The ACLU has been trying to get these photographs of US prisoner abuse released for years. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ordered that the photos be released to the public last year, but then Congress enacted a bill allowing the Secretary of Defense to exempt the photos from FOIA requests, because Congress and the DoD are both terrible. So, in light of that new legislation, the Supreme Court has ordered the appeals court to reconsider their ruling. Which means probably no torture photos.

ABC News reported that:

Where affluent Lithuanians once rode show horses and sipped coffee at a café, the CIA installed a concrete structure where it could use harsh tactics to interrogate up to eight suspected al-Qaeda terrorists at a time.

The facility, in an exclusive suburb of Vilnius, was denied by the CIA and the Lithuanian government until ABC went and found out everything about it, down to the make of the generator that powered it. The CIA shifted uneasily in its seat:

On Tuesday, the CIA again declined to talk about the prison. "The CIA's terrorist interrogation program is over," said CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano. "This agency does not discuss publicly where detention facilities may or may not have been."

The prison was closed in 2005, along with another black site in Romania. But Camp Bucca, on the Iraq/Kuwait border, which also had a CIA-only area where nefarious things went on, was only closed in September of this year. Another secret black site — one that remains open — would not be a surprise given the CIA's record of late.

That kidnapping was part of a CIA program called "extraordinary rendition," wherein an unknown number of people were flown to secret prisons to be tortured. Obama signed an executive order promising to not fly prisoners to places where they will be tortured, anymore, so his CIA's policy might be more accurately described as ordinary rendition. And we all know the CIA will do exactly as they are told, because they always do.

Extradition of the 23 convicted Americans is not going to happen, though, so Italians should probably consider having agents of their own lawless and unchecked international intelligence organization kidnap them all as they go to church or whatever.

According to the Associated Press, a new survey of scientific literature on stress and memory from a researcher at Ireland's Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience has found that CIA's torture techniques likely caused the agency's victims to actually forget the details that they were being tortured for—if they ever had the information in the first place—and could have also cause them to create false memories.

Prolonged stress from the CIA's harsh interrogations could have impaired the memories of terrorist suspects, diminishing their ability to recall and provide the detailed information the spy agency sought, according to a scientific paper published Monday.

The methods could even have caused the suspects to create - and believe - false memories, contends the paper, which scrutinizes the techniques used by the CIA under the Bush administration through the lens of neurobiology. It suggests the methods are actually counterproductive, no matter how much suspects might eventually say.

It's just a survey of other studies, rather than an actual experimental assessment of what waterboarding does to people's memories. But we'll take it as the perverse and sickening cap on the "debate" over whether American officials ought to have been instructed to inflict mock executions, calibrated drownings, and beatings on human beings in their custody: Torture doesn't work. And even if it works, it's wrong. And even if it works and isn't wrong, it still doesn't fucking work.

"He is going to flee," said his brother, Uday al-Zaidi.

That could be fun too! Muntader (there are about 12 different ways to spell his name, deal with it) reportedly plans to snitch on everyone who helped to torture him—including the government officials who authorized it—so he's clearing out of Iraq for good.

Muntader said he was beaten, whipped, subjected to electric shocks, and left outside in the cold while soaking wet. He's also kind of convinced that US intelligence services might assassinate him! God damn. We swear, US intelligence services, if this guy is assassinated we are going to be so mad, we are going to throw mad shoes, and more. Here's his explanation for what he did, which is fantastic:

"I saw the chance and I seized it," he said. "If those who blamed me knew how many destroyed houses I walked over with those shoes that I threw; and how many times those shoes mixed with the blood of the innocent; and how many times those shoes went into homes where the honor of those who lived there was disgraced, then it was probably the proper response."

Let's all take a moment to remember what a great man George W. Bush was.

In addition to having been considered morally wrong in any circumstance for the whole history of our nation, torture is also illegal. So it's pretty much a no-brainer, when you read the report about how the CIA tortured people, to say "well then they should probably look into prosecuting people." Unless you're Dick Cheney! Then what you do is demand that some other documents that will prove that torture worked get released. And once those documents are released and they just muddy the issue even further by saying over and over again that is impossible to know what interrogation techniques produced what intelligence let alone how much of that intelligence was actionable or even accurate, if you are the media, you write "well Dick Cheney has a very good point."

That is what The Washington Post did yesterday. According to the story, Khalid Sheik Mohammed was a difficult detainee who provided no worthwhile intelligence until he was waterboarded nearly 200 times and shackled and diapered and sleep-deprived for a week straight. Then he was suddenly a Chatty Cathy!

Of course, KSM has bragged about how he made up untrue intelligence while he was being tortured in order to make the torture stop, and the CIA inspector general who helmed the investigation into torture says there's been no analysis of which techniques produced what information or even how useful that information was, but hey, we tortured KSM and then he told us stuff, so torture works and no one should get in any trouble for it, ever.

The problem is probably that as soon as us shocked and appalled "civil rights extremists" who want to read al-Qaeda terrorists their rights said "torture is immoral and ineffective" it just opened the door for patriotic torturers to respond with "torture is effective and anyone who says otherwise has to prove it," which is not the best way for a moral debate to go, really.

The CIA broke the law. They literally killed detainees. Killed them. People who might've been very bad people, but we'll never know, because they were never charged with any crimes, they were not treated as prisoners of war, they were just assumed to be terrorists, and the CIA actually literally killed them.

Here is the story about the war between the CIA and Justice. And, you know, if you've read any of the CIA's heavily-redacted (but not redacted heavily enough for Leon Panetta!) I.G. report on how they tortured and killed people, how sympathetic is Leon Panetta's position here?

The strains became evident inside the administration in the past several weeks. In July, Leon E. Panetta, the C.I.A. director, tried to head off the investigation, administration officials said. He sent the C.I.A.'s top lawyer, Stephen W. Preston, to Justice to persuade aides to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. to abandon any plans for an inquiry.

Mr. Preston presented what was, in effect, a closing argument in defense of the C.I.A., contending that many potential cases against intelligence operatives were legally flawed and noting that they had already been investigated, some more than once. In none, he said, had prosecutors found grounds for charges.

The Bush Justice Department instructed its lawyers to come up with legal justifications for illegal acts, the CIA lied about the scope and the efficacy of those acts, and then exceeded the authority granted them by the already flawed legal guidelines. But, you know, the CIA totally investigated it themselves and decided shit was cool so no need to enforce the law or anything!

Also hidden from public scrutiny, according to the official, was the discovery by the CIA Inspector General that the CIA could not adequately account for several of the 100 al Qaeda suspects who were part of the detainee program that the CIA maintained had been well administered.

The official said "a few just got lost and the CIA does to know what happened to them."

Well, you know, high value detainees are always in the last place you or the Red Cross or any representatives of domestic or international law look.

CIA director Panetta already reportedly exploded in a "profanity-laced" "tirade" over Holder's plans to open a criminal investigation (a CIA spokesman told ABC news that "Panetta is known to use 'salty language,'" which is a really amusing confirmation). And Panetta is also planning on quitting pretty soon, apparently! He is not happy that Obama wants him to report to the Director of National Intelligence, and he is not happy with Democrats in the House, and he is also not happy to learn the various incredibly illegal things the CIA was up to during the Bush years. He is just not happy. He wrote a letter about how the CIA was only doing what Justice told them to do, back then.

Also today the CIA Inspector General's report on how illegal and stupid and ineffective all the torturing was will be released to the public, presumably in a heavily redacted form! But the Justice Department's own internal review into what they did wrong is still not being released any time soon.

And some civil liberties folks are upset that it sounds like Holder will limit his investigation into low-level CIA interrogators who were, after all, acting out policies created and justified by the Bush administration. But others of them say an investigation that starts out narrow could broaden to include administration officials and legal advisers, as long as Holder doesn't explicitly rule out investigating them beforehand, which he still might.

And Republicans don't want anyone to investigate anything ever because that would have a "chilling effect" and it might lead to future interrogators being reluctant to torture and kill people.

Update: If you're bored you can read the CIA IG's report at The Washington Independent. Soooo many black bars everywhere!

It means that the CIA will no longer get its jollies by man-handling suspected terrorists and the such. Rather than letting the agency do the asking, the White House will soon unveil a new "High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group" whose sole task will be to get the truth out of prisoners. And, rather than let these sessions spin into publicity nightmares, the members will reportedly follow a little thing called the Army Field Manual. How novel!

Gone are the days of waterboarding and in are the days of relatively by-the-book inquiries.

Which tactics are acceptable was an issue "looked at thoroughly," one senior official said. Obama had already banned certain severe measures that the Bush administration had permitted, such as waterboarding.

Still, the Obama task force advised that the group develop a "scientific research program for interrogation" to develop new techniques and study existing ones to see whether they work. In essence, the unit would determine a set of best practices on interrogation and share them with other agencies that question prisoners.

In addition to this science-loving group, the Obama White House wants to bring the Justice Department to obtain "assurances" from foreign governments that US-sought detainees won't be tortured. And that Department will do everything in its power to make sure that these "assurances" are sincere. That's certainly refreshing!

Now, don't get too excited, because the task force is still debating which prisoners will receive their Miranda rights. Said one official, "It is not going to, certainly, be automatic in any regard that they are going to be Mirandized.... Nor will it be automatic that they are not Mirandized."

The task force will reportedly be headed by someone from the FBI and, though an independent group, will likely work closely with the CIA, as well as the Bureau.

On a somewhat related note, Stars and Stripes</em>, a newspaper that covered the armed services, reports that reporters looking to be embedded in Afghanistan will be vetted by the military's public affairs office.

U.S. public affairs officials in Afghanistan acknowledged to Stars and Stripes that any reporter seeking to embed with U.S. forces is subject to a background profile by The Rendon Group, which gained notoriety in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq for its work helping to create the Iraqi National Congress. That opposition group, reportedly funded by the CIA, furnished much of the false information about Iraq's supposed weapons of mass destruction used by the Bush administration to justify the invasion.

The Rendon Group has been working with the Pentagon for years, by the way, and say their mission is to "expertly deliver insightful strategic communications services and products that provide clients tactical superiority in their complex information environments." Their evaluations will, according to Stars and Stripes, deem a reporter's work as "positive," "negative," or "neutral."

For its part, the military says reporters will be evaluated simply on the accuracy of their stories, not whether their perspective puts a positive spin on the action. That's the government's job! Especially considering that a new brief on the CIA's old, tired, frightening tactics will be soon be released. Now that's what we call beating a story.

Oh, you know, nothing that isn't going to (A) make the rest of the world think Americans' we-won't-but-we-will play of turn-a-cheek policy regarding torture wasn't historically despicable, (B) cause much quasi-self-effacing hand wringing by all sides, and (C) piss the Bad Guys off even more. Like:

According to two sources-one who has read a draft of the paper and one who was briefed on it-the report describes how one detainee, suspected USS Cole bomber Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, was threatened with a gun and a power drill during the course of CIA interrogation. According to the sources, who like others quoted in this article asked not to be named while discussing sensitive information, Nashiri's interrogators brandished the gun in an effort to convince him that he was going to be shot. Interrogators also turned on a power drill and held it near him.

Yeah, so basically, we threatened guys with trepanation. Don't tell us the information you've already told us you don't have after we've knowingly permanently traumatized you, and we'll put this drill in your skull. There's a Beavis & Butthead element to this, somewhere: it's some absurd - a power drill? - but sadly, not, because it actually happened. They even put on a little dog and pony for the detainees by harnessing the power of the theatah!

The report also says, according to the sources, that a mock execution was staged in a room next to a detainee, during which a gunshot was fired in an effort to make the suspect believe that another prisoner had been killed. The inspector general's report alludes to more than one mock execution.

Will Eno would be proud! Or something. Talk about breaking the fourth wall. Or the law. Or human dignity. Or protocol. Apparently, Mock Executions "weren't authorized" by the Justice Department, so don't even think of blaming them for it. At least you know what the party line's already going to be. Like all the other terrible things happening in the U.S. military these days: don't ask, don't tell. Or in this case: don't even think about it.

The John Adams Project, a joint operation of the ACLU and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, is offering support to military defense lawyers at Guantanamo, and they've launched a campaign to identify and expose CIA agents involved in torturing terror suspects. In order to figure out who was doing what to whom, they hired researchers to follow suspected spooks and snap their photos, which they then showed to terror suspects, line-up style:

[G]overnment investigators are now looking into whether the defense team went too far by allegedly showing the detainees the photos of CIA officers, in some cases surreptitiously taken outside their homes.

Way to go, CIA. Your vaunted counterintelligence capabilities and ever-vigilant secrecy protocols weren't enough to shield you from the all-seeing eye of the fucking ACLU. First the Italians—the Italians!—bust you using your cell phones during an illegal rendition, and now you're letting pointy-headed gay pinko Ivy-league liberals follow you home from Langley. Escape and evade!

After Yoo mentions the Constitution during his lecture, and asks the students if they have any questions, an Australian comedian from the show Chaser's War on Everything is seen wearing a black-hooded robe and standing on top of his desk with his arms outstretched, recalling one of the most iconic images of U.S. torture captured in the now-infamous Abu Ghraib photos.

The comedian says, "Actually, professor, I've got one question. Uhm, how long can I be required to stand here 'til it counts as torture?"

Yoo cuts his lecture short and replies, "Unfortunately, I'm going to have to end class," as he packs up his lecture notes.

As Yoo apologizes to the class for the interruption, the comedian replies, "If this is awkward for you, it's very uncomfortable for me, I can tell you…. I'd love to move but every time I do my balls get buzzed."

Hah. Australians are all beer-addled hooligans, but sometimes they are pretty funny.

Obama set up a Guantanamo task force on day two of his presidency, and told them to figure out what to do with all those people we have imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay. Their report is due tomorrow. But in between January 21 and July 21, some things happened. Like Congress threw a big hissy fit and said no prisoners could be transferred to American soil. And Europe said they didn't really want them either. And it turned out that there was no evidence linking any of the prisoners to any terrorism, so they could not have regular "trials" in "courts."

But aides to Eric Holder and Robert Gates agree that we need to continue to assert the right to hold certain people forever without charging them with anything.

Oh, also, the "interrogations" report is late as well. But we hear the Defense Department's grandma just died so we should totally give them an extension.

Since he arrived at Butner, Madoff has only once shown emotion over the impact of his crime, the source said.

"He said that his wife was mad at him because the paparazzi won't leave her alone," the source said, adding Madoff got teary-eyed while making the admission.

You thought Ruth Madoff was just being stuck-up when she got snippy with the Post paps? This stuff really hurts her! Bernie can put up with his new job in the engraving shop and the "fish filet with macaroni and cheese" prison menus. But his poor wife's tears, because of photographers—this is the punishment that will torment his soul.

Also all his victims' despair and whatnot.
[NYP. Pic: Getty]

These scientist-sadists had monkeys eat 30% fewer calories than normal for twenty fucking years, and found that "37 percent of the comparison monkeys have so far died in ways judged to be due to old age, compared with 13 percent of the dieting group." So you're three times less likely to die quite so soon, in exchange for a lifetime of hunger. Great.

Scientists know that actual humans won't stick to a diet like this so they're trying to find some chemicals that might mimic the effect of the diet, and the closest they've come so far is red wine. Yea, that's more our speed.

Meanwhile, in the mightiest city in the mightiest country on earth: Dunkin Donuts is taking on Tim Hortons Donuts in a Donut War so consequential it is covered in our city's largest newspapers, complete with analysis of Munchkins vs. Timbits, and which type of fried ball we, as New Yorkers, prefer to wrap our mouths around.

That's why America rules the world and monkeys live in cages being tortured by scientists, who are probably fat American blubbermonsters. Besides, maximum caloric intake is a key factor in total domination:

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

Reports the LA Times:

Accused Sept. 11 organizer Khalid Shaikh Mohammed told U.S. military officials that he gave false information to the CIA even after undergoing punishing bouts of interrogation, according to documents made public Monday.

Mohammed made the assertion during hearings held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where the militant leader was transferred in 2006 after being held at secret CIA sites since his capture in 2003.

"I make up stories," Mohammed said, describing in broken English an interrogation probably administered by the CIA that concerned the location of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

"Where is he? I don't know. Then he torture me," Mohammed said. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.' "

We anxiously await Dick Cheney's comments on this as soon as he finishes sipping that glass of puppy's blood.

Detainee Says He Lied to CIA in Harsh Interrogations [LA Times]

You can see the trailer at left. It's called "Rendition: Guantanamo." From the Telegraph:

In the game, players control a detainee at the camp, which has been sold by the US Government to a shadowy agency called Freedom Corp.

Before he is subjected to torture and scientific experiments, the character must shoot his way out of the detention camp to bring down his captors.

Zarrar Chishti, the director of T-Enterprises, which is developing the game, told the paper that it's really no big deal, because the game's players will only be shooting the "mercenaries" of Freedom Corp.:

"We have had a lot of hate mail about this, mainly from America, saying things like 'don't dare put out a game that shows them killing our soldiers.' But no US or British soldiers get killed in it. The only ones being killed are mercenaries."

Begg, a British citizen who moved to Afghanistan shortly before 9/11, will get a piece of the game's profits if there are any. He was captured by the CIA in Pakistan in 2002 and shipped to Gitmo. According to the Weekly Standard, Begg confessed to FBI interrogators that he "was armed and prepared to fight alongside the Taliban and al Qaeda against the US and others" and was among the Al-Quaida fighters who retreated to Tora Bora with Osama bin Laden. Begg says the confession was coerced under torture. He was released in January 2005 at the request of the British government.

The Telegraph says the game is being developed for the XBox360, which we find dubious. T-Enterprise claims to be a "team of expert computer designers and developers based in Glasgow [that] specialises in designing and building computer 3D console games for the Xbox 360," but the firm's web site features only flash and mobile phone games. And to judge by the "Rendition: Guantanamo" trailer, as well as this one for something called "Karma Combat," both of which look like they came from 1998, they're not very skilled at more sophisticated platforms.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.And to get a sense of where T-Enterprise is coming from, some of their other games include "Bush's Billions," "Bye Dubya," and "Send a Ransom" (!). And here are pictures of co-founders "Sadia" and "Zarrar."

In a statement, Microsoft said: "We are unaware of this game and have not been contacted by this developer. As such, we don't have enough details about the game to even comment about it."

The Thursday report Salon called into question found Taguba - who retired from his military career in 1997 - noting that the Abu Ghraib photos the ACLU's suing to have released show "torture, abuse, rape and every indecency." Last night, Taguba admitted that he hadn't seen the photos the ACLU is suing over:

"The photographs in that lawsuit, I have not seen," Taguba told Salon Friday night. The actual quote in the Telegraph was accurate, Taguba said — but he was referring to the hundreds of images he reviewed as an investigator of the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — not the photos of abuse that Obama is seeking to suppress.

Taguba then went on to mention that he still thinks "no other photographs should be released" because he fears it could generate and incite more violence and retribution against American soldiers.

The Daily Telegraph, now embarrassed at getting the story wrong and trying to find cover, ran their own version of Salon's story earlier this afternoon: their spin is that despite their initial report implying that Taguba had seen the suppressed photos, he had CONFIRMED their story in CLARIFYING that the photos he had seen weren't the ones Obama was trying to suppress. Ohhhhh. Got it. Hate to admit it, but Robert Gibbs was right about one thing: the British Press - kinda stupid, sometimes.

They also cited The Daily Beast: Scott Horton, who wrote yesterday about some of the photos Obama was trying to suppress, also had sources confirming their contents! Exciting!

The photographs differ from those already officially released ... In one, a female prisoner appears to have been forced to expose her breasts to be photographed. In another, a prisoner is suspended naked upside down from the top bunk of a bed in a stress position ... In one withheld photograph, not previously described, Specialist Charles A. Graner, Jr., an Abu Ghraib guard, is shown suturing the face of a prisoner, a reliable source tells The Daily Beast.

Well, guess who else looks stupid, here: yes, The Daily Beast. Salon published those two photos in 2006, and Salon's Alex Koppelman took to the streets (blog) about an hour ago to scream that those photos were so three years ago, they had already been there (First!!11!!) and that none of you morons claiming to actually have some kind of exclusive on these photos or their content do.

So Salon's playing their own horn really loudly - fine. But both The Daily Beast and the Telegraph both look fairly ridiculous, today: they bought a story without trying it on, took it home, and wore it out to the club. And then Salon pointed out the giant skidmark near their collective ass while they were in the middle of doing the "Soulja Boy." They did a great job sussing out what they smelled as a bullshit story, and called out two fairly large media outlets in the process.

Meanwhile, despite what're probably good intentions by Taguba, he definitely screwed this one up, too. Why didn't he just come out as an opponent of the photos' release rather than someone with new information to bring to the table in the first place?

Maybe the photos don't show any of the abuses Taguba noted. But they're definitely being suppressed, and as Salon's made very evident, some pretty bad shit's already out there. One thing's certain: the desire for revealing whatever's actually in those photos - be it motivated politically, emotionally, or just out of the public's sheer masochistic curiosity - keeps growing with each story furthering this news cycle. Hopefully, none of the reporting on it will continue to be as grandstanding, shoddy, and scoop-happy as some of this. It really doesn't help.

Taguba denies he's seen abuse photos suppressed by Obama [Salon]
Telegraph report over Abu Ghraib 'abuse' photos confirmed [Daily Telegraph]
The Bogus Torture Coverup [The Daily Beast]
"New" Abu Ghraib photos aren't new [Salon]

Muller is a shock jock who made his name by pulling stunts like shutting down traffic on San Francisco's Bay Bridge with his station's news van and having his sidekick get a haircut on the asphalt, making prank calls to Chinese restaurants and asking whether they make their Egg Foo Yung with dog or cat meat, saying "nigger" on the air, and making repeated calls to the hair salon next to his studio and insinuating that the male owner is a gay.

Seven days ago, after a week of on air hype, Muller—who has always denied that waterboarding was torture—purported to undergo the procedure on the air, after which he dramatically announced that he had changed his mind about it. This would have probably gone largely unnoticed except for the fact that Keith Olbermann designated him as the leading critic of torture.

So irresistable was the idea of a nominal conservative coming over to Olbermann's side of the torture debate (the right side, we might add) that even after we reported that Muller's stunt was at best a half-assed spectacle that didn't come close to the actual conditions that waterboard victims experience and at worst a deliberate con job designed to get publicity, Olbermann double-downed and blamed us for ruining his fun. Based on the evidence we've gathered, and Olbermann and Muller's confusing and contradictory responses, we're increasingly convinced that Muller's waterboarding escapade was a purposeful fabrication—that he set out to engineer a publicity event based on the reversal of his position. But even if you take the most charitable view of the evidence from Muller's perspective, all that emerges is a fake waterboarding that frightened a callow radio host.

Olbermann brought Muller—with his wife and daughter wandering around aimlessly and confusingly behind him in the studio—back to his show tonight to rebut our stories. He said that "the only actual evidence" that Muller's supposed waterboarding was not, in fact, a waterboarding was "the use of the word 'hoax' in an e-mail." Well, we'd say that's something, considering the e-mail in question was from Muller's publicist, Linda Shafran, who wrote outright that the event was indeed a hoax. Muller explained it away, as he did earlier today, by claiming that he would not have been permitted to do the stunt by his bosses if he let people know that he was actually planning on going through with it. He wasn't clear, but the implication was that Shafran wasn't in the loop—she thought it would be a bullshit stunt: "I didn't think it was a big deal, she didn't think it was a big deal. We were going to prove that it was nothing."

Shafran wrote the e-mail on the afternoon before the stunt, as part of a frantic attempt to find someone to conduct the waterboarding. Here's what she wrote:

It is going to have to look "real" but of course would be simulated with Mancow acting like he is drowning. It will be a hoax but have to look real.

No one disputes that the e-mail is genuine. Note that it contains other words than "hoax"—words like "look real" and "simulated." And—most importantly—"with Mancow acting like he is drowning."

Here's what Olbermann's paranoid rebuttals fail to explain: If Muller was planning on proving that waterboarding was no big deal, and if Shafran thought Muller was planning on proving that waterboarding was no big deal, and if Shafran also thought—wrongly—that it was going to be a hoax: Why would she write that Muller would be "acting like he is drowning"? Wouldn't he act like he wasn't drowning? Like waterboarding isn't a "big deal"? According to Muller's story, when Shafran wrote that e-mail, she was under the mistaken impression that Muller was going to fake a waterboarding to prove that it's no big deal. It makes no sense. Nor does Muller's line about trying to keep the bosses out of the loop: "You have to understand something," he said. "The Chicago cops came and said, 'You can't waterboard.'" Really? The Chicago Police Department came to you, Muller, and told you not to waterboard? We're going to call them and ask them on Monday!

Even if Muller is telling the truth about Shafran being out of the loop, her e-mail makes fairly clear that Muller knew how his waterboarding was going to end before it started.

Olbermann says it's absurd that Muller would deliberately fake a waterboarding so that he could publicly reverse his position. What's the motive? Well, how many times has he been on Countdown since he did it? How much publicity has he reaped from this episode? What's more newsworthy: A waterboarding supporter undergoes the procedure and confirms his beliefs, or a waterboarding advocate undergoes the procedure and changes his tune?

Gawker is, according to Olbermann, a part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to discredit his hero Muller: "It did occur to you," he asked us, "that the person who sent you the e-mails probably wanted to see Mancow's conversion discredited because the far right can't have somebody it considered its own dramatically saying he was wrong, and so somebody played your web site like a three dollar banjo for political purposes?"

Well, the e-mails are undisputed and they speak for themselves, so the motive of the leaker doesn't really have an impact in this instance. But Keith: The person who leaked them to us also leaked them to you—before you interviewed Muller. If they wanted to discredit him, why would they try to warn you off interviewing him? He can't be discredited until someone gives credit to what he's done in the first place—and you are the the most prominent person that he's convinced into giving him airtime. Someone who was interested in making Muller look like a clown would have wanted him to go on your show before leaking the e-mails. This leaker tried to stop him.

Olbermann acknowledged that his staff had received the e-mails, and did "due diligence and then some" in verifying Muller's story, which in this case consisted of talking to Muller, talking to Shafran, and leaving telephone messages for Klay South, the marine who did the waterboarding. Had Olbermann or his staff actually talked to South, as we did, they would have learned that he "didn't know what [he] was doing" and that he "just did what [he] was told—poured water on [Mancow's] face." Still, Olbermann says that his attempts to verify the story by talking to the guy who is telling it and believing the woman who said it was a hoax when she changed her story and said it wasn't a hoax were better than what Gawker did. "If our perspective here had been political or sloppy," he said, "we wouldn't have checked anything—you know, the way the web site did it."

That's a lie. Our night editor verified Shafran's e-mail with her directly and included her response in the story. We called Muller to get his side of the story and published it. We called South to get his story, and published it. We e-mailed Olbermann for his comment, and we called his MSNBC publicist for hers. Olbermann is living in a fantasy world where malicious bloggers spread lies about him without doing any legwork. We did more reporting on Muller's alleged waterboarding than he or his staff did.

What's more, Olbermann says that the explanation Shafran gave to his staff for her use of the words "hoax," "simulated," and "acting" in the e-mail was this that "it was just a bad choice of words in the heat of trying to find somebody, at the last minute, to participate." That was what she told them on the evening of the interview with Muller. But tonight, on Olbermann's show, Muller said that Shafran wrote that because that's what she thought it was going to be—a hoax. Which is it, Keith? Did Shafran think it was a hoax or did she just make a "bad choice of words"? If Muller's story is true, why would Shafran tell your producers that she just chose the wrong words?

In the end, there are two incontrovertible data points here: That Muller's publicist called the thing a hoax and said Muller intended to pretend he was drowning, and that the guy doing the waterboarding was by his own admission as unqualified to perform the procedure as one could possibly be. Muller's attempts to explain away the first one consist of little more than dubious rhetorical loop-de-loops from a professional provocateur and publicity-hound who has provided, over the years, innumerable reasons why he doesn't deserve the benefit of the doubt. And nobody disputes the second. Even if Muller didn't deliberately orchestrate this whole stunt from the beginning, it's clear that whatever happened to him doesn't qualify as waterboarding in any recognizable sense of the word. His waterboarder had no training and says he's "the last person" they should have asked to do it. He wasn't subjected to anything close to the conditions that actual waterboarding victims suffer, or, for that matter, that journalists like Christopher Hitchens who undertook the procedure suffered. He decided to get waterboarded, so he asked his publicist to find someone who knew nothing about it to look it up on the internet and do it to him. We say it all adds up to a fake—either by orchestration or half-assed laziness. The only reason that Olbermann—or anyone else for that matter—could come to a different conclusion is ideological fervor. This, according to Olbermann, is "changing the debate" on torture.

After repeatedly claiming—falsely—that Gawker was alleging some kind of conspiracy when all we are alleging is that a notorious radio faker faked another thing, Olbermann and Muller got into some really heavy stuff, speculating that Gawker is doing Dick Cheney's dirty work. "Telling the truth, even accidentally even in a small way, can be very dangerous stuff," Olbermann said.

"There's dark forces behind this," Muller said. "I really believe this."

Jesus.

Also, Muller compared himself to Mike Tyson's dead daughter and said this was all predicted in Revelations. Seriously. He signed off by admitting that he "plays pranks all the time—that's the irony here."

This is the star that Olbermann decided to hitch his wagon to tonight. Bad move.

P.S. For the record: We know that waterboarding is torture, and that torture is illegal, immoral, and unacceptable. We just don't want lying buffoons making the case on our behalf.