Tuesday, December 11, 2007
CIA Agent Reveals Highly Classified Interrogation Techniques and, Inexplicably, the Sky Does Not Fall
Marty Lederman
John Kiriakou confirmed the waterboarding of Abu Zubaydah, and the fact that
the White House authorized such crimes, even though such information is "highly classified." Kiriakou said that he "knew the rules" of classification but did not seek CIA approval to make his disclosures. There was fury at the CIA this morning because of this breach.
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Just like I have no faith in the truth of any information that comes from torturing a person,
I have no faith in the truth of anything that torturers and apologists for torture say. The former is speaking to avoid further torture and the latter is speaking to defend the torture they have done. The presence of torture makes them both unreliable to me.
Torture is an abomination that is against the law.John Kiriakou, if he is to be believed, has said that the
legal authorities were worked out at the highest levels of government with the President and Justice giving the CIA interrogators the authority to do the torture. In this Wonderland,
torture is legalized by the stroke of pen through a Presidential authorization backed with a compliant legal opinion.
Of course, no law was changed or treaty amended to legalize the torture. Only persons of power decided to write new words and persons below - noticeably other than John Kiriakou - were willing to go along. That is illegal conspiracy to do torture my fellow Americans and we have confirmation that this crime went up to the President.more at:
http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/12/cia-agent-reveals-highly-classified.html