OSI Now Hiring / Program Coordinator

Program Coordinator
Office of The Regional Director for Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary and the Baltics
OSI-New York

Application Deadline: August 31, 2009


The Open Society Institute, a George Soros Foundation, (http://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros) works to build vibrant and tolerant democracies whose governments are accountable to their citizens. To achieve its mission, OSI seeks to shape public policies that assure greater fairness in political, legal, and economic systems and safeguard fundamental rights. On a local level, OSI implements a range of initiatives to advance justice, education, public health, and independent media. At the same time, OSI builds alliances across borders and continents on issues such as corruption and freedom of information. OSI places a high priority on protecting and improving the lives of marginalized people and communities.

Investor and philanthropist George Soros in 1993 created OSI as a private operating and grantmaking foundation to support his foundations in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Those foundations were established, starting in 1984, to help countries make the transition from communism. OSI has expanded the activities of the Soros foundations network to encompass the United States and more than 60 countries in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Each Soros foundation relies on the expertise of boards composed of eminent citizens who determine individual agendas based on local priorities.

The Office of the Regional Director works to advance OSI's grantmaking in the Russian Federation, and to oversee and liaise with national foundations in Central and Eastern Europe. We solicit and evaluate proposals from NGOs across Russia and outside, and closely monitor the social, political and economic environment in the region. Our areas of focus are human rights, civil society, rule of law and access to information.

This position will report directly to the Regional Director.

Responsibilities
Work with applicants to develop and finalize grant proposals.
Draft/edit correspondence and memoranda, letters to grant applicants, grant documentation and dockets;
Monitor grants through review of narrative and financial reports and other communication with grantees;
Liaise with relevant OSI departments and programs to ensure that the program's grantmaking activities are conducted in a seamless and timely manner;
Liaise with national foundations and through country visits; perform site visits of prospective and current grantees;
Liaise with program consultants and area specialists to identify opportunities for new projects or prospective grantees;
Assist in developing grantmaking strategy, priorities, and guidelines;
Translate from Russian to English and English to Russian on as-needed basis; Monitor Russian-language websites and disseminate relevant articles to program staff;
Provide general administrative support to the program.
Qualifications
BA required; background in international affairs, human rights, and/or civil society helpful;
3+ years of work experience in NGO program management; experience working in the former Soviet Union a plus;
Excellent written and oral English, excellent Russian reading ability;
Flexibility and willingness to work simultaneously and independently on a wide range of tasks and projects and ability to prioritize tasks;
Attentiveness to detail and ability to work well under pressure;
Ability to travel internationally when required.
Start Date
As soon as possible

Compensation
Commensurate with experience and ability. Excellent benefit package.

To Apply
Please email resume and cover letter with salary requirements before August 31, 2009, to: humanresources@sorosny.org. Include job code in subject line: PC/Russia

OR

Open Society Institute
Human Resources - Code PC/Russia
400 West 59th Street
New York, New York 10019

FAX: 212.548.4675

No phone calls, please. The Open Society Institute is an Equal Opportunity Employer.

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Click on title above to go to the Open Societys' Website and / or to make application; http://www.soros.org/about/offices/newyork/coordinator_20090630

Fight Brews Between Civil Rights Supporters and Obomba as Constitution is Suspended

By Spencer Ackerman 7/1/09 6:00 AM
The Washington Independant

It was a blind quote hitting the civil-libertarian solar plexus. Bad enough that, as ProPublica’s Dafna Linzner and The Washington Post’s Peter Finn reported late on Friday afternoon, the Obama administration was readying an executive order for a system for preventive detention in terrorism cases. President Obama himself had indicated in a May speech at the National Archives that he wanted to seek legislation toward the same idea. But an administration official told the reporters that those same opponents of preventive detention had given the president cover to pursue it: “Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order.”



As it happens, White House officials sought to walk the story back, with officials saying that the administration wasn’t drafting an executive order and was unlikely to issue one, as press secretary Robert Gibbs said Monday. But representatives of civil liberties groups were still stunned to see the quote. At a meeting with the administration’s task force on detentions policy earlier this month, most of the major civil liberties groups explicitly urged the administration to instead either charge Guantanamo Bay detainees and future terrorism captives with crimes in federal court or release them. Now, with the prospect of a new administration creating a regimen for holding detainees for an unbounded period without facing charges — a major target for civil libertarian fights with the Bush administration — on the horizon, several groups that hailed Obama’s election are vowing to fight the proposal.

“Any continued policies of prolonged detention without trial of Guantanamo detainees simply fails to turn the page on the counterproductive policy of the Bush administration,” said Human Rights First’s Devon Chaffee, who attended the meeting with the task force. “We oppose any prolonged detention without trial beyond what is already authorized under the laws of war. If an individual committed acts of terrorism, they should be tried in our regular federal courts.”

On June 9, a task force empanelled by Obama’s January 22 executive order to recommend changes to U.S. detention policy for “violent extremists” invited civil liberties groups to the Justice Department for a meeting led by Army Col. Mark Martins, a former legal adviser to Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq. Representatives of Human Rights Watch, the ACLU, Human Rights First, New York University’s Brennan Center, the Constitution Project, Amnesty International, the Center for National Security Studies, the Open Society Institute and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers spent about two hours making a case against preventive detention, as well as offering their perspectives on military commissions, the repatriation of Guantananamo detainees, and the detention facility at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Field.

According to attendees, the meeting was respectful and solicitous. Task force members opted to listen to civil libertarian concerns far more than they chose to present their own views, offering the occasional hypothetical example to test the contention that federal civilian courts would be adequate to handle terrorism cases. “They were very thoughtful, engaging, reflective and genuinely interested in our input,” said one participant who declined to be identified. “I didn’t get the sense that they were just rubber-stamping, so they could say they met with human-rights groups.”

The meeting was designed to be a forum for a subsection of the task force to hear from the civil liberties organizations that have been distressed by emerging administration perspectives on detention since March, when the Justice Department filed a brief in federal court claiming authority to detain terrorism captives outside of the criminal justice system. “A very strong message given at that meeting was that the vast majority of the civil-liberties community oppose any form of prolonged preventive detention without trial,” said Chaffee. “Significant emphasis was placed on the ability of federal civilian courts to handle complex terrorism cases.”

Numerous attendees said that they opposed any vehicle, either legislation or an executive order, to produce an indefinite-detention system. Some made the additional point that seeking legislation for a preventive detention strategy would allow a Congress that shows relatively little concern for civil liberties to expand the parameters of any administration approach to detention in unpredictable ways. “Given the political situation in Congress, things could get even worse, and the preventive detention bill could be even broader and more problematic than what the president suggested in the National Archives speech,” said a different participant in the meeting who also declined to be identified. The administration official quoted by Linzer and Finn “somehow misinterpreted” the message, this participant added, since support for a executive order on preventive detention was “not at all what was conveyed by anyone.”

Whether or not an executive order on preventive detention is forthcoming, Obama indicated in his May speech at the National Archives that he embraces the logic of some form of detention for terrorism detainees outside the federal civilian courts, speaking of “detainees at Guantanamo who cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.” The same speech pledged to “work with Congress” to come up with a legal regime for detention, though the president did not explicitly indicate if such a system would include future alleged-terrorist captives in addition to Guantanamo detainees.

Accordingly, Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that he was disinterested in the “continuing debate over whether preventive detention is a good idea or a bad one,” since “the only serious question is what the legal framework for detention will be, not whether it will happen.”

To that end, Wittes released a proposal on Friday for legislation on non-criminal terrorism detention that seeks to give the administration latitude to detain suspected terrorists beyond the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq but also impose judicial and congressional oversight on a process that the Bush administration left virtually unbounded, and which the Supreme Court subsequently restrained. His proposal, co-authored with Colleen A. Peppard, creates a 14-day period of detention without charge that could be expanded on a repeatable six-month basis by the federal District Court for the District of Columbia and defines the class of potential detainees in terms of actions they take “working on behalf of the enemy” as defined by acts of Congress.

Wittes added that he had discussed his ideas for preventive detention with the administration task force but declined to elaborate.

Administration officials who would not speak for attribution cautioned that much remained undecided by the administration beyond what Obama had stated publicly, as debate remains ongoing, both within the task force and within the administration more broadly. One knowledgeable source pointed to career government attorneys across the Justice, Defense, and Homeland Security Departments and the National Security Council who had been working on detainee and interrogation issues for years — officials who had been as critical of Bush administration legal excesses as they are Obama-era enthusiasm for fundamental change — as key figures in determining the nuts and bolts of the internal debate. “All those people, consistently, have been warning that the way we pick these people up can’t be separated from the way we deal with them,” the source said. “Schematically, they’re in the conservative-Democrat camp. You wouldn’t find them fundamentally different than Ike Skelton or Carl Levin,” referring to the chairmen of the House and Senate armed services committees.

Even so, human rights groups are now preparing to oppose any forthcoming legislative proposal or executive order on preventive detention. “We don’t want the administration to seek to legalize a system of preventive detention by executive order or by statute,” said Sharon Bradford Franklin, a senior counsel at the Constitution Project who attended the June 9 meeting.

The Center For Constitutional Rights, one of the few major civil-liberties groups that did not attend the June 9 meeting, “would mobilize to oppose any effort to create a preventive detention scheme,” said spokeswoman Jen Nessel. “Whether it’s in the form of an executive order or legislation, indefinite detention without charge, trial or due process goes against our most fundamental principles of justice and the rule of law.”

Michael Price, the national security coordinator for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and another meeting attendee, said the administration had yet to present a robust case that there was indeed a cohort of detainees who could not be responsibly tried in federal courts, contending that classified information would be adequately protected under statutes like the Classified Information Procedures Act. (Critics contend the act lends too much deference to a defendant.) “An executive order, I think, is dangerous,” Price said. “Congress getting legislation to pass preventive detention is also dangerous, but not any more dangerous than preventive detention itself. But we will oppose either way.”

Price continued, “I don’t think opposition with the administration is necessarily the right way to categorize this, but I think we’d be strongly opposed to the idea of the proposal.”

Cully Stimson, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee policy in the Bush administration, said he was pleased by both the agitation of the civil-liberties community and the early signals by the Obama administration about preventive detention. “The Obama guys and gals have the facts now — they’ve seen the files, read the cooperation agreements, been read into the programs,” Stimson said. “Even the human-rights advocates who were throwing spitballs at me and other Bush people when I was in [government] who are now on the task force, they clearly are in a better place factually than when they were sitting on the sidelines. Who cares what the ACLU thinks?”

Liza Goitein of the Brennan Center, another June 9 meeting participant, also rejected any preventive detention scheme. But she was heartened that the question appeared not to be settled. “It’s clear that the administration is still struggling on this issue,” Goitein said. “I can see that in the difference between what Obama said in the National Archives speech seeking legislation and then the report of the executive order. It’s safe to say the administration has not come up with a final plan. As long as that’s the case, there’s some hope that there won’t be a preventive detention regime.”


http://washingtonindependent.com/49337/fight-brews-between-civil-liberties-groups-and-obama

Our Cyberwar Arms Race with Russia

U.S. at odds with Russia over cyberspace

By Judi Hasson

When it comes to the prospects of a war in cyberspace and the integrity of computer systems and the Internet, the U.S. and Russia are in a delicate tap dance.

Both are eyeing each other as adversaries, and both would like some ground rules to help ease tensions, but there is no meeting of the minds. The result is an escalation of offensive and defensive capabilities on each side, according to The New York Times.

President Obama will be in Russia this week, and cyberspace is likely to be on the agenda. The newspaper reports that Russia favors an international treaty that would help curb the cyber arms race. The U.S. disagrees, and is advocating improved cooperation among international law enforcement groups to make cyberspace more secure against criminal intrusions and military campaigns.

Even as discussions proceed, the Pentagon is planning the creation of a new military cyber command to prepare for offensive and defensive computer warfare. And Russia is certainly not the only problem. Like many other treaties around the world, the U.S. must get its allies on board before thrashing out a one-stop treaty for just one country. So what if there is a treaty with Russia? It won't stop China, or any other country from attacking when it wants an advantage.

For more on cyber diplomacy:

The United States and Russia are locked in a fundamental dispute over how to counter the growing threat of cyberwar attacks that could wreak havoc on computer systems and the Internet.

NIPA, via Associated Press

A ceremony at a Soviet war statue in Tallinn, Estonia, in 2007. The decision to move the statue from the city center to a military cemetery enraged Russia and Russian Estonians. It was followed by a crippling, monthlong siege of Estonian computer networks.

Cyberwar
Responding to a Growing Threat
Computers, indispensable in peace, are becoming ever more important in political conflicts and open warfare. This article is the sixth in a series examining the growing use of computer power as a weapon.

Both nations agree that cyberspace is an emerging battleground. The two sides are expected to address the subject when President Obama visits Russia next week and at the General Assembly of the United Nations in November, according to a senior State Department official.

But there the agreement ends.

Russia favors an international treaty along the lines of those negotiated for chemical weapons and has pushed for that approach at a series of meetings this year and in public statements by a high-ranking official.

The United States argues that a treaty is unnecessary. It instead advocates improved cooperation among international law enforcement groups. If these groups cooperate to make cyberspace more secure against criminal intrusions, their work will also make cyberspace more secure against military campaigns, American officials say.

“We really believe it’s defense, defense, defense,” said the State Department official, who asked not to be identified because authorization had not been given to speak on the record. “They want to constrain offense. We needed to be able to criminalize these horrible 50,000 attacks we were getting a day.”

Any agreement on cyberspace presents special difficulties because the matter touches on issues like censorship of the Internet, sovereignty and rogue actors who might not be subject to a treaty.

United States officials say the disagreement over approach has hindered international law enforcement cooperation, particularly given that a significant proportion of the attacks against American government targets are coming from China and Russia.

And from the Russian perspective, the absence of a treaty is permitting a kind of arms race with potentially dangerous consequences.

Officials around the world recognize the need to deal with the growing threat of cyberwar. Many countries, including the United States, are developing weapons for it, like “logic bombs” that can be hidden in computers to halt them at crucial times or damage circuitry; “botnets” that can disable or spy on Web sites and networks; or microwave radiation devices that can burn out computer circuits miles away.

The Pentagon is planning to create a military command to prepare for both defense and offensive computer warfare. And last month, President Obama released his cybersecurity strategy and said he would appoint a “cybersecurity coordinator” to lead efforts to protect government computers, the air traffic control system and other essential systems. The administration also emphasizes the benefits of building international cooperation.

The Russian and American approaches — a treaty and a law enforcement agreement — are not necessarily incompatible. But they represent different philosophical approaches.

In a speech on March 18, Vladislav P. Sherstyuk, a deputy secretary of the Russian Security Council, a powerful body advising the president on national security, laid out what he described as Russia’s bedrock positions on disarmament in cyberspace. Russia’s proposed treaty would ban a country from secretly embedding malicious codes or circuitry that could be later activated from afar in the event of war.

Other Russian proposals include the application of humanitarian laws banning attacks on noncombatants and a ban on deception in operations in cyberspace — an attempt to deal with the challenge of anonymous attacks. The Russians have also called for broader international government oversight of the Internet.

But American officials are particularly resistant to agreements that would allow governments to censor the Internet, saying they would provide cover for totalitarian regimes. These officials also worry that a treaty would be ineffective because it can be almost impossible to determine if an Internet attack originated from a government, a hacker loyal to that government, or a rogue acting independently.

The unique challenge of cyberspace is that governments can carry out deceptive attacks to which they cannot be linked, said Herbert Lin, director of a study by the National Research Council, a private, nonprofit organization, on the development of cyberweapons.

This challenge became apparent in 2001, after a Navy P-3 surveillance plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane, said Linton Wells II, a former high-ranking Pentagon official who now teaches at the National Defense University. The collision was followed by a huge increase in attacks on United States government computer targets from sources that could not be identified, he said.

Similarly, after computer attacks in Estonia in April 2007 and in the nation of Georgia last August, the Russian government denied involvement and independent observers said the attacks could have been carried out by nationalist sympathizers or by criminal gangs.

Computers, indispensable in peace, are becoming ever more important in political conflicts and open warfare. This article is the sixth in a series examining the growing use of computer power as a weapon.

The United States is trying to improve cybersecurity by building relationships among international law enforcement agencies. State Department officials hold out as a model the Council of Europe Convention on Cybercrime, which took effect in 2004 and has been signed by 22 nations, including the United States but not Russia or China.

But Russia objects that the European convention on cybercrime allows the police to open an investigation of suspected online crime originating in another country without first informing local authorities, infringing on traditional ideas of sovereignty. Vladimir V. Sokolov, deputy director of the Institute for Information Security Issues, a policy organization, noted that Russian authorities routinely cooperated with foreign police organizations when they were approached.

This is not the first time the issue of arms control for cyberspace has been raised.

In 1996, at the dawn of commercial cyberspace, American and Russian military delegations met secretly in Moscow to discuss the subject. The American delegation was led by an academic military strategist, and the Russian delegation by a four-star admiral. No agreement emerged from the meeting, which has not previously been reported.

Later, the Russian government repeatedly introduced resolutions calling for cyberspace disarmament treaties before the United Nations. The United States consistently opposed the idea.

In late April, Russian military representatives indicated an interest in renewed negotiations at a Russian-sponsored meeting on computer security in Garmisch, Germany.

John Arquilla, an expert in military strategy at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., who led the American delegation at the 1996 talks, said he had received almost no interest from within the American military after those initial meetings. “It was a great opportunity lost,” he said.

Unlike American officials who favor tightening law enforcement relationships, Mr. Arquilla continues to believe in cyberspace weapons negotiations, he said. He noted that the treaties on chemical weapons had persuaded many nations not to make or stockpile such weapons.

The United States and China have not held high-level talks on cyberwar issues, specialists say. But there is some evidence that the Chinese are being courted by Russia for support of an arms control treaty for cyberspace.

“China has consistently attached extreme importance to matters of information security, and has always actively supported and participated in efforts by the international community dedicated to maintaining Internet safety and cracking down on criminal cyber-activity,” Qin Gang, spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, said in a statement.

Whether the American or Russian approach prevails, arms control experts said, major governments are reaching a point of no return in heading off a cyberwar arms race.

As Americans Struggle with College Costs, State Gives Discounted Tuition to Foreign Students

Under a new Washington State law, foreign guest workers — and their families who are in the United States — will be allowed to attend college by paying in-state tuition, even though the law does not extend that same benefit to American citizens who are from other states.

The law — which started as H.B. 1487 in the Washington State Legislature — was signed into law by Governor Christine Gregoire on April 25 and will take effect on July 1. The new law permits foreign workers with certain work visas, including H-1B visas, to access in-state tuition benefits. The law reduces Washington's in-state residency requirement from three years to one year for foreign workers and also eliminates the requirement that students must attend a Washington State high school to qualify for in-state tuition. The new rules also provide reduced tuition to family members of certain visa holders. (WA Bill Action, 2009 Session; Seattle Times, June 22, 2009; and Bellingham Herald, June 22, 2009).

Critics point out that the law could not have come at a worse time for Washingtonians. The law is expected to contribute to a loss of revenue for the state university system. Initial estimates predict that the University of Washington will lose $430,000 in tuition revenue and that Washington State University could lose approximately $215,000. (Id.). Beyond revenue loss, others have pointed out that the law also reduces the number of educational opportunities available to Washington State residents at a time when more people are looking to return to school to obtain advanced degrees.

Critics have dubbed the bill, which was proposed by a former Microsoft executive (State Rep. Ross Hunter (D-Medina)), the "Microsoft subsidy bill," because the Seattle-based software company will garner the bulk of the benefit from the new law. Recognizing that this law is nothing more than a corporate welfare bill at the expense of state residents, State Rep. Bob Hasegawa (D-Seattle) said: "We only allow X amount of [admission] slots for resident tuition rates and we are displacing those residents with H-1B visa holders, their families and dependents. Microsoft can well afford out-of-state tuition for its people." (Id.).

At the same time, the new law discriminates against American citizens because it does not extend in-state tuition benefits to U.S. citizens living outside of Washington State. Accordingly, under the bill, an H-1B visa holder could send a family member to a state university for a total annual cost of $7,677 during the next academic year, compared to the annual out-of-state tuition cost of $24,352 that an out-of-state American citizen would be forced to pay.

Washington State's move to reduce college costs for foreign born students comes on the heels of a recent New York Times article which concluded that American college students will have a harder time paying for college this coming school year. According to The Times, "Students looking for college scholarships are going to have a harder time this year as providers, hammered by falling investment returns and declining philanthropic support." (New York Times, June 26, 2009). The current economic climate has "led foundations, corporations, state governments and colleges themselves to reduce their support of providers of scholarships, and in recent months programs have been reduced or canceled outright. The cuts come as economic conditions make it harder for families to pay for college and as more unemployed people look for financing for retraining." (Id.).




http://www.fairus.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=20861&security=1601&news_iv_ctrl=1721#4

NPI Program to Esculate Cost of HeathCare

Switch to ICD-10 should be very costly
August 25, 2008 — 10:29am ET | By Anne Zieger

Tags;
National Provider Identifier (NPI)
ICD-9 Codes
ICD-10 Codes

Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

Health IT administrators are far from done in their struggles to implement the new National Provider Identifier number, which has proved to be every bit as troublesome as the industry predicted. But apparently, HHS was determined to raise the angst level further. With its recent announcement that it was pushing for an October 2011 deadline for the industry to switch from ICD-9-CM to ICD-10 codes, health organizations are bracing themselves for millions in additional IT and operational expenses.

ICD-9-CM codes, which are used for electronic claims processing, remittance, advice, eligibility inquiries, referral authorizations and more, have been in place for 30 years, but most other developed nations around the world use ICD-10 codes. The new code set will allow clinical IT systems to record far more specific and rich diagnostic information than ICD-9 codes, as it contains more than 155,000 codes, while ICD-9 contains only 17,000.

However, as readers can well imagine, such a switch will prove to be immensely complex, not to mention quite costly. While estimates vary from one consulting firm to another, HHS estimates the cost of the switch at $1.64 billion industry-wide, including $356 million in training costs, lost productivity costs of $572 million and system change costs of $713 million. Meanwhile, HHS has estimated that health IT vendors should take on $55 million to $137 million in initial costs as they adopt their products to the new requirements.

Then, there's the reimbursement nightmares to come. HHS admits that the switch--like the NPI cutover--could initially cause significant cash flow problems for providers because of the increased risk of payment hold-ups due to coding and systems problems. HHS is predicting that claims-error rates will rise between 6 and 10 percent of all claims at the ICD-10 implementation date, up from a normal 3 percent rate typically seen for annual updates of ICD-9. Ugh--stock up on Excedrin, folks.

To learn more about the HHS proposal:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)

Related Articles:
HHS proposes 2011 deadline for ICD-10 code adoption
CMS now says NPI must match IRS data

Click here to get the FierceHealthIT email newsletter


http://www.fiercehealthit.com/story/switch-icd-10-should-be-very-costly/2008-08-24?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal&utm_medium=rss&utm_source=rss&cmp-id=OTC-RSS-FHI0

CIA Crucified Prisoner in Abu Ghraib

The Central Intelligence Agency crucified a prisoner in Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, according to a report published in The New Yorker magazine.

“A forensic examiner found that he (the prisoner) had essentially been crucified; he died from asphyxiation after having been hung by his arms, in a hood, and suffering broken ribs,” the magazine’s Jane Mayer writes in the magazine’s June 22nd issue. “Military pathologists classified the case a homicide.” The date of the murder was not given.



“No criminal charges have ever been brought against any C.I.A. officer involved in the torture program, despite the fact that at least three prisoners interrogated by agency personnel died as a result of mistreatment,” Mayer notes.



An earlier report, by John Hendren in The Los Angeles Times indicted other torture killings. And Human Rights First says nearly 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan.



Hendren reported that one Manadel Jamadi died “of blunt-force injuries” complicated by “compromised respiration” at Abu Ghraib prison “while he was with Navy SEALs and other special operations troops.” Another victim, Abdul Jaleel, died while gagged and shackled to a cell door with his hands over his head.” Yet another prisoner, Maj. Gen. Abid Mowhosh, former commander of Iraq’s air defenses, “died of asphyxiation due to smothering and chest compression” in Qaim, Iraq.


"There is no question that U.S. interrogations have resulted in deaths," says Anthony Romero, executive director of the ACLU. "High-ranking officials who knew about the torture and sat on their hands and those who created and endorsed these policies must be held accountable. America must stop putting its head in the sand and deal with the torture scandal." At least scores of detainees in U.S. custody have died and homicide is suspected. As far back as May, 2004, the Pentagon conceded at least 37 deaths of prisoners in its custody in Iraq and Afghanistan had prompted investigations.



Nathaniel Raymond, of Physicians for Human Rights, told The New Yorker, “We still don’t know how many detainees were in the black sites, or who they were. We don’t fully know the White House’s role, or the C.I.A.’s role. We need a full accounting, especially as it relates to health professionals.”

Recently released Justice memos, he noted, contain numerous references to CIA medical personnel participating in coercive interrogation sessions. “They were the designers, the legitimizers, and the implementers,” Raymond said. “This is arguably the single greatest medical-ethics scandal in American history. We need answers.”



The ACLU obtained its information from the Pentagon through a Freedom of Information suit. Documents received included 44 autopsies and death reports as well as a summary of autopsy reports of people seized in Iraq and Afghanistan. An ACLU statement noted, “This covers just a fraction of the total number of Iraqis and Afghans who have died while in U.S. custody.” (Italics added).

Torture by the CIA has been facilitated by the Agency’s ability to hide prisoners in “black sites” kept secret from the Red Cross, to hold prisoners off the books, and to detain them for years without bringing charges or providing them with lawyers.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, denounced the Obama administration for considering “prevention detention,” The New Yorker’s Mayer wrote. Roth said this tactic “mimics the Bush Administration’s abusive approach.”

From all indications, CIA Director Panetta has no intention of bringing to justice CIA officials involved in the systematic torture of prisoners. Panetta told Mayer, “I’m going to give people the benefit of the doubt…If they do the job that they’re paid to do, I can’t ask for a hell of a lot more.”

Such sentiments differ markedly from those Panetta wrote in an article published last year in the January Washington Monthly: “We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don’t. There is no middle ground.”

One way to discern who really runs a country is to look to see which individuals, if any, are above the law. In the Obama administration, like its predecessors, they include the employees of the CIA. Crucifixions they execute in the Middle East differ from those reported in the New Testament in at least one important respect: Jesus Christ had a trial.

Sherwood Ross a contributing editor to MWC News, is a Miami-based public relations consultant and columnist who formerly worked for major dailies and as a columnist for wire services. Reach him at sherwoodr1[at]yahoo.com.
Articles by Sherwood Ross at MWC News http://mwcnews.net/SherwoodRoss



http://mwcnews.net/content/view/31544/26/

White House drafts executive order to allow indefinite detentions

White House drafts executive order to allow indefinite detentions

By ProPublica

Published: June 26, 2009

By Dafna Linzer and Peter Finn

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close Guantanamo, has drafted an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations.

Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

After months of internal debate over how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, White House officials are growing increasingly worried that reaching quick agreement with Congress on a new detention system may prove impossible. Several officials said there is concern in the White House that the administration may not be able to close the facility by the president’s January deadline.

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt did not directly respond to questions about an executive order but said the administration would address the cases of Guantanamo detainees in a manner “consistent with the national security interests of the United States and the interests of justice.”

One administration official suggested the White House was already trying to build support for an executive order.

“Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order,” the official said. Such an order could be rescinded and would not block later efforts to write legislation, but civil liberties groups generally oppose long-term detention, arguing that detainees should either be prosecuted or released.

The Justice Department has declined to comment on the prospects for a long-term detention system while internal reviews of Guantanamo detainees are underway. The reviews are expected to be completed by July 21.

In a May speech, President Obama broached the need for a system of long-term detention and suggested that it would include congressional and judicial oversight. “We must recognize that these detention policies cannot be unbounded. They can’t be based simply on what I or the executive branch decide alone,” the president said.

Some of Obama’s top legal advisers, along with a handful of influential Republican and Democratic lawmakers, have pushed for the creation of a “national security court” to supervise the incarceration of detainees deemed too dangerous to release but who cannot be charged or tried.

But the three senior government officials said the White House has turned away from that option, at least for now, because legislation establishing a special court would be both difficult to pass and likely to fracture Obama’s own party. These officials, as well as others interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about internal deliberations.

On the day Obama took office, 242 men were imprisoned at Guantanamo. In his May speech, the president outlined five strategies the administration would use to deal with them: criminal trials, revamped military tribunals, transfers to other countries, releases and continued detention.

Since the inauguration, 11 detainees have been released or transferred, one prisoner committed suicide and one was moved to New York to face terrorism charges in federal court.

Administration officials said the cases of about half of the remaining 229 detainees have been reviewed for prosecution or release. Two officials involved in a Justice Department review of possible prosecutions said the administration is strongly considering criminal charges in federal court for Khalid Sheik Mohammed and three other detainees accused of involvement in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The other half, the officials said, present the greatest difficulty because these detainees cannot be prosecuted either in federal court or military commissions. In many cases the evidence against them is classified, has been provided by foreign intelligence services, or has been tainted by the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. agreed with an assessment offered during congressional testimony this month that fewer than 25 percent of the detainees would be charged in criminal courts and that 50 others have been approved for transfer or release. One official said the administration is still hoping that as many as 70 Yemeni citizens will be moved, in stages, into a rehabilitation program in Saudi Arabia.

Three months into the Justice Department’s reviews, several officials involved said they have found themselves agreeing with conclusions reached years earlier by the Bush administration: As many as 90 detainees cannot be charged or released.

The White House has spent months meeting with key congressional leaders in the hopes of reaching agreement on long-term detention, even as public support for such a plan has wavered as lawmakers have sought to prevent detainees from being transferred to their constituencies.

Lawyers for the administration are now in negotiations with Sens. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.) and Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) over separate legislation that would revamp military commissions. A senior Republican staff member said that senators have yet to see “a comprehensive, detailed policy” on long-term detention from the administration.

“They can do it without congressional backing, but I think there would be very strong concerns,” the staff member said, adding that “Congress could cut off funding” for any detention system established in the United States.

Concerns are growing among Obama’s advisers that Congress may try to assert too much control over the process. This week Obama signed an appropriations bill that forces the administration to report to Congress before moving any detainee out of Guantanamo and prevents the White House from using available funds to move detainees onto U.S. soil.

“Legislation could kill Obama’s plans,” said one government official involved. The official said an executive order could be the best option for the president at this juncture. Under one White House draft that was being discussed earlier this month, according to administration officials, detainees would be imprisoned at a military facility on U.S. soil but their ongoing detention would be subject to annual presidential review. U.S. citizens would not be held in the system.

Such detainees — those at Guantanamo and those who may be captured in the future — would also have the right to legal representation during confinement and access to some of the information that is being used to keep them behind bars. Anyone detained under this order would have a right to challenge his detention before a judge.

Officials argue that the plan would give detainees more rights and allow them a better chance to one day end their indefinite incarceration than they have now at Guantanamo.

But some senior Democrats see longterm detention as tantamount to reestablishing the Guantanamo system on U.S. soil. “I think this could be a very big mistake, because of how such a system could be perceived throughout the world,” Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) told Holder.

One administration official said future transfers to the United States for long-term detention would be rare. Al-Qaeda operatives captured on the battlefield, which the official defined as Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and possibly the Horn of Africa, would be held in battlefield facilities. Suspects captured elsewhere in the world could be transferred to the United States for federal prosecution, turned over to local authorities or returned to their home countries.

“Going forward, unless it’s an extraordinary case, you will not see new transfers to the U.S. for indefinite detention,” the official said.

Instituting long-term detention through an executive order would leave Obama vulnerable to charges that he is willing to forsake the legislative branch of government, as his predecessor often did. Bush’s detention policies suffered successive defeats in the courts in part because they lacked congressional approval and tried to exclude judicial oversight.

“There is no statute prohibiting the president from doing this through executive order, and so far courts have not ruled in ways that would bar him from doing so,” said Matthew Waxman, who worked on detainee issues at the Defense Department during Bush’s first term. But Waxman, who waged a battle inside the Bush administration for more congressional cooperation, said the “courts are more likely to defer to the president and legislative branch when they speak with one voice on these issues.”

Walid bin Attash, who is accused of involvement in the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and who was held at a secret CIA prison, could be among those subject to long-term detention, according to one senior official.

Little information on bin Attash’s case has been made public, but officials who have reviewed his file said the Justice Department has concluded that none of the three witnesses against him can be brought to testify in court. One witness, who was jailed in Yemen, escaped several years ago. A second witness remains incarcerated, but the government of Yemen will not allow him to testify.

Administration officials believe that testimony from the only witness in U.S. custody, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, may be inadmissible because he was subjected to harsh interrogation while in CIA custody.

“These issues haven’t morphed simply because the administration changed,” said Juan Zarate, who served as Bush’s deputy national security adviser for counterterrorism and is now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“The challenge for the new administration is how to solve these legal questions of preventive detention in a way that is consistent with the Constitution, legitimate in the eyes of the world and doesn’t create security loopholes that cause Congress to worry,” Zarate said.

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. Its content is in the public domain.




http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/06/26/white-house-drafts-executive-order-to-allow-indefinite-detentions/