Friday, May 23, 2008, 4:57pm
The most stunning revelation in a 370-page Justice US Department Inspector General's report released this week was that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had formally opened a "War Crimes" file, documenting torture they had witnessed at the Guantánamo Bay US prison camp, before being ordered by the administration to stop writing their reports.
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The report makes it absolutely clear that torture was ordered and planned in detail at the highest levels of the government--including the White House, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the Justice Department. Attempts to stop it on legal or pragmatic grounds by individuals within the government were systematically suppressed, and evidence of this criminal activity covered up.
There was no immediate reaction from the White House on these new revelations. Responses from other agencies directly implicated in the crimes at Guantánamo were indicative of the general atmosphere of impunity in which the torture detailed in the IG's report continues to this day.