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Yet this type of accountability just brought to Pakistan’s intelligence service is simply inconceivable in the United States. It is virtually impossible to imagine the U.S. Supreme Court ordering the CIA to disclose documents about its treatment of detainees or, even more unrealistically, to permit the victims of CIA abuse to have their grievances heard in court. Anyone who doubts that can simply review the past decade of full-scale immunity bestowed by the Justice Department and subservient American federal courts on all executive agencies in the War on Terror. We should think about that the next time some American pundit, politician, or media figure righteously holds forth on how undemocratic and oppressive is Pakistan as opposed to the U.S.

Among the list of 28 (mostly Islamic) “Ancestries of Interest” to the Demographics Unit were India, Somalia, Albania, and “American Black Muslim.” In response to these revelations, Congresswoman Yvette Clarke stated that “Americans would be outraged if police infiltrated Baptist churches looking for evangelical Christian extremists.”

Who cares what hypothetical Americans would or wouldn’t be outraged about, Clarke, this is the NYPD and it belongs to New Yorkers. Give us a time and place to be outraged over this obvious racism and disrespect for civil liberties and we’ll be there.

andrewgreene:

This group had an actual name at the CIA! And they used private aviation companies to shuttle the prisoners around the world! How self-evidently stupid is this?

If Cheney says do it, that means it’s not illegal.

A spokeswoman for the C.I.A., Jennifer Youngblood, said … “Just because something is in the public domain doesn’t mean it’s been officially released or declassified by the U.S. government.”

Just marvel at the Kafkaesque, authoritarian mentality that produces responses like that: someone can be censored, or even prosecuted and imprisoned, for discussing “classified” information that has long been documented in the public domain.

It’s like we’re talking about the arcane rules for a board game, or the dull procedures of a corporation past its prime—instead of one of the most important rights guaranteed in the constitution. It isn’t our role as citizens to be passive subjects to incomprehensible and pointless bureaucracy.