Dallas Morning News
http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/opinion/viewpoints/stories/DN-markdavis_0826edi.State.Edition1.2744357.html

Mark Davis is heard weekdays from 8:30 to 11 a.m. on WBAP-AM, News/Talk 820. His e-mail address is mdavis@wbap.com.

Indignation is a curious thing in the era of Barack Obama. Having seen the mockery this White House can heap on voters who dare to show it anger, this week has provided a window to what in turn sparks the Obama team to outrage.

The current scorecard:

•Release of one of the world's most notorious terrorists by Scottish authorities – not much indignation.

•Techniques used by the previous administration to get answers from terrorists to keep Americans safe – massive indignation.The evidence mounts that an administration that cannot even bring itself to use the word "terrorist" has shown itself thoroughly unfit to fight them. From the wildly foolish notion of affording Guantánamo detainees access to American courts to the stunning gullibility of its soft stance on Iran, this administration has made it clear to terrorists: there is indeed a new sheriff, and his holster is empty.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7919579.stm

"The Central intelligence Agency (CIA) has destroyed 92 tapes of interviews conducted with terror suspects, a US government lawyer has admitted.

The agency had previously said that it had destroyed only two tapes.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has launched a lawsuit against the CIA to seek details of the interrogations of terror suspects.

Techniques involved are understood to have included water-boarding, which the Obama administration says is torture.

The acknowledgment of the 92 destroyed tapes came in a letter sent to the judge presiding over the ACLU lawsuit."

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2009/01/cia_video_destruction.html

The destruction by Central Intelligence Agency officials of videotapes showing the interrogation of suspected terrorists is the subject of “an ongoing criminal investigation” that is expected to conclude in the near future, according to a prosecution official.

“Investigators are now in the process of scheduling interviews with the remaining witnesses to be interviewed in this investigation,” wrote John H. Durham, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, in an affidavit (pdf) late last month. “Based on the investigative accomplishments to date, we anticipate that by mid-February 2009, and no later than February 28, 2009, we will have completed the interviews.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/washington/10intel.html?ref=world

Ex-C.I.A. Aide Won’t Testify on Tapes Without Immunity

By SCOTT SHANE

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former Central Intelligence Agency official who in 2005 ordered the destruction of videotapes of harsh interrogations of prisoners at a secret site overseas, has told Congress that Mr. Rodriguez will not testify about the tapes without a grant of immunity, a person familiar with the discussions said Wednesday.

This is a ten minute video of Joshua Casteel, who served eight years in the US Army, including seven months as an interrogator and Arabic linguist in the Iraq War.

Joshua was honorably discharged as a conscientious objector and he is now a dual-MFA candidate at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and the Iowa Nonfiction Writing Program.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA erred in twice telling a court in the case of September 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui that it did not have any recordings of interrogations of "enemy combatants," when in fact it had three video or audio tapes, according to a letter released on Tuesday.

Prosecutors only recently learned of the tapes from the CIA, they said in the letter to the judge who presided over the case and to a U.S. appeals court that considered the Moussaoui case.

In court declarations on May 9, 2003 and on November 14, 2005, the CIA stated the government did not have any video or audio tapes of the interrogations. Moussaoui initially sought the testimony of several top al Qaeda witnesses as part of his defense.

When it made both declarations, the CIA in fact possessed two video tapes and an audio tape of the unidentified "enemy combatant" interrogations, the prosecutors said.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN1362605320071113

Mohammed al-Qahtani, detainee No. 063, was forced to wear a bra. He had a thong placed on his head. He was massaged by a female interrogator who straddled him like a lap dancer. He was told that his mother and sisters were whores. He was told that other detainees knew he was gay. He was forced to dance with a male interrogator. He was strip-searched in front of women. He was led on a leash and forced to perform dog tricks. He was doused with water. He was prevented from praying. He was forced to watch as an interrogator squatted over his Koran.

That much is known. These details were among the findings of the U.S. Army’s investigation of al-Qahtani's aggressive interrogation at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

But only now is a picture emerging of how the interrogation policy developed, and the battle that law enforcement agents waged, inside Guantanamo and in the offices of the Pentagon, against harsh treatment of al-Qahtani and other detainees by military intelligence interrogators.

In interviews with MSNBC.com — the first time they have spoken publicly — former senior law enforcement agents described their attempts to stop the abusive interrogations. The agents of the Pentagon's Criminal Investigation Task Force, working to build legal cases against suspected terrorists, said they objected to coercive tactics used by a separate team of intelligence interrogators soon after Guantanamo's prison camp opened in early 2002. They ultimately carried their battle up to the office of Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, who approved the more aggressive techniques to be used on al-Qahtani and others.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/06/AR2006100601077.html

Lawyers Say Prisoners Were Told of Al-Qaeda Leaders Interrogated

Germany's Denials on Detainees Challenged
Lawyers Say Prisoners Were Told of Al-Qaeda Leaders Interrogated

By Craig Whitlock
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, October 7, 2006; Page A12

BERLIN, Oct. 6 -- The chief plotter of the Sept. 11 hijackings and another al-Qaeda leader who spent time in secret CIA prisons might have been interrogated in Germany before their transfer last month to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, according to lawyers for other terrorism suspects in U.S. custody.

Lawyers for a British legal association that represents Guantanamo prisoners reported Friday that two of their clients had given independent -- though secondhand -- accounts that al-Qaeda leaders Khalid Sheik Mohammed and Tawfiq bin Attash were questioned on military bases in Germany after their capture in Pakistan in 2003.

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