Today the House Subcommittee on Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties held and hearing titled: Oversight Hearing on Torture and the Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading Treatment of Detainees: The Effectiveness and Consequences of "Enhanced" Interrogation.
Apparently shortly before the hearing the Pentagon ordered a Marine Corps prosecutor who was scheduled to testify not to attend.
Pentagon blocks testimony of former Marine prosecutor who alleges torture
Here is a link to the dKos Liveblog of the event: Liveblog Torture Mothership
It was an astounding hearing that began to give some indication of the pervasiveness of torture by the US Government.
What is truly fascinating given what was revealed by the other witnesses, is what the Pentagon must have been so concerned that this Marine would have said if allowed to testify.
Here's the scoop:
A former Marine Corps prosecutor was set to testify before Congress on Thursday that harsh interrogation techniques had tainted his case against an alleged Al Quaeda terrorist -- until a last minute email from the Pentagon told him not to.
Lt. Col. Stuart Crouch, a former lawyer with the Marines now working as a military judge, was prepared to tell a House Judiciary subcommittee about his refusal to prosecute suspected terrorist Mohamedou Slahi in 2004 after reportedly discovering that severe measures had been used to extract incriminating statements from the Guantanamo Bay detainee. Crouch considers the methods used by interrogators to be torture, according to the Wall Street Journal who first reported the story.
Crouch told the Journal that he had previously told superiors about the scheduled appearance and received no objection. But on Wednesday he received an email informing him that the Pentagon's general counsel had determined that "as a sitting judge and former prosecutor, it is improper for you to testify about matters still pending in the military court system, and you are not to appear before the Committee to testify tomorrow."
Conyer's was outraged and says he might subpoena Crouch, who in a March Inerview with the Journal said:
...that he informed former Army chief-prosecutor Col. Bob Swann in 2004 that he was "morally opposed" to the interrogation techniques used against the detainee, and refused to participate in a prosecution on those grounds alone.
...and he says that his reasons for refusing were driven by his religious beliefs:
In May 2004, attending a baptism at Virginia's Falls Church, Col. Couch joined the congregation in reciting the liturgy. The reading concluded, as is typical, with the priest asking if congregants will "respect the dignity of every human being."
"When I heard that, I knew I gotta get off the fence," Col. Couch says. "Here was somebody I felt was connected to 9/11, but in our zeal to get information, we had compromised our ability to prosecute him." He says, in retrospect, the tipping point came with the forged letter about Mr. Slahi's mother. "For me, that was just, enough is enough. I had seen enough, I had heard enough, I had read enough. I said: 'That's it.' "
In May 2004, at a meeting with the then-chief prosecutor, Army Col. Bob Swann, Col. Couch dropped his bombshell. He told Col. Swann that in addition to legal reasons, he was "morally opposed" to the interrogation techniques "and for that reason alone refused to participate in [the Slahi] prosecution in any manner."
Col. Swann was indignant, Col. Couch says, replying: "What makes you think you're so much better than the rest of us around here?"
Col. Couch says he slammed his hand on Col. Swann's desk and replied: "That's not the issue at all, that's not the point!"
An impassioned debate followed, the prosecutor recalls. Col. Swann said the Torture Convention didn't apply to military commissions. Col. Couch asked his superior to cite legal precedent that would allow the president to disregard a treaty. The meeting ended when Col. Swann asked the prosecutor to turn over the Slahi files so the case could be reassigned, Col. Couch recalls.
Get that? Couch was told that the Torture Convention did not apply.
Seems like the water is getting deeper.