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The Consequences of Covering Up
Washington Post withholds info on secret prisons at government request

http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2715

The Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story
about secret Eastern European prisons set up by the CIA for
the interrogation of terrorism suspects. While the Post article,
by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also
withheld the most crucial information--the location of these
secret prisons--at the request of government officials.

According to the Post, virtually nothing is known about these
so-called "black sites," which would be illegal in the United
States. Given the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay,
news that the U.S. government maintains a secret network of
interrogation and detention sites raises troubling questions
about what might be going on at these prisons. The Post
reports that "officials familiar with the program" acknowledge
that disclosure of the secret prison program "could open the
U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign
courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at
home and abroad."

But the Washington Post did its part to minimize those potential risks:


"The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries
involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued
that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and
elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation."


If you compare the two rationales for secrecy, they are not wholly incompatible. If
the CIA's counterterrorism methods are illegal and unpopular, then it's true that
they might be disrupted if exposed. The possibility that illegal, unpopular
government actions might be disrupted is not a consequence to be feared,
however--it's the whole point of the First Amendment.

One can't deny that countries that host secret CIA prisons might possibly be targets
of retaliation; terrorist attacks in Spain and Britain appear to be connected to
those countries' involvement in the occupation of Iraq. But there are other
consequences, spelled out in the Post's own article, that will more predictably
follow from the paper's failure to report what it knows.

Without the basic fact of where these prisons are, it's difficult if not impossible
for "legal challenges" or "political condemnation" to force them to close. As the
Post notes, there has been "widespread prisoner abuse" in U.S. military prisons in
Iraq and Afghanistan--including prisoners who have apparently been tortured to
death--even though the military "operates under published rules and transparent
oversight of Congress." Given that Vice President ***** Cheney and CIA Director Porter
Goss are seeking to exempt the CIA from legislation that would prohibit "cruel and
degrading treatment" of prisoners, and that CIA-approved "Enhanced Interrogation
Techniques" include torture techniques like "waterboarding," there's no reason to
think that prisons that operate in total secrecy will have fewer abuses than Abu
Ghraib or Afghanistan's Bagram. Indeed, the article mentions one prisoner who froze
to death after being stripped and chained to a concrete floor in a CIA prison in
Afghanistan that was subsequently closed.

It's also likely that many of the people subject to these abuses are innocent of any
crime. The Post article notes that the secret prison system was originally intended
for top Al-Qaeda prisoners, but "as the volume of leads pouring into the [CIA's
Counterterrorism Center] from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary
group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose
intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four
current and former officials." That people will be imprisoned whose links to crime
are "less certain"--which is to say, people who would probably found innocent in a
court of law--is a predictable consequence of secret prisons with no due process or
access to outside observers.

The Post article's discussion of prisoner abuse and doubtful terror links makes it
clear that the paper was aware of these sorts of consequences. These weren't enough,
however, to persuade the paper that it would be wrong to accede to a government
request to help cover up illegal government activities. (As the article notes, "Legal
experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA's internment practices...would
be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have
rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.")

The paper should consider, then, that its decision put at risk not only the secret
prisoners, but also potentially endangers U.S. soldiers and civilians. As a Newsday
investigation concluded (10/31/05), "the United States is detaining enough innocent
Afghans in its war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda that it is seriously undermining
popular support for its presence in Afghanistan." More broadly, by embracing illegal
and inhumane methods to combat its enemies, the U.S. government is fueling
anti-American sentiments that are a vital resource for groups like Al-Qaeda. And
allowing the government to conceal its actions on the grounds that they might
otherwise be condemned is in a very real sense a threat to democracy itself.

The Post's decision has struck some experts as enormously significant. National
Security Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh, told CJR Daily (11/2/05), "This is
probably the most important newspaper capitulation since [the New York Times] yielded
to JFK's call for them not to run the full story of planning for the Bay of Pigs. By
withholding the country names, the Post is directly enabling the rendition, secret
detention, and torture of prisoners at these locations to continue. That is a ghastly
responsibility."

But the Post is not the only U.S. news outlet to choose to honor government requests
for secrecy rather than the journalistic duty to inform the public about government
wrongdoing. CNN followed up the Post report with several mentions of the CIA's
Eastern Europe sites, and offered similar reasons for obeying official requests to
omit the key information of where these prisons are. CNN reporter David Ensor said
(11/2/05), "U.S. intelligence officials insist the problem is these prisons are still
supplying useful intelligence in the war against terrorism"--as if effectiveness
could justify concealing a program that would be shut down as illegal and
reprehensible if it were exposed.

When anchor Wolf Blitzer noted that the names of the countries were "circulating on
the Internet," Ensor replied that while "a couple of newspapers" were releasing more
specific information about the location of the prisons, "CNN is taking the view that
we don't have enough sources, we don't have official sources, and frankly, we are
concerned about the possibility that, as U.S. officials have said to us, lives could
be as stake." Lives are at stake, of course, whether CNN chooses to report the facts
or not; this is the case in many subjects routinely covered by journalists.

The "other newspapers" that Ensor referred to included the Financial Times, which
reported on November 3:


"Human Rights Watch, a U.S. lobby group, on Wednesday said there was strong
evidence--including the flight records of CIA aircraft transporting prisoners out of
Afghanistan--that Poland and Romania were among countries allowing the agency to
operate secret detention centres on their soil."


Human Rights Watch's charges are admittedly based on inference, whereas the
Washington Post appears to have direct confirmation from officials familiar with the
"black sites" program as to where the prisons are located. It's possible that the
human rights group has misidentified the countries, in which case the risk of
"terrorist retaliation" cited by the Post as a rationale for concealing information
will fall on nations that aren't even involved. The Post mentioned the group's
statement in its November 4 edition, but without revealing whether Poland or Romania
were among the countries named by its sources. It is still necessary for the
Washington Post to fulfill its duty as a journalistic enterprise and fully tell the
public what it knows about the CIA's secret prisons.

ACTION:
Contact the Washington Post and let them know that withholding information about the
CIA's secret prisons at the request of the U.S. government was the wrong journalistic
decision.

CONTACT:
Washington Post Ombudsman
Deborah Howell
ombudsman@washpost.com
Phone: 202-334-7582

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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.

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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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