Students: Boycott Harvard Law School!

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit


sent by Francis Boyle - Oct 26, 2004

[The Harvard Law School Faculty knew full well the nefarious activities that
Goldsmith had performed at the Department of Justice and the Pentagon before
they voted to hire him. Obviously, the Harvard Law School Faculty wanted a
war criminal to join their ranks. For this reason, the Harvard Law School
Faculty is not fit to educate students. I would strongly recommend that you
discourage students from attending the Harvard Law School for any reason. I
already have.

Violations of the Geneva Conventions are war crimes. Therefore, according to
Dean Kagan, the future of International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School
are in the "good hands" of a war criminal. Ditto for Yoo at Boalt.

"The CIA, Justice Department and the author of the draft opinion, Jack L.
Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel, declined to
comment for this article. "

Harvard Law School Dean Kagan publicly stated that the future of
International Legal Studies at Harvard Law School is in "good hands" with
Goldsmith. That is precisely why you must discourage any student from going
to HLS.]

Francis A. Boyle,
Harvard Law School, 1976


The Washington Post - Oct 24, 2004
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57363-2004Oct23.html>

Detainees Secretly Taken Out Of Iraq

By Dana Priest

Practice is called breach of protections.

At the request of the CIA, the Justice Department drafted a confidential
memo that authorizes the agency to transfer detainees out of Iraq for
interrogation - a practice that international legal specialists say
contravenes the Geneva Conventions.

One intelligence official familiar with the operation said the CIA has
used the March draft memo as legal support for secretly transporting as many
as a dozen detainees out of Iraq in the last six months. The agency has
concealed the detainees from the International Red Cross and other
authorities, the official said.

The draft opinion, written by the Justice Department's Office of Legal
Counsel and dated March 19, 2004, refers to both Iraqi citizens and
foreigners in Iraq, who the memo says are protected by the treaty. It
permits the CIA to take Iraqis out of the country to be interrogated for a
"brief but not indefinite period." It also says the CIA can permanently
remove persons deemed to be "illegal aliens" under "local immigration law."

Some specialists in international law say the opinion amounts to a
reinterpretation of one of the most basic rights of Article 49 of the Fourth
Geneva Convention, which protects civilians during wartime and occupation,
including insurgents who were not part of Iraq's military.

The treaty prohibits the "[i]ndividual or mass forcible transfers, as
well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory . . .
regardless of their motive."

The 1949 treaty notes that a violation of this particular provision
constitutes a "grave breach" of the accord, and thus a "war crime" under
U.S. federal law, according to a footnote in the Justice Department draft.
"For these reasons," the footnote reads, "we recommend that any contemplated
relocations of 'protected persons' from Iraq to facilitate interrogation be
carefully evaluated for compliance with Article 49 on a case by case basis."
It says that even persons removed from Iraq retain the treaty's protections,
which would include humane treatment and access to international monitors.

During the war in Afghanistan, the administration ruled that al Qaeda
fighters were not considered "protected persons" under the convention. Many
of them were transferred out of the country to Guantánamo Bay and elsewhere
for interrogations. By contrast, the U.S. government deems former members of
Saddam Hussein's Baath Party and military, as well as insurgents and other
civilians in Iraq, to be protected by the Geneva Conventions.

International law experts contacted for this article described the legal
reasoning contained in the Justice Department memo as unconventional and
disturbing.

"The overall thrust of the Convention is to keep from moving people out
of the country and out of the protection of the Convention," said former
senior military attorney Scott Silliman, executive director of Duke
University's Center on Law, Ethics and National Security. "The memorandum
seeks to create a legal regime justifying conduct that the international
community clearly considers in violation of international law and the
Convention." Silliman reviewed the document at The Post's request.

The CIA, Justice Department and the author of the draft opinion, Jack L.
Goldsmith, former director of the Office of Legal Counsel, declined to
comment for this article.

CIA officials have not disclosed the identities or locations of its Iraq
detainees to congressional oversight committees, the Defense Department or
CIA investigators who are reviewing detention policy, according to two
informed U.S. government officials and a confidential e-mail on the subject
shown to The Washington Post.

White House officials disputed the notion that Goldsmith's interpretation of
the treaty was unusual, although they did not explain why. "The Geneva
Conventions are applicable to the conflict in Iraq, and our policy is to
comply with the Geneva Conventions," White House spokesman Sean McCormick
said.

The Office of Legal Counsel also wrote the Aug. 1, 2002, memo on torture
that advised the CIA and White House that torturing al Qaeda terrorists in
captivity abroad "may be justified," and that international laws against
torture "may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations" conducted in
the war on terrorism. Bush's aides repudiated that memo once it became
public this June.

The Office of Legal Counsel writes legal opinions considered binding on
federal agencies and departments. Although the March 19 document obtained by
the Post is stamped "draft" and was never finalized, said one U.S. official
involved in the legal deliberations. Copies of the memo were sent to the
general counsels at the National Security Council, CIA and department of
state and defense.

"The memo was a green light," an intelligence official said. "The CIA
used the memo to remove other people from Iraq."

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the CIA has used broad authority granted in
a series of legal opinions and guidance from the Office of Legal Counsel and
its own general counsel's office to transfer, interrogate and detain
individuals suspected of terrorist activities at a series of undisclosed
locations around the world.

According to current and former agency officials, the CIA has a rendition
policy that has permitted the agency to transfer an unknown number of
suspected terrorists captured in one country into the hands of security
services in other countries whose record of human rights abuse is well
documented. These individuals, as well as those at CIA detention facilities,
have no access to any recognized legal process or rights.

The scandal at Abu Ghraib, and the investigations and congressional
hearings that followed, forced the disclosure of the Pentagon's
behind-closed-doors debate and classified rules for detentions and
interrogations at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan and Iraq. Senior
defense leaders have repeatedly been called to explain and defend their
policies before Congress. But the CIA's policies and practices remain
shrouded in secrecy.

The only public account of CIA detainee treatment comes from soldier
testimony and Defense Department investigations of military conduct. For
instances, Army Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba's report on Abu Ghraib
criticized the CIA practice of maintaining "ghost detainees" - prisoners who
were not officially registered and were moved around inside the prison to
hide them from Red Cross teams. Taguba called the practice "deceptive,
contrary to Army doctrine and in violation of international law."

Gen. Paul J. Kern, who oversaw another Army inquiry, told Congress that
the number of CIA ghost detainees "is in the dozens, to perhaps up to 100."

The March 19, 2004, Justice Department memo by Goldsmith deals with a
previously unknown class of people - those removed from Iraq.

It is not clear why the CIA would feel the need to remove detainees from
Iraq for interrogation. A U.S. government official who has been briefed on
the CIA's detention practices said some detainees are probably taken to
other countries because "that's where the agency has the people, expertise
and interrogation facilities, where their people and programs are in place."

The origin of the Justice Department memo related to the only publicly
acknowledged ghost detainee, Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul, nicknamed "Triple X"
by CIA and military officials.

Rashul, a suspected member of the Iraqi Al-Ansar terrorist group, was
captured by Kurdish soldiers in June or July of 2003 and turned over to the
CIA, which whisked him to Afghanistan for interrogation.

In October, White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales asked the Office of
Legal Counsel to write an opinion on "protected persons" in Iraq and rule on
the status of Rashul, according to another U.S. government official involved
in the deliberations.

Goldsmith, then head of the office, ruled that Rashul was a "protected
person" under the Fourth Geneva Convention and therefore had to be brought
back to Iraq, several intelligence and defense officials said.

The CIA was not happy with the decision, according to two intelligence
officials. They promptly brought Rashul back and suspended any other
transfers out of the country.

At the same time, when transferring Rashul back to Iraq, then CIA
director George Tenet asked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld not to give
Rashul a prisoner number and to hide him from International Red Cross
officials, according to an account provided by Rumsfeld during a June 17
Pentagon press conference. Rumsfeld complied.

As a "ghost detainee," Rashul became lost in the prison system for seven
months.

Rumsfeld did not fully explain the reason he had complied with Tenet's
request or under what legal authority he could have kept Rashul hidden for
so long. "We know from our knowledge that [Tenet] has the authority to do
this," he said.

Rashul, defense and intelligence officials noted, had not once been
interrogated since he was brought back into Iraq. His current status is
unknown.

In the one-page October 2003 interim ruling that directed Rashul's
return, Goldsmith also created a new category of persons in Iraq whom he
said did not qualify for protection under the Geneva Conventions. They are
non-Iraqis who are not members of the former Baath Party and who came to
Iraq after the invasion.

After Goldsmith's ruling, the CIA and Gonzales asked the Office of Legal
Counsel for a more complete legal opinion on "protected persons" in Iraq and
on the legality of transferring people out of Iraq for interrogation. "That
case started the CIA yammering to Justice to get a better memo," said one
intelligence officer familiar with the interagency discussion.

Michael Byers, a professor and international law expert at University of
British Columbia, said that creating a legal justification for removing
protected persons from Iraq "is extraordinarily disturbing."

"What they are doing is interpreting an exception into an
all-encompassing right, in one of the most fundamental treaties in history,"
Byers said. The Geneva Convention "is as close as you get to protecting
human rights in times of chaos. There's no ambiguity here."

Copyright (c) 2004 The Washington Post

*