CIA Goes After Priest
Hentoff, Nat
Bill of Rights Watch Nat Hentoff CIA Goes After Priest Since December 2002, Dana Priest has broken stories in The Washington Post on secret CIA interrogation centers around the world. Human rights...
...In an October 26 editorial, "Vice President for Torture," The Washington Post had already detailed how Cheney has become the primary protector of the CIA...
...officials that Denmark does not want its airspace used for purposes in conflict with international conventions...
...And back in August, Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moller had made it "clear to U.S...
...As a result of a front-page November 2 story ("CIA Holds Terror Suspects in Secret Prisons"), she appeared to catch the furious attention of Dick Cheney (recently exposed as the chief architect of Bush's torture policies) and CIA Director Porter Goss...
...Human rights groups have validated and further documented her stories, as have other reporters...
...Now he may go after Priest for exposing some of the torture practices...
...This war on Dana Priest, if successful, will result in far more concerted attacks by this lawless Administration on what used to be heralded in civics classes as "the people's right to know...
...This CIA "referral," as it's called, can lead to a criminal investigation, with maybe a special prosecutor in charge, as in the Valerie Plame case...
...On November 9, the Post reported, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and House Speaker Dennis Hastert "demanded an immediate joint House and Senate investigation into the disclosure of classified information" in Priest's report...
...officials...
...Keep the amendment, but include an exception for the CIA...
...Attorney General Alberto Gonzales orchestrated the White House "torture memos" three years ago when he was White House counsel...
...In concert, the CIA's general counsel's office told the Justice Department that Priest had used classified information...
...McCain told him to get lost...
...So has the Justice Department's...
...The CIA's contempt for American and international law has been an open secret for years...
...The Post and Priest had to be silenced...
...The press mobilized to protect the First Amendment rights of reporters and newspapers involved in the Valerie Plame case...
...Priest's story came soon after it was revealed that Dick Cheney-having twice been unable to get Senator John McCain to withdraw from the Defense authorization bill his amendment prohibiting inhumane treatment in prisoner interrogations-offered McCain a deal...
...She did not name those Eastern European democracies "at the request of senior U.S...
...But on the very next day, The Financial Times, which had written on these secret prisons and CIA "rendition" of suspects to countries that torture prisoners, cited Human Rights Watch as providing "strong evidence-including the flight records of CIA aircraft transporting prisoners out of Afghanistan-that Poland and Romania were among countries allowing the agency to operate secret detention centers on their soil...
...Nat Hentoff is a columnist for The Village Voice, Free Inquiry, and The Progressive...
...On November 7, Der Spiegel in Germany, reporting on "black sites" and CIA "renditions," wrote that CIA jets had violated Danish airspace twelve times since 2001...
...In her extensive November 2 report, Priest noted that these secret prisons, some located in "several democracies in Eastern Europe," are "referred to as 'black sites' in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department, and Congressional documents...
...He is the author of "The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance...
...Both Poland and Romania have issued official denials...
Vol. 70 • January 2006 • No. 1
