{"id":66993,"date":"2005-11-06T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-11-06T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2005\/11\/06\/laffaire-du-goulag-de-la-cia-et-la-presse-us\/"},"modified":"2005-11-06T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2005-11-06T00:00:00","slug":"laffaire-du-goulag-de-la-cia-et-la-presse-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/2005\/11\/06\/laffaire-du-goulag-de-la-cia-et-la-presse-us\/","title":{"rendered":"L’affaire du \u201cGoulag de la CIA\u201d et la presse US<\/em><\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"

L’affaire du Goulag de la CIA et la presse US<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t6 novembre 2005 Dans l’affaire dite du CIA’s Gulag<\/em>, ou encore l’affaire des black sites<\/em> qui concerne la new Europe<\/a> (version Rumsfeld, cette fois on ne peut mieux dire), il existe un aspect int\u00e9rieur (am\u00e9ricain) int\u00e9ressant : l’article du 2 novembre<\/a> du Washington Post<\/em> et ce qu’il ne dit pas.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tLe d\u00e9bat est f\u00e9roce aux USA parce que le Post<\/em> a intentionnellement \u00e9cart\u00e9 l’identification des pays concern\u00e9s, \u00e0 la demande de l’administration GW. Pour certains, dans le milieu du journalisme am\u00e9ricain, c’est une d\u00e9cision extr\u00eamement dommageable, pour la profession et sur le plan \u00e9thique lui-m\u00eame (en omettant cette identification, le Post<\/em> dissimule ce qu’il sait d’activit\u00e9s dont il reconna\u00eet lui-m\u00eame qu’elles sont ill\u00e9gales et moralement tr\u00e8s condamnables).<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCi-dessous, nous reprenons un texte de l’organisation FAIR en date du 4 novembre sur cette question pr\u00e9cis\u00e9ment : The Consequences of Covering Up<\/a>. Ce texte, justement, publie un de ces avis qui condamnent de fa\u00e7on irr\u00e9vocable cette attitude du Washington Post<\/em>:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t\u00ab The Post’s decision has struck some experts as enormously significant. National Security Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh, told CJR Daily (11\/2\/05), This is probably the most important newspaper capitulation since [the New York Times] yielded to JFK’s call for them not to run the full story of planning for the Bay of Pigs. By withholding the country names, the Post is directly enabling the rendition, secret detention, and torture of prisoners at these locations to continue. That is a ghastly responsibility.<\/em> \u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tCe d\u00e9bat aux USA nous para\u00eet tr\u00e8s int\u00e9ressant. Nous proposons plusieurs raisons pour en juger de cette fa\u00e7on:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• Le s\u00e9rieux, la pr\u00e9cision du d\u00e9bat, la vigueur de la pol\u00e9mique, sont une indication solide pour penser que les informations du Post<\/em> sont fond\u00e9es, et fond\u00e9 \u00e9galement ce qu’on nous dit de nos petits nouveaux \u00e0 l’Est. Conclusion : le service de damage control<\/a> de la Commission europ\u00e9enne n’est pas au bout de ses peines et nous pourrions avoir, assez vite, l’une ou l’autre mauvaise surprise. Le Post<\/em> a lev\u00e9 un li\u00e8vre, en lui coupant une de ses pattes ; le reste de la profession va se mettre au travail pour retrouver ce porte-bonheur et, vu les dissidences qui existent actuellement au sein de la CIA, il est assez probable qu’on trouvera les sources et les documents qu’il faut. Le d\u00e9put\u00e9 Janusz Onyszkiewicz a encore de quoi alimenter ses pr\u00e9occupations<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• Le premier point ci-dessus est d’autant plus \u00e0 prendre en consid\u00e9ration que les Am\u00e9ricains se foutent du tiers comme du quart des cons\u00e9quences de ces informations au sein de l’Europe institutionnelle. Pour eux, comptent d’une part le d\u00e9bat professionnel et \u00e9thique, comme on l’a vu, et d’autre part la d\u00e9fense de la guerre contre le terrorisme du point de vue de l’administration, comme il est not\u00e9 dans le texte de FAIR (\u00ab The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.<\/em> \u00bb) Cela signifie que les publications et les actes \u00e0 ce propos, aux USA, y compris venus de l’administration, ne tiendront gu\u00e8re de compte des effets au niveau institutionnel europ\u00e9en, y compris des effets pr\u00e9visibles. Il est possible qu’on ne se soit aper\u00e7u de rien \u00e0 cet \u00e9gard (quant aux remous au sein de l’UE), \u00e0 Washington.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\t• Preuve que nous ne sommes pas au bout de nos peines\/de nos surprises, cet article du Sunday Times<\/a> de Londres affirme que la fuite sur le CIA’s Gulag<\/em> vient d’un agent de la CIA: \u00ab George W Bush’s administration ordered an internal inquiry into how classified data was leaked to The Washington Post and Human Rights Watch, a New York-based group. Senior intelligence sources blamed the leak on CIA officers unhappy at having to maintain what one former counter-terrorism official described as secret gulags.<\/em> \u00bb C’est la confirmation que la fili\u00e8re des fuites est bien ouverte et pourrait continuer \u00e0 alimenter des r\u00e9v\u00e9lations sur le sujet.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tVoici le texte de FAIR.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Consequences of Covering Up<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\tBy FAIR, 4 November, 2005<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOn November 2, the Washington Post carried an explosive front-page story about secret Eastern European prisons set up by the CIA for the interrogation of terrorism suspects. While the Post article, by reporter Dana Priest, gave readers plenty of details, it also withheld the most crucial information the location of these secret prisons at the request of government officials.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tAccording to the Post, virtually nothing is known about these so-called \u00a0\u00bbblack sites,\u00a0\u00bb which would be illegal in the United States. Given the abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, news that the U.S. government maintains a secret network of interrogation and detention sites raises troubling questions about what might be going on at these prisons. The Post reports that \u00a0\u00bbofficials familiar with the program\u00a0\u00bb acknowledge that disclosure of the secret prison program \u00a0\u00bbcould open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tBut the Washington Post did its part to minimize those potential risks: <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program, at the request of senior U.S. officials. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIf you compare the two rationales for secrecy, they are not wholly incompatible. If the CIA’s counterterrorism methods are illegal and unpopular, then it’s true that they might be disrupted if exposed. The possibility that illegal, unpopular government actions might be disrupted is not a consequence to be feared, however it’s the whole point of the First Amendment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tOne can’t deny that countries that host secret CIA prisons might possibly be targets of retaliation; terrorist attacks in Spain and Britain appear to be connected to those countries’ involvement in the occupation of Iraq. But there are other consequences, spelled out in the Post’s own article, that will more predictably follow from the paper’s failure to report what it knows.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tWithout the basic fact of where these prisons are, it’s difficult if not impossible for \u00a0\u00bblegal challenges\u00a0\u00bb or \u00a0\u00bbpolitical condemnation\u00a0\u00bb to force them to close. As the Post notes, there has been \u00a0\u00bbwidespread prisoner abuse\u00a0\u00bb in U.S. military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan–including prisoners who have apparently been tortured to death–even though the military \u00a0\u00bboperates under published rules and transparent oversight of Congress.\u00a0\u00bb Given that Vice President Dick Cheney and CIA Director Porter Goss are seeking to exempt the CIA from legislation that would prohibit \u00a0\u00bbcruel and degrading treatment\u00a0\u00bb of prisoners, and that CIA-approved \u00a0\u00bbEnhanced Interrogation Techniques\u00a0\u00bb include torture techniques like \u00a0\u00bbwaterboarding,\u00a0\u00bb there’s no reason to think that prisons that operate in total secrecy will have fewer abuses than Abu Ghraib or Afghanistan’s Bagram. Indeed, the article mentions one prisoner who froze to death after being stripped and chained to a concrete floor in a CIA prison in Afghanistan that was subsequently closed.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tIt’s also likely that many of the people subject to these abuses are innocent of any crime. The Post article notes that the secret prison system was originally intended for top Al-Qaeda prisoners, but \u00a0\u00bbas the volume of leads pouring into the [CIA’s Counterterrorism Center] from abroad increased, and the capacity of its paramilitary group to seize suspects grew, the CIA began apprehending more people whose intelligence value and links to terrorism were less certain, according to four current and former officials.\u00a0\u00bb That people will be imprisoned whose links to crime are \u00a0\u00bbless certain\u00a0\u00bb–which is to say, people who would probably found innocent in a court of law–is a predictable consequence of secret prisons with no due process or access to outside observers.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe Post article’s discussion of prisoner abuse and doubtful terror links makes it clear that the paper was aware of these sorts of consequences. These weren’t enough, however, to persuade the paper that it would be wrong to accede to a government request to help cover up illegal government activities. (As the article notes, \u00a0\u00bbLegal experts and intelligence officials said that the CIA’s internment practices…would be considered illegal under the laws of several host countries, where detainees have rights to have a lawyer or to mount a defense against allegations of wrongdoing.\u00a0\u00bb)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe paper should consider, then, that its decision put at risk not only the secret prisoners, but also potentially endangers U.S. soldiers and civilians. As a Newsday investigation concluded (10\/31\/05), \u00a0\u00bbthe United States is detaining enough innocent Afghans in its war against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda that it is seriously undermining popular support for its presence in Afghanistan.\u00a0\u00bb More broadly, by embracing illegal and inhumane methods to combat its enemies, the U.S. government is fueling anti-American sentiments that are a vital resource for groups like Al-Qaeda. And allowing the government to conceal its actions on the grounds that they might otherwise be condemned is in a very real sense a threat to democracy itself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe Post’s decision has struck some experts as enormously significant. National Security Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh, told CJR Daily (11\/2\/05), \u00a0\u00bbThis is probably the most important newspaper capitulation since [the New York Times] yielded to JFK’s call for them not to run the full story of planning for the Bay of Pigs. By withholding the country names, the Post is directly enabling the rendition, secret detention, and torture of prisoners at these locations to continue. That is a ghastly responsibility.\u00a0\u00bb<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tBut the Post is not the only U.S. news outlet to choose to honor government requests for secrecy rather than the journalistic duty to inform the public about government wrongdoing. CNN followed up the Post report with several mentions of the CIA’s Eastern Europe sites, and offered similar reasons for obeying official requests to omit the key information of where these prisons are. CNN reporter David Ensor said (11\/2\/05), \u00a0\u00bbU.S. intelligence officials insist the problem is these prisons are still supplying useful intelligence in the war against terrorism\u00a0\u00bb as if effectiveness could justify concealing a program that would be shut down as illegal and reprehensible if it were exposed. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tWhen anchor Wolf Blitzer noted that the names of the countries were \u00a0\u00bbcirculating on the Internet,\u00a0\u00bb Ensor replied that while \u00a0\u00bba couple of newspapers\u00a0\u00bb were releasing more specific information about the location of the prisons, \u00a0\u00bbCNN is taking the view that we don’t have enough sources, we don’t have official sources, and frankly, we are concerned about the possibility that, as U.S. officials have said to us, lives could be as stake.\u00a0\u00bb Lives are at stake, of course, whether CNN chooses to report the facts or not; this is the case in many subjects routinely covered by journalists.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tThe \u00a0\u00bbother newspapers\u00a0\u00bb that Ensor referred to included the Financial Times, which reported on November 3:<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tHuman Rights Watch, a U.S. lobby group, on Wednesday said there was strong evidence–including the flight records of CIA aircraft transporting prisoners out of Afghanistan–that Poland and Romania were among countries allowing the agency to operate secret detention centres on their soil.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\tHuman Rights Watch’s charges are admittedly based on inference, whereas the Washington Post appears to have direct confirmation from officials familiar with the \u00a0\u00bbblack sites\u00a0\u00bb program as to where the prisons are located. It’s possible that the human rights group has misidentified the countries, in which case the risk of \u00a0\u00bbterrorist retaliation\u00a0\u00bb cited by the Post as a rationale for concealing information will fall on nations that aren’t even involved. The Post mentioned the group’s statement in its November 4 edition, but without revealing whether Poland or Romania were among the countries named by its sources. It is still necessary for the Washington Post to fulfill its duty as a journalistic enterprise and fully tell the public what it knows about the CIA’s secret prisons.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\t[Notre recommandation est que ce texte doit \u00eatre lu avec la mention classique \u00e0 l’esprit, Disclaimer: In accordance with 17 U.S.C. 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only..]<\/em><\/strong> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

L’affaire du Goulag de la CIA et la presse US 6 novembre 2005 Dans l’affaire dite du CIA’s Gulag, ou encore l’affaire des black sites qui concerne la new Europe (version Rumsfeld, cette fois on ne peut mieux dire), il existe un aspect int\u00e9rieur (am\u00e9ricain) int\u00e9ressant : l’article du 2 novembre du Washington Post et… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[625,3430,3248],"class_list":["post-66993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faits-et-commentaires","tag-fair","tag-post","tag-washington"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66993","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66993"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66993\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.dedefensa.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}