• Report pulls back veil on CIA's rendition program

    By Matthew DeLuca, Staff Writer, NBC News

    As many as 54 nations aided the United States in rendition and detention operations that swept up more than 130 people as part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s global counterterrorism efforts, according to a report released Tuesday by the Open Society Justice Initiative, a human rights advocacy group.


    The report, titled “Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition,” is the most complete account yet of the covert and extra-legal detention of suspects at undisclosed locations, or “black sites,” in the post-9/11 era. Relying on information provided by human rights groups, public records and court cases, the report details the harsh treatment some suspects faced.

    “The United States prides itself on being a leader in the field of human rights, and now we have courts around the world saying that the United States is a torturer,” Amrit Singh, who authored the report, told NBC News. “Those kinds of findings really undermine the United States’ ability to advocate for human rights around the world.”

    Public debate over the use of torture as a counterterrorism tactic was reignited recently with the release of the movie “Zero Dark Thirty." Critics of the film say it incorrectly portrays the use of waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics in the pursuit and killing of Osama bin Laden, but filmmakers say the torture scenes depict just one part of the decade-long hunt for the terrorist mastermind.

    The use of renditions appears to have reached its apogee after the September 11 attacks, when President Bush expanded the program to include indefinite periods of detention in third-party countries, according to the report. While the Obama administration has taken measures to impose more oversight on the process, renditions appear to continue, according to the report.

    President Obama issued an executive order 2009 that directed that the CIA close its secret detention facilities in order to “promote the safe, lawful, and humane treatment of individuals” held by the United States. But the order specified that the closures did not apply to facilities used to hold terror suspects “on a short-term, transitory basis.” A task force established by the order produced recommendations in 2009 that would allow rendition to continue, but with measures to prevent “the transfer of individuals to face torture.”

    Due to continued secrecy over the CIA’s extraction and detention of suspects, estimates on the total number of detainees have been imprecise.  The catalog of 136 people identified in the new report as detained or transferred by the CIA is the largest such list to be compiled to date. The report notes that the total number of people subject to rendition, detention, or interrogation will not be known until the countries involved release that information.

    Italian court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

    Countries assisting the United States included Afghanistan, Germany, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and the United Kingdom. Some of the countries hosted facilities used by the CIA on their soil, according to the report, while others provided intelligence or aided in the capture, transport, or detention of individuals.

    “The 54 governments basically enabled these operations,” Singh said. “Without the participation of these governments, the programs would not have been possible.”

    The practice may have long-term ramifications for the United States, as foreign governments react to emerging information about the secretive practice, Singh said. On February 1, for example, an Italian court sentenced a former CIA chief and two other American officials in absentia to prison sentences for the kidnapping of a Muslim cleric in 2003.

    The report also includes details on the brutal conditions faced by some suspects, including Maher Arar, a Canadian and Syrian citizen. Arar was held in Jordan and Syria between 2002 and 2003 after being detained at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on information provided by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In Syria, he was imprisoned in a cell three feet wide, threatened with electric shocks, and beaten with cables, according to the report.

    In a telephone interview Tuesday, Singh also cited the case of Khalid El-Masri, 49, who said he had been detained by the CIA in Afghanistan after being extradited from Macedonia. His case is unique, Singh said, because his claims of mistreatment have been affirmed by a court. While a 2006 lawsuit El-Masri brought in federal court against the U.S. government was dismissed, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in December that El-Masri’s rights had been violated.

    Europe court:German was victim of CIA extraordinary rendition program

    A 6,000-page review of CIA detention practices was approved by the Senate Intelligence Committee in December. Initiated in 2009 by a 14-1 vote of the committee, the report is a “comprehensive review” of the detention and interrogation of CIA prisoners, committee chairwoman Senator Dianne Feinstein said in a statement. The report, which remains classified, “uncovers startling details about the CIA detention and interrogation program and raises critical questions about intelligence operations and oversight,” Feinstein said.

    The committee is expected to vote again in February on whether or not to declassify portions of the report following comment from the White House and CIA.

    Among those urging for the declassification of the report is Senator John McCain, who in December said it is his hope that "all Americans can see the record for themselves, which I believe will finally close this painful chapter for our country. ... Our enemies may act without conscience, but we do not.”

  • US activist released from Vietnam after 9 months

    Ringo H.W. Chiu / AP

    Human rights activist Nguyen Quoc Quan (center left), seen with his wife Huong Mai Ngo and their sons Khoa, 20, and Tri, 19, speaks during a press conference after his arrival at the Los Angeles International Airport from Vietnam on Jan. 30, 2013.

    Ringo H.W. Chiu / AP

    Nguyen Quoc Quan and his wife Huong Mai Ngo smile during a news conference after his arrival in Los Angeles on Jan. 30, 2013.

    The Associated Press reports — A Vietnamese-American pro-democracy activist returned to the United States on Wednesday night after a nine-month detention on accusations of conspiring to overthrow the communist government of Vietnam.

    Nguyen Quoc Quan smiled broadly as he was greeted by his wife, children and other family members, who bore balloons and placed leis around his neck shortly after 8 p.m. as he exited a plane at Los Angeles International Airport.

    "I love you a lot, and I feel very near you every minute of jail," he told his wife, Huong Mai Ngo, in Vietnamese, then repeated in broken English for reporters. He pulled her to his side. "Now even closer," he said with a smile. Read the full story.

  • Boy's Christmas wish: Adoption of little brother caught in US-Russia spat

    Courtesy Thomas family

    John and Renee Thomas with their son, Jack, 7, who was adopted from Russia at the age of 3. Jack is hoping for his brother, Nikoly, now in a Russian orphanage, to join him in the United States.

    By Kari Huus, NBC News

    This Christmas, the best gift 7-year-old Jack Thomas could get would be the arrival of his little brother, Nikoly, who lives in an orphanage in Kursk, Russia.


    "When Jack is asked about his family, he talks about his brother," said his father, John Thomas, speaking from the family’s home in Minnetonka, Minn. "He always asks, 'When is he coming home?' We just tell him we’re waiting for the call."

    Jack has been waiting several years, a long time for a little boy. What he doesn’t know is that a feud between politicians in Moscow and Washington could destroy his chance to grow up with his brother.

    On Friday, Russian lawmakers passed a bill that would prohibit Americans from adopting Russian children, and if that bill is signed into law by President Vladimir Putin, it would cast doubt on even those adoptions already in the pipeline.

    For John Thomas and his wife, Renee — and very likely hundreds of other expectant American families and Russian children — the latest political shift could mean a delay, a new hurdle or a brick wall.

    The U.S. State Department and some high-level officials in Moscow have lambasted the legislation as punishing Russian children who need families in an effort to retaliate against Washington.

    But the bill has gained ground amid a wave of nationalism, fueled by anger over a U.S. human rights bill singling out Russia and by several highly publicized cases of U.S. adoptions that ended tragically.

    Since the end of the Soviet era in 1991, Americans have adopted about 60,000 children from Russia, making it one of the main countries of origin for non-domestic adoptions in the United States, according to U.S. government statistics. At the peak of the trend in 2004, Americans brought 5,862 children into their homes. In 2011, the number was down to 962 — a product of well-intentioned policy shifts, bureaucracy, corruption and other difficulties.

    See the US Action Plan on Children in Adversity

    European Children Adoption Services

    Jack Thomas, at the age of 3, just before he was adopted from Kursk, Russia, by Americans John and Renee Thomas. He is now 7 years old and growing up in an affluent suburb of Minneapolis.

    Even with foreign adoptions, which are allowed after giving Russians priority, Russia has an estimated 700,000 children living in institutions, nearly 80,000 of them orphaned, and the rest abandoned or taken away by the state because the parents were judged unfit to take care of them.

    The Thomases have experienced the painful, stop-start nature of the Russian adoption process in their quest for Nikoly.

    It was in December 2008, when they were finalizing their adoption of 3-year-old Eduard, whom they named Jack, that they learned he had a baby brother. They started the adoption application process for Nikoly as soon as they could, after a required waiting period.

    Compliments of the Thomas family

    Renee Thomas in December 2010 meeting Nikoly at an orphanage in Kursk, Russia. He was 18 months old at the time, and Thomas says she expected he would join the the family within a matter of months. Nikoly is now 4 and remains in institutional care in Russia.

    A year later, John and Renee Thomas, who work as an attorney and a building contract negotiator, again flew to Moscow and then went by rail to Kursk to meet Nikoly, whom they call Theodore or Teddy. He was 18 months old. Renee Thomas says she thought it would take about the same amount of time to adopt him as it had with Jack, and expected to travel to Kursk sometime in the spring of 2010 to get him.

    The Thomases are still waiting.

    One of the reasons for delay, they say, is the horror caused by a woman in Tennessee who put her 7-year-old son, whom she had adopted in Russia, on a one-way flight to Moscow in 2010, with the explanation that the child was "mentally unstable" and she could no longer take care of him.

    In another delay that Renee Thomas believes cost their adoption another year, the Russian government shut down adoptions for review and re-accreditation of all adoption agencies that work in Russia.

    European Children Adoption Services

    Nikoly in an undated photo taken at an orphanage in Kursk, Russia. (The red splotches on his face are believed to be a type of antiseptic.)

    In addition, the Thomas’ dossier has gone before a series of judges in Russia, some of whom have rejected it without a stated reason, and others setting forth requirements that they are not able to meet under U.S. law. Even so, there are Russians trying to help them run the gauntlet, and they figured the problems would get ironed out.

    "We expected to be traveling soon" to get Nikolai, said John Thomas.  

    Just last month, when a newly negotiated bilateral adoptions agreement came into effect, designed to smooth out the process and help safeguard adopted children, things appeared to be looking up.

    Watch the Top Videos on NBCNews.com

    "These adoptive parents have really been through the ringer," said Johnson. "This was a bilateral treaty signed by our two governments. We really celebrated it. I thought we could turn our attention to other countries. But we’re really back to Russia again."

    Kids pay in human rights spat
    The ban that passed the Russian parliament grew out of a dispute over human rights.

    On Nov. 16, the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act passed by a landslide in the U.S. House and Senate. Magnitsky was a 37-year-old lawyer who exposed massive fraud allegedly committed by a group of Russian officials. He was arrested and died in police custody 11 months later under suspicious circumstances. Among other things, the bill denies visas and freezes assets of the Russian officials implicated by Magnitsky.

    The new U.S. law sparked an angry reaction from Moscow and fueled popular anti-American sentiment.

    Russian President Vladimir Putin claims the U.S. is "poisoning ties" between the two countries with a law that bans Russians who abuse human rights and is backing a Russian draft law banning adoption by Americans. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.

    Vladimir Putin said that the law singling out Russia "contaminates our relations."

    Russian legislators then drafted a bill to counter the U.S. law, with provisions restricting organizations and individuals linked to the United States.

    Just before the first vote in the Duma, the proposed ban on American adoptions of Russian children was tacked on as an amendment. The legislation was named after 21-month-old Dima Yakovlev, a Russian boy who died in Virginia after his adoptive father left him alone in a hot SUV for nine hours.

    Americans may lose right to adopt Russian kids

    After the Duma approved the legislation on Friday, the U.S. State Department registered its disapproval.

    "If Russian officials have concerns about the implementation of (the adoption) agreement, we stand ready to work with them to improve it and remain committed to supporting inter-country adoptions between our two countries," said acting State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell. "The welfare of children is simply too important to be linked to political aspects of our relationship."

    The bill is now heading for Putin’s desk for his signature.

    Compliments of the Thomas family

    John Thomas and his son, Jack, who was adopted from Russia at the age of 3, in an undated picture taken at their home in Minnetonka, Minn.

    Opponents of the ban are still hoping that the president will veto the bill, despite his comments while campaigning for re-election that U.S. adoptions should no longer be allowed. More recently he has remained silent on the issue.

    Over the past week, Russian opponents of the ban have launched petitions and small protests at the parliament building, and several high-level officials have registered strong opposition to it, including Russia’s foreign minister and education minister.

    Johnson of the National Council for Adoption says he’s hoping the domestic opposition will dissuade Putin from signing the adoption ban into law.

    "One good thing that’s happening … is a movement brought on by Russian citizens and the foreign minister who has spoken out against this legislation … saying it’s not the right way to stick it to America,” he said. "Hopefully more politicians will feel comfortable speaking out."

    Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com

    Barring that, he said, he hopes Russia will at least make provisions to finalize the adoptions that are already in process.

    "There is a precedent … to negotiate pipeline cases," he said, citing examples in Guatemala and Kyrgystan. "But given the animosity that Russians feel towards this, I hope that’s not a conversation we have to have."

    For the Thomases, despite politics, the adoption effort is now in overdrive. They understand that Nikoly, who turned 4 in June, could be moved at any time — and in fact may have been moved already to a Russian institution for children as old as 18.

    "That's major," said John Thomas. "That's where bad things start to happen."

    For Renee Thomas, her greatest fear is that the boys will not be allowed to grow up together. But she tries to stay positive for Jack.

    "This morning as I was making him breakfast, he said 'Mom, wouldn't it be great if we woke up Christmas morning and Santa left presents and Teddy under the tree?' My response was 'Let's hope for next year.'"

    Follow Kari Huus on Facebook

  • Witness: Sgt. Bales, accused of Afghan massacre, was deemed a top soldier

    Lois Silver/Reuters

    A courtroom sketch shows U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, center, and his defense attorneys Emma Scanlan, second from left, and Maj. Gregory Malson, left, listen to witness Sgt. Jason McLaughlin (R) testify at a U.S. Courts Martial pre-trial proceeding, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington on Monday. Col. Lee Demecky, top center, is seen presiding over the hearing.

    By NBC News staff and wire services

    Sgt. Robert Bales, accused of carrying out a massacre of Afghan villagers in March, had been chosen for an especially challenging assignment in southern Afghanistan because he was deemed a top soldier, according to testimony on Wednesday by 1st Sgt. Vernon Bigham, the News Tribune reported.


    "We needed to put our best guys" with a Special Forces team at Village Stability Platform Belambay, the Tribune said, quoting Bigham, who testified over a video teleconference link from Kandahar Air Field to the hearings at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash.

    Defense attorneys called witnesses Wednesday in hearings that mark the start of the military justice process for Bales, who is accused of slaughtering 16 Afghan villagers, mostly women and children, in a pre-dawn rampage on March 11.

    Bales seemed remorseful after he was taken into custody and seemed to want to confess, but Bigham discouraged it, according to the testimony.

    "He invoked his rights, so I didn't want him to talk about those things to me," said Bigham.

    Bigham's testimony painted a picture of Bales as a capable soldier whom he was trying to groom for a promotion, according the the Tribune. He said that Bales missed the cut for 2011 sergeant first class promotion and was disappointed.

    The mission he was on, as part of an attachment to Special Forces across southern Afghanistan, split up the company of men across 14 different sites, limiting normal oversight of the soldiers, he said.

    "We gave up control of our guys" to the Special Forces teams, Bigham said.

    In testimony later on Wednesday, Special Agent Matthew Hoffman said U.S. Army criminal investigators could not reach the scene of the alleged massacre for three weeks, because American and Afghan leaders considered the area too dangerous.

    Focus on Bales' state of mind
    The Article 32 hearing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., where Bales is based, are to determine whether there is enough evidence to put Bales through a full court martial.

    Proceedings started Monday with prosecutors laying out their version of the events. They said the sergeant acted alone and with "chilling premeditation," leaving his base in Kandahar province twice in one night and killing 16 people, mostly women and children in nearby villages as they slept.

    Bales faces 16 counts of premeditated murder and six counts of attempted murder, as well as charges of assault and wrongfully possessing and using steroids and alcohol while deployed.

    Military prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

    The defense team has not revealed its strategy, but lead civilian defense attorney John Henry Browne has suggested over the past few months that Bales may not have acted alone and may be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Bales was on his fourth combat deployment in 11 years and suffered a concussive head injury in a previous deployment.

    Bales has not participated in a medical evaluation known as a "sanity board," because his lawyers have objected to having him meet with Army doctors without them present.

    The defendant has appeared in court wearing camouflage fatigues with his head shaved, but has remained silent except to say he understands the charges and his rights. Bales has not entered a plea, and is not expected to testify.

    Conflicting accounts
    On Tuesday, Bales' defense team began calling witnesses who gave testimony that appeared to cast doubt on the assertion that Bales acted entirely alone.

    Testifying Tuesday, Private First Class Derek Guinn said he was told by Afghan guards that two U.S. soldiers were seen entering the compound in the early hours of March 11, and one was seen leaving again.

    But Guinn, who spoke to the guards through an interpreter, said he personally did not see anyone leaving or entering Camp Belambay.

    His testimony was at odds with the U.S. Army prosecutor's case — supported by several witnesses on Monday — that Bales, 39, left and entered twice on his own, and was solely responsible for the Afghans' deaths.

    Witnesses from the Afghan villages where the alleged killing spree took place are set to testify on Friday via video link to the hearings, expected to last two weeks. Some villagers have said that more than one U.S. soldier was present during the attacks.

    Guinn's testimony was the first notable discrepancy from the version of events laid out by military prosecutors on Monday.

    Covered in blood
    In the first session of the hearing, lead prosecutor Lieutenant Colonel Jay Morse said Bales alone was responsible for the deaths, in two premeditated attacks. He showed the court a video taken from a surveillance balloon apparently of Bales returning to the base for a second time, just before 5 a.m.

    An Army medic testified on Tuesday that he saw Bales covered in blood and that he knew from experience that the blood was not his own.

    The medic, Sgt. First Class James Stillwell, said he asked Bales where the blood came from and where he had been.

    Bales responded with a shrug, Stillwell testified, and then said, "If I tell you, you guys will have to testify against me."

    The shooting, which if proven at trial would be the worst civilian slaughter by U.S. forces since the Vietnam War, eroded already-strained U.S.-Afghan ties after over a decade of conflict in the country.

    NBC News' Kari Huus, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Denied dream wedding site, lesbian couple files discrimination complaint

    By NBC News and the Associated Press

    Two New York state women who were denied their dream wedding site because they are gay have filed a discrimination complaint that could set a precedent for whether businesses can choose their clientele.

    The complaint with the state Division of Human Rights appears to be a first involving a wedding venue since same-sex marriage became legal in New York in July 2011, according to advocates on both sides of the issue. One prominent gay marriage opponent said the case could test the breadth of the law's religious freedom language.

    Melisa Erwin and Jennie McCarthy, both 29 and of Albany, filed the complaint on Oct. 11 after Liberty Ridge Farm said they would not host their wedding next summer. The two women have been together for three years, according to WNYT-TV.

    When the owners, Robert and Cynthia Gifford, found out they were gay, they refused to book their wedding. 

    Erwin told WNYT-TV's Abigail Bleck that Cynthia Gifford said that when she found out, “Well, now we have a problem.”


    “When we asked why,” Erwin said, Cynthia Gifford replied, “My husband and I have been married a really long time and it’s great that you’re getting married, but you can’t do it here.”

    Robert Gifford told WNYT-TV: “I think it’s our right to choose who we market to, like any business.”

    The farm has refused to allow two gay couples to get married at their venue, WNYT-TV reported.

    “We are a family business and we feel we ought to stay down the family path,” Gifford said.

    The couple is no longer considering the farm as a wedding venue, but McCarthy said, "we just want to know that the policy is being changed to fit the laws so this doesn't happen to anyone else."

    People took to Liberty Ridge Farm’s Facebook page to post messages of disgust or support.

    Wrote one commenter beneath images of a family harvest event: “Stay on the family path. These are individuals who have no respect for Christian beliefs or moral beliefs. You done the right thing. They are the ones that are in the wrong.”

    New York law exempts some religious-oriented institutions from having to accommodate same-sex weddings.

    But Attorney David Fallon told WNYT-TV the law does not allow a “place of public accommodation” to discriminate but that judges haven’t interpreted the law.

    “It seems like the women would have a strong argument that it is a place of public accommodation,” Fallon said.

    If state officials determine there is a case of discrimination, they can order Liberty Ridge to take appropriate action and can set monetary damages. The division's administrative determination can be appealed to state courts.

    There is at least one similar court case in New York. In September, a gay couple in Manhattan filed a lawsuit against a restaurant they allege canceled their rehearsal dinner and refused to cater their wedding after a manager said he did not want any "gay parties." The restaurant disputes the claim.

    In August, a Vermont inn agreed to pay a $10,000 civil penalty to that state's Human Rights Commission and to place $20,000 in a charitable trust to settle a lawsuit that accused the business of refusing to host a wedding reception for two women.

    Back in New York, Erwin emphasized on WNYT-TV’s Facebook page that she and McCarthy are not suing.

    “We are not seeking compensation,” she said. “We are seeking a change in policy.”

    NBC's Isolde Raftery contributed to this report.

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  • US urges China to free prisoners on Tiananmen Square anniversary

    Andrew Kelly / Reuters

    Protesters lay in front of a mock tank as part of a demonstration in New York on Sunday to mark the 23rd anniversary of the The Tiananmen Square protest in China.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    The United States urged China to free all those still jailed over the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy demonstrations on the 23rd anniversary of the brutal crackdown.

    State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner issued a statement late on Sunday calling on the Chinese government on Sunday "to provide a full public accounting of those killed, detained or missing."

    The statement said the U.S. "joins the international community in remembering the tragic loss of innocent lives" -- a comment unlikely to be welcomed by China’s ruling Communist Party.

    Hundreds, perhaps thousands, are believed to have died when the government sent in tanks and soldiers to clear Tiananmen Square on the night of June 3-4, 1989, violently crushing six weeks of protests.

    Regaining moral high ground? Google tells Chinese when they're being censored


    More than two decades later, Beijing still considers the incident a "counter revolutionary rebellion" and has refused to acknowledge any wrongdoing or consider compensation for those killed, The Australian newspaper reported.

    Meanwhile, China censors blocked internet access to the terms "six four," "23," "candle" and "never forget" on Monday, broadening extensive efforts to silence talk about the anniversary.

    Searches for the terms related to the anniversary, such as "six four" for June 4, were blocked on Sina Weibo, the most popular of China's Twitter-like microblogging platforms. Users encountered a message that said the search results could not be displayed "due to relevant laws, regulations and policies."

    Chinese activist: My nephew may be being tortured

    "It's that day again and once more numerous posts are being deleted," a Sina microblogger wrote. Sina was not immediately available for comment.

    China's censors also blocked access to the term "Shanghai stock market" on microblogs after the index fell a bizarre 64.89 points on the anniversary.

    PhotoBlog: Thousands remember Tiananmen Square crackdown

    In another twist, the Shanghai Composite Index opened at 2346.98 points on the 23rd anniversary of the killings in either a deft piece of manipulation or an uncanny double coincidence. The numbers 46.98 are June 4, 1989, backwards.

    "Whoa, these figures are too freaky! Very cool!" said a microblogger. "The opening figure and the drop are both too creepy," said another. 

    For more coverage of China, see Behind The Wall

    The anniversary of the date on which troops shot their way into central Beijing in 1989 has never been publicly marked in mainland China.

    The government has never released a death toll of the crackdown, but estimates from human rights groups and witnesses range from several hundred to several thousand.

    Yao Jianfu, author of a new book of interviews with Chen Xitong, the Beijing mayor at the time of the crackdown, told Reuters that Chen had said "this was a tragedy that should have been averted but wasn't".

    "I never foresaw there would be shooting, because Mao Zedong said that ordinary people should not be shot at and suppressing student protests comes to no good," said Yao.

    An elderly Chinese man has forced work to stop on a building development in the Chinese city of Kunming. The 70-year-old has turned his home into a fortress, and is fighting against eviction. ITN's Angus Walker reports.

    The government has restricted the movements of dozens of dissidents, former prisoners and petitioners during the anniversary period and warned them against speaking to journalists or organizing activities, said Songlian Wang of rights group Chinese Human Rights Defenders.

    A coalition of lawyers and rights activists began a one-day fast in their homes on Monday to commemorate the anniversary, said a Shandong-based lawyer, Liu Weiguo.

    Tens of thousands of people are expected to attend a candlelight vigil in Hong Kong, said organizers, who had erected a replica of the Goddess of Democracy that was built in Tiananmen Square in 1989.

    Chinese tourists stopped on Tiananmen Square shook their heads and appeared mystified when asked about the anniversary. There were no obvious signs of extra security on the already well-guarded square.

    But a trinket vendor said he was well aware what day it was.  "Do foreigners also know about June 4?" he asked a Reuters reporter in a hushed tone, looking around to make sure nobody heard him. "I think it is important we remember but nobody will talk about it now." 

    Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

     

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  • Who is Fu? Chinese exile is 'God's double agent'

    China Aid

    Taking a page from the "million hoodies" campaign in honor of shooting victim Trayvon Martin, China Aid created this show of support for Chen Guangcheng, who is blind, with hundreds of people donning sunglasses.

    By Kari Huus, msnbc.com

    Updated at 9:13 a.m. ET: After the dramatic nighttime escape of Chen Guangcheng from house arrest in his Chinese village, one of the first people to know that the blind lawyer was safe in Beijing was thousands of miles away — in Midland, Texas.

    Pastor Bob Fu, 44, says he knew of Chen’s escape three days before the security guards surrounding the house discovered it. He says he was among the first to receive and post a 15-minute video of Chen, made in hiding, appealing to Chinese President Wen Jiabao to bring to justice the local officials who illegally imprisoned him and his family for months. Fu says he also had a hand in preparing U.S. officials for Chen’s escape and arrival at the U.S. Embassy, while also helping lay the groundwork for alternatives, the details of which he says he cannot divulge.


    Kari Huus


    Follow Kari Huus on Twitter and Facebook.


    Fu knows China’s security apparatus from personal experience. He made his own escape from China, arriving in the United States as a refugee with his wife and newborn son 16 years ago.

    Now, through his Midland-based nonprofit China Aid, Fu is one of the leading voices on behalf of religious freedom in China, connected with activists in his home country and respected on Capitol Hill.

    "Bob Fu is one of the most credible people you’ll ever find about what is going on in China," said Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., who chairs the Human Rights Subcommittee within the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. "He’s very well connected and knows people inside of China who are the agents of reform — people like Chen who (take action) because they want a better China."

    According to tax documents, China Aid has raised several million dollars to fund legal counsel for "house church Christians," financial support for the families of jailed dissidents and publicity for human rights cases in China. In extreme cases, China Aid has helped fund "logistics" for an underground railway, Fu says.

    In China, worship is allowed only in state-sanctioned churches, mosques and synagogues. Evangelizing outside those sites and worshipping in independent churches, often called "house churches," is prohibited.

    China censors 'Shawshank' as Clinton heads to Beijing amid dissident drama

    Fu’s activism goes back to the Tiananmen protests of 1989, when he led a group of fellow students from Liaocheng University in Shandong province to join the massive rallies in the capital. After the crackdown on demonstrators he was one of many student activists required to attend special political study sessions and write self-criticism day after day. He worried that he would be forced to leave his hard-won position at the university.

    U.S. relations with China are being put to the test over the fate of Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese dissident who escaped from house arrest in China and is believed to be in the U.S. embassy or another safe site. NBC's Ian Williams reports.

    During this time, Fu said, he read a book given to him by American missionaries who were teaching English in China. It was the story of a famous Chinese intellectual who was addicted to opium in the early 1900s, but was able to shake the drug after he converted to Christianity.

    "I was really, really struck by the story," Fu said, in an interview with msnbc.com. "I came to the realization if you want to change China, the first thing you need to do is change people’s hearts. And if you want to change other people’s hearts, you first you have to change yourself."

    Jerry Huang / AP

    Bob Fu of the Texas-based rights group China Aid in Midland, Texas on Monday.

    Fu and his wife, Heidi Cai, began holding underground worship services and Bible studies, he said. At the same time, he was teaching English at the Communist Party School in Beijing.

    "I was God’s double-agent," he said, chuckling.

    In 1996, they were arrested and held in jail for two months, and then placed under house arrest, Fu said. Then they received word that they soon would be jailed again, he said, in the “sweep” that preceded China’s Oct. 10 National Day.

    By this time, Fu’s wife was pregnant with their first child, he said, but without the necessary permission from the government, which controls when a woman is allowed to have her one child. If she had been found out, she would be forced to have an abortion, Fu said.

    So in the dark of night, Fu escaped through a second-story bathroom window and Cai left in disguise, he said. They fled to the countryside, Fu said, where they were protected by "house church brothers and sisters."

    Fu said that with the shelter of this network, the help of a Christian policeman and travel documents obtained by a highly placed businessman, they were able to join a tour that went to Thailand and then Hong Kong, which was still under British control. Just three days before the territory was transferred to Chinese sovereignty, Fu and his wife were give refugee status, and flew to the United States.

    NBC sources: Blind activist is under US protection

    Fu and Cai lived in a suburb of Philadelphia, where he started China Aid in his garage while attending Westminster Theological Seminary. They later moved to Midland, Texas, where they are raising their three children.

    What prompted Fu to set up China Aid was a 2002 crackdown on a group of Christians in a house church in Hubei province that led to many arrests, among them five people who were sentenced to death, he said.

    Fu and a group of contacts in the Christian, dissident and exile communities started publicizing the case and raising money, he said. Ultimately, Fu said, they used the funds to pay for 58 lawyers to defend the accused. They contacted the media, making the front page of The New York Times and The Washington Post.

    Andrea Mitchell talks with Bob Fu, founder and president of China Aid, and Christopher Johnson, former China analyst with the CIA, about Chinese dissident Chen Guangcheng's escape from house arrest under the Chinese government, and his current location in U.S. custody.

    "That year, all the five death sentences were overturned," Fu said. "It was a major legal victory, and even the 'evil cult' charge was removed."

    A group of activists who came of age as he did during the Tiananmen movement, are now human rights lawyers, many of them Christian, he said. Fu said he taps into this network, and links them to Washington by picking up the phone.

    'Little ants'
    Fu compares himself and fellow human rights activists to "little ants" forcing "one case after another into courts, moving around and mobilizing and going through all the technical procedures" in place under China’s laws, but often not observed or even taken seriously by officials. 

    "We want to move the pile of dirt with 1 million ants," he said.

    "I had never envisioned or wanted to establish (a nonprofit) like this," he said, but now that China Aid is nearly 10 years old, Fu is gratified by some success. "We can help the persecuted, and we did advance rule of law," he said.

    China Aid is doggedly following and publicizing many human rights cases around China, Fu said.

    "You can write to imprisoned Christians to encourage them and to let them know that you are praying for them," through China Aid, the website says.

    Video reveals blind Chinese activist's plight

    Fu’s group also prints and distributes Bibles in China.

    For Fu, the escape of Chen was a major triumph, but it also has generated new concerns — for the wife and daughter of Chen, and for those who helped get Chen to safety.

    In an opinion piece published in the Washington Post on Monday, Fu calls out the bravery of one such supporter, He "Pearl" Peirong, who drove Chen the 300 miles to Beijing after he escaped over a compound wall in Shandong.

    "I am awed by the courage of those who helped Chen escape. Pearl told me she is willing to die with Chen because he is such a 'pure-hearted courageous person'," Fu wrote. "I was talking to her last week when she said 'guobao laile,'— that state security had arrived."

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  • Sources: Scant evidence 'torture' helped war on terror, Senate probe finds

    By Reuters

    WASHINGTON - A nearly three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to find there is little evidence the harsh "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA used on high-value prisoners produced counter-terrorism breakthroughs.

    People familiar with the inquiry said committee investigators, who have been poring over records from the administration of President George W. Bush, believe they do not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups.

    The backers of such techniques, which include "water-boarding," sleep deprivation and other practices critics call torture, maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al-Qaida leaders.

    One official said investigators found "no evidence" such enhanced interrogations played "any significant role" in the years-long intelligence operations which led to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden last May by U.S. Navy SEALs.

    'Tortured' Gitmo prisoner seeks release of secret videos

    The debate over the effectiveness of enhanced interrogations, which human rights advocates condemn as torture, is resurfacing in part because of a new book by a former top CIA official.

    In the book, "Hard Measures," due to be published on Monday, the former chief of CIA clandestine operations Jose Rodriguez defends the use of interrogation practices including water-boarding, which involves pouring water on a subject's face, which is covered with a cloth, to simulate drowning.

    Slideshow: Life goes on in Guantanamo

    John Moore / Getty Images

    President Obama's one-year deadline to close the facility has long passed as shutting it down has proven complicated and controversial.

    Launch slideshow

    "We made some al-Qaida terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days," Rodriguez says in an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes" that will air on Sunday. "I am very secure in what we did and am very confident that what we did saved American lives."

    Expert: War on terror at 'critical' point as al-Qaida looks to regroup in Africa

    For nearly three years, the Senate intelligence committee's majority Democrats have been conducting what is described as the first systematic investigation of the effectiveness of such extreme interrogation techniques.

    The CIA gave the committee access to millions of pages of written records charting daily operations of the interrogation program, including graphic descriptions of how and when controversial techniques were employed.

    The wives and children of Osama bin Laden are taken to a chartered flight out of Islamabad after being deported to Saudi Arabia.

    Sources agreed to discuss the matter on condition of anonymity because the report has not been finalized.

    The committee members' objective is to conduct a methodical assessment of whether enhanced interrogation techniques led to genuine intelligence breakthroughs or whether they produced more false leads than good ones.

    Report: Bin Laden told followers to kill Obama, Petraeus

    U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged that while the harshest elements of the interrogation program, including water-boarding and other tactics which cause severe physical stress, were in use, the CIA never carried out a scientific assessment of the program's effectiveness.

    The Bush Administration only used water-boarding on three captured suspects. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

    Slideshow: After the raid: Inside bin Laden's compound

    Farooq Naeem / AFP - Getty Images

    U.S. forces found and killed the al-Qaida leader in the affluent Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he had been living in a large compound.

    Launch slideshow

    Other coercive techniques included sleep deprivation, making people crouch or stretch in stressful positions and slamming detainees against a flexible wall.

    The CIA started backing away from such techniques in 2004. Obama banned them shortly after taking office.

    One source cautioned there could still be lengthy delays before any information or conclusions from the Senate committee's report are made public.

    Hidden in plain sight: Inside a secret CIA prison

    One reason the inquiry has taken so long is that in 2009, committee Republicans withdrew their participation, saying the panel would be unable to interview witnesses to ensure documentary material was reported in appropriate context due to ongoing criminal investigations.

    Current and former U.S. officials have said one key source for information about the existence of the al-Qaida "courier" who ultimately led U.S. intelligence to bin Laden was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

    KSM, as he was known to U.S. officials, was subjected to water-boarding 183 times, the U.S. government has acknowledged.

    Officials said, however, that it was not until some time after he was water-boarded that KSM told interrogators about the courier's existence. Therefore a direct link between the physically coercive techniques and critical information is unproven, Bush administration critics say.

    Supporters of the CIA program, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have portrayed it as a necessary, if distasteful, step that may have stopped extremist plots and saved lives. 

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney discusses his new memoir, "In My Time," with TODAY's Matt Lauer. In the exclusive interview, Cheney defends the Iraq war, says waterboarding "worked" and tells Lauer the greatest achievement of the Bush administration was preventing further attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11.

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