THE INSPECTORS GENERAL
By William Fisher
It’s not much of a stretch to argue that the toughest – and perhaps the most thankless – job in the U.S. Government is carried out by a group of people very few Americans have ever heard of.
These are the Inspectors General (IGs) of all Cabinet-level government departments – and in many smaller departments and agencies. The IGs, along with the Government Accountability Office (GAO) – reported by IPS previously -- constitute the government’s two principal watchdog agencies.
The IGs have been around since the founding of the U.S., having been established by the Continental Congress in 1777, to ensure good behavior by the army.
But their work is far more complex and challenging today. What makes the work so difficult?
IGs are appointed by the president and confirmed by the senate, but serve at the president’s pleasure – meaning they can be fired at any time for any reason, or no reason at all. Their job is to investigate waste, fraud and malfeasance in the very departments they work in. Often, the subject matter of their investigations is classified, and the production of a declassified version can lead to long delays in public release. In some cases, material contained in an IG report has been classified after the report was written, in order to keep its conclusions and recommendations away from public scrutiny. On some occasions, IGs have refused to take on highly sensitive or controversial subjects, or have taken on only small and less controversial parts of a larger subject – in effect, ignoring the 800-pound gorilla in the living room.
Steven Aftergood, head of the Government Secrecy Project of the Federation of American Scientists spends a good deal of his work life ‘watching the watchdogs’.
His assessment: “Like every other system of checks and balances, the Inspectors General are imperfect -- yet indispensable. I think that the overall performance of the IG depends to a very large extent on the individual who holds the position. A bold and persistent IG can have a tremendous impact,” he said, adding, “A lazy, indifferent or corrupt IG may be worse than none at all.”
That potential for ‘tremendous impact’ often translates into extensive media attention and changes in the way government agencies carry out their work. For example:
Late last year, the chief internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), reported that the federal government still could not keep foreigners from using stolen passports to enter the country. He found the federal air marshal program in disarray, warned that shipping containers were entering U.S. ports every day without even superficial screening for nuclear material, and chastised the department for failing to fulfill its congressional mandate to come up with a centralized watch list of suspected terrorists. Even Homeland Security’s single most publicized initiative, the screening of passengers and bags at the nation’s airports, had failed to make it any more difficult to sneak guns, knives, and explosives onto planes, the IG report found. The IG, Clark Kent Ervin, was fired two weeks later.
After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) used federal immigration laws to detain aliens in the United States. The IG found significant problems in the way the Department handled these detainees. The IG report concluded that the FBI should have made a greater effort to distinguish illegal aliens the agency suspected of having a connection to terrorism from those who may have violated immigration laws unrelated to terrorism. The department operated under a "hold until cleared" policy, which required detainees to be held without bond until the FBI cleared them of any connections to terrorism. According to the report, the average length of time from the arrest of a detainee to clearance by the FBI was 80 days. Many detainees were held in prison-like environments, without access to lawyers or families.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA), IG found that EPA “senior management,” (meaning political appointees) had rigged data and failed to meet its legal responsibility to protect children’s health. The immediate issue was mercury emissions from coal-fired electric utilities. The IG’s evaluation found that because the assumptions imposed on the analysis were incorrect, the allowable level of mercury pollution proposed by EPA did not meet the minimum standard required by the Clean Air Act.
The U.S. Defense Department's (DOD) weapons buying chief and senior Air Force officials sidestepped regulations in a $23 billion proposal to lease and buy as many as 100 Boeing Co. tankers, the Pentagon's IG said. His report is the Pentagon's fullest so far on the failed Boeing deal, shelved last year after questions about cost and criminal conflicts of interest. The decision by the Pentagon's former undersecretary for acquisition to exempt the Boeing tanker program from specific regulations ``was the major failure associated with managing and making decisions on the program,'' said the IG report. A senior civilian Pentagon procurement official and two Boeing executives were convicted and are now serving prison sentences.
Sibel Edmonds, an FBI linguist was fired in 2002 after raising security-related allegations about a co-worker. The IG report concluded that the FBI did not, and still has not, adequately investigated these allegations. Had the FBI investigated the claims thoroughly, it would have found that many of Edmonds’ allegations regarding the co-worker were supported by documentary evidence or other witnesses. Instead, the FBI seems to have discounted Edmonds’ allegations, believing she was a disruptive influence and not credible, and eventually terminated her services. The IG report noted that Edmonds also alleged that the FBI retaliated against her by terminating her services. The IG concluded that Edmonds’ allegations were at least a contributing factor in why the FBI terminated her services. Edmonds sought protection under the Whistleblowers’ Act, and sued the government. Earlier this year, the Supreme Court ruled that her case could not go forward because much of the evidence was classified.
Jeff Ruch, who heads the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) – a not-for-profit “watch the watchdogs” organization -- believes the IG system has numerous flaws.
He said, “Many intakes to IGs are ignored; an IG can take as long as it wants, holding reports until they are irrelevant or moot; IGs can reframe the question or pull punches in ways that is hard to detect unless the gist of the original intake is known (but they are not often on any public record).”
He offers these recommendations to improve the IG system:
Give IGs a fixed term, removable only for cause -- rather than serving at the president’s pleasure.
Require IGs to report back to agency employee whistleblower/intakes within a certain time. Give whistleblowers some official status to review and comment on adequacy of an IG report and include those comments in the final published version. Put teeth in whistleblower protection.
Impose a penalty for IG staff who disclose confidential informant identity.
Give IGs a mechanism to pursue officials they believe are guilty of misconduct.
Friday, July 22, 2005
GOVERNMENT WATCHDOGS
Part one of a two-part series
By William Fisher
For the past few years, Americans have lived with an increasingly secret government. More official documents are being classified than ever before -- more than 16 million last year alone – while the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990s, has slowed to a relative crawl. And Federal agencies are creating new categories of “semi-secrets”, bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."
This increasing secrecy, which accelerated sharply after attacks of September 11th 2001, is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $8 billion annually and is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification.
Meanwhile, requests for these documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) are at an all-time high, and the government is taking ever-longer to respond – or claiming exemptions on grounds of national security and not responding at all. The FOIA law was enacted in 1968 to provide greater access to government documents.
Yet even in this opaque environment, the U.S. Government is still far more transparent than most. And much of the credit goes to two Federal agencies – the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Inspectors General (IGs), who operate in virtually all major government departments.
According to Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy government secrecy project for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), “Both organizations often have a direct impact on particular policies and programs, and play a vital role in nourishing public awareness.”
Aftergood is part of a smallish group of non-governmental agencies that watch the watchdogs. He said, “Both sets of organizations routinely ‘make news’ and help to inform public debate.”
In this, the first of two articles, we report on the GAO.
Created by Congress in 1921, GAO is independent of the executive branch of government. According to Jeff Ruch, who heads another of the “watchdog watcher” organizations, the Project on Government Oversight, “On a monthly basis, GAO uncovers more problems within executive agencies than all the IGs combined do in a year.”
He said, “While GAO is a creature of Congress, that oversight goes to what it examines and the size of its budget. We have never heard of a draft GAO report watered down by Congressional intervention.”
With a staff of 3,200 and an annual budget of $463.6 million, the GAO is headed by the Comptroller General of the United States (CG), currently David M. Walker, who came to the job with extensive government and private sector experience.
In an effort to de-politicize its operations and ensure continuity, the CG is appointed by the President for a term of ten years; the current CG was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
GAO’s mission is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government. Last year it testified 217 times before Congress, and over the past four years has made 2,700 recommendations for improving government operations – 83 per cent of which have been implemented. It claims its work in 2004 saved taxpayers $44 billion
Because of its size and huge budget, the Defense Department has been a frequent target of GOA criticism. This year, it charged that thePentagon was spending over $13 billion to maintain and buy often duplicative business software and computer systems. In another report, it said that over the last three years, the Pentagon disposed of $33 billion in ‘excess’ equipment – for pennies on the dollar. Some $4 billion of this equipment was reported to be in new, unused, or excellent condition. In yet another report, the GAO blasted the Pentagon for its "atrocious financial management," saying the Defense Department was not able to give federal oversight officials a full accounting of the $1 billion being spent each week on the war in Iraq.
"If the Department of Defense were a business, they'd be out of business," said GAO boss Walker. "They have absolutely atrocious financial management."
GAO also reported that the Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect the public from tens of thousands of toxic compounds because it has not gathered data on the health risks of most industrial chemicals
It criticized the Office of Management and Budget for weaknesses in its security reporting guidance and reported deficiencies in the information security policies and practices at 24 of the largest federal agencies. -- putting financial data at risk of unauthorized modification or destruction, and putting sensitive information at risk of inappropriate disclosure.
GAO found that inaccurate reporting by the Department of Energy (DOE) was covering up the agency’s failure ensure that 50% of subcontracts went to small businesses.
It charged that “plenty” of the 8.8. million passports issued by the State Department in 2004 went to killers, rapists, drug dealers and even terrorists because the FBI did not routinely share with the State Department its list of fugitives wanted by state and federal agencies. Among those who fell through the intelligence cracks were nine murder suspects, five sex offenders, three drug dealers and one alleged bombing suspect. One of the fugitives on the list managed to obtain a U.S. passport less than a year and a half after being on the FBI's 10 most-wanted list.
But the GAO’s work does not always produce success stories. In 2001, it demanded to see the minutes of an Energy Task Force headed be Vice President Disk Cheney – following allegations that the group was “packed” with energy industry executives. For the first time since the GAO’s founding, it filed a lawsuit against Cheney to enforce its right of access to records. After several years, the Supreme Court ruled the minutes were privileged.
Steven Aftergood of FAS injects a further cautionary note. He resists “idealizing the IGs or the GAO as ‘truth tellers’. What they represent, instead, are old-fashioned checks and balances. They are government organizations and officials with a degree of independence and a charter to investigate. If this seems heroic, then that tells something about the times we live in,” he said.
By William Fisher
For the past few years, Americans have lived with an increasingly secret government. More official documents are being classified than ever before -- more than 16 million last year alone – while the declassification process, which made millions of historical documents available annually in the 1990s, has slowed to a relative crawl. And Federal agencies are creating new categories of “semi-secrets”, bearing vague labels like "sensitive security information."
This increasing secrecy, which accelerated sharply after attacks of September 11th 2001, is estimated to cost taxpayers more than $8 billion annually and is drawing protests from a growing array of politicians and activists, including Republican members of Congress, leaders of the independent commission that studied the Sept. 11 attacks and even the top federal official who oversees classification.
Meanwhile, requests for these documents under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) are at an all-time high, and the government is taking ever-longer to respond – or claiming exemptions on grounds of national security and not responding at all. The FOIA law was enacted in 1968 to provide greater access to government documents.
Yet even in this opaque environment, the U.S. Government is still far more transparent than most. And much of the credit goes to two Federal agencies – the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Inspectors General (IGs), who operate in virtually all major government departments.
According to Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy government secrecy project for the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), “Both organizations often have a direct impact on particular policies and programs, and play a vital role in nourishing public awareness.”
Aftergood is part of a smallish group of non-governmental agencies that watch the watchdogs. He said, “Both sets of organizations routinely ‘make news’ and help to inform public debate.”
In this, the first of two articles, we report on the GAO.
Created by Congress in 1921, GAO is independent of the executive branch of government. According to Jeff Ruch, who heads another of the “watchdog watcher” organizations, the Project on Government Oversight, “On a monthly basis, GAO uncovers more problems within executive agencies than all the IGs combined do in a year.”
He said, “While GAO is a creature of Congress, that oversight goes to what it examines and the size of its budget. We have never heard of a draft GAO report watered down by Congressional intervention.”
With a staff of 3,200 and an annual budget of $463.6 million, the GAO is headed by the Comptroller General of the United States (CG), currently David M. Walker, who came to the job with extensive government and private sector experience.
In an effort to de-politicize its operations and ensure continuity, the CG is appointed by the President for a term of ten years; the current CG was appointed by President Bill Clinton.
GAO’s mission is to help improve the performance and assure the accountability of the federal government. Last year it testified 217 times before Congress, and over the past four years has made 2,700 recommendations for improving government operations – 83 per cent of which have been implemented. It claims its work in 2004 saved taxpayers $44 billion
Because of its size and huge budget, the Defense Department has been a frequent target of GOA criticism. This year, it charged that thePentagon was spending over $13 billion to maintain and buy often duplicative business software and computer systems. In another report, it said that over the last three years, the Pentagon disposed of $33 billion in ‘excess’ equipment – for pennies on the dollar. Some $4 billion of this equipment was reported to be in new, unused, or excellent condition. In yet another report, the GAO blasted the Pentagon for its "atrocious financial management," saying the Defense Department was not able to give federal oversight officials a full accounting of the $1 billion being spent each week on the war in Iraq.
"If the Department of Defense were a business, they'd be out of business," said GAO boss Walker. "They have absolutely atrocious financial management."
GAO also reported that the Environmental Protection Agency is failing to protect the public from tens of thousands of toxic compounds because it has not gathered data on the health risks of most industrial chemicals
It criticized the Office of Management and Budget for weaknesses in its security reporting guidance and reported deficiencies in the information security policies and practices at 24 of the largest federal agencies. -- putting financial data at risk of unauthorized modification or destruction, and putting sensitive information at risk of inappropriate disclosure.
GAO found that inaccurate reporting by the Department of Energy (DOE) was covering up the agency’s failure ensure that 50% of subcontracts went to small businesses.
It charged that “plenty” of the 8.8. million passports issued by the State Department in 2004 went to killers, rapists, drug dealers and even terrorists because the FBI did not routinely share with the State Department its list of fugitives wanted by state and federal agencies. Among those who fell through the intelligence cracks were nine murder suspects, five sex offenders, three drug dealers and one alleged bombing suspect. One of the fugitives on the list managed to obtain a U.S. passport less than a year and a half after being on the FBI's 10 most-wanted list.
But the GAO’s work does not always produce success stories. In 2001, it demanded to see the minutes of an Energy Task Force headed be Vice President Disk Cheney – following allegations that the group was “packed” with energy industry executives. For the first time since the GAO’s founding, it filed a lawsuit against Cheney to enforce its right of access to records. After several years, the Supreme Court ruled the minutes were privileged.
Steven Aftergood of FAS injects a further cautionary note. He resists “idealizing the IGs or the GAO as ‘truth tellers’. What they represent, instead, are old-fashioned checks and balances. They are government organizations and officials with a degree of independence and a charter to investigate. If this seems heroic, then that tells something about the times we live in,” he said.
FINALLY: A DEGREE IN PUBLIC DIPLOMACY
By William Fisher
As the U.S. faces increasingly negative attitudes around the world, the previously arcane subject of public diplomacy has become a serious issue in the Bush Administration, Congress, universities, think-tanks and with ordinary citizens.
“Why do they hate us?” is being asked in more places and by more kinds of Americans than ever before.
As widely reported, repeated polls by reputable opinion organizations such as the Pew Research Center and Zogby International have shown that negative overseas perceptions of the U.S. are largely a product of American policies, especially its policies in the Arab and Muslim world.
Particularly incendiary among Arabs and other Muslims are the invasion of Iraq, the alleged U.S. abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and what many foreigners see as America’s one-sided support of Israel.
The importance the Bush Administration places on finding new ways to counter these negative perceptions has been underlined by the President’s nomination of his close confidante and advisor, Karen Hughes, to be Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and former White House personnel chief, Egypt-born Dina Habib Powell to be her deputy.
But neither of these high-profile individuals have had any formal training in crafting and communicating messages that will resonate with foreign audiences who represent widely varying cultural, social, political and economic backgrounds.
That should not come as a surprise: most of the people who actually work in the public diplomacy field today have learned their craft largely from on-the-job experience. They are diplomats, educators, foreign policy experts, political scientists, and men and women who have made their fortunes in journalism or commercial broadcasting, and have sought to adapt these backgrounds to the complex task of winning friends for America.
Until now.
Next month, the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles will begin teaching courses in a new program that will offer a Master’s Degree in Public Diplomacy -- the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
The two-year program will be offered jointly by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences' School of International Relations. The degree program will officially launch in fall 2006.
Just appointed to head the new program is one of the best-known names in the public diplomacy field -- Professor Nicholas J. Cull. Cull is Director of the Centre for American Studies at Leicester University in the United Kingdom. He specializes in US foreign policy, the history of propaganda and the politics of popular culture, and is the author of numerous books on the subject.
His first book, “Selling War”, was a study of British information work in the United States before Pearl Harbor. Since then he has published numerous articles on the theme of propaganda, public diplomacy, politics and foreign policy. He is also an active film historian who has been part of the movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources.
While the new program’s curriculum will be global, media attention predictably focuses on U.S. efforts to ‘win hearts and minds’ among Arabs and other Muslims, especially in the Middle East.
Prof. Cull addressed Middle East issues in an interview. "There is a problem underpinning all U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East and that is the extent to which Arabs actually understand the U.S. rather well and have reasons for disliking American actions based on U.S. policy. A good public diplomacy response would be to show more of the debate within the U.S. so the Arab world understands there are plenty of people of disapprove of much of American-Israeli policy, and conversely that there are reasons why the U.S. behaves the way that it does."
In the Middle East, he said, "We are dealing with a different culture and cannot assume that a message will be received with the intent with which it was transmitted. What hope is there for Bush to say 'sorry' to the Arab world when he doesn't seem to understand that no Arab takes an apology seriously unless the person apologizing adds 'and I ask you to forgive me'."
The Master’s Program was conceived by USC Annenberg Dean Geoffrey Cowan, who served as director of the Voice of America radio service during the
1990s, and USC College Dean Joseph Aoun.
"In an increasingly democratic world, leaders of this nation - as well as the leaders of other countries, businesses and non-governmental organizations - know that they need to find more effective forms of communication," Cowan said.
"There is a pressing need for a cadre of well-trained graduates who will understand diverse cultures, new forms of communication technology and a wide range of communication tools, ranging from cultural diplomacy to exchange programs, to international broadcasting."
"We expect this program to attract and train students and mid-career
professionals who will become the leaders of the next generation of public diplomacy professionals," he added.
Traditional definitions of public diplomacy include: government-sponsored cultural, educational and informational programs; and citizen-exchange programs and broadcasts such as the BBC World Service that are used by governments to promote the national interests of a country through understanding, informing and
influencing foreign audiences.
The new program will use these definitions as starting points, but will address new ways – such as blogs, independent news organizations like Al Jazeera and non-governmental organizations -- to influence and shape the worldview of citizens of foreign countries.
The curriculum will include graduate-level classes on topics such as international broadcasting, cultural diplomacy, corporate citizenship and images, and historical approaches to public diplomacy.
The program is designed for students who already have a substantial undergraduate background in social sciences or relevant professional experience in subjects such as communication, public relations, media studies, journalism,
political science and international relations.
In addition to the new degree program, USC is home to the new Center on Public Diplomacy, which has arranged for internships at such institutions as the Sesame Workshop, the European Union, a number of major consulates in Los Angeles and several leading U.S. foreign policy agencies in Washington, D.C.
"The work of the USC Center for Public Diplomacy will enrich research opportunities for students in the degree program," Joshua Fouts, the center's executive director, said,” This degree is the first step in creating substantive dialogue among students, scholars and practitioners at a critical period in global and political communication.”
For far too long, public diplomacy has been largely an afterthought, an add-on to other international programs. It has rarely, if ever, been fully integrated into foreign policy, either in the US or anywhere else. Nor have governments appreciated the long-term nature of building sound two-way communications or the importance of people of other nations understanding – if even not liking – its policies and practices.
The 21st century is different, however. Today, we are all inter-connected and there is virtually nothing important a nation can do by itself. That is why nations must understand one another. And that is the goal of public diplomacy.
It’s long past time to put the amateurs out to pasture and train a pool of professionals. That is why the USC initiative is so important.
As the U.S. faces increasingly negative attitudes around the world, the previously arcane subject of public diplomacy has become a serious issue in the Bush Administration, Congress, universities, think-tanks and with ordinary citizens.
“Why do they hate us?” is being asked in more places and by more kinds of Americans than ever before.
As widely reported, repeated polls by reputable opinion organizations such as the Pew Research Center and Zogby International have shown that negative overseas perceptions of the U.S. are largely a product of American policies, especially its policies in the Arab and Muslim world.
Particularly incendiary among Arabs and other Muslims are the invasion of Iraq, the alleged U.S. abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and what many foreigners see as America’s one-sided support of Israel.
The importance the Bush Administration places on finding new ways to counter these negative perceptions has been underlined by the President’s nomination of his close confidante and advisor, Karen Hughes, to be Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy, and former White House personnel chief, Egypt-born Dina Habib Powell to be her deputy.
But neither of these high-profile individuals have had any formal training in crafting and communicating messages that will resonate with foreign audiences who represent widely varying cultural, social, political and economic backgrounds.
That should not come as a surprise: most of the people who actually work in the public diplomacy field today have learned their craft largely from on-the-job experience. They are diplomats, educators, foreign policy experts, political scientists, and men and women who have made their fortunes in journalism or commercial broadcasting, and have sought to adapt these backgrounds to the complex task of winning friends for America.
Until now.
Next month, the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles will begin teaching courses in a new program that will offer a Master’s Degree in Public Diplomacy -- the first of its kind anywhere in the world.
The two-year program will be offered jointly by USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and the College of Letters, Arts and Sciences' School of International Relations. The degree program will officially launch in fall 2006.
Just appointed to head the new program is one of the best-known names in the public diplomacy field -- Professor Nicholas J. Cull. Cull is Director of the Centre for American Studies at Leicester University in the United Kingdom. He specializes in US foreign policy, the history of propaganda and the politics of popular culture, and is the author of numerous books on the subject.
His first book, “Selling War”, was a study of British information work in the United States before Pearl Harbor. Since then he has published numerous articles on the theme of propaganda, public diplomacy, politics and foreign policy. He is also an active film historian who has been part of the movement to include film and other media within the mainstream of historical sources.
While the new program’s curriculum will be global, media attention predictably focuses on U.S. efforts to ‘win hearts and minds’ among Arabs and other Muslims, especially in the Middle East.
Prof. Cull addressed Middle East issues in an interview. "There is a problem underpinning all U.S. public diplomacy in the Middle East and that is the extent to which Arabs actually understand the U.S. rather well and have reasons for disliking American actions based on U.S. policy. A good public diplomacy response would be to show more of the debate within the U.S. so the Arab world understands there are plenty of people of disapprove of much of American-Israeli policy, and conversely that there are reasons why the U.S. behaves the way that it does."
In the Middle East, he said, "We are dealing with a different culture and cannot assume that a message will be received with the intent with which it was transmitted. What hope is there for Bush to say 'sorry' to the Arab world when he doesn't seem to understand that no Arab takes an apology seriously unless the person apologizing adds 'and I ask you to forgive me'."
The Master’s Program was conceived by USC Annenberg Dean Geoffrey Cowan, who served as director of the Voice of America radio service during the
1990s, and USC College Dean Joseph Aoun.
"In an increasingly democratic world, leaders of this nation - as well as the leaders of other countries, businesses and non-governmental organizations - know that they need to find more effective forms of communication," Cowan said.
"There is a pressing need for a cadre of well-trained graduates who will understand diverse cultures, new forms of communication technology and a wide range of communication tools, ranging from cultural diplomacy to exchange programs, to international broadcasting."
"We expect this program to attract and train students and mid-career
professionals who will become the leaders of the next generation of public diplomacy professionals," he added.
Traditional definitions of public diplomacy include: government-sponsored cultural, educational and informational programs; and citizen-exchange programs and broadcasts such as the BBC World Service that are used by governments to promote the national interests of a country through understanding, informing and
influencing foreign audiences.
The new program will use these definitions as starting points, but will address new ways – such as blogs, independent news organizations like Al Jazeera and non-governmental organizations -- to influence and shape the worldview of citizens of foreign countries.
The curriculum will include graduate-level classes on topics such as international broadcasting, cultural diplomacy, corporate citizenship and images, and historical approaches to public diplomacy.
The program is designed for students who already have a substantial undergraduate background in social sciences or relevant professional experience in subjects such as communication, public relations, media studies, journalism,
political science and international relations.
In addition to the new degree program, USC is home to the new Center on Public Diplomacy, which has arranged for internships at such institutions as the Sesame Workshop, the European Union, a number of major consulates in Los Angeles and several leading U.S. foreign policy agencies in Washington, D.C.
"The work of the USC Center for Public Diplomacy will enrich research opportunities for students in the degree program," Joshua Fouts, the center's executive director, said,” This degree is the first step in creating substantive dialogue among students, scholars and practitioners at a critical period in global and political communication.”
For far too long, public diplomacy has been largely an afterthought, an add-on to other international programs. It has rarely, if ever, been fully integrated into foreign policy, either in the US or anywhere else. Nor have governments appreciated the long-term nature of building sound two-way communications or the importance of people of other nations understanding – if even not liking – its policies and practices.
The 21st century is different, however. Today, we are all inter-connected and there is virtually nothing important a nation can do by itself. That is why nations must understand one another. And that is the goal of public diplomacy.
It’s long past time to put the amateurs out to pasture and train a pool of professionals. That is why the USC initiative is so important.
Monday, July 18, 2005
THE FBI IN PEACE AND WAR
By William Fisher
Those who remember recent history will not be surprised to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been amassing files on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Greenpeace, and other anti-war and anti-Bush organizations.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and other intelligence agencies had all conspired to engage in widespread spying on ordinary Americans – and illegal covert operations.
The targets back then were left-wing groups and individuals, civil rights and anti-Vietnam activists and, of course, President Nixon’s “enemies list”.
The leader of the pack was the FBI’s powerful first director, J. Edgar Hoover – who had started his witch-hunting career in the 1920s under Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. Palmer’s infamous ‘Red Raids’ were enabled by a national environment of fear and suspicion and led to the jailing or deportation of hundreds of communists, Bolsheviks, and other dissidents, including Emma Goldman, the well-known Russian émigré poet.
The FBI under Hoover collected information on all America's leading politicians. Known as Hoover's “secret files”, this incriminating material was used to make sure that the eight presidents under whom he served would be too frightened to sack him. The strategy worked and Hoover was still in office when he died, aged 77, in 1972.
But it was the FBI’s spying on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. that ended that era of government snooping. The FBI had used wiretaps and a covert operation, personally directed by Hoover, to unearth derogatory information intended to destroy King as a national civil rights leader.
The Committee’s work led to important reforms, including the adoption of Attorney General guidelines for the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations, enforcement of the limits on the CIA’s involvement in domestic spying, and internal controls on the National Security Agency’s monitoring of the electronic communications of United States persons.
Today, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the FBI is again armed with expanded powers to collect information on ordinary citizens. And it has been doing so.
That is what the FBI itself disclosed in Federal court yesterday. It acknowledged that it has collected 1,173 pages of files on the American Civil Liberties Union, 2,383 on Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group, and an undetermined number of files on an organization called United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups. The coalition allegedly was planning peaceful protests at the time of the Republican Party National Convention in New York.
Six pages of internal documents from the FBI’s Los Angeles Bureau reportedly related to the UPJ group, and referred to possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions. But it also quoted at greater length from uncontroversial statements the protesters posted on their website and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention.
The government’s court filing came in response to a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) brought by the ACLU. and other groups that maintain that the FBI has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration.
The ACLU is seeking FBI records since 2001 or earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war and other policies.
The FOIA law was passed in 1968 to give the public greater access to government documents.
The DOJ is opposing the ACLU request to expedite the review of material it is seeking under FOIA, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in the thousands of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the ACLU alone.
Earlier, the ACLU went to court in a separate case to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the government's detention and interrogation practices. The organization said the FBI records on the dozens of protest groups could total tens of thousands of pages.
DOJ officials did not reveal what was in the ACLU and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they denied that they have sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests were intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to silence free speech.
"Why would the FBI collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?" asked ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.
A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of FBI counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.
These documents are reportedly similar in tone to a bulletin distributed among FBI counterterrorism officials in October 2003 analyzing the activities of antiwar demonstrators who were then planning protests in Washington and San Francisco.
When an FBI employee charged that the memo blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity, the DOJ conducted an internal investigation but found that the bulletin did not raise legal problems and that any First Amendment impact posed by the FBI’s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, press, religion and peaceful assembly.
Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the DOJ in 2003 after two of its protesters went aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner. A federal judge in Miami dismissed the case last year.
Those who remember recent history will not be surprised to learn that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has been amassing files on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Greenpeace, and other anti-war and anti-Bush organizations.
Back in the 1960s and 1970s, the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Department of Defense (DOD) and other intelligence agencies had all conspired to engage in widespread spying on ordinary Americans – and illegal covert operations.
The targets back then were left-wing groups and individuals, civil rights and anti-Vietnam activists and, of course, President Nixon’s “enemies list”.
The leader of the pack was the FBI’s powerful first director, J. Edgar Hoover – who had started his witch-hunting career in the 1920s under Attorney General Mitchell Palmer. Palmer’s infamous ‘Red Raids’ were enabled by a national environment of fear and suspicion and led to the jailing or deportation of hundreds of communists, Bolsheviks, and other dissidents, including Emma Goldman, the well-known Russian émigré poet.
The FBI under Hoover collected information on all America's leading politicians. Known as Hoover's “secret files”, this incriminating material was used to make sure that the eight presidents under whom he served would be too frightened to sack him. The strategy worked and Hoover was still in office when he died, aged 77, in 1972.
But it was the FBI’s spying on Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. that ended that era of government snooping. The FBI had used wiretaps and a covert operation, personally directed by Hoover, to unearth derogatory information intended to destroy King as a national civil rights leader.
The Committee’s work led to important reforms, including the adoption of Attorney General guidelines for the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations, enforcement of the limits on the CIA’s involvement in domestic spying, and internal controls on the National Security Agency’s monitoring of the electronic communications of United States persons.
Today, in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., the FBI is again armed with expanded powers to collect information on ordinary citizens. And it has been doing so.
That is what the FBI itself disclosed in Federal court yesterday. It acknowledged that it has collected 1,173 pages of files on the American Civil Liberties Union, 2,383 on Greenpeace, the environmental advocacy group, and an undetermined number of files on an organization called United for Peace and Justice (UPJ), a coalition of more than 1,000 antiwar groups. The coalition allegedly was planning peaceful protests at the time of the Republican Party National Convention in New York.
Six pages of internal documents from the FBI’s Los Angeles Bureau reportedly related to the UPJ group, and referred to possible anarchist connections of some protesters and the prospect for disruptions. But it also quoted at greater length from uncontroversial statements the protesters posted on their website and elsewhere to prepare for the Republican convention.
The government’s court filing came in response to a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) brought by the ACLU. and other groups that maintain that the FBI has engaged in a pattern of political surveillance against critics of the Bush administration.
The ACLU is seeking FBI records since 2001 or earlier on some 150 groups that have been critical of the Bush administration's policies on the Iraq war and other policies.
The FOIA law was passed in 1968 to give the public greater access to government documents.
The DOJ is opposing the ACLU request to expedite the review of material it is seeking under FOIA, saying it does not involve a matter of urgent public interest, and department lawyers say the sheer volume of material, in the thousands of pages, will take them 8 to 11 months to process for Greenpeace and the ACLU alone.
Earlier, the ACLU went to court in a separate case to obtain some 60,000 pages of records on the government's detention and interrogation practices. The organization said the FBI records on the dozens of protest groups could total tens of thousands of pages.
DOJ officials did not reveal what was in the ACLU and Greenpeace files, citing the pending lawsuit. But they denied that they have sought to monitor the political activities of any activist groups and that any intelligence-gathering activities related to political protests were intended to prevent disruptive and criminal activity at demonstrations, not to silence free speech.
"Why would the FBI collect almost 1,200 pages on a civil rights organization engaged in lawful activity? What justification could there be, other than political surveillance of lawful First Amendment activities?" asked ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero.
A smaller batch of documents already turned over by the government sheds light on the interest of FBI counterterrorism officials in protests surrounding the Iraq war and last year's Republican National Convention.
These documents are reportedly similar in tone to a bulletin distributed among FBI counterterrorism officials in October 2003 analyzing the activities of antiwar demonstrators who were then planning protests in Washington and San Francisco.
When an FBI employee charged that the memo blurred the line between lawfully protected speech and illegal activity, the DOJ conducted an internal investigation but found that the bulletin did not raise legal problems and that any First Amendment impact posed by the FBI’s monitoring of the political protests was negligible and constitutional.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of speech, press, religion and peaceful assembly.
Greenpeace was indicted as an organization by the DOJ in 2003 after two of its protesters went aboard a cargo ship to try to unfurl a protest banner. A federal judge in Miami dismissed the case last year.
Blair Must Be Wiser Than Bush
By Rami G. Khouri
The author is Editor-at-Large for The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
The terror attack in London last week is especially troubling because of three political dimensions, above and beyond the moral depravity of the criminal act. The first is the anticipated political response of the United Kingdom, the United States and other governments and societies that now define and lead the “global war on terror”. The second is the frustrating, helpless, feeling among entire populations who sense that such attacks have moved from the realm of the occasional to that of the routine, with little seemingly that can be done to prevent them. The third is a widespread sense of moral and political detachment in much of the Arab-Asian-Islamic world, where perfunctory condemnations of such deeds are overwhelmed by the anticipation of where and when the next attack will come, even though it is likely to come in the Arab-Islamic world more than in the Western world.
These three dimensions are related to one another, so any policy that hopes to reduce or stop such terror attacks must address all three simultaneously, i.e., why are targets in specific countries being hit and what do the terrorists hope to achieve? What can be done to stop this, militarily, politically and in other fields? What is the balance in an effective counterterrorism strategy between foreign policies by Western governments and domestic policies by Arab-Asian governments and societies?
Tony Blair and the British people have an opportunity now to do that which George Bush failed to do after Sept. 11: diagnose the phenomenon of international criminal terrorism factually and correctly; identify its underlying motives and goals accurately; devise appropriate policies that can hope to reduce or even stop it; and implement an integrated, global strategic response to this menace. Blair and his European partners should learn from the American mistakes, and respond to terror with a comprehensive, rational, realistic and multi-sectoral strategy that would make us all — Americans, Arabs, Europeans, Asians — active participants in a true worldwide war against terror and its causes. The alternative is for us all to remain the helpless, befuddled, angry spectators and victims that we have become.
The initial response from American and British leaders has been understandable emotional, but dangerously political, because it risks playing right into the hands of the terrorists and their goal of provoking a long-term war between civilisations. The three predominant responses we have seen from the UK and US leaderships and others in their societies in recent days have been the stiff upper lip syndrome of getting on with life despite the terror, a determination to take the fight to the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, and a refusal to allow the terrorists to threaten or destroy Western civilisation and its freedom-based life values.
These three responses, though understandable psychologically, are a misguided catastrophe in global strategic terms because they will expand rather than reduce the terror problem, if we are to judge by the results of the policies since Sept. 11. Simply repeating views on the criminality and immorality of the terrorists, the grit of the British, and the determination of Americans and Britons to maintain their values and way of life is the basis for a failed policy.
It is safe to assume that some of the new generation of global terrorists have been inspired to their ghastly deeds by the recent Iraqi policies of the American and British governments, among others. Washington's heavy focus on largely unilateral military moves in Afghanistan and Iraq has generated an entire new cohort of terrorists, some of whom have now joined forces with Iraqis who are inspired by their own nationalism to fight foreign troops in their country.
The American- and British-led, Iraq-based counterterrorism strategy of recent years has achieved our collective worst nightmare: it has prompted an alliance, or at least a loose, “ad hoc” coalition of Islamist jihadist terrorists, common criminals, genuine Iraqi and other Arab nationalists, and ordinary Arab and Asian citizens whose sense of indignity at their treatment by their own and foreign governments has pushed them over the edge of understandable anger into using terror as a desperate response.
The question I ask myself over and over again, as I travel throughout the Middle East and the West, is simple but critical: what happened in the course of the last several decades to give birth to waves of terrorists from the Arab-Asian region, targeting both their own societies and the West? Why has Arab-Asian society not done very much to delegitimise these killers and run them out of town? If we still do not — and, amazingly, we do not — have a consensus analysis of how and why ordinary citizens slowly become terrorists, we will not be able to implement a successful counterterrorism strategy. Instead, we have terror in London, and widespread expectations of other attacks to follow.
The key issue, it seems to me, is whether the West and this region focus on the relatively small group of terrorists, or try instead to respond to the legitimate needs, grievances and aspirations of the hundreds of millions of Arabs and Asians who are the enabling environment from which the terrorists emerge. Yes, a very small number of crazed Islamist fanatics really do want to kill Crusaders, apostates and infidels simply because these Arab and Asian criminals feel threatened by Western values. Yet the overwhelming majority of Arabs, Asians, Muslims and Middle Easterners reject such terrorist tactics, motivations and goals.
The criminality of the terrorists since Sept. 11 has generated, in return, a peculiar combination of militarism and emotionalism from the United States, without a supporting foundation of rationalism or realism that positively engages the hundreds of millions of decent, ordinary citizens in the Arab-Asian world.
Terrorists can only be contained and put out of business when their own society delegitimises and rejects them, which requires a more balanced combination of police and political actions, and punitive and preventive measures. Bush ignored this basic fact after Sept. 11 and chose the road of a counterproductive military strategy, based on faulty analysis, in turn built on incomplete diagnosis. Blair now must make a similar decision on how to respond to the London attacks. Let us hope that he acts more intelligently and rationally than Bush. The Arab-Asian-Islamic world, in particular, is anxious to join a genuine war against terror and the many demeaning forces that make it happen.
The author is Editor-at-Large for The Daily Star newspaper in Beirut.
The terror attack in London last week is especially troubling because of three political dimensions, above and beyond the moral depravity of the criminal act. The first is the anticipated political response of the United Kingdom, the United States and other governments and societies that now define and lead the “global war on terror”. The second is the frustrating, helpless, feeling among entire populations who sense that such attacks have moved from the realm of the occasional to that of the routine, with little seemingly that can be done to prevent them. The third is a widespread sense of moral and political detachment in much of the Arab-Asian-Islamic world, where perfunctory condemnations of such deeds are overwhelmed by the anticipation of where and when the next attack will come, even though it is likely to come in the Arab-Islamic world more than in the Western world.
These three dimensions are related to one another, so any policy that hopes to reduce or stop such terror attacks must address all three simultaneously, i.e., why are targets in specific countries being hit and what do the terrorists hope to achieve? What can be done to stop this, militarily, politically and in other fields? What is the balance in an effective counterterrorism strategy between foreign policies by Western governments and domestic policies by Arab-Asian governments and societies?
Tony Blair and the British people have an opportunity now to do that which George Bush failed to do after Sept. 11: diagnose the phenomenon of international criminal terrorism factually and correctly; identify its underlying motives and goals accurately; devise appropriate policies that can hope to reduce or even stop it; and implement an integrated, global strategic response to this menace. Blair and his European partners should learn from the American mistakes, and respond to terror with a comprehensive, rational, realistic and multi-sectoral strategy that would make us all — Americans, Arabs, Europeans, Asians — active participants in a true worldwide war against terror and its causes. The alternative is for us all to remain the helpless, befuddled, angry spectators and victims that we have become.
The initial response from American and British leaders has been understandable emotional, but dangerously political, because it risks playing right into the hands of the terrorists and their goal of provoking a long-term war between civilisations. The three predominant responses we have seen from the UK and US leaderships and others in their societies in recent days have been the stiff upper lip syndrome of getting on with life despite the terror, a determination to take the fight to the enemy in Iraq and elsewhere, and a refusal to allow the terrorists to threaten or destroy Western civilisation and its freedom-based life values.
These three responses, though understandable psychologically, are a misguided catastrophe in global strategic terms because they will expand rather than reduce the terror problem, if we are to judge by the results of the policies since Sept. 11. Simply repeating views on the criminality and immorality of the terrorists, the grit of the British, and the determination of Americans and Britons to maintain their values and way of life is the basis for a failed policy.
It is safe to assume that some of the new generation of global terrorists have been inspired to their ghastly deeds by the recent Iraqi policies of the American and British governments, among others. Washington's heavy focus on largely unilateral military moves in Afghanistan and Iraq has generated an entire new cohort of terrorists, some of whom have now joined forces with Iraqis who are inspired by their own nationalism to fight foreign troops in their country.
The American- and British-led, Iraq-based counterterrorism strategy of recent years has achieved our collective worst nightmare: it has prompted an alliance, or at least a loose, “ad hoc” coalition of Islamist jihadist terrorists, common criminals, genuine Iraqi and other Arab nationalists, and ordinary Arab and Asian citizens whose sense of indignity at their treatment by their own and foreign governments has pushed them over the edge of understandable anger into using terror as a desperate response.
The question I ask myself over and over again, as I travel throughout the Middle East and the West, is simple but critical: what happened in the course of the last several decades to give birth to waves of terrorists from the Arab-Asian region, targeting both their own societies and the West? Why has Arab-Asian society not done very much to delegitimise these killers and run them out of town? If we still do not — and, amazingly, we do not — have a consensus analysis of how and why ordinary citizens slowly become terrorists, we will not be able to implement a successful counterterrorism strategy. Instead, we have terror in London, and widespread expectations of other attacks to follow.
The key issue, it seems to me, is whether the West and this region focus on the relatively small group of terrorists, or try instead to respond to the legitimate needs, grievances and aspirations of the hundreds of millions of Arabs and Asians who are the enabling environment from which the terrorists emerge. Yes, a very small number of crazed Islamist fanatics really do want to kill Crusaders, apostates and infidels simply because these Arab and Asian criminals feel threatened by Western values. Yet the overwhelming majority of Arabs, Asians, Muslims and Middle Easterners reject such terrorist tactics, motivations and goals.
The criminality of the terrorists since Sept. 11 has generated, in return, a peculiar combination of militarism and emotionalism from the United States, without a supporting foundation of rationalism or realism that positively engages the hundreds of millions of decent, ordinary citizens in the Arab-Asian world.
Terrorists can only be contained and put out of business when their own society delegitimises and rejects them, which requires a more balanced combination of police and political actions, and punitive and preventive measures. Bush ignored this basic fact after Sept. 11 and chose the road of a counterproductive military strategy, based on faulty analysis, in turn built on incomplete diagnosis. Blair now must make a similar decision on how to respond to the London attacks. Let us hope that he acts more intelligently and rationally than Bush. The Arab-Asian-Islamic world, in particular, is anxious to join a genuine war against terror and the many demeaning forces that make it happen.
Friday, July 15, 2005
ABUSE, WHAT ABUSE?
By William Fisher
The U.S. Army general widely considered the ‘architect’ of abusive prisoner interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan used “creative” and “aggressive” tactics, but did not practice torture or violate law or Pentagon policy. Despite the recommendations of military investigators, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey C. Miller will not be reprimanded – thus bringing to a close what could be the last of 15 separate investigations into detainee abuse.
Members of the team that conducted the three-month investigation told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday that Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, had overruled their recommendation of a reprimand, and will instead refer the matter to the Army's inspector general (IG).
They said Gen. Craddock had concluded that Miller’s techniques did not rise to the level of torture and did not violate any U.S. laws or policies. Their probe was looking into allegations by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who said they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. The FBI allegations were contained in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Barring future allegations of prisoner abuse, the Miller probe ends all outstanding inquiries into an issue that has inflamed Bush Administration critics for several years. In the dozen previous investigations – all carried out by military or Pentagon-appointed panels – only one high-level officer has faced disciplinary action. Army Reserve General Janice Karpinsky received an administrative reprimand for failing to properly supervise detainee treatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A number of lower-level officers and enlisted personnel have been reprimanded or court martialled, and other low level cases are still pending.
There have been only two congressional hearings into prisoner abuse, one in the Senate, the other in the House of Representatives. Increasingly frustrating calls for an investigation by an independent 9/11-type commission have been resisted by most Republicans, who control both bodies.
The conclusions of the Miller inquiry appear to strongly support the contention that Gen. Miller was the constant in the prisoner treatment equation, first at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later at military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, where similar interrogation techniques were employed.
General Miller was deeply involved in the handling of detainees, first at
Guantánamo in 2002 and 2003, where he earned credit for improving interrogation techniques and for the treatment of prisoners, and later in Iraq, where he was sent in August 2003 to suggest ways to improve interrogations immediately before the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. In 2004, he was appointed to oversee all detainee operations in Iraq. Multiple investigations have cleared him of wrongdoing.
Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director, said, "It is irrefutable that the government violated the Geneva Conventions and the Army Field Manual. As before, low-ranking men and women will take the full blame while the higher ups get off scot-free. Once again, we have abuse without high-level accountability.”
The chief investigator into Guantanamo practices, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, told the Senate panel of the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Al-Qahtani was thought to be involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Schmidt said interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra and wear a thong on his head, told him he was a homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women, and to wear a leash and act like a dog.
These techniques were approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use on al-Qahtani -- the alleged "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- were used at Guantanamo in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking him down.
Investigators also described other interrogation practices used at Guantanamo, including:
A female interrogator smeared what she described as menstrual blood — it was fake — on a prisoner. The woman was disciplined, investigators said, but they recommended no further action on the allegation because it happened some time ago.
A Navy officer threatened one high-value prisoner by saying he would go after his family. This was in violation of U.S. military law, the investigation found.
A prisoner was bound on the head with duct tape, his mouth covered, because he was chanting verses from the Quran.
Interrogators used cold, heat, loud music and sleep deprivation on prisoners to break their will to resist interrogation. These techniques were approved at certain times at Guantanamo.
Detainees were chained to the floor in fetal positions. The investigation said this was not authorized, but could not confirm an FBI agent's allegation that detainees were left in this position for long periods.
Female interrogators sought to persuade male prisoners to talk, using forms of "gender coercion." These techniques were approved at the time as non-injurious, but the Schmidt investigation found that they were inappropriate. In one case, a detainee was doused with perfume.
In addition, detainees were subjected to excessive cold and heat, as well as
loud music and sleep deprivation, techniques that were approved at certain times at Guantánamo.
There have also been repeated accusations that American personnel at Guantanamo have mishandled the Quran, the Muslim holy book. A separate Pentagon investigation found five such instances
The Guantanamo investigators described the techniques they found as degrading and abusive, Gen. Schmidt said, but did not constitute torture.
"It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue military police in a night shift," said Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee.
And Sen. Edward Kennedy, the powerful Democrat committee member from Massachusetts, said, "I am deeply concerned about the failure — indeed, outright refusal — of our military and civilian leaders to hold higher ups accountable for the repeated and reports of abuse and torture of the prisoners at Guantanamo."
Bush administration officials have said the excesses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the work of “a few bad apples”. The Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, said investigators had found only three instances, out of thousands of interrogations, where military personnel violated Army policy.
Investigators also determined that interrogators violated the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations three times.
Edward S. Herman, professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, told IPS, “Internal investigations by an institution whose lies would fill an encyclopedia are hardly credible and would be laughed out of court by an honest media. They are even more laughable when we consider that the top leadership has indicated that international law is not applicable to us, that the concept of torture is infinitely flexible, and that the folks we are holding in Guantanamo are being treated like Caribbean vacationers.”
The report said the military should review how it determines the legal status of prisoners at Guantanamo, and decide what forms of treatment and interrogation techniques will be allowed.
Guantanamo holds 520 prisoners, while more than 230 others have been released or transferred to the custody of their home governments. Most were captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; only a few have been charged with any crime.
The report also recommended discipline for several low-level interrogators.
It is unclear whether General Miller could face disciplinary proceedings as a result of the Inspector General inquiry recommended by General Craddock.
The U.S. Army general widely considered the ‘architect’ of abusive prisoner interrogation techniques at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and in Afghanistan used “creative” and “aggressive” tactics, but did not practice torture or violate law or Pentagon policy. Despite the recommendations of military investigators, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey C. Miller will not be reprimanded – thus bringing to a close what could be the last of 15 separate investigations into detainee abuse.
Members of the team that conducted the three-month investigation told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday that Gen. Bantz J. Craddock, commander of U.S. Southern Command, had overruled their recommendation of a reprimand, and will instead refer the matter to the Army's inspector general (IG).
They said Gen. Craddock had concluded that Miller’s techniques did not rise to the level of torture and did not violate any U.S. laws or policies. Their probe was looking into allegations by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, who said they witnessed abusive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. The FBI allegations were contained in documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Barring future allegations of prisoner abuse, the Miller probe ends all outstanding inquiries into an issue that has inflamed Bush Administration critics for several years. In the dozen previous investigations – all carried out by military or Pentagon-appointed panels – only one high-level officer has faced disciplinary action. Army Reserve General Janice Karpinsky received an administrative reprimand for failing to properly supervise detainee treatment at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. A number of lower-level officers and enlisted personnel have been reprimanded or court martialled, and other low level cases are still pending.
There have been only two congressional hearings into prisoner abuse, one in the Senate, the other in the House of Representatives. Increasingly frustrating calls for an investigation by an independent 9/11-type commission have been resisted by most Republicans, who control both bodies.
The conclusions of the Miller inquiry appear to strongly support the contention that Gen. Miller was the constant in the prisoner treatment equation, first at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and later at military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, where similar interrogation techniques were employed.
General Miller was deeply involved in the handling of detainees, first at
Guantánamo in 2002 and 2003, where he earned credit for improving interrogation techniques and for the treatment of prisoners, and later in Iraq, where he was sent in August 2003 to suggest ways to improve interrogations immediately before the worst abuses at Abu Ghraib prison. In 2004, he was appointed to oversee all detainee operations in Iraq. Multiple investigations have cleared him of wrongdoing.
Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director, said, "It is irrefutable that the government violated the Geneva Conventions and the Army Field Manual. As before, low-ranking men and women will take the full blame while the higher ups get off scot-free. Once again, we have abuse without high-level accountability.”
The chief investigator into Guantanamo practices, Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall M. Schmidt, told the Senate panel of the interrogation techniques used on Mohamed al-Qahtani, a Saudi who was captured in December 2001 along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Al-Qahtani was thought to be involved in the attacks of September 11, 2001.
Schmidt said interrogators told him his mother and sisters were whores, forced him to wear a bra and wear a thong on his head, told him he was a homosexual and said that other prisoners knew it. They also forced him to dance with a male interrogator and subjected him to strip searches with no security value, threatened him with dogs, forced him to stand naked in front of women, and to wear a leash and act like a dog.
These techniques were approved by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld for use on al-Qahtani -- the alleged "20th hijacker" in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks -- were used at Guantanamo in late 2002 as part of a special interrogation plan aimed at breaking him down.
Investigators also described other interrogation practices used at Guantanamo, including:
A female interrogator smeared what she described as menstrual blood — it was fake — on a prisoner. The woman was disciplined, investigators said, but they recommended no further action on the allegation because it happened some time ago.
A Navy officer threatened one high-value prisoner by saying he would go after his family. This was in violation of U.S. military law, the investigation found.
A prisoner was bound on the head with duct tape, his mouth covered, because he was chanting verses from the Quran.
Interrogators used cold, heat, loud music and sleep deprivation on prisoners to break their will to resist interrogation. These techniques were approved at certain times at Guantanamo.
Detainees were chained to the floor in fetal positions. The investigation said this was not authorized, but could not confirm an FBI agent's allegation that detainees were left in this position for long periods.
Female interrogators sought to persuade male prisoners to talk, using forms of "gender coercion." These techniques were approved at the time as non-injurious, but the Schmidt investigation found that they were inappropriate. In one case, a detainee was doused with perfume.
In addition, detainees were subjected to excessive cold and heat, as well as
loud music and sleep deprivation, techniques that were approved at certain times at Guantánamo.
There have also been repeated accusations that American personnel at Guantanamo have mishandled the Quran, the Muslim holy book. A separate Pentagon investigation found five such instances
The Guantanamo investigators described the techniques they found as degrading and abusive, Gen. Schmidt said, but did not constitute torture.
"It is clear from the report that detainee mistreatment was not simply the product of a few rogue military police in a night shift," said Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the committee.
And Sen. Edward Kennedy, the powerful Democrat committee member from Massachusetts, said, "I am deeply concerned about the failure — indeed, outright refusal — of our military and civilian leaders to hold higher ups accountable for the repeated and reports of abuse and torture of the prisoners at Guantanamo."
Bush administration officials have said the excesses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were the work of “a few bad apples”. The Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, Sen. John Warner of Virginia, said investigators had found only three instances, out of thousands of interrogations, where military personnel violated Army policy.
Investigators also determined that interrogators violated the Geneva Conventions and Army regulations three times.
Edward S. Herman, professor emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania, told IPS, “Internal investigations by an institution whose lies would fill an encyclopedia are hardly credible and would be laughed out of court by an honest media. They are even more laughable when we consider that the top leadership has indicated that international law is not applicable to us, that the concept of torture is infinitely flexible, and that the folks we are holding in Guantanamo are being treated like Caribbean vacationers.”
The report said the military should review how it determines the legal status of prisoners at Guantanamo, and decide what forms of treatment and interrogation techniques will be allowed.
Guantanamo holds 520 prisoners, while more than 230 others have been released or transferred to the custody of their home governments. Most were captured during the U.S. war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks; only a few have been charged with any crime.
The report also recommended discipline for several low-level interrogators.
It is unclear whether General Miller could face disciplinary proceedings as a result of the Inspector General inquiry recommended by General Craddock.
SKATING ON THIN ICE
By William Fisher
As a nervous Congress was voting billions to make America safer in the wake of the London bombings, a nationally recognized authority on immigration detention charged that the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and other immigrants are being ignored.
Mark Dow, author of “American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons”, told IPS, “Aside from some haggling over how many thousands more detention beds will be funded, the immigration detention system -- run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- is simply not being discussed.”
He called for appointment of an independent ombudsman to monitor DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) compliance with the law, independent monitoring of the detention system, and legislation creating a right to counsel for immigration detainees.
Earlier this week, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a major reorganization of his huge two-year-old department. In remarks delivered to an auditorium crowded with department officials, terrorism experts and others with a stake in department policy, Chertoff identified his top priorities as preparation for catastrophic attacks, information sharing with state and local partners and transportation security, along with overhauling immigration and restructuring the department's intelligence unit.
Chertoff has been a strong advocate of comprehensive immigration reform, specifically enhancing border security through a guest worker program. But Dow does not see immigration reform as essential to improving the treatment of immigrants.
“Unnecessarily jailing immigrants who are not ‘doing time’, mistreating them, and denying them legal help has nothing to do with immigration policy -- or with ‘securing the homeland’, he told IPS.
Chertoff’s strategy of coupling controversial immigration policy with ‘helping win the war on terror’, could help President Bush's stalled proposal for a guest worker program and enhanced border security. Similarly, linking the guest worker plan to calls for tougher border controls could neutralize conservative Republicans in Congress who believe that enforcement must come first.
But none of these strategies, Dow said, will do anything to eliminate what he sees as the excessive and unnecessary secrecy that shrouds the immigration detention system. “Unfortunately the prediction I made in my book that this system would move even further from scrutiny as the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was folded into Homeland Security seems to be proving accurate.”
Quoting Sec. Chertoff’s statement that that illegal border crossing "undermines respect for the rule of law," Dow said, “If he's concerned about the rule of law, he should announce his support for an independent ombudsman to monitor DHS and ICE compliance with the law. Chertoff is responsible, for example, for the fact that ICE continues to violate Supreme Court decisions ordering the release of certain long-term detainees.”
He said Chertoff should also ask Congress to “establish independent monitoring of the detention system. And I'm not talking about an audit from within the agency, or an audit by a contracted company paid by the agency it's reporting to.”
Dow recalled that in February 2005, Chertoff said, "Mistreatment of detainees . . . is wholly unacceptable." Dow called on Congress -- and community activists -- to “hold him to that. He is responsible for rampant mistreatment. He should recommend legislation creating a right to counsel for immigration detainees.”
Dow sought to debunk the notion that mistreatment of immigrants was a product of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “In the early 1990s, INS officials at the Miami airport issued a statement conflating poor people, drug dealers, and terrorists in one breath. There was been an immigration agency culture of discrimination and violence long before Chertoff headed up the post-9/11 mistreatment of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian detainees. I see DHS moving further and further in that direction, regardless of bureaucratic reorganization.”
In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, Chertoff, then a senior official at the Department of Justice (DOJ), played a major role in orchestrating the wholesale roundups and detentions of hundreds of mostly Arab and other Muslim immigrants. A report by the DOJ’s Inspector General confirmed that many were held incommunicado in jail-like settings, abused and denied access to lawyers and families.
Meanwhile, a major human rights advocacy group, Human Rights First (HRF), said it welcomed one of the few immigration proposals in the proposed DHS reorganization plan – creation of a new senior refugee policy position.
“Secretary Chertoff should be commended for recognizing the need to improve the coordination of asylum policy across the Department’s various bureaus,” said Eleanor Acer, director of HRF’s asylum program. “
The United States has a long and proud tradition of providing refuge for people who flee from persecution and oppression, and it is essential for the Department to make clear that it will protect the lives of these people as it fulfills its other important responsibilities.”
Ms. Acer added, “Ultimately however, whether or not this position will be effective will depend on how much authority this position is given.”
In announcing the DHS reorganization plan, Chertoff acknowledged that “Immigration policy is about more than keeping illegal migrants out. Our heritage and our national character inspire us to create a more welcoming society for those who lawfully come to our shores to work, learn and visit.”
He said he is working with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “to ease the path for those who wish to visit, study, and conduct business in the United States.”
The current system, he said, “leaves a negative first impression of our nation with our new fellow countrymen. Worse yet, it causes unnecessary security risks because people enjoy temporary residence while we are completing the screening process. Restructuring this process to enhance security and improve customer service will be an important part of our upcoming agenda.”
Earlier in the week, the Senate passed a $31.8-billion Homeland Security spending bill, and Chertoff testified before a committee in the House of Representatives, where Democrats engaged him in heated exchanges regarding allocation of funds.
"The Bush administration should put forward real policy proposals to plug our homeland security vulnerabilities, instead of just moving people's offices around and changing the department's stationery," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
As a nervous Congress was voting billions to make America safer in the wake of the London bombings, a nationally recognized authority on immigration detention charged that the rights of refugees, asylum-seekers and other immigrants are being ignored.
Mark Dow, author of “American Gulag: Inside U.S. Immigration Prisons”, told IPS, “Aside from some haggling over how many thousands more detention beds will be funded, the immigration detention system -- run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) -- is simply not being discussed.”
He called for appointment of an independent ombudsman to monitor DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) compliance with the law, independent monitoring of the detention system, and legislation creating a right to counsel for immigration detainees.
Earlier this week, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced a major reorganization of his huge two-year-old department. In remarks delivered to an auditorium crowded with department officials, terrorism experts and others with a stake in department policy, Chertoff identified his top priorities as preparation for catastrophic attacks, information sharing with state and local partners and transportation security, along with overhauling immigration and restructuring the department's intelligence unit.
Chertoff has been a strong advocate of comprehensive immigration reform, specifically enhancing border security through a guest worker program. But Dow does not see immigration reform as essential to improving the treatment of immigrants.
“Unnecessarily jailing immigrants who are not ‘doing time’, mistreating them, and denying them legal help has nothing to do with immigration policy -- or with ‘securing the homeland’, he told IPS.
Chertoff’s strategy of coupling controversial immigration policy with ‘helping win the war on terror’, could help President Bush's stalled proposal for a guest worker program and enhanced border security. Similarly, linking the guest worker plan to calls for tougher border controls could neutralize conservative Republicans in Congress who believe that enforcement must come first.
But none of these strategies, Dow said, will do anything to eliminate what he sees as the excessive and unnecessary secrecy that shrouds the immigration detention system. “Unfortunately the prediction I made in my book that this system would move even further from scrutiny as the old Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was folded into Homeland Security seems to be proving accurate.”
Quoting Sec. Chertoff’s statement that that illegal border crossing "undermines respect for the rule of law," Dow said, “If he's concerned about the rule of law, he should announce his support for an independent ombudsman to monitor DHS and ICE compliance with the law. Chertoff is responsible, for example, for the fact that ICE continues to violate Supreme Court decisions ordering the release of certain long-term detainees.”
He said Chertoff should also ask Congress to “establish independent monitoring of the detention system. And I'm not talking about an audit from within the agency, or an audit by a contracted company paid by the agency it's reporting to.”
Dow recalled that in February 2005, Chertoff said, "Mistreatment of detainees . . . is wholly unacceptable." Dow called on Congress -- and community activists -- to “hold him to that. He is responsible for rampant mistreatment. He should recommend legislation creating a right to counsel for immigration detainees.”
Dow sought to debunk the notion that mistreatment of immigrants was a product of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. “In the early 1990s, INS officials at the Miami airport issued a statement conflating poor people, drug dealers, and terrorists in one breath. There was been an immigration agency culture of discrimination and violence long before Chertoff headed up the post-9/11 mistreatment of Arab, Muslim, and South Asian detainees. I see DHS moving further and further in that direction, regardless of bureaucratic reorganization.”
In the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, Chertoff, then a senior official at the Department of Justice (DOJ), played a major role in orchestrating the wholesale roundups and detentions of hundreds of mostly Arab and other Muslim immigrants. A report by the DOJ’s Inspector General confirmed that many were held incommunicado in jail-like settings, abused and denied access to lawyers and families.
Meanwhile, a major human rights advocacy group, Human Rights First (HRF), said it welcomed one of the few immigration proposals in the proposed DHS reorganization plan – creation of a new senior refugee policy position.
“Secretary Chertoff should be commended for recognizing the need to improve the coordination of asylum policy across the Department’s various bureaus,” said Eleanor Acer, director of HRF’s asylum program. “
The United States has a long and proud tradition of providing refuge for people who flee from persecution and oppression, and it is essential for the Department to make clear that it will protect the lives of these people as it fulfills its other important responsibilities.”
Ms. Acer added, “Ultimately however, whether or not this position will be effective will depend on how much authority this position is given.”
In announcing the DHS reorganization plan, Chertoff acknowledged that “Immigration policy is about more than keeping illegal migrants out. Our heritage and our national character inspire us to create a more welcoming society for those who lawfully come to our shores to work, learn and visit.”
He said he is working with Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice “to ease the path for those who wish to visit, study, and conduct business in the United States.”
The current system, he said, “leaves a negative first impression of our nation with our new fellow countrymen. Worse yet, it causes unnecessary security risks because people enjoy temporary residence while we are completing the screening process. Restructuring this process to enhance security and improve customer service will be an important part of our upcoming agenda.”
Earlier in the week, the Senate passed a $31.8-billion Homeland Security spending bill, and Chertoff testified before a committee in the House of Representatives, where Democrats engaged him in heated exchanges regarding allocation of funds.
"The Bush administration should put forward real policy proposals to plug our homeland security vulnerabilities, instead of just moving people's offices around and changing the department's stationery," said Rep. Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the House Homeland Security Committee.
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