Surprise! The Bush Administration Tried to Thwart Justice for Torturers

If you watch cable news, well, geez, stop. But if hearing Wolf Blitzer churn Pentagon press releases into news reports is your sort of thing, then you might be under the impression that all this recent WikiLeaks stuff is simultaneously 1) *yawn* much ado about nothing and 2) the greatest national security threat ev-er -- even bigger than the threat of gays openly serving in the military.

What you might have missed, though, amid all the hubbub over tawdry gossip and the drone of respectable American journalists decrying the fact their government wasn't better able to keep information from them, was that the thousands of leaked State Department cables provide clear evidence of official wrongdoing – wrongdoing that the political establishment would much rather soon forget than acknowledge.

One cable in particular “reveals a sad reality about the tangled web woven by the Bush administration when it decided to engage in torture,” says the group Human Rights First, “and highlights how President Obama has kept the U.S. ensnared in that legacy.”

Recounting a 2007 meeting between U.S. diplomat John Koenig and German Deputy National Security Adviser Rolf Nikel, the cable in question details the Bush administration's “strong concerns about the possible issuance of international arrest warrants in the al-Masri case.” Who's al-Masri (or el-Masri) and why do we care, you ask? Well, why not let al-Masri explain:

On New Year's Eve in 2003, I was seized at the border of Serbia and Macedonia by Macedonian police who mistakenly believed that I was traveling on a false German passport. I was detained incommunicado for more than three weeks. Then I was handed over to the American Central Intelligence Agency and was stripped, severely beaten, shackled, dressed in a diaper, injected with drugs, chained to the floor of a plane and flown to Afghanistan, where I was imprisoned in a foul dungeon for more than four months.

What the U.S. was so concerned about in its meeting was that those CIA agents who tortured el-Masri might have to face justice as if they were ordinary human being, not ones endowed with a license to torture and kill, the meeting coming less than a week after a German prosecutor issued warrants for 13 CIA operatives. And the U.S. was prepared to intimidate a long-stand ally to make sure that those warrants were squashed.

According to the cable, Koenig reminded the German deputy national security adviser that the “issuance of international arrest would have a negative impact on our bilateral relationship,” reminding him of “the repercussions to U.S.-Italian bilateral relations in the wake of a similar move by Italian authorities last year.”

“[O]ur intention [is] not to threaten Germany,” Koenig added, as paraphrased in the cable, “but rather to urge that the German Government weigh carefully at every step of they way the implications for relations with the U.S.” Translation: we're not saying we're going to doing anything to you – oh heavens no – but, boy, wouldn't it be a shame if something happened to that nice bilateral relationship you got there?

Koenig also suggested that while the U.S. “of course recognized the independence of the German judiciary” – the diplomatic version of, “Now, I'm not a racist, but ...” – it was his understanding that “international arrest warrants or extradition requests would require the concurrence of the German Federal Government.”

Nikel, the German adviser, while lodging his government's objections objections to “Guantanamo and the alleged use of renditions,” nonetheless promised to relay Koenig's message to Chancellor Angela Merkel, according to the cable, but said – in what's apparently a direct quote – that he couldn't “promise that everything will turn out well.” “Well,” in this instance, of course refers to denying al-Masri a chance to see his kidnappers face justice; what it doesn't mean is ensuring that all are equal before the law.

Meanwhile, though the Bush administration is long gone, Human Rights First points out that not a whole lot has changed when it comes to condoning torture and other abuses committed by U.S. operatives, all while hypocritically condemning abuses in other nations (*cough* Iran). "[U]ntil President Obama acknowledges, investigates and accounts for [torture], he will keep the United States in that contorted position of instructing notorious dictators to respect human rights and hold violators accountable, while informing our democratic allies that it’s in their best interest not to do the same.”

As for those 13 CIA operatives: while Germany dropped its prosecution, and the Bush administration successfully defeated a lawsuit filed by the ACLU, a Spanish judge has since issued warrants for their arrest.

Photo Credit: Steve Bott