Brian Beutler of the Media Consortium has an update on his story on torture over on the main site:
Divulged in memos, but largely undiscussed at yesterday's bombshell Senate Armed Services hearing about the origins of American torture was a September 25, 2002 meeting at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba between Major General Michael Dunlavey -- who at the time was overseeing interrogations at the detention facility there--and several of the administrations top lawyers, including Jim Haynes, then general counsel to the Department of Defense, John Rizzo, acting CIA general counsel, David Addington, counsel to the vice president, and Michael Chertoff, then head of the Criminal Division at the Department of Justice.
The trip report is suspiciously short. It notes for the most part that the group received "briefings on Intel successes, Intel challenges, Intel techniques, Intel problems and future plans for facilities," and that they participated in "private conversations."
But, through interviews with Dunlavey and Lieutenant Colonel Diane Beaver, author Philippe Sands got to the bottom of that trip. In his new book, Torture Team, Sands writes that the Washington gang came down, in part, to learn how the military was treating a suspect named Mohammed al-Qahtani. "They wanted to know what we were doing to get to this guy," recalled Dunlavey. Beaver said that the message was loud and clear: do "whatever needed to be done." In Sands words, "a green light from the very top--from the lawyers for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the CIA.
