Pentagon Told Guantanamo Interrogators To Trash Evidence

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — The Pentagon urged interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to destroy handwritten notes in case they were called to testify about potentially harsh treatment of detainees, a military defense lawyer said Sunday.

The lawyer for Toronto-born Omar Khadr, Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, said the instructions were included in an operations manual shown to him by prosecutors and suggest the U.S. deliberately thwarted evidence that could help terror suspects defend themselves at trial.

Kuebler said the apparent destruction of evidence prevents him from challenging the reliability of any alleged confessions. He said he will use the document to seek a dismissal of charges against Khadr.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, said he was reviewing the matter Sunday evening.

The "standard operating procedures" manual that contained the purported instructions was made available to Kuebler last week as part of a pretrial review of potential evidence, the Navy lawyer said.

"The mission has legal and political issues that may lead to interrogators being called to testify, keeping the number of documents with interrogation information to a minimum can minimize certain legal issues," the document is quoted as saying in an affidavit signed by Kuebler.

The document could support challenges by other detainees to suppress confessions at Guantanamo, where the U.S. military says it plans to prosecute as many as 80 of roughly 270 detainees before the first U.S. war-crimes tribunals since World War II.

The case against Khadr, who was captured in Afghanistan when he was 15, is on track to be one of the first to trial. He faces war-crimes charges including murder for allegedly throwing a grenade that killed a U.S. Special Forces soldier during a 2002 firefight.

Kuebler said the nature of the interrogations is particularly relevant in Khadr's case because prosecutors are relying on evidence "extracted" from him at Bagram air base in Afghanistan and at Guantanamo.

"If handwritten notes were destroyed in accordance with the SOP, the government intentionally deprived Omar's lawyers of key evidence with which to challenge the reliability of his statements," Kuebler said in an e-mail to reporters.

The operations manual, which dates to January 2003, was attached to a 2005 report on an investigation into detainee abuse allegations at Guantanamo, Kuebler said. A summary of the findings was released at the time, but the defense lawyer said the section including the manual has not been made available publicly.

The so-called Schmidt-Furlow report documented degrading treatment, including one instance of a top terror suspect forced to dance with another man and behave like a dog. But investigators stopped short of saying torture occurred.

Comments

[ama nesciri]

Is it ok now for the US citizenry to destroy all evidence of any wrongdoing?
I think the notion that all of us are beyond criminal wrongdoing is attractive.
Who do we thank for this general absolution?

[cheshirecat831]

Unfortunately, in a stunning blunder by the Speaker of the House, impeachment was taken off the table. That was the equivalent of telling a childed "no matter what you do you will not be punished" and then expecting good behavior.

[comebackid]

Am I alone here? Doesn't anyone else see that Nancy Pelosi is standing in the way of richeous justice here. She is guilty of criminal compliance. Because of her in her position of power where she has so misused and abused her office I sincerely doubt that a woman could handle a job as powerful as president. I've never been a sexist person but after what I've seen of women in politics lately I seriously doubt that they are built for the job and I am relieved that Hillary didn't get the nomination on many levels.

I would go so far as to try Nancy along with the Bush administration and at least make her try and make sense of her actions to the American public.

San Francisco, please don't re-elect this woman to office. Look into her local dealings with her husband where she is sending pork projects home to his business. She is not an honest person.

[MajorKong]

Common sense would dictate that if you have to cover something up it probably wasn't something you should have been doing in the first place.

[HumeSkeptic]

That, I think, is a reasonable assumption.

[RobertaInCT]

Should be Huff Post of the day...........excellent

[lennix]

and you think MCcain will go after his belove military if he gets in the white house we will never find out the truth this is going to make us the laughing stock of the world

[3rdCitizen]

I've lost count: how many examples of war crimes by the Bush administration do we have now?

[labstellamom4]

Hhhhmmmm....Treason, Treason, Treason..........hang 'em high !!!

[RichardD]

This is what the World believes America has become ( or, worse latently always has been since at least Nixon).
The question in this election then becomes, at least in part, is America actually this?
What does the "American" brand, to use the current baffle-speak of the media, really stand for ???
Does the country stand for what its forefather's foresaw, or is it what 14 years of Rovian GOP members showed it to be?

[BeyondGoodAndEvil]

America has been committing crimes against foreign nationals and foreign Governments since before Nixon.

Read "Legacy of Ashes", and you will never view our Government in quite the same way. The covert operations that have been carried out by the bumbling CIA makes them look more incompetent and crooked than KAOS in "Get Smart".

[RobertaInCT]

The average American has no ideal if the crimes committed by our government. The ugly American is a face many can't or refuse to see..............

[LaFeminazi]

Impeach, who cares.

War crimes trials, now that is the ticket.

Roll on 09.

[kellygrrrl]

that is why the new Atty Gen is one of the most important positions I will be watching

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Dodd? Edwards? Waxman? Patrick Fitzgerald?

[speakingtruth2power]

For the good of the country we must let the crooks keep all their ill gotten gains.

Political healing is more important than the rule of law and/or international law.

[LaFeminazi]

???????

Say hello to the jack boot on your throat.

Nothing is above truth and justice.

[Harinama]

yes indeed, because we'd never actually want to change or cleanup Washington right?

The only way to heal this country politically is to excise the festering scabs that are neocons and neoliberals, and start acting like a member of the world community, instead of it's spoiled brat militaristic imperialist overseer....

[ReasonIsMyReligion]

Big fan, as ever, but on this we differ.

Forgiving Nixon begat Republican vengefulness vented on Clinton, and now Bush.

Justice cares not for mollification.

Justice will lead to less future injustice, the foundation of LONG-term political healing.

"Political healing" vs. "rule of law." Is that your final answer? Some truth ya got there.

[labstellamom4]

Healing can only occur with cleaning the wounds.....purging the infection .... The citizens need to see the process work and adhereance to the rule of law is vital... No one is above it or below it ........ No one can prevert it for their own gain while standing on those who have been expended with little regard. Keep it simple...... So much has been done by a few for their own financial and personal gain !!

[IntelligentDesign]

Well of course they did, can’t blame war criminals for destroying evidence to try and avoid prosecution, can you? War criminals are people too.

[LaFeminazi]

Good morning to

The torture capital of the world.

Anyone for water-boarding?

Surfs up!

[ThunderclapNewman]

Morning, Femi.

You seem loaded for bear. :-}

[RobertaInCT]

Loaded for bear is her natural state....................:)

[kellygrrrl]

the Isolated Self-Hating Ogre does not like morning!
BLAH!

[RobertaInCT]

Why waste water...............use rope!

Hi Fem.................)

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Prosecuting these repugnant rats is the only way to gain global credibility again. Until such time we have no say in other nations persecuting people because we are no better than them.

[Marlyn]

"Prosecuting these repugnant rats is the only way to gain global credibility again" ???

But this is how we LOST global credibility.

[HumeSkeptic]

Huh?

[mathme]

I don't think you're misunderstanding who thegreatgig is calling REPugnant rats :)

[pithy]

A "15 year old boy" and evidence "extracted from him" - how utterly despicable.

Rev. Wright is exactly correct - our chickens will be coming home to roost - for the next century.

Old white woman for Obama 08!

[S1m0n]

What's outrageous is that they're prosecuting him for the crime of shooting back. Khadr was in a building which was bombed so heavily that the military assumed there was no one left alive. As it turned out, there was at least one*, and when troops moved in, he threw a grenade, killing one soldier.

In my book, if you've dropped so much ordnance on someone that you're sure they're dead, the very least you should expect is that he'll return the favor.

*Until very recently, the army had been claiming that Khadr was the only one alive when the grenade was thrown. However, evidence recently disclosed to the defense shows that there was more than one person present. An official incident report written by the officer on the scene was later altered to eliminate any mention of additional defenders.

[JerryTheAngel]

That humming sound coming from the White House and the Pentagon from now until Jan 21, 2009 are shredders running non-stop.

[thegreatgiginthesky]

They can shred all they want, it is not going to save them.

[COMtns]

Wow, that's a waste of electricity. Surely they know by now that the Democrats can be relied upon to quash any investigation.

What we'll get from Obama is a pretty speech about looking forward instead of looking backwards, and about how unity is good and divisiveness is bad. But, just like with impeachment, any serious investigation or prosecution will be blocked by the Democrats.

I haven't seen any rock-solid promises from Obama to the contrary. He hasn't been touring the country beating his fist on the podium saying that this must not stand and people must go to prison. Nope. Instead we get chatter about unity and divisiveness and what comes awfully close to promises to make sure there are Republicans in his cabinet.

[FCBarca]

Impeach now, hell, impeach yesterday...But impeach these fools who are descending our country further into the abyss

[ThunderclapNewman]

Utter foolishness.

First, there is not enough time left in this administration.
Second, there aren't enough votes in the Senate to convict.
Third, the ONLY penalty is removal from office, which is happening anyway.
Fourth, why do you advocate something that will take all the energy and press attention away from the very important election coming in less than 150 days?

Research the impeachment process, and what it means.
Then come and apologize for sounding foolish.

[ProfessorDuh]

Their many crimes must be made public, and Bush and Cheney must be made to pay for them in prison, whether they are in or out of office. If they get away with rending the Constitution in this way, we've had it.

[Exusian]

"there is not enough time left in this administration...
there aren't enough votes in the Senate to convict....
the ONLY penalty is removal from office, which is happening anyway"

Sadly, all true.

Better to focus on decimating the repugs in November, then sign onto the international court of justice, make it retroactive, then prosecute them.

In the meantime, document their actions and gather evidence.

[COMtns]

All the standard excuses about why the Democrats have been protecting Bush and Cheney all along.

Yes, time is short. This is because of the Dem leadership's active campaign to make sure the clock gets run out.

The number of votes in Senate should not matter. Here's the real impeachment process. When sufficient evidence emerges that the President might be breaking the law, the House holds hearings to determine if there is really grounds for impeachment. If those hearings say yes, it goes to the full House to see if the House will vote for a charge of impeachment. Then, it goes to the Senate for a trial.

The idea in any trial is that the people making the judgement, in this case the Senators, keep an open mind until they hear the evidence presented to them. So, its fundamentally wrong on so many levels to block the first step of an investigation because you don't think you have the votes to convict. Heck, until you do the investigation, you don't know what evidence you'll have and what case you'd present.

And, by the above arguments, Richard Nixon would not have been impeached. At the beginning, there weren't the votes to convict him either. But, as the investigations proceeded and evidence emerged the case got stronger till impeachment became a certainty and he resigned to avoid it.

Feel free to apologize for sounding foolish ... just like all the Dems who've been actively protecting Bush and Cheney.

[doug108]

What would the excuse have been in January of '07?

Is the message we want to take away from this that you can commit high crimes and misdemeanors in the White House, and, provided you make it to the end of your term, you won't be held responsible?

If we want to worryy about the politics of the moment, then starting January of '09 criminal investigations should begin. It's either that, or these people get away with everything, up to and inlcuding treason.

[ProfessorDuh]

Impeach! Or the republic is dead.

[BeyondGoodAndEvil]

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bu$h screamed back. "It's just a godda**ed piece of paper!"

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_7779.shtml

[NoFactsJustTruth]

We already figured the missing waterbaording tapes had someone quite recognizable on them.

Can you say WARCRIMES?

[Graywolf48]

We are on a very slippery slope here. This is what happens when we allow, or even expect, our military leaders to be politicians and diplomats instead of purely generals and admirals. Are we far from having political "commissars" shadowing senior military leaders? The other problem is the broad definition of the "war on terrorism" and in fact what comprises a terrorist. Almost anyone, at some point might be a terrorist or potential terrorist. The unregulated or unchecked ability to make this call puts all of us at risk. What can we do if a despotic military or political authority decides a friend, neighbor, family member or even we are somehow terrorists? We read the wrong book, visit the wrong website, make a statement or comment that could be construed as a threat? If our accuser(s) are not bound by the guarantees of our Constitution and laws, where will we end up? Our nation was opposed to this type of tyranny since 1776. What has happened to us? What will we become?

[NoRepresentation]

I am glad so many people are pissed off about this. Just think if they can do it to them, what makes you think that you are not next on that list.

[ProfessorDuh]

Precisely, Graywolf. From Laurence Britt's 14 Elements of a Fascist State:
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled or manipulated mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.
------
Any of that sound at all familiar?

[ThunderclapNewman]

It's the Repub party platform.
It has been for 40 years.

It just took Americans a long time to realize what was being done in their names.