The FBI's General Counsel, Valerie Caproni Forced To Admit That Cruel Actions At Guantanamo Bay Are Against The Geneva Convention

Those who read this blog regularly will remember an article that I had written sometime back in regard to Valerie Caproni and the FBIs' illegal usurpation of the NTSB investigation of TWA Flight 800 in 1996. It was clear that Caproni and the FBI were called into the situation by then President Bill Clinton, in order to obfuscate the fact that Flight 800 was destroyed by a terrorist attack, rather than a defective fuel tank.

Being that 1996 was an election year, Clinton did not want the baggage of a terrorist attack encumbering his chances at gaining a second term in the White House, so a whitewash of the entire TWA situation was deemed necessary, in order to leave the American people thinking that Flight 800 and its 230 passengers were the victims of a faulty fuel tank; instead of the truth -- that they had been shot out of the sky by a ground to air missile launched from a U.S. Navy ship.

And once the media had been fed this disinformation and began to promulgate it, the American people were once again sent down the wrong path. On the Tenth Anniversary of the TWA Flight 800 disaster, the Long Island daily newspaper, Newsday, was still reporting the same propaganda that the FBI had circulated a decade before.

A missile was never mentioned in the destruction of the ill fated airliner. Instead, Newsday propagated the FBI's fabrication without once even insinuating that the Bureau had pulled a fast on the American people.

In the following article regarding the horrific torture of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, FBI General Counsel, Valerie Caproni, would herself be questioned by Senator Dick Durbin in regard to whether or not such torture was legal. At first, Caproni attempted to duck the question, but was eventually forced to acknowledge that putting prisoners in "painful stress positions, threatening detainees with dogs, forced nudity, mock execution and waterboarding” were “abusive” and “illegal.”


See the following article from The Progressive:

FBI General Counsel: Waterboarding Is ‘Clearly Not Permissible In The United States’

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing today, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) asked FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni if “painful stress positions, threatening detainees with dogs, forced nudity, mock execution and waterboarding” were “abusive” and “illegal.” In asking his question, Durbin cited judge advocate generals who told him that the “techniques are illegal and violate Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.”

Caproni first tried to deflect the question to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, saying that “the issue of legality or non-legality is not mine to reach.” But pushed further by Durbin, she stated unequivocally that “they are all abusive”:

DURBIN: I asked you that question. Are they abusive, illegal or violate Geneva Conventions?

CAPRONI: Oh, I’m sorry. I was running them all together, Senator. I would say they are all abusive.

Durbin then asked her if she considered the techniques torture. Again, Caproni tried to dodge the question, saying “it’s not within my pay grade” to make that determination. Eventually, following more pressure from Durbin, Caproni relented, admitting that “these techniques are clearly not permissible in the United States”:

DURBIN: Do you consider them torture?

CAPRONI: Again, torture has a legal definition, and that’s what OLC has passed on. And it’s not — it’s not within my pay grade to overrule OLC.

DURBIN: And how could it be within the pay grade of those below you to understand whether what they’re doing is torture or not?

CAPRONI: Again, from — the FBI agents’ responsibilities was, one, not to participate. These techniques are clearly not permissible in the United States. We train our agents well. They would have known that none of those techniques were they permitted to participate in.

While a report released last month by the Justice Department’s inspector general *praised the FBI for “its conduct and professionalism” during interrogations, the bureau has been criticized as having “done nothing to end the abuse” perpetrated by other agencies.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/10/fbi-waterboarding-abusive/

* It should come as no surprise to anyone that the FBI would be praised by the Department Of Justice when in reality it failed to end the atrocities that were being perpetrated at Guantanamo Bay. The DOJ is for all intents and purposes the parent organization of the FBI, and has been either looking the other way when the FBI is in the commission of serious breaches of both civil and human rights, or in fact actually obstructing justice by aiding and abetting the FBI in helping to cover up its crimes.