Huffington Post : Disappeared in the Name of National Security

Disappeared in the Name of National Security

Mohamed Farag Bashmilah | February 19, 2009

From October 2003 until May 2005, I was illegally detained by the U.S. government and held in CIA-run "black sites" with no contact with the outside world. On May 5, 2005, without explanation, my American captors removed me from my cell and cuffed, hooded, and bundled me onto a plane that delivered me to Sana'a, Yemen. I was transferred into the custody of my own government, which held me -- apparently at the behest of the United States -- until March 27, 2006, when I was finally released, never once having faced any terrorism-related charges. Since my release, the U.S. government has never explained why I was detained and has blocked all attempts to find out more about my detention.

What I do know is that the Jordanian government -- after torturing me for several days -- handed me over to a U.S. "rendition team" in Amman, which then abducted me, forced me onto a plane, and flew me to Afghanistan. During this, and several other transfers between CIA prisons, I was subjected to a brutal and deeply humiliating "preparation" ritual. I was stripped naked, dressed in a diaper, shackled, blindfolded and hooded, and then boarded onto a waiting plane. I was forced into painful positions, often reeling from the blows and kicks of the men who had "prepared" me for flight.

During my detention, I agonized constantly about my family back in Yemen, knowing they had no idea where I was. They never once received information about who had taken me, why I was taken, or even whether I was alive. They were never contacted by the U.S. government or the International Committee of the Red Cross. My mother and wife were in such anguish that they had to be hospitalized for illness, stress, and anxiety. My father passed away while I was disappeared and I am still distraught thinking that he died without knowing whether I was dead or alive. I continue to suffer from bouts of illness that medical doctors attribute to the treatment I experienced in the "black sites." My physical symptoms are made worse by the anxiety caused by never knowing where I was held, and not having any form of acknowledgment that I was disappeared and tortured by the U.S. government.

I believe that acknowledgment is the first step toward accounting for a wrongdoing. The American public needs to face what has happened to those of us who were disappeared and mistreated in the name of their national security, demand accountability for those who committed torture and other crimes, and acknowledge the suffering of those who became victims. Today, a group of concerned Americans called on President Obama to take the first steps to do just that, by demanding that he establish an independent commission of inquiry into the treatment of detainees in the "War on Terror."

President Obama himself recently said that "democracy requires accountability and accountability requires transparency." If he establishes this commission, it would break the silence about what has happened and signal a real commitment not only to changing the practices of the past but also to ensuring that they do not happen again. Both the American public and the victims of these past policies need to understand what the CIA did in the name of U.S. national security. We need to find out where we were all held and who is still missing. And we need justice for the crimes that were committed in violation of our most basic human rights -- rights the United States has always claimed to uphold and defend. President Obama's recent order to the CIA to shut down its secret prisons was a significant step in the right direction, but it did not resolve the unfinished business of establishing accountability and restoring transparency.

The American public deserves to know what was done to people like me -- and I deserve to know why I lost nineteen months of my life -- all in the name of protecting their security. It gives me faith to see that Americans are standing up for my rights and calling for the truth to be exposed. It is my hope that the President will not only establish this commission, but that he will also direct the relevant authorities to investigate and prosecute those who broke American laws in ordering the torture and disappearance of people like me. Truth and justice are not in opposition; both are necessary, and both are the right of all Americans and the victims harmed in their name.


Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a citizen of Yemen, is a client of the International Human Rights Clinic at NYU School of Law, which represents him in his quest for truth and justice.

Toronto Star : Toronto man haunted by U.S. jail nightmares

Toronto man haunted by U.S. jail nightmares

Former Algerian air force lieutenant jailed for 5 years says Canada's decision to transfer him to the United States after Sept. 11 attacks was illegal

Isabel Teotonio | Staff reporter | February 29, 2008

Benamar Benatta rarely sleeps more than three or four hours a night.

The 33-year-old former Algerian air force lieutenant still spends nights wondering why Canadian officials transported him across the border on Sept. 12, 2001 then handed him to American authorities. And, of course, there are recurring nightmares of five years spent in U.S. jails, despite being cleared by the FBI in November 2001 of having any links to the 9/11 attacks.

The Toronto man can still hear the taunts from jail guards who called him a terrorist; can still hear the jingle of keys as guards entered his cell every half-hour, waking him from a fitful slumber.

"I'm not the same person I used to be before Sept. 12, who was full of life and full of spirit," said Benatta, whose feet and hands bear scars from his time in jail. "It's like they've marked me for the rest of my life. It wasn't only five years of detention – what they did to me will hurt me the rest of my life," said Benatta, who was granted refugee status in November.

Benatta's story became a minor cause celebre in the U.S., but his fight to have the Canadian government probe his case, isn't well-known north of the border. That's why he is scheduled to speak tonight at the Noor Cultural Centre.

"He is the first and only known case of Canada effecting an extraordinary rendition – an illegal transfer of a person from one legal jurisdiction to another outside the scope of law," said Benatta's lawyer Nicole Chrolavicius.

A Canada Border Services Agency spokesperson refused to comment yesterday, saying the government is reviewing the allegations in a lawsuit filed by Benatta.

Benatta was raised in a middle-class family in Algeria, the youngest of 10 children. He trained as an aeronautical engineer and joined the air force in 1992, the same year the military-backed government cancelled elections to keep the opposition Islamic party from power. Conflict engulfed the nation in a civil war marked by atrocities.

Benatta watched the military crackdown and refused to participate in some acts, which landed him in prison. He also received death threats from Islamic fighters.

In December 2000, he and other Algerian officers went to the U.S. to train in aircraft technology. But when his six-month visa expired, he stayed illegally.

On Sept. 5, 2001, he decided to seek asylum in Canada. Officials spotted his false identification and arrested him. On Sept. 12 he was handed over to the Americans, but he unaware of what had happened the previous day.

Benatta and his lawyer say this was an illegal transfer. There has been suggestion by the Canadian government he had withdrawn his asylum bid and returned voluntarily but no paperwork has been produced to support that claim.

Benatta was held in jail under abusive conditions documented in U.S. court filings. Although he was cleared of terror links two months later, he wasn't told, or given access to counsel, until April 2002.

He was then transferred to another prison on charges of having carried fraudulent papers. A federal judge later called the case a "sham."

Benatta was released in summer 2006 when Canada issued him a temporary residency permit, allowing him to claim refugee status, which was granted because it was determined he would be in danger if he returned to Algeria.

"I'm very disappointed about (the government's) reaction," said Benatta, who recently landed a job and got off social assistance. "When they allowed me to return, I thought they'd accept their mistake and say `Sorry.' Maybe for them it means nothing, but for someone who has been subjected to torture.... It means a lot."

Discussion starts at 7:30 p.m. at the Noor Cultural Centre. Admission: $5.

Guardian : The mysterious disappearance of an alleged terror mastermind

The mysterious disappearance of an alleged terror mastermind

Rashid Rauf's escape from police at a mosque seemed audacious. But his lawyer believes he is still in custody.

Ian Cobain in Rawalpindi | January 28, 2008

On the morning of Thursday August 10 2006, Britain awoke to the news that the security services and police were alleged to have foiled a terror attack that was to have been unprecedented in magnitude and mercilessness, according to senior Scotland Yard officers.

Using smuggled liquid explosives and detonators made from camera flashlights, Islamist terrorists were said to have been plotting to bring down 10 airliners in mid-Atlantic. Three thousand people or more were to have died.

A few hours earlier, New Yorkers watching late-night television news had been told official sources had identified the alleged mastermind as a British citizen called Rashid Rauf. A few hours later, Pakistani authorities were reporting that he had already been captured.

Little was known about Rauf at that time, other than that he was from Birmingham, and that he had flown to Pakistan four years earlier, one step ahead of detectives who were eager to question him about the murder of his uncle. Eighteen months on, the alleged terrorist mastermind remains something of an enigma, even though he is at the centre of another curious episode in the campaign against international jihadist terror - one far more difficult to fathom than the alleged airline bomb plot.

Shortly before Christmas, Rauf is said to have escaped from Pakistani custody when two policemen escorting him from court in the capital, Islamabad, to a jail outside the nearby city of Rawalpindi stopped to allow him to pray in a roadside mosque. The officers claimed that when Rauf walked into the mosque they waited outside in their car, never considering for a moment that he could simply walk out of the back door.

Both policemen are now themselves in custody, and the official Pakistani government explanation is that they were bribed. It is an explanation that appears to satisfy western officials in Islamabad. "The policemen must have been paid off, they didn't report it for several hours," says one. "The Pakistani government is seriously embarrassed by this." Others are not so sure, however, and suspect that Rauf may still be in custody, this time at one of the secret detention centres that the formidable Pakistani security agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), is known to operate at anonymous suburban villas. "It wasn't an escape from custody," says his lawyer, Hashmat Ali Habib. "You could call it a 'mysterious disappearance' if you like, but not an escape. The Pakistanis are simply not interested in handing him over to the British. They never have been, although it is not clear why not."

What is clear is that in a country where ties of family and faith can mean more than duty or the letter of the law, where intelligence agencies stand accused of operating like terrorists and where terrorist gangs are the creation of those same agencies, nothing can be taken for granted in the strange disappearance of Rashid Rauf.

Vanishing act

The son of a successful businessman from the Ward End area of Birmingham, east of the city centre, Rauf, 27, had already pulled off one vanishing act, in April 2002, after his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, was stabbed repeatedly in the stomach as he walked home from work. Saeed, 54, managed to stagger the few yards to his front door, where he collapsed in front of his wife and children. The motive for his killing has never been made public, but if West Midlands police ever get their hands on Rauf, they say he will face a charge of murder.

Once in Pakistan, the young Brummie headed for Bahawalpur, a small town 450 miles south of Islamabad where he knew a local imam, a man who had stayed at his family home while preaching in the UK. Despite speaking very little Urdu, Rauf was soon engaged to marry the imam's daughter. It was a union that brought him close to an organisation once described as the deadliest terrorist group on the sub-continent.

Rauf's wife is closely related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, the founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Mohammed, a group that enjoyed close links with the ISI during the 1990s, when it was helping the Pakistani government wage a proxy war against India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Outlawed in the wake of the September 11 attacks, at the insistence of the United States, Jaish-e-Mohammed has been alleged to have been implicated in the murder of Wall Street Journal correspondent Daniel Pearl, and is accused of orchestrating a string of suicide bombing attacks in Pakistan. Despite this, it operates almost openly across Pakistan under a number of different names, and undoubtedly still has contacts within the ISI and the Pakistani police.

Rauf was picked up in Bahawalpur in early August 2006, almost a week before any airliner terrorism suspects were detained in the UK. The Americans had been urging the British and Pakistani authorities to move quickly, and when they threatened to detain Rauf themselves, and hurl him into their so-called extraordinary rendition programme, the ISI arrested him.

After being held incommunicado by the ISI, Rauf was brought before court accused of terrorism offences, and remanded to Adiala prison, where violence and extortion is rife and where a parliamentary human rights commission concluded after a visit in May 2006 that "most prisoners showed signs of physical abuse". Rauf subsequently told his lawyer that he had been mistreated, and that he had been interrogated by westerners as well as Pakistani officials.

In December 2006, a judge threw out the terrorism charges, but Rauf remained in custody for a further year, accused of possessing explosives and carrying forged identity papers. Then, last November, a lower court ordered his release after those charges were withdrawn. Within 30 minutes, the government announced that he was to be extradited to the UK, and the following day he was detained for a further 90 days. To complicate matters, the Pakistani government had been insisting for several months that Rauf would be handed over only if the British extradited two Pakistani men living in London. The pair - separatists from the south-western province of Balochistan - are accused by Islamabad of terrorism, which they firmly deny. While the British government insisted there could be no such swap, the two men were arrested by Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command within three weeks of extradition proceedings beginning against Rauf, and are fighting to remain in the UK.

Extradition process

Under the terms of the extradition process, Rauf was to be brought regularly before a court in Islamabad, 18 miles from Adiala prison. On December 14, Habib says, he heard shortly after lunch that his client had unlocked his handcuffs and escaped while being taken to court.

That evening, however, Islamabad police said that two policemen escorting him from court had taken him to a McDonald's drive-in in Rawalpindi later that afternoon before allowing him to pray alone at a mosque, still handcuffed. And then, according to the official account, the alleged British terrorist mastermind simply melted away.

McDonald's, in the neighbourhood known as Civil Lines, is a place where teenagers hum to music echoing from the speakers while security guards carefully search their cars for bombs. The manager is clearly tired of answering questions about Rashid Rauf. "I can tell you what I have told the police," he says. "Nobody noticed them. But we have lots of policemen coming here, and lots of people who look like Rauf."

A few miles away on Adiala Road, leading from the city to the prison, there was a similar story at Rukhshanda mosque. "We don't remember seeing Rauf that day, and the police didn't come in looking for him," says the caretaker. "We only know he's supposed to have escaped from here because the police have been back every day since, asking questions."

At the back of the mosque is a small yard bounded by a head-high wall. Behind the wall is an alley, at the end of which lie open fields. And somewhere beyond those, according to the official account, perhaps hiding with members of Jaish-e-Mohammed, is the young man from Birmingham who plotted to bring down 10 transatlantic airliners.

It is an account that makes Rauf's lawyer smile. "Look, many people, thousands of people, disappear in Pakistan," says Habib. "The government knows what it means, and the people know what it means."

Like most Pakistanis, Habib is afraid of the ISI, and is reluctant to name the agency. "You can infer what you like," is all he will say.

Human rights organisations are not so apprehensive. Amnesty International said in a recent report that in the Pakistani government's enthusiasm for the so-called war on terror, "many people have been detained incommunicado in undisclosed places of detention and tortured or ill-treated ... some have been charged with criminal offences unrelated to terrorism, others have been released without charge, reportedly after being warned to keep quiet about their experience, while some have been found dead".

Habib does not believe that Rauf has disappeared for ever. "Sometimes in Pakistan, people come home after two or three years saying they were just taken out of prison and left at the side of a main road," he says. "Or sometimes people are brought to the surface by the authorities, for some reason or other."

There is a third possibility: "Perhaps it will be announced that Rashid was caught in crossfire during a police operation. Then his family will be given his body."

Birmingham to Bahawalpur

· Rashid Rauf fled the UK in 2002 after his uncle, Mohammed Saeed, was stabbed repeatedly in the stomach as he walked home from work. West Midlands police say Rauf will face a charge of murder if he returns.

· Rauf ended up in Bahawalpur, a small town 450 miles south of Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. An imam there had once stayed at Rauf's family home in Birmingham. Rauf was soon engaged to the imam's daughter. Rauf's wife is closely related by marriage to Maulana Masood Azhar, founder of Jaish-e-Mohammed, or Army of Muhammad, a group outlawed in the wake of the September 11 attacks at the insistence of the United States. Jaish-e-Mohammed has been alleged to have been implicated in the murder of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent, and is accused of orchestrating a string of suicide bombing attacks in Pakistan.

· Rauf was picked up in Bahawalpur in early August 2006 as part of the investigation into an alleged plot to bring down 10 airliners flying from Britain to the United States. In court he was accused of terrorism offences and remanded to Adiala prison, near Rawalpindi.

· In December 2006 a judge threw out the terrorism charges, but he remained in custody for a further year, accused of possessing explosives and carrying forged identity papers. Last November a lower court ordered his release but the government immediately announced that he was to be extradited to the UK and he was detained for a further 90 days. Rauf is said to have escaped on December 14 while being returned to prison after an extradition hearing in Islamabad.

IHT : CIA agents sense shifting support for methods

CIA agents sense shifting support for methods

By Scott Shane | December 13, 2007

WASHINGTON: For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.

Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil.

The Justice Department, which in 2002 gave the CIA legal approval for waterboarding and other tough interrogation methods, is reviewing whether agency officials broke the law by destroying videotapes of those very methods.

The congressional intelligence committees, whose leaders in 2002 gave at least tacit approval for the tough tactics, have voted in conference to ban all coercive techniques, and they have announced investigations of the destruction of the videotapes and the methods they documented.

"Exactly what they feared is what's happening," Jack Goldsmith, the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, said of the CIA officials he advised in that job. "The winds change, and the recriminations begin."

The legal siege against the Bush administration's counterterrorism programs goes far beyond the CIA, including lawsuits brought on behalf of hundreds of detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and more than 40 challenges in court to the National Security Agency's warrantless surveillance program.

For some at the CIA, the second-guessing began in 2004 with a decision by Goldsmith, now at Harvard Law School, to withdraw the 2002 opinion on interrogation, whose sweeping constitutional claims and narrow definition of torture he found fatally flawed. But he said he regretted the way the agency had been whipsawed — accused of "risk aversion" immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks, and now blamed for traducing American values by engaging in torture.

"Things that seemed to them five years ago to have airtight legal and political support are now under investigation," he said, comparing this cycle to the Senate hearings into CIA abuses in the 1970s and the criminal prosecution of CIA officials in the Iran-contra affair of the 1980s.

Even a CIA officer involved in capturing and questioning leaders of Al Qaeda expresses a striking ambivalence about the policies that were carried out.

John Kiriakou, who helped lead the team that caught the Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in Pakistan in March 2002, went public on ABC News this week with such a message. He said he saw intelligence reports saying that waterboarding, a technique that induces a sense of suffocation, had caused Abu Zubaydah to start talking after 35 seconds.

But Kiriakou, a 43-year-old father of four who left the agency in 2004, also said in an interview that he believed waterboarding was torture and should never be used again, because "we Americans are better than that." He added: "I think the second-guessing of 2002 decisions is unfair. What I think is fair is having a national debate over whether we should be waterboarding."

Legal hazards were on the minds of Bush administration officials from the beginning of the response to 9/11. The 2002 Justice Department interrogation opinion laid out some defenses interrogators might use against criminal accusations of torture.

"The administration's success in preventing attacks has become its enemy," said John Yoo, the former Justice official who wrote most of the 2002 opinion. Since then, he added, "The political environment has changed because people feel the threat is less than it used to be."

Yoo's legal opinions, though criticized as seriously flawed by some scholars, may nonetheless provide impenetrable armor for CIA officers. From the beginning, wary agency officials insisted on what they called "top cover" — written Justice Department approval for what they did.

Most legal scholars say that even under a future administration, the Justice Department would not seek charges against CIA officers for actions the department itself had approved.

Another obstacle to such prosecutions would be the laws passed by Congress in 2005 and 2006 granting extensive legal protection for authorized conduct. But the videotape destruction may not have such protection; the episode recalls the adage of Washington scandals — that it's not the crime, it's the cover-up that leads to trouble.

The deaths of several prisoners who had been questioned by CIA officers or contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan — but outside the detention program for high-level Qaeda prisoners — have been referred to the Justice Department. Only one CIA contractor, David Passaro, has been prosecuted, receiving an eight-year sentence for beating an Afghan man who later died.

Still, investigations can impose a high price no matter how they end. "It's not just the fear of going to jail," Goldsmith said. "It's the enormous expense of hiring lawyers. It's seeing your reputation destroyed. It's losing your career."

Overseas, CIA officers implicated in rendition cases have been sought on criminal charges in Italy and Germany, though none have been arrested. And since the international pursuit of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, human rights advocates have often sought criminal charges against former officials on the principle of "universal jurisdiction" for certain grave offenses, including torture.

The Center for Constitutional Rights in New York, which unsuccessfully sought charges against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a recent visit to France, has pledged to pursue criminal torture charges against former Bush administration officials when they travel abroad.

"The only way to restore the moral authority of our country," said Michael Ratner, the group's president, "is accountability."

BBC : CIA chief backs rendition flights

CIA chief backs rendition flights

October 31, 2007

The director of the US Central Intelligence Agency, General Michael Hayden, has defended the methods it uses to interrogate terror suspects.

Gen Hayden said programmes such as extraordinary rendition produced what he said was irreplaceable intelligence.

Under the programme, terror suspects are transported to secret prisons in countries with less stringent interrogation rules.

Mr Hayden, speaking in Chicago, said the leads gained justified rendition.

"The irreplaceable nature of that intelligence is the sole reason why we have what I admit freely is a very controversial programme."

The CIA had produced thousands of intelligence reports from the "fewer than 100 hardened terrorists" detained since 2002, Mr Hayden told the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

'Water-boarding' controversy

His comments came as President George Bush's nominee for US attorney general came under fire for his position on interrogation techniques.

Nominee Michael Mukasey condemned one technique, water-boarding, as "repugnant" and possibly "over the line," but declined to explicitly rule it out as torture, saying he could not speculate on classified procedures.

Water-boarding simulates drowning by immobilizing a prisoner with his head lower than his feet and pouring water over his face.

Leading Democrats in the Senate have threatened to block Mr Mukasey's confirmation if he does not explicitly rule out water-boarding as illegal.

When asked to comment about Mr Mukasey's statement, Mr Hayden avoided a clear answer.

"Judge Mukasey cannot nor can I answer your question in the abstract. I need to understand the totality of the circumstances in which this question is being posed before I can give you an answer," he said.

IHT : Sober times for Myanmar's comics

Sober times for Myanmar's comics

By Choe Sang-Hun | October 28, 2007

MANDALAY, Myanmar: Par Par Lay goes to India to seek relief for a toothache. The Indian dentist wonders why the Burmese man has come all that way to see him.

"Don't you have dentists in Myanmar?" he asks.

"Oh, yes, we do, doctor," says Par Par Lay. "But in Myanmar, we are not allowed to open our mouths."

That's a favorite joke of Par Par Lay, a third-generation practitioner of a-nyeint pwe, the traditional Burmese vaudeville featuring puppets, music and slapstick comedy tinged with in-your-face political satire - all performed in a country where cracking the wrong joke can land you in jail.

And Par Par Lay, the 60-year-old leader of the Mustache Brothers troupe, appears to be paying dearly for it.

About midnight on Sept. 25, his relatives say, the police raided Par Par Lay's home-cum-theater here and took him away. On the same day, at least one other popular comedian who, like Par Par Lay, had previously been imprisoned for his political jokes, a man named Zargana in Yangon, was arrested, according to Amnesty International and local residents.

The tightening of the ruling junta's gag on dissident voices came as the regime conducted a bloody crackdown on the first major pro-democracy uprising in this country in 19 years.

"I tried to find him, but I don't know where he is," said Par Par Lay's wife, Ma Win Ma, 56, a dancer. "If the past is an indication, he must have been beaten a lot. I am worried about whether he is alive or not."

The Mustache Brothers is a family troupe of 13 comedians, dancers and musicians. Par Par Lay and his brother Lu Maw, 58, wear handlebar mustaches, hence the group's name. They used to travel from village to village, performing at weddings, funerals and festivals.

In times past, Burmese kings would watch a-nyeint pwe to gauge public sentiment. But it seems the current junta never developed a taste for it.

In 1990, when the military government rejected the decisive victory of Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy in the country's first election in 30 years and placed the pro-democracy leader under house arrest, Par Par Lay was thrown into jail for six months for his political humor.

In 1996, his troupe performed before an audience of 2,000 people, including foreign ambassadors, at the lakeside compound of Aung San Suu Kyi, by then a Nobel Peace laureate. In one skit, Par Par Lay demonstrated a "government dance," a comic rendition of a wily public servant stealing money from the poor.

A videotape of the event shows Aung San Suu Kyi laughing, clearly entertained. The generals were apparently less amused. Par Par Lay and his cousin Lu Zaw, also a comedian, were sentenced to seven years in a labor camp. He was released after five and a half years.

Afterwards, the government scratched the Mustache Brothers from the list of state-licensed artists Burmese were permitted to hire. Barred from performing for ordinary Burmese but determined to keep their tradition alive, and to make a living, the troupe reinvented itself, performing for foreigners who would come to the home they had turned into a makeshift theater.

Even with Par Par Lay gone, his family has kept the theater going on Mandalay's run-down a-nyeint street, which Lu Maw proudly likened to London's West End and Broadway in New York.

The street looked deserted, with foreign tourism having been sharply curtailed since the crackdown. Creaking taxis and pedicabs maneuvered around potholes and stray dogs on a sun-baked street. Lu Maw's family waited for tourists who never came.

"We are artists: we believe in ordinary people, not in the government," said Lu Maw in English. "We need light, but in Myanmar, light on and off. Not enough electricity. No water supply. School - money, money, money! Ordinary people no money.

"So we joke," he said. "People need a good joke. But the government don't like us because we joke."

The Mustache Brothers are an unlikely tourist attraction in a country where few people dare to criticize the government. But the government appears to tolerate the troupe's spoofs as long as they performed only in English.

Lu Maw, the only English speaker in the troupe, said he learned the language from tourists.

His rapid-fire English words seldom form a complete sentence. In performances, he supplements them with gestures and sign boards. One sign read "KGB," Lu Maw's allusion to the secret police in Myanmar.

"My favorite English is American and English slang," he said. "My brother in the clink, up the river, in big house."

His street-side theater could barely accommodate 10 red plastic chairs. Marionettes hung against a wall. On display was a picture of Aung San Suu Kyi visiting the Mustache Brothers in June 2002. Outside, Lu Maw's nephews kept an eye out for the police.

Lu Maw said he believed that Par Par Lay was arrested because he was a "good organizer" among the many a-nyeint comedians in Mandalay. He had strong opinions about the military generals who have mismanaged this resource-rich country into poverty, and joked about why Myanmar largely escaped the worst of the deadly 2004 tsunami:

A general died and became a big fish, the joke goes. As the tsunami was rolling toward Myanmar, the fish came to the surface and told the wave: "Stop! I have already done that here."

But Lu Maw said the recent killing of monks by soldiers was "no good for jokes."

"People are sad," he said. "Man kill man, you go to hell. This Buddhist belief. Now they are killing monks! They go beyond hell."

Lu Maw said that everyone in Myanmar was busy trying to keep up with rising prices, which is what drove people onto the streets to protest in August. He noted that Par Par Lay was sentenced in 1996 to "seven years for one joke" at Aung San Suu Kyi's place. Now, thanks to inflation, Lu Maw cracked, you make "two jokes and get 100 years in prison."

"We are dead meat already," he said.

International pressure has helped his family in the past, he said. When Par Par Lay was arrested in 1996, he said, British and Hollywood comedians wrote to the Myanmar government in protest.

"We need their help again," Lu Maw said. "Richard Gere's support is especially important because he is a Buddhist. We need a Rambo."

Despite Lu Maw's tireless optimism, his theater was permeated with sadness. In the past month, the family has struggled to make ends meet with a dearth of foreign tourists. Mustache Brothers T-shirts are collecting dust. Older members of the family were lying listlessly on a wooden bed on the mud-brick floor.

"If the government comes and takes his clothes and food, then I will know he is alive," said Ma Win Ma, Par Par Lay's wife. "That is enough. I believe one day he will come back and we can perform together again."

Lu Maw said that when Par Par Lay was in prison camp, he used to perform for other inmates before bed time.

"Maybe he is performing in prison somewhere," Lu Maw said. "Yes, we are afraid. But we keep on going. We just joke. This is our job, our family tradition."

Alternet : Will Blackwater Be Kicked Out of Iraq After Recent Bloodbath?

Will Blackwater Be Kicked Out of Iraq After Recent Bloodbath?

by Jeremy Scahill | The Nation | September 28, 2007

It's being described as "Baghdad's bloody Sunday." On September 16 a heavily armed State Department convoy guarded by Blackwater USA was whizzing down the wrong side of the road near Nisour Square in the congested Mansour neighborhood in the Iraqi capital. Iraqi police scrambled to block off traffic to allow the convoy to pass. In the chaos, an Iraqi vehicle entered the square, reportedly failing to heed a policeman's warning fast enough.

The Blackwater operatives, protecting their American principal, a senior State Department official, opened fire on the vehicle, killing the driver. According to witnesses, Blackwater troops then launched some sort of grenade at the car, setting it ablaze. But inside the vehicle was not a small sect from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia or the Mahdi Army, the "armed insurgents" Blackwater described killing in its official statement on the incident.

It was a young Iraqi family -- man, woman and infant -- whose crime appeared to be panicking in a chaotic traffic situation. Witnesses say the bodies of the mother and child were melded together by the flames that had engulfed their vehicle.

Gunfire rang out in Nisour Square as people fled for their lives. Witnesses described a horrifying scene of indiscriminate shooting by the Blackwater guards. In all, as many as twenty-eight Iraqis may have been killed, and doctors say the toll could climb, as some victims remain in critical condition. A company spokesperson said Blackwater's forces "acted lawfully and appropriately" and "heroically defended American lives in a war zone."

Blackwater's version of events is hotly disputed, not only by the Iraqi government, which says it has video to prove the shooting was unprovoked, but also by survivors of the attack. "I saw women and children jump out of their cars and start to crawl on the road to escape being shot," said Iraqi lawyer Hassan Jabar Salman, who was shot four times in the back during the incident.

"But still the firing kept coming and many of them were killed. I saw a boy of about 10 leaping in fear from a minibus -- he was shot in the head. His mother was crying out for him. She jumped out after him, and she was killed."

Salman says he was driving behind the Blackwater convoy when it stopped. Witnesses say some sort of explosion had gone off in the distance, too far away to have been perceived as a threat. He said Blackwater guards ordered him to turn his vehicle around and leave the scene. Shortly after, the shooting began. "Why had they opened fire?" he asked. "I do not know. No one -- I repeat no one -- had fired at them. The foreigners had asked us to go back, and I was going back in my car, so there was no reason for them to shoot." In all, he says, his car was hit twelve times, including the four bullets that pierced his back.

While the shooting in Nisour Square has put the issue of private forces in Iraq -- and Blackwater's name specifically -- on the front pages of newspapers around the globe, this is hardly the first deadly incident involving these forces. What is new is that the Iraqi government responded powerfully. Within twenty-four hours of the shooting, Iraq's Interior Ministry announced that it was expelling Blackwater from the country; Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki called the firm's conduct "criminal."

The next day, the State Department ordered all non-US military officials to remain inside the Green Zone, and diplomatic convoys were halted. The Iraqi government, acting as though it was in control of the country, announced that it intended to prosecute the Blackwater men responsible for the killings. "We will not allow Iraqis to be killed in cold blood," Maliki said. "There is a sense of tension and anger among all Iraqis, including the government, over this crime."

But getting rid of Blackwater would not prove to be so easy. Four days after being grounded, Blackwater was back on Iraqi streets. After all, Blackwater is not just any security company in Iraq; it is the leading mercenary company of the US occupation. It first took on this role in the summer of 2003, after receiving a $27 million no-bid contract to provide security for Ambassador Paul Bremer, the original head of the Coalition Provisional Authority.

Since then, it has kept every subsequent US Ambassador, from John Negroponte to Ryan Crocker, alive. It protects Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits the country, as well as Congressional delegations. Since its original Iraq contract, Blackwater has won more than $700 million in "diplomatic security" contracts through the State Department alone.

The company's domestic political clout has been key to its success. It is owned by Erik Prince, a reclusive right-wing evangelical Christian who has served as a major bankroller of the campaigns of George W. Bush and his allies. Among the company's senior executives are former CIA official J. Cofer Black, who once oversaw the extraordinary-rendition program and led the post-9/11 hunt for Osama bin Laden (and who currently serves as GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney's top counterterrorism adviser), and Joseph Schmitz, the Pentagon Inspector General under Donald Rumsfeld.

So embedded is Blackwater in the US apparatus in Iraq that the incident in Nisour Square has sparked a crisis for the occupation that is both practical and political. Now that Blackwater's name is known (and hated) throughout Iraq, the bodyguards themselves are likely to become targets of resistance attacks, perhaps even more so than the officials they are tasked with keeping alive. This will make their work much more difficult. But beyond such security issues are more substantive political ones, as Blackwater's continued presence on Iraqi streets days after Maliki called for its expulsion serves as a potent symbol of the utter lack of Iraqi sovereignty.

Maliki has been under heavy US pressure to back off his initial demands. While Rice immediately called the Iraqi prime minister ostensibly to apologize, she made a point of emphasizing publicly that "we need protection for our diplomats." A few days later, Tahseen Sheikhly, a representative of Maliki's government, stated, "If we drive out this company immediately, there will be a security vacuum. That would cause a big imbalance in the security situation." Given the carnage of September 16, it was a difficult statement to wrap one's head around.

Maliki then agreed to withhold judgment on Blackwater's status, pending the conclusion of a joint US-Iraqi investigation. If he ultimately goes along with the United States and tolerates Blackwater's presence, the political consequences will be severe. Among those calling for the firm's expulsion is Muqtada al-Sadr. A cave-in by Maliki could weaken his already tenuous grip on power and reinforce the widespread perception that he is merely a puppet of the US occupation. Clearly aware of this, while visiting the United States a week after the shootings, Maliki went so far as to call the situation "a serious challenge to the sovereignty of Iraq" that "cannot be accepted."

In Baghdad there is great determination to bring the perpetrators of the Nisour Square slaughter to justice. An investigative team made up of officials from Iraq's Interior, National Security and Defense ministries said in a preliminary report that "the murder of citizens in cold blood in the Nisour area by Blackwater is considered a terrorist action against civilians just like any other terrorist operation."

But Iraqi investigators claim that they have received little or no information from the US government and have been denied access to the Blackwater operatives involved in the shootings. A US official appeared to dismiss the validity of the Iraqi investigation, telling the New York Times, "There is only the joint investigation that we have with the Iraqis."

Still, Iraqi officials announced their intent to bring criminal charges against the Blackwater forces involved in the shooting, and the report stated, "The criminals will be referred to the Iraqi court system." Abdul Sattar Ghafour Bairaqdar, a member of Iraq's Supreme Judiciary Council, the country's highest court, recently said, "This company is subject to Iraqi law, and the crime committed was on Iraqi territory, and the Iraqi judiciary is responsible for tackling the case."

Unfortunately, things are not quite so simple.

On June 27, 2004, the day before Paul Bremer skulked out of Baghdad, he issued a decree known as Order 17, which granted sweeping immunity to private contractors working for the United States in Iraq, effectively barring the Iraqi government from prosecuting contractor crimes in domestic courts. The timing was curious, given that Bremer was leaving after allegedly "handing over sovereignty" to the Iraqi government.

Shortly after the Nisour shooting, Maliki said he wanted to change Order 17 to permit prosecution in Iraqi courts of criminal activities committed by contractors. The Iraqi Parliament could also try to pass a law repealing it altogether. Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, characterizes Order 17 as a clear violation of Iraqi sovereignty but points out that it contains a provision that allows the United States to waive the immunity with regard to individuals.

"A possible first step for Iraq is to ask the US to waive the immunity of those involved in the killing," says Ratner, who concedes that this is an unlikely move from Washington, "as it would frighten other private contractors." He also said the immunity is a part of the US strategy for using private companies like Blackwater to deter resistance attacks on occupation personnel. "None of this is by chance; their very purpose is to brutalize and strike fear into the people of Iraq -- that is why they are back on the streets."

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer says that the cleanest solution would be for the United States to rescind Order 17. "Do we let Iraqi Embassy private security contractors race around Washington or New York, machine guns sticking out the window, to prevent carjackings?" asked Baer. "This would effectively close down private security companies. There is no reason the State Department cannot provide its own security." He points out that State Department security officers are under diplomatic immunity, but if there's a questionable shooting, the Iraqi government would have the option of expelling the perpetrators under the Vienna Convention.

This discussion of Order 17 is important but in practical terms it may well be moot, as it is hard to imagine the United States allowing the prosecution of US private security forces in an Iraqi court. Industry representatives say that in cases where contractors are alleged to have committed crimes or engaged in misconduct, Washington has told them to get the contractors in question out of Iraq quickly. As one private security contractor recently told the Washington Post, "We were always told, from the very beginning, if for some reason something happened and the Iraqis were trying to prosecute us, they would put you in the back of a car and sneak you out of the country in the middle of the night."

That is precisely what happened after an incident that occurred last Christmas Eve, in which an off-duty Blackwater operative allegedly shot and killed the Iraqi bodyguard of Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi inside the Green Zone. Blackwater officials confirm that they whisked the contractor safely out of Iraq, which they say Washington ordered them to do. Iraqi officials labeled the killing a "murder."

Blackwater says it fired the contractor, but he has yet to be publicly charged with any crime. Representative Dennis Kucinich, a member of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has suggested that "there's a question that could actually make [Blackwater's] corporate officers accessories here in helping to create a flight from justice for someone who's committed a murder." According to a memo from the US Embassy to Secretary Rice, after the shooting, Abdul-Mahdi tried to keep the story under wraps because he believed "Iraqis would not understand how a foreigner could kill an Iraqi and return a free man to his own country."

While there may be a debate about subjecting private forces to Iraqi courts, legal mechanisms do exist to prosecute armed contractors in US courts for crimes committed in Iraq. But the Bush Justice Department would have to press charges, and that hasn't happened. US contractors in Iraq reportedly have their own motto: "What happens here today stays here today."

While much of the media attention stemming from the September 16 killings focuses on the current crisis, this is hardly a new situation. In just the past nine months, Blackwater forces have been at the center of several other fatal shootings that sparked protests from the Iraqi government.

There was the Christmas Eve incident, and then, in May, Blackwater forces engaged in back-to-back deadly actions in a Baghdad neighborhood near the Iraqi Interior Ministry. In one incident, Blackwater forces fired on an Iraqi vehicle they said had veered too close to their convoy, killing a civilian driver. As with the September 16 shooting, witnesses say it was unprovoked. In the ensuing chaos, the Blackwater operatives reportedly refused to give their names or details of the incident to Iraqi officials, sparking a tense standoff between Blackwater and Iraqi forces, both of which were armed with assault rifles. It might have become even bloodier if a US military convoy hadn't arrived on the scene and intervened.

A day before that incident, in almost the same neighborhood, Blackwater operatives found themselves in a gun battle lasting nearly an hour that drew in US military and Iraqi forces, in which at least four Iraqis are said to have died. US sources said the Blackwater forces "did their job," keeping the officials alive.

Iraqi officials allege that there have been at least six deadly incidents involving Blackwater in the past year alone, which in addition to the September 16 death toll have caused ten Iraqi deaths. An Iraqi official says they show Blackwater "has a criminal record." Among these are a February 4 shooting allegedly resulting in the death of Hana al-Ameedi, an Iraqi journalist, near the Foreign Ministry; a February 7 shooting in which three guards were allegedly killed outside Iraqi state television offices; a September 9 shooting during which five Iraqis were killed near a government building in Baghdad; and a September 12 shooting that wounded five people in eastern Baghdad.

US and Iraqi officials reportedly discussed Blackwater's impunity months before the September shooting. "We tried several times to contact the US government through administrative and diplomatic channels to complain about the repeated involvement by Blackwater guards in several incidents that led to the killing of many Iraqis," said deputy Interior Minister Hussein Kamal.

However, US Embassy spokesperson Mirembe Nantongo said, "We have no official documentation on file from our Iraqi partners requesting clarification of any incident." That statement is contradicted by another US official. Matthew Degn, who served as a liaison to the Iraqi Interior Ministry until August, told the Washington Post that Iraqi officials sent a flurry of memos to Blackwater and US officials well before the September 16 shootings and were rebuffed in their requests for action. "We had numerous discussions over [Iraqi government] frustrations with Blackwater, but every time [Iraqi officials] contacted the [US] government, it went nowhere."

Iraq's anger would be understandable even if the only incident involving Blackwater was the Nisour shootings -- more so if you take into account the past year of the company's actions. But this is a four-year pattern that goes beyond Blackwater. The system of "private security" being paid billions in US taxpayer dollars has not only continued despite rampant abuses; it has flourished. Blackwater and its ilk operate in a demand-based industry, and with US forces stretched thin, there has been plenty of demand. According to the Government Accountability Office, there are as many as 180 mercenary firms in Iraq, with tens of thousands of employees. Without the occupation and continued funding for the war, these companies would not be in Iraq.

Even though this scandal is about a system, not about one company or "a few bad apples," Blackwater does stand out. While it has no shortage of US and British competitors in Iraq, no other private force's actions have had more of an impact on events in Iraq than those of the North Carolina-based company. Blackwater's primary purpose in Iraq, at which it has been very effective, is to keep the most hated US occupation officials alive by any means necessary. This has encouraged conduct that places American lives at an infinitely higher premium than those of Iraqi civilians, even in cases where the only Iraqi crime is driving too close to a VIP convoy protected by Blackwater guards.

It isn't just the Iraqi government and the country's civilian population that are angered by Blackwater's conduct. Col. Thomas Hammes, the US military official who once oversaw the creation of a new Iraqi military, has described driving around Iraq with Iraqis and encountering Blackwater operatives. They "were running me off the road. We were threatened and intimidated," Hammes said. But, he added, "they were doing their job, exactly what they were paid to do in the way they were paid to do it, and they were making enemies on every single pass out of town." Hammes concluded they were "hurting our counterinsurgency effort."

Just as the world was learning of the September 16 Blackwater shooting in Baghdad, another scandal involving the company was breaking in the United States. Allegations surfaced that weapons brought into Iraq by Blackwater may have ended up in the hands of the Kurdish militant group the PKK, which is designated a "foreign terrorist organization" by the State Department. According to a September 18 letter sent by Representative Henry Waxman to State Department Inspector General Howard Krongard, a federal investigation into whether Blackwater "was illegally smuggling weapons into Iraq" was obstructed by Krongard, who, Waxman charged, is a partisan operative with close ties to the Bush Administration.

Waxman cited a July e-mail message from Krongard in which he ordered his staff to "stop IMMEDIATELY" cooperating with the federal prosecutor investigating Blackwater until Krongard himself could speak to him. Waxman said Krongard's actions caused "weeks of delay" and that by subsequently assigning a media relations staffer instead of an investigator to aid the prosecutor, Krongard had "impeded the investigation." Blackwater, for its part, denies that it was "in any way associated or complicit in unlawful arms activities" and is cooperating in the federal investigation. Waxman has announced that he will hold hearings on the issue in October.

In keeping with Krongard's stance, the State Department has responded to the widening Blackwater inquiry with stonewalling and evasion. Indeed, Blackwater's attorney told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which Waxman chairs, that State had directed the company "not to disclose any information" regarding its Iraq security contract without written authorization.

After Waxman protested, the department specified that this restriction applied only to classified information. Waxman, for his part, is looking for answers from the top gun: He sent Blackwater CEO Erik Prince a letter requesting his presence at a hearing. "One question that will be examined is whether the government's heavy reliance on private security contractors is serving U.S. interests in Iraq," Waxman informed Prince. "Another question will be whether the specific conduct of your company has advanced or impeded U.S. efforts."

Those are good questions. But it is unfortunate that it has taken four years of the most privatized war in US history for Congress to ask them. Last time Prince was invited to appear before Congress, he sent his lawyer instead. This time Waxman could choose to use the power of the subpoena. As has finally become clear to some in Congress, war contracting is not merely about squandered taxpayer dollars. It is about life and death. The stakes are far too high to let Prince and his cronies call (or fire) any more shots.

Jeremy Scahill, an independent journalist who reports frequently for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!, has spent extensive time reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.

NYT : Supreme Disgrace

Supreme Disgrace

October 11, 2007

The Supreme Court exerts leadership over the nation’s justice system, not just through its rulings, but also by its choice of cases — the ones it agrees to hear and the ones it declines. On Tuesday, it led in exactly the wrong direction.

Somehow, the court could not muster the four votes needed to grant review in the case of an innocent German citizen of Lebanese descent who was kidnapped, detained and tortured in a secret overseas prison as part of the Bush administration’s morally, physically and legally abusive anti-terrorism program. The victim, Khaled el-Masri, was denied justice by lower federal courts, which dismissed his civil suit in a reflexive bow to a flimsy government claim that allowing the case to go forward would put national security secrets at risk.

Those rulings, Mr. Masri’s lawyers correctly argued, represented a major distortion of the state secrets doctrine, a rule created by the federal courts that was originally intended to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit filed against the government. It was never designed to dictate dismissal of an entire case before any evidence is produced.

It may well be that one or more justices sensitive to the breathtaking violation of Mr. Masri’s rights, and the evident breaking of American law, refrained from voting to accept his case as a matter of strategy. They may have feared a majority ruling by the Roberts court approving the dangerously expansive view of executive authority inherent in the Bush team’s habitual invocation of the state secrets privilege. In that case, the justices at least could have commented, or offered a dissent, as has happened when the court abdicated its responsibility to hear at least two other recent cases involving national security issues of this kind.

Mr. Masri says he was picked up while vacationing in Macedonia in late 2003 and flown to a squalid prison in Afghanistan. He says he was questioned there about ties to terrorist groups and was beaten by his captors, some of whom were Americans. At the end of May 2004, Mr. Masri was released in a remote part of Albania without having been charged with a crime. Investigations in Europe and news reports in this country have supported his version of events, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged privately to her that Mr. Masri’s abduction was a mistake, an admission that aides to Ms. Rice have denied. The Masri case, in other words, is being actively discussed all over the world. The only place it cannot be discussed, it seems, is in a United States courtroom.

In effect, the Supreme Court has granted the government immunity for subjecting Mr. Masri to “extraordinary rendition,” the morally and legally unsupportable United States practice of transporting foreign nationals to be interrogated in other countries known to use torture and lacking basic legal protections. It’s hard to imagine what, at this point, needs to be kept secret, other than the ways in which the administration behaved irresponsibly, and quite possibly illegally, in the Masri case. And Mr. Masri is not the only innocent man kidnapped by American agents and subjected to abuse and torture in a foreign country. He’s just the only one whose lawsuit got this far.

This unsatisfactory outcome gives rise to new worries about the current Supreme Court’s resolve to perform its crucial oversight role — particularly with other cases related to terrorism in the pipeline and last week’s disclosure of secret 2005 Justice Department memos authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods that just about everyone except the Bush White House thinks of as torture. Instead of a rejection, the Masri case should have occasioned a frank revisiting of the Supreme Court’s 1953 ruling in United States v. Reynolds. That case enshrined the state secrets doctrine that this administration has repeatedly relied upon to avoid judicial scrutiny of its lawless actions.

Indeed, the Reynolds case itself is an object lesson in why courts need to apply a healthy degree of skepticism to state secrets claims. The court denied the widows of three civilians, who had died in the crash of a military aircraft, access to the official accident report, blindly accepting the government’s assertion that sharing the report would hurt national security. When the documents finally became public just a few years ago, it became clear that the government had lied. The papers contained information embarrassing to the government but nothing to warrant top secret treatment or denying American citizens honest adjudication of their lawsuit.

In refusing to consider Mr. Masri’s appeal, the Supreme Court has left an innocent person without any remedy for his wrongful imprisonment and torture. It has damaged America’s standing in the world and established the nation as Supreme Enabler of the Bush administration’s efforts to avoid accountability for its actions. These are not accomplishments to be proud of.

NYT : Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Torture Appeal

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Torture Appeal

By LINDA GREENHOUSE | October 10, 2007

WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — The Supreme Court on Tuesday refused to hear an appeal filed on behalf of a German citizen of Lebanese descent who claims he was abducted by United States agents and then tortured by them while imprisoned in Afghanistan.

Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that the state secrets privilege, a judicially created doctrine that the Bush administration has invoked to win dismissal of lawsuits that touch on issues of national security, protected the government’s actions from court review. In refusing to take up the case, the justices declined a chance to elaborate on the privilege for the first time in more than 50 years.

The case involved Khaled el-Masri, who says he was detained while on vacation in Macedonia in late 2003, transported by the United States to Afghanistan and held there for five months in a secret prison before being taken to Albania and set free, evidently having been mistaken for a terrorism suspect with a similar name.

Mr. Masri says he was tortured while in the prison. After prosecutors in Germany investigated the case, a court there issued arrest warrants in January for 13 agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. The German Parliament is continuing to investigate the episode, which has become a very public example of the United States government’s program of “extraordinary rendition.”

Mr. Masri, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, brought a lawsuit in federal court against George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence from 1997 to 2004; three private airline companies; and 20 people identified only as John Doe. He sought damages for treatment that he said violated both the Constitution and international law.

Shortly after he filed the lawsuit in December 2005, the government intervened to seek its dismissal under the state secrets privilege, asserting that to have to provide evidence in the case would compromise national security. That argument succeeded in the Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., which dismissed the case without permitting Mr. Masri’s lawyers to take discovery. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., upheld the dismissal in March.

In their Supreme Court appeal, El-Masri v. United States, No. 06-1613, Mr. Masri’s lawyers argued that these rulings allowed the state secrets doctrine to become “unmoored” from its origins as a rule to be invoked to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit against the government, rather than to dismiss an entire case before any evidence was produced.

The Supreme Court created the doctrine in a 1953 decision, United States v. Reynolds, which began as a lawsuit by survivors of three civilians who had died in the crash of a military aircraft. In pretrial discovery, the plaintiffs sought the official accident report.

But the government, asserting that the report included information about the plane’s secret mission and the equipment that it was testing, refused to reveal it. The Supreme Court upheld the government, ruling that evidence should not be disclosed when “there is a reasonable danger that compulsion of the evidence will expose military matters which, in the interest of national security, should not be divulged.”

Mr. Masri’s lawyers argued that this decision, which the court has occasionally invoked but has not revisited, did not justify dismissing a case before any evidence was requested. Ben Wizner, Mr. Masri’s lawyer at the civil liberties union, said in an interview that the courts had permitted the doctrine to evolve from an evidentiary privilege to a broad grant of immunity, a way for the executive branch to shield itself from judicial scrutiny.

In this case, Solicitor General Paul D. Clement offered to let the justices see, “under appropriate security measures,” the classified declaration that the government filed in the lower courts to support its claim of privilege. The court evidently did not think that step was necessary.

The court will soon have other opportunities to revisit the state secrets issue. Last week the A.C.L.U. filed an appeal that raises the issue as part of a challenge to the National Security Agency’s program of wiretapping without court warrants.

NYT : Justices Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

Justices Won’t Hear Torture Appeal

By REUTERS | October 9, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A German citizen who says he was kidnapped, imprisoned and tortured by the CIA lost his appeal on Tuesday when the Supreme Court refused to review a decision dismissing the case because it would expose state secrets.

Attorneys for Khaled el-Masri, a German of Lebanese descent, argued in the high court appeal that his lawsuit did not depend on the disclosure of state secrets and that it should be allowed to go forward in U.S. court.

His case has drawn worldwide attention to the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in which terrorism suspects are sent from one foreign country to another for interrogation. Human rights groups have strongly criticized the program.

Masri's case sparked outrage in Germany and prompted a parliamentary inquiry to find out what authorities might have known about U.S. renditions.

Masri's attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union challenged what they called the Bush administration's increased invoking of national security secrets to prevent any judicial inquiry into serious allegations of misconduct.

The administration also has asserted the so-called state secrets privilege in an effort to dismiss the lawsuits over the warrantless domestic spying program that Bush created after the September 11 attacks.

'CENTRAL FACTS NOT STATE SECRETS'

Masri's allegations have been widely reported by the news media. "The central facts of this case are not state secrets and do not become so simply because the government insists otherwise," Ben Wizner of the ACLU wrote in the appeal.

Masri's lawsuit, which sought damages of at least $75,000, was brought against former CIA Director George Tenet, three private aviation companies and 20 unnamed employees of the CIA and the companies.

The Supreme Court sided with the administration and rejected the appeal without any explanation or recorded dissent.

Masri said he was abducted by Macedonian authorities on December 31, 2003, while on vacation. After 23 days, he was handed over to a CIA team and flown to a CIA-run secret prison near Kabul, Afghanistan, he said.

Masri said he was beaten, interrogated and held as a terrorism suspect, even though CIA officials quickly determined his innocence. He said he was flown to Albania and released on May 28, 2004.

A federal judge and then a U.S. appeals court dismissed the lawsuit because it threatened to expose government secrets, including how the CIA supervises its most sensitive intelligence operations.

The Supreme Court formally recognized the state secrets privilege in a 1953 ruling. The ACLU's attorneys said the court has not revisited the decision in more than 50 years and urged the justices to re-examine it.

The CIA has never acknowledged any role in Masri's detention. The Bush administration opposed Masri's appeal.

Administration attorneys said lower courts applied "settled legal principles to the highly classified facts of this case" and that further review by the Supreme Court was unwarranted.

Federal Times : Report blasts Tenet’s pre-9/11 CIA

Report blasts Tenet’s pre-9/11 CIA

By RICHARD WILLING | USA Today | August 22, 2007

CIA director George Tenet declared “war” on al-Qaida in 1998 but failed to follow up with a thorough counterterrorism plan until after the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA inspector general charged in an internal report partially declassified on Tuesday.

The report, completed in June 2005, said the pre-Sept. 11 CIA failed to develop “assets” needed to disrupt al-Qaida before it launched its devastating attacks.

Echoing the public “9/11 Commission Report” in 2004, the CIA watchdog also criticized the agency for not sharing intelligence that could have led authorities to two Sept. 11 hijackers who traveled to the U.S. in 2000 and 2001.

Neither the CIA nor its officers discharged “their responsibilities in a satisfactory manner,” Inspector General John Helgerson concluded in the report’s 19-page summary.

However, the summary also found “no silver bullet” or “single point of failure” that “would have enabled the intelligence community to predict or prevent the 9/11 attacks.”

Tenet, who resigned in 2004, said in a statement Tuesday that the report is “flat wrong” in its assertion that the CIA lacked a clear plan. Instead, he said, the agency had a “robust” plan that helped it attack al-Qaida after Sept. 11 and chase it from its “Afghan sanctuary.”

Tenet and at least six other top agency officials should face review boards to further evaluate their actions, the report said. Then-CIA Director Porter Goss rejected that proposal in June 2005, a decision the agency’s current director, Michael Hayden, said he supported.

Hayden told CIA employees in a statement Tuesday that he opposed declassifying and releasing the report because that would “distract officers serving ... on the front lines of a global conflict.”

The inspector general’s summary was required to be released under a law passed this month that implemented some recommendations of the 9/11 Commission.

While Hayden said the report is mostly old news, it included several points that were either new or offered internal CIA views that had not been made public. For example:

• The CIA targeted Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for capture and rendition but did not “recognize the significance” of his role in al-Qaida.

• No comprehensive study of Osama bin Laden was written after 1993. “Strategic analysis” of al-Qaida was lacking.

• The CIA and National Security Agency were sometimes unclear about their pre-Sept. 11 roles in pursuit of al-Qaida.

• As many as 60 CIA officials read at least one cable in 2000 or 2001 dealing with the American travel plans of two Sept. 11 hijackers. But the information wasn’t quickly shared with domestic law enforcement.

E-mail: fedlet@federaltimes.com

Foreign Policy : The Terrorism Index (III)

The Terrorism Index

In the third Terrorism Index, more than 100 of America’s most respected foreign-policy experts see a world that is growing more dangerous, a national security strategy in disrepair, and a war in Iraq that is alarmingly off course.

September/October 2007

Americans are thinking more about the war on terror than ever before. But that doesn’t mean they’ve come to see this issue in the black-and-white terms preferred by many elected leaders. The combination of bloody wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, continued terrorist attacks from Britain to Somalia, and a presidential election in which candidates are defining themselves based on how they would stare down the threats has many seeing shades of gray. Six years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, just 29 percent of Americans believe the United States is winning the war on terror—the lowest percentage at any point since 9/11. But Americans also consider themselves safe. Six in 10 say that they do not believe another terrorist attack is imminent. Likewise, more than 60 percent of Americans now say that the decision to invade Iraq was a mistake. Yet around half report that they would support similar military action to stop Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.

Such seemingly incompatible points of view may stem in part from the fact that we are increasingly asked to reconcile a bewildering array of threats—and a nebulous enemy that defies convention. In Iraq, for instance, the same surge in U.S. forces that is meant to help pacify Baghdad only escalates violence elsewhere in the country. In the broader Middle East and South Asia, some of the same countries that are now the United States’ most crucial allies have also been guilty of cultivating the very terrorists we look to bring to justice. Deciphering priorities from such difficult paradoxes can be hard. So, how can one determine whether the war on terror is making America safer or more dangerous?

To find out, FOREIGN POLICY and the Center for American Progress once again turned to the very people who have run the United States’ national security apparatus during the past half century. Surveying more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—Republicans and Democrats alike—the FOREIGN POLICY/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index is the only comprehensive, nonpartisan effort to mine the highest echelons of the nation’s foreign-policy establishment for its assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror. First released in July 2006, and again last February, the index attempts to draw definitive conclusions about the war’s priorities, policies, and progress. Its participants include people who have served as secretary of state, national security advisor, senior White House aides, top commanders in the U.S. military, seasoned intelligence professionals, and distinguished academics. Eighty percent of the experts have served in the U.S. government—including more than half in the Executive Branch, 32 percent in the military, and 21 percent in the intelligence community.

The world these experts see today is one that continues to grow more threatening. Fully 91 percent say the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and the United States, up 10 percentage points since February. Eighty-four percent do not believe the United States is winning the war on terror, an increase of 9 percentage points from six months ago. More than 80 percent expect a terrorist attack on the scale of 9/11 within a decade, a result that is more or less unchanged from one year ago.

On the positive side, many of the key agencies charged with ensuring the United States’ national security appear to be getting better at their job. Six of nine agencies, including the Departments of State and Defense, scored above average on the experts’ scale of 0 to 10. One year ago, only one agency scored above average. The National Security Agency fared the best, with an average ranking of 6.6. Many of the policies that these agencies pursue, however, did not fare as well. Nearly every foreign policy of the U.S. government—from domestic surveillance activities and the detention of terrorist suspects at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to U.S. energy policies and efforts in the Middle East peace process—was sharply criticized by the experts. More than 6 in 10 experts, for instance, believe U.S. energy policies are negatively affecting the country’s national security. The experts were similarly critical of the CIA’s rendition of terrorist suspects to countries known to torture prisoners and the Pentagon’s policy of trying detainees before military tribunals.

No effort of the U.S. government was more harshly criticized, however, than the war in Iraq. In fact, that conflict appears to be the root cause of the experts’ pessimism about the state of national security. Nearly all—92 percent—of the index’s experts said the war in Iraq negatively affects U.S. national security, an increase of 5 percentage points from a year ago. Negative perceptions of the war in Iraq are shared across the political spectrum, with 84 percent of those who describe themselves as conservative taking a dim view of the war’s impact. More than half of the experts now oppose the White House’s decision to “surge” additional troops into Baghdad, a remarkable 22 percentage-point increase from just six months ago. Almost 7 in 10 now support a drawdown and redeployment of U.S. forces out of Iraq.

Chastened by the fighting in Iraq, the U.S national security community also appears eager not to make the same mistakes elsewhere. For instance, though a majority—83 percent—do not believe Tehran when it says its nuclear program is intended for peaceful, civilian purposes, just 8 percent favor military strikes in response. Eight in 10, on the other hand, say the United States should use either sanctions or diplomatic talks to negotiate an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Similarly, a majority of the experts favor some kind of engagement with groups that may be labeled terrorist organizations but have gained popular support at the ballot box, such as Hamas in the Palestinian Territories or Hezbollah in Lebanon. It’s one indication that, after six years, we may be entering a new chapter in the war on terror.

The Failing Surge

The outcome of the war in Iraq may now rest in large part on the success or failure of the so-called surge. Beginning in February, the White House sent an additional 28,000 U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell the violence there. Securing the capital with overwhelming force is a key component of the anti-insurgency plan developed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the military’s foremost expert on counterinsurgency tactics. It took until June for all the U.S. forces to be put in place, and the number of American troops in Iraq is now at its highest level since 2005. But is Petraeus’s plan working?

The index’s experts don’t think so. More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all. When the experts were asked to grade the government’s handling of the Iraq war, the news was even worse. They gave the overall effort in Iraq an average point score of just 2.9 on a 10-point scale. The government’s public diplomacy record was the only policy that scored lower.

These negative opinions may result in part from the experts’ apparent belief that, a decade from now, the world will still be reeling from the consequences of the war. Fifty-eight percent of the index’s experts say that in 10 years’ time, Sunni-Shiite tensions in the Middle East will have dramatically increased. Thirty-five percent believe that Arab dictators will have been discouraged from reforming. Just 5 percent, on the other hand, believe that al Qaeda will be weaker, whereas only 3 percent believe Iraq will be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. If true, the surge, or any other tactical shift for that matter, was probably already too little, too late.

A Perfect Nightmare

A perfect terrorist storm may be brewing in Pakistan. When asked to choose the nation that is most likely to become the next al Qaeda stronghold, more experts chose Pakistan than any other country, including Iraq. Osama bin Laden reportedly remains at large along Pakistan’s mountainous border with Afghanistan, where al Qaeda is also regrouping; the country’s intelligence service is said to be still cooperating with radical Islamist elements; and President Pervez Musharraf’s political future seems increasingly imperiled. These developments would not be as worrisome had the experts not also said that Pakistan is the country most likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists in the next three to five years. Together, it’s a terrifying combination.

But if there is a wide consensus about the dangers that Pakistan poses, there is very little agreement about what to do about it. A modest number of the index’s experts, fewer than 1 in 3, favors threatening Pakistan with sanctions. Yet about the same number support increasing U.S. aid to the country. Such a muddled response underscores the puzzle that Pakistan presents to American policymakers. What is clear is that the experts do not favor more of the same: More than half of those surveyed believe the current U.S. policy toward Pakistan is having a negative impact on U.S. national security. Getting the strategy right could be critical if the world is to keep those dark clouds from forming.

Will the Enemy Follow Us Home?

It may be the most common—and, for many, the most convincing—argument against a quick exit from Iraq: Pulling American forces out would only move the war’s front line from the streets of Baghdad to the streets of Anytown, U.S.A. Or, as President George W. Bush often says, “The enemy would follow us home.”

Or would it? It’s a scenario that the index’s experts say is unlikely. Only 12 percent believe that terrorist attacks would occur in the United States as a direct result of a U.S. troop withdrawal from Iraq. Eighty-eight percent of the experts said that either such a scenario was unlikely or that they see no connection between a troop withdrawal from Iraq and terrorist attacks inside the United States. This line of thinking was consistent across party lines, with 58 percent of conservatives saying they did not believe terrorist attacks would occur at home as a result of a military drawdown in Iraq.

That could explain why a bipartisan majority, 68 percent, of the experts favor redeploying U.S. forces from Iraq during the next 18 months. Although most oppose an immediate pullout, the situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point that 1 in 5 experts, including 25 percent of conservatives, now favor an immediate withdrawal. If opinion continues to move in this direction, it will become much harder to explain why the troops aren’t homeward bound.

The Next Front

Raging violence in Iraq has raised the specter that similar savagery could bleed over into neighboring countries. Many have feared that there could be a spillover of violence in Turkey, which has reportedly amassed troops on its border with Iraq, or in Saudi Arabia, home to a series of recent al Qaeda attacks, including the 2003 bombing of a residential compound in Riyadh. But the index’s experts fear for someone else in Iraq’s backyard. Nearly half said that Jordan is the neighbor most likely to experience a spillover of violence from Iraq—more than twice as many who pinpointed any other country. The Hashemite Kingdom was already a target for terrorists working from Iraq with the 2005 Amman hotel bombings, and it now hosts the second-largest Iraqi refugee population. With porous borders and its own home-grown Islamist movement, it’s a volatile mix that may be primed to explode.

Deciphering the Chatter

The U.S. presidential race is being dominated by foreign-policy issues. So how does the rhetoric of the candidates match up to the opinions of the country’s most respected international affairs experts? Here’s a look.

Sen. Hillary Clinton: “I believe we are safer than we were.”--June 3, 2007

Terrorism Index Experts: A huge majority, 91 percent, believe the world is growing more dangerous for Americans and the United States.

Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “I support the president’s increase in troops. Even more importantly, I support the change in strategy. . . .”--Jan. 10, 2007

Terrorism Index Experts: The majority, 83 percent, believe the surge has had either a negative impact or no impact at all on the war in Iraq.

Sen. John McCain: “We lose this war and come home, they’ll follow us home.”--March 10, 2007

Terrorism Index Experts: Nearly 9 in 10 say that they do not believe terrorist attacks would occur inside the United States as the result of a withdrawal from Iraq.

Sen. Barack Obama: “We must maintain the isolation of Hamas.”--March 2, 2007

Terrorism Index Experts: More than 70 percent believe the United States should engage, not isolate, Hamas.

Gov. Mitt Romney: “This is a time . . . to increase our diplomatic isolation of Iran.”--Feb. 18, 2007

Terrorism Index Experts: Eight in 10 support engaging in bilateral dialogue with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Sen. John Edwards: “[Congress] should correct its mistake and use its constitutional funding power to force an immediate withdrawal from Iraq.”--July 10, 2007

Terrorism Index Experts: Almost 80 percent of the experts oppose an immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

No Love from Russia

With so many foreign-policy headaches these days, Washington could use some friends to lean on. According to the index’s experts, don’t look to Moscow. When asked to choose the U.S. ally that least serves U.S. interests, 34 percent chose Russia, far ahead of complicated friends such as Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. What makes Russia an ally hardly worth the effort? The Kremlin frequently speaks out against the war in Iraq, denounces U.S. leadership in the world, and has refused to back the toughest international sanctions against Iran. Nor does it help that Russian President Vladimir Putin has increasingly played the strongman, cracking down on the press or any other group with the courage to question his leadership. It may be enough to make a superpower think carefully about the company it keeps.

Want to Know More?

The National Counterterrorism Center tracks cases of terrorist activity around the world in its annual Report on Incidents of Terrorism, available on its Web site. Lee Hamilton, Bruce Hoffman, Paul Pillar, and other terrorism experts assess the progress of the war on terror in State of the Struggle: Report on the Battle Against Global Terrorism (Washington: Council on Global Terrorism, 2006).

Jessica T. Mathews offered a plan for how to move forward in Iraq in testimony before the House Armed Services Committee, in “The Situation in Iraq” (July 18, 2007), available on the Web site of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. For two other viewpoints on how to fix the situation in Iraq, see “The New Strategy in Iraq,” by Frederick W. Kagan and Kimberly Kagan (The Weekly Standard, July 9, 2007), and Strategic Reset: Reclaiming Control of U.S. Security in the Middle East, by Brian Katulis, Lawrence J. Korb, and Peter Juul (Washington: Center for American Progress, 2007). Benjamin Friedman offers a skeptical look at the U.S. government’s ability to prevent terrorist attacks at home in “Think Again: Homeland Security” (FOREIGN POLICY, July/August 2005). Pakistan’s involvement in the war on terror is the subject of Zahid Hussain’s Frontline Pakistan: The Struggle with Militant Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).

Experts Available for Comment

Contact:
(FP) Jeff Marn, Media Relations Manager / (202) 939-2242 / jmarn@CarnegieEndowment.org

(CAP) Daniella Léger, Vice President of Communications / (202) 741-6258 / DLeger@americanprogress.org

Foreign Policy magazine

William J. Dobson
Managing Editor

William J. Dobson became FP’s managing editor in 2004. He is responsible for setting the editorial direction of the magazine, as well as editing and commissioning feature articles, reviews, and essays. Prior to joining FP, he served as Newsweek International’s Senior Editor for Asia and as an associate editor at Foreign Affairs. While at Newsweek, he supervised coverage that was honored for overall general excellence by the Society of Asia Publishers in 2003 and 2004. Since 2004, FP has been nominated for a National Magazine Award three years in a row—the only publication of its size to be so honored—and in 2007, FOREIGN POLICY won the overall award for General Excellence in its circulation category.

Mr. Dobson has written for Foreign Policy, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and The New Republic. He is a regular source of commentary and analysis for a variety of news outlets, including CNN, CBS, MSNBC, and NPR. Mr. Dobson was named a 2006 Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and is a 1994 Truman Scholar. He holds a law degree from Harvard Law School and a Master’s degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard University. He received his bachelor’s degree in history, summa cum laude, from Middlebury College.

Michael C. Boyer
Senior Editor

Mike Boyer joined FP in July 2001. He commissions and edits feature articles, arguments, and department pieces. He also reports and writes for the magazine. Previously, Mr. Boyer served on the legislative staff of U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel, where he covered foreign relations. He was assistant to the candidate on Hagel’s first Senate campaign in 1996, during which time he traveled extensively with the senator on the campaign trail.

Mr. Boyer’s writing on international affairs has appeared in National Geographic, the Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Weekly Standard online, among other publications. He has appeared as a commentator on television and radio, including CNN International, CBS Sunday Morning, Al Jazeera, National Public Radio, and in numerous print media outlets. A native of Omaha, Nebraska, he earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Colorado College and a Master’s degree in the history of international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Center for American Progress

Caroline Wadhams
National Security Senior Policy Analyst

Caroline Wadhams is a Senior Policy Analyst for National Security at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining the Center, she served as a Legislative Assistant for Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) on foreign-policy issues. Wadhams also worked at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C., as the Assistant Director for the Meetings Program and in New York as a Research Associate on national security issues. Prior to the Council on Foreign Relations, she worked at ABC News in New York. Her overseas experience includes work with the International Rescue Committee in Sierra Leone and two years in Ecuador and Chile. She received a Master’s degree in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and is a Term Member at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Peter Rundlet
Vice President for National Security and International Policy

Peter Rundlet is Vice President for National Security and International Affairs at the Center for American Progress. Prior to joining American Progress, Peter was Counsel for the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (the 9/11 Commission), where he focused on domestic intelligence and law enforcement policy, including related civil liberties issues. In 1997, Peter was selected to be a White House Fellow, serving in the Office of the Chief of Staff to the President. After his fellowship year, he was appointed Associate Counsel to the President and was responsible for a range of policy and constitutional law issues until the end of the Clinton administration.

After his White House tenure, Peter was an attorney in the political law department of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom. Earlier in his career, Peter received the Skadden Public Interest Law Fellowship and was an Assistant Counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he litigated voting rights, housing, school desegregation, and employment discrimination cases. Peter was also a Peace Corps Volunteer in Honduras. He received his undergraduate degree from Brown University, a Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy at Tufts University, and a law degree from the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Brian Katulis
Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Brian Katulis is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. At the Center, his work examines U.S. national security policy in the Middle East with a focus on Iraq. He is also a Senior Advisor to the Center’s Middle East Progress project.

Prior to joining the Center, Katulis lived and worked in the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, including projects in Egypt, Iraq, and the Palestinian territories. From 2000 to 2003, he worked as a senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. He has published articles in the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, and the Christian Science Monitor, among other publications. Katulis received a graduate degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs.

Contact:
(FP) Jeff Marn, Media Relations Manager / (202) 939-2242 / jmarn@CarnegieEndowment.org

(CAP) Daniella Léger, Vice President for Communications / (202) 741-6258 / DLeger@americanprogress.org

The Terrorism Index

Majority of America’s Foreign-Policy Experts Now Say That the Troop Surge Is Failing in Iraq, Call for a U.S. Troop Withdrawal in 18 Months

Pakistan Most Likely Country to Become Stronghold for al Qaeda; Russia is Least Valuable U.S. Ally

A majority of America’s foreign-policy experts now hold a negative view of the White House’s “troop surge” strategy in Iraq, and two thirds support a redeployment of troops in the next 18 months, according to a bipartisan survey produced by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for American Progress.

The third Foreign Policy/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index—published in the September/October issue of Foreign Policy magazine and available today at www.ForeignPolicy.com and www.AmericanProgress.org—is the first comprehensive attempt to determine the American foreign-policy establishment’s assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror.

Of the more than 100 foreign-policy experts (both liberals and conservatives) surveyed, 53 percent now say that the surge is having a negative impact—an increase of 22 percentage points in just the past six months. Nearly all of the experts (92 percent) believe that the war in Iraq is having a negative impact on U.S. national security.

A bipartisan majority (68 percent) now say that the United States should redeploy troops from Iraq in the next 18 months, though most oppose an immediate withdrawal. Surprisingly, more conservatives (25 percent) called for an immediate pullout than liberals or moderates.

Overall, nearly all of the experts (91 percent) say that the world is becoming more dangerous for Americans and report that the country is not winning the war on terror (84 percent). More than 80 percent predict a 9/11-scale terrorist attack on the United States in the next 10 years.

Pakistan was named as the country most likely to become the next al Qaeda stronghold, ahead of Iraq. Seventy-five percent also said that Pakistan—home to A.Q. Kahn’s now infamous nuclear black market ring—was the most likely to transfer nuclear technology to terrorists in the near future.

But when the experts were asked to name the ally that least serves U.S. security interests, Pakistan placed second to Russia, with Moscow’s consistent criticism of the United States, refusal to back tougher sanctions against Iran, and the increasingly authoritarian tendencies of President Vladimir Putin likely weighing on the experts’ minds.

For complete survey results, methodology, list of participants, and experts available for comment, visit www.ForeignPolicy.com and www.AmericanProgress.org.

About the Foreign Policy/Center for American Progress Terrorism Index

The Terrorism Index is survey of more than 100 of America’s top foreign-policy experts—including two former secretaries of state, a national security advisor, intelligence officers, and senior military leaders—and represents the first comprehensive attempt to determine the U.S. foreign-policy establishment’s assessment of how the United States is fighting the war on terror.

The index is based on the results of a survey designed by the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy. Participants in the survey were selected by Foreign Policy and the Center for American Progress for their expertise in terrorism and U.S. national security. No one currently working in an official U.S. government capacity was invited to participate.

The nonscientific survey was administered online from May 23-June 26, 2007. Respondents were asked to self-identify their ideological bias from choices across a spectrum: very conservative, conservative, somewhat conservative, moderate, somewhat liberal, liberal, and very liberal. Twenty-five people identified themselves as some level of conservative, 39 identified as moderate, and 44 identified as some level of liberal. To ensure balance, the survey was weighted according to ideology to make the number of weighted liberal respondents equal to the number of conservative respondents. Moderate and conservative respondents remained unweighted.