Those European Countries Hosting Secret CIA Prisons

The Washington Post's  extraordinary piece  on the  secret prisons declined to  name names, a decision that got my eyebrows raised.  I'd be happy to hear differing opinions but the more I think about the more I wonder about the Post's decision. The paper explained:

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. They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation.

I can't speak to how, or how not, disclosing the countries "might disrupt counterterrorism efforts." My guess: What they're  suggesting is that disclosure of the countries would result in political pressure from their citizens to shut down the prisons. That would "disrupt counterterrorism efforts"; it would also be democracy in action. 

Of course, the notion that these prisons are, in any larger sense, ultimately helpful for "counterterrorism efforts" is debatable on all sorts of grounds. I'm not talking about just morally, I'm talking about efficacy. It's a cost-benefit thing: The cost of having them, in a PR sense, is big and as more info comes out, is  getting bigger. Meanwhile, the benefits, well, the benefits of being able to, say, waterboard a guy in secret are  unclear.

As for the argument that publishing the names of the countries might make them terrorist targets, I'm  reminded of a  judge's recent ruling that the Pentagon must turn over unpublished Abu Ghraib photos despite Pentagon warnings  that the photos will prompt riots and, perhaps, terrorist attacks.

"Our nation does not surrender to blackmail, and fear of blackmail is not a legally sufficient argument to prevent us from performing a statutory command," the judge wrote.
 

  "Indeed, the freedoms that we champion are as important to our success in Iraq and Afghanistan as the guns and missiles with which our troops are armed."   

There is another reason why the "but terrorists might attack them" argument is bogus, and it's actually what I meant to write about from the beginning of this post. Human Rights Watch is about to name names. Two European countries are apparently hosting CIA prisons: Poland and Romania

Want to know something else about Poland and Romania? They both have troops in Iraq. Should we keep that secret too? Perhaps we should keep all decisions that might drive terrrorism hush-hush. A hundred-thirty-five thousand GIs in Iraq? Eh, can't discuss that. It might let the terrorists win.

   

Comments

[marc]

purely speculatively, might it be that he didn't name the states because officials of, or in,those states were among his sources?

Maybe his source was al Farouq.

[marc]

She. Dana Priest. Her source. My first posting to a blog, ever, and already a correction.

[WIIIAI]

Inevitably, Eastern European countries (the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Hungary, Slovakia but conspicuously not Romania or Poland) have denied being the countries referred to in the WaPo article. This was predictable and just makes the WaPo decision to obey the government that much sillier.

[Michael Roston]

Eric -

See this post in my blog for what HRW has already said to the European press:

http://lookingforsomeonetolietome.blogspot.com/2005/11/where-are-those-secret-detention.html

[Dan]

'm wondering why there are so many discussions on that topic. What's wrong in the fact that terrorists are imprisoned? And all those "pro human rights" politicians are just picking up stuff to play for them during elections.

[Scoorevette]

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