Proving that the 1978-founded New York City-based Human Rights Watch has a political agenda, Executive Director Kenneth Roth urged Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch to open up a probe of former Bush-43 administrations officials. HRW wants Lynch to investigate some 21 U.S. officials, including former President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and others connected to the Bush-43 administration. Contending the Senate’s Dec. 9, 2014 report of CIA practices in the wake of Sept. 11 provides proof of human rights crimes, HRW wants more investigation and prosecution. “It’s been a year since the Senate torture report, and still the Obama administration has not opened new investigations into CIA torture,” said Roth, urging the Justice Department to act.
A non-governmental organization with an annual budget of around $50 million, $10 million [20%] annually from billionaire hedge fund manager George Soros, HRW is an NGO chartered to protect human rights around the globe. Pushing the Justice Department to pursue criminal investigation into past CIA actions after Sept. 11, HRW wants Lynch to waste more taxpayer money. Proving that the timing now is political, Roth insists that the 2014 Senate report proves egregious criminal actions by former Bush-43 administration officials. “Without criminal investigations, which would remove torture as a policy option, Obama’s legacy will forever be poisoned,” said Roth, exposing his own bias. Roth refers largely to “waterboarding,” the controversial CIA technique used at “black ops” sites and Guantanamo Bay to extract actionable intelligence out of hardcore terrorist detainees.
Roth doesn’t talk about prosecuting al-Qaeda or now the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] for massacring U.S. citizens on Sept. 11 and more recently around the globe. HRW seeks to waste Justice Department money on a colossal goose chase to charge and prosecute former Bush-43 administration officials. Roth doesn’t talk of the nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens and foreign nationals murdered on Sept. 11 or prosecuting terrorist organizations, like ISIS, for really torturing and beheading U.S. citizens. GOP presidential candidate real estate mogul Donald Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos Nov. 22 he favored strong interrogation techniques, including water-boarding. “I would bring it back. Yes, I would bring it back,” Trump told Stephanopoulos regarding waterboarding. “I think waterboarding is peanuts compared what they [terrorists] do to us,” said Trump.
Pushing the prosecution issue over nearly seven years after the end of the Bush administrations shows how little common sense HRW has when it comes to dealing with national security. Roth doesn’t talk about the CIA waterboarding before the Bush-43 administration, only pointing fingers at former Bush-43 officials. When Sept. 11 blindsided U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the Bush administration was dumbfounded trying to protect U.S. national security. Ordinary national security agencies, including the CIA and FBI, failed to intercept Osama bin Laden’s grand Sept. 11 terrorist plot. While there are many objectionable practices, far worse than waterboarding in the Dec. 9, 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture, it’s clear that CIA consultants James Mitchell and Bruce Jansen found the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report overblown.
Senate Intelligence Committee officials released their report not to open prosecutions of former Bush-43 administration officials but to evaluate the limits of U.S. intelligence-gathering techniques. Mitchell and Jensen, chief architects of the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques,” made about $81 million, going overboard, getting dangerously close to the “torture” line. “What we’ve asked the Justice Department to do is take a fresh look, a comprehensive look, into what has occurred to basically leave no stone unturned in investigating possible violations,” said American Bar Assn. President Paulette Brown. Working closely with HRW, the ABA also has an ax to grind. Both groups know that the former Atty. Gen Eric Holder closed the door on criminal prosecutions in 2012. There’s nothing new in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report that Holder didn’t know.
Dredging up old news defaming the past Bush-43 administration plays well for Democrats during an election year but wastes precious government resources. However overboard Jensen and Mitichll went trying to find actionable intelligence in the wake of Sept. 11, it’s old news today, other than renewing, with certain GOP candidates, the need reconsider enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding. French officials, sifting through the rubble of the Nov. 13 ISIS terror attacks, would consider anything, including CIA enhanced interrogation techniques, to get actionable intelligence to prevent another terror attack. Whether the CIA’s program yielded actionable intelligence or not, no sovereign state can let well-meaning NGOs interfere with protecting national security. Prosecuting former Bush-43 officials does nothing other than play politics and waste money.
