New Torture Memos Outline Black Sites, Ghost Prisoners

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Three human rights groups released more than a thousand pages of Department of Defense and CIA documents Thursday that outline how closely the two agencies worked in rendering terrorism suspects to black sites, keeping detainees’ identities secret, and tempering bad publicity for inmate treatment at Guántanamo Bay.

Most of the documents—obtained after Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice sued under the Freedom of Information Act—simply contain news articles, but the Center for Constitutional Rights scoured the files and found three significant disclosures from the DoD.

One heavily redacted page mentions (PDF, page 34) an “undisclosed detention facility” at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

Another, dated May 2004, highlights (PDF, page 17) how the Geneva Conventions can be interpreted to allow the CIA and the DoD to ghost detainees’ identities so they can be denied a visit from the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The [Geneva Conventions] also permit holding a SI (security internee) who participated in activities hostile to security of the occupying power if required by “absolute military security.”

This was done, according to a memo from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to “maximize intelligence collection efforts.” In other words, give them more time to interrogate inmates.

The most interesting document, though, is a February 2006 email (PDF) to members of the DoD’s Transportation Command discussing how to deal with the bad press the US was receiving over its detention facilities.

US Getting Creamed on Human Rights: Coverage of UN Rapporteurs’ report on Guantanamo, plus lingering interest in Abu Ghraib photos, adds up to the US taking a big hit on the issues of human rights and respect for the rule of law.

To temper the bad PR, the email suggests delaying the release of prisoners at Gitmo “for 45 days or so until things die down. Otherwise we are likely to have a hero’s (sic) welcome awaiting the detainees when they arrive.”

It would probably be preferable if we could deliver these detainees in something smaller and more discreet than a T tail (a larger aircraft with a T-shaped tail wing).

The full list of documents can be found here.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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