http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=torturefoia

This is where we start.

FYI: Another volunteer and I tried to do the Army docs last week, but there were too many pages, and some of it is quite difficult to read unless one has 1) a large monitor and/or 2) can print out the pages.  That's because a lot of the Army docs are handwritten ... which means that searching each section won't help us.

Let's start at the top and work backwards. So, our first docs will be the FBI papers turned over and posted by the ACLU yesterday and today:

SECTION 1 of the FBI papers is organized by the ACLU on this page:
http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/052605/
Then, the LINK to Section 1 is at the top.  
The page numbers are  pp. 1474-3834, reprocessed.

I just clicked on that link, and it looks like the entire 2400+ pages downloads at once.  Yikes.  Who wants to take the first 100 pages, and so on?

Just mark that you're taking pp. 1474 - 1700 -- something like that.  And the rest of us will pick other pages to check.

(How in the hell does the ACLU do this? They must have an army of workers on this!)

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

Feel free to send me inquiries regarding any acronyms you encounter that you question.  I'll do my best to decipher.  I was in the military for a number of years so may be able to help out.  You can e-mail me at lapin66us(at)yahoo(dot)com

For what it's worth, I ran up the docket sheet for this case (04 Civ. 4151 in the SDNY, for anyone who's interested) and noted that the most recent filed item is Judge Hellerstein's short approval of the CIA's request to get until July 15 to produce their documents.  The CIA noted that it has over 10,000 pages to review line-by-line for potential production.  Hellerstein's agreement to the extension is conditioned on there being no more requests for further delay.

Someone should remember this deadline to see what actually gets turned over then.

Susan -- I'm fairly pressed with deadlines in the next few weeks (finishing one job, starting another), so I'm afraid that what I can offer to do is very limited. One place I might be able to help out with though, is actually with tricky handwriting (I trained as a medievalist, so learning to decipher horrible handwriting was kind of an occupational hazard)

If this would be of any use, just let me know here or on booman.

Keep up the amazing work.


Refusing to vote for the greater of two evils is not an adequate alibi -- poco
In Flight

I've transferred the acronym list to dKosopedia. I added a couple of new ones from the tribunal dossiers and made a couple of minor changes, but I haven't added in any updates from comments below this one.

IMHO, we should be moving any stuff like this that we want to update frequently to dKosopedia. Maybe you could add links to the resources you've been using.

I've set up a front page on dKosopedia for these researches. There's not much there, of course, but if you look at the source, I've tried to set up some useful naming conventions for links within the wiki.

IMHO, we should be putting our results in a format like wiki (i.e. dKosopedia) where the relations between different people's work can be made easier to see than in a comment thread (and typos and such can be fixed).

I asked Mike at the ACLU about this:

http://www.aclu.org/torturefoia/released/052605/
Section 1 says it contains "pp. 1474-3834, reprocessed"
But, when I opened Section 1, I only saw 100 pages.  Will more be
linked, Mike?

Mike replied:
the 100 pages are reprocessed pages from that 1474-3834 page range.

So, the rest of the pages are linked elsewhere. I haven't had a chance to look for those.  Nor do I know if those pages are important for us to review.  Anyone want to weigh in on that?

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

However, I think we should check on the theft charges to see if there's a pattern.  You might also look for NEWS STORIES that corroborate this material.  If there are no news stories, that means this hasn't gotten out in the press.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

If you had to write a one-paragraph summary in newspaper style, what would you write?

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

I notice with the particular PDF I'm working on that there is no security set, so one is free to copy text or save file in RTF format if one is using the full version of Acrobat (not Reader). This particular file is short so that would not necessarily be an advantage with this one, but may be useful to others working on longer docs to enable easier searching or to extract sections of text that may be of interest.

Section 6 of the Army documents aren't relevant to our investigation.  It is an interesting read, but it has to do with several soldiers stealing over $4000 in US currency and 70,000 Iraqi dinars while conducting an apartment building search.

I've got the section right after yours.  And I've found something you might need:

I've only had the time so far to read four of the hundred pages of my section (Section 5 of the 03/25/05 DoD release), and I've already noticed that the Army's redactors did a (luckily for us) really shitty job!  On the first page of my section (page 1181 of the release; page 2 of DA Form 2823, December 1998 version), the form mentions a prisoner whose jaw was broken, but the prisoner's name is blacked out.  But guess what?  On the very next page, his name - Salah Salih Jassim - was left alone!

i've updated the big long list of abbreviations

plover: how do i get in touch with you so we can coordinate this with DKosopedia? I've added quite a lot of new lists and links. Post back here or mail me (email is in my diary).

All great truths begin as blasphemies – George Bernard Shaw

Apparently has extensive documentation related to detainees.  They and the Red Cross at one time had extensive documentation related to the Geneva conventions.

Oh, there is one more detainee who has not been mentioned on that list.

Jose Padilla.

He is being held in South Carolina, not Cuba.

George Phillies http://www.libertyforamerica.com http://3mpub.com/phillies