CORRUPTION
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first posted: June 8, 2008, Draft edition
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1) The Articles linked below were Abstracted from the sources cited. After the abstract there's analysis and commentary, links to related articles, and a link to the database with suggested search terms.
CAPITOL CHAOS
AN ABSENCE OF ACCOUNTABILITY
John Diaz
SF Chronicle, Sunday, June 8, 2008
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/08/INFS114789.DTL
Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi had no intention of voting for AB2818, a bill that the Castro Valley Democrat feared could undermine its stated goal of protecting affordable housing. But on May 28, she nearly approved it - without her knowledge, and without her presence on the Assembly floor.
As the roll call began, Hayashi was engaged in a budget subcommittee meeting on the Capitol's fourth floor. Suddenly, two floors below, the light next to her name on the big electronic voting board in the Assembly chamber turned green, a "yes" vote.
Seconds later, it turned red.
Then green.
Red.
Green.
Finally, after 22 seconds of alternating colors, the space next to Hayashi's name went blank.
While there are conflicting accounts of exactly what caused this dizzying sequence, this much is clear: Two people had their hands on Hayashi's voting switches during the roll call on AB2818 - and one was acting against her will.
"Ghost voting" was not the only disturbing episode as the Assembly took up 316 bills in the three days leading up to the deadline for measures to pass their house of origin. In the frenzied treadmill, there was little or no debate on most matters, important bills died when legislators failed to vote, and votes were being cast for members without their express consent.
In the Hayashi case, eyewitnesses said her initial "yes" vote was cast by Assemblyman Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, an assistant majority floor leader who colleagues said had taken the liberty of voting for other missing members as bills were being rushed to beat the deadline.
"I don't recall it, but I don't deny it either," de León said of allegations that he voted for Hayashi on AB2818. He added that deadline-day floor sessions can get "chaotic and wacky," with "hundreds and hundreds of bills moving through."
Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, a Berkeley Democrat who knew of Hayashi's concerns with the bill, acknowledged intervening to prevent her colleague from being a potentially decisive vote for passage of a bill she opposed.
"I didn't even know who pushed the green button originally," Hancock said. "I was riveted on the screen, I was doing a million things ...but I saw the green light go on ... and I knew Mary didn't want to be the 41st vote."
The bill ultimately passed with two votes to spare, 43 to 32, with Hayashi among the five nonvoters. Assemblywoman Cathleen Gagliani, D-Stockton, then pulled the key out of her desk mate Hayashi's voting station.
This extraordinary tug-of-war was in brazen defiance of Assembly Rule 104, which states, "A member may not operate the voting switch of any other member."
Outside of the Capitol, voting for someone else is a felony subject to up to three years' imprisonment. In the Assembly, where the stakes of a single vote are significantly higher, it is a rule that is widely ignored. Members routinely ask their desk mates to cover for them when they are away from the floor, usually with instructions on how to vote on specific bills. But if they leave their keys in their voting machines while away from the desk, they risk having a party-line voting recorded, whether they like it or not - as Hayashi discovered to her chagrin.
"It sounds like what is kind of the normal way we go about things got out of control," newly minted Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), said in a phone interview Thursday, when asked about reports of ghost voting, including the Hayashi incident. She promised to confront the matter at a closed-door Democratic caucus this week. "I hate that it had to come out this way, but it raised a red flag and I'm going to follow up."
De León acknowledged that he voted for his fellow Democrats at times, to help keep bills moving toward the 41 votes required for passage, but he emphasized that he would never knowingly cast a vote against a colleague's wishes. In the case of AB2818, de León said he was certain that he never discussed the bill with Hayashi, and was not aware of her position on it.
Asked about the ethics of voting for a colleague without specific knowledge of his or her position on a bill, de León noted that a legislator who did not like the way his or her vote was cast could later change it for the record. House rules allow an Assembly member to change his or her vote after a bill has been passed or rejected - up to the end of the day's session - as long as it does not alter the outcome.
"It's not like it's etched in stone," de León said. "It's like you go to your ATM machine - same thing - change your vote."
But not all legislators are eager to cast a yes or no vote, especially on the tough issues. In a practice that has been the focus of a series of Chronicle editorials since June 2002, many important bills were rejected when a potentially decisive number of Assembly members failed to vote.
For the nonvoters, "taking a walk" is the equivalent of voting "no," because passage requires a majority of all 80 Assembly members. There is a pattern to this walking: In the vast majority of cases, the bill involves something average Californians care about - often consumer or environmental protections - while powerful corporate interests stand in opposition. Legislators prefer to euphemistically refer to this practice of avoiding what they were elected to do - Take a stand! Make tough decisions! Vote! - as "laying off" a bill.
"This practice of laying off is one of my pet peeves in the Capitol," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, a first-term San Rafael Democrat. "It's not a courtesy, it's not some lesser vote - it's a no."
Nonvoters delivered a death blow to Huffman's AB3011, which would have required California cell-phone companies to get a customer's consent before sharing his or her financial information with third parties. Landline companies are already subject to such privacy regulations.
Huffman said the AT&T lobbyists were out in force. They were aggressive, they were relentless and they were effective. "There are some powerful folks with an awful lot of influence in the Capitol," he observed. In the end, 22 members failed to vote, including some Democrats who might be expected to support a consumer privacy issue (see chart).
"AT&T never loses," said Lenny Goldberg, who lobbies for consumer and privacy issues. "They don't always win, but they never lose."
The telecom giant also prevailed in the Senate with the passive assistance of nonvoters. Sen. Sheila Kuehl's SB1423 would have prohibited phone companies from charging an extra fee for unlisted numbers, which the Santa Monica Democrat rightly cast as a privacy issue. "They (telecom lobbyists) really went to the wall to stop this," said Goldberg, who was working for the measure. At one point, they assigned one lobbyist to each member of the Appropriations Committee. On May 27, SB1423 died in the Senate on a 16-to-16 tie, with 8 nonvoters.
For the health insurance industry, particularly Blue Cross, target No. 1 in the Assembly was AB2805, authored by Fiona Ma in response to complaints from doctors and patients about the cumbersome process for reimbursement from preferred provider organizations. In too many cases, Ma said, the patients were, in effect, being asked to serve as billing administrators.
More than a dozen lobbyists were working the bill outside the Assembly floor as the deadline loomed. Many lawmakers waffled in the week before the final vote. On May 29, it was defeated: 30 voting yes, 16 voting no and 34 not voting.
"It just shows the power of the insurance industry," said Ma, a San Francisco Democrat.
If there is an overarching theme to the chaos of the last week in May - the ghost voting, the walks, the switched votes without footprints - it is the extent to which the systems in Sacramento allow politicians to avoid accountability. What Californians see in the official record - even in the live telecasts of proceedings on the California Channel - can be deceptive.
For example, the video of the May 28 vote on AB2818 would suggest that Hayashi was racked with indecision: green, red, green, red, green, then blank. In fact, she was opposed to the bill. Her staffers, who knew her position, watched the office TV monitor with puzzlement as the lights flickered between green and red. They bolted up to the fourth floor to alert her that something was amiss.
"How do you think that makes me feel?" Hayashi said, when asked about the vote. "The California Channel is totally airing this. They're probably thinking: 'What is wrong with Hayashi: Why can't she decide on this bill?' "
Hancock, who rescued Hayashi from a vote that would have been a double-cross to public-housing leaders in her district who were assured she would oppose 2818, said this was not the first time a key left in the voting machine resulted in a foul vote. Hancock herself was the victim when she was a freshman.
What is rare is for members to acknowledge such transgressions. The outrage over the infamous 2005 attempt by Sen. Carole Migden to cast a vote for one of her bills when it was in the Assembly was an aberration. When the violation is among members in the same house, within the same party, the pressure to close ranks is intense. At least one other Assembly Democrat privately told colleagues that he was the victim of a ghost vote against his will in the last week of May. He declined to be interviewed.
"I don't think in any way, shape or form anything malicious was intended here," Speaker Bass said Thursday, at which point she said she had yet to discuss the allegations with de León or Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont.
Torrico, whose new job is to oversee floor action, insisted by phone Thursday, "I'm not aware of any vote being cast against the will of a member. This is the first I've heard of it."
Torrico added that he believed Assembly members were in compliance with "the spirit of the rule" if they give consent to their colleagues to vote for them if they're away from the floor.
It's clear that the Assembly majority leader is not the only one who hasn't read the plain language of the rule: Members must cast their own vote.
Ma, who was elected in 2006 and holds the leadership position of majority whip, said she did not know that the rules explicitly forbid voting for another member. She said the ruling Democrats have "an understanding" that members who don't want people voting for them do not leave their keys in their voting station when they leave the floor.
"Some people don't let other people vote for them because they're in marginal seats and they have to be very careful about what they are voting for," Ma said of her colleagues who keep their voting keys with them.
"It's just amazing to me that they have these rules and they ignore them - what other body can do that?" said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles and an author of the Political Reform Act of 1974. "When is the Legislature going to learn ... that people are watching?"
Editorial: What state lawmakers should do to fix a
broken system and abide by their own rules. G10
Assemblywoman Mary Hayashi had no intention of voting for AB2818, a bill that the Castro Valley Democrat feared could undermine its stated goal of protecting affordable housing. But on May 28, she nearly approved it - without her knowledge, and without her presence on the Assembly floor.
As the roll call began, Hayashi was engaged in a budget subcommittee meeting on the Capitol's fourth floor. Suddenly, two floors below, the light next to her name on the big electronic voting board in the Assembly chamber turned green, a "yes" vote.
Seconds later, it turned red.
Then green.
Red.
Green.
Finally, after 22 seconds of alternating colors, the space next to Hayashi's name went blank.
While there are conflicting accounts of exactly what caused this dizzying sequence, this much is clear: Two people had their hands on Hayashi's voting switches during the roll call on AB2818 - and one was acting against her will.
"Ghost voting" was not the only disturbing episode as the Assembly took up 316 bills in the three days leading up to the deadline for measures to pass their house of origin. In the frenzied treadmill, there was little or no debate on most matters, important bills died when legislators failed to vote, and votes were being cast for members without their express consent.
In the Hayashi case, eyewitnesses said her initial "yes" vote was cast by Assemblyman Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, an assistant majority floor leader who colleagues said had taken the liberty of voting for other missing members as bills were being rushed to beat the deadline.
"I don't recall it, but I don't deny it either," de León said of allegations that he voted for Hayashi on AB2818. He added that deadline-day floor sessions can get "chaotic and wacky," with "hundreds and hundreds of bills moving through."
Assemblywoman Loni Hancock, a Berkeley Democrat who knew of Hayashi's concerns with the bill, acknowledged intervening to prevent her colleague from being a potentially decisive vote for passage of a bill she opposed.
"I didn't even know who pushed the green button originally," Hancock said. "I was riveted on the screen, I was doing a million things ...but I saw the green light go on ... and I knew Mary didn't want to be the 41st vote."
The bill ultimately passed with two votes to spare, 43 to 32, with Hayashi among the five nonvoters. Assemblywoman Cathleen Gagliani, D-Stockton, then pulled the key out of her desk mate Hayashi's voting station.
This extraordinary tug-of-war was in brazen defiance of Assembly Rule 104, which states, "A member may not operate the voting switch of any other member."
Outside of the Capitol, voting for someone else is a felony subject to up to three years' imprisonment. In the Assembly, where the stakes of a single vote are significantly higher, it is a rule that is widely ignored. Members routinely ask their desk mates to cover for them when they are away from the floor, usually with instructions on how to vote on specific bills. But if they leave their keys in their voting machines while away from the desk, they risk having a party-line voting recorded, whether they like it or not - as Hayashi discovered to her chagrin.
"It sounds like what is kind of the normal way we go about things got out of control," newly minted Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Baldwin Vista (Los Angeles County), said in a phone interview Thursday, when asked about reports of ghost voting, including the Hayashi incident. She promised to confront the matter at a closed-door Democratic caucus this week. "I hate that it had to come out this way, but it raised a red flag and I'm going to follow up."
De León acknowledged that he voted for his fellow Democrats at times, to help keep bills moving toward the 41 votes required for passage, but he emphasized that he would never knowingly cast a vote against a colleague's wishes. In the case of AB2818, de León said he was certain that he never discussed the bill with Hayashi, and was not aware of her position on it.
Asked about the ethics of voting for a colleague without specific knowledge of his or her position on a bill, de León noted that a legislator who did not like the way his or her vote was cast could later change it for the record. House rules allow an Assembly member to change his or her vote after a bill has been passed or rejected - up to the end of the day's session - as long as it does not alter the outcome.
"It's not like it's etched in stone," de León said. "It's like you go to your ATM machine - same thing - change your vote."
But not all legislators are eager to cast a yes or no vote, especially on the tough issues. In a practice that has been the focus of a series of Chronicle editorials since June 2002, many important bills were rejected when a potentially decisive number of Assembly members failed to vote.
For the nonvoters, "taking a walk" is the equivalent of voting "no," because passage requires a majority of all 80 Assembly members. There is a pattern to this walking: In the vast majority of cases, the bill involves something average Californians care about - often consumer or environmental protections - while powerful corporate interests stand in opposition. Legislators prefer to euphemistically refer to this practice of avoiding what they were elected to do - Take a stand! Make tough decisions! Vote! - as "laying off" a bill.
"This practice of laying off is one of my pet peeves in the Capitol," said Assemblyman Jared Huffman, a first-term San Rafael Democrat. "It's not a courtesy, it's not some lesser vote - it's a no."
Nonvoters delivered a death blow to Huffman's AB3011, which would have required California cell-phone companies to get a customer's consent before sharing his or her financial information with third parties. Landline companies are already subject to such privacy regulations.
Huffman said the AT&T lobbyists were out in force. They were aggressive, they were relentless and they were effective. "There are some powerful folks with an awful lot of influence in the Capitol," he observed. In the end, 22 members failed to vote, including some Democrats who might be expected to support a consumer privacy issue (see chart).
"AT&T never loses," said Lenny Goldberg, who lobbies for consumer and privacy issues. "They don't always win, but they never lose."
The telecom giant also prevailed in the Senate with the passive assistance of nonvoters. Sen. Sheila Kuehl's SB1423 would have prohibited phone companies from charging an extra fee for unlisted numbers, which the Santa Monica Democrat rightly cast as a privacy issue. "They (telecom lobbyists) really went to the wall to stop this," said Goldberg, who was working for the measure. At one point, they assigned one lobbyist to each member of the Appropriations Committee. On May 27, SB1423 died in the Senate on a 16-to-16 tie, with 8 nonvoters.
For the health insurance industry, particularly Blue Cross, target No. 1 in the Assembly was AB2805, authored by Fiona Ma in response to complaints from doctors and patients about the cumbersome process for reimbursement from preferred provider organizations. In too many cases, Ma said, the patients were, in effect, being asked to serve as billing administrators.
More than a dozen lobbyists were working the bill outside the Assembly floor as the deadline loomed. Many lawmakers waffled in the week before the final vote. On May 29, it was defeated: 30 voting yes, 16 voting no and 34 not voting.
"It just shows the power of the insurance industry," said Ma, a San Francisco Democrat.
If there is an overarching theme to the chaos of the last week in May - the ghost voting, the walks, the switched votes without footprints - it is the extent to which the systems in Sacramento allow politicians to avoid accountability. What Californians see in the official record - even in the live telecasts of proceedings on the California Channel - can be deceptive.
For example, the video of the May 28 vote on AB2818 would suggest that Hayashi was racked with indecision: green, red, green, red, green, then blank. In fact, she was opposed to the bill. Her staffers, who knew her position, watched the office TV monitor with puzzlement as the lights flickered between green and red. They bolted up to the fourth floor to alert her that something was amiss.
"How do you think that makes me feel?" Hayashi said, when asked about the vote. "The California Channel is totally airing this. They're probably thinking: 'What is wrong with Hayashi: Why can't she decide on this bill?' "
Hancock, who rescued Hayashi from a vote that would have been a double-cross to public-housing leaders in her district who were assured she would oppose 2818, said this was not the first time a key left in the voting machine resulted in a foul vote. Hancock herself was the victim when she was a freshman.
What is rare is for members to acknowledge such transgressions. The outrage over the infamous 2005 attempt by Sen. Carole Migden to cast a vote for one of her bills when it was in the Assembly was an aberration. When the violation is among members in the same house, within the same party, the pressure to close ranks is intense. At least one other Assembly Democrat privately told colleagues that he was the victim of a ghost vote against his will in the last week of May. He declined to be interviewed.
"I don't think in any way, shape or form anything malicious was intended here," Speaker Bass said Thursday, at which point she said she had yet to discuss the allegations with de León or Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont.
Torrico, whose new job is to oversee floor action, insisted by phone Thursday, "I'm not aware of any vote being cast against the will of a member. This is the first I've heard of it."
Torrico added that he believed Assembly members were in compliance with "the spirit of the rule" if they give consent to their colleagues to vote for them if they're away from the floor.
It's clear that the Assembly majority leader is not the only one who hasn't read the plain language of the rule: Members must cast their own vote.
Ma, who was elected in 2006 and holds the leadership position of majority whip, said she did not know that the rules explicitly forbid voting for another member. She said the ruling Democrats have "an understanding" that members who don't want people voting for them do not leave their keys in their voting station when they leave the floor.
"Some people don't let other people vote for them because they're in marginal seats and they have to be very careful about what they are voting for," Ma said of her colleagues who keep their voting keys with them.
"It's just amazing to me that they have these rules and they ignore them - what other body can do that?" said Bob Stern, president of the Center for Governmental Studies in Los Angeles and an author of the Political Reform Act of 1974. "When is the Legislature going to learn ... that people are watching?"
Editorial: What state lawmakers should do to fix a
broken system and abide by their own rules. G10
Allowing a silent death by not voting
By withholding their votes and "taking a walk," state legislators allow a bill to die. In the Assembly, a bill requires a simple majority of 41 of the 80 members to pass; in the Senate, that majority is 21. Often the bills address consumer or environmental issues, and a "no" vote may anger the electorate whereas the nonvote appears less at odds with a particular constituency. Not registering a vote allows the bill to die, often in response to powerful corporate lobbying, as surely as a "no" vote.
Cell Phone Privacy, Assembly Bill 3011
Author: Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael
Its goal: To require cell-phone companies to obtain a customer's consent before sharing a customer's financial information with third parties (similar to a requirement imposed on land-line companies).
The vote: 23 yes, 35 no, 22 nonvoters.
Key opponents: AT&T, Verizon, the wireless industry group.
Its defeat means: Cell-phone companies will continue to enjoy wide latitude to share your personal information unless you exercise your limited ability to "opt out" under federal rules.
Bay Area nonvoters
Anna Caballero, D-Salinas,
assemblymember.caballero@assembly.ca.gov
Noreen Evans, D-Santa Rosa,
assemblymember.evans@assembly.ca.gov
Cathleen Galgiani, D-Stockton,
assemblymember.galgiani@assembly.ca.gov
Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley,
assemblymember.hayashi@assembly.ca.gov
Guy Houston, R-San Ramon, assemblymember.houston@assembly.ca.gov
Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco,
assemblymember.ma@assembly.ca.gov
Sandré Swanson, D-Alameda, assemblymember.swanson@assembly.ca.gov
Unlisted Phone Numbers, Senate bill1423
Author: Sheila Kuehl, D-Santa Monica
Its goal: To stop phone companies from gouging customers for having an unlisted number. As the author noted, the cost of unlisting a number is virtually nil in this digital age.
The vote: 16 yes, 16 no, 8 nonvoters.
Key opponents: AT&T, Verizon.
Its defeat means: You will continue to pay $1.25 or more a month to keep your number unlisted ... or take your chances that your phone company is not going to sell information about you to other companies.
Bay Area nonvoters
Sen. Don Perata, D-Oakland, senator.perata@sen.ca.gov
Water Conservation, Assembly Bill 2153
Author: Paul Krekorian, D-Burbank
Its goal: To compel developers to install cost-efficient water conservation measures in new residential and commercial development. The measure would force developers either to show that their projects would not create a "net gain" in water use or to contribute to a fund for conservation projects.
Key opponents: California Chamber of Commerce, the building and construction industries.
The vote: 30 yes, 37 no, 13 nonvoters.
Its defeat means: California will continue to grow without knowing how it will meet its future water demands.
Bay Area nonvoters
Guy Houston, R-San Ramon, assemblymember.houston@assembly.ca.gov
Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont, assemblymember.torrico@assembly.ca.gov
Internet Tax, Assembly bill1840
Author: Charles Calderon, D-Whittier
Its goal: To extend the state sales tax to certain transactions on the Internet.
Key opponents: The California Chamber of Commerce and more than 100 of its member businesses.
The vote: 18 yes, 37 no, 25 nonvoters.
Its defeat means: State and local governments will continue to lose a potential $1 billion a year from purchases of out-of-state Internet and mail-order sales.
Bay Area nonvoters
Jim Beall, D-San Jose,
assemblymember.beall@asm.ca.gov
Anna Caballero, D-Salinas,
assemblymember.caballero@assembly.ca.gov
Joe Coto, D-San Jose,
assemblymember.coto@assembly.ca.gov
Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley,
assemblymember.hayashi@assembly.ca.gov
Guy Houston, R-San Ramon,
assemblymember.houston@assembly.ca.gov
Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco,
assemblymember.ma@assembly.ca.gov
Alberto Torrico, D-Fremont,
assemblymember.torrico@assembly.ca.gov
Medical Billing, Assembly bill 2805
Author: Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco
Its goal: To arrange for physicians to be reimbursed directly from preferred provider organizations, or PPOs, instead of forcing patients to pay the money up front and then seek reimbursement when they see an out-of-network doctor.
The vote: 30 yes, 16 no, 34 nonvoters.
Key opponents: The health insurance industry.
Its defeat means: It's going to remain as difficult as ever for consumers in PPOs to get reimbursed if they want to seek a second opinion or otherwise see an out-of-network specialist.
Bay Area nonvoters
Joe Coto, D-San Jose,
assemblymember.coto
@assembly.ca.gov
Mary Hayashi, D-Castro Valley,
assemblymember.hayashi
@assembly.ca.gov
Guy Houston, R-San Ramon, assemblymember.houston
@assembly.ca.gov
Sandré Swanson, D-Alameda,
assemblymember.swanson@assembly.ca.gov
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2) The Article linked below was Abstracted from the source cited.
Inside a 9/11 Mastermind’s Interrogation
(suggested title: inside the mind of the US torture program)
nyt, 6-22-08
WASHINGTON — In a makeshift prison in the north of Poland, Al Qaeda’s engineer of mass murder faced off against his Central Intelligence Agency interrogator. It was 18 months after the 9/11 attacks, and the invasion of Iraq was giving Muslim extremists new motives for havoc. If anyone knew about the next plot, it was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
The interrogator, Deuce Martinez, a soft-spoken analyst who spoke no Arabic, had turned down a C.I.A. offer to be trained in waterboarding. He chose to leave the infliction of pain and panic to others, the gung-ho paramilitary types whom the more cerebral interrogators called “knuckledraggers.”
...
A canny opponent, Mr. Mohammed mixed disinformation and braggadocio with details of plots, past and planned. Eventually, he grew loquacious. “They’d have long talks about religion,” comparing notes on Islam and Mr. Martinez’s Catholicism, one C.I.A. officer recalled. And, the officer added, there was one other detail no one could have predicted: “He wrote poems to Deuce’s wife.”
Mr. Martinez, who by then had interrogated at least three other high-level prisoners, would bring Mr. Mohammed snacks, usually dates. He would listen to Mr. Mohammed’s despair over the likelihood that he would never see his children again and to his catalog of complaints about his accommodations.
...
The story of Mr. Martinez’s role in the C.I.A.’s interrogation program, including his contribution to the first capture of a major figure in Al Qaeda, provides the closest look to date beneath the blanket of secrecy that hides the program from terrorists and from critics who accuse the agency of torture.
Beyond the interrogator’s successes, this account includes new details on the campaign against Al Qaeda, including the text message that led to Mr. Mohammed’s capture, the reason the C.I.A. believed his claim that he was the murderer of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and the separate teams at the C.I.A.’s secret prisons of those who meted out the agony and those who asked the questions.
In the Hollywood cliché of Fox’s “24,” a torturer shouts questions at a bound terrorist while inflicting excruciating pain. The C.I.A. program worked differently. A paramilitary team put on the pressure, using cold temperatures, sleeplessness, pain and fear to force a prisoner to talk. When the prisoner signaled assent, the tormenters stepped aside. After a break that could be a day or even longer, Mr. Martinez or another interrogator took up the questioning.
...
The two dozen current and former American and foreign intelligence officials interviewed for this article offered a tantalizing but incomplete description of the C.I.A. detention program. Most would speak of the highly classified program only on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Martinez declined to be interviewed; his role was described by colleagues. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A., and a lawyer representing Mr. Martinez asked that he not be named in this article, saying that the former interrogator believed that the use of his name would invade his privacy and might jeopardize his safety. The New York Times, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked undercover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news articles and books, declined the request. (An editors’ note on this issue has been posted on The Times’s Web site.)
The very fact that Mr. Martinez, a career narcotics analyst who did not speak the terrorists’ native languages and had no interrogation experience, would end up as a crucial player captures the ad-hoc nature of the program. Officials acknowledge that it was cobbled together under enormous pressure in 2002 by an agency nearly devoid of expertise in detention and interrogation.
...
In its scramble, the agency made the momentous decision to use harsh methods the United States had long condemned. With little research or reflection, it borrowed its techniques from an American military training program modeled on the torture repertories of the Soviet Union and other cold-war adversaries, a lineage that would come to haunt the agency.
It located its overseas jails based largely on which foreign intelligence officials were most accommodating and rushed to move the prisoners when word of locations leaked. Seeking a longer-term solution, the C.I.A. spent millions to build a high-security prison in a remote desert location, according to two former intelligence officials. The prison, whose existence has never been disclosed, was completed — and then apparently abandoned unused — when President Bush decided in 2006 to move all the prisoners to Guantánamo.
...
A Break in Pakistan
When Mr. Martinez flew to Pakistan early in 2002, he was joining an increasingly desperate campaign to catch and question anyone who might know the plans for the next terrorist attack.
...
One of the SWAT teams found Abu Zubaydah, protected by Syrian and Egyptian bodyguards, at a handsome house on Canal Road in Faisalabad. It held bomb-making equipment and a safe loaded with $100,000 in cash, according to a terrorism consultant briefed on the event. Photographs of the raid reviewed by The Times last month showed Abu Zubaydah, a cleanshaven 30-year-old Palestinian, shot three times during the raid, lying face down in the back of a Toyota pickup before he was taken to a hospital.
At first, Abu Zubaydah fell in and out of consciousness, emerging occasionally to speak incoherently — once, evidently imagining himself in a restaurant, ordering a glass of red wine, a C.I.A. official said. The agency, desperate to keep him alive, flew in a Johns Hopkins Hospital surgeon to consult. Within a few days, Abu Zubaydah was flown to Thailand, to the first of the “black sites,” the agency’s interrogation facilities for major Qaeda figures.
Thailand, which had long faced Muslim insurgents in its south, became the first choice because C.I.A. officers had a very close relationship with their counterparts in Bangkok, according to one American intelligence official. At first, the official said, “they didn’t even tell the prime minister.”
Inside a ‘Black Site’
It was at the Thai jail, not far from Bangkok, that Mr. Martinez first tried his hand at interrogation on Abu Zubaydah, who refused to speak Arabic with his captors but spoke passable English. It was also there, as previously reported, that the C.I.A. would first try physical pressure to get information, including the near-drowning of waterboarding. The methods came from the military’s SERE training program, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, which many of the C.I.A.’s paramilitary officers had themselves completed. A small version of SERE had long operated at the C.I.A.’s Virginia training site, known as The Farm.
Senior Federal Bureau of Investigation officials thought such methods unnecessary and unwise. Their agents got Abu Zubaydah talking without the use of force, and he revealed the central role of Mr. Mohammed in the 9/11 plot. They correctly predicted that harsh methods would darken the reputation of the United States and complicate future prosecutions. Many C.I.A. officials, too, had their doubts, and the agency used contract employees with military experience for much of the work.
Some C.I.A. officers were torn, believing the harsh treatment could be effective. Some said that only later did they understand the political cost of embracing methods the country had long shunned.
John C. Kiriakou, a former C.I.A. counterterrorism officer who was the first to question Abu Zubaydah, expressed such conflicted views when he spoke publicly to ABC News and other news organizations late last year. In a December interview with The Times, before being cautioned by the C.I.A. not to discuss classified matters, Mr. Kiriakou, who was not present for the waterboarding but read the resulting intelligence reports, said he had been told that Abu Zubaydah became compliant after 35 seconds of the water treatment.
(note: See the second ABC report, which, when tied to the first report demonstrate that the top cabinent officers participated in real-time torture from the white house.)
...
If officers believed the prisoner was holding out, paramilitary officers who had undergone a crash course in the new techniques, but who generally knew little about Al Qaeda, would move in to manhandle the prisoner. Aware that they were on tenuous legal ground, agency officials at headquarters insisted on approving each new step — a night without sleep, a session of waterboarding, even a “belly slap” — in an exchange of encrypted messages. A doctor or medic was always on hand.
The tough treatment would halt as soon as the prisoner expressed a desire to talk. Then the interrogator would be brought in.
Interrogation became Mr. Martinez’s new forte, first with Abu Zubaydah; then with Ramzi bin al-Shibh, the Yemeni who was said to have been an intermediary between the 9/11 hijackers and Qaeda leaders, caught in September 2002; and then with Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Saudi accused of planning the bombing of the American destroyer Cole in 2000, who was caught in November 2002.
Mr. bin al-Shibh quickly cooperated; Mr. Nashiri resisted and was subjected to waterboarding, intelligence officials have said. C.I.A superiors offered Mr. Martinez and some other analysts the chance to be “certified” in what the C.I.A. euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation methods.”
(note that martinez was an integeral part of a team the employed torture. The times seems to miss the point that martinez is just as guilty as the members of his team that tortured.)
...
Mr. Martinez declined, as did several other C.I.A. officers. He did not condemn the tough methods, colleagues said, but he was learning that his talents lay elsewhere.
...
(Khalid Shaikh Mohammed captured)
...
Within days, Mr. Mohammed was flown to Afghanistan and then on to Poland, where the most important of the C.I.A.’s black sites had been established. The secret base near Szymany Airport, about 100 miles north of Warsaw, would become a second home to Mr. Martinez during the dozens of hours he spent with Mr. Mohammed.
Poland was picked because there were no local cultural and religious ties to Al Qaeda, making infiltration or attack by sympathizers unlikely, one C.I.A. officer said. Most important, Polish intelligence officials were eager to cooperate.
“Poland is the 51st state,” one former C.I.A. official recalls James L. Pavitt, then director of the agency’s clandestine service, declaring. “Americans have no idea.”
Mr. Mohammed met his captors at first with cocky defiance, telling one veteran C.I.A. officer, a former Pakistan station chief, that he would talk only when he got to New York and was assigned a lawyer — the experience of his nephew and partner in terrorism, Ramzi Yousef, after Mr. Yousef’s arrest in 1995.
But the rules had changed, and the tough treatment began shortly after Mr. Mohammed was delivered to Poland. By several accounts, he proved especially resistant, chanting from the Koran, doling out innocuous information or offering obvious fabrications. The Times reported last year that the intensity of his treatment — various harsh techniques, including waterboarding, used about 100 times over a period of two weeks — prompted worries that officers might have crossed the boundary into illegal torture.
...
Sometimes Mr. Mohammed wrote letters to the Red Cross or to President Bush with his demands; the letters went to C.I.A. psychologists for analysis.
...
The interrogations the commission cited began just 11 days after Mr. Mohammed’s capture and ended just days before the commission’s report was published in mid-2004. Together they amount to a detailed history of Mr. Mohammed’s initiation into terrorism along with his nephew, Mr. Yousef; his plotting of mayhem from Bosnia to the Philippines; and his alliance with Osama bin Laden, to whom the egotistical Mr. Mohammed was reluctant to defer.
...
Divergent Paths
On June 5, Mr. Mohammed made a theatrical return to the public eye at his Guantánamo Bay arraignment, with a long, graying beard and a defiant insistence that the American military commission could do no more to him than give him his wish: execution and martyrdom.
His interrogator has moved on, too. Like many other C.I.A. officers in the post-9/11 security boom, Mr. Martinez left the agency for more lucrative work with government contractors.
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NYT SoftSellling US torture by applauding torture team member martinez
Alex Wierbinski, Berkeley, Ca., June, 2008
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Background:
First ABC report on John Kiriakou, ABC News, 12-10-07
Second ABC report on white house participation in torture, ABC News, April 9, 2008
Two ABC articles prove that the White House directly participated in torture sessions, committee, april 10, 2008
Corruption Updates 69, 1st article on the page, "Rights Groups Call for End to Secret Detentions"
Corruption Updates 71, 1st article on the page, "CIA rejects secret jails report"
Corruption Updates 91, 3rd article on the page, "CIA dissenters aided secret prisons report"
Corruption Updates 37, 8th article on the page, "Corporate Media Humiliates itself, Again: War,WMD,Kidnapping,Torture,and Plame..."
Corruption Updates 38, 2nd article on the page, "Gitmo: THE KANGAROO COURT IS OPEN: ENTER AND BE CONVICTED"
Corruption Updates 80, 1st article on the page, "CIA Lawyer who Justifies Toture-Kidnapping-Endless Detention Appears before Congress"
Corruption Updates 83, 1st article on the page, "Cheney the Torture mastermind"
Corruption Updates 84, 1st article on the page,"Pelosi: Impeachment 'off the table"
All Links: Kidnapping/Torture
Links: Torturing the Law
US Code 2441: War Crimes
essay: US has Trained Torturers
The Corruption
Database
torture
kidnapping
secret prisons
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