Some Call It Torture-Bush Admin Calls It "Coming Into Possession Of Classified Info"

[kpete]

You Call It "Torture"; We Call It "Coming Into Possession of Classified Information"
Marty Lederman

Why can't Majid Khan have a lawyer, according to the Department of Justice?
Because he might tell the lawyer how he was treated by the U.S. government.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/11/you-call-it-torture-we-call-it-coming.html

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Since so much was happening this weekend politically, it was easy to miss one story by The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110301793.html on Saturday, which covered the Justice Department's declaration that one of our detainees at Guantánamo is a human “state secret.”

Meaning the very act of being a detainee had given the man “Top Secret” information which he’s not supposed to share—like with a lawyer.

What do you know about our torture techniques and where our black sites are? Sorry, you weren’t supposed to know that, therefore no lawyer for you.

That’s right folks, Majid Khan, one of the detainees from the CIA “black sites” is not allowed to talk about his detention and (likely) torture because the lawyer he could speak to doesn’t have clearance to know about U.S. detention policies and “interrogation” procedures.

That a government lawyer could even offer this kind of Kafkaesque argument means someone truly has drunk the Kool-Aid down at the Justice Department.


more at:
http://www.opednews.com/maxwrite/linkframe.php?opedpg=http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/11/06/secret_existence.php&opedid=25612