Only UK press follows Dana Priest’s lead in exposing CIA torture camps in Poland, Romania

Dana Priest left a bold ’emdash’ dangling in the middle of her bombshell expose of the CIA “secret” prison camps in Wednesday’s Washington Post.

Just as every jaw in the land hit the floor she dropped this in the 8th graph:

“The Washington Post is not publishing the names of the Eastern European countries involved in the covert program at the request of senior U.S. officials.”

The reason: “disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts….”

Its not that the Post didn’t know the names, they clearly stated they just wouldn’t print them. A small exchange to ensure the confidentiality of their sources, mind you, and a gold trail from which Joe Journalist could’ve raked up the missing details in his fingernails.

But for fear of following the yellow-cake road.

Priest said this afternoon in a live discussion session at Washington Post.com:

Senior administration officials did persuade The Post not to publish the names of the Eastern European countries we identified. I could say they were not happy about the subject in general, but no one suggested we ditch the whole thing, although I’m sure they felt that way.

The front page article had been on the website for over a day and no broadcast, print or online outlet had anything on the story except a cut/copy/paste including the dead-giveaway “terrorism” insinuation.

Needless to say, it couldn’t have taken much investigation for theFinancial Times
to release (with a WEDNESDAY date-stamp):

A leading human rights group on Wednesday identified Poland and Romania as the likely locations in eastern Europe of secret prisons where al-Qaeda suspects are interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Its not worth dwelling on the idea that exposing the locations of these prisons would endanger counterterrorism. The fact that dangerous terrorists are already contained within these camps is reason enough for publicity, especially considering the fate of Omar al-Faruq, the al-Qaeda chief who escaped a “maximum security” prison guarded by US troops in Afghanistan.

The real danger is that if the CIA goes on record identifying the locations of their “secret terror camps,” they will be stripped of their freedom to boycott International Crimes Court the U.S> gov’t would be fried.

The outsourcing of detainees to Egypt and Syria is no secret, but to torture prisoners of war in countries that do not endorse torture and have relatively clean human rights records is [insert horrifying comparison here].

This administration will be around another few years, most likely, but we CAN get over Libby, we can FORGET Delay – he’s one of many, and enough ? ENOUGH!! buying into the bird flu nonsense. Haven’t we already learned that it doesn’t matter how much money you use if you don’t have a plan?

Lets kick ourselves and stop thinking twice about yesterday’s news – the media army has alot more influence and independence than our helpless warriors in Iraq. I’ll bet they’re pulling for us now more than ever.