A newly declassified narrative of the Bush administration's advice to the CIA on harsh interrogations shows that the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing controversial interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

At the same time, the narrative suggests that then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell were largely left out of the decision-making process.

The narrative, posted Wednesday on the Senate Intelligence Committee's Web site and released by its former chairman, Sen. Jay Rockefeller , D- W.Va. , came as Attorney General Eric Holder told reporters that he'd "follow the evidence wherever it takes us" in deciding whether to prosecute any Bush administration officials who authorized harsh techniques that are widely considered torture.

In a statement accompanying the narrative's release, Rockefeller said the task of declassifying interrogation and detention opinions "is not complete" and urged prompt declassification of other opinions from 2006 and 2007 that he said would show how Bush Justice Department officials interpreted laws governing torture and war crimes.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/3218102;_ylt=Al.EVSsWtedhG2JdUXk77wus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTI5OTA2MmdsBGFzc2V0A21jY2xhdGNoeS8yMDA5MDQyMi8zMjE4MTAyBGNwb3MDMwRwb3MDOQRzZWMDeW5fdG9wX3N0b3J5BHNsawNjaGVuZXk-

and then …..

from Alternet …..

Suddenly, accountability is all the rage: for days the networks have been covering every public statement uttered by President Obama and his officials, looking for signs that, contrary to their past rhetoric, there might be plans to prosecute Bush officials who authorized torture.

For those who have been covering this issue for many months, that the accountability debate is now front and center in the corporate press is a welcome development. But it is just as critical right now to support the efforts of all the people and organizations who have been pushing for accountability for years.

David Swanson, the tireless co-founder of AfterDowningStreet.org has unveiled a great new resource compiling links and information pushing for the impeachment of Jay Bybee, who is currently employed as a federal judge despite the bogus and sadistic "legal" analysis on display in his declassified memo.

Of course, the movement for accountability for Bush era crimes is much bigger than Bybee.

Go here to sign a statement calling for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate all top-level Bush officials for their abuse of power in the so-called "war on terror."

And for more breaking coverage of the torture memos, including who is calling for prosecutions, and even more damning revelations contained in a just-declassified Senate Armed Services Committee report, be sure to check out AlterNet's Rights & Liberties Special Coverage. (There just isn't room to include all of it in this newsletter.)

meanwhile, back at the mad hatter’s place …..

It's not considered politically correct - even among the high-profile progressive political blogs that are now quoted by the D.C. Beltway corporate media - to accuse the Bush Administration of murder and sadism. It's "the wave" now to urge an investigation of the torture memos and potential prosecution, but the reality that torture resulted in the murders of an untold number of detainees in the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld Gulag is not discussed much.

This reminder of murder in the name of the "War on Terror" clearly makes many Americans uncomfortable.  But if one becomes a denier of death by torture, such as the one detailed in "Taxi to the Dark Side," one is conceding one of the biggest right-wing talking points: how can it be torture if no one died? The reality is that many did indeed die from torture, but the Bush Administration went to great lengths to ensure that the highest profile Al Qaeda detainees were not murdered, just so that they could make the case of "no harm, no foul."

http://buzzflash.com/articles/node/8289

over at the quality department …..

A little known Pentagon agency that trained US troops to resist torture promoted the use of some of the same interrogation techniques on Al-Qaeda, which were aired and quickly authorized at high levels of the US government, a Senate investigation has found.

Warnings by military lawyers about both the legality and the effectiveness of techniques that were modeled on methods used by China to extract false confessions from US prisoners in the Korean War were ignored, the report found.

Released Wednesday, the investigation traced the interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and that later spread to Afghanistan and Iraq to the Pentagon's Joint Personnel Recovery Agency (JPRA).

The agency oversees the military's Survival Evasion Resistance and Escape (SERE) training, which prepares captured military personnel to withstand interrogations that do not abide by the Geneva Conventions.

The techniques used at SERE schools were strikingly similar to those that later surfaced at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere: nudity, stress positions, hoods, treatment like animals, sleep disruption, loud music and flashing lights, and exposure to extreme temperatures.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5g7Ga-qBv6e8ajiIldnUw6U1cSnJA

whilst monty python lives on …..

The chief justice of the British High Court on Wednesday gave the British government one week to obtain the US release of classified information about the alleged torture of a British resident who'd been detained at the US military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The court indicated that it would issue its own order if the government doesn't respond or justify why continued secrecy is warranted.

Noting that President Barack Obama had released highly sensitive documents tracing the decisions on torture during the Bush administration's war on terror, the high court judges voiced exasperation that the British government hasn't acted in what they said was the British public interest in being similarly open.

The hearing illustrated how Obama's decision to be more transparent about his predecessor's detainee policies is having ripple effects abroad, but it also threw the ball back to the Obama administration to approve release of the contested information.

http://www.truthout.org/042309T