The FBI is in on the torture

Well, its not just the CIA that has taken to torturing terrorism suspects, turns out the FBI is in on the program, too.  And, just to add insult to injury, the Administration made sure that this information was redacted from the official, only they were too late.  Kevin Drum is a much better summarizer than me, so:

Shortly after 9/11, an Egyptian national named Abdallah Higazy was
rounded up by the FBI and told to confess that he had been part of the
plot. If he didn't, he was warned, things would go badly for his
family. So he confessed. But then it turned out the FBI had made a
mistake. He wasn't part of the 9/11 plot after all.

So he sued the FBI. On Thursday the Second Circuit Court issued an
opinion in the case, but a few minutes later the decision was pulled
down from the court's website. Steve Bergstein tells the story:

The
next day, the Court of Appeals reissued the Higazy opinion. With a
redaction. The court simply omitted from the revised decision facts
about how the FBI agent extracted the false confession from Higazy. For
some reason, this information is classified. Just as the opinion gets
interesting, when we are about to learn how an FBI agent named
Templeton squeezed the “truth” out of Higazy, the opinion reads at page
7: “This opinion has been redacted because portions of the record are
under seal. For the purposes of the summary judgment motion, Templeton
did not contest that Higazy's statements were coerced.”

Obvious
lessons here: (a) forced confessions aren't worth the tape they're
recorded on, and (b) redactions for national security reasons often
aren't for national security reasons at all. But you already knew that,
didn't you?

What is particularly disturbing about this, is how little noise this is making in the mainstream media, to quote one of Drum's commenters (under the psuedonym, Katie Couric), “This redaction story is obviously a very disturbing account that
requires further fol- — oh, my God! Isn't that Britney Spears, hanging
out with O.J.? OK, we're outa here! Hey, you guys! Wait up! America
wants to know …”

In fairness, though, this is not all the media's fault.  The sad truth is that the Democratic majority has basically rolled over again and again and presented their belly to Bush on issues of torture.  If there is no opposition to these deplorable policies outside the lefty blogosphere, the media is just not going to cover it.