DOJ

AP: "Feds open criminal probe of Gulf oil spill"

Edger — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:37:32 -0700

videoFull text of speech below
AP reports that:

PORT FOURCHON, La. — Attorney General Eric Holder said Tuesday that federal authorities have opened criminal and civil investigations into the nation's worst oil spill, and BP lost billions in market value when shares dropped in the first trading day since the company failed yet again to plug the gusher.

Investors presumably realized the best chance to stop the leak was months away and there was no end in sight to the cleanup. As BP settled in for the long-term, Holder announced the criminal probe, though he would not specify the companies or individuals that might be targeted.

"We will closely examine the actions of those involved in the spill. If we find evidence of illegal behavior, we will be extremely forceful in our response," Holder said in New Orleans.

How Bush's DOJ Killed a Criminal Probe Into BP That Threatened to Net Top Officials

Jason Leopold — Wed, 19 May 2010 10:39:47 -0700

Originally published at Truthout.org

Mention the name of the corporation BP to Scott West and two words immediately come to mind: Beyond Prosecution.

West was the special agent in charge with the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) criminal division who had been probing alleged crimes committed by BP and the company's senior officials in connection with a March 2006 pipeline rupture at the company's Prudhoe Bay operations in Alaska's North Slope that spilled 267,000 gallons of crude oil across two acres of frozen tundra - the second largest spill in Alaska's history - which went undetected for nearly a week.

West was confident that the thousands of hours he invested into the criminal probe would result in felony charges against the company and the senior executives who received advanced warnings from dozens of employees at the Prudhoe Bay facility that unless immediate steps were taken to repair the severely corroded pipeline, a disaster on par with that of the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill was only a matter of time.

In fact, West, who spent more than two decades at the EPA's criminal division, was also told the pipeline was going to rupture - about six months before it happened.

In a wide-ranging interview with Truthout, West described how the Justice Department (DOJ) abruptly shut down his investigation into BP in August 2007 and gave the company a "slap on the wrist" for what he says were serious environmental crimes that should have sent some BP executives to jail.

He first aired his frustrations after he retired from the agency in 2008. But he said his story is ripe for retelling because the same questions about BP's record are now being raised again after a catastrophic explosion aboard the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig killed 11 workers and ruptured an oil well 5,000 feet below the surface that has been spewing upwards of 200,000 barrels of oil per day into the Gulf waters for a month.

Zubaydah's Torture, Detention Subject of Senate Intelligence Inquiry

Jason Leopold — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 18:14:11 -0700

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has launched an investigation into Abu Zubaydah, the "high-value" detainee captured in March 2002 that the Bush administration wrongly claimed was one of the planners of 9/11 and a top al-Qaeda operative, according to several Capitol Hill sources.

The investigation of Zubaydah, who was tortured at a secret black site prison in Thailand, will be conducted alongside the committee's ongoing probe of the Bush administration's interrogation and detention policies. Zubdaydah has been detained at Guantanamo since 2006.

The panel will scrutinize thousands of pages of highly classified documents related to Zubaydah's detention and torture to determine, among other things, whether the "enhanced interrogation techniques" he was subjected to was accurately reflected in CIA cable traffic sent back to Langley, whether he ever provided actionable intelligence to his torturers, and how the CIA and other government agencies came to rely on flawed intelligence that led the Bush administration to classify him as the No. 3 person in al-Qaeda and its first high-value detainee, Hill sources said.

New Documents Describe in Extraordinary Detail Process of "Rendition," Torture

Jason Leopold — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 11:28:11 -0700

Among the treasure trove of documents released on Monday related to the CIA's detention and torture program is a 20-page background paper that, for the first time, describes in extraordinary detail the process of "rendition" and the torture prisoners are then subjected to when they are flown to "black site" prisons.

The document was turned over to the ACLU in response to the civil liberties group's Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the government late on Monday evening along with numerous others, including previously undisclosed Justice Department legal opinions.

The background paper clearly illustrated that the torture of detainees was systematic and micromanaged by the top officials at the CIA, the Justice Department, medical professionals and, likely, the White House. Previously, the CIA had refused to disclose any details of its rendition program, citing state secrets.

Obama Administration Cooks Up New Legal Argument for Detaining Guantanamo Prisoner

Jason Leopold — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 07:39:28 -0700

Faced with impending defeat in a US District Court habeas corpus case, the Obama administration devised a new strategy for continuing the detention of Mohammed Jawad, an Afghani who may have been as young as 12 in 2002 when he allegedly wounded two US soldiers with a grenade.

Justice Department lawyers announced Friday that they would transform Jawad's indefinite detention as an enemy combatant at Guantanamo Bay into a criminal case, thus negating the habeas corpus hearing in Washington, DC, where Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle had accused the government of "dragging [the case] out for no good reason."

Jonathan Hafetz, an attorney with the ACLU's National Security Project and one of Jawad's lawyers, blasted the Obama administration for its "pathetic attempt to prolong an outrageous case and to manipulate the court system.

DOJ Reveals Details About Cheney's Interview With Patrick Fitzgerald

Jason Leopold — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 07:02:42 -0700

In early fall 2003, as the scandal over leaking a covert CIA officer's identity was exploding, President George W. Bush claimed not to know anything about the leak and called on anyone in his administration who had knowledge to come "forward with the information so we can find out whether or not these allegations are true."

How disingenuous the president's appeal was has been underscored again by a new Justice Department court filing sketching out the contents of the 2004 interview between special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Though the Obama administration continues to balk at releasing the full contents of the Cheney interview, it did reveal that Bush and Cheney were in contact about the scandal, including what is described as "a confidential conversation" and "an apparent communication between the Vice President and the President."

John Yoo, Donald Rumsfeld and the Systematic Torture of Prisoners

Jason Leopold — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:44:34 -0700

On January 17, 2003, Mary Walker, the Air Force general counsel, received an urgent memo from the Pentagon's top attorney. Attached to the classified document was a set of directives drafted two days earlier by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.

"Establish a working group within the Department of Defense to assess the legal, policy and operational issues relating to the interrogations of detainees held by the US Armed Forces in the war on terrorism," the directives said.

Among the issues to be addressed were "policy considerations with respect to the choice of interrogation techniques, including contribution to intelligence collection, effect on treatment of captured US military personnel, effect on detainee prosecutions, historical role of US armed forces in conducting interrogations, recommendations for employment of particular interrogation techniques by [Defense Department] interrogators."

Comey Emails Illustrate Concerns Over Torture Policies

Jason Leopold — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 16:20:55 -0700

Dick Cheney and his lawyer, David Addington, pressured the Department of Justice (DOJ) in 2005 to quickly approve a torture memo that authorized CIA interrogators to use a combination of barbaric techniques during interrogations of "high-value" detainees, despite objections from senior DOJ officials, according to emails written by James Comey, the agency's former deputy attorney general.

In the emails, Comey also wrote that then Attorney General (AG) Alberto Gonzales was "weak" and had essentially allowed Cheney and Addington to politicize the DOJ. The emails can be found here: Documents: Justice Department Communication on Interrogation Opinions.

"The AG explained that he was under great pressure from the Vice President to complete both memos, and that the President had even raised it last week, apparently at the VP's request and the AG had promised they would be ready early this week," Comey wrote. Gonzales "added that the VP kept telling him 'we are getting killed on the Hill.'"

A DOJ Attorney Reacts to Obama's War Crimes Speech

Pluto — Thu, 21 May 2009 21:13:43 -0700

President Obama spoke today about new directions in fighting terrorism. He rejected Bush administration policies and reiterated his plans to close the Guantánamo Bay detention center. He vowed to prosecute detainees in federal courts and restated his intention to transfer some detainees to secure prisons within U.S. borders. He also nuanced the hell out of what he hopes to see happen in the criminal justice realms regarding our very own war criminals, George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their web of co-conspirators.

Lars Thorwald, an attorney with the DOJ, gave me permission to publish his impression of what he heard this morning (which he originally posted at Daily Kos), with the following disclaimer:

My views are not the views of the Department. I write merely as a private citizen who works as a trial attorney with the Department. I have only public knowledge about the OPR investigation, and this diary should not be construed as revelation of confidential information, because there ain't none there. That is all, carry on.

And now, a legal analysis of Obama's War Crimes speech:

CIA Headquarters Micromanaged Torture

Jason Leopold — Mon, 11 May 2009 10:33:06 -0700

Illustration: Matt Mahurin
Washington Independent

CIA interrogators provided top agency officials in Langley with daily "torture" updates of Abu Zubaydah, the alleged "high-level" terrorist detainee, who was held at a secret "black site" prison and waterboarded 83 times in August 2002, according to newly released court documents obtained by this reporter.

The extensive back-and-forth between CIA field operatives and agency officials in Langley likely included updates provided to senior Bush administration officials.

The government documents filed May 1 with US District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein included two sets of indexes totaling 52 pages and contained general descriptions of cables sent back to CIA headquarters describing the August 2002 videotaped interrogation sessions of Zubaydah. Those cable transmissions included a description of the techniques interrogators had used and the intelligence, if any, culled from those sessions.