Two and a half years ago, the government released a damning report by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) relating to the “enhanced interrogation” program of the CIA. The report was released in response to an ACLU Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. It made headlines because of its criticism of the CIA’s program and because it is said to have prompted Attorney General Eric Holder to launch a criminal investigation into some of the CIA’s abuses.

We’ve known for some time that there were more CIA OIG reports about the torture and detention program, but a new revelation by the government confirms just how many: 11.

Over the years, we’ve counted references (in both government documents and the media) to at least six additional OIG reports, several of which relate to the deaths of detainees in CIA custody. So, in April 2011, we filed a FOIA request for those and any other reports that analyzed the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs.

In November, the government confirmed to us (in this index) that there were indeed eleven additional reports. Based on the minimal information we have so far, among the most interesting are reports on the deaths of two CIA prisoners, Abid Hamad Mahawish Al-Mahalawi and Manadal Al-Jamaidi, which are reportedly being investigated by the Justice Department. Also notable is a report on the “nonregistration” of detainees, which relates to the CIA’s practice of holding “ghost” (or unacknowledged) detainees.


Manadel al-Jamadi aka Abu Ghraib's "Ice Man"

Detainee died during an interrogation by OGA, and was placed in the shower area of tier 1, hard site. No NDRS or ISN numbers, as he was never processed in the system.


Gul Rahman

More than seven years ago, a suspected Afghan militant was brought to a dimly lit CIA compound northeast of the airport in Kabul, Afghanistan. The CIA called it the Salt Pit. Inmates knew it as the dark prison.

Inside a chilly cell, the man was shackled and left half-naked. He was found dead, exposed to the cold, in the early hours of Nov. 20, 2002.

Subsequent forensic examinations determined that he had frozen to death. Until the A.P. disclosed the details, on

Sunday, March 28th, the C.I.A. kept the dead man’s name and fate secret for seven years. His wife and four daughters were given no notification of his death.

“The CIA’s then-station chief in Afghanistan was promoted after Rahman’s death,” the A.P. reported, “and the officer who ran the prison went on to other assignments, including one overseas.”

Group protests Belmont's hiring of ex-attorney general Alberto Gonzales

http://www.tennessean.com/article/20120121/NEWS0202/301210040/Group-protests-Belmont-s-hiring-ex-attorney-general-Alberto-Gonzales-

A small group rallied on Belmont Boulevard and at Belmont University’s temporary law school on Friday morning to protest the institution’s hiring of Alberto Gonzales as a law professor.

The demonstrators, supported by the Tennessee chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, claimed Gonzales was “one of the key architects” of the Bush administration’s torture policies.

“It’s really shameful that Belmont would honor him by hiring him as a law professor,” said protester Mark Brooks, who also thought it was “deeply ironic to hire him to teach constitutional law.”

During the protest, the demonstrators were photographed by Jeff Kinsler, dean of the Belmont College of Law. He declined to comment about the protest.

How Postwar Germany Let War Criminals Go Free
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,809537,00.html

The German occupiers wanted to avenge an attack that communist partisans had carried out a day earlier on a German police unit in Rome's Via Rasella. The victims of this retaliatory act were chosen at random. Most of them had been imprisoned in a Gestapo jail in the Italian capital or were being detained by the Wehrmacht, Germany's Nazi-era military. None of them had been involved in the attack.


Damning Documents Discovered in Berlin

The documents entail an exchange of letters begun in 1959 between officials at the German Embassy in Rome and their counterparts at the Foreign Ministry in Bonn, Germany's capital at the time. With unprecedented clarity, the documents testify to how German diplomats and Italian officials cooperated in shielding the soldiers in Kappler's charge from criminal prosecution. As embassy adviser Kurt von Tannstein put it, the goal was a "putting (the affair) to rest, as desired by both the German and Italian side."


Agreeing to Sweep the Matter under the Rug

In the case of the Ardeatine Caves, the initiative came from the Italian government. Their initial attempts to see that the German crimes wouldn't go unpunished were abandoned early. Many of the perpetrators were living in postwar Germany, and the Christian Democrats ruling in Rome were hoping to avoid having to make any extradition requests. As one leading diplomat in Rome warned: "On the day that the first German criminal is extradited, there will be a wave of protests in countries that are demanding the extradition of Italian criminals." After all, Italy had sided with Nazi Germany until 1943 and occupied parts of the Balkans, where hundreds of thousands of people fell victim to the Italians' reign of violence.


Willful Blindness, Feigned Ignorance

Klaiber's sympathy for the perpetrators was typical of the early days of new, postwar Germany. Only later, as SPIEGEL reported in 1968, did it emerge that Gawlik took advantage of his position in the Foreign Ministry to warn former Nazis against traveling abroad should they have been convicted in absentia in their destination countries and were thus at risk of arrest.

I think you can write a psychological profile of me that says I found a way to immerse my insecurities in a cause large enough to justify whatever I wanted it to." Newt Gingrich"

"Newt's friends have told me that his primary references are movies. They have informed his heroic ideal. "When he watches John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart on TV, he lives out these movies," says Melvin Steely, a former colleague at West Georgia College."

"I'm a mythical person," says Newt, no stranger to revolutions. "I had a period of thinking that I would have been called 'Newt the McPherson,' as in Robert the Bruce."

"Robert the Bruce," Newt continues, "is the guy who would not, could not, avoid fighting...He carried the burden of being Scotland." Like the Bruce, Newt feels he must carry the burden of being his nation."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/newt/vanityfair1.html

The sketches are chilling -- prisoners arriving at a concentration camp, children being torn from their parents' arms, a guard casually smoking outside a gas chamber as bodies are loaded into a truck. The images, recently published in a book by the Auschwitz Memorial Museum, were taken from a unique sketchbook drawn around 1943 at the Birkenau camp. A former prisoner working as a watchman discovered the 32 sketches in a bottle near the death camp's crematorium in 1947.


"The Sketchbook from Auschwitz" includes the 22 pages of drawings from an unknown prisoner whose initials were apparently MM. They represent a rare first-hand historical account of the Holocaust. "These sketches are the only work of art made in Birkenau that depict exterminations," museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki told SPIEGEL ONLINE.

While the circumstances make it hard to identify or trace the author, details in the images themselves provide several clues as to when they were created. The main gate at Birkenau, for example, is depicted before an extension was added.

"The second wing of the main gate was built between 1943 and 1944, but is absent from the sketches. Thus we concluded that the sketches were drawn in 1943 or before. From our records we believe that the author would have worked in the hospital sector or gathering luggage from the ramp," Sawicki explained.


http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,809591,00.html

It remains unclear who might be prosecuted in the case; the opinion mentions a number of senior Bush Administration figures. Judge Ruz requested that prosecutors take a position on this issue before the case proceeds. While the Audiencia Nacional adopted a decision in January 2010 viewing the “intellectual authors” of the policy that permitted torture as the persons principally culpable, former Spanish attorney general Cándido Conde-Pumpido sharply disputed this perspective, arguing that only the persons who physically committed the acts of torture or abuse could be charged. WikiLeaks cables published in El País subsequently revealed that Conde-Pumpido had been the target of aggressive lobbying by American politicians and diplomats seeking his intervention to spike the Guantánamo prosecutions. Conde-Pumpido resigned as attorney general last month, and Spain’s new government is currently in the process of designating his successor.

Submissions by lawyers for the victims strongly suggest that they are pursuing a strategy focusing on claims against Major General Geoffrey Miller, a former Guantánamo camp commander whose practices were heavily scrutinized and criticized by Congress. The lawyers have repeatedly asked for Miller to be subpoenaed and compelled to give testimony, and one of the victims has testified that Miller was the person in charge at the time he was abused.

In separate developments, a French judge has also issued letters rogatory to the Justice Department, seeking permission to travel to Guantánamo and conduct inquiries there. Le nouvel Observateur reports that Judge Sophie Clément is investigating the claims of three Frenchmen formerly held at Guantánamo, who say they were tortured and subjected to other acts of barbarity during their detentions.

As Carol Rosenberg noted in a report this past Saturday, these cases reflect European courts’ increasing tendency to conclude that the Obama Administration’s “look forward, not back” policy means that U.S. prosecutors will not meaningfully investigate or act in cases involving the torture or mistreatment of prisoners during the Bush era. Since the crimes involved are subject to universal jurisdiction—as the United States has itself long argued—this means that other nations may now conduct their own investigations and open prosecutions. This means that, far from being over, the torture investigations will now enter a new phase—one that parallels the developments following Augusto Pinochet’s rule in Chile and after Argentina’s “dirty war,” when criminal investigations were pursued largely in European courts because amnesty arrangements prevented the pursuit of justice in domestic courts.


http://harpers.org/archive/2012/01/hbc-90008400