Today, Greg Craig, the White House's top legal advisor, stepped down from the post he once described as his dream job. The speculation over the much-respected lawyer's resignation has been swirling for months, reaching a fever pitch back in October, when the New York Times published a story on the controversy in the White House office of legal counsel.

Craig's resignation comes on the day the administration announced it will    try Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- among the tougher Guantanamo cases from a prosecutorial stance, given that he was tortured and that the government hopes to seek the death penalty -- in federal court a few blocks from Ground Zero.

The most obvious reason (Craig gave none specifically in his resignation note) is that he was the person charged with closing the facility at Guantanamo Bay, determining how to relocate and try all of the detainees. When Obama came into office, he promised it would be done by Jan. 22, 2010. It will not, likely costing Craig his job. The October Times story explained:

When an administration stumbles, whispers begin and fingers point in search of someone to blame. At a certain point, assumptions can become self-fulfilling, and an official in the cross hairs finds it harder to do the job. In Mr. Craig’s case, friends said he was unfairly being made a scapegoat for decisions supported across the administration.

It is, of course, not a good thing that the administration has stumbled in its goal of closing Guantanamo. But it is worth considering that it isn't really Craig's fault at all.

Gitmo, ultimately, isn't closed because Craig did not take any of the easy ways out. He could have moved all of the prisoners to Bagram or another overseas military facility. He could have tried all of them in military commissions, the legal process jerry-rigged by the Bush administration. Because, in part, of Craig's insistence on taking each case separately and at least trying to conform to U.S. law, Guantanamo remains open.

It is a much lesser sin than what came before it. Craig is stepping down less due to his own failures than due to the extralegal maneuvering of the Bush administration. Lawyers like John Yoo and David Addington made a mockery of due process back then, and their sins are now being revisited upon members of the Obama administration. If anyone should have to answer for Greg Craig's job, it is John Yoo.

A large contingent of American bands have joined the Close Gitmo Now campaign in direct protest of the use of their music during torture practices at Guantanamo Bay. The new campaign is led by two retired generals: Lieutenant General Robert Gard and Brigadier General John Johns. Robert Gard has spoken out in defense of the musicians, stating:

"The musicians' music 'was used without their knowledge as part of the Bush administration's misguided policies'."

Popular artists such as REM, Pearl Jam, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Morello, Billy Bragg, Michelle Branch, Jackson Browne, and The Roots have signed an open letter to Congress requesting the declassification of government records concerning how music was utilized during "futility" interrogation tactics - making the prisoner feel hopeless while exploiting his psychological, moral, and sociological weaknesses.

Tom Morellon of Rage Against the Machine fame has expressed his peronsal rage against Dick Cheney:

"Guantanamo is known around the world as one of the places where human beings have been tortured - from water boarding, to stripping, hooding and forcing detainees into humiliating sexual acts - playing music for 72 hours in a row at volumes just below that to shatter the eardrums. Guantanamo may be Dick Cheney's idea of America, but it's not mine.  The fact that music I helped create was used in crimes against humanity sickens me - we need to end torture and close Guantanamo now."

But don't except every rock band to jump on board, some view the use of their music at Gitmo as an honor.

Above, Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against The Machine performs during the 2008 Republican National Convention (RNC) at the Target Center September 3, 2008 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Eric Thayer/Stringer/Getty Images

Yesterday, the New York Times reported on a leaked Pentagon document showing that one in seven detainees released from Guantanamo has returned to terrorism. 

An unreleased Pentagon report concludes that about one in seven of the 534 prisoners already transferred abroad from the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, are engaged in terrorism or militant activity, according to administration officials.

The conclusion could strengthen the arguments of critics who have warned against the transfer or release of any more detainees as part of President Obama's plan to shut down the prison by January. Past Pentagon reports on Guantánamo recidivism have been met with skepticism from civil liberties groups and criticized for their lack of detail. 

The one-in-seven statistic is problematic. It might be too high. It might be too low. The category of "terrorism or militant activity" is broad; tracking released detainees and determining what they're doing -- that's not easy.

It's clear that the finding will put additional pressure on Obama administration officials to hold detainees, rather than release them. 

More interesting will be the reaction of Bush administration defenders to this statistic. Does it mean we're minting terrorists in Guantanamo? Or does it mean these people were always too dangerous to release?

With a hat-tip to our incoming intern Michael Wilkerson, here's tape of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defending the Bush administration enhanced interrogation policies -- which she insists never led to torture -- speaking off-the-cuff at a Stanford University dorm. Here's a really quick transcript [updated] -- will correct for word-errors:

 

How are we supposed to continue promoting America as this guiding light of democracy and how are we supposed to win hearts and minds in the world as long as we continue with these actions?

Well, first of all, you do what's right. That's the most important thing -- that you make a judgment of what's right.  And in terms of enhanced interrogation, and rendition, and all the issues around the detainees. Abu Ghraib is, and everyone said, Abu Ghraib was not policy. Abu Ghraib was wrong and nobody would argue with...

Except that information that's come out since then speaks against that.

No, no, no -- the information that's come out since then continues to say that Abu Ghraib was wrong. Abu Ghraib was. But in terms of the enhanced interrogation and so forth, anything that was legal and was going to make this country safer, the president wanted to do. Nothing that was illegal. And nothing that was going to make the country less safe.

And I'll tell you something. Unless you were there in a position of responsibility after September 11^th, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans. And I know a lot of people are second-guessing now, but let me tell you what the second-guessing that would really have hurt me -- if the second-guessing had been about 3,000 more Americans dying because we didn't do everything we could to protect them.

If you were there in a position of authority, and watched Americans jump out of 80-story buildings because these murderous tyrants went after innocent people, then you were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again. And so I think people do understand that.

Now, as to Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and so forth -- I agree with you. We have tried to use the trafficking in persons and all of those measures, human rights reports and so forth, to put a spotlight on the kinds of problems that you have in places like Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or Oman or other places. But you can't -- you don't have the luxury in foreign policy of saying, alright, I won't deal with that country because I don't like its human rights record. You don't have that luxury. So if you need Saudi Arabia to fight al Qaeda internally -- which is by the way where al Qaeda came from -- or if you need Saudi Arabia to be part of a coalition that's going to help bring a Palestinian state, you can't decide not to deal with Saudi Arabia because of its problems with human rights. Or, if you need to make sure that the Gulf is safe from Iranian influence -- you want to talk about human rights abusers? -- Iran.

I'm well aware.

Excuse me?

I'm well aware.

So, foreign policy is full of tough choices. Very tough choices. The world is not a bunch of easy choices in which you get to make ones that always feel good.

I'm aware, but...[I'm sorry, we have to move]

Let him finish, let him finish.

Even in World War II, as we faced Nazi Germany -- probably the greatest threat that America has ever faced -- even then...

With all due respect, Nazi Germany never attacked the homeland of the United States.

No, but they bombed our allies...

No. Just a second. Three thousand Americans died in the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

500,000 died in World War II, and yet we did not torture the prisoners of war.

And we didn't torture anybody here either. Alright?

We tortured them in Guantanamo Bay.

No, no dear, you're wrong. Alright. You're wrong. We did not torture anyone. And Guantanamo Bay, by the way, was considered a model "medium security prison" by representatives of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe who went there to see it. Did you know that?

 Were they present for the interrogations?

No. Did you know that the Organization -- just answer me -- did you know that the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe said Guantanamo was a model medium security prison?

No, but I feel that changes nothing...

No -- Did you know that?

I did not know that, but that changes absolutely nothing.

Alright, no -- if you didn't know that, maybe before you make allegations about Guantanamo you should read.

Now, the ICRC also had access to Guantanamo, and they made no allegations about interrogations at Guantanamo. What they did say is that they believe indefinite detention, where people didn't know whether they'd come up for trial, which is why we tried with the military commissions system to let people come up for trial. Those trials were stayed by whom? Who kept us from holding the trials?

I can't answer that question.

Do your homework first.

I have a question...

Yes. The Supreme Court.

I read a recent report, recently, that said that you did a memo, you were the one who authorized torture to the -- I'm sorry, not torture, waterboarding. Is waterboarding torture?

The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations, under the Convention Against torture. So that's -- and by the way, I didn't authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency. That they had policy authorization subject to the Justice Department's clearance. That's what I did.

Okay. Is waterboarding torture?

I just said -- the United States was told, we were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so, by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture.

Thank you.

Alright.

 

That's the most articulated defense of enhanced interrogation -- now, we call it torture -- we have from a high-ranking Bush official. 

Earlier today, I spoke with veteran Washington Post reporter Dana Priest. My question was simple: At what point did it become clear that the United States' treatment of detainees in overseas prisons was harsh, and possibly illegal? (For more FP torture coverage, see here.)

Allegations of detainee abuse first started trickling out in January 2002 -- in essence, as soon as detainees came into U.S. custody. But it wasn't until eleven months later that Priest and fellow Post reporter Barton Gellman wrote the first definitive account of such abuse. On the day after Christmas, 2002, the Post described "stress and duress" tactics, extraordinary rendition to countries like Syria, and the harsh treatment of al Qaeda operative Abu Zubayda. The article used the word torture -- saying that the United States harshly interrogated prisoners, and sent them to foreign prisons to gain the "fruits" of torture without having to do it themselves.

According to one official who has been directly involved in rendering captives into foreign hands, the understanding is, "We don't kick the [expletive] out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the [expletive] out of them."

Back then, the CIA was Priest's beat. She says her tip-off on the "stress and duress" story came when she noticed a separate, unmarked compound near the main Bagram holding facility. "It wasn't in the military compound," she says. "But it was surrounded with triple concertina wire," the type used in high-security prisons. "I thought -- they have a separate facility, so are they working under separate rules? I knew the CIA and military were working in teams together, but at what?"

She and a team of Post reporters, among them Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Barton Gellman, working in parallel and in competition to New York Times writers like Tim Golden and Carlotta Gall, started piecing the stories together. "Really, there were just a handful of reporters who could make inroads on the subject," she says.

The reporting was painstaking. "It was a very decentralized thing. You weren't even sure what the questions were," she says. "We couldn't connect it up. We couldn't see the big picture. And there was no past reporting to go on. Everyone was making it up. We'd follow these little reports from Afghanistan, about people disappearing. That was it."

Crucial to the success of the early reporting were the teams of lawyers at organizations like the Center for Constitutional Rights struggling to glean information on detainees. "We were all getting little teeny scraps and putting it together painstakingly," she says. "Nobody told you the whole story, or even a quarter of a story." One Post article on an extraordinary rendition came together because a someone happened to write down the number on the tail of an airplane. "You needed to keep those little scraps in your head," Priest notes.

Another big break -- for which she won a Pulitzer Prize -- came when she completed a story about the black sites, secret overseas prisons. The story took more than two years to report, and, she says, reporting on the subject still didn't get much easier -- it took years for Congress to devote as much attention to it as reporters and defense lawyers were.

"Congress did nothing," she says, "until political winds had changed, and the Democrats were feeling a little more at ease in the world. It's a new feeling for them. Because, before, there were Democrats in those meetings saying, ‘Do what you've got to do.'"

Alex Wong/Getty Images

There's been a wealth of information released on the treatment and torture of detainees in U.S. custody in the past days. Here's a capsule of the new news:

• The Senate Armed Services Committee released a declassified report, written in November, 2008.  The report describes how the Pentagon used SERE techniques, meant to help captured soldiers resist foreign interrogators, to break down U.S. detainees.

• A New York Times story pointed out that the CIA did no due diligence on the history of SERE techniques before using them on detainees.

• The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released a narrative history of the harsh treatment of detainees like Abu Zubayda. It works through the myriad overlapping Office of Legal Counsel opinions pertaining to detainee treatment.  

• Last week, the Obama administration released four memos, requested by the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act, detailing the Bush administration's legal case for torture. The memos, which had few redactions, described in intricate detail what happened to detainees during interrogations -- including forced nudity, forced wakefulness, beatings and slappings.  

• A blogger parsing released memos found that Abu Zubayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, two of the three people waterboarded at the hands of CIA interrogators, were waterboarded 266 times. 

• Questions arose about whether the brutal treatment of detainees ever led to actionable intelligence. To this end, in a Fox News interview, former Vice President Dick Cheney asked for the release of memos showing that waterboarding worked. Marc Thiessen, a former George W. Bush speechwriter, took to the pages of the Washington Post's editorial section to argue that enhanced interrogation prevented terrorist attacks.

• President Obama went forward and back about the prosecution for the CIA agents who tortured detainees; ultimately the decision belongs to Attorney General Eric Holder. Top torture reporter Jane Mayer at The New Yorker started to deconstruct the "invisibility cloak" President Obama cast last week. 

One of the most interesting things about the four newly released Bush administration memos on the “enhanced interrogation” of detainees in overseas secret CIA prisons has been what isn’t in there, rather than what is. The truly grotesque caterpillar revelation aside, the memos weren’t very revelatory. We already knew about the SERE techniques. We knew that medical professionals attended them -- and that Jay Bybee, then an administration lawyer, now a federal judge, felt the presence of medical professionals meant it wasn’t torture.

But Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch, pointed me to one truly new detail, in a footnote in the May 2005 memo from Steven Bradbury to John Rizzo, a CIA lawyer. Here’s footnote 28:

“This is not to say that the interrogation program has worked perfectly. According to the IG Report, the CIA, at least initially, could not always distinguish detainees who had information but were successfully resisting interrogation from those who did not actually have the information….On at least one occasion, this may have resulted in what might be deemed in retrospect to have been the unnecessary use of enhanced techniques. On that occasion, although the on-scene interrogation team judged Zubaydah to be compliant, elements within CIA headquarters still believed he was withholding information. [REDACTED PORTION.] At the direction of CIA Headquarters, interrogators therefore used the waterboard one more time on Zubaydah.”

Which marks the first time a memo has admitted that waterboarding was “unnecessary.”

Scott Horton reports that Spanish prosecutors will indict high-ranking members of the Bush administration over allegations of detainee abuse and torture.

The six are: former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee; former OLC lawyer John Yoo; former Defense Department lawyer William J. Haynes II; David Addington, a former adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; and former Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith.

Horton explains the context of the case:

The case arises in the context of a pending proceeding before the court involving terrorism charges against five Spaniards formerly held at Guantánamo. A group of human-rights lawyers originally filed a criminal complaint asking the court to look at the possibility of charges against the six American lawyers. Baltasar Garzón Real, the investigating judge, accepted the complaint and referred it to Spanish prosecutors for a view as to whether they would accept the case and press it forward. [They found sufficient evidence.]

The case won't come before Judge Real, though; he also was involved in a terrorism case against the five Spaniards held in Guantanamo. 

What does it all mean?

Well, John Yoo won't be vacationing on the Costa del Sol this summer. Were any of the Bush Six to step foot in Spain, they would be arrested. 

More importantly: Spain has said that it would drop the cases if the United States would investigate the claim. Thus far, the U.S. Department of Justice and the White House haven't responded. But the indictment may force the administration's hand, spurring a response to the allegations.

For, ultimately, the issue may have more political potency than judicial importance. It's up to U.S. President Barack Obama to dictate whether and how the strong allegations of legal abuses in the Bush administration will be resolved. 

In a press release, Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice announce the withdrawal of the "enemy combatant" definition of Gitmo detainees. The memo says that, under President Obama's orders, the department is reviewing detention policy:

In a filing today with the federal District Court for the District of Columbia, the Department of Justice submitted a new standard for the government’s authority to hold detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Detention Facility. The definition does not rely on the President’s authority as Commander-in-Chief independent of Congress’s specific authorization. It draws on the international laws of war to inform the statutory authority conferred by Congress. It provides that individuals who supported al Qaeda or the Taliban are detainable only if the support was substantial. And it does not employ the phrase "enemy combatant."

The Department also submitted a declaration by Attorney General Eric Holder stating that, under executive orders issued by President Obama, the government is undertaking an interagency review of detention policy for individuals captured in armed conflicts or counterterrorism operations as well as a review of the status of each detainee held at Guantanamo. The outcome of those reviews may lead to further refinements of the government’s position as it develops a comprehensive policy.

The memo states that the government will no longer detain combatants who provided "insignificant or insubstantial" support to al Qaeda or the Taliban. (The Bush administration came under fierce criticism for holding persons with little or no connection to the terrorist organizations.) More than 200 remain incarcerated at Camp Delta; it's unclear if any -- or how many -- will be released under the new legal standards. 

Photo: Paul J. Richards/AFP/Getty Images

In a report made public today in The Guardian, a U.N. watchdog castigates Britain for its role in facilitating the United States' torture of detainees in secret prisons: 

The Special Rapporteur remains deeply troubled that the United States has created a comprehensive system of extraordinary renditions, prolonged and secret detention, and practices that violate the prohibition against torture and other forms of ill-treatment. This system required an international web of exchange of information and has created a corrupted body of information which was shared systematically with partners in the war on terror through intelligence cooperation, thereby corrupting the institutional culture of the legal and institutional systems of recipient States.

While this system was devised and put in place by the United States, it was only possible through collaboration from many other States. There exist consistent, credible reports suggesting that at least until May 2007 a number of States facilitated extraordinary renditions in various ways. States such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Georgia, Indonesia, Kenya, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Pakistan and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland have provided intelligence or have conducted the initial seizure of an individual before he was transferred to (mostly unacknowledged) detention centres in Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Pakistan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, Thailand, Uzbekistan, or to one of the CIA covert detention centres, often referred to as “black sites”. In many cases, the receiving States reportedly engaged in torture and other forms of ill-treatment of these detainees.

The special rapporteur, Martin Scheinen, states that British intelligence officers interviewed detainees in "so-called safe houses where they were being tortured" and that they "conducted or witnessed just over 2,000 interviews in Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and Iraq." He calls for whistle-blower protections and the revision of numerous policies to safe-guard human rights. The revelations aren't that revelatory, given past reports on the participation of European countries in rendition and "enhanced interrogation." But the tone's especially fire-and-brimstone in this iteration.

And, the report comes as concern over the Britain'ss collusion in the mistreatment of detainees comes to a fever pitch. Last month, Binyam Mohammed, a British national arrested in Pakistan, returned to the U.K. after seven years of detention. He told papers, "Mentally right now, the result of my experience is that I feel emotionally dead....When I realised that the British were co-operating with the people torturing me, I felt completely naked. They sold me out."

Additionally, members of parliament are calling for the government to release classified documents which detail its cooperation and participation with U.S. interrogators. And the country is considering accepting more prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, to hasten its closure.

All in all, it's an issue that's received an extraordinary amount of attention and garnered extraordinary public debate in Great Britain -- even more so than in the United States. And it isn't good news for poor Prime Minister Gordon Brown, just coming off the worst week ever.

Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images