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Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other 9/11 terror suspects had a pre-trial hearing before the Guantanamo Bay commission just over two weeks ago. And, yesterday, The Nation published a dispatch on the proceedings that is well worth reading and I wrote about how the government maintains the Guantanamo defendants’ thoughts and memories of torture at the hands of CIA interrogators should be considered classified.
I went on RT America to talk about the military commissions and made a few key points: this argument that the government controls the thoughts and memories is totalitarian and also designed to prevent the press and public from finding out about the torture terror suspects have experienced at the hands of the CIA. It also aims to protect torturers from being held accountable.
As I note, no person has been held accountable for torture or had his or her life ruined by a government prosecution for carrying out torture or authorizing torture. However, CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou has and that reality should not be ignored when assessing how the government is trying to prevent defendants’ talk about torture in the court room from being reported by the press.
2 Comments
Well done interview, Kevin.
I appreciate your restraint while being interviewed. I’m guessing that most people watching who might not be very familiar with the situation would accord you more credibility as a result of the restraint.
The government claiming it has control over a person’s memories is in keeping with the continuation of psychological torture it used on its prisoners.
I remember reading that the key to breaking someone in the detention facilities was to establish the fact that the jail keeper (an agent of the government) was God and as God could hold absolute power over the prisoner including, it appears now, the power in a courtroom to prevent the prisoner from speaking his/her mind.
If prisoners could speak ill of their captors in a courtroom wouldn’t this would break the spell the government hoped to cast and did cast in prison? What would happen to the unequal power dynamic the government has crafted for these detention facilities if a prisoner were “granted” the right to talk back in a courtroom?
Ultimately, of course, the government is trial ballooning these legal theories because it is desperate to prevent the news of government-sanctioned torture from reaching the ears of the greater public. It must think “because he is a terrorist!” is not the winning phrase it used to be in the court of public opinion.