NEW YORK TIMES: Pressure mounted on President Obama on Monday for more thorough investigation into harsh interrogations of terrorism suspects under the Bush administration, even as he tried to reassure the Central Intelligence Agency that it would not be blamed for following legal advice. Mr. Obama said it was time to admit “mistakes” and “move forward.” But there were signs that he might not be able to avoid a protracted inquiry into the use of interrogation techniques that the president’s top aides and many critics say crossed the line into torture. And while Mr. Obama vowed not to prosecute C.I.A. […]

NEW YORK TIMES: Waterboarding, the near-drowning technique that top Obama administration officials have described as illegal torture, was used by C.I.A. interrogators 183 times on one prisoner from Al Qaeda and 83 times on another, according to a 2005 Justice Department legal memorandum. The release of the numbers is likely to become part of the debate about the morality and efficacy of interrogation methods that the Bush administration Justice Department declared legal even though the United States had historically treated them as torture. A former C.I.A. officer, John Kiriakou, had told ABC News and other news media organizations in 2007 […]

GUARDIAN: In the first of the memos, dated 1 August 2002, the justice department gave the go-ahead to John Rizzo, then acting general counsel to the CIA, for operatives to move to the “increased pressure phase” in interrogating an al-Qaida suspect. Ten techniques are approved, listed as: attention grasp, walling (in which the suspect could be pushed into a wall), a facial hold, a facial slap, cramped confinement, wall standing, sleep deprivation, insects placed in a confinement box (the suspect had a fear of insects) and the waterboard. In the latter, “the individual is bound securely to an inclined bench, […]

DAILY BEAST: Spanish prosecutors have decided to press forward with a criminal investigation targeting former U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and five top associates over their role in the torture of five Spanish citizens held at Guantánamo, several reliable sources close to the investigation have told The Daily Beast. The six defendants—in addition to Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David […]

SALON: So [candidate] Barack Obama — the one trying to convince Democrats to make him their nominee and then their President — said that abducting people and imprisoning them without charges was (a) un-American; (b) tyrannical; (c) unnecessary to fight Terrorism; (d) a potent means for stoking anti-Americanism and fueling Terrorism; (e) a means of endangering captured American troops, Americans traveling abroad and Americans generally; and (f) a violent betrayal of core, centuries-old Western principles of justice.  But today’s Barack Obama, safely ensconced in the White House, fights tooth and nail to preserve his power to do exactly that.I’m not searching for ways to criticize Obama.  I […]

[Image courtesy of NYPL DIGITAL LIBRARY] WASHINGTON POST: The CIA no longer operates any secret overseas prisons, Director Leon Panetta said yesterday, and has not detained anyone since he became chief in February. Panetta’s statement, contained in a message to the CIA workforce, also said the agency will no longer use contractors to conduct interrogations or to provide security for remaining detention sites. Referring to “black sites,” as the secret prisons were known, Panetta said the agency has a plan “to decommission the remaining sites,” an apparent reference to facilities still in existence but no longer operational. He said that […]

THE HILL’S CONGRESS BLOG: American’s support for marijuana law reform is fast approaching a tipping point — a scenario made all that more remarkable when one considers that the federal government has spent nearly seven decades propagandizing against it.  Mainstream America is coming to terms with marijuana, and growing more and more dissatisfied with our nation’s failing pot policies. […] In the past days, leading commentators like David Sirota, Kathleen Parker, Paul Jacob,  Hendrik Hertzberg, Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald , Debra Saunders (San Francisco Chronicle), Leonard Pitts (Miami Herald),  John Richardson (Esquire), and Margery Eagan (Boston Herald), have all opined […]

WALL STREET JOURNAL: Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials. The spies came from China, Russia and other countries, these officials said, and were believed to be on a mission to navigate the U.S. electrical system and its controls. The intruders haven’t sought to damage the power grid or other key infrastructure, but officials warned they could try during a crisis or war. The espionage appeared pervasive across the U.S. and doesn’t target a particular company or region, said a […]