Culture Project’s Groundbreaking “Blueprint For Accountability” Event Plays To A Sold Out Audience At The Skirball Center For The Performing Arts, NYU

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) June 9, 2010 -- June 9, 2010, New York, NY – Culture Project’s “Blueprint for Accountability” event—a groundbreaking fusion of theater, film and journalism—played to a sold out audience on June 7th at 7:30PM at NYU Skirball Center.

“Blueprint for Accountability” featured provocative panel discussions with former CIA Officer Valerie Plame Wilson, retired Iraq commander Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, author and environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., best-selling author and investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind, and Center for Constitutional Rights Executive Director Vince Warren.

Punctuating the experts’ discussion, Director Fisher Stevens (The Cove, 2010 Academy Award for Best Documentary) screened vital archival footage and directed theatrical scenes starring acclaimed actors James Spader, Liev Schreiber, Julianna Margulies, Mariska Hargitay and Matt Dillon.

“Blueprint for Accountability” assembled some of the nation’s leading and most influential voices to debate and examine the unparalleled events, policies and circumventions of the previous administration. This forum urged policy makers, the military, and world citizens to craft a decisive moral response capable of restoring both America’s dignity and standing throughout the international community and bring back long-held our values of justice and liberty; ultimately creating a ‘blueprint for accountability’.

In breaking news, Dr. Keller discussed a new report released by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) that charges the Bush administration with experimenting on terrorism detainees and violating laws on human testing enacted after the Holocaust. The report alleges that the CIA’s medical professionals monitored interrogations, recorded data on techniques and pain thresholds, and used this information to “enhance” future interrogations. Keller stressed that these doctors provided the medical sanitation necessary to legalize interrogation methods previously classified as torture, harking back to Jay Bybee and John Yoo’s infamous torture memos.

General Sanchez spoke at length about the complicity of the American public and politicians in the use of torture tactics, stating, “Yes, we have tortured people. We have to deal with the fact that when we send our young men and women to war we unleash brutality.” He advised against closing Guantánamo, adding that a more tenable location for holding enemy combatants has not been proposed.

An interview with the family of Fahad Hashmi, an American citizen held for three years in solitary confinement under Special Administrative Measures, brought home the de facto treatment of all Muslim detainees suspected of terrorism. Dr. Keller stressed that confinement and other forms of military-sanctioned torture can have brutal, destructive effects on prisoners—among them nightmares, paranoia, post-traumatic stress, and family devastation.

“International law has failed,” Sanchez said, to the strenuous disagreement of moderator Warren, who stressed that the 1929 Geneva Conventions codified standard operating procedures for detention of prisoners of war. Given the rise of the CIA and private contractors in military programs, Warren questioned our collective ability to hold covert operatives accountable for their actions when no such mechanism exists in our government.

Wilson echoed his sentiment, faulting the degradation of our ability to provide security from inside the government as leading to the rise in private contractors—who typically command salaries 3-to-5 times greater than government officials. Scahill added that these mercenaries collectively receive 70% of the federal security budget though, as hired guns, their allegiance ultimately lies with the government paying top dollar.

Bobby Kennedy, Jr. called for a restoration of the Rule of Law and a return to the democratic ideals enshrined in the Constitution, calling into question President Obama’s ability to fulfill the mandate given by the American people in his 2008 election. “But will Obama lead us out of torture?” Warren asked.

Suskind and Styron were cautiously optimistic, touting America’s grassroots values and urging concerned individuals to hold public demonstrations and make their voices heard by the Obama administration, putting an end to ongoing abuses in the War on Terror. A number of solutions were offered, including a truth commission to investigate crimes committed in the Iraq War, though Warren remained wary of amnesty for officials implicated in the process.

The event featured several calls-to-action from prominent human rights organizations—including the Center for Constitutional Rights, Alliance For Justice, and Theaters Against War—with a special reading by Hargitay of Sister Dianna Ortiz’s letter to President Obama, part of Amnesty International’s “Ten Against Torture” campaign.

For more than a decade, Culture Project has been on the forefront in the movement to restore our system of dem

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