by hilzoy
I haven’t yet gotten my preordered copy of Jane Mayer’s new book on torture. But other people have, and it sounds horrific, in the way that a very well-sourced book by a very good journalist on how this administration, in her words, made “torture the official law of the land in all but name.” Andrew Bacevich has a great review of it here (that’s where I got the quote I just used from). The NYT writes:
“Red Cross investigators concluded last year in a secret report that the Central Intelligence Agency’s interrogation methods for high-level Qaeda prisoners constituted torture and could make the Bush administration officials who approved them guilty of war crimes”
Steve Clemons is hosting a discussion about the book tomorrow at 9:30; he’ll have streaming video at his site. Frank Rich writes about it here; and Scott Horton has a great interview with Mayer, including the story of an internal probe into homicides in detention, done by the CIA’s Inspector General, and shut down after a series of meetings between the IG and Dick Cheney. Mayer:
“Helgerson’s 2004 report had been described to me as very disturbing, the size of two Manhattan phone books, and full of terrible descriptions of mistreatment. The confirmation that Helgerson was called in to talk with Cheney about it proves that–as early as then–the Vice President’s office was fully aware that there were allegations of serious wrongdoing in The Program.
We know that in addition, the IG investigated several alleged homicides involving CIA detainees, and that Helgerson’s office forwarded several to the Justice Department for further consideration and potential prosecution. The only case so far that has been prosecuted in the criminal courts is that involving David Passaro—a low-level CIA contractor, not a full official in the Agency. Why have there been no charges filed? It’s a question to which one would expect that Congress and the public would like some answers.”
Then there’s this, from the Washington Post, which seems to me to encapsulate much of what I hate about this administration:
“A CIA analyst warned the Bush administration in 2002 that up to a third of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay may have been imprisoned by mistake, but White House officials ignored the finding and insisted that all were “enemy combatants” subject to indefinite incarceration, according to a new book critical of the administration’s terrorism policies.
The CIA assessment directly challenged the administration’s claim that the detainees were all hardened terrorists — the “worst of the worst,” as then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said at the time. But a top aide to Vice President Cheney shrugged off the report and squashed proposals for a quick review of the detainees’ cases, author Jane Mayer writes in “The Dark Side,” scheduled for release next week.
“There will be no review,” the book quotes Cheney staff director David Addington as saying. “The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.” (…)
“Addington’s response was adamant and imperious. ‘We are not second-guessing the President’s decision. These are enemy combatants,’ ” Mayer wrote.”
It is absolutely appropriate for the President to decide what to do with enemy combatants, within the limits of the law. But what earthly reason could there be for his making the determination that any given detainee was or was not an enemy combatant? Had he met these detainees? Had he gone over all their case files? Even if he did, which defies belief, did he have the background in the law of war that would allow him to make any such determination? Isn’t that why the government hires people with specific sorts of expertise — to make determinations like this one?
In any remotely sane administration, the very idea of saying “The president has determined that they are ALL enemy combatants. We are not going to revisit it.” would be laughable — like saying that the President went out and did a job safety inspection, or decided that a given factory was operating in violation of the Clean Air Act. Presidents decide policy; other people apply those policies to specific individuals.
But what makes it incalculably worse is that Addington was not just asserting that no one could question the President’s decisions on a matter obviously beyond his competence. It’s that the decision that would not be “second-guessed” or “revisited” was the decision to keep hundreds of people, many of whom were, according to the CIA, innocent of any wrongdoing, locked up for years, in secret. Recall this statement by the lawyer of a detainee who had been cleared by the government two years before:
“I thought I knew something about what this imprisonment meant, but I was wrong. I really found out Friday of last week. You see, there had been a newspaper article that had been written about this story, and it had been picked up by the Uighur diaspora and made its way to Europe.
And late Thursday came an extraordinary telephone call, and on Friday, through an interpreter, I spoke by telephone to Kabsur Abdul Hakim, who is a refugee living in Sweden, and she is Adel’s sister. And while Mary Turkel, the interpreter who was in the room, and I listened to her weep, she told us that the thought her brother was dead.
You see, she was right. These people are dead to the outside world. They’re dead to their children, they’re dead to their wives, even their names are a secret. And but for the fortuity that my clients happen to have outside lawyers, the fact of their acquittal, or whatever you call this, would be a secret.””
Despite making every effort to ensure that detainees would have next to no legal rights, this detainee was found not to be an enemy combatant. When that phone call took place, he had been kept incommunicado for four years. He has a wife, and he has children, children who spent years without a father. His family didn’t even know he was alive.
Even had there been no torture at all, this would be completely unconscionable. But think about the idea that it happened because even though this man was not an enemy combatant, and even though our own laughable “reviews” determined that he was not an enemy combatant, our President had decided, on the basis of nothing at all, that he was, and “We are not second-guessing the President’s decision.”
In any sane administration, people would have gone to the President and said: This is just wrong. And any President with a shred of decency would have agreed. But we have neither.
I get angry about this issue, a lot. But at some point the futility of getting angry and the repeated blows to my ideal of what I wish our country stood for are just too much to deal with. I just can’t spend so much of my life caring so deeply about what’s been done.
Fuck it all. This is a stupid stupid country, willing to be led by stupid and malicious people. Nothing I say or do will ever change that fact, just as if I’d grown up in Stalin’s Russia or Hitler’s Germany or for that matter Saddam’s Iraq.
Nothing I do or say will ever make a diddly damn to this status quo. By and large Americans are fucking idiots who will put up with anything as long as their daddy figure is willing to talk tough in their name, and as long as nothing delays the start of American Idol or the football game.
My only practical concern is to make sure I can still move to Canada when things get too bad for me to accept.
EOC: Much as I agree with you, the posting rules still forbid profanity…
Apologies. I really did not know that.
Really, I think I just participate in blogs like this as a parlor game to blunt my frustration over the fruitlessness of it all. Ah well, it’s less destructive than crack….
I find it fascinating that this cabal had a contempt for the very institutions its party controlled. After all, if there was a problem of inaction in the last Congress, it was a Republican problem. The party had abdicated its duty to oversight out of loyalty, and that abdication of authority made its beneficiaries (Cheney et al) even more contemptuous of the institution.
I have a sense that administration figures did this to prove, to themselves or others, that they could. I find this more disturbing than anything else.
I hope the golden rule will bite them into their behinds really hard. Vain hope of course but where would we be without fantasies?
It’s like something right out of the The Gulag Archipelago, with Addington playing the role of Lavrentiy Beria.
The Red Cross is privileged in the Geneva Convention; I would assume that they would be influential if, say, Switzerland or Spain were to try to press charges against US officials who travel abroad. How politicized are they in that regard? That is,the report seems to conclude that torture occured, which would be a prima facie violation of the Geneva conventions; would that be a factor in human rights courts? Would the Red Cross ever issue that report publicly, or is it something that they would keep buried and watered down?
I know Liddy Dole used to be president of the American Red Cross … forgive my suspicions of the current Republicans if that makes me wonder about the ARC. I know almost nothing about the international body.
Brian, I don’t think anyone outside the US is in any doubt that prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay and other oubliettes around the world have been tortured.
To the best of my knowledge and belief, there is only one international human rights court, and that is the European Court of Human Rights – torture in Europe or by Europeans, and of extraordinary rendition for torture by European countries would come within its remit, but not torture by Americans in countries outside Europe. (The US is not a member state of the Council of Europe, nor is Iraq, nor Afghanistan, nor Cuba.)
Bush & Co decided they did not want to be subject to the International Criminal Court, so American war criminals can’t be tried there.
So long as Bush & Co rule in the US government, they could not ordinarily be tried by national courts outside the US. There remains the question whether a retired head of state, his vice, and his minions, can be tried for the crime of torture. It would not be necessary if it appeared at all likely that the US intended to investigate and try Bush & Co for their crimes, and it won’t be possible unless the US government indicates they will support extradition – or unless, after January 2009, Bush & Co happen, severally or together, to visit a country from which they could be extradited to face trial.
Not sure I can watch:
Lawyers for a Canadian prisoner at Guantanamo Bay released excerpts of videotaped interrogations Tuesday, providing a first-ever glimpse into the secretive world of questioning enemy combatants at the isolated U.S. prison in Cuba.
The 10 minutes of video — selected by Omar Khadr’s Canadian lawyers from more than seven hours of footage recorded by a camera hidden in a vent — shows a 16-year-old Khadr weeping, his face buried in his hands, during the 2003 interrogation that took place over four days.
The video, created by U.S. government agents and originally marked as secret, provides insight into the effects of prolonged interrogation and detention on the Guantanamo prisoner.
Hadn’t heard this before, from Scott Horton’s interview with Mayer:
Jessica Radack, a young career attorney in the Justice Department’s Honors Program, who dispensed ethics advice concerning plans for the interrogation of John Walker Lindh.
…
Radack was in some ways an early guinea pig showing how high the costs were for anyone—including administration lawyers—who dissented from the Bush Administration’s determination to rewrite the rules for the treatment of terrorists. Her job in the department was to give ethical advice. She was asked whether an FBI officer in Afghanistan could interrogate John Walker Lindh and use his statements against him in any future trial. By the time she was asked this, however, as she knew, Lindh’s father had already hired a lawyer to represent him. So she concluded that it would not be proper for the FBI to question him outside the presence of his counsel.
To her amazement, the FBI agent went ahead and did so anyway, and then the prosecutors in the Justice Department proceeded to use Lindh’s statements against him in their criminal prosecution.
What happened next was truly scary. She tried to ensure that a judge overseeing the case, who asked for all information regarding the Department’s handling of Lindh, was given the full record, including her own contrary advice. But instead, she said she found that her superiors at Justice sent the judge only selective portions of the record, excluding her contrary opinion. Her case files, she said, were tampered with, and documents missing. Among the senior Justice Department officials who were sent her files, she said was Alice Fisher, a deputy to Michael Chertoff who followed him as head of the Department’s Criminal Division.
Ah lying to federal judges, violating the Constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, just another day in the Bush administration.
What are the processes by which these guys could be sent to jail?
By “these guys” I include everyone from the hands-on interrogators, through the military and/or intelligence chain of command, through the folks in the Executive setting the policy, through Cheney and Bush.
No doubt the procedures are different for different actors. I’m just curious to know what the procedures are.
I can’t find the words to say how thoroughly and profoundly corrupt I believe Bush, Cheney, and their minions to be. Personally, I suspect Cheney is criminally insane. No joke. There is nothing good in them, no soundness to them, at all. They are horrible, rotten people, failures as human beings.
The damage these people have done to the nation is immeasurable, and will continue for years and years.
They could not have done what they’ve done without the acquiescence of the American people. We are also culpable for everything that has been done in our name. We will pay and pay for years to come.
You can’t put the whole country on trial, but you can sure as hell do so with the authors and implementors of this stuff.
What are the procedures?
Thanks –
Man does this stuff make my blood boil. It is VERY frustrating to be able to do so little to stop this.
After Bush issues blanket pardons on January 2009, there will probably be no way under US law that anyone will ever be held accountable, or punished.
I’m steeling myself to that idea already.
if any of you work construction, and can tolerate warm weather, i hear Hell is undergoing major expansion in order to handle the flood of new members it’s anticipating.
long hours, terrible conditions, but you get paid in solid gold fiddles.
The blanket pardon would be wonderful. The perfect “fnck you” send off to the nation and world from the Bush administration. Though I don’t think Bush could pardon himself (but don’t put it past him to resign an hour before his term is up and then have Cheney pardon him).
Of course, if someone has a blanket pardon they can be called before congress to testify to what they did and could not invoke their fifth amendment rights. Doesn’t prevent them from answering “I don’t recall” to every question (though that would open them up to perjury charges, hard to prove of course). Pardons also make it more likely that they might get prosecuted overseas later.
Ugh, Bush doesn’t need to pardon himself. It’s not as if any American court would try him – he’s the President! You guys don’t believe in holding your rulers accountable for their crimes in office: and I don’t suppose after he retires from office he’ll ever visit Europe again.
But what earthly reason could there be for his making the determination that any given detainee was or was not an enemy combatant? Had he met these detainees? Had he gone over all their case files? Even if he did, which defies belief, did he have the background in the law of war that would allow him to make any such determination?
I imagine it was exactly like his reviews of death row clemency appeals while he was governor of Texas: he had someone prepare a short summary and read it to him, then he made his decision, everyone knowing all along what the decision was going to be.
Impeachment is, was, the only effective remedy. The structural damage may be permanent now.
Given how seriously the Republican Party takes (a) the President receiving a blow job in the Oval Office
(b) gay sex scandals
isn’t any redblooded American male willing to take one for the team? It’s the only way you’ll ever manage to impeach Bush.
The structural damage may be permanent now.
as soon as the next Dem president tries anything like this, the government, the courts, the media, and the public will all jump to make sure The Rule Of Law, Not Of Men is restored. don’t you worry.
After Bush issues blanket pardons on January 2009
What if legal action was not initiated until after January? Can Bush pardon people, proactively, for as-yet-unnamed charges?
isn’t any redblooded American male willing to take one for the team?
Really, Jes, you ask too much.
thanks –
Jesurgislac, it’s not so much whether people outside of the US believe the US has tortured; they’re easily dismissed. The Red Cross, which is explicitly the institution in the treaty that’s supposed to inspect prisoners, in a way which random “surrender monkeys” and pinko human rights organizations are not, publicly and without weakening came out against Bush’s former government — perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that this might be a bigger influence on “the (international) elite” which might make trials actually happen.
Russell, Ford’s pardon of Nixon and Carter’s pardon of Vietnam-era draft dodgers provide a precedent for pardons preceding the legal proceedings. (Ahem, the alliteration got to me there).
You guys don’t believe in holding your rulers accountable for their crimes in office: and I don’t suppose after he retires from office he’ll ever visit Europe again.
Yeah. For a citizenry that is so proud of its revolutionist forebears, we are pretty darn deferential to power.
What are the processes by which these guys could be sent to jail?
There’s a conference next month, I think in Massachusetts somewhere, of lawyers and others to explore this very question.
It is vastly preferable for the effort to hold accountable the people who made torture a policy be made in this country, rather than having suits brought in other countries or a case coming to the International Criminal Court (which would require the U.S. becoming a signatory, and there being no effort in the U.S. to try those responsible).
Impeachment remains the best option to deal with Bush and Cheney and get the facts into the record. Few Americans understand that impeachment is possible after the officials in question have left office. The fundamental need is for an official, inescapable acknowledgement of what was done.
‘Truth and reconciliation’ kinds of proceedings are not appropriate for us now –we’re not in the aftermath of a civil war or an oppressed majority taking power. We’re simply a country in which the opposition has ceased to function as an opposition for electoral reasons and because of corruption and complicity.
I don’t expect the ICRC to do anything public, Brian. Ever.
Ugh, I’m told that the full Khadr tape will be released later in the day.
Here’s a possibility. Suppose that first there’s a full airing of the truth: the torture, the denial of rights, the innocence of many of the detainees, and so on. Testimony before Congress by detainees. Spend a good year airing the dirty laundry. Build up the public outrage. THEN start criminal proceedings against Bush Administration figures. Use plea deals to get damning evidence against Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush. Prosecute them last.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
there. will. be. no. impeachment.
mm k?
Impeachment, convictions, indictments.
Not going to happen. Nor should it.
It’s like blaming the grizzly bear who ate Timothy Treadwell; did anyone expect differently from Bush? Look, anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew what they were getting by voting for Bush. The Bush voter had to understand they were getting someone with a reverse Midas touch and a surly pride in being ignorant.
Blaming Bush is merely treating a symptom.
Suppose that first there’s a full airing of the truth: the torture, the denial of rights, the innocence of many of the detainees, and so on.
While such a thing would be wonderful, in general, people are unwilling to testify about crimes in which they might be implicated without an offer of legal immunity. That’s why we really can’t start off by assuming that people will just testify. And while detainees might testify, without corroboration from people within government, I’m afraid most Americans won’t find such testimony persuasive.
Note that when other countries engage in Truth and Reconciliation activities, a critical component of those commissions is their promise not to prosecute offenders based on testimony disclosed. There is a trade off between publicizing the truth and bringing perpetrators to justice. T&R commissions exist at one end of the spectrum (where you have lots of truth but almost no prosecutions) while the more typical American justice system exists closer to the opposite end, at least for complex prosecutions involving many people working in an organization (where prosecutors coerce small fish into testifying against bigger fish with threats of imprisonment).
The idea of truth and reconciliation occuring in contemporary America is pretty terrifying. Outside of the informed left and a few moderates, the public is not capable of following what America has done. This is a feature, not a bug, about the American public, and it’s not to the credit of people on the left who do have a clue. Add that there is also the fact of deniability and complicity, as in anyone who voted for Bush in 2004 is pretty much guilty of supporting what was obvious then as torture, a pointless war, and complete corruption and you have a huge latent opposition to justice. No one will come out and say this, of course, but that will just add to the derangment.
And in the slim-to-none chance that trials go forward, people who support the process must be prepared for a fight not only with the perpetrators at the top, but the America that sat around and let these people do this.
If you look at Watergate as a triumph of the Constitution over unlawful power, you also have to look at it as a springboard for a thousand very effective resentments, which lead from El Salvador to Iran-Contra to the anti-Clinton propaganda machine to the War on Terror. What would happen if Bush and Cheney were put on trial would dwarf that, period.
“Would the Red Cross ever issue that report publicly, or is it something that they would keep buried and watered down?”
Neither. International Red Cross reports are always kept confidential. (Except when they leak.)
Unless:
I highly recommend reading both articles, and also the links I didn’t include, for further information and answers to these questions.
“Can Bush pardon people, proactively, for as-yet-unnamed charges?”
IANAL. But: Yes.
Ford’s pardon of Nixon:
No charges had been brought at the time. (Official text.)
Next question? 🙂
Let me throw in:
It’s quite the royal power.
Ugh, I’m told that the full Khadr tape will be released later in the day.
Well, this will be interesting.
Anyone want to take bets on whether this will make the evening news?
people who support the process must be prepared for a fight not only with the perpetrators at the top, but the America that sat around and let these people do this.
Bring it.
Long past time for an “agonizing reappraisal.”
I want my American dream back. They stole it. I want it back.
“Look, anyone with two brain cells to rub together knew what they were getting by voting for Bush. The Bush voter had to understand they were getting someone with a reverse Midas touch and a surly pride in being ignorant.”
It may be treating the symptom, Mis En Place, but your argument seems to be, all too literally, “Don’t punish the murderer — it’s society’s fault.” Maybe society needs be cleaned up, but that’s no reason to let murderers go completely unpunished — or even rewarded.
Learned helplessness.
Brian: A more apt analogy might be handing the keys to the car to the one who had the most to drink.
As we sort through the wreckage, we can certainly blame the driver. But we really must question those who put him behind the wheel. Otherwise, we’re pretending to be shocked that gambling is taking place in the back of Rick’s Café Américain.
I wouldn’t expect everyone to work through all 216 pages of today’s en banc decision in Al Marri, but here’s a snippet from Judge Gregory’s concurrence:
The only advantage of the pardons we can expect to be granted is that they would fulfill the condition of the international court of non-prosecution by the home country of the culprits for taking on the case.
But we really must question those who put him behind the wheel. Otherwise, we’re pretending to be shocked that gambling is taking place in the back of Rick’s Café Américain.
Well it wasn’t me who put him there, and I don’t need to pretend to be shocked. Ok, at this point maybe not shocked, but disgusted anew.
If Bush is going to pardon everyone anyway, let’s at least force him to do so. At a minimum, it will get names on the record.
I agree that pushing this as far as it will go will create resentment among lots of folks. TFB. It’s not that I don’t care about what those folks think, it’s that I actively would like to rattle their cages.
I’m with trilobite, bring it.
This isn’t borderline, padding-the-expense-account kind of stuff. These guys are bad actors, and their actions are crimes.
I’ve had enough. I’m just trying to figure out what kind of recourse is available.
If the best possible answer is get the facts out and make them cover their *sses, fine, let’s do that. If we can do more, fine, let’s do that.
I just want to know what’s available.
Thanks –
@modulo myself: Outside of the informed left and a few moderates, the public is not capable of following what America has done.
That’s just not so. They’re made very uncomfortable by the contrast with the pretty story we tell ourselves about our role in the world, but they’re completely capable of following it.
The resistance to anything that contradicts the pretty story is a bug, not a feature; it keeps the country infantilized and in the thrall of corrupt power with a sunny countenance.
mm: This is a feature, not a bug, about the American public, and it’s not to the credit of people on the left who do have a clue.
So how exactly is this supposed incapacity on the part of the American public, which you say is a good thing, to my discredit?
@Mis en Scene:
1- There are so many issues and policy areas affected by the executive branch that anyone who votes for a candidate for President cannot plausibly be held to account for any one of those issues. I tried repeatedly to make this point to friends who wanted to insist in December 2004 that the country had just voted for torture.
2- Even if there were far more massive public support for torture across the board than there is, there is no such thing as putting an entire country and culture on trial.
3- Holding leaders to account does have an instructive effect on the followers. (Contra ‘modulo myself’ above, the Watergate hearings did not create the resentments that led to the rightist resurgence, the sixties did.). In this case, the officials responsible have already lost the political support of 70% of the public. Impeachment, trial, or truth commission — whatever process is used to lay out the history of how indefinite detention and torture were made policy — will have some effect on the willingness to admit that gambling goes on in Rick’s Cafe Americain.
isn’t any redblooded American male willing to take one for the team? It’s the only way you’ll ever manage to impeach Bush.
Jeff Gannon tried, but IOKIYAR.
No, Mis En Place, “getting away with murder” is still the most appropriate comparison. People died at Abu-Ghraib, which the army concluded was due to homicide; almost nobody has been punished.
Douglas Feith, Man of Humanity:
Feith concurred with a December 2002 memorandum that recommended the approval of stress positions, dogs and nudity during interrogations, saying it was possible to apply them in a “humane fashion” in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
They should have brought out a couple of dogs and asked him how to use them humanely on himself.
Arizona Republican, Man of Humanity:
The panel’s ranking Republican member, Arizona Rep. Trent Franks, accused the majority Democrats of holding hearings “dedicated primarily to making sure we are protecting the rights of terrorists.”
Because the federal government is flawless when it comes to defending the U.S. against terrorists. That’s why I was able to visit the twin towers in Manhattan this weekend.
Iowa Republican, Man of Humanity:
Invoking the September 11, 2001, attacks, Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, said officials crafted the policy “while that smoking hole in New York was still burning.”
“It’s inappropriate for us to bring people up and turn them slowly on a spit because there are people on this committee that despise this administration,” he said.
Right, December 2002, “still burning.”
But the pardon doesn’t even need to contain the names. Bush could follow the course another Republican took in 2005:
But the pardon doesn’t even need to contain the names
Unbelievable.
I give up.
Thanks –
Russell,
If it’s any consolation, it’s going to be much harder for Bush issue a blanket subject matter pardon like the one in Kentucky for the endless transgressions by the administration over the pass seven years. For example, if he pardons “any and all persons who have committed or may be accused of committing, any offense up to and including the date hereof, relating in any way to the current War on Terror”, there’s a good argument that applies to the terrorists themselves (I suppose he could carve that back, but then it just goes on and on and on).
We’ll see what Bush does. He didn’t pardon Libby until just before he was going to be sent to jail. Bush might just be petulant enough to say “you all told me this stuff was legal, you don’t need a damn pardon!”
Ugh, it would seem simple enough to limit the pardon to people in the US government. I think the main considerations are (1) keeping Bush, Cheney, and perhaps a few top cronies out of legal jeopardy; (2) avoiding having things come out that would further tarnish Bush’s precious legacy and perhaps delay the realization by historians that he was one of America’s great presidents.
KCinDC – I guess he could limit to US gov’t personnel and people under contract with the US gov’t to sweep in Blackwater (but he’ll likely end up pardoning people who even he might agree should be prosecuted).
If he wants to limit it to the top people, he could just go the Ford/Nixon route and name names.