New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania

Credit for image to Andy Worthington

From Tuesday August 3, 2010 and Wednesday August 4, 2010 respectively by Andy Worthington dot co dot uk and Truth Out dot org

t r u t h o u t | New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA ...
Aug 4, 2010 ... New Evidence About Prisoners Held in Secret CIA Prisons in Poland and Romania ... of prisoners transferred by the CIA to a secret prison in Poland ... who were subsequently transferred to a secret CIA prison in Romania. GO here

by: Andy Worthington, t r u t h o u t | Report

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(Photo: Prisoner 159753; Edited: Jared Rodriguez / t r u t h o u t)

On Friday, the Polish Border Guard Office released a number of documents to the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which, for the first time, provide details of the number of prisoners transferred by the CIA to a secret prison in Poland between December 5, 2002, and September 22, 2003, and, in one case, the number of prisoners who were subsequently transferred to a secret CIA prison in Romania. The documents (available here and here) provide important information about the secret prison at Szymany, in northeastern Poland, and also add to what is known about the program in Romania, which has received far less scrutiny.

The existence of the prisons was first revealed in The Washington Post on November 2, 2005, although the Post refrained from "publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials." However, on November 6, 2005, Human Rights Watch identified the countries as Poland and Romania, and stated that it had seen "flight records showing that a Boeing 737, registration number N313P - a plane that the CIA used to move several prisoners to and from Europe, Afghanistan, and the Middle East in 2003 and 2004 - landed in Poland and Romania on direct flights from Afghanistan on two occasions in 2003 and 2004."

Although the Polish and Romanian governments denied the claims, Swiss Sen. Dick Marty, a rapporteur for the Council of Europe, concluded in a report in June 2007, based on two years' research and interviews with over 30 current and former members of the intelligence services in the United States and Europe, that he had enough "evidence to state that secret detention facilities run by the CIA did exist in Europe from 2003 to 2005, in particular in Poland and Romania." Marty also identified both sites, noting that the flights to Romania flew into the Mihail Kogalniceanu military airfield, and also explained how the flights were disguised using fake flight plans.

In September 2008, a Polish intelligence official confirmed that between 2002 and 2005 the CIA had held terror suspects inside a military intelligence training base in Stare Kiejkuty in northeastern Poland. He said that only the CIA had access to the prison, and that, although Prime Minister Leszek Miller and President Aleksander Kwasniewski knew about it, "it was unlikely either man knew if the prisoners were being tortured because the Poles had no control over the Americans' activities."

It was not until March 23, 2009, however, that the first details of specific flights into Szymany were officially confirmed in Poland, when the Polish Air Navigation Service Agency released information about a Lockheed L100-30 Hercules, registration number N8213G, which had flown in on February 4, 2003. This was followed up on September 16 with far more incriminating records, demonstrating that a notorious "torture jet," a Gulfstream V, registration number N379P, had flown into Szymany on six occasions between February 8 and September 22, 2003, (see here and here), and on June 2 this year, a further release identified a Gulfstream IV, registration number N63MU, which had flown in on July 28, 2005.

Friday's revelations by the Polish Border Guard Office are, however, even more significant, firstly because they include, for the first time, confirmation that N63MU flew into Poland on December 5, 2002, and secondly, because they provide details of the number of passengers on seven of the flights, as follows:

December 5, 2002: 8 passengers delivered
February 8, 2003: 7 passengers delivered; 4 others flown to an unknown destination
March 7, 2003: 2 passengers delivered
March 25, 2003: 1 passenger delivered
May 6, 2003: 1 passenger delivered
July 30, 2003: 1 passenger delivered
September 22, 2003: 0 passengers delivered; 5 flown to Romania

Who Are the "High-Value Detainees" Held in Poland?

In identifying these 20 passengers, the documents provide more questions than answers, as it is not known how many of them were prisoners, and how many were US government operatives accompanying them.

However, what can be stated with certainty is that three of the men who arrived on December 5, 2002, were the HVDs (HVDs) Abu Zubaydah, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, who had all been held previously in a secret CIA prison in Thailand.

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In the CIA Inspector General's Report on "Counterterrorism Detention and Interrogation Activities (September 2001-October 2003)," published in May 2004, but only made publicly available last August, it was stated that the "enhanced interrogation of al-Nashiri continued through 4 December 2002" and that, "after being moved, al-Nashiri was thought to have been withholding information," indicating that it was at this time that he was rendered to Poland.

Moreover, in research for a "Joint Study on Global Practices in Relation to Secret Detention in the Context of Counter-Terrorism," published by the United Nations in February this year, an analyst

identified a flight from Bangkok to Szymany, Poland, on 5 December 2002 (stopping at Dubai) ... though it was disguised under multiple layers of secrecy, including charter and sub-contracting arrangements that would avoid there being any discernible "fingerprints" of a United States Government operation, as well as the filing of "dummy" flight plans.

This, clearly, is the flight identified in the newly released documents as having flown into Poland via Dubai.

In addition, according to information provided to "ABC News" by "[c]urrent and former CIA officers" in December 2005, seven other high-value detainees, as well as Zubaydah, al-Nashiri and bin al-Shibh, were held in Poland, while an 11th, Hambali, was held elsewhere (possibly on the British island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, which is leased to the US). "ABC News" identified these men as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Waleed bin Attash, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi, Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman, Hassan Ghul and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani.

Of these seven, Hassan Ghul (whose whereabouts are still unknown, although he was reportedly held in a Pakistani prison in 2006) and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani (who was one of 14 HVDs transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006) were seized in 2004, outside of the period from December 2002 to September 2003 covered by the documents, but the other five may all have been held in Poland.

In April 2009, Der Spiegel reported that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (another of the 14 HVDs, and the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks) was flown to Szymany on March 7, 2003, and if this is the case (and the date, noticeably, corresponds with one of the dates in the newly released documents), then it is possible that Mustafa al-Hawsawi, who was seized with him on March 1, 2003, (and who was also transferred to Guantanamo in September 2006), was the other passenger who arrived with him on that date - although it is also, of course, possible that the second passenger was an interrogator or a psychologist.

As for the others identified by "ABC News," Waleed bin Attash (another of the 14 HVDs), seized in Karachi, Pakistan, on April 29, 2003, could be the passenger delivered on May 6, and Mohamed Omar Abdel-Rahman, one of the sons of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh," imprisoned in the US, could have been on any of the flights. Seized in Quetta in February 2003, his detention has never been officially acknowledged by the US authorities, and his current whereabouts are unknown.

More contentious are the claims that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi and Abdul Rahim al-Sharqawi were held in Poland. Al-Libi, the emir of the Khaldan training camp in Afghanistan, which was closed down by the Taliban in 2000 after he refused to cede control of it to Osama bin Laden, was, notoriously, rendered by the CIA to Egypt soon after his capture in Afghanistan in December 2001, where, under torture, he came up with the false allegation that Saddam Hussein was working on a chemical weapons program with al-Qaeda, which was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

According to an account by the journalist Stephen Grey, al-Libi was rendered back to Afghanistan in November 2003, and according to another account, by a Libyan who talked to al-Libi in a prison in Tripoli before his suspicious death last May, he was rendered from Egypt to prisons in Mauritania, Morocco and Jordan, before his return to Afghanistan, where he was held in three separate prisons run by, or under the control of the CIA, before his eventual return to Libya (possibly in 2006). As a result, although it's possible that he was also held in Poland for a while, it is by no means certain.

As for al-Sharqawi (also identified as Sharqwi Abdu Ali al-Hajj or Abdu Ali Sharqawi), the available reports suggest that, after he was seized in a house raid in Pakistan in February 2002, he was rendered to Jordan, where he was held for nearly two years - and tortured on behalf of the CIA - before being transferred to the CIA's "Dark Prison" near Kabul, and then, via Bagram, to Guantánamo, where he arrived in September 2004. As with al-Libi, however, it is possible that at some point he was transferred to Poland.

A Program Still Shrouded in Secrecy

Given the intense secrecy that still surrounds the HVD program, all that we can state with certainty is that, in May 2005, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Bradbury of the Office of Legal Counsel stated in a memo (updating the notorious "torture memos" of August 1, 2002, by John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee) that the CIA had, by that point, "taken custody of 94 prisoners [redacted] and ha[d] employed enhanced techniques to varying degrees in the interrogations of 28 of these detainees." These figures do not include prisoners rendered to prisons in other countries that were not directly under CIA control.

As these are essentially the only details about the program's scope that have ever been made publicly available, it is impossible to state with any certainty how many of these 94 prisoners were held in Poland. However, research undertaken for the UN's secret detention report indicated that the majority of the 94 were probably held in secret prisons in Afghanistan, and the figure of ten men in Poland that was cited by "ABC News" is close to the figure quoted by Marty, who noted, "a single CIA source told us that there were 'up to a dozen' high-value detainees in Poland in 2005, but we were unable to confirm this number." If this is the case, then the 20 passengers referred to in the newly released documents may include just eight prisoners, with two more - Hassan Ghul and Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani - arriving in 2004, and the rest being interrogators and psychologists.

One more question, however, concerns the origin of one of the flights. Although the first flight came from Bangkok via Dubai, and the rest appear to have flown directly from Kabul, Afghanistan, the flight on February 8, 2003, which contained seven passengers, and left the next day with four passengers (again, perhaps US personnel) arrived from Rabat, Morocco. Given that Morocco was one of a handful of countries (along with Jordan, Egypt and Syria) that were used either as proxy torture prisons or in order to "disappear" prisoners entirely, it is possible that the flight picked up three prisoners in Morocco, and flew them on to Poland.

If this is the case, then three possible candidates are Abu Zubair al-Haili, a Saudi seized in Morocco in June 2002, who was known as "the Bear," because of his size, and who was reported to be "one of the top 25 al-Qaeda leaders," and to have had "a very close relationship to Abu Zubaydah," plus two other Saudis seized with him. The whereabouts of all three men have never been explained by either the US or the Moroccan authorities, although, in September 2002, The Independent reported that al-Haili was "in U.S. custody."

Romania's Role in the CIA's Secret Prison Program

The final piece of the jigsaw revealed by the new Polish documents concerns Romania, as it seems clear that, on September 22, 2003, five prisoners were taken from the Polish prison to what may, at the time, have been a new project in Romania. In his report for the Council of Europe, Marty stated:

For reasons of both security and capacity, the CIA determined that the Polish strand of the HVD program should remain limited in size. Thus a "second European site" was sought to which the CIA could transfer its detainees with "no major logistical overhaul". Romania, used extensively by United States forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom in early 2003, had distinct benefits in this regard: as a member of the CIA's Counterterrorist Centre remarked about the location of the proposed detention facility, "our guys were familiar with the area."

Marty added:

Romania was developed into a site to which more detainees were transferred only as the HVD program expanded. I understand that the Romanian "black site" was incorporated into the program in 2003, attained its greatest significance in 2004 and operated until the second half of 2005. The detainees who were held in Romania belonged to a category of HVDs whose intelligence value had been assessed as lower but in respect of whom the Agency still considered it worthwhile pursuing further investigations.

While this avenue remains to be explored, the UN secret detention report suggested that three of the men held in Romania may have been the Yemenis Salah Nasser Salim Ali (seized in Indonesia in August 2003), Mohammed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah (seized in Jordan in October 2003) and Mohammed al-Asad (seized in Tanzania in December 2003), who, after being held in secret prisons in Afghanistan, were transferred in April 2004 to "an unknown, modern facility apparently run by United States officials, which was carefully designed to induce maximum disorientation, dependence and stress in the detainees ... Research into flight durations and the observations of Mr. al-Asad, Mr. Ali, and Mr. Bashmilah suggest that the facility was likely located in Eastern Europe."

All three were eventually transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005, but they were clearly more fortunate than the other men rendered to Romania, whose stories have never emerged, and are as unknown as those of the five men transferred from Poland to Romania on September 22, 2003, whose existence has just been revealed.

In conclusion, while the release of these documents provides only a tantalizing glimpse into a program that is still shrouded in secrecy, it also provides some much needed information to be used in an attempt to compel the Polish government, the Romanian government and, most of all, the US government, to stop pretending either that these prisons did not exist, or that "we need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," and to come clean about both the prisons and the men held there.

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Breaking the Torture Routine (Iraq)

From: Lauren Jenkins at EPIC
Date: August 2, 2010 12:54:42 PM EDT

Subject: Breaking the torture routine
info@epic-usa.org

Promoting a Free & Secure Iraq

Held in a secret detention facility for months, Iraqi prisoners were subjected to electric shocks, blindfolded, hung upside down, and beaten. This torture, as described to Human Rights Watch researchers in April, was systematic and routine and has yet to be properly investigated by the Iraqi government.

Recently, EPIC had the opportunity to speak with Samer Muscati, one of the HRW researchers who interviewed these prisoners about the abuses they faced at Muthanna detention facility. What he and his colleagues found was that the prisoners they spoke to described being tortured in similar ways, as if the perpetrators were doing it using a manual.

(Refer to) the first part of our interview with Samer Muscati of Human Rights Watch

Torture in prisons in Iraq is not uncommon, but the routine nature of the torture discovered at Muthanna is particularly alarming. Samer explained that Iraqi officials use torture as a way to elicit confessions--it's the preferred method of collecting evidence. Torture in Iraq is a product of the criminal justice system.

When the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry discovered the secret facility at Muthanna, it launched an investigation into the abuses there. Unfortunately, the Human Rights Ministry's report on the abuses at Muthanna has yet to be acted upon by other government officials. No one has been investigated or prosecuted for the crimes that happened there.

(Refer to) more of what Samer had to say on torture in Iraqi prisons

In addition to routine abuse, the prisoners held at Muthanna also had no access to legal counsel or their families. In fact, Samer says across Iraq, most families have a difficult time finding their loved ones held in detention.

Promoting human rights in Iraq means promoting human rights for all Iraqis, prisoners included. The international community must continue to put pressure on the Iraqi government investigate claims of torture in Iraqi prisons. The Iraqi government must take legislative steps to enforce the rule of law within the criminal justice system.

Torture has a long history in Iraq, but it does not have to be a part of Iraq's future.

Sincerely,

Lauren Jenkins
National Coordinator

EPIC: Promoting a Free & Secure Iraq works to build peace through the advancement of human rights, humanitarian relief and sustainable development that benefits all Iraqis.

EPIC
900 Second Street NE, Suite 216
Washington, DC 20002
202-682-0208

Update: Read Stephen Lendman - A big tip!

Although I have NO time to properly post any of Steve Lendman's work - let alone properly read the same, Plz go here if you do have the time. Lendman is on the cutting edge of international reporting...an invaluable voice for all of us who believe in human rights no matter who is transgressor and who is the victim.

GO here OFTEN...even just to skim headlines and file - but if you read ANY Lendman article in depth you will be amazed how thorough it is. Next for me is to read MORE, to hear his Radio show and to buy/read his book...

Here's a sample:
Previous Posts

* The Repressive Citizenship and Entry into Israel L...(TODAY- August 4, 2010)
* The Liberal Media: Rest in Peace
* Honduran Junta Murdering Journalists
* Palestinian Detainee Abuse During Operation Cast L...
* Occupied Palestine: Home Demolitions, Dispossessio...
* Damage Control: Downplaying WikiLeaks Revelations
* Investigating the Freedom Flotilla Attack
* WikiLeaks "Afghan War Diaries"
* Progressive Radio News Hour Guests for July 29, 31...
* Growing Health Crisis in the Gulf

Lendman also mentions KEY quotes and articles many of the most progressive among us miss - See On July 29, Countercurrents.org published Providence Knolls and Tania Kepler's article titled, "Villagers Rebuild Razed Bedouin Village," accessed through the following link:

GO here

They reported villagers, Palestinians, Israeli and international volunteers rebuilt Al-Araqib one day after Israel bulldozed it, and residents plan to build "more than what was destroyed, in an attempt to prevent future demolitions." Asking international help to survive, village spokesperson, Dr. Awad Abu Freih, said "We want our voice to be heard around the world." Is Israel listening?

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Stephen Lendman Radio - GO - here

and also posted by Steve Lendman @ 3:01 AM
Friday, July 30, 2010
Damage Control: Downplaying WikiLeaks Revelations

Damage Control: Downplaying WikiLeaks Revelations - by Stephen Lendman

When truths are too disturbing to conceal, downplay them, change the subject, and blame others, not responsible Washington officials and key allies, culpable politicians and media misinformation masters suppressing and misreporting the facts, their well-oiled spin machine counterattacking WikiLeaks - revelations too sensitive to explain, a potential game-changer otherwise, so pundits and reporters duck them.

Above all, WikiLeaks "Afghan War Diaries" are a powerful indictment of wars, their true face, the mindless daily slaughter and destruction too disturbing to reveal, for Julian Assange:

"the vast sweep of abuses, everyday squalor and carnage of war....one sort of kill after another every day going on and on and on....one damn thing after another....(endless) small events, the continuous deaths of children, insurgents, allied forces....(many) thousands" of war crimes needing exposure, accountability, and prosecutions.

The "Diaries" document them, suppressed by the major media, choosing embedded complicity and Pentagon handouts over real journalism, WikiLeaks "high quality material" and solid analysis their antidote, so far not enough to stop Congress.

One day after (Wiki-Leaks Documents) release, following the Senate's passage days earlier on top of $130 billion already approved this year, the House overwhelmingly passed a $60 billion supplemental spending bill, including $37 billion for America's wars, mostly for 30,000 additional troops in Afghanistan. Obama TRIPLED the force since taking office, now around 100,000 and increasing by about 2,000 a month, their numbers exceeded by private military and other contractors, making the annual cost per US soldier $1 million and rising, reason enough to end both wars and bring them home.

Yet more escalation is planned, breaking candidate Obama's October 27, 2007 pledge saying:

"I will promise you this, that if we have not gotten our troops out by the time I am president, it is the first thing I will do. I will get our troops home, We will bring an end to this war. You can take that to the bank," perhaps an insolvent one under FDIC receivership.

A day after the WikiLeaks release, he ignored old promises, evaded indictable war crimes evidence and a deepening unwinnable quagmire, urging the House authorize more supplemental funding, then engaged in contradictory, deceitful damage control saying:

"While I'm concerned about the disclosure of sensitive information from the battlefield that could potentially jeopardize individuals or operations, the fact is these documents don't reveal any issues that haven't already informed our public debate about Afghanistan. Indeed, they point to the same challenges that led me to conduct an extensive review of our policy last fall."

Instead of withdrawing as earlier promised, he plans escalation, the same Vietnam misjudgment, force levels there reaching 540,000 in December 1969, yet not enough to win, resulting in drawdowns, withdrawal and defeat, now repeating in Afghanistan, then Iraq no matter each country's troop level. Mindless of history, Obama added:

"We've substantially increased our commitment there, insisted upon greater accountability from our partners in Afghanistan and Pakistan, developed a new strategy that can work and put in place a team, including one of our finest generals, to execute that plan. Now we have to see that strategy through," no matter its illegality and futility, what he and Pentagon brass know but won't say, what Congress and the media won't address, supporting a killing machine in violation of US and international law, explained in this writer's July 28 article, accessed through the following link:

GO here

UPDATING: See Chris Hedges & What Howard Zinn's FBI Files Reveal

Truthdig

Why the Feds Fear Thinkers Like Howard Zinn
here
Posted on Aug 1, 2010

By Chris Hedges

Today I will teach my final American history class of the semester to prison inmates. We have spent five weeks reading Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.” The class is taught in a small room in the basement of the prison. I pass through a metal detector, am patted down by a guard and walk through three pairs of iron gates to get to my students. We have covered Spain’s genocide of the native inhabitants in the Caribbean and the Americas, the war for independence in the United States and the disgraceful slaughter of Native Americans. We have examined slavery, the Mexican-American War, the Civil War, the occupations of Cuba and the Philippines, the New Deal, two world wars and the legacy of racism, capitalist exploitation and imperialism that continue to infect American society.

We have looked at these issues, as Zinn did, through the eyes of Native Americans, immigrants, slaves, women, union leaders, persecuted socialists, anarchists and communists, abolitionists, anti-war activists, civil rights leaders and the poor. As I was reading out loud a passage by Sojourner Truth, Chief Joseph, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, W.E.B Du Bois, Randolph Bourne, Malcolm X or Martin Luther King, I have heard students mutter “Damn” or “We been lied to.”

The power of Zinn’s scholarship—which I have watched over the past few weeks open the eyes of young, mostly African-Americans to their own history and the structures that perpetuate misery for the poor and gluttony and privilege for the elite—explains why the FBI, which released its 423-page file on Zinn on July 30, saw him as a threat.

Zinn, who died in January at the age of 87, did not advocate violence or support the overthrow of the government, something he told FBI interrogators on several occasions. He was rather an example of how genuine intellectual thought is always subversive. It always challenges prevailing assumptions as well as political and economic structures. It is based on a fierce moral autonomy and personal courage and it is uniformly branded by the power elite as “political.” Zinn was a threat not because he was a violent revolutionary or a communist but because he was fearless and told the truth.

The cold, dead pages of the FBI file stretch from 1948 to 1974. At one point five agents are assigned to follow Zinn. Agents make repeated phone calls to employers, colleagues and landlords seeking information. The FBI, although Zinn is never suspected of carrying out a crime, eventually labels Zinn a high security risk. J. Edgar Hoover, who took a personal interest in Zinn’s activities, on Jan. 10, 1964, drew up a memo to include Zinn “in Reserve Index, Section A,” a classification that permitted agents to immediately arrest and detain Zinn if there was a national emergency. Muslim activists, from Dr. Sami Al-Arian to Fahad Hashmi, can tell you that nothing has changed.

The file exposes the absurdity, waste and pettiness of our national security state. And it seems to indicate that our security agencies prefer to hire those with mediocre or stunted intelligence, dubious morality and little common sense. Take for example this gem of a letter, complete with misspellings, mailed by an informant to then FBI Director Hoover about something Zinn wrote.

“While I was visiting my dentist in Michigan City, Indiana,” the informant wrote. “This pamphlet was left in my car, and I am mailing it to you, I know is a DOVE call, and not a HOCK call. We have had a number of ethnic groups move into our area in the last few years. We are in a war! And it doesn’t look like this pamphlet will help our Government objectives.”

Or how about the meeting between an agent and someone identified as Doris Zinn. Doris Zinn, who the agent says is Zinn’s sister, is interviewed “under a suitable pretext.” She admits that her brother is “employed at the American Labor Party Headquarters in Brooklyn.” That is all the useful information that is reported. The fact that Zinn did not have a sister gives a window into the quality of the investigations and the caliber of the agents who carried them out.

FBI agents in November 1953 wrote up an account of a clumsy attempt to recruit Zinn as an informant, an attempt in which they admitted that Zinn “would not volunteer information” and that “additional interviews with ZINN would not turn him from his current attitude.” A year later, after another interrogation, an agent wrote that Zinn “concluded the interview by stating he would not under any circumstances testify or furnish information concerning the political opinions of others.”

While Zinn steadfastly refused to cooperate in the anti-communist witch hunts in the 1950s, principals and college administrators were busy purging classrooms of those who, like Zinn, exhibited intellectual and moral independence. The widespread dismissals of professors, elementary and high school teachers and public employees—especially social workers whose unions had advocated on behalf of their clients—were carried out quietly. The names of suspected “Reds” were handed to administrators and school officials under the FBI’s “Responsibilities Program.” It was up to the institutions, nearly all of which complied, to see that those singled out lost their jobs. There rarely were hearings. The victims did not see any purported evidence. They were usually abruptly terminated. Those on the blacklist were effectively locked out of their professions. The historian Ellen Schrecker estimates that between 10,000 and 12,000 people were blackballed through this process.

The FBI spent years following Zinn, and carefully cutting out newspaper articles about their suspect, to amass the inane and the banal. One of Zinn’s neighbors, Mrs. Matthew Grell, on Feb. 22, 1952, told agents that she considered Zinn and another neighbor, Mrs. Julius Scheiman, “to be either communists or communist sympathizers” because, the agents wrote, Grell “had observed copies of the Daily Workers in Mrs. Scheiman’s apartment and noted that Mrs. Scheiman was a good friend of Howard Zinn.”

The FBI, which describes Zinn as a former member of the Communist Party, something Zinn repeatedly denied, appears to have picked up its surveillance when Zinn, who was teaching at Spelman, a historically black women’s college, became involved in the civil rights movement. Zinn served on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. He took his students out of the classroom to march for civil rights. Spelman’s president was not pleased.

“I was fired for insubordination,” Zinn recalled. “Which happened to be true.”

Zinn in 1962 decried “the clear violations by local police of Constitutional rights” of blacks and noted that “the FBI has not made a single arrest on behalf of Negro citizens.” The agent who reported Zinn’s words added that Zinn’s position was “slanted and biased.” Zinn in 1970 was a featured speaker at a rally for the release of the Black Panther leader Bobby Seal held in front of the Boston police headquarters. “It is about time we had a demonstration at the police station,” Zinn is reported as telling the crowd by an informant who apparently worked with him at Boston University. “Police in every nation are a blight and the United States is no exception.”

“America has been a police state for a long time,” Zinn went on. “I believe that policemen should not have guns. I believe they should be disarmed. Policemen with guns are a danger to the community and themselves.”

Agents muse in the file about how to help their unnamed university source mount a campaign to have Zinn fired from his job as a professor of history at Boston University.

“[Redacted] indicated [Redacted] intends to call a meeting of the BU Board of Directors in an effort to have ZINN removed from BU. Boston proposes under captioned program with Bureau permission to furnish [Redacted] with public source data regarding ZINN’s numerous anti-war activities, including his trip to Hanoi, 1/31/68, in an effort to back [Redacted’s] efforts for his removal.”

Zinn and the radical Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan had traveled together to North Vietnam in January 1968 to bring home three prisoners of war. The trip was closely monitored by the FBI. Hoover sent a coded teletype to the president, the secretary of state, the director of the CIA, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of the Army, the Department of the Air Force and the White House situation room about the trip. And later, after Berrigan was imprisoned for destroying draft records, Zinn repeatedly championed the priest’s defense in public rallies, some of which the FBI noted were sparsely attended. The FBI monitored Zinn as he traveled to the Danbury Federal Prison in Connecticut to visit Berrigan and his brother Philip.

“Mass murders occur, which is what war is,” Zinn, who was a bombardier in World War II, said in 1972, according to the file, “because people are split and don’t think … when the government does not serve the people, then it doesn’t deserve to be obeyed. … To be patriotic, you may have to be against your government.”

Zinn testified at the trial of Daniel Ellsberg, who gave a copy of the Pentagon Papers to Zinn and Noam Chomsky. The two academics edited the secret documents on the Vietnam War, sections of which had appeared in The New York Times, into the four volumes that were published in 1971.

“During the Pentagon Papers jury trial, Zinn stated that the ‘war in Vietnam was a war which involved special interests, and not the defense of the United States,’ ” his FBI file reads.

By the end of the file one walks away with a profound respect for Zinn and a deep distaste for the buffoonish goons in the FBI who followed and monitored him. There is no reason, with the massive expansion of our internal security apparatus, to think that things have improved. There are today 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, The Washington Post reported in an investigation by Dana Priest and William M. Arkin. These agencies employ an estimated 854,000 people, all of whom hold top-secret security clearances, the Post found. And in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together, the paper reported, they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings—about 17 million square feet.

We are amassing unprecedented volumes of secret files, and carrying out extensive surveillance and harassment, as stupid and useless as those that were directed against Zinn. And a few decades from now maybe we will be able to examine the work of the latest generation of dimwitted investigators who have been unleashed upon us in secret by the tens of thousands. Did any of the agents who followed Zinn ever realize how they wasted their time? Do those following us around comprehend how manipulated they are? Do they understand that their primary purpose, as it was with Zinn, is not to prevent terrorism but discredit and destroy social movements as well as protect the elite from those who would expose them?

Zinn’s book is revered in my cramped classroom. It is revered because these men intimately know racism, manipulation, poverty, abuse and the lies peddled by the powerful. Zinn recorded their voices and the voices of their ancestors. They respect him for this. Zinn knew that if we do not listen to the stories of those without power, those who suffer discrimination and abuse, those who struggle for justice, we are left parroting the manufactured myths that serve the interests of the privileged. Zinn set out to write history, not myth. And he knew that when these myths implode it is the beginning of hope.

“If you were a Native American,” one of my students asked recently, “what would have been the difference between Columbus and Hitler?”

AP / Dima Gavrysh
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Howard Zinn an early photo
Immediate credit for photo goes to tpmuckraker/talkingpointsmemo for July 30, 2010

This is one of the most significant stories of our time because this involves a man beloved by so many internationally and across the apparent ideological/religious and secular "divide"....

Keep watching here and at the most non-corporate, independent and reader-supported-media available:

here

More ongoing items to come...

Kashmir, Fasting and Role of 'Memory' in Present Kashmir Crises

The Role Of ‘Memory’ In The Present Crises In Kashmir
By Inshah Malik

here

This current resistance is the outcome of ‘memory’ instigated by state’s dim-witted response to the youth

Gandhi On Fast In Kashmir
By Javaid Iqbal Bhat

here

Today as each district of Kashmir is under curfew and people are peering into the abyss of darkness Gandhi would have placed himself in the home of one of the shot dead teenagers, and sat on a fast unto death. Given an understanding of what he did in his lifetime his set of demands would be clear and unambiguous

Christians Implored to Stay in Holy Land and Stand for Peace...

Pray that Christians not flee the Holy Land, says LWF Patriarch

“Who could imagine the Holy Land without Christians?” Younan, LWF Patriarch, asked -- see the story at this link: here

“Who could imagine the Holy Land without Christians?”

STUTTGART, Germany, 25 July 2010 – In his first sermon as president-elect of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF), Rt Rev. Dr Munib A.Younan told a congregation today that Christians should be “children of the light,” and urged them to “pray that Palestinian Christians may not lose faith and leave the country.” He was preaching at the Andreaskirche in Uhlbach, a suburb of Stuttgart.

Christ walked in the Holy Land, he said. “Who could imagine the Holy Land … without Christians?” the bishop asked. Younan is bishop of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Jordan and the Holy Land (ELCJHC).

“We as Christians...have a role to play in the Middle East in reconciliation and interfaith dialogue,” the president-elect said. “I sometimes ponder the fact that there have been Christians in Palestine since the first Pentecost,” he said, and added, “Now we Palestinian Christians are less than 1.5 per cent of the population.” Palestinian Christians leave their homeland for three reasons: “ the difficulties caused by the political conflict, a lack of jobs and growing political and religious extremism.”

“Even so,” he continued, “Palestinian Christianity has survived 2,000 years. We have never ruled the country, nor were we ever in the majority. We do not have much property, power, money or influence. Yet we have survived.”

That survival, he said, is because “we have carried the death and resurrection of our Lord in our bodies, souls and minds.” Palestinian Christians should be “brokers of justice, instruments of peace, ministers of reconciliation, defenders of human rights including women’s rights and apostles of love,” he said. The bishop has been active in a variety of inter-religious activities in his homeland and has held high positions in local ecumenical and inter-religious groups.

Christian love reaches across religious and ethnic boundaries, Younan told the congregation. He recalled being asked about a Christian woman who had been seen caring for a Muslim child. He had responded, “As Christians we are called to serve every human being regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, religion or political affiliation.”

Younan said that as “children of the light,” a phrase from the biblical book of Ephesians, Christians should work to promote justice, peace and reconciliation and “to eliminate Islamophobia, xenophobia and antisemitism.”

The bishop and several other visitors from the LWF Assembly were introduced to the congregation by Rev. Margarete Goth, pastor of the church situated amid Uhlbach’s famous vineyards and not far from the burial chapel with tombs of Wuertemberg royalty from previous centuries.

Younan’s term as LWF President begins as the Eleventh Assembly ends here 27 July.

WAR = SUICIDE

Occupied Afghanistan, an American gun barrel, and an Afghan highway, 04/04/10. (photo: John Moore/Getty Images)

Reader Supported News | 31 July 10 PM

A modest announcement: This (is from) the first "All Original" edition of Reader Supported News. Each of the stories in this edition originate with Reader Supported News. Kudos to John Cory, Leslie Griffith and Rick Wolff for their fine efforts.

Perspective

War is suicide.

It kills in arterial spurts and oozes death in listless unhurried drops. It festers and weeps with the puss of infectious fear and chills the bone in fevered sweat. It explodes in vainglorious sparkle and whimpers in smoldering insanity long after the drums go silent. War is obscenity made sacred.

We cloak ourselves in the body armor of language as protection against the truth. Carefully marketed words meant to inoculate us against the viral indiscriminate violence and provide anesthesia to numb us to the slaughter of other human beings.

And so we die - one syllable at a time as Mike Altman and Johnny Mandel's theme from "M*A*S*H" plays in the background:

"Through early morning fog I see
visions of the things to be
the pains that are withheld for me
I realize and I can see ..."

They say we did not learn from Vietnam. But that's not true. The Big Green taught us exactly how to get into Iraq and Afghanistan with flags waving and Congress singing on the steps of the Capitol and the media in full battle-rattle ready to take us on a ride alongside "our brave troops."

"That suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please."

I once wrote: "They say that the first casualty of war is truth but they are wrong. The first casualty of war is reality - the unreal becomes real and truth is a lie."

If you haven't read "War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us To Death" by Norman Solomon or watched the documentary - take a taste here and go get the book or movie. Perception is reality - and nothing beats a good Psy-Op on perception.

Vietnam taught three very important lessons:

1) End the draft. Get a professional all-volunteer military. Turn the troops into a fetish of freedom. They alone defend and provide our freedoms. Say "thank you" and be on your way.

2) Terminology is critical. "Friendly-fire" is color-coded to "blue-on-blue." Operation Phoenix is now the cool Tom Clancy-sounding "Black Ops" elite Rambo-like warriors striking fear in the hearts and minds of evil-doers. No atrocity here.

3) Corporatize the military, media and defense industry. Mergers are good. Prior to the Iraq invasion, Eason Jordan of CNN said, "... I went to the Pentagon myself several times before the war started and met with important people there and said, for instance, at CNN here are the generals we're thinking of retaining to advise us on the air and off about the war, and we got a big thumbs up on all of them. That was important."

"I try to find a way to make
all our little joys relate
without that ever-present hate
but now I know that it's too late, and ..."

Torture is "enhanced interrogation." Torture is acceptable when it is a police officer controlling an unruly citizen with a Taser. Digby here and here, and Glen Greenwald here show us how standard it has become. This same police state wants to make it illegal for citizens to film them on the street, while they demand more street cameras to monitor us in the name of security. Not to worry, crowd control is also coming our way after being battle-tested. And don't look up at the sky. Technology keeps you safe while watching over you. What's wrong with that?

A man recently told me that I was despicable for writing about atrocities and war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan. "What would you do if every day some Hajji was shooting at you and killing your buddies," he asked. "I would go home," I said. He called me an un-American Communist. He only believes what he wants to believe and what he is told by the media like this lede from CNN: "Battlefield justice or murder?" He definitely would not like this, or this. Denial is so much more than a river in Egypt.

"Suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please."

The greatest recruiting tool for terrorism is Guantanamo some say. But these people are guilty and dangerous, you say. Really? What about the story of Omar Khadr? How many others are there around the world?

And what about the views we never see? The questions we never ask? The "collateral damage?" The survivors? The people on the other end of that bombsight?

In Badakhshan, where the Kokcha River rushes out of the great Hindu Kush, the surrounding terrain reminds me of the Grand Tetons and the Snake River. Steep mountain slopes and the grassy steppe is every bit the image of Jackson Hole and the Alpine Valley prairie - so much the same and yet worlds apart.

As I walked along the river a village Elder told me, "Afghanistan has never been conquered but it has been demolished many times. We live out of sight from the rest of the world until they need a place to fight each other. Then they come here and speak promises they will never keep. Their words are loud wind that blows out of the mountains and quickly passes after much storm. And we go on with life."

The other side of this war is hardly examined in any depth or with any human face and understanding. A Hajji is a Hajji and Johnny Jihad and Tommy Taliban are brothers of the same terrorist family. End of story.

A brave man once requested me
To answer questions that are key
'Is it to be or not to be'
and I replied, 'Oh why ask me?'

It is ironic that the two great disasters of recent times can be spelled: A-I-G. One, a huge financial catastrophe and the other, is Afghanistan-Iraq-Guantanamo.

It is said and repeated that "they" hate us for our freedoms; freedoms we so willingly hand over to the militarized corporate plutocracy on a daily basis. Death by Taser is the collateral damage of law and order. Drones will keep our borders safe. Warrantless wiretaps are the price for remaining free in an internet-connected world of terrorism. Privacy is a privilege not a right. Technology keeps our troops safer than ever on the battlefield. Invest now and get in on the ground floor of the growth industry of the future - Peace through superior firepower.

Iraq and Afghanistan and everyone else? Sorry about the collateral damage to you and your families, but some day soon you will be free enough to understand that it was for your own good. Here, have a Coca-Cola. Love you, man. Bomb ya' later.

We buy the victimhood of false patriotism. We buy fear by the barrel and servitude by the gallon. We sell conformity as righteousness and plaster billboards with utopian consumerism under the red, white and blue of "American Exceptionalism."

One war is too many and a hundred is never enough.

Our addiction has turned to infection and blood poisoning. Overcome by fever and sepsis we rationalize the irrational and succumb to the hallucinations and the sweet voices in the darkest corners of our minds -

"Cause suicide is painless
It brings on many changes
And I can take or leave it if I please.
... and you can do the same thing if you choose."

-Peace-

Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.

COMMENTS

+2 # Daniel Fletcher 2010-07-31 20:33
Thank you John Cory. You've answered many questions and doubts I've had lately. Yes, war is suicide and we are dying. Who can doubt the quiet bleeding of an American soul that can no longer tell the difference between collateral damage and human persons every bit as worthy of life as we?

What have we wrought? And who in America gives a damn as long as they get theirs...what ever that is? Gee, all that fighting and dying for our freedom. I wonder if we're worth it. Hard to say since what we do with it is so horrible. I'll let karma decide and hope that my children are not consumed in the fire to come.

+2 # Peacedragon 2010-07-31 20:46
Some of the best writing I have ever seen.
Reply | Reply with quote | Quote

+2 # x dane 2010-07-31 23:36
It is a tragedy what we have become. Too many of our fellow citizens have closed their eyes and minds. It is easier that way. Don't think about it. And for heavens sake, don't talk about it.

Saddam was evil, he killed so many of his own people. And how many have died since we LIBERATED THEM?? Millions are displaced inside and out of Iraq. When we leave, what will happen??


+3 # Peter Edler 2010-07-31 23:47
Thanks for a great atmospheric piece - all right and true of course. For the US war has become permanent, so, as George Orwell put it, war is peace. But what sort of peace at home (if you can call it that) has been bought for war abroad. The US (if not necessarily America) has become the Evil Empire, with Reagan's Russia a distant second. Still, the question is: So what? We're all human, one family, whether we know it or not. If we're torturing other members of our family we're torturing ourselves. Indeed, let's pray for love and peace. Pete Edler, Stockholm


+2 # Hors-D-whores 2010-08-01 00:08
Thanks for making the nightmare so real John Cory. (Your articles are always mind-blowing-ly good) As bad as things seem and that we are hopelessly helpless to stop the war mindset this country has gotten so comfortable with, things can be worse should the Republicans gain Congress in November. I'm shaking at the thought of what can and will transpire.


+2 # Daniel Hickey 2010-08-01 02:30
Heartfelt thanks for your offering of truth. I live in Brazil, a "friend" of the USA, but here the vast majority see American Exceptional-ism as simply a Empire using war to protect its interests, and yes, they see America as addicted to war as a solution. What is most astonishing to them is the unconscious support of this thinking by majorities of "educated" Americans.
daniel hickey


+2 # Rodney Ferris 2010-08-01 02:35
This is a powerful statement with important dimensions, leaving me in tears and sadness. What is missing is the destruction of love and human kindness as irrelevant values except as necessary to gain a perspective on our collective insanity. We are killing our brothers and sisters and ourselves all together and calling it other meaningless names. That war could be called an "obscenity made sacred" is to dignify what cannot be. This piece calls it like it is, a truth we cannot escape except to STOP IT NOW.