Informed Consent

Australian Prisoner at Guantanamo Says U.S. Flew Him to Unknown Locations to Beat Him

Former Guantanamo prisoner, David Hicks, who is returning to Australia to serve 9 months before being released, said that he feared his U.S. interrogators would shoot him if he didn't cooperate with them. He also said he was kicked and punched and that on two occasions he was taken off of a U.S. warship and flown to another location where he was abused by U.S. personnel. U.S. investigations haven't substantiated these claims, but Colin Powell's former chief of staff said in an Australian Associated Press article that such internal investigations aren't to be trusted.

In his plea agreement with the U.S., Hicks agreed not to speak with the media or claim any mistreatment that he received while imprisoned, but allegations about his abuse appeared anyway in an affidavit he filed earlier in a British court. Hicks had filed the affidavit in a bid to seek British citizenship. A number of Guantanamo prisoners have sought to obtain UK citizenship out of the belief that the UK would fight for their release more than their birth countries would.

Hicks was sentenced to seven years but all but nine months of that has been suspended. The plea agreement that Hicks signed stated that, "I have never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody of the United States" and that "I agree that this agreement puts to rest any claims of mistreatment by the United States."

But his Australian lawyer seemed to contradict that statement in comments made to the Australian media.

White House Uses Private E-mail to Evade Public Record Requests

It's been previously reported in other publications in bits and pieces, but Salon pulls it all together in a story today about how Karl Rove and others use non-federal e-mail accounts to avoid having their correspondence made public. From the Salon piece by Sidney Blumenthal:

The discovery of a hitherto unknown treasure-trove of e-mails buried by the Bush White House may prove to be as informative as Nixon's secret White House tapes. Last week the National Journal disclosed that Karl Rove does "about 95 percent" of his e-mails outside the White House system, instead using a Republican National Committee account. What's more, Rove doesn't tap most of his messages on a White House computer, but rather on a BlackBerry provided by the RNC. By this method, Rove and other White House aides evade the legally required archiving of official e-mails. The first glimmer of this dodge appeared in a small item buried in a January 2004 issue of U.S. News & World Report: "'I don't want my E-mail made public,' said one insider. As a result, many aides have shifted to Internet E-mail instead of the White House system. 'It's Yahoo!, baby,' says a Bushie."

The offshoring of White House records via RNC e-mails became apparent when an RNC domain, gwb43.com (referring to George W. Bush, 43rd president), turned up in a batch of e-mails the White House gave to House and Senate committees earlier this month. Rove's deputy, Scott Jennings, former Bush legal counsel Harriet Miers and her deputies strangely had used gwb43.com as an e-mail domain.

The production of these e-mails to Congress was a kind of slip. In its tense negotiations with lawmakers, the White House has steadfastly refused to give Congress e-mails other than those between the White House and the Justice Department or the White House and Congress. E-mails among presidential aides have been withheld under the claim of executive privilege.

When I worked in the Clinton White House, people brought in their personal computers if they were engaged in any campaign work, but all official transactions had to be done within the White House system as stipulated by the Presidential Records Act of 1978. (The PRA requires that "the President shall take all such steps as may be necessary to assure that the activities, deliberations, decisions, and policies that reflect the performance of his constitutional, statutory, or other official or ceremonial duties are adequately documented and that such records are maintained as Presidential records.") Having forsaken the use of Executive Office of the President e-mail, executive privilege has been sacrificed. Moreover, Rove's and the others' practice may not be legal.

The revelation of the gwb43 e-mails illuminates the widespread exploitation of nongovernmental e-mail by Bush White House officials, which initially surfaced in the investigations and trial of convicted Republican super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff.