Details Emerge About Secret Overseas Prisons
The Washington Post today reports on the CIA's use of secret prisons overseas, in Thailand and an unnamed Eastern European country, used to house and interrogate terror suspects. America: Gulag nation. It's not a pretty picture.
The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.
The New York Times has a similar report that discusses the diverging views of those in the Administration on proposed new interrogation rules:
The Bush administration is embroiled in a sharp internal debate over whether a new set of Defense Department standards for handling terror suspects should adopt language from the Geneva Conventions prohibiting "cruel," "humiliating" and "degrading" treatment, administration officials say.
Advocates of that approach, who include some Defense and State Department officials and senior military lawyers, contend that moving the military's detention policies closer to international law would prevent further abuses and build support overseas for the fight against Islamic extremists, officials said.
Their opponents, who include aides to Vice President Dick Cheney and some senior Pentagon officials, have argued strongly that the proposed language is vague, would tie the government's hands in combating terrorists and still would not satisfy America's critics, officials said.
Among those Cheney aides opposing the plan is Dick Cheney's counsel David Addington, whom Cheney elevated yesterday to Chief of Staff. In addition, Addington and Cheney were behind the White House push to exempt the CIA from Sen. McCain's torture amendment. That bill goes to House-Senate Conference this week.
Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin has more here.
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