The poem below was written by my longtime friend, Gwen Gould. In addition to writing moving poetry, Gwen is a professional musician -- a gifted conductor who has enriched our little upstate New York area for many years with her community sings, recitals, and concerts with the Columbia Festival Orchestra.

Ice Storm
a seasonal sestina

On a day when all is gray
at the cusp of winter,
tears of the sunless sky
freeze the pace of life.
A gentle but treacherous rain
clothes my world in icy crystals.

In the scant light of early morn, freezing crystals
form on the filagre of branches, gray
and darkened from the rain.
This harbinger of winter
suggests the coming season of my life;
I can conjure it clearly in the foreboding sky.

A hawk swoops by, alone in the sky.
No hint of light illuminates the crystals
in the stiff branches devoid of life.
The sky is still a gloomy gray.
Unrelenting is the approach of winter
I long for a warm spring rain.

But this treacherous winter rain
thickens the darkness of the sky,
chilled in the stillness of winter.
My eyes are the dim crystals
and my memory the sky's dull gray,
slipping down the icy spine of life.

A slender beam of light parts the dull sky, life
is nourished by warming showers of new rain,
that do not wash away the gray
in my hair, but clear the sky
of its thickness and melt the crystals,
thawing my life for another winter.

Now shine the muted colors of early winter.
Slanting rays of light affim new life.
Gleams of wisdom are the crystals
that wash over me like the rain.
Light now beams from a luminous sky.
Russet and beige glow against the gray.

The surface of my life, made shiny by the rain
and toughened by the winter's frozen crystals,
glistens gray and hopeful in the bright winter sky.

CHANGES DEMANDED IN TERRORIST-FINANCING LAWS

By William Fisher

The government’s spotty record in obtaining convictions of people charged with providing “material support” to terrorist organizations is adding new impetus to the efforts of prominent constitutional lawyers to seek substantial changes in the law.

The latest failure in a terrorism-financing prosecution came late in 2007, when a Texas jury failed to render any guilty verdicts in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF) – once the largest and most prominent charity dedicated to supporting Palestinian and other Muslim causes. Several HLF officials were charged with giving money to Hamas, the militant Palestinian organization designated a terrorist group by the U.S. in 1995. The trial ended with a mix of acquittals and deadlocks.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation started looking into HLF in 1993. In December 2001, the U.S. Treasury Department (DOT) seized and confiscated the charity’s assets and records, effectively putting the organization out of business. Given that outcome, some legal scholars have questioned why the government pursued a criminal prosecution at all. The trial did not begin until mid-2007.

William Neal, a juror in the HLF case, told the media that the government’s evidence “was pieced together over the course of a decade — a phone call this year, a message another year.” Instead of trying to prove that the defendants knew they were supporting terrorists, Mr. Neal said, prosecutors “danced around the wire transfers by showing us videos of little kids in bomb belts and people singing about Hamas, things that didn’t directly relate to the case.”

Civil liberties groups say the HLF case was just the latest in a line of misguided
prosecutions. One such group, OMB Watch, charges that the USA Patriot Act gives the government “largely unchecked power to designate any group as a terrorist organization.” It says that “once a charitable organization is so designated, all of its materials and property may be seized and its assets frozen. The charity is unable to see the government’s evidence and thus understand the basis for the charges. Since its assets are frozen, it lacks resources to mount a defense. And it has only limited right of appeal to the courts. So the government can target a charity, seize its assets, shut it down, obtain indictments against its leaders, but then delay a trial almost indefinitely.”

One result, say critics of the government’s policy, is that Muslim charities have experienced a precipitous decline in contributions. Contributions that do arrive often come in cash from anonymous givers. And donors who happen to be Muslim are increasingly turning to the large household names like Oxfam and Save the Children, which may conduct programs in predominantly Muslim areas abroad.

One of America’s foremost constitutional scholars, Prof. David Cole of the Georgetown University Law Center, argues that the “material support principle is ‘guilt by association’ in 21st-century garb, and presents all of the same problems that criminalizing membership and association did during the Cold War.” He told us that the problem requires fundamental changes in the terrorism-financing law.

Included in Cole’s recommendations for major changes:

1. The Treasury Department should be required to permit closed charities to direct their collected funds to charities mutually approved by the frozen charity and the government.

2. Congress should enact a statutory definition of a "specially designated terrorist." “Right now the Treasury Department makes such designations entirely on the basis of an Executive Order, and accordingly Congress has given the President essentially a blank check,” Cole told us.

3. Treasury should allow designated entities to use their own funds to pay for their own defense. “Treasury not only shuts down charities in a secretive one-sided process, but then bars the charities from using any of their own money to defend themselves against the designation,” according to Cole.

4. The criminal material support statutes should be amended to require proof that an individual supported a proscribed group with the intent to further its illegal activities. “Today,” according to the government, “even aid intended to discourage terrorist activities is a crime under the material support laws,” Cole says.

He adds, “There is no requirement that the aid have any connection to terrorism,” and cites a case he is handling with the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

He told us, “My clients had been providing human rights advocacy training to the PKK in Turkey, as a way of encouraging them to use peaceful lawful means to resolve their disputes with the Turkish government over its treatment of the Kurdish minority. By encouraging lawful outlets for dispute resolution, such aid would presumably discourage terrorism. Yet under the material support statute it is a crime even if HLP could prove that both the purpose and the effect of their support was to decrease the PKK's resort to violence.”

OMB Watch says the “material support” effort has resulted in the government shutting down charities that were not on any government watch list before their assets were frozen.

The organization says the result is that Muslims have no way of knowing which groups the government suspects of ties to terrorism. “Organizations and individuals suspected of supporting terrorism are guilty until proven innocent,” it says.

OMB Watch told us, “A group could comply 100% and still be shut down ‘pending an investigation’."

Material-support cases are just a small fraction of the Justice Department’s terrorism prosecutions, but some observers believe they represent a shift in government strategy from punishment to prevention. Earlier prosecutions were for acts of violence that actually took place. Examples include the first World Trade Center attack, the 1998 bombings of American embassies in Africa, and conspiracies that were relatively close to fruition.

Nonetheless, government terror-financing prosecutions have been reasonably successful. From the Sept. 11 attacks to last July, the government started 108 material-support prosecutions and completed 62. Juries convicted nine defendants, 30 defendants pleaded guilty, and 11 pleaded guilty to other charges. There were eight acquittals and four dismissals.

In terrorism prosecutions involving a violent act actually committed or near fruition, the government’s record is spottier. According to the Center on Law and Security at the New York University School of Law, the government has a 29 percent conviction rate in terrorism prosecutions overall, compared with 92 percent for felonies generally.

The latest government setback involves the so-called Liberty City Seven – seven men named for the blighted Miami district where they allegedly operated. Charged with plotting to join forces with al-Qaeda to blow up Chicago's Sears Tower, one was acquitted last month and a mistrial was declared for the six others after the federal jury deadlocked.

Prosecutors acknowledged that no attack was imminent, and then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said after the arrests in mid-2006 that the alleged terror cell was ''more aspirational than operational.''

In some cases, defendants are arguably convicted of terror-related offenses in the court of public opinion rather than in the courts. One example often cited by lawyers is the case of Dr. Rafil Dhafir, an Iraqi-born American citizen, who organized and raised money for a charity providing humanitarian relief to children in Iraq. He was never charged in court with a terrorist-related offense; the word “terrorism” was not allowed to be used in his trial, although prominent politicians such as then-New York Governor George Pataki hailed his arrest as a victory in the war on terror.

The upstate New York oncologist was sentenced to 22 years in jail in 2005 for 59 felony charges, including violating U.S. sanctions against Iraq.

2007: YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS SOME GOOD NEWS

By William Fisher

The year is racing to a close. Lamentably, it’s going out with a Bhutto Bang.

Almost as pathetic as this cruel assassination is the wisdom spewed out by our presidential wannabees. Funny how they all morphed into instant Pakistan Pundits to continue their endless pandering to those who will bundle themselves up to venture out into the chill air of Iowa and New Hampshire to cast their primary ballots.

My vote for the most pathetic goes to Mike Huckabee, who was in charge of Arkansas’ foreign policy during his years as the Republican governor of this historically Democratic state. Rev. Huckabee suggested that after Bhutto’s assassination the United States should, “have an immediate, very clear monitoring of our border, and particularly to make sure, if there’s any unusual activity of Pakistanis coming into the country. We just need to be very very thorough in looking at every aspect of our own security internally.”

Right on, Mike. Gotta watch those Paki terrorists turning up in California to pick lettuce.

That comment struck just the right tone to end a year filled by consequential events too numerous and too depressing to catalog here. Suffice it to say that, for a journalist, 2007 was a very good year. “If it bleeds, it leads,” was the year’s press mantra. And there was more than enough bleeding to keep all of us scribblers very busy.

During 2007, I wrote several hundred pieces of news and opinion. Almost all of them reported bad news – imperial wars, government incompetence and intransigence, thousands of dead civilians, soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, tens of thousands more seriously wounded, poverty ignored, populations displaced, preventable diseases not being prevented, the toxic extremism of fundamentalist clerics and their followers of all faiths. And on and on. You get the picture.

But, at the risk of being called a Pollyanna, let me give you the good news.

And, yes, for Americans at least, there was some good news.

Despite our government’s efforts to re-create 1984, we Americans continued to live in the freest country in the world. Free to think, write, speak, organize, get involved, associate with whomever we wish, worship or not worship.

Our courts may be filled with judges we disagree with, but Chief Justice Roberts is not under house arrest.

Our legislators may be the world’s most talented Kabuki dancers, but they still read our letters and take our phone calls, and occasionally even do what we pay them to do.

Our president may think he’s King, but next year, he’ll leave office peacefully and say nice things about his successor.

We should be grateful for all these blessings, but they are all macro blessings. The really good news happens and keeps happening at a totally unreported, but far more meaningful, level: Ordinary people doing extraordinary things.

Like my 60-plus cousin-in-law, who learns to knit so he can make a blanket for his first grandchild.

Like the mother of a friend’s cleaning lady, who works three jobs so her daughter can get to college.

Like the neighbor who just shows up year after year to plow the snow off a friend’s driveway and never asks for a penny.

Like the friend who organizes farmers to get our town to appreciate the benefits of local agriculture.

Like the local psychotherapist who gives up her Thanksgiving Day to distribute food to our less fortunate neighbors.

Like the hundreds of volunteers who show up to work phone banks or lick postage stamps to support their chosen candidates for town supervisors, local judges or county commissioners.

Like the retired UN official who turns her acreage into a refuge and recovery center for our county’s orphaned, abandoned, abused or injured wildlife.

Like the retired college profs who spend hours mentoring kids who have no role models.

Like the management consultant who shares her “happy gene” with a depressed widower and gives him a new life.

There are millions of these kinds of acts of kindness. They happen every day in every American town and city. We rarely hear about any of them. They are the acts of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. They are the real threads that hold the fabric of our country together.

As long as they continue, we can be hopeful.

As long as they continue, 2008 may yet turn out to be a good news year.

THE ARMY: AHEAD TO THE PAST?

By William Fisher

The year was 1951. The Korean “police action” was raging. I was a draftee NCO in a military police unit safely nestled in a major American city. But my comrades and I lived each day under the long, dark shadow of being shipped out to fight in a frozen country most of us couldn’t find on a map.

Like most army units, my company had a “welfare fund” – money collected from our fellow troops, to be used for their benefit: for Christmas parties, summer barbeques, gifts for newly married buddies, and suchlike.

The fund had to have a treasurer –someone to collect, hold and account for the money. But no one wanted the job. More paperwork was exactly what none of us needed.

But one of us had a brilliant idea. We would go sell the idea to the private we all referred to as “The Idiot.” We would persuade him that being “The Treasurer” would get him known and enhance his chances of promotion.

The Idiot was good kid, but strange. I mean really strange. His buddies thought he was “a little crazy.” He was alternately depressed and euphoric, pastoral and warlike. He would arrive back at our base after a three-day pass with a big wide toothy grin and enough doughnuts for the whole company. Five minutes later he would be on the brink of apoplexy, raging against the army, the draft, his parents, the Koreans. Five minutes after that he would be sitting alone in a corner of our barracks, staring morosely at his boots for an hour, seemingly oblivious to things going on around him. After that hour, we would see him ebulliently bounding down the aisle between the beds, trumpeting some brilliant new idea to remake the military. And five minutes later, he would be smashing furniture and throwing boots and chairs at his comrades. The Idiot’s behaviors were as unpredictable as they were bizarre.

But he was our only candidate. Long story short: We got him to take the treasurer’s job, and he dutifully gave us a monthly accounting of how much money was in our welfare fund, receipts for what was spent, and a report on likely future expenses.

The rest of us, if we thought about it at all, were happy with our solution. We thought we’d pulled off a coup. Until December, that is, just before our company Christmas party. It was then The Idiot told us we couldn’t have a Christmas party that year, but that this was really a good thing because he’d spent our money buying toys for poor kids.

The Idiot was court martialed, spent a year in the stockade (Army-speak for jail), and dishonorably discharged.

I haven’t thought about that episode in more than half a century. But that’s where my mind went as I read the harrowing story of 1st Lieutenant Elizabeth Whiteside.

Though described by one of her Iraq comrades as “A Soldier’s Officer,” Lt. Whiteside may finally learn this week whether she will be treated for severe mental illness and given the appropriate benefits to pay for her care – or court-martialed and face the possibility of life in prison.

The charges now being considered against her: Attempting suicide and endangering the life of another soldier while serving in Iraq.

The military prosecutor, Maj. Stefan Wolfe, argues that, even after seven years of exemplary service, the 25-year-old Army reservist should be court-martialed. Under military law, soldiers who attempt suicide can be prosecuted because their action affects unit order and discipline and discredits the armed forces.

In Whiteside’s case, prosecutors consider her mental illness "an excuse" for criminal conduct. But the military psychiatrists at Walter Reed who examined her after she recovered from her self-inflicted gunshot wound have diagnosed her with a severe mental disorder, possibly triggered by the stresses of a war zone.

The prosecutor has warned Whiteside's lawyer of the risk of using a "psychobabble" defense. But a senior psychiatrist at Walter Reed, asked to justify his diagnosis of severe mental illness, responded angrily: "I'm not here to play legal games. I am here out of the genuine concern for a human being that's breaking and that is broken. She has a severe and significant illness. Let's treat her as a human being, for Christ's sake!"

At one point, Whiteside requested that she be allowed to resign to avoid a court-martial. But the result of that course would mean having to spend the rest of her life explaining why she didn’t receive an honorable discharge, living with the still-present stigma being mentally ill – and probably losing her medical care and benefits.

Walter Reed’s commander, Maj. Gen. Eric B. Schoomaker, a physician and now Army surgeon general, agrees. He said, "This officer has a demonstrably severe depression which manifested itself . . . as a psychotic, self-destructive episode. . .. Resignation in lieu of court-martial eliminates all of the benefits of medical support this officer deserves after seven years of credible and honorable service."

But many other members of the uniformed military involved in the case take the opposite view. One of them said, "Although the sanity board determined that at the time of the misconduct she had a severe mental disease or defect, she knowingly assaulted and threatened others and injured herself."

Whiteside, who is now a psychiatric outpatient at Walter Reed, ran a medical unit at the very same hospital until 2006, when she volunteered to deploy to Iraq. She told the Washington Post that seeing so many casualties at Walter Reed made her feel she was not bearing her full responsibility.

The bare details: In Iraq, she was assigned as a platoon leader in a medical company at the Camp Cropper detainee prison, which housed 4,000 suspected terrorists and insurgents, and included such high-security prisoners as Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan Majeed, known as "Chemical Ali."

Whiteside supervised nine medics who worked the night shift at the prison, ate one meal a day and worked seven days a week, dispatching drivers, medics and support staff to transport sick and wounded Iraqis and U.S. troops. Her superiors credit her with her unit's success.

Given the radio handle "Trauma Mama," the high school valedictorian and ROTC grad told the Washington Post, "I loved our mission because it represented the best of America: taking care of the enemy, regardless of what they are doing to us."

Sometime after Hussein’s execution, a nurse in Whiteside’s unit reported that Whiteside was "freaking out." The nurse found Whiteside sitting on her bed, mumbling and visibly upset.

When comrades tried to help, Whiteside resisted and told them to leave. At one point, she fired her pistol into the ceiling. Later, she pointed the weapon at one of her colleagues, yelling that she wanted to kill them. When she opened her door she saw armed soldiers approaching. She slammed the door shut and fired her weapon once into her stomach. She was still in serious condition when she arrived at Walter Reed a few days later.

There are many more details I’m not going to try to cover here. The Washington Post first told Lt. Whiteside’s story in a brilliant report by Dana Priest and Anne Hull in the December 2 paper. It’s well worth reading, at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/01/AR2007120101782.html.

The point of all this is that, despite monumental advances in mental illness diagnosis and therapy, and endless pronouncements from the White House and the Pentagon about how deeply concerned they are about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other combat-related psychological problems, the Army doesn’t seem to have moved very far from “The Idiot” of my 1951 MP unit.

Back then, doctors knew virtually nothing about how to diagnose, much less treat, his psychological disorder. His buddies thought of him as a little crazy. So The Idiot was tried, jailed and dishonorably discharged.

But today, both diagnosis and treatment are real options – and they are happening every day. They happen when mental health professionals, not military prosecutors, get listened to and believed.

This week we may find out whether the Army has been listening.

“AMERICAN TALIBAN” WHISTLEBLOWER JOINS TAPEGATE FUROR

By William Fisher

A former U.S. Department of Justice ethics adviser who came to prominence as a whistleblower after she objected to the government's treatment of John Walker Lindh -- the "American Taliban" captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan – has joined leading members of the U.S. legal community in calling on Congress to investigate the destruction of tape recordings of interrogations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Jesselyn Radack told a news teleconference last week that the destroyed tapes are “part of a pattern.” She said, “There are some 5 million missing White House e-mails. No one knows where the hit lists are from the U.S. Attorney massacre. And now the CIA interrogation videotapes have been erased. This is criminal.”

She added, “Remember when the Justice Department prosecuted Enron and Arthur Anderson for destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice? Now the Justice Department is trying to block congressional oversight and legal proceedings involving this latest scandal.”

Radack’s comments came during the launch of a new campaign, “American Lawyers Defending the Constitution.” The effort is backed by a statement signed by more than 1,300 lawyers and law students around the country, including former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former Reagan administration official Bruce Fein, leaders of legal organizations and more than 100 law professors in the U.S.

Their statement calls on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to hold wide-ranging hearings to investigate “unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity by the Bush Administration.”

The “TapeGate” furor erupted after the New York Times revealed in early December that the CIA in 2005 had destroyed at least two videotapes documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s custody, “a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and former government officials.” An announcement was subsequently made by the CIA.

The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody — to severe interrogation techniques. In a message to his staff, CIA Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden reportedly said the tapes were destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal risks. He also said the tapes no longer had intelligence value.

The destruction of the tapes has raised questions about whether CIA officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sept. 11 commission about aspects of the program.

The CIA program that included the detention and interrogation of terrorism suspects began after the capture of Mr. Zubaydah in March 2002. The CIA has said that the Justice Department (DOJ) and other elements of the executive branch reviewed and approved the use of a set of harsh techniques before they were used on any prisoners, and that the DOJ issued a classified legal opinion in August 2002 that provided explicit authorization for their use.

Other participants on the telephone press conference included Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal advocacy group, and Marjorie Cohn, president of the 6,000-member National Lawyers Guild.

Ratner, whose organization has played a major role in providing defense lawyers for detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, underscored the importance of congressional action. He said, “For far too long Congress has been the handmaiden of the Bush administration’s undermining and subversion of basic constitutional rights. The right to be free from torture; warrantless wiretapping; jailing without habeas corpus; and disappearances into secret sites. Principles going back to the Magna Carta are at stake.”

He called on Congress to “do its job: defend the Constitution from its enemies. Its enemies are the Bush administration.”

Ratner said, “Just announcing that investigations will be held and subpoenas will be issued is terribly insufficient unless Congress is willing to enforce the subpoenas by issuing contempt citations. Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the activities of the executive branch and our entire system of government is threatened when Congress simply folds before an obstinate executive.”

Cohn, author of the recently published book, “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law”, told us, “From the illegal war in Iraq to the illegal torture of prisoners in U.S. custody to the illegal destruction of evidence by the CIA, the Bush administration has become an institution of lawbreakers. Congress must hold hearings to investigate this lawbreaking, and should authorize the appointment of an independent prosecutor since Michael Mukasey cannot be counted to conduct an impartial investigation.”

Radack rose to prominence as a major whistleblower in the John Walker Lindh case. In the course of Lindh's criminal prosecution, the court ordered all documents associated with his interrogation to be turned over. After some documents were turned over, Radack was asked about the existence of more documents. At that time, she looked through the files and discovered that the bulk of her work was missing and had not been turned over. Radack was able to reconstruct much of her work, and informed her supervisor that her department had not complied with the court order.
She was forced to resign before the documents were turned over. A criminal investigation into Radack’s actions was eventually closed with no charges, but her case was referred to the state bar of Maryland, which eventually cleared her of all wrongdoing. She has never been called to testify before Congress.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it had no knowledge that Lindh was represented by a lawyer prior to his interrogation, but this position appears to be contradicted by material in Radack's files.

Radack told the news conference, “My e-mails documented my advice against interrogating Lindh without a lawyer, and concluded that the FBI committed an ethics violation when it did so anyway. Both the CIA videotapes and my e-mails were destroyed, in part, because officials were concerned that they documented controversial interrogation methods that could put agency officials in legal jeopardy.”

In a related development, one of America’s leading constitutional scholars said White House involvement in the CIA's decision to destroy videotapes documenting severe interrogation techniques of suspected terrorists could constitute as many as six crimes.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University law school in Washington appeared on CNN to discuss a report by the New York Times that four White House attorneys, including then-White House counsels Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, participated in discussions with the CIA about whether or not the tapes should be destroyed.

Turley said, "There are at least six identifiable crimes here, from obstruction of justice to obstruction of Congress, perjury, conspiracy, false statements, and what is often forgotten: the crime of torturing suspects.

He added, "If that crime was committed it was a crime that would conceivably be ordered by the president himself, only the president can order those types of special treatments or interrogation techniques."

The American Lawyers Defending the Constitution statement, along with the list of 80 original signers, is available at http://www.americanfreedomcampaign.org/lawyers .

The American Freedom Campaign (AFC) is a joint project of AFC, the Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, the Alliance for Justice, the Equal Justice Society, and the American Freedom Agenda.

BOEING'S UNFRIENDLY SKIES

By William Fisher

As human rights lawyers sought to block U.S. Government efforts to stop a lawsuit against a Boeing subsidiary accused of flying detainees to ‘black sites’ where they were tortured, a legal advocacy group published the first testimony of a victim of the Central Intelligence Agency’s ‘enhanced interrogation’ program.

In the first-ever report of its kind, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHRGJ) at New York University School of Law released a first-hand account of a survivor of enforced disappearance and torture at several Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) ‘black sites’. The 63-page report, "Surviving the Darkness: Testimony from the U.S. 'Black Sites'," is an in-depth account of a former CIA detainee's experience in his own words.

The bone-chilling narrative tells the story of Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah, a Yemeni national who spent more than a year and a half in the CIA's secret detention program. He was never charged with a terrorism-related crime.

The full report can be found at http://www.chrgj.org/projects/docs/survivingthedarkness.pdf.

The CHRGJ charges that Bashmilah was “illegally detained by the Jordanian intelligence service in October 2003, tortured into signing a false confession, and then handed over to an American rendition team.”

The group says he spent the next eighteen months in the U.S. secret detention network -- in sites believed to be in Afghanistan and possibly Eastern Europe. In May 2005, he was transferred to the custody of the Yemen government, which held him in proxy detention at the behest of the U.S. until he was put on trial and finally released in March 2006.

Bashmilah’s story was made public as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed legal papers opposing the CIA’s attempt to throw out a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. for its participation in the CIA’s "extraordinary rendition" program.

The ACLU charged that the U.S. government is improperly invoking the "state secrets" privilege to avoid judicial scrutiny of this unlawful policy.

Steven Watt, an attorney with the ACLU’s Human Rights Program, told us, “Five men have been brutally abused with the help of a U.S. corporation, and they are entitled to their day in court." He added, " Jeppesen must not be given a free pass for its profitable participation in a torture program. And the government should not be allowed to use the national security defense as a way to cover up its mistakes or, worse, its egregious abuses of human rights.”

The ACLU filing comes in a lawsuit brought on behalf of five victims of the rendition program who were kidnapped and secretly transferred by the CIA to U.S.-run overseas prisons or foreign intelligence agencies where they were interrogated and tortured.

According to the lawsuit, Jeppesen knowingly provided flight planning and essential logistical support to aircraft and crew used by the CIA for the clandestine rendition flights.

After the lawsuit was filed, the U.S. government intervened to seek its dismissal, contending that further litigation of the case would be harmful to national security. But the ACLU contends that the information needed to pursue this lawsuit, including details about the rendition program, is already in the public domain.

It adds, “Jeppesen’s involvement in the program is also a matter of public record. It has been confirmed by extensive documentary evidence and eyewitness testimony, including the sworn declaration of a former senior Jeppesen employee, which was submitted in support of the ACLU filing.

In recent years, the government has asserted the once-rare “state secrets” claim with increasing regularity in an attempt to throw out lawsuits and justify withholding information from the public not only about the rendition program, but also about illegal wiretapping, torture, and other breaches of U.S. and international law. It has been 50 years since the United States Supreme Court last reviewed the use of the "state secrets" privilege. The Supreme Court recently refused to review the "state secrets" privilege in a lawsuit brought by Khaled El-Masri, a German citizen also represented by the ACLU, who was kidnapped and rendered to detention, interrogation, and torture in a CIA "black site" prison in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, more than 250 people once held in Iraqi prisons, including Abu Ghraib, have filed suit against a U.S. military contractor for alleged torture of detainees. The Center for Constitutional Rights filed the lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages against CACI International Inc. of Arlington, Virginia.

The complaint alleges that CACI interrogators who were sent to Iraqi prisons directed and engaged in torture between 2003-2004. The lawsuit charges that the detainees were repeatedly beaten, sodomized, threatened with rape, kept naked in their cells, subjected to electric shock and attacked by unmuzzled dogs, among other humiliations.

The court action also names two CACI employees — Stephen Stefanowski, known as Big Steve, and Daniel Johnson, known as DJ — accusing them of participating in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. The suit alleges that the two CACI contractors directed corporal Charles Graner and sergeant Ivan Frederick. Graner was sentenced to 10 years in prison for this role in the Abu Ghraib scandal; Frederick is serving an eight-year jail term.

“These corporate guys worked in a conspiracy with those military guys to torture people,” said Susan Burke, the lead attorney in the case.

“And now the military have been held accountable, but the company guys and the company have not been,” she said.

The legal status of U.S. private contractors in Iraq and elsewhere abroad remains cloudy. The Iraqi Government says they should be subject to Iraqi law, a position rejected by the U.S. It remains unclear whether they are subject to U.S. law. No American court has yet decided a relevant case, though lawsuits have been brought against a number of contractors, including Blackwater, whose employees are accused of killing 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians in a shooting incident in September.

In the CACI case, to the surprise of some legal observers, the government did not intervene on behalf of the contractors and the court ruled that the litigation could go forward.

In a related development, the New York Times reported Wednesday that Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies, “apparently trying to avoid acknowledging an elaborate secret detention system, have quietly set free nearly 100 men suspected of links to terrorism, few of whom were charged.”

Human rights groups in Pakistan say those released are some of the nearly 500 Pakistanis presumed to have disappeared into the hands of the Pakistani intelligence agencies cooperating with Washington’s fight against terrorism since 2001.

The Times reported that no official reason has been given for the releases. But it quoted Pakistani sources as saying that as pressure has mounted to bring the cases into the courts, “the government has decided to jettison some suspects and spare itself the embarrassment of having to reveal that people have been held on flimsy evidence in the secret system.”

Among those pressing to bring the cases into court was the chief justice of Pakistan’s supreme court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. He was dismissed by President Pervez Musharraf and remains in detention, although Musharraf last Saturday lifted the state of emergency he imposed in November.

The Times reported that the prisoner releases were “particularly galling to lawyers” because Musharraf had accused the courts of being soft on terrorists, and had used that claim as one justification for imposing emergency rule.

KAREN HUGHES AND HER “PLACE-HOLDER” REPLACEMENT

By William Fisher

As Karen Hughes, the close confidante of President George W. Bush, gives up her mission to improve America’s image abroad – amid dedicedly mixed reviews of her performance – her replacement is already facing criticism for his support of the Iraq war and a number of alleged ethical lapses.

Hughes, a key advisor to the president since his days as governor of Texas, resigned her post as Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy last week after just under two years in the post to return to private life in Texas. President Bush has nominated James Glassman as her replacement.

Glassman is currently chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), the organization responsible for conveying America’s messages through television and radio to the Middle East, Iran, Cuba, and other troubled areas around the world. Washington-watchers have speculated that Glassman was nominated because he had already been confirmed by the Senate for his BBG post.

Glassman’s critics point to his early and enthusiastic support for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In an article he wrote in 2003, Glassman said, “….the anti-war protesters remain clueless. They're still planning their marches. Instead, they should be apologizing. Before the war, they told us that 500,000 Iraqis would be killed in Dresden-like bombing, that we would precipitate an eco-catastrophe by pushing Saddam to set fire to his oil wells, that millions of people would flee the country, that thousands of our own troops would be killed, that the Arab ‘street’ would rise up, that terrorist attacks would resume ferociously on our homeland, that Iraqis would tenaciously resist our colonization of their land, that we would become bogged down in urban warfare, and on and on.”

Glassman continued, “In fact, none of that has happened. It has been a war unmatched in history, with relatively few civilian and allied casualties and the prime objectives - control of the capital and the destruction of Saddam's regime - achieved in only a few weeks. Conscientious opponents of the war should say they were wrong, wrong, wrong - on all counts.”

A year later, after the Abu Ghraib detainee scandal hit the headlines, he wrote, “Recent events in Iraq, especially in Abu Ghraib prison emphasize once more the dire need for serious, strategic and properly funded public diplomacy -- the promotion of the national interest by informing, engaging and influencing people around the world.”

Like Ms. Hughes, Glassman has little Middle East experience. He was a member of an aadvisory group on public diplomacy in the Arab and Muslim World, chaired by former Ambassador Edward Djerejian, who has been one of Hughes’ supporters.

Hughes, who played a key role in crafting the pre-Iraq invasion “message” to American voters, was a Texas television reporter before becoming one of George W. Bush’s most trusted advisors.

Glassman, a former syndicated columnist, is perhaps best known for his prediction that the Dow Jones Industrial Average would reach 36,000 during the last bull market. A Resident Fellow at the right-wing think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), he is the founder and long-time "host" of Tech Central Station (TCS) , an Internet opinion site published by the Republican firm, the DCI Group. Sponsors of TCS include fast-food giant McDonald’s and the oil company, Exxon Mobil.

Glassman has been accused of a number of ethical breaches reportedly committed on behalf of the DCI Group. In 2006, St. Petersburg Times reporter Bill Adair revealed that Glassman’s had used TCS and his syndicated column to champion the interests of the Website’s corporate sponsors without disclosing these relationships.

Adair cited Glassman as one of those who profit from this practice. He said Glassman denounced “Super Size Me,” a 2004 movie critical of McDonald's nutritional policies, but failed to disclose that “McDonald's is a major sponsor” of Glassman’s Website. The film said McDonald's was partly to blame for the nation's obesity epidemic.

Glassman used the TCS Website and his syndicated newspaper column to launch an aggressive effort to discredit the film. In his weekly column, Glassman called the movie "an outrageously dishonest and dangerous piece of self-promotion."

Glassman takes on his new State Department post at time when most reliable polls are finding American credibility abroad lower than it has ever been. He faces an overseas environment increasingly hostile to the U.S. due to such factors as the “marketing” of post 9/11 fear of Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, the invasion and occupation of Iraq, failure to seriously address the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo scandals, and revelations of “enhanced” interrogation techniques, CIA renditions, and “black sites” where detainees become “ghost prisoners.”

Samar Jarrah, A Florida-based Palestinian-American who is a radio talk show host and the author of “Arab Voices Speak to American Hearts,” summed up the feelings of many ordinary Middle Easterners. She told us, ""If the U.S. asks me to take Karen Hughes' or James Glassman's job tomorrow, I would fail too. What do I tell people in the Arab and Muslim world when they ask me why did you go to war in Iraq knowing that there were no weapons of mass destruction, no connection to 9/11, and you did you have any plans for the day after? Any attempt on my behalf to answer these questions truthfully will lead to my firing!”

Jarrah added, “Karen and Jim assume that Arabs and Muslims do not read and do not have a clue! Can you imagine what my answers can be when I am asked about Israel, Iran, supporting torturous dictators in the Arab World? Any one is doomed to fail. I bet you a million dollars that it is Karen who got a lesson or two from her job and this is why she quit. It is a dead end job."

Hughes’ departure as America’s chief spokesperson abroad has been greeted with mixed assessments of her performance. While she successfully pushed for substantial budget increases, experts say there has been little substantive change, and few new ideas, in U.S. public diplomacy during her tenure. Her so-called “listening tours” of contentious areas, including the Middle East, have brought charges of “cultural insensitivity.”

One assessment comes from Patricia H. Kushlis, a former career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency from 1970-1998, and co-author, with Patricia Lee Sharpe and Cheryl R. Rofer, of WhirledView, a widely respected foreign affairs and public diplomacy blog.

On the positive side, Kushlis told us, “I think that Karen Hughes' basic accomplishment was remaining in office for more than a year. True, she increased the budgets for exchanges -- particularly for bringing foreigners here -- and restored portions of core public diplomacy functions, like media reaction or rapid response units, which had been allowed to lay fallow since the demise of USIA in
1999.”

On the negative side, Kushlis told us that “Hughes apparently failed to recognize or act upon the central problem -- a bifurcated and under-funded public diplomacy effort is an anemic approach to solving much more fundamental public diplomacy issues both in terms of policy and structure. Clearly, if Hughes did understand the problems she did not use her proximity to President Bush to initiate the fundamental structural changes that could and should have happened.”

She added, “As for James Glassman's appointment to replace her, it seems to me that he will be a ‘place holder’ at best. It's far too late in this administration's day -- even if its luster were still there -- for Glassman or anyone else to accomplish much of anything - if indeed - he has any interest in doing so.”