In
this Issue:
US Embassy
Close to Admitting Syria Rendition Flight
Statement contradicts ambassador's interview
Correction could leave Britain open to challenge
by Ewen MacAskill
Published on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by the Guardian /
UK
The US embassy in London was forced to issue a correction
yesterday to an interview given by the ambassador, Robert
Tuttle, in which he claimed America would not fly suspected
terrorists to Syria, which has one of the worst torture records
in the Middle East. A statement acknowledged media reports
of a suspect taken from the US to Syria.
Torture is banned in the US but the CIA has been engaged
in a policy of rendition, flying terrorist suspects to
countries in the Middle East and other parts of the
world where torture is commonplace.
Demand a full Investigation into US Torture Policy
Rendition Flights to Syria, other Practices Exposed
Although Mr. Tuttle, a Beverly Hills car dealer and major
donor to George Bush's re-election campaign, has been ambassador
in London only since the summer, he is proving to be accident-prone.
Last month he vigorously denied British media reports that
American forces used white phosphorus as a weapon in Iraq,
only to be undercut by an admission from the Pentagon the
next day.
Mr. Tuttle gave an interview to the BBC Today program
on Thursday for broadcast yesterday morning. On Friday,
the US embassy returned to the BBC with a lengthy
statement of clarification, which was also broadcast
yesterday at the end of the interview.
Asked
by the BBC if the US dumped suspects in Syria, Mr. Tuttle
said: "I don't think there is any evidence that
there have been any renditions carried out in the
country of Syria. There is no evidence of that. And I think
we have to take what the secretary [Condoleezza Rice] says
at face value. It is something very important, it is done
very carefully and she has said we do not authorize, condone
torture in any way, shape or form."
A US embassy spokeswoman contacted the BBC on Friday
to say the ambassador "recognized that there had been a media
report of a rendition to Syria but reiterated that the United
States is not in a position to comment on specific allegations
of intelligence activities that appear in the press".
The embassy spokeswoman "underscored that the president
and secretary Rice have made clear that even in today's circumstances,
where we are confronting a new kind of threat, the United
States does not condone torture, its officials do not participate
in such activities anywhere, and we do not hand over anyone
in our custody to anywhere where we believe that they will
be tortured. Full stop.
"We
take our actions in the fight against terrorism with full
respect for our international obligations and with full
respect for the sovereignty of our partners."
The embassy's statement is close to an admission
of at least one flight to Syria as it would be unlikely
to embarrass the ambassador by referring to a media
report it considered inaccurate.
Maher Arar, a Canadian software engineer of Syrian descent,
says he was arrested in New York in 2002 and transferred
to Jordan, then to Syria, where he said he was tortured.
The US use of Syria for rendition sits uneasily with
Washington's portrayal of the country as a pariah state. The Guardian
has reported the CIA used British airports to refuel
for rendition flights, which would contravene British law.
Asked if he knew whether the US had sought permission
from Britain, Mr. Tuttle said Ms Rice had maintained
that rendition would respect each country's sovereignty.
His reply would seem to imply the US had sought permission,
possibly leaving the British government open to challenge.
Back-story
US presidents tend to treat the post of ambassador to
Britain more as a reward for political donors and allies
than a job for diplomats, and Robert Tuttle fits this
pattern. A Beverly Hills car dealer and major Republican
party donor, he became ambassador this summer. He served
in Ronald Reagan's White House and was ranked as a "pioneer" in George Bush's
re-election campaign for raising more than $100,000.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005
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Rendition Flights to Syria, other Practices Exposed
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U.S. Stalls on Human Trafficking
Pentagon has yet to ban contractors from using forced labor
by Cam Simpson
Published on Tuesday, December 27, 2005 by the Chicago Tribune
WASHINGTON - Three years ago, President Bush declared
that he had "zero tolerance" for trafficking in humans
by the government's overseas contractors, and two years ago
Congress mandated a similar policy.
But notwithstanding the president's statement and the congressional
edict, the Defense Department has yet to adopt a policy to
bar human trafficking.
A proposal prohibiting defense contractor involvement in
human trafficking for forced prostitution and labor was drafted
by the Pentagon last summer, but five defense lobbying groups
oppose key provisions and a final policy still appears to
be months away, according to those involved and Defense Department
records.
The lobbying groups opposing the plan say they're in favor
of the idea in principle, but said they believe that implementing
key portions of it overseas is unrealistic. They represent
thousands of firms, including some of the industry's biggest
names, such as DynCorp International and Halliburton subsidiary
KBR, both of which have been linked to trafficking-related
concerns.
Lining up on the opposite side of the defense industry are
some human-trafficking experts who say significant aspects
of the Pentagon's proposed policy might actually do more
harm than good unless they're changed. These experts have
told the Pentagon that the policy would merely formalize
practices that have allowed contractors working overseas
to escape punishment for involvement in trafficking, the
records show.
The long-awaited debate inside the Pentagon on how to implement
presidential and congressional directives on human trafficking
is unfolding just as counter trafficking advocates in Congress
are running into resistance. A bill reauthorizing the nation's
efforts against trafficking for the next two years was overwhelmingly
passed by the House this month, but only after a provision
creating a trafficking watchdog at the Pentagon was stripped
from the measure at the insistence of defense-friendly lawmakers,
according to congressional records and officials. The Senate
passed the bill last week.
Delay seen as weakness
The Pentagon's delay in tackling the issue, the perceived
weakness of its proposed policy and the recent setbacks in
Congress have some criticizing the Pentagon for not taking
the issue seriously enough.
"Ultimately, what we really hope to see is resources
and leadership on this issue from the Pentagon," said
Sarah Mendelson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies, a national security think tank
in Washington. She also had called for creation of an internal
Pentagon watchdog after investigating the military's links
to sex trafficking in the Balkans.
Rep.
Christopher Smith (R-N.J.), author of the original legislation
targeting human trafficking, said there seems to be an
institutional lethargy on the issue at the Pentagon below
the most senior levels. He said he was concerned that the
Pentagon's overseas-contractor proposal might not be tough
enough and that the delays in developing it could mean
more people "were being
exploited while they were sharpening their pencils."
But he pledged to maintain aggressive oversight of the plan.
`We're
addressing the issue.’
Glenn Flood, a Pentagon spokesman, said he did not know
why it has taken so long to develop a proposal but said, "From
our point of view, we're addressing the issue."
An official more directly involved with the effort to draft
a formal policy barring contractors from involvement in trafficking
said it might not be ready until April, at least in part
because of concerns raised by the defense contractors.
Bush declared zero tolerance for involvement in human trafficking
by federal employees and contractors in a National Security
Presidential Directive he signed in December 2002 after media
reports detailing the alleged involvement of DynCorp employees
in buying women and girls as sex slaves in Bosnia during
the U.S. military's deployment there in the late 1990s.
Ultimately, the company fired eight employees for their
alleged involvement in sex trafficking and illegal arms deals.
In 2003, Smith followed Bush's decree with legislation ordering
federal agencies to include anti-trafficking provisions in
all contracts. The bill covered trafficking for forced prostitution
and forced labor and applied to overseas contractors and
their subcontractors.
But it wasn't until last summer that the Pentagon issued
a proposed policy to enforce the 2003 law and Bush's December
2002 directive.
The proposal drew a strong response from five defense-contractor-lobbying
groups within the umbrella Council of Defense and Space Industries
Associations: the Contract Services Association, the Professional
Services Council, the National Defense Industrial Association,
the American Shipbuilding Association and the Electronic
Industries Alliance.
The response's first target was a provision requiring contractors
to police their overseas subcontractors for human trafficking.
In a two-part series published in October, the Tribune detailed
how Middle Eastern firms working under American subcontracts
in Iraq, and a chain of human brokers beneath them, engaged
in the kind of abuses condemned elsewhere by the U.S. government
as human trafficking. KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, relies
on more than 200 subcontractors to carry out a multibillion-dollar
U.S. Army contract for privatization of military support
operations in the war zone.
Case of 12 Nepali men
The Tribune retraced the journey of 12 Nepali men recruited
from poor villages in one of the most remote and impoverished
corners of the world and documented a trail of deceit, fraud
and negligence stretching into Iraq. The men were kidnapped
from an unprotected caravan and executed en route to jobs
at an American military base in 2004.
At the
time, Halliburton said it was not responsible for the recruitment
or hiring practices of its subcontractors, and the U.S.
Army, which oversees the privatization contract, said questions
about alleged misconduct "by subcontractor
firms should be addressed to those firms, as these are not
Army issues."
Once implemented, the new policy could dramatically change
responsibilities for KBR and the Army.
Alan Chvotkin, senior vice president and counsel for the
Professional Services Council who drafted the contractors'
eight-page critique of the Pentagon proposal, said it was
not realistic to expect foreign companies operating overseas
to accept or act on U.S. foreign policy objectives.
"This is a clash between mission execution [of the
contract] and policy execution," Chvotkin said. "So
we're looking for a little flexibility."
He said
that rather than a "requirement that says you
have to flow this through to everybody," the group wants
the policy to simply require firms to notify the Pentagon
when their subcontractors refuse to accept contract clauses
barring support for human trafficking.
Still,
Chvotkin said, "We don't want to do anything
that conveys the idea that we are sanctioning or tolerating
trafficking."
In a
joint memo of their own, Mendelson and another Washington-based
expert, Martina Vandenberg, a lawyer who investigated sex
trafficking for Human Rights Watch, told the Pentagon its
draft policy "institutionalizes
ineffective procedures currently used by the Department
of Defense contractor community in handling allegations
of human trafficking."
Without
tough provisions requiring referrals to prosecutors, they
said, contractors could still get their employees on planes
back to the U.S. before investigations commenced, as they
allege happened in several documented cases in the Balkans.
They said some local contract managers even had "special
arrangements" with police in the Balkans that allowed
them to quickly get employees returned to the U.S. if they
were found to be engaged in illegal activities.
Copyright © 2005, Chicago Tribune
‘Waterboarding’ spurs
debate on what is torture
By John Crewdson
Published December 28, 2005
In
an appearance in March before the Senate Armed Services
Committee, U.S. Sen. John McCain asked CIA Director Porter
Goss about a purported agency interrogation technique intended
to "have the prisoner feel that they were drowning."
"You're getting into, again, an area of what I will
call professional interrogation techniques," Goss replied.
"That's the area that I'm concerned about," retorted
McCain, an Arizona Republican, whose amendment to a military
appropriations bill forbidding the "cruel, inhuman or
degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody passed
the Senate in October by 90-9.
`We don't do torture'
The CIA
won't discuss the technique McCain mentioned, known as "waterboarding," which it says is classified.
But as Goss also told the committee, "We don't do torture."
"There is no doubt that waterboarding is torture, despite
the administration's reluctance to say so," argues Kenneth
Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Demand
a full Investigation into US Torture Policy
Rendition Flights to Syria, other Practices Exposed
Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales recently told CNN that "Congress
has defined what torture is, and it is intentional infliction
of severe--I emphasize the word `severe'--intentional infliction
of severe physical or mental pain or suffering."
Asked
whether "waterboarding" would be allowed
under that definition, Gonzales replied that "that would
be something that would have to be evaluated on a case-by-case
basis."
Whether or not it constitutes torture, intelligence officials
and others who have seen waterboarding -- or experienced
it--say nothing in the interrogator's arsenal is simpler,
quicker or more effective.
The difference, they say, is that waterboarding doesn't
induce pain that can be withstood. It induces terror and
a reaction of the autonomic nervous system that cannot be
controlled.
Several conflicting descriptions of how waterboarding is
done have been published in recent weeks. According to a
Navy SEAL who says he underwent waterboarding during training,
the process works like this:
The subject is strapped to a board and tilted so his head
is lower than his feet. A cloth is tied over his nose and
mouth and saturated with water, eventually making it impossible
for him to breathe.
When used in the field, the technique is less elaborate
but no less effective. No board, for example, is involved;
the suspect is simply held down.
"You just pull the guy's T-shirt over his face and
dump a canteen of water on his head," said the SEAL,
who spoke on condition that he not be identified and who
emphasized that he had never used the technique during a
real interrogation.
Waterboarding
has been described as "the illusion of
drowning." In fact, there is no illusion; if interrogators
didn't stop, the subject would drown.
"Inhaling even a small amount of water causes the body
to close the glottis and violently cough to remove the offending
substance," said the SEAL, who is also trained as a
Navy hospital corpsman.
"This
entire process initiates the fight-or-flight response in
the sympathetic nervous system, causing the person to involuntarily
raise their heart rate, respiratory rate, and flail and
writhe in an effort to break free from the situation.
"This
reaction is even more pronounced when the subject is lying
on his back with feet elevated and head down. This is due
to the fact that the nostrils serve as a catch basin for
small, but significant nonetheless, amounts of water."
Because the water prevents air from entering the nose and
mouth, and therefore the lungs, the supply of oxygen available
for metabolic functions is exhausted within seconds.
"After performing this on a target for 30 seconds and
then stopping the flow of water, the sense of relief and
then the realization that this is but a brief respite are
extremely powerful motivators for the subject to cooperate
in the interrogation," the SEAL said.
Practice seen in training
Waterboarding
experienced in training, he added, "is
instantly effective on 100 percent of Navy SEALs, a group
which is probably more comfortable in adverse maritime swimming
conditions than any other on the planet."
"In
my case, I wasn't even held down. My teammate simply poured
a canteen of water over my face while I had my T-shirt
pulled over my head. Instantly, my ability to breathe through
the T-shirt was taken away and my natural reaction to inhale
deeply through my mouth and nose for air caused me to take
on small amounts of water."
Waterboarding
is also effective, the SEAL said, because the subject realizes
that "there are no enduring physiological
consequences, which he intuitively knows. This is important
psychologically, because he can legitimately hope that he
will be able to live on normally after the experience, if
only he cooperates.
"Breaking
kneecaps and pulling out fingernails does not hold this
promise. The fact that the target has a chance to remain
fully whole makes him more likely to be truthful and to
break more quickly."
Copyright © 2005,
Chicago Tribune
Demand
a full Investigation into US Torture Policy
Rendition Flights to Syria, other Practices Exposed
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