Jeff Kaye

Why does the United States Air Force, in their teaching materials provided to ICBM missile combat crew at Air Force Global Strike Command, present such a sympathetic portrayal of former Nazi scientist and SS officer Werner von Braun, and why does the Air Force limit their discussion about Nazi involvement in the U.S. space program to “only one man,” von Braun? The reason is simple, but shocking to many, as the history has been largely covered-up, or relegated to out-of-print history books: the U.S. missile program, and much of its military science program in the post-World War II period, was imported wholesale from the Nazis, including their leading scientists.

In an an arrogant riposte to an earlier posting of mine, Lawfare blogger and member of the Hoover Institute Task Force on National Security and the Law, Benjamin Wittes, proclaimed he is “Happy to be a government proxy.”

Wittes’ tongue may seem somewhat in cheek, but he really means it. “Government proxy” how? In my earlier article criticizing both Wittes and Adweek columnist Alex Koppelman for their poorly resourced and vituperative articles attacking Scott Horton’s investigation of the 2006 deaths of three Guantanamo detainees, published by Harper’s Magazine in January 2010. Department of Defense investigations had labeled all three deaths suicides.

It is difficult to know why the CDPP has decided now to officially go after David Hicks’ royalties. One wonders if it had anything to do with the warm reception and ovation he received when he spoke to “a packed audience of 1000 people at the Sydney Writers’ Festival” last May. At the same event, Hicks “also warned that Julian Assange could face a similar abandonment by the Australian government, if the US government get their hands on him.”

According to the UK legal charity Reprieve, “the first large array of photographs depicting the devastating impact of US unmanned aircraft (‘drone’) attacks on innocent civilians in Pakistan” goes on display today at at Beaconsfield Art Gallery, 22 Newport Street, London. The show, which displays the work of Noor Behram, a 39 year old photographer from the North Waziristan Agency (NWA), runs until August 5. Reportedly, photos from 28 of 60 drone attack sites visited by Behram can be viewed at the London gallery.

The conditions at Security Housing Units (SHU) at Pelican Bay Prison, and other Supermax prisons, clearly constitute torture and/or cruel, inhumane treatment of prisoners. It relies on the use of severe isolation or solitary confinement, the effects of which I’ve written about before in the context of the Bradley Manning case (see here and here). At Pelican Bay, the prisoners in “administrative segregation” are locked in a gray concrete 8′X10′ foot cell 22-1/2 hours per day. The other time (if that privilege is granted) is spent alone in a tiny concrete yard. There is no human physical contact. No work, no communal activities. If the prisoner has enough money they can purchase a TV or radio. Meals are pushed through a slot in the metal door.

The Obama administration is using U.S. vessels to hold ghost prisoners. We don’t even know how many. The old bad days of the Bush administration are back, and the details aren’t pretty, and the outstanding questions about what is really going on are many.

Ian Cobain and Richard Norton-Taylor at the UK Guardian are reporting that the widely heralded 2010 announcement of a British government official inquiry into UK torture is facing a boycott by British human rights and attorney groups. The reason is undue secrecy. The handwriting was on the wall for some time on this sham inquiry, but the British human rights and lawyer groups kept fighting to make something real out of it.

The announcement of John Durham’s decision to investigate two CIA detainee murders prompts a reexamination at how the different torture techniques were developed, and how they were propagated across governmental institutional boundaries between the Department of Defense and the CIA. If the press did their job, perhaps we could get a better picture of how torture was implemented, who was responsible, leading the public to demand the accountability that otherwise, without significant public outcry, is not going to happen.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed an appeal for the families of two of the three men who died in mysterious circumstances in June 2006. The U.S. government called it “asymmetrical warfare” by the detainees, who are said to have killed themselves in some belief that would hurt the U.S. government. As bizarre as that theory is, Defense Department investigations found the men committed suicide in a multiple, timed series of three planned suicides.

The entire 9/11 field of inquiry has been vilified, poisoned over the years by ridicule, sometimes fantastic conspiracy mongering, and fearfulness by journalists of approaching the material, lest they be branded as irresponsible or some kind of conspiracy freak. As a result, little work has been done to investigate, except by a small group of people, some of whom have raised some real questions, others who were intoxicated by the possibility of some giant conspiracy.

If anything, this story is about an intelligence and oversight scandal.