were special audio visual systems that were installed by the CIA to facilitate their monitoring what was going on including from some distance.
So that raises the question here was there a special audio video monitoring system put in place at Camp No and just in the course of the last couple of weeks we have begun receiving information that that is the case in particular we've talked to someone who was involved in the installation of these systems and we're collecting information that suggests very strongly that one of these systems was installed in Thailand and another was installed at Camp No in Guantanamo and that's important because it means that there should be a recorded tape of what happened that evening another thing that's very very interesting is that we know there's supposed to be tape of the cell block A at Camp 1 in Camp America where allegedly they died as well and the government the government refuses to release or turn over that tape it simply says that there's nothing significant in it and my suspicion very strong suspicion is that they won't turn it over, they won't release it because that tape disproves their claims about what happened Yeah, well that sounds like a pretty good guess, so that's incredible very important development in the story here that you have new witnesses coming to talk about this which again brings back the issue of accountability and you know when you talk about soldiers at Abu Ghraib being prosecuted and that kind of thing as compared to if there were to be prosecutions of those responsible we can't let justice be done or the heavens will fall right?
I mean we're talking about blocking half the American political system in prison here well I, you know it's a reflection of our obligations you know, of course we have obligations not to torture people we even had obligations with respect to the Indies, people held at Guantanamo not to be holding them but when those obligations are violated, there's also a duty to conduct a criminal investigation and act on that and I think this is one of these things is a violation by the Bush administration but the other, that is the refusal to investigate and bring charges is a violation of our obligations by the Obama administration, that's the bottom line with don't look back Right, now it's the President's mandate in Article 2 of the Constitution in it that he is to faithfully execute the law and then there's a period at the end right?
It doesn't say immunity for your predecessors, etc.
Absolutely that's an oath that's sworn by the Attorney General and the President both there's no footnote that says except laws that it might be politically inconvenient to enforce and there's no question but that this is the law, I mean just start with the fact homicide is a very clear violation of the criminal law nothing fancy, it's not modern international law very clear cut and you know, killing people when they're held in prison and strapped down I mean it's just hard to imagine any way in which you know, the killing could be justified or privileged of course we don't know exactly what happened but I'd say that's a highly implausible explanation and if that, you know if it had been a matter of self-defense we would have heard that instead of the fairy tale that they committed suicide Yeah, well and so what about the Durham investigation?
Have you heard anything?
First of all I guess tell people what the Durham investigation is and then whether you heard anything Well John Durham career prosecutor from Connecticut was appointed by the Bush administration to conduct an investigation into the destruction of tapes by the CIA by the way, just in the last few days we've learned much more about what tapes by the CIA means because we now know that these maintenance of these tapes is directly connected to this medical experimentation program used by psychologists medical doctors and so forth previously we were told oh this is just for training purposes involving CIA agents that may also be true but that clearly now was not the principal purpose and remember when word first got out about this we were told that well maybe there was one tape and it seems to have disappeared about two weeks later we were told maybe there were two tapes about a month and a half later we learned no there were 92 tapes minimum 92 tapes and they've all disappeared well 92 tapes don't disappear as a result of inadvertence or being misplaced that's a conscious decision to destroy the tapes very very clear right now that's what happened no longer denied by the CIA they subsequently released information showing that there was a raging internal discussion about whether and how to destroy them and we know that some senior people in the agency in fact took the decision to destroy them and this was run by Porter Goss who was in the head of the agency in fact even went into the White House so a criminal investigation was opened up after demands were brought in Congress John Durham was appointed to head that investigation and he's been working on it now for a couple of years well and his mandate was expanded and then he kind of narrated himself according to the post right that's right his mandate was then expanded to deal with all these cases where a prisoner was abused or killed or nearly killed by a CIA operative from the CIA's own internal investigation and very very clear that he's treating that that would be anyone who went beyond the memo exactly only to the extent they went beyond the explicit authorization of the Department of Justice so if they were acting within the guidelines the Justice Department gave them torturing ala John Yu and Jay Bybee was just fine only to the extent they got a little bit more aggressive than Yu or Bybee would have approved then there was trouble so this investigation has been going on for two years and we know that people have been brought before a grand jury something seems to be active but you know we've got little to go on which I have to say means that John Durham is doing his job professionally because we journalists shouldn't know what he's doing yeah well fair enough but there are some journalists who at least claim to know what he was doing in the Washington Post they said that he's decided that torturing someone almost to death and that's probably covered by the memo but if you torture them all the way to death then he'll have a preliminary investigation to see whether in some of these cases maybe a prosecution or maybe an actual criminal investigation toward a prosecution could be warranted right?yeah the bottom line that we've heard through the Post reporting is that he's definitely focused on the homicide cases or the near homicide cases which I would say is appropriate I mean looking over all the things that are alleged brandishing a gun in front of somebody and shouting at them hard to see that leads to a major criminal prosecution but death and detention yeah that usually does lead to a prosecution well but I guess it's the the more narrow the scope the more it means that only the lowest level CIA guy, you know, contractor whatever kind of hired goon or mercenary could be prosecuted but the Vice President's Office, the Cabinet all the bureaucrats in between them the CIA torturers, George Tenet they're all safe I think that's right and that's the scope that was given by the Attorney General so Durham doesn't have a choice in that yeah he essentially said we're not going to look at the policy makers so Durham does not have that mandate although I think a prosecutor dealing with this fairly should look at the crime and follow it back wherever it goes and shouldn't be limited that way now I know that you were, well I think I know you've never been a prosecutor, right?
Never and yet I bet there's an affirmative answer to this question which is if you were a prosecutor and you had a grand jury with the information that's already available about the torture regime of the last administration the heavens would fall you could indict the Cabinet their lawyers and on down the chain you know like a ham sandwich in 25 minutes am I right?if I were running the criminal investigation I would definitely focus not on the little guys who implemented policy but I would focus on the people who created policy and who gave the green light for torture to occur and I think the justification for that again comes in these cases that were decided at the end of World War II I mean that's the position the United States took that it was those who made policy and who gave the green light who were most culpable I mean them more than the sadistic prison guards we were much more concerned about the people in Berlin or in Tokyo who gave a green light for horrible things to happen for fairly obvious reasons and in fact we have two criminal investigations going on in Spain right now and the investigating judges in both of those cases have taken the same view which is that in the United States the people who made torture policy who should be investigated and ultimately prosecuted rather than the low level CIA agent well I guess we can expect that to happen right after they indict Nixon for illegally killing all those Laotians right?
well I don't know I think something is going to happen in those cases and in fact you know we did have the prosecution occur in Italy I think we'll see some sort of prosecution occur in Spain but you know what will most likely happen is that their targets are not going to leave the United States so I think people like John Ewe and Judge Bybee and Alberto Gonzalez let's say their traveling days are over yeah well more proof of just how anti-American the world is and we need to arm up and torture more well how anti-American most Americans are then too yeah I guess so yeah well don't go quoting the opinion polls on these issues thank you very much I really appreciate it take care everybody that is the other Scott Horton heroic international anti-torture human rights lawyer and journalist and law professor at harpers.org slash subjects slash no comment his most recent piece is regarding this report by the Physicians for Human Rights and it's called Bush Era CIA Human Experimentation Program Revealed
