After the September 11th attacks, the White House established a secret CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) program in which terrorism suspects were detained in "black sites" – secret prisons outside the United States – and subjected to unusually harsh treatment, including sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and simulated drowning known as waterboarding. Although the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law do not allow some of the extreme interrogation methods used at the black sites, the Bush Administration argued that suspects held in these secret locations are effectively beyond the reach of the law. The network of secret prisons was eventually suspended when President Bush announced that he was emptying the CIA's prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The White House envisioned military tribunals that would function as a de facto judicial system to try and sentence enemy combatants held at Guantanamo. In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld that military commissions set up by the Bush Administration to try detainees at Guantanamo could not proceed because they violated both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. In Boumediene v. Bush, the Court held that because the Pentagon exercises total control over Guantanamo, the prison there is effectively part of the United States and therefore the right of habeas corpus applies to the detainees held there. The Court further held that Congress' effort to satisfy the White House by passing legislation to conduct military hearings with limited judicial review was unconstitutional. Most recently, in Al-Marri v. Spigone, the Supreme Court dismissed a challenge by Ali Al-Marri to the president's authority to detain people without charges, granting an Obama administration request to end the high court case, but granted the request by defendant and civil liberties groups to vacate the lower court decision that upheld the Bush administration's authority to designate al-Marri as an 'enemy combatant.' The issue of interrogation techniques used on detainees was also a problem for the Bush White House as it sought to prevent U.S. courts from hearing cases that might call into question the legality of the methods being used. In late July 2007, the White House issued an executive order stating that the CIA would bring its interrogation methods into compliance with the Geneva standards. However, Bush's order notably did not rule out the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. President Obama has declared that the U.S. does not torture and has ordered the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and other secret prisons. Yet, the Obama Department of Justice has embraced the Bush Administration’s “state secrets” doctrine, arguing in Mohamed v. Jeppesen that the doctrine prevents any court from hearing a case involving secret prisons, extreme rendition, or torture of detainees. |
