David Addington

On December 11, the Senate Armed Services Committee (chaired by Senators Carl Levin and John McCain) issued a compelling report into the torture and abuse of prisoners in US custody (PDF), based on a detailed analysis of how Chinese torture techniques, which are used in US military schools to train personnel to resist interrogation if […]

The answer ought to be yes, if the verdict of the Senate Armed Services Committee Inquiry into the Treatment of Detainees in US Custody is to mean anything. The bipartisan report (see here, here or here, and see here for the hearings in June and September 2008), based on a two-year investigation and released on December 11 by […]

On Sunday, in his first television interview since winning the Presidential election, Barack Obama repeated his campaign pledge to close the prison at Guantánamo Bay and to ban the use of torture by US forces. Speaking on 60 Minutes, he explained, “I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantánamo, and I will follow […]

In the end, the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President of the United States struck me as both more and less extraordinary than I had anticipated. I suppose I thought it was in the bag when right-wing pundits started defecting, acknowledging that they couldn’t stomach the idea of Sarah Palin as President if […]

Last week, Bill Kovach, former Washington Bureau Chief of the New York Times and the founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, blasted the US media for its failure to ask tough questions of both presidential candidates regarding their opinions of the Bush administration’s unprecedented adherence to the controversial “unitary executive theory” of government. […]

In a third article looking at the corrupt chain of command in the Military Commissions at Guantanamo, Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looks at the implications of the recently announced military investigations into the conduct of the Commissions’ former legal adviser, Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, but doubts that either investigation will be encouraged […]

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, continues his analysis of the corrupt command structure of the Military Commissions at Guantánamo, with new information from Maj. David Frakt, one of the Commissions’ military defense lawyers. In the last three weeks, two events have occurred that have dealt what should have been a knockout blow to […]

Andy Worthington, author of The Guantánamo Files, looks at recent disturbing developments in the Military Commission trial system at Guantánamo, and traces a chain of command that runs from the Commissions’ supposedly impartial “Convening Authority” all the way to the Office of the Vice President. A prosecutor resigns On September 24, Col. Lawrence Morris, the […]

Iraq, Iran, Russian, Pakistan, Afghanistan: It was an impressive foreign policy list in Friday’s Presidential debate, and by all sensible accounts Barack Obama did a decent job convincing Americans that his opponent may not be the expert that he claims to be. Missing from the debate, however, as it has been since Obama clinched the […]

Andy Worthington is a London-based historian, who has written three books on civil rights issues, including, most recently, The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison, scheduled for release in October, which is the most detailed and specific account to date of the capture and provenance of the over 700 […]