Zayn al Abidin Muhammad Husayn, aka Abu Zabaydah, is currently in U.S. custody at the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The CIA has acknowledged waterboarding Abu Zabaydah in secret interrogations while his attorneys claim that he is insane.
Walter Pincus had an interesting piece in the Washington Post today about how the U.S. government has insisted that the words and writings of Abu Zubaydah are, in and of themselves, classified. Pincus' article is based upon court filings by Abu Zabaydah's lawyers, who, as summarized by Pincus:
"...wrote that the government was classifying what the prisoner was telling them, what he wrote in his diaries before being captured and during his seven years of captivity in Cuba, and even information that they had learned from public documents that he could not possibly know. Many sections of that motion itself ... are redacted in the recently declassified public version."
It turns out that the Government has adopted a position that could have only been developed by a team of attorneys consisting of Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, and Franz Kafka. In contrast to the cogent points outlined by Abu Zabaydah's lawyers in their court filing, the Government has adopted the position that Abu Zabaydah's thoughts are, in essence, "born classified." As such, by continuing to allow Abu Zabaydah to think and write, the Government is, by virtue of their own position, allowing an accused terrorist to have continuing and uninterrupted access to classified information, not withstanding the fact that by the Government's own rules, Abu Zabaydah is an unauthorized person. Per Executive Order 12958, as amended, Abu Zabaydah is not an unauthorized person for access to his own thoughts in that he does not have a current security clearance, nor has he executed an appropriate non-disclosure agreement. Furthermore, while the Government has apparently already determined that Abu Zabaydah's attorneys do not have a "need-to-know" for access to his thoughts and writings, the issue apparently remains as to whether or not Abu Zabaydah has a "need-to-know" for his own thoughts.
Just when you thought that the Government's contempt for the classification system could get no worse, they always seem to find a way to make a mockery of an extraordinarily critical national security tool that is essential for our nation's well-being; the very same system that our country's young military and intelligence service members who put themselves everyday in harm's way depend upon for their very lives.
h/t bmaz at emptywheel.firedoglake.com
btw -- I am on the road this week and thus postings may be intermittent.
Walter Pincus had an interesting piece in the Washington Post today about how the U.S. government has insisted that the words and writings of Abu Zubaydah are, in and of themselves, classified. Pincus' article is based upon court filings by Abu Zabaydah's lawyers, who, as summarized by Pincus:
"...wrote that the government was classifying what the prisoner was telling them, what he wrote in his diaries before being captured and during his seven years of captivity in Cuba, and even information that they had learned from public documents that he could not possibly know. Many sections of that motion itself ... are redacted in the recently declassified public version."
It turns out that the Government has adopted a position that could have only been developed by a team of attorneys consisting of Lewis Carroll, George Orwell, and Franz Kafka. In contrast to the cogent points outlined by Abu Zabaydah's lawyers in their court filing, the Government has adopted the position that Abu Zabaydah's thoughts are, in essence, "born classified." As such, by continuing to allow Abu Zabaydah to think and write, the Government is, by virtue of their own position, allowing an accused terrorist to have continuing and uninterrupted access to classified information, not withstanding the fact that by the Government's own rules, Abu Zabaydah is an unauthorized person. Per Executive Order 12958, as amended, Abu Zabaydah is not an unauthorized person for access to his own thoughts in that he does not have a current security clearance, nor has he executed an appropriate non-disclosure agreement. Furthermore, while the Government has apparently already determined that Abu Zabaydah's attorneys do not have a "need-to-know" for access to his thoughts and writings, the issue apparently remains as to whether or not Abu Zabaydah has a "need-to-know" for his own thoughts.
Just when you thought that the Government's contempt for the classification system could get no worse, they always seem to find a way to make a mockery of an extraordinarily critical national security tool that is essential for our nation's well-being; the very same system that our country's young military and intelligence service members who put themselves everyday in harm's way depend upon for their very lives.
h/t bmaz at emptywheel.firedoglake.com
btw -- I am on the road this week and thus postings may be intermittent.
No comments:
Post a Comment