Comments (14)

Jane wrote on June 8, 2007 12:41 PM:

Blackmail is the threat to reveal a crime. In this context it probably refers to Marty's belief that once a European intelligence agency commits a crime known to the CIA, the CIA could threaten to allow the crime to be revealed unless the European agency continues to co-operate with the CIA. If the Europeans do so this digs their own hole deeper.

Or simple blackmail of the officials involved based on their personal lives.

There is no reason to believe that the threats among the intelligence agencies are simply limited to reactions to cooperation with this investigation.

Anonymous wrote on June 8, 2007 12:48 PM:

Kind of like how Karl Rove is likely being blackmailed by agents of countless countries?

Karl uses private e-mail exclusively to do the governments business.

How much do you want to be Israel, Russia, China, Iran and Cuba aren't well versed in what the President's top advisor knows?

Russian espionage is at Cold War levels once again: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10785968

Then again, maybe the RNC is better than the NSA at protecting its e-mail.

So the question really is, do you trust Rove with your national security?

Anonymous wrote on June 8, 2007 1:06 PM:

So what does this do to Bush's and other members of the Admin's often-repeated statements that we have never sent people to other countries to be tortured? Is this just another blatant lie that the public will brush aside as yet another Bush screw up or will they try to spin it with some clever wordsmithing (depends on the meaning of "people")? This sounds like war crimes type of stuff, doesn't it?

d

JNagarya wrote on June 8, 2007 1:30 PM:

Well, Bushit admited to the prisons. But denied using them for the purposes for which they exist.

Being Bushit, he expects to have it both ways.

Of course it's war crimes stuff: torture is a war crime, and is defined as such, and prohibited by, international instruments to which the US is signatory; which are, therefore, part of the law of the land -- Constitution; therefore cannot be made legal by Congress, Executive, or even both together with the approval of the judiciary. It can only be given the (unconstitutional) appearance of legality.

I wonder if the illegal wiretappings included/s gathering information on allies in order to blackmail them into cooperating with the Bushit criminal enterprise re. the "rendition" and torture program.

noen wrote on June 8, 2007 1:47 PM:

Marty says: "special mechanisms... employed by intelligence services in their counter-terrorist activities". More info about those mechanisms would sure be nice.

Saying "They're always worried about mystical things" isn't very helpful because when all you have is a web of lies any theory you construct will be based on those lies will therefore be suspect. It is too rich for a former CIA official to blame others for failing to understand what is going on when the only information we have are your lies.

And perhaps those lives should be put at risk because their activities are putting the entire globe at risk. This looks to me more like a struggle between competing mafia families than anything else. Could the global neo-con intelligence community be at war with other competing factions? What a wonderful world we live in.

FChurch wrote on June 8, 2007 1:54 PM:

"They're always worried about mystical things -- for a long time, they thought the U.S. was manipulating their economies,"

Economic warfare has been the cornerstone of American foreign policy for decades and if you think otherwise you are either seriously naive, willfully ignorant, or an apologist/denier insider.

Anonymous wrote on June 8, 2007 2:16 PM:

Worried about "mystical things" like some nonexistent evidence of Saddam having WMD's?

Those "mystical things?"

Worried about "voter fraud" that doesn't exist?

Those "mystical things?"

sailmaker wrote on June 8, 2007 2:41 PM:

Probably blackmail; you want to join the EU - host our 'camps'.

And then conversely, 'tell anyone anything about these 'camps', and you can be thrown out (Poland joined in 2004), or taken off the list (Romania joined in January).

Mary wrote on June 8, 2007 4:23 PM:

Dick Marty is a prosecutor, not the conductor on the magical mystery tourbus.

They didn't get evidence of the torture/rendition flights by finding a seer or a "flight plan" partial crystal ball. Mahr Arar did not, along with all elements of the Canadian government, succumb to a year long hallucination that only led him to believe he was drugged, photographed, flown to Jordan, shipped to Syria and tortured to order until Canadian authorities finally secured is release.

Spataro didn't hear "voices in his head" in connection with his investigation in Italy - he heard them on wiretap recordings.

Final clue- there's nothing all that mystical about blackmail and torture and lawbreaking. Marty isn't claiming that Bush made a pentagram within the oval and then shook the severed head that he had fetched back for him (see Suskind's book) while he jumped up and down saying oogity boogity and then people just disappeared.

With the thought and planning that went into rendition flight planning, torture memos, Geneva conventions memos, Article 49 draft memos, state secrets invocations for things like the Arar case, etc. - it's really just basic crime analysis that you get enough lawbreaking immoral henchmen for a power crazed moronic self-obsessed idiot and there might be some attempts at arm twisting and blackmail.

No tea leaves needed.

Anonymous wrote on June 8, 2007 5:10 PM:

Spencer,

Your former CIA officer is being too cute by half.

Go back and ask him if there aren't certain quid pro quo arrangements between the U.S. and certain allied services, especially in Europe and Scandinavia, that depend on each side conveniently circumventing their respective laws.

These arrangements require everyone to be on the same page. Pissing and moaning about extraneous matters -- while not blackmail -- would not be conducive to the mission.

The European and Scandinavian allies had to suck it up.

Anonymous wrote on June 8, 2007 5:41 PM:

Blackmail only works if you want to hide something; but the illegal activity has been disclosed, is being prosecuted. I personally think this is BS: "Many of these methods give rise to chain reactions of blackmail and lies between different agencies and institutions in individual states, as well as between states. Therein may lie at least a partial explanation for certain governments' fierce opposition to revealing the truth. We cannot go into this phenomenon without putting human lives at risk... " This sounds more like the Cheney-related intelligence community is whining that Italy and Germany are turning the prosecution screws on the Cheney-dogs, and the VP is letting them dangle in the wind. Prosecutor are circling DC, and this isn't going to end.

"lives at risk" sounds like code for, "We can't tell you the truth because we were stupid; so let's hide raelity behind this BS story."

Remember who we're dealing with: This President has signed findings to conduct operations in Iran to destablize the country and do other things. "Blackmail" over issues of Poland and Romania -- things that are known and legal issues -- aren't subject to "blackmail" but to prosecutions.

Stop your whining, Cheney-Dogs. You naively expected nobody would find out. Stupid assumption.

`

Anonymous wrote on June 8, 2007 6:05 PM:

EASTERN EUROPEAN PRISONER ABUSE SITES: WHCH WH LEGAL COUNSEL KNEW OR SHOULD HAVE KNOWN?

Rendition is back in the news, and "OK" to talk about? Tell brad Berenson to go Cheney himself. It looks as though the WH Counsel's office has its hands all over this; and as with FISA, no reasonable attorney could conclude this conduct was lawful.

Time to go after WH Counsel and find out what the Cheney they were doing/thinking while this abuse was continuing. Utterly contemptible. Time to go after Berenson, find out what the Cheney he knew about this, and specifically target him for prosecutions, if that is warranted.

Italian and German war crimes prosecutors need to rely on Nuremberg precedents and go after WH legal counsel who appear to have signed off on this illegal activity, abuse. I want to know what Berenson's role in this; and why his comments on PBS-Frontline asserting "we believed it was legal" are credible reports of what they really believed. Doesn't appear they really believed this, in light of Comey-Philbin disclosures that DoJ viewed the program as unlawful.
Or is Berenson saying, as Addington does with the law, that they take a "pick and choose" approach with the OLC opinions. There had to have been written memoranda on this issue; and the lack of evidence and Berenson's unbelievable "we believe"-defense does not appear to be credible.

No statute of limitations on war crimes; and I hope Germany and Italian prosecutors spend no expense to prosecute Berenson and other legal counsel associated with DOJ if it appears there is sufficient evidence to show Berenson was reckless in refusing to stop illegal activity. Then time to target the Federalist Society to find out what non-sense propaganda they've been spreading through the RNC e-mails to justify silence on peer misconduct; and why they are not complying with DC Bar Rules 1.16/1.6 in re withdrawals from illegal activity.

Berenson, as Sidley Austin, appears to have known about the Sidley Austin financial reviews of Boeing; need a very good explanation as to what they should have known given the well known coordination between WH-Boeing and others to move prisoners; then cycle US personnel through for interrogations. Yes, I'm talking going after the Joint Staff to find out when they knew, in the wake of Abu Ghraib abuses, that other misconduct was occurring in Europe.

AT&T needs to provide a straight story when they knew, or should have known, that their data-interception methods which appear to have been illegally were used for unlawful prisoner abuse; and how AT&T was involved with Boeing to transfer data to support the targeting, transport, and interrogations of prisoners. It's likely once prisoners in Eastern Europe were abused and they received other unreliable information, AT&T and others working with NSA contractors like SAIC and Lockheed Martin knew or should have known that the subsequent use of that information was outside what FISA permitted; but they used the information to expand illegal surveillance to more American civilians.

It's absurd to pretend that these "programs' were isolated; it appears the NSA surveillance and data transfers between the NSA contractors and GOP was linked with the illegal prisoner abuse, rendition, and interrogations, not to mention unlawful warrants and illegal interrogations of US civilians without counsel being present. It appears as though Berenson is well connected and in the middle of this illegal activity, and should be able to explain why his comments on PBS Frontline appear less credible, but designed to mislead in light of the contradictory remarks from Comey and Philbin.

Even if Congress refuses to impeach, sitting presidents, vice presidents, legal counsel, and NSA intermediaries may be lawfully prosecuted for war crimes. If Congress doesn't want to impeach, time to prosecute them for 5 USC 3331 violations. Yes, the American legal community could talk to each other, or share notes with German and Italian war crimes prosecutors to adjudicate these alleged war crimes.

psyopswatcher wrote on June 9, 2007 10:47 PM:

Three things:

1. What was Whittingdon telling Cheney when he got shot in face? Something on the order of "You'll never get away with it"? The US Ambassador to Switzerland, Pamela Willeford, was a part of that hunting party and Dick Marty had been asking questions around that time. She was replaced a few months later. Whittingdon is a lawyer and a prison expert.

2. Is Shala Ali Riza (Wolfowitz's gal pal) working at the State Dept. to get at the Iranian bank accounts to perform financial sanctions? As FChurch said above, is 'manipulating their economies', Economic Warfare her game?

3. Could it be that this is what General Pace really resigned over? Serious knowledge of his own culpability?

Irina wrote on June 10, 2007 1:00 AM:

This issue of state-sanctioned torture is the number one issue facing our country.

So long as torture of human being and other living things is official state policy, we may not consider ourselves a Christian nation with a born-again Christian leader, only a nation of barbarians.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/8/28/95433/7144

CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY,

damnit! " ... we were committing a serious wrong ... "Serious wrongs are sins. There is no question that the actions of the Bush regime which have caused the deaths of tens of thousands of human beings, bodily and mental injury to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands more, and untold suffering to hundreds of thousands of human beings, are sins.

There is no question that on the issue of religious belief Bush and the Bushist regime are cynics and hypocrites of the highest order. Sins and their renunciation and punishment fall within the folded skirts of the religious leaders people choose to follow, and are properly dealt with in a religious context.

Every Christian and Muslim leader who has not loudly denounced torture and unjust killing is, ipso facto, morally suspect.