The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the “alternative interrogation methods” that their captors used to get them to talk.
The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation’s most sensitive national security secrets and that their release — even to the detainees’ own attorneys — “could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage.” Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.
Not even to their own attorneys…
This little pickle the government has gotten itself into stems from the transfer of someone from one of those “secret CIA prisons” into the relative light of day at Guantanamo.
The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, a 26-year-old former Catonsville resident who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the “black” sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him.
The government, in trying to block lawyers’ access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees’ experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public.
Never. Got that?
How about if we just go fully through this looking glass, and admit that there’s only one reliable way to permanently silence a person.
Somebody please pinch me. I want to wake up from this nightmare….
If you had told someone this ten years ago they would’ve dismissed you as a conspiracy nut. If you’d told me ten years ago this country would even be having a debate on whether it’s right to torture someone I’d have dismissed you too.
The list goes on; it’s sad how far down the slope we’ve gone.
If we loose our constitutional rights and our rights bestowed by our Bill of Rights, then we have really lost.
The current Bush-Cheney administration is like a bad cop, where any means justifies the end.
During the 80’s I was an active Regan Repbulican. I don’t think Ronald Regan would have anything to do with this current group of Republican extremists.
We are on a dangerous slope where the rights and priviledges granted by our constitution are in grave danger. At some point, you have to worry if this is way fasicism evolved in other countries.
President Bush has become to terrorism as Senator MacCarthy was to communism, and you have to wonder if he has any understanding of our constitution or our Bill of Rights.