news/notes2009.04.17a

[Biography of the Day] from [Britannica]
Nikita Khrushchev
Soviet Premier Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, born this day in 1894, guided the U.S.S.R. (and the communist movement) out from under the shadow of former premier Joseph Stalin and into closer orbit with the capitalist West.

[On This Day] from [Britannica]
1982: Canada Act proclaimed
The Canada Act, also known as the Constitution Act, took effect on this day in 1982, establishing certain individual rights, preserving parliamentary supremacy, and making Canada a wholly independent, fully sovereign state.


[TODAY'S TOP STORIES] from [The Japan Times]

[NATIONAL NEWS]
Friday, April 17, 2009
DPJ slams strict bills on foreign residents
（民主党：在留外国人対する厳格化法案に糾弾）

By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer

A Democratic Party of Japan legal affairs panel has drafted proposals to soften the rules and punishments stipulated in government-sponsored bills to tighten immigration regulations on foreign residents, DPJ lawmaker Ritsuo Hosokawa said Thursday.

The panel called for eliminating eight provisions in the bills, including one that would oblige foreigners to always carry residency cards, Hosokawa told The Japan Times.

These cards, called "zairyu," would replace alien registration cards if the bills now before the Diet are passed. Foreigners are currently required to carry their alien cards at all times, but unlike at present, a failure to carry the zairyu could draw a 200,000 fine. Also subject to the fine would be failure to promptly report changes in personal information, including residential address, place of employment or marital status.

"The control (over foreign residents) is too tight" in the bills, said Hosokawa, who is the justice minister in the DPJ's shadow Cabinet. Under the proposed system, resident registrations would be handled by the Justice Ministry, not the municipalities where people live.

The bills to revise the immigration law, which were submitted to the Diet in March, have drawn fire from foreigners, lawyers and nonprofit organizations, who complain the proposed stricter monitoring is a violation of human rights.

The panel also rejected language in the bills to strip foreigners of their residency status for failing to report new addresses to the government after a move.

Another factor drawing flak pertains to cases in which foreigners with a spouse visa move away from their spouses, and thus fail to maintain "a normal married life."

While critics acknowledge that living separately cannot be considered normal married life, they argue, for example, that many foreign wives who are victims of domestic violence have no other choice but to change their residence.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Friday, April 17, 2009
Best, Wellco execs held in postal scam
（ベスト電器元部長、ウイルコ会長ら逮捕：割引郵便悪用の疑い）
Discounts for disabled used in direct mail

OSAKA (Kyodo) Officials of Best Denki Co., printer Wellco Corp. and a support group for the disabled were arrested Thursday on suspicion of using a postal discount system reserved for the disabled to mail ads for the major electronics discount chain at a reduced rate.

Osaka prosecutors are expected to turn up other major firms involved in illicitly using the system to send more than 10 million pieces of direct mail.

Prosecutors Thursday raided the headquarters of Best Denki in Fukuoka Prefecture, the Tokyo sales department of Ishikawa Prefecture-based Wellco and other locations.

Those arrested include Toshiharu Kubo, 51, Best Denki's former senior sales-promotion official, Wellco Chairman Kazuyoshi Wakabayshi, 57, and Yoshikuni Morita, 69, the head of the Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo-based Hakusan-kai support group for the disabled. They are suspected of violating the Mail Law by ordering the use of the discount system.

Nobuyuki Itagaki, 47, an executive of Hakuhodo Erg Inc., a subsidiary of major advertising agency Hakuhodo Inc., was also taken into custody, the prosecutors said. Ten people have been arrested in the case, including two who were served new warrants.

The Mail Law allows disabled groups to be charged a lower postal rate under certain conditions, including when a periodical is issued three or more times a month and has a circulation of at least 500.

According to company sources, Wellco, in cooperation with an Osaka ad agency, enclosed periodicals from Hakusan-kai and others in some 11 million pieces of Best Denki direct mail between August 2005 and February 2008 to take advantage of a direct-mail rate of around 8, rather than pay the normal 120 rate.

Hakuhodo Erg served as a middleman for Wellco and Best Denki, the sources said.

Both firms are listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

About 2 million pieces of direct mail sent around February 2007 are directly related to the allegations in the case, investigative sources said. The firms are believed to have evaded paying at least 200 million by using the discount system.

Hakusan-kai's head is an acquaintance of Yoshio Maki, a Lower House member of the Democratic Party of Japan.


[NATIONAL NEWS]
Friday, April 17, 2009
Japan sets $1 billion aside for Pakistan
（麻生首相：パキスタン支援で１０００億円）

(Kyodo News) Japan is ready to pledge $1 billion in aid for Pakistan over two years at a donors conference Tokyo will host Friday to assist the country in stabilizing its economy and fighting terrorism, Prime Minister Taro Aso said Thursday.

Including Tokyo's $1 billion pledge, about 40 countries and international organizations attending the Pakistan Donors Conference are expected to announce a combined equivalent of $4 billion in aid over the same period, according to government sources.

Aso's pledge came in his talks Thursday evening with visiting Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari at the Prime Minister's Official Residence.

Aso said ensuring stability in Pakistan is key to stabilizing the Southwest Asian region, Japanese officials said.

"The stable development of Pakistan will directly lead to the stability of the entire region," Aso told Zardari.

Zardari responded by emphasizings Islamabad's efforts to eradicate terrorism, the officials said.

Touching on nuclear nonproliferation, Aso told Zardari that Japan will be closely watching how Pakistan deals with this issue, according to the officials.

Apart from being criticized as a hotbed of terrorism, Pakistan is also suspected of providing nuclear arms technology to other countries, particularly North Korea.

Aso and Zardari agreed to set up a joint panel of experts on bilateral political and economic exchanges, the officials said.

Zardari, in a meeting earlier in the day with Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Toshihiro Nikai, urged Japanese businesses to invest more in Pakistan.

Pakistan plans to establish a special economic zone in Karachi and offer favorable treatment to Japanese firms operating in the area, a Japanese official quoted Zardari as saying.

news/notes2009.04.17b

[Today's News] from [The Guardian]

Government wants 'greater transparency' in use of local surveillance powers
Review of Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act designed to stop legislation being used for 'trivial' purposes

Hélène Mulholland and Vikram Dodd
guardian.co.uk, Friday 17 April 2009 10.56 BST
Article history

The government today admitted the need for greater "transparency" over the use of covert surveillance in local neighbourhoods as it launched a review of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act in order to stop the act's powers being used for "trivial" purposes.

The review comes amid increasing concern over the abuse of powers designed to fight terrorism and serious crime.

It has emerged that some councils have been using the powers to target people who put their bins out on the wrong day.

Last month, it was revealed that the surveillance powers had been used by 182 district and unitary councils 10,288 times since 2004.

Fewer than one in 10 inquiries led to a successful prosecution, caution, or fixed penalty notice.

The alleged offences included dog fouling, littering, illegal street trading, taxi overcharging and taking the fairy lights from a Christmas tree.

Vernon Coaker, the minister of state for policing, security and crime, insisted that the powers enshrined in the act had been used well by local authorities "in the vast majority of cases".

However, he acknowledged that the government had become concerned by instances in which the powers had been misused.

A "strengthened" code of guidance would lay out the sorts of uses for which the government would wish to see the powers used, he added, and the government also wanted greater transparency on who made decisions and on what basis.

Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, who announced the review yesterday, said the powers were vital for keeping the public safe, not only from serious crime but also from rogue traders and flytippers.

Concern has grown amid an increasing number of stories showing that the powers were being abused.

Examples included a family in Poole, Dorset, being tracked covertly for nearly three weeks because the council wrongly doubted their claim that they lived in a school's catchment area.

Four councils – Derby, Bolton, Gateshead and Hartlepool – have admitted using the surveillance powers granted under the act to investigate dog fouling.

Coaker told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "That would be an area [where] we would like to see greater transparency.

"Clearly, there is a balance between ensuring you keep the covert nature of what you are doing relatively secret but of course, alongside that, it's a question of ensuring that people's privacy is protected as well.

"All the time it's this balance between trying to deal with the criminal behaviour they see and ensuring people's privacy is not unduly interfered with."

The review will propose that senior officials such as council leaders or chief executives would be able to authorise the use of the powers. It will also look at which public bodies could use them.

Coaker admitted that individuals would not necessarily know they had been under surveillance if no evidence was subsquently found to bring a case against them. "It could be the case you wouldn't know what had happened," he said.

"I'm comfortable with the fact that what we need to do is try and ensure that the decisions that are taken as to whether somebody should be looked at are taken on the basis of seriousness and, as the codes of practice lays out, its regarded as necessary and proportionate.

"Of course, what we are concerned about is, in some cases, [that] necessity and proportionality do not seem to have been given the strength that they should have been."

The Liberal Democrats, who obtained the details of the act's use under freedom of information legislation, said it was becoming a "snoopers' charter".

Chris Huhne, the party's home affairs spokesman, said the powers should require authorisation by a magistrate.

"For too long, powers we were told would be used to fight terrorism and organised crime have been used to spy on people's kids, pets and bins," he said.

Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, said theact was "supposed to be there to tackle terrorism and serious crime".

"Instead, it is being used by both the government and hundreds of local authorities to pry into all kinds of different parts of people's lives," he said. "It has to stop."

news/notes2009.04.17c

[Today's Paper] from [Los Angeles Times]

Memos reveal harsh CIA interrogation methods
Obama releases Justice Department documents that guided the CIA on how to use waterboarding and other tactics with terror suspects. Intelligence officials won't be prosecuted over the interrogations.

By Greg Miller and Josh Meyer
April 17, 2009

Reporting from Washington -- Prisoners could be kept awake for more than a week. They could be stripped of their clothes, fed nothing but liquid and thrown against a wall 30 consecutive times.

In one case, the CIA was told it could prey on a top Al Qaeda prisoner's fear of insects by stuffing him into a box with a bug. When all else failed, the CIA could turn to what a Justice Department memo described as "the most traumatic" interrogation technique of all -- waterboarding.

Baring what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history,” President Obama on Thursday released a collection of secret Justice Department documents that provided graphic guidance to the CIA on how far it could go to extract information from terrorism suspects.

The memos provide the most detailed account to date not only of the interrogation tools the CIA employed against Al Qaeda suspects in secret prisons around the world but the legal arguments the Bush administration constructed to justify their use.

At the same time, Obama assured CIA employees and other U.S. operatives that they would be protected from prosecution or other legal exposure for their roles in the nation's counter-terrorism efforts over the last eight years.

"This is a time for reflection, not retribution," Obama said in a message delivered to CIA employees, explaining his decision to release a collection of documents that agency veterans and some senior officials in his administration had fought to keep sealed.

The memos were crafted by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, a unit that was at the center of a series of debates during the Bush administration over the limits of executive power and counter-terrorism tactics.

One of the authors was then-Assistant Atty. Gen. Jay S. Bybee, who since has been confirmed as a judge on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The release of the memos was seen as a test of the Obama administration's commitment to its pledge of transparency, as well as its promise to roll back Bush administration counter-terrorism policies.

But the decision was met with criticism among conservatives and CIA veterans, who warned that the highly detailed documents would serve as a counter-interrogation training manual for Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.

Former CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said the release of the memos would make the country less safe as enemies learned about techniques that might be approved again in the future.

The documents go beyond cataloging the methods the CIA was authorized to use and spell out in detail how they were to be administered.

Prisoners could be kept shackled in a standing position for as many as 180 hours. The documents also noted that more than a dozen CIA prisoners had been deprived of sleep for at least 48 hours, three for more than 96 and one for the nearly eight-day maximum allowed. Another document seemed to endorse sleep deprivation for 11 days.

In some cases, the memos address specific interrogation plans. When the CIA proposed putting an Al Qaeda suspect in a small box with an insect, the Justice Department endorsed the idea but added conditions it said were necessary to keep the agency from violating the international convention against torture.

"If you do so . . . you must inform him that the insects will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain," said a 2002 memo sent to the CIA's acting general counsel. A footnote clarified that the CIA never carried out the insect interrogation plan.

The documents include elaborate legal debate over the simulated drowning method known as waterboarding.

A May 10, 2005 memo -- one of several documents that seemed to strain to find a legal rationale for the method -- spelled out that a prisoner could be waterboarded at most six times during a two-hour session. It also required that a physician be on duty in case a prisoner didn't recover after being returned to an upright position.

In that event, "the intervening physician would perform a tracheotomy," the memo said.

The four documents cover a period of time from 2002 until 2005, when the government was recalculating its approach to detention and interrogation matters in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.

The release of the documents was preceded by months of jostling among CIA and Justice Department officials over how much to disclose.

A department official who was not authorized to speak publicly said Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. urged full disclosure to help restore trust in the Justice Department, which had been beleaguered by criticism that it had twisted the law to fit the Bush administration's political ends.

On Wednesday, the department issued a memo repudiating the opinions in the four Bush administration documents, saying they no longer represented the views of the Office of Legal Counsel.

Three of the four memos released Thursday were signed by Steven G. Bradbury, who served as head of the Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 until President Bush left office.

In a telephone interview, Bradbury -- who is now in private practice at a Washington firm -- said he and his small team of lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel did the best they could under trying circumstances, based on information provided by the CIA and other government sources.

"I feel that the opinions speak for themselves and would suggest that people carefully review them before criticizing them or jumping to conclusions," Bradbury said. "I can't go into deliberative detail beyond what's in the documents."

The release of the memos was driven to a large degree by a court-imposed deadline in an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit aimed at forcing the government to disclose secret rulings issued in connection with the CIA's detention and interrogation programs.

Obama's decision to shield agency employees from legal liability drew criticism from human rights groups. Holder said the Justice Department would provide representation to CIA employees facing legal challenge in the U.S. or overseas.

Amnesty International, which also was involved in the legal effort to disclose the documents, described the administration's position as a "get-out-of-jail-free card to individuals who, by U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder's own estimation, were involved in acts of torture."

The memos were designed to fill in details left out of more theoretical opinions -- some of which eventually surfaced publicly -- that were produced by the Justice Department as it sought to lay out the legal boundaries of Bush's war on terrorism.

In many cases, the memos were drafted at the insistence of lawyers at the CIA, including Acting General Counsel John Rizzo, who grew increasingly anxious in the years after the Sept. 11 attacks that agency employees were being pressured to use methods that might later place them in legal jeopardy.

The memos make clear that many of the methods were imported from the military's survival training programs, and frequently refer to physicians and psychologists who took part in evaluating CIA prisoners being subjected to coercive methods.

The ultimate goal, the memos said, was to make a detainee feel "he has no control over basic human needs."

Detainees' heads and beards were shaved and they were photographed naked. At first, interrogators would be cordial. But if a prisoner were uncooperative, interrogators would design a regimen that would grow in intensity.

Even the less violent techniques employed by the CIA can have a harrowing aspect, as described in the documents. A prisoner being subjected to sleep deprivation, for example, would have his feet shackled to the floor, his hands cuffed near his chin, and be forced to stand for the duration.

If the prisoner starts to fall asleep, "he will lose his balance and awaken, either because of the sensation of losing his balance or because of the restraining tension of the shackles," the May 10, 2005 memo said. A prisoner undergoing such treatment was to be fed by hand and forced to wear a diaper. If he became cooperative, the agency could unshackle him "and let him feed himself."

The memo outlined an escalating series of interrogation methods, sometimes used in concert, and was written months after the Justice Department had issued a December 2004 document that declared "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and to international norms."

Other methods outlined in the memos include dietary manipulation, in which prisoners were fed nothing but liquids; forced nudity, including in front of female CIA personnel; slaps to the face and abdomen; and a technique called "walling," in which a detainee has a towel wrapped around his neck to guard against whiplash before being slammed against a "flexible, false wall."

news/notes2009.04.17d

[News Alert] from [The New York Times]

Interrogation Memos Detail Harsh Tactics by the C.I.A.

By MARK MAZZETTI and SCOTT SHANE
Published: April 16, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department on Thursday made public detailed memos describing brutal interrogation techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency, as President Obama sought to reassure the agency that the C.I.A. operatives involved would not be prosecuted.

In dozens of pages of dispassionate legal prose, the methods approved by the Bush administration for extracting information from senior operatives of Al Qaeda are spelled out in careful detail — like keeping detainees awake for up to 11 straight days, placing them in a dark, cramped box or putting insects into the box to exploit their fears.

The interrogation methods were authorized beginning in 2002, and some were used as late as 2005 in the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons. The techniques were among the Bush administration’s most closely guarded secrets, and the documents released Thursday afternoon were the most comprehensive public accounting to date of the program.

Some senior Obama administration officials, including Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., have labeled one of the 14 approved techniques, waterboarding, illegal torture. The United States prosecuted some Japanese interrogators at war crimes trials after World War II for waterboarding and other methods detailed in the memos.

The release of the documents came after a bitter debate that divided the Obama administration, with the C.I.A. opposing the Justice Department’s proposal to air the details of the agency’s long-secret program. Fueling the urgency of the discussion was Thursday’s court deadline in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued the government for the release of the Justice Department memos.

Together, the four memos give an extraordinarily detailed account of the C.I.A.’s methods and the Justice Department’s long struggle, in the face of graphic descriptions of brutal tactics, to square them with international and domestic law. Passages describing forced nudity, the slamming of detainees into walls, prolonged sleep deprivation and the dousing of detainees with water as cold as 41 degrees alternate with elaborate legal arguments concerning the international Convention Against Torture.

The documents were released with minimal redactions, indicating that President Obama sided against current and former C.I.A. officials who for weeks had pressed the White House to withhold details about specific interrogation techniques. Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, had argued that revealing such information set a dangerous precedent for future disclosures of intelligence sources and methods.

A more pressing concern for the C.I.A. is that the revelations may give new momentum to proposals for a full-blown investigation into Bush administration counterterrorism programs and possible torture prosecutions.

Within minutes of the release of the memos, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that the memos illustrated the need for his proposed independent commission of inquiry, which would offer immunity in return for candid testimony.

Mr. Obama condemned what he called a “dark and painful chapter in our history” and said that the interrogation techniques would never be used again. But he also repeated his opposition to a lengthy inquiry into the program, saying that “nothing will be gained by spending our time and energy laying blame for the past.”

Mr. Obama said that C.I.A. officers who were acting on the Justice Department’s legal advice would not be prosecuted, but he left open the possibility that anyone who acted without legal authorization could still face criminal penalties. He did not address whether lawyers who authorized the use of the interrogation techniques should face some kind of penalty.

The four legal opinions, released in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U., were written in 2002 and 2005 by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the highest authority in interpreting the law in the executive branch.

The first of the memos, from August 2002, was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who oversaw the Office of Legal Counsel, and gave the C.I.A. its first detailed legal approval for waterboarding and other harsh treatment. Three others, signed by Steven G. Bradbury, sought to reassure the agency in May 2005 that its methods were still legal, even when multiple methods were used in combination, and despite the prohibition in international law against “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment.

All legal opinions on interrogation were revoked by Mr. Obama on his second day in office, when he also outlawed harsh interrogations and ordered the C.I.A.’s secret prisons closed.

In the memos, the Justice Department authors emphasized precautions the C.I.A. proposed to take, including monitoring by medical personnel, and the urgency of getting information to stop terrorist attacks. They recounted the C.I.A.’s assertions of the effectiveness of the techniques but noted that interrogators could not always tell a prisoner who was withholding information from one who had no more information to offer.

The memos include what in effect are lengthy excerpts from the agency’s interrogation manual, laying out with precision how each method was to be used. Waterboarding, for example, involved strapping a prisoner to a gurney inclined at an angle of “10 to 15 degrees” and pouring water over a cloth covering his nose and mouth “from a height of approximately 6 to 18 inches” for no more than 40 seconds at a time.

But a footnote to a 2005 memo made it clear that the rules were not always followed. Waterboarding was used “with far greater frequency than initially indicated” and with “large volumes of water” rather than the small quantities in the rules, one memo says, citing a 2004 report by the C.I.A.’s inspector general.

Most of the methods have been previously described in news accounts and in a 2006 report of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which interviewed 14 detainees. But one previously unknown tactic the C.I.A. proposed — but never used — against Abu Zubaydah, a terrorist operative, involved exploiting what was thought to be his fear of insects.

“As we understand it, you plan to inform Zubaydah that you are going to place a stinging insect into the box, but you will actually place a harmless insect in the box, such as a caterpillar,” one memo says.

Mr. Bybee, Mr. Bradbury and John Yoo, who was the leading author of the 2002 interrogation memos, are the subjects of an investigation by the Justice Department’s ethics office about their legal analysis on interrogation. Officials have described the draft ethics report, by the Office of Professional Responsibility, as highly critical, but its completion has been delayed to allow the subjects a chance to respond.

The A.C.L.U. said the memos clearly describe criminal conduct and underscore the need to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate who authorized and carried out torture.

But Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cautioned that the memos were written at a time when C.I.A. officers were frantically working to prevent a repeat of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“Those methods, read on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009, appear graphic and disturbing,” said Mr. Blair in a written statement. “But we will absolutely defend those who relied on these memos.”

news/notes2009.04.17e

[Today's Newspaper] fom [The Washington Post]

New Interrogation Details Emerge
As It Releases Justice Dept. Memos, Administration Reassures CIA Questioners

By Carrie Johnson and Julie Tate
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 17, 2009

Justice Department documents released yesterday offer the fullest account to date of Bush administration interrogation tactics, including previously unacknowledged strategies of slamming a prisoner into a wall and placing an insect near a detainee terrified of bugs.

Authorities said they will not prosecute CIA officers who used harsh interrogation techniques with the department's legal blessing. But in a carefully worded statement, they left open the possibility that operatives and higher-level administration officials could face jeopardy if they ventured beyond the boundaries drawn by the Bush lawyers.

The four memos, dated from 2002 to 2005, contain few redactions, despite a fierce battle within the highest ranks of the Obama White House about the benefits of releasing the information. Intelligence experts said the documents could ignite calls in Congress and among international courts for a fresh, independent investigation of detainee treatment.

The documents lay out in clinical, painstaking detail a series of practices intended to get prisoners to share intelligence about past wrongdoing and future attacks. The legalistic analysis under anti-torture laws and the Geneva Conventions is at odds with the severity of the strategies, which include 11-day limits on sleep deprivation as well as waterboarding and nude shackling.

Step by step, experts considered the legality of slapping prisoners' faces and abdomens, dousing them with water, and confining them in small boxes, with the last strategy limited to two hours. The techniques were designed to inspire "dread," according to a footnote.

Some of the practices were used against more than a dozen detainees whom authorities considered to be of particularly high intelligence value after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes. But President Obama and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. reassured CIA employees anew yesterday that interrogators would not face criminal prosecution so long as they followed legal advice.


Both Obama and Holder for months have indicated a desire to look forward rather than conduct investigations that could alienate the intelligence community and incite partisan rancor. "This is a time for reflection, not retribution," Obama said in a statement, even as he bemoaned the "dark and painful chapter in our history."

A multiagency task force Obama established in his first days in office is evaluating other options for questioning such suspects and is exploring whether individual CIA officers may have committed crimes by overstepping the limits imposed by lawyers.

"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," Holder said in a statement.

For the first time, officials said yesterday that they would provide legal representation at no cost to CIA employees subjected to international tribunals or inquiries from Congress. They also said they would indemnify agency workers against any financial judgments.

The announcement appeared to be designed to soothe concerns expressed by top intelligence officials, who argued in recent weeks that the graphic detail in the memos could bring unwanted attention to interrogators and deter others from joining government service.

CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told employees that the interrogation practices won approval from the highest levels of the Bush administration and that they had nothing to fear if they followed the legal guidance from the Justice Department.

"You need to be fully confident that as you defend the nation, I will defend you," Panetta said.

Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, cited his experience after taking part in the unpopular Vietnam War. "We in the intelligence community should not be subjected to similar pain," he said.

For years, the documents were sought by lawmakers, civil liberties advocates and defense attorneys for men detained in U.S. military prisons. Holder and White House counsel Gregory B. Craig advocated publishing the sensitive documents in their entirety, saying the move would fulfill the president's campaign promises of transparency and underscore the new team's break with the past.

The Bush Justice Department wrote three of the memos in 2005 in response to a request for legal advice from John A. Rizzo, senior deputy general counsel at the CIA, who wanted to know whether the agency's procedures for questioning al-Qaeda operatives complied with laws and international treaties. Those memos were prepared by Steven G. Bradbury, who led the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, an elite band of constitutional scholars who offer advice to the executive branch.

The fourth document dates to August 2002 and was signed by Jay S. Bybee, who served in the Office of Legal Counsel before becoming a federal appeals court judge. That memo involves a single prisoner, alleged al-Qaeda associate Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, better known as Abu Zubaida, whose interrogations began in May 2002.

Administration lawyers gave oral advice to CIA officials in July and offered written versions of their analysis that summer, giving rise to questions among congressional Democrats about whether officials who participated in the interrogation before the advice was proffered could face legal exposure.

Interrogators told Justice Department lawyers that they sought to exploit Abu Zubaida's fear of bugs by telling him that they had put a stinging insect in a small, confined box where he was held for brief periods, when in fact they would introduce a harmless caterpillar instead.

Intelligence officials said yesterday that they had not actually used the practice, which won approval from administration lawyers. In the bulk of their analysis, the lawyers appeared to put significant weight on the question of whether the tactics would cause severe, lasting pain.

Another memo, from May 2005, signed by Bradbury, addressed how CIA officials could employ different combinations of techniques, including a practice known as walling, in which interrogators would press a prisoner's shoulder blades against a fake wall, producing loud noises.

"A detainee may be walled one time (one impact with the wall) to make a point, or twenty to thirty times consecutively when the interrogator requires a more significant response to a question," according to the memo.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) said that the documents are "chilling" and that their content "is as alarming as I feared it would be."

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who has investigated detainee abuse, said that "we must acknowledge and confront these abuses" in order to "restore America's image as a country that not only espouses ideals of human rights, but lives by them."

The memos were released as part of a long-standing case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which have sought photos and papers documenting the government's treatment of detainees captured after Sept. 11, 2001.

The Senate intelligence committee, led by Chairman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), is investigating alleged interrogation abuses in an initiative she announced this year.

Calls from interest groups for criminal prosecution of former administration officials who authorized the tactics have intensified with each release of fresh information about the operations.

"Whether or not CIA operatives who conducted waterboarding are guaranteed immunity, it is the high level officials who conceived, justified and ordered the torture program who bear the most responsibility for breaking domestic and international law, and it is they who must be prosecuted," executives at the Center for Constitutional Rights said yesterday.

But it is unclear whether Obama administration officials have the appetite to prosecute their predecessors and what evidence authorities might use to do so. If they are relying on the accounts of detainees, lawyers said yesterday, government officials surely would require corroboration.

Among the most comprehensive documents on the alleged torture is a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which chronicled accounts by 14 detainees of their treatment at the hands of CIA officers between 2002 and 2006. Those accounts closely match the techniques outlined in the memos released yesterday.

news/notes2009.04.17f

[Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine]

Getting Away With Torture

By Daniel Politi
Posted Friday, April 17, 2009, at 6:25 AM ET

The Los Angeles Times, New York Times, and Washington Post lead with the Justice Department documents released by the Obama administration that provide the most detailed accounting to date of the harsh interrogation tactics used by the Central Intelligence Agency during the Bush administration, as well as the legal reasoning to back them up. At the same time, the administration made it clear that CIA officers who followed the guidelines would not be prosecuted. The four memos, one from 2002 and three from 2005, spell out in painstaking detail the techniques that could be used to get information from prisoners.

USA Today leads with a look at how Democrats and Republicans in state legislatures across the country are having the same "classic fight over taxes" as Congress. As states struggle to balance their budgets during a recession, Democrats are pushing for tax increases on the wealthy, while Republicans want to cut taxes for businesses. The Wall Street Journal. leads its world-wide newsbox with President Obama stating that the ball is now in Cuba's court as the United States will not remove any more of its sanctions against the island until it gets some reciprocal action from the Cuban government. "Having taken the first step I think it's very much in our interests to see whether Cuba is also ready to change," Obama said during his visit to Mexico.

Many of the interrogation tactics described in the Justice Department memos were already well-known, but others either haven't received a lot of attention or were unknown. The two highlights involve insects and "walling." In one memo, lawyers allowed interrogators to exploit a prisoner's fear of insects by putting him in a small box with what they would describe as a stinging insect when, in fact, it would be a harmless one, "such as a caterpillar." The technique was allowed, although never actually used, as long as the prisoner was told the insect "will not have a sting that would produce death or severe pain." In the practice known as "walling," a prisoner could be pushed "quickly and firmly" against a "flexible false wall" so that his shoulder blades hit the wall and produce a loud noise. Interrogators could do this up to "thirty times consecutively."


Even if most of the techniques had already been known, that doesn't make the memos any less terrifying, particularly when all the techniques are brought together and described in such detail. Prisoners could be deprived of sleep for as many as 11 days, confined to small boxes, doused with water as cold as 41 degrees, kept shackled for days at a time, and slapped in the face and abdomen, among others. All with the ultimate goal of making prisoners feel as if they have "no control over basic human needs." The memos also included extensive discussions about water-boarding and how it should be carried out. But the NYT points out that these directives weren't always followed, and one memo notes that water-boarding was used "with far greater frequency than initially indicated" and with "large volumes of water."

The LAT notes that, as outlined in the documents, "[e]ven the less violent techniques … can have a harrowing aspect," and points out that a prisoner being deprived of sleep would have his feet shackled to the floor, his hands cuffed near his chin. In that position the prisoner would be forced to wear a diaper and fed by hand and wouldn't be able to fall asleep because he would lose his balance.

Reading through the memos, it is evident that the administration's lawyers devoted lots of effort to justifying each and every technique. As the WP notes, the lawyers seemed to "put significant weight on the question of whether the tactics would cause severe, lasting pain."

The memos were released after a long, drawn-out fight within the upper echelons of the Obama administration. The CIA opposed the Justice Department's desire to release the documents. But ultimately, the documents were released practically without redactions, marking a victory for Attorney General Eric Holder. The talks became more urgent in recent weeks as the administration faced a court-imposed deadline in a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union to obtain the documents. Obama said the documents illustrated "a dark and painful chapter in our history," but the WSJ reports that the president "wrestled with the decision" on Wednesday night and had been considering redacting more of the information. The WSJ says that one of the main factors that pushed Obama to release the documents was that the New York Review of Books had published the Red Cross account of the interrogations, which led him to conclude that most of the information was already known.

Although Obama said that those who followed the advice from Justice would not be prosecuted, a carefully worded statement seems to leave "open the possibility that operatives and higher-level administration officials could face jeopardy if they ventured beyond the boundaries drawn by the Bush lawyers," notes the Post. The NYT also points out that it's not clear whether the lawyers themselves could be penalized in some way.

The WSJ and NYT front word that the head of the Obama administration's auto task force, Steven Rattner, is one of the executives involved in what has been described as a pay-to-play scheme to obtain business from New York state's pension fund. Rattner isn't named in a Securities Exchange Commission complaint, but both papers say he is the "senior executive" at Rattner's investment firm, Quadrangle Group, that is mentioned. The whole issue is a bit confusing because the investigation into the fund has been going on for a while. It basically breaks down into two parts. Through an affiliated company, Quadrangle acquired the DVD rights to a low-budget movie that was produced by New York's deputy comptroller and his brothers, netting the producers almost $90,000. Soon afterward, the deputy comptroller informed Quadrangle that it would get a $100 million investment from the pension fund. And then Quadrangle paid $1.1 million in finder's fees to a company affiliated with one of the comptroller's top political aides. Such payments aren't illegal per se, but why would Quadrangle need to pay an intermediary when Rattner had already met with the deputy comptroller, particularly since it had previously retained a separate intermediary for the deal? Both papers emphasize that Rattner, a former NYT reporter, hasn't been accused of any wrongdoing, and the Treasury Department said yesterday that "during the transition, Mr. Rattner made us aware of the pending investigation."

In an important front-page piece, the NYT reports on a so-far mostly overlooked factor that helped the Taliban gain control over Pakistan's Swat Valley: class warfare. In order to gain power, the Taliban skillfully exploited class divisions and ultimately forced out the approximately four dozen landlords that held the most power in the region. In order to do so, the Taliban organized armed gangs of landless peasants "that became their shock troops." The Taliban gained popularity by offering peasants, who were frustrated with their living conditions and a corrupt government that was deaf to their needs, what amounted to rich economic rewards and a feeling of self-determination. The ease with which the Taliban were able to exploit these entrenched class divisions is raising worries that the same series of events could play out in other parts of Pakistan, particularly in the populous Punjab province, which largely remains a feudal society.

In a piece that was reported in conjunction with ProPublica, the LAT fronts a look at how civilian contractors often have to endure long legal fights in order to get covered for injuries suffered in a war zone. Unlike soldiers, contractors are insured by private companies that frequently resist paying for coverage. The main culprit? American International Group. AIG is the main player in providing insurance to civilian contractors in war zones and has made a handsome profit from the business. As a whole, insurers have earned nearly $600 million in profit by charging premiums that a military audit called "unreasonably high." Yet that doesn't translate into good medical care. Insurers have rejected 44 percent of claims from contractors suffering serious injuries and more than half of claims relating to psychological ailments. Disputes are usually settled through mediation, but more than 1,000 cases have made their way to court. Workers win the vast majority of the appeals, but resolving the cases can take years while medical bills keep piling up.

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news/notes2009.04.17g

「Today's Papers] from [Slate Magazine] CONTINUED FROM news/notes2009.04.17f

The Taliban Spreads Out

By Daniel Politi
Posted Tuesday, April 14, 2009, at 6:39 AM ET

As we approach the 10-year anniversary of the Columbine massacre, USAT fronts a look at how many of the details that the public thinks it knows about the <>shooting rampage that killed 13 people are wrong. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold weren't part of the "Trenchcoat Mafia," and they hadn't been bullied. The massacre made schools watch out for so-called "enemies lists," but the truth is that the list that Harris and Klebold had written up was made up of students who had graduated a year earlier. And despite the reports at the time, the shooters weren't on antidepressants and didn't target any specific type of student. It is now widely accepted that the students wanted to kill everyone at the school, but their plot to carry out a huge bombing failed.

The NYT and WP report on the auction of items from Michael Jackson's Neverland Valley Ranch. The "yard sale of the century," as the Post puts it, is open for public viewing until April 21 and will be followed by a four-day live auction. There are so many items that the auction house conducting the sale set up all the products in a former Robinsons-May department store. Jackson is trying to stop the sale, saying he never got a chance to remove his personal effects, but the auction house that is running the event is confident it will go forward. Among the items up for sale are dozens of bronze garden statues of young children, a red velvet throne, platinum albums, a seven-foot Lego model of Darth Vader, and, of course, gloves. In fact, there are 13 gloves, each covered in "iridescent Swarovski loch rosen crystals," one of which is estimated at up to $15,000. "What he loved, he collected in mass quantity," the auctioneer explained. "What is unusual, more so than any other celebrity memorabilia sale, is what a pack rat he was."