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TBR NEWS February 8, 2008



Voice of the White House

Waterboarders for God

February 8, 2008

by Ray McGovern

Consortium News

I missed the National Prayer Breakfast—for the 45th time in a row. But, as I drove to work I listened with rapt attention as President George W. Bush gave his insights on prayer:

“When we lift our hearts to God, we’re all equal in his sight. We’re all equally precious. ... In prayer we grow in mercy and compassion. ... When we answer God’s call to love a neighbor as ourselves, we enter into a deeper friendship with our fellow man — and a deeper relationship with our eternal Father.”

Vice President Dick Cheney skipped Thursday’s prayer breakfast in order to put the final touches on the speech he gave later that morning to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Perhaps he felt he needed some extra time to devise careful words to extol “the interrogation program run by the CIA ... a tougher program for tougher customers, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11,” without conceding that the program has involved torture.

But there was a touch of defensiveness in Cheney’s remarks, as he saw fit repeatedly to reassure his audience that America is a “decent” country.

After all, on Tuesday, CIA Director Michael Hayden had confirmed publicly that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and two other “high-value” detainees had been waterboarded in 2002-2003, though Hayden added that the technique had since been discontinued.

An extreme form of interrogation going back at least as far as the Spanish Inquisition, waterboarding has been condemned as torture by just about everyone – except the legal experts of the Bush administration.

On Wednesday, however, President Bush’s spokesman Tony Fratto revealed that the White House reserves the right to approve waterboarding again, “depending upon circumstances.”

Fratto matter-of-factly described the process still followed by the Bush administration to approve torture—er, I mean “enhanced interrogation techniques” like waterboarding:

“The process includes the director of the Central Intelligence Agency bringing the proposal to the attorney general, where the review would be conducted to determine if the plan would be legal and effective. At that point, the proposal would go to the president. The president would listen to the determination of his advisers and make a decision.”

Dissing Congress

Cheney’s task of convincing the nation about its decency was made no easier when Attorney General Michael Mukasey stonewalled questions from the hapless John Conyers, titular chair of the House Judiciary Committee. Conyers tried, and failed, to get straight answers from Mukasey on torture.

Conyers referred to Hayden’s admission about waterboarding and branded the practice “odious.” But Mukasey seemed to take perverse delight in “dissing” Conyers, as the expression goes in inner-city Washington . Sadly, the tired chairman took the disrespect stoically.

Chairman Conyers did summon the courage to ask Attorney General Mukasey directly, “Are you ready to start a criminal investigation into whether this confirmed use of waterboarding by U.S. agents was illegal?”

“No, I am not,” Mukasey answered.

Mukasey claimed that “waterboarding was found to be permissible under the law as it existed” in the years immediately after 9/11; thus, the Justice Department couldn’t investigate someone for doing something the department had declared legal.

“That would mean that the same department that authorized the program would now consider prosecuting somebody who followed that advice,” Mukasey said.

Oddly, however, Mukasey is on record saying waterboarding would be torture if applied to him. And Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, was even more explicit in taking the same line in an interview with Lawrence Wright of the New Yorker magazine. McConnell told Wright that, for him:

“Waterboarding would be excruciating. If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I just can’t imagine how painful! Whether it’s torture by anybody else’s definition, for me it would be torture.”

Okay, it would be torture if done to you, Mike; how about if done to others?

Sadly, McConnell, too, missed the prayer breakfast and the president’s moving reminder that we are called “to love a neighbor as ourselves.” Are detainees not covered?

Cat Out of Bag

When torture first came up during his interview with the New Yorker, McConnell was more circumspect, repeating the obligatory bromide “We don’t torture,” as former CIA Director George Tenet did in five consecutive sentences while hawking his memoir on 60 Minutes on April 29, 2007 .

As McConnell grew more relaxed, however, he let slip the rationale for Mukasey’s effrontery and the administration’s refusal to admit that waterboarding is torture. For anyone paying attention, that rationale has long been a no-brainer. But here is McConnell inadvertently articulating it:

“If it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be paid for anyone engaging in it.”

Well, Mike, you should get yourself a briefing on that. Even the Bush-administration-friendly editorial page of the Washington Post on Friday saw fit to declare torture “illegal in all instances,” adding that “waterboarding is, and always has been, torture.”

After World War II, Japanese soldiers were hanged for the war crime of waterboarding American soldiers. Indeed, patriots and prophets have made it clear from our earliest days that such abuse has no place in America .

Virginia patriot Patrick Henry insisted passionately that “the rack and the screw,” as he put it, were barbaric practices that had to be left behind in the Old World , or we are "lost and undone."

Attorney General Mukasey, for his part, recently refused to say whether he considers the rack and the screw forms of torture, dismissing the question as a hypothetical.

As for prophets, George Hunzinger of Princeton Theological Seminary has awakened enough religious folks to form the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, a coalition of 130 religious organizations from left to right on the political spectrum.

Hunzinger puts it succinctly: “To acknowledge that waterboarding is torture is like conceding that the sun rises in the east,” adding:

"All the dissembling in high places that makes these shocking abuses possible must be brought to an end. But they will undoubtedly continue unless those responsible for them are held accountable.... A special counsel is an essential first step.”

Sadly, Hunzinger and his associates have been unable to overcome the pious complacency of the vast majority of institutional churches, synagogues and mosques in this country and their reluctance to stick their necks out.

How It Looks From Outside

Sometimes it takes a truth-telling outsider to throw light on our moral failures.

South African Methodist Bishop Peter Storey, erstwhile chaplain to Nelson Mandela in prison and outspoken opponent of apartheid, has this to say to those clergy who would preach more than platitudes:

“We had obvious evils to engage; you have to unwrap your culture from years of red, white, and blue myth. You have to expose and confront the great disconnect between the kindness, compassion, and caring of most American people and the ruthless way American power is experienced, directly or indirectly, by the poor of the earth. You have to help good people see how they have let their institutions do their sinning for them.

“All around the world there are those who long to see your human goodness translated into a different, more compassionate way of relating with the rest of this bleeding planet.”

Mukasey’s thumbing his nose at Conyers’s committee was simply the most recent display of contempt for Congress on the part of the Bush administration.

The Founders expected our representatives in Congress to be taken seriously by the executive branch, and that congresspersons would hold senior executives accountable—to the point of impeaching them, when necessary, for high crimes and misdemeanors.

That used to worry those officials and put a brake on more outlandish behavior. No more.

No Worries, George

One reads George Tenet’s memoirs with some nostalgia for the days of a modicum of congressional oversight, and with a strong sense of irony—as he confesses concern that Congress might one day hold him and others accountable for taking liberties with national and international law.

It seems likely that then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales counseled Tenet that his concerns were quaint and obsolete and, alas, Gonzales may have been right, the way things have been going. But Tenet apparently entertained lingering misgivings—perhaps even qualms of conscience.

In the immediate post-9/11 period, Tenet says he told the president that “our only real ally” on the Afghan border was Uzbekistan , “where we had established important intelligence-collection capabilities.”

We now know from UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray that those “collection capabilities” included the most primitive methods of torture, including boiling alleged “terrorists” alive.

Tenet adds that he stressed the importance of being able to detain unilaterally al-Qaeda operatives around the world. His worries shine through the rather telling sentences that follow:

“We were asking for and we would be given as many authorities as CIA ever had. Things could blow up. People, me among them, could end up spending some of the worst days of our lives justifying before congressional overseers our new freedom to act.”

At the Center of the Storm, p. 177-178

Tenet need not have worried. He would be shielded from accountability by a timid Congress as well as by an arrogant White House able to arrogate unprecedented power to itself and to shield those it wished to protect.

Setting the Tone

It was President George W. Bush who set the tone from the outset. After his address to the nation on the evening of 9/11, he assembled his top national security aides in the White House bunker—the easier, perhaps, to foster a bunker mentality.

Among them was counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who quoted the president in his memoir:

“I want you to understand that we are at war and we will stay at war until this is done. Nothing else matters. Everything is available for the pursuit of this war. Any barriers in your way, they’re gone. Any money you need, you have it. This is our only agenda...

“I don’t care what the international lawyers say, we are going to kick some ass.” Against All Enemies, Free Press, 2004

Clarke, of course, took his book’s title from the oath of office we all swore as military officers and/or senior government officials: “To defend the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.”

John Ashcroft, head of the Department of Justice at the time, fell in lockstep with the thrust of the president’s comment dismissing any concern with international law—or, as would quickly be seen, domestic law, as well.

With the enthusiastic assistance of David Addington, attorney for Vice President Dick Cheney, the affable Ashcroft assembled a cabal of Mafia-like lawyers whose imaginative legal opinions on torture, warrantless eavesdropping and other abuses mark them forever as “domestic enemies” of the Constitution.

Now add Mukasey to that distinguished roster.

Torture became the hallmark.

What is not widely known is that Justice Department-approved torture was first applied to an American citizen, John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan in late November 2001. The White House and corporate press immediately sensationalized Lindh as “the American Taliban.”

Jesselyn Radack, a conscientious legal adviser in the Justice Department’s Professional Responsibility Advisory Office giving ethics advice to department attorneys, insisted that Lindh be advised of his rights before any interrogation. Instead, he was tortured mercilessly during the first few days of his internment and denied medical care.

Lindh simply had the foolishness and bad luck to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, i.e., in a large group of prisoners rounded up by CIA and Army paramilitary forces—too large a group, it turned out.

In a spontaneous uprising, CIA paramilitary officer Johnny “Mike” Spann, who had questioned Lindh just minutes before, was shot dead. Spann’s colleagues were very angry and applied “frontier justice,” totally ignoring the Constitutional cautions of Ms. Radack.

Eventually, the Department of Justice fired Radack for her principled stand. But she had the presence of mind to save e-mails providing chapter and verse of the difficult exchanges in which she had insisted on respect for Lindh’s rights as an American citizen.

Newsweek carried the story briefly, but neither Congress nor anyone else in the media showed much interest.

Radack’s book recounting this experience, The Canary in the Coalmine: Blowing the Whistle in the Case of “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh, is available on line at: http://www.patriotictruthteller.net/.

Against this backdrop, together with Guantanamo , Abu Ghraib and prisons in Afghanistan , Iraq and elsewhere, Patrick Henry’s question remains a challenge for our time: Are we “lost and undone?”

I think not; but we had better get it together soon, for, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., warned, “There is such a thing as too late.”

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an Army intelligence officer before joining the CIA where he had a 27-year career as an analyst. He is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2008/020808a.html

Justice Dept. ‘Cannot’ Probe Waterboarding, Mukasey Says

February 8, 2008

by Dan Eggen

The Washington Post

The attorney general yesterday rejected growing congressional calls for a criminal investigation of the CIA’s use of simulated drownings to extract information from its detainees, as Vice President Cheney called it a “good thing” that the CIA was able to learn what it did from those subjected to the practice.

The remarks reflected a renewed effort by the Bush administration to defend its past approval of the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding, which some lawmakers, human rights experts and international lawyers have described as illegal torture.

Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Justice Department lawyers concluded that the CIA’s use of waterboarding in 2002 and 2003 was legal, and therefore the department cannot investigate whether a crime had occurred.

“That would mean that the same department that authorized the program would now consider prosecuting somebody who followed that advice,” he said.

New controversy about waterboarding has swirled in Washington since CIA Director Michael V. Hayden confirmed Tuesday that the CIA used the tactic on al-Qaeda prisoners Khalid Sheik Mohammed; Zayn al-Abidin Muhammed Hussein, commonly known as Abu Zubaida; and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri at a secret detention site. In congressional testimony, he defended the treatment as necessary to obtain information about potential terrorist attacks.

The next day, White House spokesman Tony Fratto provoked criticism from lawmakers and others when he said that even though the CIA no longer uses waterboarding, it could do so again with Bush’s approval, which would “depend on the circumstances,” including whether “an attack might be imminent.”

Independent legal experts have said the use of a tactic meant to coerce detainees to talk by making them fear death through drowning is barred by U.S. laws and treaties under all circumstances, a viewpoint the administration has made clear it rejects. At the same time, Fratto and Hayden yesterday played down the idea that the administration could freely order more simulated drownings.

“In my own view, the view of my lawyers and the Department of Justice, it is not certain that that technique would be considered to be lawful under current statute,” Hayden told the House intelligence committee.

In 2006, Hayden said, he officially prohibited CIA operatives from using waterboarding after a Supreme Court decision forcing the administration to respect a Geneva Conventions article barring “outrages upon personal dignity” and “humiliating and degrading treatment” of U.S. detainees. He said he doubts the practice would be considered legal now.

Fratto said the tactic could not be used again unless the president obtained new advice about its legality, personally approved it and notified Congress. “I’m not aware that anyone has plans to use it in this program,” Fratto said.

He said that although lawyers had determined that waterboarding was legal when it was used in 2002 and 2003, new laws passed since then would have to be considered. “We have made clear that the law has changed. That has given greater clarity to these questions,” he said. But he declined to rule it out, saying, “We are not going to speculate on the future.”

Cheney added to the cacophony yesterday when he said of those subjected to special CIA’s interrogation methods, “It’s a good thing we had them in custody, and it’s a good thing we found out what they knew.” Speaking to the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington about multiple counterterrorism policies Bush has approved, he added: “Would I support those same decisions again today? You’re damn right I would.”

The Bush administration’s sudden willingness to discuss waterboarding — after five years of official silence about it — follows the launch of a special U.S. attorney’s investigation into the CIA’s destruction in 2005 of interrogation videotapes that included footage of waterboarding and other harsh techniques.

Many Democrats this week have called on Mukasey to open a separate criminal investigation to focus on the CIA’s use of waterboarding and whether it violates U.S. anti-torture laws. Although Mukasey suggested in testimony last week that the tapes investigation could include that subject, his position has since appeared to have hardened.

Waterboarding, he told the House committee, “cannot possibly be the subject of . . . a Justice Department investigation” because its use was approved by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Mukasey made a parallel argument about the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, saying the Justice Department could not investigate that program because it was approved at the outset by the department’s lawyers.

Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA, called for an outside investigator. “Everyone in the world knows that waterboarding is torture and illegal,” Cox said. “The U.S. government admits having done it. Yet the highest law enforcement official in the land refuses to investigate this scandal.”

In waterboarding, a prisoner generally is strapped to an inclined board with his head lower than his feet. Water is poured over his mouth and nose, which are covered with cellophane or cloth, producing a sensation of drowning. The tactic, which dates to at least the Spanish Inquisition, has been prosecuted as torture by the U.S. military and condemned by the State Department when used by despotic governments.

Waterboarding has become a signature controversy for Mukasey, a former federal judge whom the Senate nearly rejected as attorney general last fall over his refusal to say whether the tactic constituted illegal torture.

In his appearance last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey said waterboarding would be torture if it were done to him. But he declined to say whether it was legal, saying that was irrelevant because the practice is no longer used.

Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), who had threatened this week to hold up the appointment of a deputy attorney general over the controversy, said yesterday he would allow the vote to proceed, but he decried the administration’s policy.

Durbin said “CIA agents have been put in jeopardy by misguided counsel from the Justice Department” on interrogation practices, and Mukasey’s “refusal to repudiate waterboarding does tremendous damage to America’s values and image in the world and places Americans at risk of being subjected to waterboarding by enemy forces.”

Staff writer Peter Baker contributed to this report.

It’s Past Time to End the Use of Torture

February 8, 2008

by Douglas A. Johnson

The Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota)

U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey is unable or unwilling to say that waterboarding is torture. It should not be a hard call: The United States has prosecuted others for using similar interrogation tactics and has protested their use on Americans.

Even Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., believes waterboarding is torture. Yet surprisingly, he has announced opposition to an amendment that would prohibit its use by the CIA.

For those of us who work with torture victims, there is no question that waterboarding is another in a long line of torture techniques relying on principles of asphyxiation. Their terrible impact relies on more than the panic resulting from cutting off the supply of air. They also constitute forms of mock execution, recognized as a separate and distinct type of torture. Our clients tell us that these experiences haunt their nightmares more than the physical pain they were forced to endure.

Torture and cruelty will not make America more secure. FBI, military intelligence and CIA professionals agree that torture does not work. It yields more faulty information than actionable intelligence, leading to poor policy and dangerous missions based on flawed information.

Pending legislation would create one national standard for the treatment and interrogation of prisoners. An amendment to the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2008 would hold the CIA to the rules of the U.S. Army Field Manual on Interrogation. The field manual was written by military interrogators and contains their wisdom gained during times of great crisis and threats.

Because of the Senate’s rules, it will take 60 votes, not a simple majority, to pass the anti-torture amendment. Coleman’s opposition is all the more disappointing because he is a lead sponsor of the Torture Victims Relief Act. He knows better than most the devastating consequences of torture, not just on individuals but on societies.

Congress already holds all Department of Defense personnel to the manual’s standards, but not the CIA. Failing to apply consistent standards in the treatment of prisoners causes confusion, unpredictability and dangerous gaps in national policy. Top military lawyers say the executive order approving the CIA program would allow for abuses under the Geneva Conventions, therefore putting troops at risk. The military relies on the humanitarian law standards when they are taken into enemy custody and should have a prominent role in determining how those rules are interpreted by the U.S. government.

Fighting terrorism requires strength of arms, but also strength of character. While maintaining respect for the rule of law and our Constitution, we have prevailed against threats and forces determined to destroy us. Through our example, other nations were moved to adopt the universal principles we lived by.

Minnesotans should be able to count on Coleman’s leadership to help restore America as a global leader. He should help pass the amendment to the intelligence bill and undo the practice of torture and cruelty.

Douglas A. Johnson is executive director of the Center for Victims of Torture in Minneapolis .

SECRECY NEWS

from the FAS Project on Government Secrecy

Volume 2008, Issue No. 13

February 5, 2008

OPEN SOURCE INTELLIGENCE ADVANCES

The DNI Open Source Center , which gathers, translates, analyzes, and distributes unclassified open source intelligence from around the world, is steadily growing in capability and impact, according to Doug Naquin, the Center's Director.

The Open Source Center, which replaced the CIA's Foreign Broadcast Information Service, is doing more analysis and outreach than its predecessor and is also exploring new media, said Mr. Naquin in a recent speech.

"We're looking now at YouTube, which carries some unique and honest-to-goodness intelligence," he said.

"We have groups looking at what they call 'Citizens Media': people taking pictures with their cell phones and posting them on the Internet. Then there's Social Media, phenomena like MySpace and

blogs.... A couple years back we identified Iranian blogs as a phenomenon worthy of more attention, about six months ahead of anybody else."

"But we still have an education problem ... both with the folks who are proponents of open source but perhaps don't know exactly why, and folks internally who are still wondering why I am sitting at the same table they are."

"All of us have heard the statement by [intelligence community] leaders at one time or another that 'Our business is stealing secrets.' Or 'Our business is espionage.' While I deeply respect that, and I understand where that's coming from, from my Open Source perspective, I'm thinking that's like a football coach saying, 'Our mission is to pass the ball.' Or 'Our mission is to run the ball.' Well, not exactly. It's to win football games."

Mr. Naquin addressed the Central Intelligence Retirees' Association on October 3, 2007 . The text of his remarks is available here:

http://www.fas.org/irp/eprint/naquin.pdf

While the Open Source Center may be thriving, its net value to the general public has actually declined. That is because only a small fraction of its product is normally made publicly available (for a

substantial subscription fee), while alternative means of public access to international information sources continue to multiply.

COMMON STANDARDS FOR TERRORISM INFORMATION SHARING

Government agencies are still laboring to devise "common standards for preparing terrorism information for maximum distribution," in response to a December 2005 directive from the President.

Recently the Program Manager for the ODNI Information Sharing Environment issued a memorandum describing the implementation of such common standards.

See "Common Terrorism Information Sharing Standards (CTISS) Program," Information Sharing Environment Administrative Memorandum, October 31, 2007 :

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/ise/ctiss.pdf

"Maximum distribution" of information here means sharing with federal agencies, state and local governments, law enforcement agencies, and the private sector. It does not imply that terrorism-related

information will be shared with the general public.

RENDITION TO TORTURE: THE CASE OF MAHER ARAR

The case of Maher Arar, the Canadian national who was mistakenly identified as an Islamist extremist and deported from the United States to Syria for interrogation under torture, was explored in a

Congressional hearing last October. The record of that hearing has just been published.

"The refusal of the Bush administration to be held accountable [for its handling of the Arar case] is an embarrassment to many of us," said Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-MA) of the House Judiciary Committee, who issued his own apology to Mr. Arar.

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) endorsed the apology to Maher Arar, but also defended the Bush Administration policy of extraordinary rendition.

"Should we halt every government program that, due to a human error, results in a tragedy?" asked Mr. Rohrabacher. "I challenge anybody to compare the error rate of rendition, this program, with the error rate in any other government program."

See "Rendition to Torture: The Case of Maher Arar," joint hearingbefore subcommittees of the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs Committees, October 18, 2007 :

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2007_hr/arar.pdf

THE NEXT PRESIDENT COULD REVERSE BUSH-ERA SECRECY

The next President of the United States could single-handedly do what years of advocacy, investigation, legislation and litigation have yet to fully accomplish, namely to uncover the concealed record of the Bush Administration's two terms in office on everything from warrantless wiretapping to extraordinary rendition.

In an essay published in the Nieman Watchdog today, I argue that the next Administration might find it advantageous and would clearly have the authority to overcome the Bush-era secrecy that has impeded government accountability and confounded public debate on a whole host of issues.

"By now no one expects the Bush Administration to make itself accountable for its controversial and possibly illegal practices in domestic surveillance, prisoner detention and interrogation, or for its numerous other departures from the norms of American government. But the next President will have a unique opportunity to reveal what has been kept hidden for the last seven years, and to let Americans know exactly what has been done in their name."

"Although internal White House records that document the activities of the outgoing President and his personal advisers will be exempt from disclosure for a dozen years or so, every Bush Administration decision that was actually translated into policy will have left a documentary trail in one or more of the agencies, and all such records could be disclosed at the discretion of the next President."

If so, it would make sense to question the presidential candidates now about their willingness to engage in such housecleaning by asking them, for example:

"Will you disclose the full scope of Bush Administration domestic surveillance activities affecting American citizens, including all surveillance actions that were undertaken outside of the framework of

law, as well as the legal opinions that were generated to justify them?"

See "The next president should open up the Bush Administration's record" by Steven Aftergood, Nieman Watchdog, February 7:

http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm

The Nieman Watchdog, a project of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University , aims to invigorate press coverage by framing probing questions on matters of public policy importance.

NORTHERN COMMAND ROLES AND MISSIONS, AND MORE FROM CRS

Noteworthy new reports from the Congressional Research Service include the following.

"Homeland Security: Roles and Missions for United States Northern Command," January 28:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/homesec/RL34342.pdf

" Pakistan 's Nuclear Weapons: Proliferation and Security Issues," updated January 14, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL34248.pdf

" Pakistan 's Political Crises," updated January 3, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL34240.pdf

"Navy Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Program: Oversight Issues and Options for Congress," updated January 4, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/weapons/RL33741.pdf

"East Asian Regional Architecture: New Economic and Security Arrangements and U.S. Policy," updated January 4, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33653.pdf

"The United Nations Human Rights Council: Issues for Congress," updated January 8, 2008 :

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/row/RL33608.pdf

A Credit Card You Want to Toss

February 8, 2008

by Robert Berner

Business Week

Credit-card issuers have drawn fire for jacking up interest rates on cardholders who aren't behind on payments, but whose credit score has fallen for another reason. Now, some consumers complain, Bank of America is hiking rates based on no apparent deterioration in their credit scores at all.

The major credit-card lender in mid-January sent letters notifying some responsible cardholders that it would more than double their rates to as high as 28%, without giving an explanation for the increase, according to copies of five letters obtained by BusinessWeek. Fine print at the end of the letter—headed "Important Amendment to Your Credit Card Agreement"—advised calling an 800-number for the reason, but consumers who called say they were unable to get a clear answer. "No one could give me an explanation," says Eric Fresch, a Huron ( Ohio ) engineer who is on time with his Bank of America card payments and knows of no decline in the status of his overall credit.

Bank of America spokeswoman Betty Riess confirms some bank cardholders could be receiving rate increases for reasons other than declines in credit scores, such as running higher balances with their Bank of America cards or with other creditors. She says the increases are part of a "periodic review" that assesses customers' credit risk. She declined to say if the Charlotte (N.C.) bank had changed its credit standards thereby bumping some consumers' rates or how many cardholders were being affected by the review. Bank of America has 40 million U.S. credit-card accounts.

Buzz about the letters is building on the Internet. Since mid-January Credit.com, a credit-card information site, has received 40 complaints from consumers Bank of America had notified of sharp rate increases, even though they were current on their bills, says Emily Davidson, a Credit.com researcher. Complaint sites My3cents.com and BankofAmericaBadforAmerica.org say they have also received similar complaints.

The so-called "opt-out" letters give borrowers the option of no longer using their card and paying off the balance at the old rate. But they must write Bank of America by later this month if they plan to do so—otherwise their rates on existing and new balances automatically rise.

Arbitrary Criteria

What's striking is how arbitrary the Bank of America rate increases appear, credit industry experts say. In recent years, many card companies have turned to a practice called "risk-based pricing," where they will raise a regular paying consumer's rate because of a decline in the person's FICO score. FICO is a credit-risk score developed by Fair Isaac that includes a number of risk metrics the Minneapolis company doesn't disclose. Credit reporting bureaus supply creditors with FICO scores along with other data, such as late payments and debts owed.

In a December congressional hearing spearheaded by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), lawmakers slammed big card companies for using such pricing with customers who pay on time. By law, credit-card lenders can change terms as long as they notify borrowers. Even so, JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup announced ahead of Levin's hearing that they would stop the practice of raising card rates based solely on FICO scores.

But Bank of America appears to be taking an even more aggressive stance because, beyond credit scores, it is using internal criteria that aren't available to consumers. That makes the reason for the rate increase even more opaque. "Congress has faulted credit-card companies for lack of transparency in raising rates," says William Ryan, a financial industry analyst at Portales Partners, a New York-based research firm. "Bank of America is bringing it to a new level."

An Unjustified, For-Profit Move

Analysts also say they are surprised by the magnitude of the rate raises Bank of America is imposing on affected cardholders. Michael Jordan, 25, a software developer who lives in Higganum , Conn. , says he received a letter from Bank of America in late January advising him that his card rate would rise from 9.99% to 24.99%. The software developer, who earns $80,000 per year, says he was "shocked" because his payments had been on time and his credit score hadn't changed in the last year. In fact, Jordan says, he has only $4,500 in overall outstanding credit-card debt on two cards and that, on the Bank of America card in question, he had paid down his balance to $3,000 from $3,700 last August. "His rate increase seems unjustified based on his credit profile," says David Robertson, publisher of The Nilson Report, a credit-card industry trade publication.

When Jordan called Bank of America about the higher rate, he says, the bank representative couldn't explain why his rate was going up. On a second call, he adds, the individual told him the reason for the increase was that he hadn't been paying down his balance fast enough, though he had lowered it by 19% in the last six months and was only now utilizing 54% of his $5,500 credit limit. Riess, the Bank of America spokeswoman, declined to discuss individual rate increases or to list all the criteria the bank was using as reasons to raise rates on existing cardholders.

Analysts say the bank's move is obviously aimed at shoring up profits. On Jan. 22 Bank of America reported a 95% decrease in fourth-quarter earnings due mostly to increases in loan-loss reserves for consumer credit, including rising card charge-offs and write-downs in mortgage-related securities. Bank of America faces another profit sinkhole with its pending acquisition of troubled Countrywide Financial (CFC). Portales' Ryan notes that boosting rates on existing credit-card holders is one of the quickest levers a bank can pull to try to boost earnings.

Anticipating Charge-Offs

Bank of America hasn't made it easy for consumers to reject the new rates. The letters require that consumers write Bank of America to agree to no longer use the card and pay off the existing balance at the old rate—they can't telephone to do so, nor does Bank of America provide a form or a return envelope. Moreover, consumers don't have much time to respond. Cardholders say they got the letters in the latter half of January: four of the letters obtained by BusinessWeek require a written response by Feb. 19, while the fifth requires a response by Feb. 29. If the company doesn't get a response by those dates, rates automatically rise. A response, of course, assumes consumers read the letter from Bank of America as they sort junk mail. "It's a reasonable assumption that most don't," says Karen Gross, a legal scholar on consumer credit and president of Southern Vermont College.

Bank of America also benefits from consumers who do write in an agreement to pay off balances at the old rate and not use the card again, says Nathan Powell, a credit analyst at New York-based research firm RiskMetrics Group. The bank, he says, is clearly trying to protect itself from worsening credit-card charge-offs ahead, something analysts widely expect in the card industry as the economy deteriorates. Powell says the bank must have identified a list of other credit criteria besides FICO that it is using to screen cardholders and determine it's no longer worth new business if they don't accept the higher rate. So far, Bank of America's charge-off rates have risen in line with the credit-card industry, up to 5.08% of receivables at the end of the fourth quarter from 4.57% a year ago. "The bank doesn't want to get behind the curve," Powell says.

"Unacceptable" Hikes

Bank of America is trying to get ahead of Amanda Pennington, 29, of Euless , Texas . She says the bank raised her credit limit three months ago from $5,000 to $8,000 because of her strong payment history. Then she got the letter from the bank in mid-January notifying that her rate would rise from 15.74% to 25.99%. When she called, she says, the bank told her it was raising her rate because her balance was now too high, though it was still under the higher new limit the bank had previously granted. After paying tuition for a community college course, transferring another balance, and paying for daily expenses, Pennington's Bank of America debt now stands at $7,500. Bank of America declined to comment on individual customers.

Adam Levin, CEO of Credit.com and former head of New Jersey 's Division of Consumer Affairs, says he is surprised Bank of America would risk bad public relations with its rate increases, given the congressional hearings in December. The bank risks alienating new customers and existing ones by being so brazen, he says, adding, "Either Bank of America has more financial troubles than it is willing to admit or it has a level of institutional arrogance that is unacceptable."

Berner is a correspondent for BusinessWeek in Chicago .

Bush, Congress hit bottom in AP poll

February 8, 2008

by Alan Fram

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -It's almost as if people can barely stand the thought of President Bush and Congress anymore. Bush reached his lowest approval rating in The Associated Press-Ipsos poll on Friday as only 30 percent ( a White House private poll shows that over all, Bush is at 15% approval rate nationwide ed.)said they like the job he is doing, including an all-time low in his support by Republicans. Congress' approval fell to just 22 percent, equaling its poorest grade in the survey.

Both marks dropped by 4 percentage points since early January. The dour public mood seems to chiefly reflect distress over the doddering economy, which has seen job cuts, financial market slides and real estate losses stoke recession fears.

Bush's approval for handling the economy dove to 29 percent, ( private White House poll shows an approval rate of 17&. ed) a slide of 4 percentage points in a month and matching hislow on that issue, with noticeable slumps among middle-income people,

Southerners and city residents.

"He's spent billions of dollars on the war, and the economy here is suffering," said Ron Brathwaite, 41, a Democrat from Brooklyn , N.Y. ,who was interviewed in the poll.

"If you're leading this country, you should start fixing within this country." Bush and Congress

have been overshadowed in recent months by a presidential campaign in which both parties' candidates have emphasized how they would change Washington — an implicit criticism of the president and the Democratic-led Congress.

Even the leading Republican contenders have spent little time defending Bush, though they haven't attacked him frequently because he remains popular within the GOP. Yet Bush's acceptance by his own party is at bottom in the AP-Ipsos poll.

Just 61 percent of Republicans gave Bush positive reviews; his previous low was 65 percent last month. Only 28 percent of them expressed strong approval. About one in 10 Democrats and three in 10 independents gave Bush positive marks.

"I believe we have to protect the country at all costs," said Jack Vogt, 61, a retiree from Lakeland , Fla. , and a strong Bush supporter.

He said he did not fault the president or Congress for the economy's problems, saying, "I don't feel they can influence it one way or the other."

Bush's previous overall low in the AP-Ipsos poll came in November when his approval rating was 31 percent. His current level is essentially even with that.

Congress also hit 22 percent in October. It usually has lower ratings than the president because it is an institution people love to criticize. Many have negative views of Congress while still supporting their own House and Senate members.

Even so, its ratings are approaching its historic low in the Gallup Poll of 18 percent reached in early 1992 during a furor over lawmakers who bounced House bank checks.

Only about one in five Democrats, Republicans and independents approve of Congress' work, with less than one in 20 from each group approving strongly.

"When I see them say they want to investigate Bill Belichick and Spygate, I say, 'Why do you want to investigate something like that when we have things we should address'" like the economy and health care, Mitch Dugger, 46, an independent from Mandeville , La. , said.

Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., recently said the Senate Judiciary Committee may want to examine why the National Football League destroyed evidence in a scandal over cheating by Belichick, the New England Patriots' coach.

Bush also hit a new low in this month's poll for his work on domestic issues likehealth care, energy and the environment, getting approval from 27 percent, a 7-point tumble since January.

Thirty-three percent approved of his handling of the war in Iraq , virtually unchanged. Underlining the public gloom, after a brief holiday uptick, the mood of the country has returned to its level in November, with just 25 percent saying the country is headed in the right direction.

President Truman had the lowest rating ever in the Gallup Poll with 23 percent approval in 1952 during the Korean War; President Nixon reached 24 percent during the summer of 1974 before he resigned during the Watergate scandal.

The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted Feb. 4-6 and involved telephone interviews with 1,006 adults. (The private White House poll surveyed 25,000 people on eighteen levels. Ed.)

It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.

___

AP Director of Surveys Trevor Tompson and

AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.

Concern mounts over rising troop suicides

February 3, 2008

CNN

WASHINGTON Every day, five U.S. soldiers try to kill themselves. Before the Iraq war began, that figure was less than one suicide attempt a day. The dramatic increase is revealed in new U.S. Army figures, which show 2,100 soldiers tried to commit suicide in 2007.

"Suicide attempts are rising and have risen over the last five years," said Col. Elspeth Cameron-Ritchie, an Army psychiatrist.

Concern over the rate of suicide attempts prompted Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, to introduce legislation Thursday to improve the military's suicide-prevention programs. Sen. Patty Murray, D-Washington, took to the Senate floor Thursday, urging more help for military members, especially for those returning from war.

"Our brave service members who face deployment after deployment without the rest, recovery and treatment they need are at the breaking point," Murray said.

She said Congress has given "hundreds of millions of dollars" to the military to improve its ability to provide mental health treatment, but said it will take more than money to resolve the problem.

"It takes leadership and it takes a change in the culture of war," she said. She said some soldiers had reported receiving nothing more than an 800 number to call for help.

"Many soldiers need a real person to talk to," she said. "And they need psychiatrists and they need psychologists."

According to Army statistics, the incidence of U.S. Army soldiers attempting suicide or inflicting injuries on themselves has skyrocketed in the nearly five years since the start of the Iraq war.

Last year's 2,100 attempted suicides -- an average of more than 5 per day -- compares with about 350 suicide attempts in 2002, the year before the war in Iraq began, according to the Army.

"Our troops and their families are under unprecedented levels of stress due to the pace and frequency of more than five years of deployments," Webb said in a written statement.

The figures also show the number of suicides by active-duty troops in 2007 may reach an all-time high when the statistics are finalized in March, Army officials said.

The Army lists 89 soldier deaths in 2007 as suicides and is investigating 32 more as possible suicides. Suicide rates already were up in 2006 with 102 deaths, compared with 87 in 2005.

Cameron-Ritchie, the Army psychiatrist, said suicide attempts are usually related to problems with intimate relationships, but they are also related to problems with work, finances and the law.

"The really tough area here is stigma. We know that soldiers don't want to go seek care. They're tough, they're strong, they don't want to go see a behavioral health-care provider," Cameron-Ritchie said.

Multiple deployments and long deployments appear to exact a toll on relationships, thereby boosting the number of suicide attempts, she said.

Traditionally, the suicide rate among military members has been lower than age- and gender-matched civilians. But in recent years the rate has crept up from 12 per 100,000 among the military to 17.5 per 100,000 in 2006, she said. That's still less than the civilian figure of about 20 per 100,000, she said.

The "typical" soldier who commits suicide is a member of an infantry unit who uses a firearm to carry out the act, according to the Army.

Post-traumatic stress disorder also may be a factor in suicide attempts, Cameron-Ritchie said, because it can result in broken relationships and often leads to drug and alcohol abuse.

"The real central issue is relationships. Relationships, relationships, relationships," said U.S. Army Chaplain Lt. Col. Ran Dolinger. "People look at PTSD, they look at length of deployments ... but it's that broken relationship that really makes the difference."

To reduce suicides, the Army said it is targeting soldiers who are or have been in Iraq for long periods and teaching them to notice signs that can lead to suicide.

That training came too late for Army Specialist Tim Bowman. The 23-year-old killed himself in 2005 after returning from Iraq .

"As my family was preparing for a 2005 Thanksgiving meal, our son Timothy was lying on the floor, slowly bleeding to death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound," said his father, Mike Bowman, in testimony to a House Veterans' Affairs committee hearing in December. "His war was now over."

He said veterans return home to find an "understaffed, under-funded, under-equipped" Veterans Affairs mental health system.

The Cable-Cutter Mystery

Spies, lies, and "conspiracy theories" – what's behind the Middle East internet outage

February 8, 2008

by Justin Raimondo

AntiWar.com

I was skeptical, at first, of speculation over the cutting of two cables linking the Middle East with the Internet, which had it as part of some Vast Neocon Conspiracy to isolate the region prior to a US military assault. However, when two more cables – this time, in the Persian Gulf – were mysteriously cut, I began to wonder ….

In a piece headlined "Cable cutter nutters chase conspiracy theories," The Register goes out of its way to laugh off the prospect that what we are witnessing is a military operation, or the prelude to one, sniffing "there's little more than suspicions to work with" since we've yet to reach the damaged cables. Yet, given the sort of government we are dealing with – a regime that lied us into one war, and is not-so-subtly trying to finagle us into yet another one – why shouldn't we be suspicious? We'd have to be crazy not to be.

The Economist follows suit, sneering at "internet conspiracy theories" and denouncing the whole brouhaha as an "online frenzy" that is "way out of line." Yet one has to wonder: four cable cuts in the past week? I'm with Steven Bellovin, a computer science professor at Columbia University , who avers:

"As a security guy, I'm paranoid, but I don't understand the threat model here. On the other hand, four accidental failures in a week is a bit hard to swallow, too. Let's hope there will be close, open examination of the failed parts of the cables."

First it was supposed to be a ship's anchor that caused the damage, and yet the Egyptians have said there were no ships in the vicinity, which they regularly monitor: besides which, that entire area near Alexandria is off-limits to all shipping. Another reason to suspect a deliberate act: this politically-sensitive region is an Internet choke-point, as ABC News points out. "The route connecting Europe to Egypt , and from there to the Middle East " is tenuous:

"Today, just three major data cables stretch from Italy to Egypt and run down the Suez Canal , and from there to much of the Middle East . (A separate line connects Italy with Israel .) A serious cut here is immediately obvious across the region, and a double cut can be crippling."

Yet theories that this incident prefigures a US attack on Iran don't comport with the facts: Iran , far from being isolated by the cuts, may have enjoyed better connectivity as a result of the events. The areas hardest hit were Kuwait , Egypt , and especially Pakistan – this last being a likelier target for isolation than Iran , and certainly more current

Another, and far more plausible, theory is that the seemingly coordinated cuts resulted from efforts to tap into the cables – a spying operation. Go here for an exhaustive and very convincing case for viewing this as "special warfare."

The Register cites Prof. Bellovin, but fails to note the real gist of his remarks. While he's skeptical of the above-cited link, which posits a scenario whereby the USS Jimmy Carter, present whereabouts unknown, uses its specially designed facilities to tap directly into the cables, Bellovin poses an alternative scenario:

“If it wasn't a direct attempt at eavesdropping, perhaps it was indirect. Several years ago, a colleague and I wrote about link-cutting attacks. In these, you cut some cables, to force traffic past a link you're monitoring. Link-cutting for such purposes isn't new; at the start of World War I, the British cut Germany 's overseas telegraph cable to force them to use easily-monitored links. One of the messages they intercepted — and cryptanalyzed — was the Zimmerman telegram, which asked Mexico to join Germany in attacking the US, in exchange for financial support and recovery of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. Instead, public outrage in the US contributed to the decision to enter the war against Germany ."

"The problem with this scenario," he adds, "is that the benefit is short-lived: the cables will be repaired in a few weeks." Yes, but long enough to have accomplished – what? We can't know, of course, but Prof. Bellovin certainly raises some interesting possibilities, none of which can be discounted by clueless journalists who sniff at "conspiracy theories" – as if we have no reason whatsoever to suspect covert action, by the US or whomever, in that area of the world. As Prof. Bellovin and a co-author point out in this paper on the subject: "Attacks on the routing system, with the goal of diverting traffic past an enemy-controlled point for purposes of eavesdropping or connection-hijacking, have long been known."

Given the context in which these cable cuts are occurring – heightened tensions in the region, and not only with Iran – I think it is probable that they are deliberate, and that the diversion of internet traffic for purposes of eavesdropping is clearly the intent. After all, ask yourself this question: which is more plausible, an "accidental" cutting of four cables in one week in an area of the world which is the current focus of US military and diplomatic efforts, or the scenario outlined by Prof. Bellovin?

None of this is at all surprising. The US government currently claims the right to spy on Americans, in their own country, as well as when they're in communication with overseas individuals. They don't hide this, but proclaim it from the rooftops: does anyone doubt they are capable of commandeering the world's internet cable network in order to utilize it for their own purposes? You don't have to quaff the "conspiracy theorist" Kool-Aid to find this credible: a dose of realism will do.