On Jan. 24, 2003, a new law enforcement and investigatory agency whose duties include functions taken from as many as 22 other federal agencies came into existence. The reorganization of these operations reportedly marks the biggest government bureaucratic shake-up since the creation of the Department of Defense half a century ago.
Even before the new Department of Homeland Security opened its doors, controversies arose over not just how it would operate and exercise its powers, but what level of access to information it would allow, and how it would respond to news media requests. Will new exemptions be carved out of the FOI Act, either by law or by practice? Will officials and agents feel free to tap phones of journalists, or subpoena their records during investigations? Will the new director consider procedural safeguards, like those adopted years ago by the Department of Justice, to ensure that freedom of the press will not be denied? And will those practices be followed?

But "homeland" security is not the only concern for journalists covering anti-terrorism initiatives; military actions abroad often present a greater challenge, as questions over disclosure of information, access to troops, and restraints on reporting seem to resurface anew with each conflict.

Questions and issues like these led the Reporters Committee to launch this "weblog," so that there will be a centralized site on the Internet for journalists who want to follow these issues and pass along information they learn while covering — or worse, being covered by — the new department and other anti-terrorism actions. Please submit comments and pass along tips to make this project as useful, thorough and up-to-date as possible.

A few words about what this project will not do. We do not intend to cover many of the issues that will undoubtedly come up as the Department takes shape, even if those issues are the ones generating headlines. We will cover information access and free press issues, but will not follow debates over many civil liberties issues that, while important, are outside of our domain.

Funding for the launch of this site was provided by The Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation.

May. 28, 2004

SERGEANT DISCIPLINED FOR SPEAKING TO MEDIA. A U.S. Army sergeant who gave an insider's view of Abu Ghraib prison to the media has lost his security clearance and has been disciplined by the military for speaking out, he told The Associated Press this week. Sgt. Samuel Provance said that although soldiers he served with in Iraq were treating him as a pariah, he would not change a thing if given a second chance. — Posted at 4:08 pm

POST EDITORIAL SAYS ADMINISTRATION COVERED UP IRAQI PRISON DEATHS. An editorial in today's Washington Post took the Bush Administration to task for its handling of the prison scandal in Iraq. The newspaper said the administration has done its best to cover up the killings of a number of Iraqi detainees. The deaths "have been reported only after news of them leaked to the media, and details about most of them are still undisclosed," the Post said. "Had it not been for the leak of the photographs from Abu Ghraib, which record less serious crimes, it is probable that none of the deaths in Iraq would have become public knowledge." — Posted at 3:59 pm

TWO JAPANESE JOURNALISTS KILLED, THREE NBC JOURNALISTS RELEASED. Gunmen attacked a car carrying two Japanese journalists in Iraq and the vehicle burst into flames, Japan's Foreign Ministry said Friday. Two bodies were found at the scene, and hospital officials identified them as Japanese. Separately, three NBC journalists and an Iraqi freelancer were released Friday, three days after the group was captured in Fallujah. The bodies have not been positively identified as the missing freelance journalists, Shinsuke Hashida, 61, and his nephew, Kotaro Ogawa, 33, said Yu Kameoka, a spokesman for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. — Posted at 3:55 pm

9/11 EVIDENCE TO BE DISCLOSED IN PRIVATE MEETINGS. The Department of Justice will hold two private meetings for 9/11 hijacking victims' families to hear tapes and see other evidence, The Associated Press reports. The families requested the meetings after some of the tapes and evidence were disclosed to the public during 9/11 commission hearings in order to get as much information about their loved one's deaths - and what might have been done to prevent them - as possible. "It's important for people to get the facts," said a family member identified as Roger of Longmeadow, Mass. Nikki Stern, executive director of Families of Sept. 11, says some members believe the government is witholding information and want to judge for themselves what happened. "You have to go further. Sometimes they are not right," she said. — Posted at 3:28 pm

PRISON ABUSE INQUIRIES NOT COMPREHENSIVE. According to The Washington Post, an examination of the varied inquiries into prisoner abuse in the war on terror reveals a number of gaps. "I can't tell if all the inquiries represent attempts to patch new holes opening in the boat every day, or if they're part of some carefully designed strategy to have lots of activity going on around the center of this thing without probing the center itself," said John Hamre, head of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and former Clinton deputy secretary of defense. Problems include the lack of an overarching inquiry, lack of depth in some of the inquiries and the fact that the Department of Defense is investigating itself. — Posted at 09:29 am

PRIVACY PROMISE PROVOKES UNDERWHELMING RESPONSE. Government Computer News reports that the Protected Critical Infrastructure Information Office has received only six submissions since opening in February. The office was created under the Critical Infrastructure Informaton Act of 2002. The goal was to encourage private companies to share information with the government about vulnerabilities to such things as power plants and chemical factories by providing limits on civil liability and exemptions from disclosure under FOIA. Program manager Frederick W. Herr said that it is good that so few submissions were received because the office is not yet ready to handle them. "Most of the submissions have been in formats we didn't anticipate, in ways we didn't expect," he said. Submissions may not be made in electronic format yet. — Posted at 09:06 am

May. 27, 2004

SHOE-BOMBER DENIED ACCESS TO TIME MAGAZINE. The U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston has declined to overturn Special Administrative Measures (SAMs) that prevent the so-called "shoe-bomber," Richard Reid, from receiving unredacted copies of Time magazine in prison. According to the opinion, officials at the federal super-max facility in Colorado regularly redact the entire "letters to the editor" section from Reid's copy of the magazine, citing the potential for al Qaida to communicate through coded messages. They also blocked two articles about terrorism (later returned) and impose a 30-day delay on his receipt. Reid subscribed to Time with funds from his prison account. — Posted at 5:08 pm

ACLU RELEASES REDACTED PATRIOT ACT LAWSUIT DOCUMENTS. The American Civil Liberties Union this week made public its brief and supporting documents asking a court to strike down a controversial provision of the USA Patriot Act. Among the documents is a heavily censored declaration that confirms, for the first time, the existence of the ACLU's anonymous client in the case. The "National Security Letter" provision at issue in the lawsuit allows the government to demand sensitive customer records from businesses without judicial oversight. The ACLU and its New York affiliate are also challenging a provision of the law that imposes a broad gag order on any entity that receives a National Security Letter, or NSL. — Posted at 4:49 pm

KAY TESTIFIES BEFORE COMMISSION IN SECRET. In its first official meeting Wednesday, the president's commission investigating flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction heard from David Kay, the former Iraq weapons inspector whose criticism helped drive the panel's creation. Kay, along with about a dozen other experts, appeared before the commission in a closed seven-hour session to brief the nine commissioners as they begin sorting out the quality of U.S. intelligence on the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, The Associated Press reported. President Bush formed the commission - called the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction - in February after increasing criticism involving the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. — Posted at 4:40 pm

NUMBERS JUST AREN\'T PART OF THE DETAILS. Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, Deputy Director for Coalition Operations, and Dan Senor, Senior Advisor, Coalition Provisional Authority, gave a press briefing today. General Kimmit and a reporter had this interchange: Q You talked yesterday about a large number of Sadr followers who were killed either in Najaf or Sadr City or both. I wonder if you could specify any specific numbers and give us any more details on that? GEN. KIMMITT: Let me give you some details. As a soldier, it's tough to go out and have to fight, and I can tell you it's even tougher when you've got 17-year-old kids picking up RPGs and aiming them at you. It's very tough to have to do your job at that time, and we don't take any glory and we don't take any pride in having to do it. So, frankly, anytime we have to kill one of those kids because he's aiming a weapon at us, aiming an RPG at one of our soldiers, aiming a rifle at one of our tanks, it's not a good day. But that is more than one. And so - it serves no purpose to talk about the numbers of young Iraqis that we've had to kill because they have been entranced and followed into the lure of Muqtada al-Sadr and his group. So I would be more than happy to talk about things that have military significance, but frankly, the sheer volume of people that we have had to kill to achieve this is not something I'm - Q But earlier this week you were giving us numbers, and all of a sudden yesterday we stopped getting numbers, and I wonder - GEN. KIMMITT: Right. Q - is that a change in policy? GEN. KIMMITT: Not at all. — Posted at 3:48 pm

May. 26, 2004

DETENTION ABUSE IS WIDESPREAD, REPORTS SAY. Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan about abusive detention techniques continue to be reported. Today's New York Times reports that an Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known. NBC News reports that U.S. military and intelligence officials familiar with the situation say the Army's elite Delta Force is now the subject of a Pentagon inspector general investigation into abuse against detainees. The target of that investigation is a top-secret site near Baghdad's airport. — Posted at 3:45 pm

NEW YORK TIMES CONCEDES FLAWS IN COVERAGE. A remarkable editor's note in todays' New York Times concedes that some articles written about the prelude to war in Iraq and after contained serious flaws. "[W]e have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged - or failed to emerge, the editor's note said." — Posted at 11:05 am

May. 25, 2004

FEDS LEFT \"CALLING CARDS\" AT OREGON MAN\'S HOME. Much of the federal investigation into possible links between Brandon Mayfield and the deadly Madrid terror bombings was cloaked in secrecy: Secret search warrants. Sealed court documents. And, of course, the gag order that kept the Beaverton attorney from uttering a word about his captivity until the case was dismissed Monday morning. But The Oregonian reports today that the fact that he was being watched by the FBI starting in March was never much of a secret to Mayfield. In fact, government agents all but left their business cards after snooping around his Aloha home. — Posted at 4:18 pm

RECORDS UNSEALED, GAG ORDER LIFTED IN OREGON CASE. A federal judge in Portland, Ore., yesterday dismissed material witness proceedings involving Brandon Mayfield, the lawyer mistakenly linked to the Spanish train bombings on the basis of a botched fingerprint ID. The Portland Tribune reports that U.S. District Judge Robert Jones rescinded a gag order on Mayfield and his attorneys, unsealed the court file, and ordered the return of property seized by the FBI. The FBI has apologized, but questions remain about its handling of the case and the government's expansive use of the material witness law to detain terror suspects on the basis of little or no reliable evidence. The New York Times, the Associated Press, The Washington Post and The Oregonian also have stories on the collapse of the case. Click here to read the government's motion to dismiss the material witness proceedings in the Mayfield case. — Posted at 10:53 am

GHOSTS OF ABU GHRAIB. The practice of keeping secret prisoners - Iraqi detainees not listed on official logs - was widespread The New York Times reports. According to a memorandum obtained by the Times, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, a military intelligence commander assigned to Abu Ghraib, was concerned about the CIA-initiated practice and signed an agreement with an intelligence agent referred to only as "James Bond" to halt it just days before the abuses at the prison were brought to the attention of Army investigators. Gen. Taguba's still-classified report concluded that allowing "ghost detainees" at the prison was "deceptive, contrary to Army doctrine, and in violation of international law." — Posted at 10:15 am

May. 24, 2004

LAWSUITS SEEK BROOKLYN PRISON VIDEOS. The Justice Department is trying to make sure a prison scandal doesn't erupt close to home, NEWSWEEK reports. At issue: more than 300 hours of secret videotapes from a U.S. prison facility in Brooklyn, N.Y., where many Arab and Muslim detainees were incarcerated in the months after 9/11. On the tapes, according to a report by federal investigators, prison guards slam inmates into walls, twist their arms and wrists and subject them to humiliating strip searches in which, in some cases, male prisoners were forced to stand naked in the presence of female guards; in others, prison guards "laughed, exchanged suggestive looks and made funny noises." The existence of the tapes was first disclosed late last year in a blistering report on conditions at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn by the Justice Department's inspector general. But the tapes got little attention at the time, in part because only a handful of blurry stills from the videos were released. But now attorneys in two lawsuits filed against top Justice officials on behalf of former inmates tell NEWSWEEK they plan to push for full release of the videos, arguing that, as with Abu Ghraib, the visual evidence can make the case far more powerfully than mere allegations from prisoners. — Posted at 4:06 pm

EDITORIAL CALLS FOR DISCLOSURE OF DETENTION PROCEDURES. An editorial in Sunday's Washington Post called for the Bush Administration to disclose the policies it has developed for handling foreign prisoners. Rules for the interrogation of detainees used to be published in widely available Army manuals. But the Bush administration has classified the procedures it has approved for the Guantanamo Bay prison, Afghanistan and Iraq - even though it claims that all are in compliance with the Geneva Conventions. It has been slow to release the procedures even to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which is leading the way in investigating the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. — Posted at 3:37 pm

2,000 PAGES MISSING FROM ARMY REPORT TO CONGRESS. At least 2,000 pages might have been missing from the copy of the Army report on soldiers' abusive treatment of Iraqi prisoners that was delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee, The Washington Post reported today. The 6,000-page report, compiled by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, formed the basis for hearings this month into the allegations. Time magazine reported Sunday that committee aides noticed the report was missing a third of its pages. — Posted at 3:31 pm

NY PROPOSES SUBWAY PHOTOGRAPHY BAN. The New York City Transit Authority has proposed a ban on unauthorized photography, filming and videotaping on city subways, buses and Staten Island Railway trains. The press and businesses or individuals with permits would be exempt, The New York Times reported. The agency cited the security of 7 million daily riders, 48,000 employees and its transportation network as the reason for the proposed ban. — Posted at 3:18 pm

REUTERS REPORT SAYS SHOOTING OF CAMERAMAN WAS PREVENTABLE. In an extensive report on the death of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, the news agency said the tragedy was preventable and rejected the findings of a U.S. Army investigation that the shooting by an American soldier in Iraq last August was justified. The report commissioned by Reuters said some of the U.S. military investigation's conclusions "are unsupported by the evidence, and, as a whole, the evidence does not support a conclusion that the shooting was 'justified' based on the circumstances." — Posted at 3:01 pm

PENTAGON REPORT SHOWS ABUSE MORE PREVALENT THAN PREVIOUSLY ACKNOWLEDGED. Brutal interrogation techniques by U.S. military personnel are being investigated in connection with the deaths of at least five Iraqi prisoners in war-zone detention camps, Pentagon documents obtained by The Denver Post show. The deaths include the killing in November of a high-level Iraqi general who was shoved into a sleeping bag and suffocated, according to the Pentagon report. The documents contradict an earlier Defense Department statement that said the general died "of natural causes" during an interrogation. Pentagon officials declined to comment on the new disclosure. Details of the death investigations, involving at least four different detention facilities including the Abu Ghraib prison, provide the clearest view yet into war-zone interrogation rooms, where intelligence soldiers and other personnel have sometimes used lethal tactics to try to coax secrets from prisoners. Internal records obtained by The Post point to wider problems beyond the Abu Ghraib prison and demonstrate that some coercive tactics used at Abu Ghraib have shown up in interrogations elsewhere in the war effort. The documents also show more than twice as many allegations of detainee abuse - 75 - are being investigated by the military than previously known. Twenty-seven of the abuse cases involve deaths; at least eight are believed to be homicides. Documents obtained by The New York Times show the use of dogs to intimidate prisoners during interrogation at Abu Ghraib in Iraq was approved by military intelligence officers at the prison, and was one of several aggressive tactics they adopted even without approval from senior military commanders, according to interviews gathered by Army investigators. — Posted at 2:56 pm

U.S. COURT-MARTIAL GOT LIMITED AIRTIME FROM ARAB JOURNALISTS. The court-martial in Baghdad of Specialist Jeremy C. Sivits was open to the press, and at least 9 of the 25 seats for the news media at the trial room last Wednesday were taken by Arab journalists. American officials made no secret that they hoped the public court-martial would show American justice in action and help blunt anger at the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. But by Wednesday evening, the images out of Gaza, where Israeli soldiers had fired on a demonstration of Palestinians, were so violent that the guilty plea of Specialist Sivits, who admitted to taking part in abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, received only secondary coverage on the main Arab satellite channels, The New York Times reported. — Posted at 2:46 pm

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT RETROACTIVELY CLASSIFIED FBI TRANSLATOR INFORMATION. The Justice Department has taken the unusual step of retroactively classifying information it gave to Congress nearly two years ago regarding a former F.B.I. translator who charged that the bureau had missed critical terrorist warnings, officials said last week. Law enforcement officials say the secrecy surrounding the translator, Sibel Edmonds, is essential to protecting information that could reveal intelligence-gathering operations. But some members of Congress and Congressional aides told The New York Tmes they were troubled by the move, which comes as critics have accused the Bush administration of excessive secrecy. — Posted at 2:41 pm

SEATTLE LAWSUIT CHALLENGES TRIBUNALS. A lawsuit is being heard in Seattle that weighs the foundations of American laws and values against the mission of protecting the country from foreign terrorists. At the center of the case is Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a Yemeni who admits he was a driver for Osama bin Laden, according to the Seattle Times. The military lawyer assigned to represent him, Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, is using Hamdan's detention in Guantanamo Bay to question the power of his own commander in chief, the president of the United States. The issues, wrote U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik in a procedural ruling two weeks ago, have \"monumental significance" and are reminiscent of the Japanese-internment cases decided six decades ago in the same courthouse. Swift argues not only that Hamdan is an innocent civilian, but that the military tribunal President Bush's administration created to try him is unconstitutional. Also, he says, the tribunal rules violate military law and the Geneva Conventions. The case, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, is the first court challenge to the new tribunals, and it offers a glimpse into a modern world of justice that has been created to confront the terrorist threat. — Posted at 2:34 pm

REPORTERS SUBPOENAED IN LEAK INVESTIGATION. NBC's Tim Russert and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper have been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the leak of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity, according to The New York Times . Both companies have said they will fight the subpoenas, and NBC News president Neal Shapiro said "sources will simply stop speaking to the press if they fear those conversations will become public," according to The Times. Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald was appointed to investigate the leak after columnist Robert Novak wrote in a July column that Plame's identity had been revealed to him by two administration officials. — Posted at 2:17 pm

WMD COMMISSION AND FACA. According to The Washington Post, while the presidential commission studying weapons of mass destruction claims to be complying with the openness requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, this has resulted in little information being released to the public. The commission has publicly filed a charter and notice of a meeting, but the meeting itself was closed to the public due to classifed information being discussed. The commission's spokesman, Larry McQuillan, says future public meetings haven't been ruled out, but no decision has been made. "I believe the intent is to certainly give the public some kind of description and sense of what happened," he said. "I just don't know how detailed that can be." A reading room for documents required to be made public under the act has not yet been created due to "logistical" problems. Stewart Baker, the attorney for the commision, has repeatedly said that although the commission has acted in a manner consistent with FACA, it should not be taken as a concession that the commission is subject to the act. — Posted at 11:56 am

MORE FLAWS IN THE DETAINEE PROCESS. An editorial in The Washington Post criticizes the Pentagon's recently released policy for periodic review of the status of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Post identifies some of the policy's shortcomings - no right to a lawyer, no clear standards, no appellate review, and no accountability to any non-military body. The process is an invitation for a "rubber stamp," the Post concludes. On a related note, The New York Times published a story on the evolution of the Justice Department's legal strategy of avoiding compliance with the Geneva Conventions (and other applicable law) in detaining individuals captured in the war on terror. — Posted at 11:38 am

MISSION CREEP IN MATERIAL WITNESS LAW. The ordeal of Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield has rallied critics of the government's increasingly aggressive use of the material witness law, the Los Angeles Times reports. Mayfield was arrested without charges and held incommunicado for two weeks in a Portland jail, apparently on the basis of a botched fingerprint ID by Spanish authorities that purported to link him to the Madrid train bombings. He was released Thursday but remains subject to an indefinite gag order and, according to the Times, is still considered a material witness by U.S. authorities. An editorial in The Washington Post points out that the material witness law is being used for preventive detention of the suspects themselves while the government tries (often unsuccessfully) to build a case, rather than as a tool to ensure that witnesses are available for testimony. — Posted at 10:53 am

GENERAL ORDERS PROBE OF AFGHANISTAN JAILS. The Associated Press reported last week that a military spokesman in Afghanistan announced a review of secretive jails and prisoner abuse allegations, an investigation ordered by the top American general in Afghanistan - who was not named in the announcement. Two investigations were of claims by former detainees were launched two weeks ago. The new investigation will involve visits to 20 prisons and portions of the report due in June will be public according to the announcement. Reporters and a human rights group were denied access to the closely guarded jails where they hoped to determine if Iraq-style abuses were taking place. Last week Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch called on the United States to immediately release results of past investigations into misconduct by U.S. personnel in Afghanistan and to include information about two Afghan detainees who originally scheduled were killed in late 2002 while in U.S. custody. — Posted at 10:20 am

May. 20, 2004

REUTERS NOT PLEASED BY ARMY RESPONSE TO ABUSE OF JOURNALISTS. Reuters has said that the Pentagon has not taken complaints of physical and sexual abuse of three of its journalists seriously, and has not conducted a complete investigation into the incidents. The three Iraqi employees of the agency, along with an Iraqi employee of NBC, had been detained in January, even though they had identified themselves as journalists, and most of the abuse and mistreatment had occurred after Reuters had informed Army officials that the men were on the agency's staff. Reuters later released a timeline showing that it had repeatedly pressed the military for answers since the incident occurred, but Army officials announced that the case was considered closed. — Posted at 5:43 pm

May. 19, 2004

GUANTANAMO REVIEWS TO BE CLOSED. The United States plans within weeks to begin annual reviews of whether or not to release foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, but the entire process will be closed and the prisoners will have no right to a lawyer, the Pentagon said on Tuesday. Each of the roughly 600 non-U.S. citizens imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be given a chance to appear once a year before a board of three U.S. military officers to explain why he no longer poses a threat to America and its allies, the Pentagon said. A prisoner will not have the right to be represented by a lawyer or any other independent adviser, the proceedings at the remote Guantanamo base will be closed to the public and media with transcripts kept secret and no public announcements will be made on the disposition of cases, officials said. — Posted at 4:05 pm

ARMY TRIED TO LIMIT RED CROSS INSPECTIONS. OFFICER SAYS. Army officials in Iraq responded late last year to a Red Cross report of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison by trying to curtail the international agency's spot inspections of the prison, a senior Army officer who served in Iraq told The New York Times on Tuesday. After the International Committee of the Red Cross observed abuses in one cellblock on two unannounced inspections in October and complained in writing on Nov. 6, the military responded that inspectors should make appointments before visiting the cellblock. That area was the site of the worst abuses. The Red Cross report in November was the earliest formal evidence known to have been presented to the military's headquarters in Baghdad before January, when photographs of the abuses came to the attention of criminal investigators and prompted a broad investigation. But the senior Army officer said the military did not start any criminal investigation before it replied to the Red Cross on Dec. 24. — Posted at 4:01 pm

KEY WITNESSES REFUSED TO TESTIFY AT ABU GHRAIB HEARING. Three key witnesses, including a senior officer in charge of interrogations, refused to testify during a secret April 26 hearing against an alleged ringleader of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal on the grounds that they might incriminate themselves. The witnesses appeared at a preliminary hearing behind closed doors for Cpl. Charles A. Graner Jr., who has been identified in court-martial documents as the leader of a band of military police guards who humiliated and abused Iraqi detainees and compiled a bizarre photographic record of their activities. The prospective witnesses' refusal to testify is described in court-martial documents obtained by The Los Angeles Times on Tuesday. — Posted at 3:58 pm

TSA TO PROTECT MARITIME SECURITY INFORMATION. The Transportation Security Administration yesterday published an interim final rule to extend the agency's legal protections for confidentiality of "sensitive security information" to maritime and vessel information. TSA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, absorbed the Federal Aviation Administration, which by law has been able to keep from disclosing security information about the aviation industry. The agency will receive public comments until July 19. — Posted at 3:55 pm

STINGING REVELATIONS COME FROM SUPPRESSED TAPES. Today's New York Times reports that a number of the most stinging new revelations from Tuesday's hearing on the Sept. 11 attacks came from 911 tape recordings that Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and his administration have tried to keep from public inspection for more than two years. The tapes showed that a number people inside the towers - isolated without public address announcements - turned to the 911 emergency system for advice but were steered terribly wrong by the Police Department and fire dispatchers, according to a report by the staff of the independent commission investigating the attacks. — Posted at 3:51 pm

JOURNALISTS MUST SPEAK UP, CURLEY SAYS. In an Op-Ed published in today's St. Paul Pioneer Press, Associated Press President Tom Curley says journalists are alarmed at the assault on the public's right to know since September 11, 2001. But, he says, their protests have been muted so far, partly out of their clear sense that a badly frightened public, already resentful of nosy reporters, prefers to trust the government not to abuse its expanding secrecy. "This is how the first paving stones on that road to tyranny are laid. Yes, it's a dangerous time when careful measures to keep some sensitive information out of the wrong hands are called for. But there is no safety in building up walls against one danger by tearing down the walls against another even greater one," Curley wrote. — Posted at 3:45 pm

OUTSOURCING OVERSIGHT QUESTIONED. Senators Ron Wyden (D-Ore) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich) and Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent a letter to defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld complaining that the Pentagon has contracted out oversight of its contracts to companies that have conflicts of interest due to major business deals with the companies they are overseeing. The Congressmen urged the Pentagon not to "abdicate" its responsibility. "Watching out for taxpayer dollars is a government function," Wyden said. "The defense department is contracting out the oversight of the hen house to the foxes," Wyden told Reuters. — Posted at 3:10 pm

CONTRACTING PROCESS HID HIRING OF PRIVATE INTERROGATORS A private interrogator accused of abusing Iraqi prisoners was hired under a vague, flexible contract that hinders public oversight The Washington Post reports. CACI International, a Virginia company that is providing interrogators to the military in Iraq - one of whom has been implicated in abusing prisoners - was hired under an open-ended "blanket purchase agreement" in 1998. The large routine services contract is designed to be vague so that agencies can make quick requests for services without having to go through the normal open and competitive bidding process, but this flexibility also means that the public and government watchdogs don't see what's being contracted for. CACI has refused to comment on the contract or the allegations of abuse by their employee. "If they want to provide information to the media, that's the business of the United States government, that's not the business of CACI," said CACI chairman and CEO J.P. London. — Posted at 3:08 pm

May. 18, 2004

POWELL REGRETS DEFECTOR\'S MISLEADING INFORMATION. The Bush administration publicized the claims of an Iraqi defector already deemed by the CIA to be unreliable as a part of its effort to garner public and congressional support for the invasion of Iraq, Jonathan S. Landay of Knight Ridder Newspapers wrote Monday. Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri had showed deception in a lie detector test and his claims to have worked in illegal chemical, biological and nuclear facilities around Baghdad had been rejected by intelligence leaders nine months before the White House cited his story to Congress, Landry wrote, referring to Secretary of State Colin Powell's acknowledgement Sunday on "Meet the Press" that he regrets that Saeed and other defectors fed him and the CIA wrong and sometimes deliberately misleading information that was used to justify the buildup toward the war in Iraq. Landay wrote that in a report the White House cited Saeed's claims in a background paper nine months after he was discredited as unreliable. The report, "A Decade of Deception and Defiance," is still available on the administration's Web site. It footnotes an article in The New York Times based on a reporter's interview with Saeed three days after the polygraph had raised CIA suspicions about Saeed's credibility. — Posted at 4:53 pm

REUTERS AND NBC EMPLOYEES DETAINED, ABUSED NEAR FALLUJAH. Reuters said Tuesday three Iraqis working for the news agency and another working for NBC were beaten, taunted and forced to put shoes in their mouths during their detention at a military camp near Fallujah in January. After being freed from their Jan. 2-5 detention, the men told Reuters about their alleged ordeal but only decided to make it public when the U.S. military said there was no evidence of abuse, and news broke about the mistreatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad. — Posted at 3:29 pm

CLASSIFIED REPORT SAYS MILITARY INTELLIGENCE DIRECTED MPS AT IRAQI PRISON. The American officer who was in charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison has told a senior Army investigator that intelligence officers sometimes instructed the military police to force Iraqi detainees to strip naked and to shackle them before questioning them. The officer, Col. Thomas M. Pappas, commander of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, also told the investigator, Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, that his unit had "no formal system in place" to monitor instructions they had given to military guards, who worked closely with interrogators to prepare detainees for interviews. The statements by Col. Pappas, contained in the transcript of a Feb. 11 interview that is part of General Taguba's 6,000-page classified report, offer the highest-level confirmation so far that military intelligence soldiers directed military guards in preparing for interrogations. Portions of Colonel Pappas's sworn statements were read to The New York Times by a government official who had read the transcript. — Posted at 3:22 pm

DOCUMENTARY SHOWS U.S. MILITARY SPINNING THE NEWS; JOURNALISTS ALLOWING IT. In an Op-Ed in Sunday's New York Times, Frank Rich describes a "revelatory" new documentary about Al Jazeera. In "Control Room," opening in New York this Friday before fanning out nationally, the audience is taken into the U.S. Central Command's media center in Doha, Qatar, in early April 2003 to see American mythmaking in action. The director of "Control Room" is Jehane Noujaim, an Egyptian-American who is a protege of D. A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, the chroniclers of the '92 Clinton campaign in "The War Room." Rich says that though Noujaim's principal subject may be the Arab satellite news station that has been widely condemned as a fount of anti-American propaganda, her eye for the American media is no less keen. The true control room in "Control Room" is not so much the Al Jazeera HQ as the coalition media center. It is there, from a costly Hollywood set, that the U.S. military commanded its own propaganda effort, which was aided and abetted by an American press sometimes as eager to slant the news as its Arab counterpart. — Posted at 3:12 pm

APPEALS COURT ORDERS MOUSSAOUI PROSECUTORS TO PROVIDE INFORMATION ABOUT AL QAEDA INTERROGATIONS. A federal appeals court ordered Justice Department lawyers Monday to explain at a closed hearing why they provided "arguably inconsistent" information about the interrogation of al Qaeda detainees - a subject that already has mired the case of terrorism suspect Zacarias Moussaoui, according to a story in today's Washington Post. The order by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit comes just after a crucial decision by the same court on the same issue had moved the case forward. The order came in response to a letter filed by the Justice Department that sought to clarify the role of prosecution team members in the secretive process of questioning the detainees. The letter says that some Moussaoui prosecutors and FBI agents are involved in broader terrorism investigations and have "shared information." But the public release of the letter is heavily redacted for national security reasons, and it could not be determined what type of information was shared or in what context. The New York Times reported that the Justice Department said in the letter it would "provide clarification" on the issue. The letter was made public on Friday by the appeals court. — Posted at 3:02 pm

CIA SAYS NEW YORKER ARTICLE WAS WRONG. The CIA on Monday denied a New Yorker magazine article about the roots of the abuse of Iraqi prisoners as "fundamentally wrong," saying it had no program with the Defense Department to humiliate prisoners. "The New Yorker story is fundamentally wrong, there was no DOD/CIA program to abuse and humiliate Iraqi prisoners," CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said. — Posted at 2:58 pm

SPECIAL PROSECUTOR SEEKS TO INTERVIEW REPORTERS. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is seeking to question several reporters about the July 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, according to The Washington Post . Post attorney Eric Lieberman told Fitzgerald he would respond this week to requests to interview Post reporters Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler. The Los Angeles Times reports that reporters for Newsday are also being asked for interviews and that other reporters may be added to the list. Sources close to the case see the requests as a signal that the leak investigation is winding up and as a precursor to issuing subpoenas to the journalists, according to the Times . Justice Department guidelines require prosecutors to exhaust all alternatives before turning to reporters and to negotiate with reporters before issuing subpoenas. — Posted at 11:59 am

FISA SLANTS THE RULES IN TERROR CASES. A report in the Legal Times examines the unequal playing field caused by the growing use of evidence obtained under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillane Act to prosecute suspected terrorists. For years, the secret surveillance authorized by FISA was off-limits to federal prosecutors, but that changed after Sept. 11 with the disintegration of the so-called "wall" separating law enforcement and intelligence. Now, the article notes, prosecutors are able to use mountains of secretly gathered evidence in criminal cases, while defense attorneys - who generally have no access to the FISA applications or their supporting materials - can do little to challenge their validity. — Posted at 09:50 am

SECRETIVE LEGAL STRATEGY LED TO ABU GRHAIB TORTURE. A report in Newsweek illuminates the link between the Bush administration's aggressive legal strategies in the wake of Sept. 11 and the atrocities committed against detainees at Abu Ghraib. Newsweek details how a small band of conservative Justice Department lawyers, with the support of the Pentagon and the approval of White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, convinced the President that the Geneva conventions do not apply to prisoners captured in the name of the war on terror. The story quotes an unnamed former administration lawyer as saying that the Guantanamo Bay prison was established to create "the legal equivalent of outer space," where interrogation methods that violate the Geneva conventions could be used. Ultimately, the magazine reports, Secretary Rumsfeld made the conscious decision to import such tactics to Iraq, laying the foundation for the current prisoner abuse scandal. — Posted at 09:48 am

May. 15, 2004

RUMSFELD GOES TO IRAQ, PUTS HEAD IN SAND. The Washington Post reports that on his recent surprise trip to Iraq, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld denied that the refusal to release more photos of abuse of Iraqi prisoners suggests a coverup. "I've stopped reading newspapers," he told troops. "You've got to keep your sanity somehow." — Posted at 10:50 am

WMD COMMISSION TO MEET IN SECRET. The Commisssion on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction will meet in closed session on May 26 and 27 at its officies in Arlington, VA. The commission, created by President Bush via Executive Order 13328, is charged with determining if U.S. intelligence is capable of identifying and warning of the development of weapons of mass destruction "and other related threats of the 21st Century." According to the notice in the Federal Register, the commission does not concede that it is subject to the notice and openness requirements of the Federal Advisory Committee Act, but that even if it were the meeting could be closed because of the discussion of classified intelligence information. Members of the public wishing to comment to the commission may do so by fax or e-mail. — Posted at 10:46 am

FREE SPEECH WORTHLESS WITHOUT FACTS. In commentary on Findlaw, attorney and writer Julie Hilben says the failure of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to reveal serious Iraqi prisoner abuses in January when they were first discovered threatens the First Amendment. The military should constantly weigh national security against the value of "a fully informed 'marketplace of ideas,' in which the press is free to investigate, and the public has timely access to important information." Where the military controls relevant information, the press must rely on military judgment as to whether the information is significant to public discourse, she writes. "Free speech is worthless if you don't know what all the facts are - or if you don't even know that there is something important you should be talking about in the first place." — Posted at 10:40 am

LETTING LOOSE THE IMAGES OF WAR. Thanks to digital technology, the traditional establishment - the military, the government, and the mainstream media - seems to be losing control of the images of war, according to The New York Times. Noting recent unofficially released photos and videos, including the video of the decapitation of Nicolas Berg, photos of American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, and photos of military coffins being loaded onto a transport plane in Kuwait, the Times discusses the belief of Internet experts and military historians that technology is forcing "a major shift in the expectation of what can be kept private, [which] may ultimately hold everyone more accountable for their actions." — Posted at 10:37 am

May. 13, 2004

FORMER AL-SABAH EDITOR LAUNCHES INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER. The editor of an American-funded Iraqi newspaper who resigned last week protesting censorship has launched a new independent publication. "I wanted to help build a good, democratic and free media in Iraq. I wanted to create a paper that was 100% independent, with no conditions, no censorship, and one which we are the bosses of," Ismail Zayer told IslamOnline.net. Zaher made headlines after he and most of his colleagues in Al-Sabah daily quit as a protest of American intervention in news coverage. — Posted at 8:16 pm

ABUSE PHOTOS SOUGHT UNDER FOIA. The Federation of American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy is seeking access to undisclosed photos and video of Iraqi prisoner abuse through the Freedom of Information Act. According to Steven Aftergood, senior research analyst for the project, withholding the images is a violation of Executive Order 12958 which prevents classsification to "conceal violations of law." Vice President Dick Cheney has publicly commented that release of the images might violate the victims privacy or hamper efforts to prosecute the abusers, but Aftergood says those concerns could be resolved by "sanitizing" them rather than withholding them entirely. According to The New York Times, members of the Senate were allowed to view the images for three hours Wednesday night in a secure room with Pentagon supervision and no staffers allowed. The Baltimore Sun reports that limited additional details of the abuse have been revealed by charging documents in the court martial of two soldiers, specifying their individual roles in the abuse. — Posted at 5:46 pm

SECRET RULES ELEVATE TORTURE FOR AL QAEDA PRISONERS. The New York Times reported today that the CIA and the Justice Department shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks endorsed a secret set of rules for the interrogation of high level Al Qaeda prisoners that may have helped create a new understanding in the government that officials would be free to deal more harshly with detainees. The methods were so harsh that senior FBI officials directed agents to stay out of many of the interviews of high level detainees so that the interrogation techniques used could not compromise the agents in future criminal cases. Some prisoners have never been identified by the government. The CIA's Qaeda detention system has been operated under secret legal opinions at the two agencies, the Times reports. The legal advice apparently said that if detainees were held by other countries, the Geneva conventions would not apply to interrogations by the United States. — Posted at 5:43 pm

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT BATTLES ACLU ON UNSEALING OF PATRIOT ACT CASE. The Washington Post reports that the ACLU was forced to remove two paragraphs from a press release about the organization's lawsuit challening provisions of the USA Patriot Act, after the government complained that the ACLU had violated a sealing order in the case. U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, of New York, ordered the group to delete two seemingly innocuous paragraphs - one laying out the briefing schedule in the case, the other describing in general terms the statutory provision being challenged. In an April 30 letter opposing the ACLU's attempts to unseal the case, an assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, Meredith Kotler, made the remarkable assertion that "the ACLU essentially seeks a presumption that all information in this case shall be publicly available. [REDACTED] it is critical that the opposite presumption prevail...." — Posted at 5:41 pm

May. 11, 2004

ABU GHRAIB DISASTER WAS INEVITABLE, COLUMNIST SAYS. In a column in today's New York Times, Paul Krugman acknowledges that a great majority of Americans are "decent and good." But so are a great majority of people everywhere. If America's record is better than that of most countries - and it is - it's because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances. Yet President Bush, according to Krugman, doesn't believe in that system. From the day his administration took office, its slogan has been "just trust us." No administration since Nixon has been so insistent that it has the right to operate without oversight or accountability, and no administration since Nixon has shown itself to be so little deserving of that trust. Out of a misplaced sense of patriotism, Congress has deferred to the administration's demands. Sooner or later, a moral catastrophe like Abu Ghraib was inevitable. — Posted at 3:35 pm

SPECIAL LAW COVERS DEFENSE CONTRACTOR ABUSES. Legal Times examines a four-year-old law that permits the Justice Department to go into U.S. district courts to prosecute employees of Defense Department contractors and subcontractors who commit crimes on foreign soil. When it approved the law, Congress knew that it is nearly impossible to charge civilians under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, even if they work alongside active-duty service members. In short, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act is narrowly crafted and, according to lawyers familiar with it, may not cover some of the abuses - and abusers - involved in the torture of Iraqi detainees at U.S.-run prisons. Yet the law could be crucial for federal prosecutors if they pursue cases against civilian employees who participated in the abuse. Passed in 2000, the act — Posted at 2:42 pm

ANOTHER FOREIGN JOURNALIST DEPORTED FROM U.S. In a comentary in today's Los Angeles Times, British journalist Elena Lappin describes how she was treated as a common criminal on May 3 when she tried to enter the U.S. in Los Angeles for a writing assignment. Lappin is one of at least a dozen journalists who have been detained and deported in the last year from Los Angeles because they did not have a "journalists' visa for entry into this country. Ironically, May 3 is "World Press Freedom Day." The American Society of Newspaper Editors has strongly criticized the actions taken by the Department of Homeland Security, and has called for changes in U.S. law requiring special journalist visas. — Posted at 2:34 pm

JOURNALIST DEATH TOLL IN IRAQ HITS 30. The death toll for journalists working in Iraq has reached 30 after two reporters were targeted and killed by gunmen, The Guardian reported last week. — Posted at 2:28 pm

EXPLOITATATIVE TACTICS NOT CONFINED TO ABU GHRAIB. Today's Washington Post contains a feature on the extensive network of secret prisons operated by the U.S. military and CIA in the name of counterterrorism or counterinsurgency. Citing Pentagon figures and intelligence estimates, the Post reports that at least 9,000 people are being held by U.S. authorities overseas, generally without legal rights or process of any kind. That figure includes many who "have, in effect, disappeared" without notice to family members, and without a public record of their detention. The article examines such U.S. tactics as torture, rendition, and moving prisoners within a facility to hide them from Red Cross teams. — Posted at 11:20 am

ARMY SAYS PRISON REPORT STILL \"SECRET.\" The Department of Defense continues to insist that the army report on abuse of Iraqi prisoners that has been made available by a number of news agencies is still secret, The Washington Post reports. A memo from the Pentagon to Senate staffers instructs them not to view the report on the National Public Radio website, but instead request it through proper DoD channels. Staffers who have already downloaded it were intructed to contact the DoD and turn it over. According to Senate Armed Services Committee security manager Cindy Pearson, the DoD has not decided whether it will declassify the report yet. Time magazine reports that a similar memo was sent to Pentagon staff instructing them not to view the report from the Fox News website, or discuss the issue with family or friends. — Posted at 09:38 am

REVEALING THE REDACTIONS. Swiss researchers have developed a method of identifying blacked-out words in redacted documents, The New York Times reports. The process involves determining the font used to create the document and the space taken up by the blacked-out word or words, and then using a computer to create a list of words that would fit the space and narrow the list based on grammar and context. Researchers used the process to determine a blacked-out source of intelligence information from the Aug. 6 presidential daily brief warning the Osama bin Laden was determined to attack the U.S. Open government advocates, including Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, worry that this could be used as an excuse by government to release less information. "They have exposed a technique that may now become less and less useful as a result," he said. — Posted at 09:32 am

May. 10, 2004

PRISON CONTROVERSY ROUNDUP. The United States military has told Congress it will see other graphic photos and videos of violent abuse of Iraqi prisoners this week, as the Abu Ghraib prison scandal spreads into its third week of constant media coverage, according to a roundup of prisoner abuse stories published in the Christian Science Monitor. And a previously confidential Red Cross report published by the Wall Street Journal Monday shows that the abuse in the prison system spread far beyond six individuals and cites abuses - "tantamount to torture" - including brutality, hooding, humiliation and threats of "imminent execution." USA Today reports that high-level Pentagon officials were informed of the abuses in mid-January. Click here for a timeline of the abuse controversy. — Posted at 4:45 pm

RAND SAYS WEB SITES SHOULD BE REOPENED. The overwhelming majority of federal Web sites that reveal information about airports, power plants, military bases and other attractive terrorist targets need not be censored because similar or better information is easily available elsewhere, a taxpayer-financed study has found. The Rand Corp. identified only four Web pages that might merit the restrictions imposed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Associated Press reports that Rand urged government officials to consider reopening public access to about three dozen Web pages that were withdrawn from the Internet in the name of homeland security. — Posted at 4:41 pm

SECRET MATERIAL WITNESS PROCESS CONTROVERSIAL. Newsweek reports that the use of a "material witness" warrant to detain Oregon lawyer Brandon Mayfield could prove controversial. Since 9/11, law-enforcement officials told the magazine, the Justice Department has detained between 30 and 40 terror suspects as "material witnesses" in secret proceedings. The category was originally conceived to ensure that reluctant witnesses show up to testify at a trial. Under Attorney General John Ashcroft, prosecutors have often used it as one way to hold terror suspects indefinitely when they don't have enough evidence to charge them with a crime. Justice officials insist that more than half of the detained material witnesses have ended up in criminal prosecutions. Since Brandon Mayfield was arrested, he has refused to speak with authorities. — Posted at 4:33 pm

PENTAGON TRIED TO KEEP PRISON ABUSE SECRET. In this week\'s New Yorker, Seymour Hersh reports that many senior army generals believe that, along with the civilians in Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's office, General Ricardo Sanchez and General John Abizaid, who is in charge of the Central Command, in Tampa, Fla., had done their best to keep the prison abuse issue quiet in the first months of the year. Secrecy and wishful thinking, the Pentagon official told Hersh, are defining characteristics of Rumsfeld's Pentagon, and shaped its response to the reports from Abu Ghraib Prison. "They always want to delay the release of bad news - in the hope that something good will break," he said. — Posted at 3:50 pm

SIVITS COURT MARTIAL WILL BE \"OPEN\" BUT NOT \"PUBLIC,\" KIMMITT SAYS. The Associated Press reports that the first U.S. court martial in connection with the prisoner abuse scandal will be held at Baghdad Convention Center on May 19. According to the AP, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said the court martial of Jeremy C. Sivits will be open to family members, observers and print reporters, but TV cameras will not be permitted. Kimmitt told NBC that there would be "an open hearing," but "to suggest that it's somehow public would give the indication that this is a show trial, no." — Posted at 3:08 pm

MORE OVERSIGHT OF IRAQI WAR MONEY SOUGHT.. The Washington Post reports that there has been a bipartisan call for more oversight of Iraqi war money. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WVa) and Rep. C.W. Bill Young (R-Fla) are both insisting on oversight by the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, of which they are members, of the $25 billion recently requested by President Bush. — Posted at 3:05 pm

FAA TAPE FROM 9/11 WRONGFULLY DESTROYED. An audiotape of statements made by New York air traffic controllers shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was purposefully destroyed by a Federal Aviation Administration manager because he "felt strongly" that it should not have been made. The findings are detailed in Department of Transportation Inspector General Kenneth Mead's report, made public last week. According to the report, the quality assurance manager destroyed the tape because he considered it contrary to FAA's policy of taking handwritten statements and - based on watching television crime shows, the report says - felt that the controllers were "not in the correct frame of mind" to consent to the taping. The report, which does not identify any of the FAA personnel involved, concluded that the destruction was improper and recommends "appropriate administrative action." — Posted at 2:31 pm

May. 8, 2004

LAWMAKERS INSIST ON IRAQ SPENDING OVERSIGHT. Both Republican and Democratic congressmen said Thursday that because of their frustration with secrecy about wartime spending they will not allow the Bush administration free reign in the use a new $25 billion installment for the war in Iraq, The Washington Post reported Friday. — Posted at 11:38 am

May. 7, 2004

NO STUDENT VISION ON UT TUNNELS Secret Service agents interrogated a University of Texas physics freshman who filed a state Freedom of Information Act request with UT administrators for information about the underground campus tunnel system, the Daily Texan, the campus newspaper, reported May 6. The school had denied Mark Miller's FOI request for the dimensions of the utility tunnel network under the school, a request he made in December after a plant official told him that information on the tunnels was secret because of Sept. 11-related concerns. — Posted at 5:49 pm

RUMSFELD: IF THE PUBLIC SEES MORE, IT\'LL JUST GET WORSE Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that many more photographs and videos of prisoner abuse in Iraq exist, according to a Reuters report. "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse. That's just a fact," Rumsfeld said. "I mean I looked at them last night and they're hard to believe," he said. "And if they're sent to some news organization and taken out of the criminal prosecution channels that they're in, that's where we'll be. And it's not a pretty picture." — Posted at 5:48 pm

AIR TRAFFIC CONTROL TAPE DESTROYED. At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording a few hours later describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said Thursday. — Posted at 3:08 pm

RED CROSS COMPLAINTS ABOUT IRAQI PRISON IGNORED. The International Committee of the Red Cross regularly complained to senior United States officials in Iraq and in Washington over the last several months about prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, a spokesman for the group said on Thursday. The spokesman, Roland Huguenin, was quoted in today's New York Times: "Our reports to the U.S. administration contained many aspects which have now been reported with clear descriptions of the treatment of prisoners." — Posted at 3:03 pm

OREGON LAWYER ARRESTED IN CONNECTION WITH MADRID BOMBING. Newsweek reported that FBI agents on Thursday detained a Portland, Ore., lawyer after receiving evidence from Spanish authorities that the man\'s fingerprints allegedly were found on bomb-related evidence associated with the March 11 railway attack in Madrid that killed 191 people and wounded 2,000 people. The man was was not identified by authorities, but others identified him as Brandon Mayfield, a convert to Islam who is tangentially linked to one of the chief defendants in the \"Portland Seven\" case - a suspected terror cell in Oregon whose six surviving members pled guilty last year of plotting to fight for the Taliban against U.S. soldiers during the war in Afghanistan. The story also appeared in today\'s New York Times. — Posted at 2:55 pm

CLASSIFICATION OF ABUSE REPORT MAY BE ILLEGAL. The director of the Information Security Oversight Office will investigate the decision to classify the U.S. Army report on military torture of Iraqi prisoners. In a letter responding to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists, William Leonard said he would pursue the issues Aftergood raised. Aftergood pointed out that the current executive order on classification of records prohibits classification for the purpose of concealing violations of law and yet the classified report on the abuses submitted by Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, identified numerous illegal acts of abuse. Leonard also said in a telephone interview that his office is investigating Defense Department classification policies on detention and interrogation activities at Guantanamo Bay. Aftergood reported on the investigations in today's Secrecy News. — Posted at 1:20 pm

MOUSSAOUI FILES SECRET APPEAL. Zacarias Moussaoui has filed a sealed request for a rehearing of his appeal before the entire U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, Va. (4th Cir.), The Washington Post reports. A three-judge panel of the court had previously ruled that Moussaoui may be denied access to defense witnesses in U.S. custody, and that the government may seek the death penalty. The Post reports that Moussaoui's request must be reviewed by intelligence officials before it is publicly released, suggesting that all or part of the document may ultimately become available. Previously, most of the filings in the case have been made available with redactions. — Posted at 10:16 am

May. 6, 2004

ABUSE REPORT SHOULD NOT BE SECRET. According to Secrecy News, classification of the report on prisoner abuses at Abu Graihb prison may have been improper. The Army report details specific instances of physical, sexual and psychological abuse at the prison by military police in violation of rules on prisoner treatment and interrogation, and was classified "Secret/No Foreign Dissemination." But Executive Order 12958 prevents classification from being used to conceal criminal activity. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has sais he does not know why the report was classified, and Gen. Peter Pace stated, "There's clearly nothing in there that's inherently secret." MSNBC.com has made the entire report, minus the names of some witnesses not implicated in the abuse, available online. — Posted at 11:24 am

May. 5, 2004

EDITORIAL BERATES OFFICIAL DOWNPLAY OF ABUSES. In an editorial today, The New York Times opines that disclosure of the photos of "grinning American soldiers" torturing Iraqi prisoners calls for "some humility, an apology to the abused men and an immediate, full and public accounting of what happened and who was responsible." It says that instead, in a classic Bush administration maneuver, the President and his top officials portray the abuses as "the aberrant work of a handful of men and women" even when they know or should know of current criminal investigations into 20 or more incidents involving prisoner deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan. The editorialists cite Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for clinging to euphemisms for the torture and the Pentagon for keeping the details of six investigations secret from Congress and the public and for withholding an "horrific" report of abuse as secret until after the New Yorker made public its existence. — Posted at 3:48 pm

GEOGRAPHIC DATA COMMENT PERIOD OPENS. The Federal Geographic Data Committee has opened a public comment period for proposed rules governing access to sensitive geographic information. The "Guidelines for Providing Appropriate Access to Geospatial Data in Response to Security Concerns" are open to comment through June 2. The guidelines define geospatial data as "data that identify the geographic location and charactaristics (attributes) of natural or constructed features and boundries on the earth. These data may be derived from, among other things, remote sensing, mapping, and surveying technologies." — Posted at 2:02 pm

WEB SITES AND \"EXPERT\" ADVICE. The case of Web site moderator Sami Omar al-Hussayen raises questions of how far the USA PATRIOT Act's provisions against providing "expert advice" to terrorist groups extends, and of whether federal prosecutors consider the First Amendment aspects of those issues, a FindLaw columnist points out. — Posted at 10:14 am

EDITOR, STAFF QUIT U.S.-FUNDED IRAQI PAPER OVER INTERFERENCE. Citing constant problems with editorial interference from American officials, the editor-in-chief of Al Sabah, a U.S.-funded Iraqi newspaper, quit yesterday, took most of the staff with him and started a new, independent newspaper, the Associated Press reported. — Posted at 09:56 am

May. 4, 2004

BURY THE REPORT UNTIL THIS BLOWS OVER The State Department will delay delivery of a human rights report due tomorrow to Congress partly because of sensitivities aroused by the revelations this week of the abuses of U.S. held Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, Reuters reported today. "Supporting Human Rights and Democracy: The U.S. Record 2003-2004" is not fully ready to go, but officials told Reuters that the embarrassment of the stories about prisoner abuses may have contributed to the decision not to give over the report now. — Posted at 7:45 pm

INFO SURROUNDING IRAQI PRISONER ABUSE REMAINS ELUSIVE Secrecy continues to surround the investigation into abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Graib prison. The Associated Press reports that Army Reserve Lt. Gen. James R. Helmly met with about 100 family members of the reserve unit implicated in the abuse, but the meeting, scheduled before the allegations became public, was closed to the press. Also implicated in the abuse were two private contract employees, but The New York Times reports that the employers cited in the still-classified government report on the abuse refused to verify the employee's identities, their contracts or even that they worked there. The Washington Post reports that CACI of Arlington, VA, one of the companies cited in the report, has complained that it has not been allowed to review the report implicating its employee, and that even the rules under which the prisoners are supposed to be treated have not been made public. — Posted at 5:53 pm

LAWSUIT, BUT NO CRIMINAL CHARGES, FOR 9/11 DETAINEE ABUSE. The New York Times reports that two men detained shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks have sued Attorney General Ashcroft and other federal officials, alleging that they were beaten, strip-searched, and sexually abused while being held in secret detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. The men, Javaid Iqbal and Ehab Elmaghraby, were cleared of terrorist charges but have been deported to Pakistan and Egypt, respectively. CNN reports that federal prosecutors have decided not to bring criminal charges relating to allegations of abuse at the facility, despite a report by the Justice Department's Inspector General that documented widespread mistreatment of detainees. — Posted at 11:15 am

IT\'S NATIONAL SECURITY INFORMATION UNLESS. . . Boston Globe writer Charlie Savage today reported on criticisms that a series of document declassifications by the Bush administration appear to be political. In several cases the administration first claimed that disclosures would damage national security, and then released it "when it became politically convenient to do so - leaving the impression that it was safe to release all along." — Posted at 11:14 am

PRIVATE SECURITY CONTINGENT LOOMS \'HUGE BUT FUZZY.\' Christian Science Monitor writer Clayton Collins examines the "huge if fuzzy" role of U.S. employed security firms in Iraq. He quotes Brookings Institutute fellow Peter Singer as calling their use " a problem of lack of accounting and accountability." An estimated civilian security work force of as many as 20,000 people - the third largest contingent in Iraq behind the U.S. and Britain - now handles jobs once occupied by military personnel. But little is known about what they are doing, Singer told Collins. Collins also interviewed contracting expert Steven Schooner of George Washington University Law School who said that continued toleration of "private sector mission creep" could "mask the human cost" of the military actions in Iraq. — Posted at 11:12 am

May. 3, 2004

ARMY REPORT DETAILS PRISON ABUSES. New Yorker writer Seymour Hersh's investigation into the Army's managment of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shows that a supervising general was formally admonished and quietly suspended, and a major investigation into the Army's prison system, authorized by Lieutenant General Ricardo S. Sanchez, the senior commander in Iraq, was conducted. A 53-page report, obtained by The New Yorker, written by Major General Antonio M. Taguba and not meant for public release, was completed in late February. Its conclusions about the institutional failures of the Army prison system are devastating. Specifically, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib. This systematic and illegal abuse of detainees, Taguba reported, was perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and also by members of the American intelligence community. — Posted at 3:58 pm

CHENEY PLUGS FOX. Vice President Cheney endorsed the Fox News Channel during a conference call last week with tens of thousands of Republicans who were gathered across the country to celebrate a National Party for the President Day organized by the Bush-Cheney campaign, according to The Washington Post. "It's easy to complain about the press - I've been doing it for a good part of my career," Cheney said. "It's part of what goes with a free society. What I do is try to focus upon those elements of the press that I think do an effective job and try to be accurate in their portrayal of events. For example, I end up spending a lot of time watching Fox News, because they're more accurate in my experience, in those events that I'm personally involved in, than many of the other outlets." — Posted at 3:45 pm

POST PRINTS NAMES OF 370 GITMO DETAINEES. Sunday's Washington Post features a report on the secretive U.S. prison for suspected terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where about 600 detainees are being held. Notably, the report includes a list of the names of 370 of the men, whose identities the Post has established from various non-governmental sources. To date, only six of the 600 detainees have been designated to stand trial, and only two have been charged. The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule in June on whether the detainees have any recourse to American courts. — Posted at 3:39 pm

FEW LEAKS FROM BUSH, CHENEY MEETING WITH COMMISSION. Very little information has leaked out about President Bush and Vice President Cheney's closed-door meeting with the 9/11 commission last week. The Washington Post has collected a series of statements from Bush and commission members on the meeting, but they contain little substance. Most of the comments are pleasantries focusing on how well the meeting went. The only two items of substance are that Bush and Cheney said intelligence before Sept. 11 pointed to overseas, not domestic attacks, and that Bush commented on his disappointment with the Justice Departmet for releasing classified documents about commission member Jamie Gorelick. An official statement from the commission has also been issued. — Posted at 3:37 pm

DEMS SUGGEST DISCLOSURE TO SETTLE DISPUTE. Secrecy News reports that Congressional Democrats are pushing for the declassification of counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke's 2002 testimony before Congress. Congressional Republicans and White House spokesman Scott McClellan have accused Clarke of telling inconsistent versions of events relating to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They have claimed that events as described in Clarke's book and public testimony before the 9/11 commission are "entirely different" than his secret testimony before Congress. Twenty-three House Democrats, citing the release of the Aug. 6, 2001, President's Daily Brief as precedent, have asked House Speaker Dennis Hastert to release the testimony so that the public can evaluate the conflicting claims as to the content of the testimony. Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL) was unable to intoduce a bill urging release in the Senate due to procedural problems. Clarke has also called for the testimony to be released. — Posted at 3:35 pm

CPA A MYSTERY. Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists calls a new Congressional Research Service report a "bureaucratic thriller" and he names it "The Mystery of the Coalition Provisional Authority." Written by CRS's Elaine Halchin, the report questions how the entity came into being. It is responsible for managing and overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq, but "[n]o explicit, unambiguous, and authoritative statement has been provided that declares how the authority was established, under what authority, and by whom." Even after it goes out of existence, as it is slated to do June 30, questions will remain as to "what it did, how it spent money, and what it accomplished." Aftergood has posted a copy of the report on his Web site. — Posted at 3:32 pm

DOJ IN THE DOGHOUSE. President Bush is "disappointed" with the Department of Justice for selectively declassifying documents to undermine the credibility of a 9/11 commission member, The New York Times reports. Attorney General John Ashcroft has accused Democratic committee member and former Dept. of Justice official Jamie Gorelick of being responsible for a "wall" restricting the sharing of information about terrorism among law enforcement agencies. To support his allegations, Ashcroft had the justice department release classified documents related to internal department discussions on information sharing. At a press conference Thursday, excerpted on TalkingPointMemo.com, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the president "does not believe we ought to be finger pointing." McClellan stopped short of criticizing Ashcroft personally, and said the president's disappointment had been communicated to the department "at the staff level." Democratic and Republican members of the 9/11 commission have also been upset by the release. — Posted at 3:27 pm