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In the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, the debate over the role of torture in military intelligence has resurfaced. After bin Laden learned that U.S. intelligence agencies had been tracking the al-Qaeda leader through his use of satellite phones in the late nineties, he started to rely on messengers to communicate. Understanding the courier network then became key to gathering information about the whereabouts of bin Laden and other senior al-Qaeda leaders. Tracking one of these couriers, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, ultimately led the Pentagon to bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. John Yoo, the Bush-era Justice Department attorney who authored President Bush’s policies on interrogation in the so-called “torture memos,” wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal saying “President George W. Bush, not his successor, constructed the interrogation and warrantless surveillance programs that produced this week’s actionable intelligence.” But both former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and current chair of the Senate Intelligence committee Senator Dianne Feinstein have said that the information leading U.S. security forces to Abbottabad did not come from the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” that were commonly used in Guantanamo and other U.S.-run prisons. In late April the whistleblowing website, Wikileaks released more than 700 previously classified Defense Department documents written between 2008-2009 that provide new information about the prisoners who have been released from Guantanamo, as well updates on the 172 men who remain there. The documents do not include details about “enhanced interrogation techniques”—a euphemism for state-sanctioned torture— but they do provide details about the most famous of their prisoners, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the purported architect of the September 11, 2001 attacks. The files also show the dossiers of innocent men arrested in war zones in cases of mistaken identity or being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of these men had been incarcerated and interrogated for years.

Thank you Gifts

Uprising USB 4 G Memory Stick – $120

Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo DVD – $75

The Guantanamo Files – book – $120

Poems from Guantanamo – book – $75

Uprising’s Guantanamo Exposed $365 Pack (all of the above)
This package is a comprehensive educational primer on Guantanamo, post 9-11 American torture policies, detainee treatment and their stories, and more. It includes the Uprising 4G USB Memory stick loaded with the 700+ Wikileaks Guantanamo files, Andy Worthington’s book “The Guantanamo Files,” his film “Outside the Law: Stories from Guantanamo,” and the book “Poems from Guantanamo”

Call 818-985-5735 or visit www.kpfk.org to make a pledge.