Want to learn how Jack Bauer ought to get terrorists to divulge information against their interests? Check out Interrogations Central, a website launched last week by “Matthew Alexander,” a pseudonymous interrogator whose non-torturous interrogations contributed to the successful hunting and killing of the Iraq-based terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in More…
The New Jersey Democratic legislator and intelligence oversight maven has finally won on a fight he’s waged to record military interrogations. As The Wall Street Journal reports, a May 10 memo from Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn instructs interrogators gathering high-value intelligence off the battlefield — that is, Bagram More…
A federal court today ruled that the government can continue to suppress transcripts of former CIA prisoners now being held at Guantanamo Bay talking about abuse and torture they suffered in CIA custody. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the American Civil More…
The conference report to next fiscal year’s defense appropriations bill includes a provision long — and I mean long — sought by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.): a requirement for military interrogators to videotape their interrogation sessions. (The CIA, which is no longer in the lead on high-value interrogations, has More…
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said on “Face the Nation” Sunday that — like most Republicans and even some Democrats, including some in the president’s cabinet — he thinks President Obama was right when he said “we ought to go forward, not back.”
But then he went on to More…
After months of deliberation about humane and effective ways of interrogating high-value terrorism detainees, the Obama administration announced on Monday that it would create a new interagency interrogation task force for extracting information from the most important terrorist suspects in its custody. Known as the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, the More…
That’s what I asked Joshua Dratel, Chair of the John Adams Project Advisory Committee and a prominent defense lawyer who has represented numerous terror suspects before. Speaking this morning after the news broke that the Department of Justice is investigating military defense lawyers representing terror suspects, More…
The task force advising the Obama administration on interrogating terrorism-related detainees is wrapping up its work this week, and although some of its final recommendations remain unfinished, officials familiar with its work indicate that it will focus less on specific interrogation techniques than on recommending interrogators develop their non-abusive strategies More…
And we’re off. Here’s President Obama at the National Archives, talking in broad themes about what comes after Guantanamo Bay. Chris Matthews points out that he’s standing in front of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Will he say anything about preventative detention?
10:31. We’re doing good things More…
Something I couldn’t figure out for my piece yesterday on the 2007 memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel about CIA interrogations: why didn’t the Obama administration disclose it last week, when it released the 2002 and 2005 OLC memoranda? The Justice Department declined to comment on More…
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