EU promises inquiry into CIA's 'gulags'

Comment: The E.U. will investigate the American gulag network. The WASHINGTON POST will investigate, and maybe 60 MINUTES will investigate. Will the U.S. Congress investigate? Probably not, because the U.S. Congress already knows about it.   H&HH   PERMANENT LINK

Excerpt:  "We're dealing with the government's review of a secret law that now they want a secret judicial review for," one of John Gilmore's, attorneys, James Harrison, said in a phone interview Sunday. "This administration's use of a secret law is more dangerous to the security of the nation than any external threat."

Excerpt:  All of his court proceedings to date have been secret and his family has only caught glimpses of him entering and exiting court rooms. In one case, his family says he looked "swollen."

Excerpt:  The United States government, in conjunction with key allies, is running an 'invisible' network of prisons and detention centres into which thousands of suspects have disappeared without trace since the 'war on terror' began.

Key findngs of Pentagon report

Excerpt:  The acquittal on all counts came after the court rejected a last-minute motion from a lawyer representing relatives of American victims of the attacks. The lawyer, Andreas Schulz, said his clients had access to "new information" from the U.S. Department of Justice but that he was "not authorized" to tell the court what it was.

Excerpt:  Prosecutors and defense attorneys can't discuss or even confirm the existence of the secret room, even though it's mentioned in court records available for public inspection.

A trial date hasn't been set because of all the secrecy constraints.

Excerpt:  Fresh controversy about Donald Rumsfeld's personal dealings with Saddam Hussein was provoked yesterday by new documents that reveal he went to Iraq to show America's support for the regime despite its use of chemical weapons.

The formerly secret documents reveal the Defence Secretary travelled to Baghdad 20 years ago to assure Iraq that America's condemnation of its use of chemical weapons was made "strictly" in principle.

Excerpt:  Last Monday, the Supreme Court announced it would consider an effort by Vice President Cheney to keep private the records of the energy policy task force he ran. On Friday, the White House announced that it has known for two weeks about an attack on a convoy carrying Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer -- but had decided not to divulge the information. Later that day, President Bush announced a disarmament deal with Libya reached during nine months of secret negotiations.

Excerpt:  In the two years since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has systematically reduced the amount of information available to the public, which in turn has made government officials less accountable to taxpayers. Attorney General John Ashcroft set the tone in an Oct. 12, 2001, memo that urged agencies to withhold information from requests that were made under the Freedom of Information Act. Then, in January, Rumsfeld claimed that too much data was popping up on military Web sites. Citing al-Qaida, Rumsfeld warned that "one must conclude our enemies' access (to Department of Defense) Web sites on a regular basis."

Excerpt:  Under a long-secret operation run by the State Department, the FBI and military intelligence, 15 Latin American countries handed over more than 4,000 of their German residents to the U.S. Army. They were interned in places like Florida's Camp Blanding and Crystal City, Texas.

National security: the government's "trust us" argument
It works, even when the government is lying

Excerpt:  It is important for U.S. citizens to have confidence that the government cannot grab them off the street and put them in jail without having to appear in a court within a day or so and try to justify the need for such a step.

Secret arrest and imprisonment without charge or trial is something that some governments around the world reserve for their opponents and enemies. We can't fight them on the one hand and then appear to do more or less the same thing.

Excerpt:  Under the plan, the government will consist of 23 ministries, each headed by an American. Every ministry will also have four Iraqi advisers appointed by the Americans, the Guardian has learned.

Excerpt:  According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization -- the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" -- will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by US forces.

In other words -- and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan -- the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people.

Excerpt:  Recent pronouncements from the Bush Administration and national security initiatives put in place in the Reagan era could see internment camps and martial law in the United States.

... A Miami Herald article on July 5, 1987, reported that the former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida's deputy, John Brinkerhoff, handled the martial law portion of the planning. The plan was said to be similar to one Mr Giuffrida had developed earlier to combat "a national uprising by black militants". It provided for the detention "of at least 21million American Negroes"' in "assembly centres or relocation camps".

Today Mr Brinkerhoff is with the highly influential Anser Institute for Homeland Security. Following a request by the Pentagon in January that the US military be allowed the option of deploying troops on American streets, the institute in February published a paper by Mr Brinkerhoff arguing the legality of this.

He alleged that the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which has long been accepted as prohibiting such deployments, had simply been misunderstood and misapplied.

Excerpt:  A couple of million more people were killed in Cambodia, when the United States secretly bombed the hell out of that country in the '70s. Secretly.

Now, who do you suppose American leaders were keeping such "secrets" from? The bombs were certainly no secret in Cambodia. The terrified, the dead, and the survivors there all knew America built the bombs, and dropped them.

Secrets like this are kept, not from the victims, not from the dreaded communists, not even from the French -- they're secrets only kept from "we the people." America's leaders knew then, like they know now, that if the American people knew what was going on, it would have to stop.

Excerpt:  When every government action that isn't announced in a press conference is classified as an official state secret, we should ask why the heck so much needs to be hidden.