So, when I read that the Georgetown University law school prof had a new book out, I quickly got my copy. I wasn’t disappointed, and you won’t be either.

Cole’s new book is two things: First, a collection of six of the previously-published “torture memos” written between 2002 and 2006 by lawyers at the Bush-era Office of Legal Counsel. Yes, the ones that used law to justify the “enhanced interrogation techniques” now so well known. And, second, Cole’s commentary on this distortion of the law and its implications for our society

This book is a must-read for the latter alone. In chillingly uncomplicated prose, Cole argues that these memos are the real “smoking gun” in the torture controversy because they demonstrate that the culpability lies not merely with the CIA interrogators who may have exceeded Justice Department legal guidance, but with the legal guidance itself – the “incredible arguments advanced to give them a green light.”

As we all now know, that sloppy and craven legal analysis  contorted the law to authorize clearly illegal CIA tactics. And it continued to do so in secret even after the Bush Administration sought to assure the public that it was abiding by the very laws it was breaking.

Yet, at about the same time as the torture memos were being published – and the nation prepared to mark the eighth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks –those who ordered and wrote these memos were busily defending themselves.

Or, more accurately perhaps, using the straw-man of an investigation of the CIA to deflect attention away from their conduct.

Exhibit A is John Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California’s law school, who was the Bush Administration’s go-to guy for legal justifications. In a recent op-ed, Yoo warns us about the dire consequences that await the nation as the Justice Department pursues its investigation of CIA operatives.

Yoo invokes Jimmy Carter, who he describes as “a young fresh face” campaigning for the presidency by attacking the CIA: “Our government should justify the character and moral principles of the American people, and our foreign policy should not short-circuit that for temporary advantage,” Carter says. He promises to never “do anything as president that would be a contravention of the moral and ethical standards that I would exemplify in my own life as an individual.”

“He wins the election and begins to decimate the intelligence agencies,” Yoo writes, and then recalls, “The Carter administration’s national-security record should not serve as a model for any president. But unless Obama changes course, he risks duplicating the intelligence disasters of the ’70s, and endangering the nation.”

Yoo reminds us that several of the detainees the CIA tortured “were directly involved with the planning and execution of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. They were captured at a time when our government feared a second wave of attacks.”

“Our nation’s leaders made the difficult decision to use coercive interrogation methods to learn as quickly as possible what these hardened al-Qaida operatives knew,” he writes, adding:

“As one of many government lawyers who worked on these counterterrorism programs, I can attest to the terrible pressure of time and events in the months after the Sept. 11 attacks. Knowledgeable officials expected that al-Qaida would try again — soon — and in a more devastating fashion.”

And, then, in true Dick Cheney mode, he admonishes: “As we pause to remember the Sept. 11 attacks eight years later, fair-minded people should take heart that there has been no follow-up attack in the United States. To the contrary, several plots have been foiled and the terrorists are on the run. This was not the result of luck — it is because of the hard work of members of the military and our intelligence agencies.”

“Their reward,” he laments, “is an open-ended investigation, and in some instances the disturbing reopening of cases closed by career prosecutors.”

“Even the most fervent antiwar activists should welcome an effective intelligence service. If the CIA had accurately judged Iraq’s lack of WMD in 2003, the war might not have occurred. If the CIA had decapitated al-Qaida’s leadership in the 1990s (the plans were vetoed by President Bill Clinton), the 9/11 attacks may have been headed off and the invasion of Afghanistan rendered unnecessary,” he writes.

“Persecuting the CIA risks another (Pearl Harbor) or major intelligence failure,” Yoo concludes.

But, hold on now, this is not about an investigation of the CIA. That’s John Yoo’s smoke-screen. This is about a bunch of highly-educated but ideologically-challenged lawyers who exploited our post-9/11 hysteria to try to rewrite the Constitution.

Paradoxically, it is precisely during times of such hysteria that we most urgently need the Constitution and its principles of fairness and equity. Resisting – not caving to — the temptation to compromise those principles would have been the benchmark for discovering those who truly believe.

I first came across David Cole several years ago, when he was doing a lot of advocating on behalf of donors to Muslim-oriented charities whose organizations were shut down by our Treasury Department with virtually no legal due process on vaguely-defined suspicions that they were supporting terrorist causes.

Cole likened that situation to the guilt-by-association tactics of the McCarthy era. He never weighed in on the guilt or innocence of those charities. But he was downright bulldoggish in his insistence that this was precisely the time we should apply the rule of law – not the law of the Wild, Wild, West soundbite. A position the Obama Administration has now also embraced.

For me, that defines a lawyer’s lawyer. For our country, it defines the future of our Constitution and the sacred legal structures that keep us from flying apart.

John Yoo is far from any lawyer’s lawyer.

William Fisher is a regular contributor to The Public Record. He has managed economic development programs for the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Middle East, Latin America and elsewhere for the past 25 years and served in the administration of President John F. Kennedy. He reports on a wide-range of issues for numerous domestic and international newspapers and online journals. He blogs at The World According to Bill Fisher.

Judge Baltasar Garzón

The Spanish newspaper Público reported exclusively on Saturday that Judge Baltasar Garzón, who sits on the Criminal Court of Spain, is pressing ahead with a case against six senior Bush administration lawyers for implementing torture at Guantánamo.

Back in March, Judge Garzón announced that he was planning to investigate the six prime architects of the Bush administration’s torture policies — former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who played a major role in the preparation of the OLC’s notorious “torture memos”; Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy; William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department’s former general counsel; Jay S. Bybee, Yoo’s superior in the OLC, who signed off on the August 2002 “torture memos”; and David Addington, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.

In April, on the advice of the Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido, who believes that an American tribunal should judge the case (or dismiss it) before a Spanish court even thinks about becoming involved, prosecutors recommended that Judge Garzón should drop his investigation. As CNN reported, Mr. Conde-Pumpido told reporters that Judge Garzón’s plans threatened to turn the court “into a toy in the hands of people who are trying to do a political action.”

On Saturday, however, Público reported that Judge Garzón had accepted a lawsuit presented by a number of Spanish organizations — the Asociación Pro Dignidad de los Presos y Presas de España (Organization for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners), Asociación Libre de Abogados (Free Lawyers Association), the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España (Association for Human Rights in Spain) and Izquierda Unida (a left-wing political party) — and three former Guantánamo prisoners (the British residents Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, and Sami El-Laithi, an Egyptian freed in 2005, who was paralyzed during an incident involving guards at Guantánamo). The newspaper reported that all these groups and individuals would take part in any trial.

It is, at present, uncertain whether another attempt to stifle Judge Garzón will derail him, as he is not known for letting adversaries stand in his way. At the end of June, the Spanish Parliament pointedly passed legislation aimed at “ending the practice of letting its magistrates seek war-crime indictments against officials from any foreign country, including the United States,” on the basis that no Spanish Court should be able to judge officials of foreign countries except when the victims are Spanish or the crimes were committed in Spain.

However, on Sunday, when Público spoke to Philippe Sands, the British lawyer, and author of Torture Team, which provided much of the first-hand evidence for Garzón’s case, Sands explicitly stated that there was “no legal barrier” to prevent Judge Garzón’s prosecution from proceeding. He explained that he believed the recent decision by US Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special investigator to investigate cases of torture by the CIA is related to the Spanish lawsuit and the importance it has acquired because of its instigation by Judge Garzón. Sands told Público, “The recent decision by Eric Holder emphasizes how appropriate the Spanish investigation is. Many commentators believe that this decision has had a significant and direct impact in the United States, reminding people that there is an obligation to investigate torture.”

He added, “Judge Garzón’s actions have acted like a catalyst, and are supported by many people in the United States, including some members of Congress. He has reminded everybody that a blind eye cannot be turned to these actions and that there are people who are not going to let that happen.” He also explained that Eric Holder’s gesture is only a first step, “limited to cases in which interrogators may have exceeded the limits formally approved by lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel,” that the architects of the “legal decisions that purported to justify the use of torture are not in immediate danger in the United States,” and that there is, therefore, “no legal barrier to the continuation of the Spanish investigation.”

He concluded by stating that it was “important” that Judge Garzón proceeds with the case in Spain, because, although Eric Holder “has confirmed the importance of the Convention Against Torture, he has taken only a first step that “does not really address the actions of those who were truly responsible for its violation.”

Note: I wish to extend my thanks to Carlos Sardiña Galache for alerting me to the latest developments in this important story, which was not mentioned in the English-speaking press, and for translating crucial passages.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon — click on the following for the US and the UK). To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to Mr. Worthington’s RSS feed, and also see his definitive Guantánamo prisoner list, published in March 2009.

The former Bush administration officials rank at the top of the list of the 50 most nortious war criminals living in the U.S.

Compiled below, in hopes that it may be of some assistance to Eric Holder, John Conyers, Patrick Leahy, active citizens, foreign courts, the International Criminal Court, law firms preparing civil suits, and local or state prosecutors with decency and nerve is a list of 50 top living U.S. war criminals. These are men and women who helped to launch wars of aggression or who have been complicit in lesser war crimes. These are not the lowest-ranking employees or troops who managed to stray from official criminal policies. These are the makers of those policies.

The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have seen the United States target civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, use antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, use white phosphorous as a weapon, use depleted uranium weapons, employ a new version of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, engage in collective punishment of Iraqi civilian populations — including by blocking roads, cutting electricity and water, destroying fuel stations, planting bombs in farm fields, demolishing houses, and plowing down orchards — detain people without charge or legal process without the rights of prisoners of war, imprison children, torture, and murder.

The list below does not include those responsible for war crimes prior to 2001. Nor does it include those currently in power who are making themselves complicit by failing to prosecute or cease commission of these crimes. The list could be greatly expanded. It could also be narrowed. I would argue, however, that it presents a more reasonable starting place than Holder’s reported proposal to investigate only CIA employees who failed to comply with criminal torture policies, of whom there are no doubt more than 50.

Because each of the people on this list should be nonviolently protested everywhere they go (more on that below), I have organized them by location. Please post updates on where they are as comments at http://afterdowningstreet.org/warcriminals

CALIFORNIA

1. John Yoo: Professor of Law at Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley, California, with house at 1241 Grizzly Peak Blvd., Berkeley, (but a lawyer with the Pennsylvania bar from which he should be disbarred and would be if enough people demanded it) counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, wrote this memo promoting presidential power to launch aggressive war, and claimed the power to decree that the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming, and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war, and to announce a new definition of torture limiting it to acts causing intense pain or suffering equivalent to pain associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in loss of significant body functions will likely result. Yoo claimed in 2005 that a president has the right to enhance an interrogation by crushing the testicles of someone’s child. Yoo has been confronted in his classroom: video, and defended by the Washington Post, and again confronted in the classroom.

Additional collaborators:
2. Robert J. Delahunty, Yoo colleague, should be disbarred in NY
3. Patrick F. Philbin, Yoo colleague, Deputy, should be disbarred in D.C. and MA

4. Jay Bybee: federal judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, headquartered in San Francisco, California (but Bybee based in Las Vegas), counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by helping Yoo draft the memo linked above. He signed not only torture memos but also a memo purporting to legalize illegal and unconstitutional wars. BYBEE SHOULD BE IMPEACHED. He works, among other places, at the James R. Browning Courthouse, 95 7th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103, — This is a giant marble building in the center of the city represented in Congress by the Speaker of the House.

5. William J. “Jim” Haynes, II: was General Counsel to the Department of War (“Defense”). He is now Chief Corporate Counsel at the Chevron Corporate Office in San Ramon, California. He counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by drafting memos for Yoo. Works at Chevron Headquarters, 6001 Bollinger Canyon Road, San Ramon, CA 94583. Member of bar in GA, NC, DC.

More collaborators:
6. Major General (Ret.) Michael E. Dunlavey, (now Judge, Erie County Court, Common Pleas, Erie, PA
7. Diane Beaver, top military lawyer at Gitmo
8. Jack Landman Goldsmith, III, [the illegal transfer memo in March 2004], DoD General Counsel’s Office at Pentagon
9. Ms. Eliana Davidson, International Law Division, Office of the General Counsel, Office of the Secretary of “Defense”

10. Colin Powell: strategic limited partner with Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, appears as a speaker in a series of motivational events called Get Motivated, board member of Revolution Health and of the Council on Foreign Relations, took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people, lied to the United Nations about the grounds for war in a failed attempt to legalize a war of aggression, and was in fact a leading liar in making the false case for an illegal war of aggression.

Remember: Not every man in a dark suit is a war criminal. Check for blood under their fingernails to confirm identification.

NEW YORK

11. Henry Kissinger: lives in Kent, Connecticut, and works at Kissinger Associates, 350 Park Avenue, New York, N.Y., had a resume envied by other war criminals long before he advised George W. Bush to commit war crimes. Here’s a partial list of his crimes.

12. Nicholas E. Calio: Citigroup’s Executive Vice-President for Global Government Affairs served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies.

13. Michael Mukasey: works in New York, N.Y. Some of his crimes are detailed at DisbarTortureLawyers.com.

TEXAS

14. George W. Bush: lives at 10141 Daria Place, Dallas, Texas. His crimes are described at http://afterdowningstreet.org/bush and at War Criminals Watch and at The 13 people who made torture possible.

15. Karen Hughes: lives in Austin, Texas, served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies.

16. Paul Bremer lives in Chester, Vermont, and also works in Austin, Texas. His crimes are listed at War Criminals Watch.

Yes, a woman can be a war criminal. What? Did you think any of the men above ever risked personally breaking a fingernail?

WASHINGTON, D.C.

17. Dick Cheney: The former vice president lives nextdoor to CIA headquarters at 1126 Chain Bridge Road, McLean, Va. His crimes are documented at http://impeachcheney.org and at The 13 people who made torture possible and at War Criminals Watch.

18. John Rizzo: The General Counsel for the CIA (then and now) works nextdoor to Dick Cheney’s house at the headquarters of the CIA in McLean, Va. His crimes are described in The 13 people who made torture possible.

More collaborators:
19. Robert Eatinger, CIA lawyer
20. Steven Hermes, CIA’s National Clandestine Service (NCS)
21. Paul Kelbaugh, Deputy Legal Counsel, CTC, CIA

22. Steven Bradbury: also of McLean, Va., is described along with his crimes at SourceWatch, DisbarTortureLawyers.com, and The 13 people who made torture possible.

23. David Addington: was chief of staff to Dick Cheney in Washington, D.C., counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes, including by helping Yoo draft the memo linked above, and drafted signing statements for Bush declaring the right to violate laws redundantly banning war crimes including torture and the construction of permanent bases in Iraq and efforts to control Iraq’s oil. Lives at 103 W Maple Street, Alexandria, VA 22301-2605 — This is a few blocks from the King Street Metro Stop.

24. Condoleezza Rice: served as Secretary of State in Washington, D.C., and can be found frequenting shoe stores, served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies, took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people, lied about mushroom clouds, and was in fact a leading liar in making the false case for an illegal war of aggression.

25. Donald Rumsfeld: lives in Washington, D.C., and at former slave-beating plantation “Mount Misery” on Maryland’s Eastern Shore near St. Michael’s and a home belonging to Dick Cheney, as well as at an estate outside Taos, New Mexico. He took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people, and was in fact a leading liar in making the false case for an illegal war of aggression, and pushed for wars of aggression for years as a participant in the Project for the New American Century.

26. George Tenet: Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people, oversaw the Central Intelligence Agency as it engaged in illegal renditions, detentions, torture, murder, and coverups of crimes, as well as helping to build a false case for an illegal war of aggression.

27. John Ashcroft: has his own lobbying company through which to profit from his government connections: The Ashcroft Group, LLC, 1399 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 950, Washington, DC 20005, Phone: 202.942.0202, Fax: 202.942.0216, info@ashcroftgroupllc.com took part in White House meetings personally overseeing and approving torture by authorizing the use of specific torture techniques including waterboarding on specific people.

28. Alberto Gonzales: has hired a criminal-defense lawyer George Terwilliger, partner at White & Case, to defend him, while others have created a trust fund to help pay for his legal expenses, meanwhile Gonzales has been unable to find work as a lawyer himself, so his income comes from speaking engagements, then White House counsel, wrote a memo on January 25, 2002. It explained that under the 1996 War Crimes Act, U.S. officials might be prosecuted for violating the Geneva Conventions for actions in Afghanistan (and future parts of the “war on terror”), with penalties up to and including death. He suggested that Bush declare that the Taliban and Al Qaeda weren’t covered by Geneva, to be on the safe side. Bush did so. Gonzo now has a job at Texas Tech, but not teaching law. Help this effort to boot him! Remember that we drove him out of office by almost impeaching him.

29. Paul Wolfowitz: lives in Chevey Chase, Maryland, and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., advocated illegal war of aggression, and pushed for wars of aggression for years as a participant in the Project for a New American Century.

30. Doug Feith: serves on the faculty of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., as a Professor and Distinguished Practitioner in National Security Policy, manufactured, cherry picked, and distorted information, and pressured others to do the same, to help build a false case for an illegal war of aggression, and advocated early and openly for an illegal war of aggression against a “non-al qaeda target.” Also works at Hudson Institute, 1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor, Washington, DC 20005, three blocks from the White House.

31. Elliot Abrams: served as Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy in Washington, D.C., and wherever he can do the most damage around the world, was a well-established war criminal even before he pushed for wars of aggression for years as a participant in the Project for a New American Century, helped to build a false case for attacking Iraq, and supported a failed coup attempt in Venezuela.

32. Karl Rove: owns million dollar houses in Washington, D.C., and Florida, and works for Fox News, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal when not testifying to congressional committees or federal prosecutors about his numerous unindicted non-war crimes. He served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies, and took part in exposing an undercover agent as retribution for exposing one of WHIG’s lies.

(According to Star80 at DemocraticUnderground, Rove “can be found stuffing his fat pasty little face with crab meat at Cafe 30A in Santa Rosa Beach FL: http://www.cafethirtya.com – 3899 East County Highway 30A Santa Rosa Beach FL 32459.”)

(Citizens arrest of Rove attempted in Iowa, and in California, and in New York.)

33. I. Lewis Libby: lives in McLean, Virginia, and has been disbarred in Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania, served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies, took part in exposing an undercover agent as retribution for exposing one of WHIG’s lies, has already been convicted of obstruction of justice for interfering with investigation, and pushed for wars of aggression for years as a participant in the Project for a New American Century.

34. Mary Matalin: married to James Carville, both of them addicted to Washington, D.C., served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies.

35. Stephen Hadley: served as National Security Advisor to the President in Washington, D.C., served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies, and took part in exposing an undercover agent as retribution for exposing one of WHIG’s lies.

36. James R. Wilkinson: worked for Bush as Deputy National Security Advisor for Communications in Washington, D.C., served as a member of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) which planned the marketing of an illegal war of aggression on the basis of lies.

37. John Bolton: lives in Bethesda, Maryland, is a member of a Lutheran Church, works for the law firm Kirkland and Ellis LLP, 655 Fifteenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005-5793, T: +1 202-879-5000, F: +1 202-879-5200, is associated with the American Enterprise Institute, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Institute of East-West Dynamics, National Rifle Association, US Commission on International Religious Freedom, and the Council for National Policy, helped to launch an illegal war of aggression by disseminating false claims through the State Department while he was under-secretary of state for arms control, and pushed for wars of aggression for years as a participant in the Project for a New American Century.

38. Michael Chertoff: works in Washington, D.C. Some of his crimes are detailed at DisbarTortureLawyers.com.

39. Timothy Flanigan: works in Washington, D.C. Some of his crimes are detailed at DisbarTortureLawyers.com.

40. Alice Fisher: works in Washington, D.C. Some of her crimes are detailed at DisbarTortureLawyers.com.

41. John Bellinger works in Washington, D.C. His crimes are listed at War Criminals Watch.

42. John Negroponte works in Washington, D.C. His crimes are listed at War Criminals Watch.

43. Jonathan Fredman was a top torture lawyer under John Rizzo at the CIA: details.

44. Scott Muller was general counsel at the CIA: details.

45. Kyle D. “Dusty” Foggo was instrumental in setting up illegal secret prisons.

NEBRASKA:

46. Andrew Card works in Omaha, NE. His crimes are listed at War Criminals Watch.

AFGHANISTAN:

47. Stanley McChrystal has been promoted as reward for his war crimes.

UNKNOWN LOCATION:

48. James Mitchell:
From The 13 people who made torture possible:

Even while Addington, Gonzales and the lawyers were beginning to build the legal framework for torture, a couple of military psychologists were laying out the techniques the military would use. James Mitchell, a retired military psychologist, had been a leading expert in the military’s SERE program. In December 2001, with his partner, Bruce Jessen, Mitchell reverse-engineered SERE techniques to be used to interrogate detainees. Then, in the spring of 2002, before OLC gave official legal approval to torture, Mitchell oversaw Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation. An FBI agent on the scene describes Mitchell overseeing the use of “borderline torture.” And after OLC approved waterboarding, Mitchell oversaw its use in ways that exceeded the guidelines in the OLC memo. Under Mitchell’s guidance, interrogators used the waterboard with “far greater frequency than initially indicated” — a total of 183 times in a month for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and 83 times in a month for Abu Zubaydah.

More on Mitchell and Jessen.

49. Tommy Franks: His crimes are listed at War Criminals Watch.

50. Michael Hayden: His crimes are listed at War Criminals Watch.

Heck, let’s make it a full deck of 52, by including Bruce Jessen mentioned above and Erik Prince of Blackwater.

No Justice, No Peace

Judge’s comment on Rove’s citizen arrest in Iowa: “It’s about time.”

We encourage you to nonviolently protest these people and insist that they be given what so many of them have denied others: a fair trial. We encourage you to attempt to make citizen’s arrests, after consulting lawyers and learning how to avoid any unnecessary criminal risk to yourselves. It is possible to confront a war criminal at a public event and announce a “citizen’s arrest!” without actually touching (or handcuffing) the criminal.

You may want to avoid announcing that you’re coming, because the war criminal may choose to escape.

Your team should include one or more people who can produce an excellent video and be extremely fast in editing and posting it online. Your team should ideally include a lawyer. And, of course, people who can read the charges and question the suspect. Everyone on your team should be able to keep a secret while you’re planning your arrest or protest.

Read the war criminal their rights, rights they have denied others:
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”

Read the war criminal the charges against them.

Ask the war criminal if they would like to say anything.

Once you have good video footage, your top priority becomes immediately getting it edited (if necessary) and online.

If possible, turn the war criminal over to the police.

Pass out flyers to passersby.

Send statement to the media and/or have the media present.

Consult a lawyer to avoid unnecessary risks of violating laws while enforcing the law. According to Wikipedia, “A citizen’s arrest is an arrest made by a person who is not a sworn law enforcement official. In common law jurisdictions, the practice dates back to medieval England and the English common law, when sheriffs encouraged ordinary citizens to help apprehend law breakers. Despite the title, the arresting person does not usually have to be a citizen of the country where he is acting, as they are usually designated as any person with arrest powers…

Each state with the exception of North Carolina permits citizen arrests if the commission of felony is witnessed by the arresting citizen… The application of state laws varies widely with respect to … felonies not witnessed by the arresting party. American citizens do not carry the authority or enjoy the legal protections of police, and are held to the principle of strict liability before the courts of civil- and criminal law including but not limited to any infringement of another’s rights.

Though North Carolina General Statutes have no provision for citizen’s arrests, detention by private persons is permitted and apply to both civilians and police officers outside their jurisdiction. Detention, being different from an arrest in the fact that a detainee may not be transported without consent, is permitted where probable cause exists that one has committed a felony, breach of peace, physical injury to another person, or theft or destruction of property … A person who makes a citizen’s arrest could risk exposing himself to possible lawsuits or criminal charges (such as charges of impersonating police, false imprisonment, kidnapping, or wrongful arrest) if the wrong person is apprehended or a suspect’s civil rights are violated.”

In the case of the war criminals we propose detaining, they are most if not all public figures and we have all witnessed their felonies, as detailed above.

Be prepared to post your video online in multiple places: Youtube, Google, and After Downing Street.

Known upcoming public appearances of war criminals who should be protested and citizen arrested: List. Map. See also: War Criminals Watch.

For more on holding the biggest criminals accountable, see http://prosecutebushcheney.org

See also: “Crimes and Misdemeanors: Slate’s interactive guide: Who in the Bush administration broke the law, and who could be prosecuted?” by Emily Bazelon, Kara Hadge, Dahlia Lithwick, and Chris Wilson. This guide includes some of those complicit in crimes other than war crimes, such as DOJ hirings and firings, destruction of CIA tapes, and illegal spying. (Of course, Karl Rove shows up in every part of every list.)

David Swanson is the founder of AfterDowningStreet.org and the author of the upcoming book “Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union” by Seven Stories Press.  You can pre-order it for a discount price here.

Conyers is now considering taking advantage of that prearranged agreement. He and his staff have been engaged in talks that could result in Rove and Miers being called to testify before his panel sometime in the fall, according to several congressional sources who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Their expected appearance would mark the first time that senior Bush White House officials will testify publicly about a scandal that resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and other top Justice Department officials. Rove and Miers defied numerous congressional subpoenas seeking their sworn testimony over the past two years about the roles they played in the firings of the federal prosecutors.

Both Miers and Rove were subpoenaed by Conyers’ committee numerous times and were held in contempt of Congress for refusing to appear before the panel. They said Bush administration attorneys advised them they were protected by George W. Bush’s assertion of “absolute immunity” and were told not to appear before the committee.

If Rove and Miers are called to testify before Congress and either of them refuses to appear than the agreement the Judiciary Committee entered into with the former officials would be considered breached and Congress “can resume the litigation,” Conyers said in a statement his office issued March 4, after his panel reached a negotiated settlement to secure Rove and Miers’ testimony. The parties agreed to stay the contempt case “until at least the completion of the [private interviews," The Constitutional Law Prof Blog noted.  The agreement between the Judicairy Committee and Rove and Miers begins on page 4 of Rove Exhibit 1.

Attorneys for Rove and Miers did not return messages left at their offices nor did they respond to e-mails seeking comment.

The questioning of Rove and Miers, if a public hearing is held, is expected to be lead by committee member Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, a former federal prosecutor who also lead the questioning during their closed-door testimony before the committee in June and July.

The Judiciary Committee has already reached out to some of the fired federal prosecutors whose dismissals, according to documents and e-mails released by the panel last week, were politically motivated to assist in drafting new questions for Rove and Miers, congressional sources said.

These sources added that, in addition to covering old ground, the committee wants Rove and Miers to publicly testify about what Bush knew and when he knew it.

In his interview with the committee last month, repeatedly avoided responding to direct questions about whether Bush was aware of the plan. But in interviews he gave to The Washington Post and The New York Times last month, which the newspapers agreed not to publish until Rove completed his second round of testimony last month, he said he believed Bush “had been informed of the decision to let the prosecutors go.”

In an interview with the Post, Rove also said he’s “sure” Bush was told about the firings in advance.

“Maybe Harriet [Miers] talked to him about it,” Rove said. “I’m sure they did walk in at the end and say, ‘Mr. President, we want to make a change here.’”

That revelation would contradict numerous public statements made by White House spokespersons Tony Snow and Dana Perino that Bush did not play a role nor was he involved in the decision to dismiss the U.S. Attorneys and that the decisions emanated from the Department of Justice.

“[T]here is no indication that the President knew about any of the ongoing discussions [about firing U.S. attorneys] over the two years, nor did he see a list or a plan before it was carried out,” Perino told reporters in March 2007.

The Judiciary Committee intends to question Rove again about his statements related to what Bush knew.

Miers testified that she believed it was “required” for Bush to be told about the U.S. Attorney firings and she expected White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to brief Bush about it. She added, however that perhaps Bolten never told Bush about the plan based on the fact that Perino’s March 2007 statement to reporters said Bush was in the dark about the matter.

In a Judiciary Committee report issued last week that accompanied the release of documents, the panel said that Rove and Miers’ statements, “plus the revelation that [former New Mexico] Senator [Pete] Domenici directly pressed Chief of Staff Bolten to have [New Mexico U.S. attorney David] Iglesias replaced in the fall of 2006, brings the matter closer to the former President’s door than previously known.”

Last year, a 356-page report prepared by Department of Justice Inspector General Glenn Fine and the head of the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility, H. Marshall Jarrett, concluded that Bush and Rove spoke with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in October 2006 about their concerns over voter fraud in three cities, one of which was Albuquerque, New Mexico,” and concerns Domenici had about Iglesias’s job performance.

Conyers’ committee had previously subpoenaed Bolten to testify about his role in the firings, but his testimony was not part of the negotiated settlement the Judiciary Committee entered into.

In a little known 12-page fact sheet the committee released last week summarizing Rove and Miers’ testimony, the panel said Rove’s “memory appeared to be quite selective.”

Rove “did not remember basic facts such as how and when he learned that David Iglesias would be removed, whether or not he ever saw the list of US Attorneys proposed for removal, or whether he even knew which US Attorneys were on the removal list when he approved the plan,” the committee’s fact sheet states. “Similarly, Mr. Rove clearly remembered obscure details such as a conversation with a now-deceased political scientist from a University of Wisconsin subcampus about possible flaws in the Justice Department’s rejection of Wisconsin vote fraud
complaints.

“But he did not recall much more basic facts about the matter such as whether there were specific US Attorneys that White House officials wanted to replace during the President’s second term, or what statements he made to [Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff] Kyle Sampson and [the Justice Department’s White House liaison] Monica Goodling at a political briefing he lead just weeks before the final stage of the removal process was launched. While failure of recollection is always an issue in investigations, the extent of these witnesses’ failure to recall the basic facts about recent events is disturbing, and continues to obscure the full truth about the US Attorney removals.”

The committee said Miers “suffered from an extraordinary failure of recollection during her interview, stating more than 150 times that she did not recall the answer to questions about the US Attorney matter, including fundamental and memorable facts such as what she meant when she wrote that a ‘decision’ had been made to remove David Iglesias from his position in October 2005, or whether or not Karl Rove specifically asked that David Iglesias be removed when Mr. Rove called her, agitated, from New Mexico.”

Congressional sources said, in the case of Rove, he has made specific comments in the past week characterizing the reasons for Iglesias’s firing that he did not disclose during his testimony and as such he will be questioned about it when he testifies publicly.

In discussing the U.S. Attorney firings, lawmakers want Rove and Miers to publicly explain who was responsible for disclosing to them specific details about ongoing corruption investigations some of the fired prosecutors had been conducting, some of which involved powerful Republican lawmakers, which Democrats believe was then used to justify the firings, congressional sources said.

In the case of Iglesias, the panel is particularly interested in probing recent statements Rove made following last week’s release of the transcript of his testimony and thousands of previously undisclosed e-mails that showed he was deeply involved in Iglesias’s firing.

But in an interview last Wednesday with Fox News host Bill O’Reilly, Rove tried to minimize his role in Iglesias’s dismissal and said it was Iglesias who politicized prosecutions.

Rove said he told the Judiciary Committee he “passed on to the White House counsel’s office to pass on to the Justice Department complaints about the performance of the U.S. Attorney in New Mexico, that he failed to go after ACORN in clear cases of vote fraud, that he bungled a high prosecution — a high-profile corruption prosecution by interfering with the career prosecutors, and that he was treating an indictment of people in a courthouse corruption case very politically by refusing to indict them when the case was ready but waiting for nine months, 12 months, 14 months until after an election.

“These were charges that were made about him. Allegations. I was not in a position to find out whether or not they were accurate. That was up to the Justice Department. But I had an obligation to pass those on through the appropriate channels.”

The Judiciary Committee wants Rove to answer how he arrived at that conclusion if neither he nor any of the Republican Party activists in New Mexico had access to any of Iglesias’s case files as he has maintained.

In an interview, Iglesias said Rove’s claims are “outrageous,” particularly the fact that Rove has “the audacity” to claim that Iglesias had politicized an investigation into a courthouse construction project involving a former state Democratic official.

“He never talked to the FBI agent assigned, he didn’t talk to the [voter fraud] task force members, he didn’t talk to the career federal prosecutor that was helping me out with the matter, he didn’t review the FBI reports like I did. He’s just pulling this out of thin air. His position is not tenable it’s fantasy,” Iglesias said.

He added that if Rove was suggesting to O’Reilly he had first hand knowledge of ongoing investigations Iglesias had been conducting then that would be a violation of criminal and/or civil laws.

“That’s privileged law enforcement information. In fact I don’t even think anyone in the White House Counsel’s office, even though they’re lawyers they are not prosecutors, had the right to that information. The only people that had the legal right to review [those cases] are the prosecutors working for the Justice Department, either in Washington, D.C. or out of my office in Albuquerque.

“Let’s assume for a second that he did have access to the FBI reports that is very problematic and it probably violates laws—civil laws and probably some criminal law–in and of itself. Rove’s not an attorney, he’s not a prosecutor and he has the audacity to second guess not only my opinion but the opinion of the career prosecutor who was working on [the cases] with me and the career Justice Department attorney who does nothing but voter fraud? It’s outrageous.”

Rove and Miers testified that they both fielded complaints from Domenici and his chief of staff and Heather Wilson and state Republican Party officials about Iglesias’s “refusal” to prosecute cases of voter fraud and that he was dragging his feet on securing an indictment in a corruption case he was investigating.

But, as documents released by the committee show, those complaints were made in the context of Iglesias’s failure to help Republicans win elections by using his office to prosecute Democrats.

The Judiciary Committee’s report said Rove’s statement to the New York Times and Washington Post that he acted as a “conduit” for complaints about Iglesias are “false.”

“White House emails and the testimony of Rove and Miers establish that Iglesias was targeted for firing no later than May 2005 and that the White House reached a ‘decision’ to fire him by June of that year,” the report said. “This is months earlier than previously known (and more than a year
earlier than originally disclosed to Congress). The documents and testimony also reveal that Rove and his staff personally agitated for Mr. Iglesias to be fired on multiple occasions in 2005 and 2006, and did not act as mere passive ‘conduits’ in this matter.

“This campaign was clearly designed to interfere with Iglesias’ prosecutorial judgment in order to obtain political advantage for Republican candidates. Iglesias himself has explained that the reason he did not bring more vote fraud cases is because ‘the evidence was not there.’”

With regard to Miers, congressional sources said lawmakers would press her to further explain her involvement in a federal corruption investigation into Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi that resulted in the DOJ becoming violating its own internal regulations. Paul Charlton, the U.S. Attorney in Arizona who was one of the nine fired, was investigating Renzi.

The committee’s report said:

“In the weeks before the 2006 election, leaks surfaced indicating that then-Representative Rick Renzi of Arizona was under federal criminal investigation. After a complaint from Scott Jennings of Karl Rove’s office, Harriet Miers called Paul McNulty seeking a statement that would have ‘vindicated’ Renzi.

“Two days later, unnamed Department officials did in fact make several misleading and highly favorable statements to the media on behalf of Mr. Renzi, for example, warning reporters ‘this is not a well-developed investigation, by any means .. . a tip comes into the Department – the Department is obligated to follow up . . . People are assuming there is evidence of some crime, even though that is not necessarily true. . . . I want to caution you not to chop this guy’s (Renzi’s) head off.’  Notwithstanding these statements, which appear to violate Department policy about commenting about pending matters as acknowledged by Miers herself, Renzi has since been indicted.”

When Miers was asked during her testimony whether she thought “it is appropriate for a White House political official . . . to pressure the Department of Justice to make statements about pending investigations for political advantage?” she complained that the question was “very charged.”

When news reports were published quoting unnamed Justice Department sources about the Renzi investigation a wiretap had already been in place. Miers and McNulty could face conspiracy to obstruct justice charges if their involvement hindered Charlton’s investigation into Renzi.

And according to sources working closely with Nora Dannehy, a federal prosecutor appointed last year by Attorney General Michael Mukasey to investigate whether criminal laws were broken in connection with the firings and whether any of the key players perjured themselves when they testified before Congress, she has evidence that Charlton’s probe was compromised. But it’s unknown if it was the result of Miers’ involvement or other Justice Department officials who played a role in the attorney firings of Charlton and the eight other federal prosecutors.

Charlton’s case file on Renzi contains an unprecedented memo that the former federal prosecutor drafted indicating that he faced difficulty from the Justice Department getting approval to move forward on several fronts involving his probe into Renzi, according to Justice Department sources.

Separately, the documents and e-mails released last week show that White House lawyer William Kelley played a far larger role in the firings than had been previously known. Conyers’ committee may also seek to depose Kelley as well.

In March, after Conyers announced his panel reached an agreement to secure Miers and Rove’s testimony he said, “If the committee uncovers information necessitating his testimony, the committee will also have the right to depose William Kelley, a former White House lawyer who played a role in the U.S. attorney firings.”

The evidence, which House Judiciary Committee chairman John Conyers released Tuesday and turned over to a special prosecutor, contradicts claims by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials that the White House played only a minimal role in the firing of David Iglesias and eight other U.S. Attorneys, who were deemed by a Justice Department official as not “loyal Bushies.”

In a recent interview with the New York Times and Washington Post, Rove downplayed his role in the firings, saying he only acted as a “conduit” for complaints that Republican Party officials and GOP lawmakers sent to him about the federal prosecutors. But the documents tell a different story.

The documents reveal that Rove, his White House aides and then-White House counsel Harriet Miers actively participated in the decision to oust New Mexico U.S. Attorney Iglesias because Republicans wanted him to bring charges against Democrats regarding alleged voter fraud and other issues. [Here is the Judiciary Committee’s fact sheet and links to the documents in question:Rove’s interview transcript, Miers interview transcript, RNC e-mails and documents, White House documents.]

According to Miers’s closed-door testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, a “very agitated” Rove phoned her from New Mexico, apparently in September 2006, and told her that Iglesias was “a serious problem and he wanted something done about it.”

At the time of the phone call, Rove had just met with New Mexico Republican Party officials angry at Iglesias, who was refusing to proceed with voter fraud cases because he felt the evidence was weak and because pre-election indictments would violate Justice Department guidelines.

Miers said she responded to Rove’s call by getting on the phone to Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty and passing along the message that Rove “is getting lots of complaints.” Miers added, “it was a problem.” About one month later, Iglesias was added to the list of U.S. Attorneys to be removed.

But the documents show that White House dissatisfaction with Iglesias over his resistance to bringing politically motivated cases against Democrats had been building for more than a year. On June 28, 2005, Scott Jennings, one of Rove’s aides, sent an e-mail to Tim Griffin, another Rove aide, asking what could be done to remove Iglesias.

“I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY,” Jennings wrote, complaining that “Iglesias has done nothing” on prosecuting voter fraud cases and adding: “We’re getting killed out there.”

‘Driving Force’

In a statement on Tuesday, accompanying release of more than 5,000 pages of documents, including transcripts of the recent interviews with Rove and Miers, Conyers said the revelations warrant further inspection by special prosecutor Nora Dannehy, who has spent nearly a year conducting a criminal probe into the firings.

“After all the delay and despite all the obfuscation, lies, and spin, this basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons,” Conyers said.

A Justice Department watchdog report concluded last year that a majority of the prosecutor firings were politically motivated. The U.S. Attorney in Little Rock, Arkansas, was pushed out, so Rove’s aide, Tim Griffin, could be given the job. But — in the face of the growing scandal — Griffin bowed out.

For months, Rove and Miers had dodged congressional subpoenas seeking their testimony in the matter, citing George W. Bush’s broad claims of executive privilege. But the Obama administration brokered a deal that had Rove and Miers testify behind closed doors.

Besides the Bush White House pressure for ousting Iglesias, powerful New Mexico Republicans also weighed in.

In October 2006, a month before the midterm elections that cost Republicans control of the Congress, an e-mail chain started by Rep. Heather Wilson, R-New Mexico, faulted Iglesias for not using his office in a manner that would help Wilson in her reelection campaign.

Wilson’s e-mail included a news report about an FBI probe of Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Pennsylvania, as an example of criminal investigations proceeding close to election day.

Steve Bell, chief of staff to New Mexico Sen. Pete Domenici, forwarded the e-mail to Jennings at Rove’s White House shop, with a note, saying it “seems like other U.S. attorneys can do their work even in election season. And the FBI has already admitted they have turned over their evidence [in a federal corruption probe] to the [U.S. Attorney] in [New Mexico] and are merely awaiting his action.”

Jennings then passed along the e-mail to Rove, saying Iglesias was “shy about doing his job on [Patricia] Madrid,” a Democratic congressional candidate who would lose the 2006 election to Wilson by only 800 votes.

Last year, Wilson told Justice Department watchdogs investigating the U.S. Attorney purge that the context of her e-mail was more of a “heads up” to the recipients. She said that if she were asked by reporters about an FBI investigation into Madrid, she would confirm it. Madrid was New Mexico’s former attorney general who was involved with a political action committee that was allegedly under scrutiny.

Domenici’s Intervention

Domenici also intervened, personally lobbying Bush’s top aides to fire Iglesias, according to the documents. Between September 2005 and April 2006, Domenici called Attorney General Alberto Gonzales three times to complain about Iglesias’s handling of voter fraud and corruption probes and to ask that he be fired.

Gonzales testified to Congress that he did not recall Domenici ever making such a request. Gonzales resigned in August 2007 amid the political fallout from the prosecutor-firing scandal.

On Oct. 4, 2006, Domenici also called Deputy Attorney General McNulty “expressing concern about Iglesias’s lack of fitness for the job of U.S. Attorney.”

At one point, according to Rove’s testimony, Domenici wanted to speak with President Bush to press his case, but Rove talked him out of it. However, in October 2006, the senator personally asked Bush’s chief of staff Josh Bolten to replace Iglesias, according to White House phone logs and e-mails.

In congressional testimony, Iglesias said he also received telephone calls from Domenici and Wilson in October 2006 inquiring about the timing of an indictment against former state senator Manny Aragon, a Democrat, and other Democrats who were involved in a courthouse construction project.

Domenici’s interventions prompted a Senate Ethics Committee investigation, which resulted last year in a letter of reprimand for creating an “appearance of impropriety.” Special prosecutor Dannehy is probing possible obstruction of justice charges against Domenici and his former aide Bell.

Dannehy secured the testimony last April of Scott O’Neal, the assistant FBI special agent in charge of the Albuquerque field office, who reportedly informed Domenici or his aide Bell about the status of the FBI’s investigation of alleged Democratic wrongdoing, according to legal sources who requested anonymity because of the secrecy surrounding the probe.

In an interview, former U.S. Attorney Iglesias said the briefing to Domenici and/or Bell, if it did take place, would be significant because it would have required approval from himself or his former colleagues who never received a formal request from O’Neal or his FBI superiors.

The U.S. Attorney’s manual states that “personnel of the Department of Justice shall not respond to questions about the existence of an ongoing investigation or comment on its nature or progress, including such things as the issuance or serving of a subpoena, prior to the public filing of the document.”

Rove’s Fingerprints

Regarding Tuesday’s revelations, Iglesias said he had long suspected that Rove’s “fingerprints were all over this.”

In an interview with me two years ago, Iglesias said he believed “somewhere on an RNC computer – on some server somewhere – there’s an e-mail from Karl Rove stating why we need to be axed.” He added that he believed a “smoking gun” would eventually surface and lead directly to Rove and blow the scandal wide open.

“The e-mail timing [in October 2006] corroborates what I suspected,” Iglesias said Tuesday. Domenici and other New Mexico Republican Party officials “wanted me to file indictments and [Wilson] would benefit. They wanted to use me and my office as a political tool.”

Iglesias said Dannehy has access to “a lot of the facts” and “there still may be obstruction of justice charges” filed.  He added, “I can’t believe Gonzales did not know what was going on,” suggesting that the former attorney general may be one of Dannehy’s targets.

Domenici retired from the Senate and Wilson also left Congress in 2009 after unsuccessfully seeking the Republican nomination to fill Domenici’s seat, which is now held by Democratic Sen. Tom Udall.

Deputy Attorney General McNulty testified before Congress in February 2007 that the prosecutor firings were “performance related,” though that testimony also now appears to be in question.

Documents released by the Justice Department showed that Gonzales and McNulty participated in an hour-long meeting with Gonzales’s chief of staff Kyle Sampson, who compiled the list of prosecutors to be fired, a group he famously designated as not “loyal Bushies.”

The documents, along with Rove’s and Miers’s testimony, contradict numerous public statements made by White House spokespersons Tony Snow and Dana Perino in the aftermath of the December 2006 firings. Snow and Perino insisted that the White House did nothing wrong and didn’t oust prosecutors for political reasons.

Yet, upon being informed in November 2006 via e-mail of the plan to fire the U.S Attorneys, Perino responded: “Someone get me the oxygen can!” When told the firings included some U.S. Attorneys who were actively investigating GOP lawmakers who were alleged to be involved in corruption, Perino added: “Give me a double shot — I can’t breathe.”

The newly released documents also show that Kansas City U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was removed in a deal between the White House and Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri that appears to have been personally approved by Rove.

According to the documents, Bond agreed to lift his hold on an Arkansas judge nominated to the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court in exchange for Graves’s firing. A Dec. 21, 2005 e-mail sent by White House lawyer Fred Klingler to Miers stated that “Karl is fine” with the proposal.

Editor’s note: The House Judiciary Committee has just released more than 5,000 pages of new documents that the panel said implicates former White House poltical adviser Karl Rove in the firings of several U.S. attorneys dismissed for partisan political reasons in December 2006. The documents include transcripts of recent interviews Rove and former White House Counsel Harriet Miers gave to the Judicary Commitee.

We invite our readers to read through the documents and leave comments related to any interesting or explosive findings, which we will incorporate into our story.

Here is the Judiciary Committee’s fact sheet and links to the documents in question:

Rove’s interview transcript, Miers interview transcript, RNC e-mails and documents, White House documents.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.) today released over 700 pages of on-the-record interview transcripts of Karl Rove and Harriet Miers on the U.S. attorney firings and the Bush administration’s politicization of the Department of Justice. Conyers also released over 5,400 pages of Bush White House and Republican National Committee e-mails on these subjects.

The released materials reveal that White House officials were deeply involved in the U.S. attorney firings and the administration made a concerted effort to hide that fact from the American people. “After all the delay and despite all the obfuscation, lies, and spin,” Conyers said, “this basic truth can no longer be denied: Karl Rove and his cohorts at the Bush White House were the driving force behind several of these firings, which were done for improper reasons. Under the Bush regime, honest and well-performing U.S. attorneys were fired for petty patronage, political horsetrading and, in the most egregious case of political abuse of the U.S. attorney corps – that of U.S. Attorney Iglesias – because he refused to use his office to help Republicans win elections. When Mr. Iglesias said his firing was a ‘political fragging,’ he was right.”

Key new facts revealed in the materials released today include:

• 2005 White House “Decision” to fire David Iglesias – It has previously been known that New Mexico Republicans pressed for Iglesias to be removed because they did not like his decisions on vote fraud cases.  New White House documents show that Rove and his office were involved in this effort no later than May 2005 (months earlier than previously known) – for example, in May and June 2005, Rove aide Scott Jennings sent e-mails to Tim Griffin (also in Rove’s office) asking “what else I can do to move this process forward” and stressing that “I would really like to move forward with getting rid of NM US ATTY.” In June 2005, Harriet Miers e-mailed that a “decision” had been made to replace Iglesias.  At this time, DOJ gave Iglesias top rankings, so this decision was clearly not just the result of the White House following the Department’s lead as Rove and Miers have maintained.1
• Iglesias criticized by Rove aide for not “doing his job on” Democratic Congressional Candidate Patricia Madrid – An October 2006 e-mail chain begun by Representative Heather Wilson criticized David Iglesias for not bringing politically useful public corruption prosecutions in the run up to the 2006 elections. Scott Jennings forwarded Wilson’s email to Karl Rove and complained that Iglesias had been “shy about doing his job on Madrid,” Wilson’s opponent in the 2006 Congressional race. Just weeks after this e-mail, Iglesias’ name was placed on the final firing list.2
• An “agitated” Rove pressed Harriet Miers to do something about Iglesias just weeks before Iglesias was placed on the removal list – Karl Rove phoned Harriet Miers during a visit to New Mexico in September 2006 – according to Miers’ testimony, Rove was “agitated” and told her that Iglesias was “a serious problem and he wanted something done about it.”3
• Senator Domenici personally asked Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to have Iglesias replaced – In October 2006, Senator Domenici stepped up his campaign to have Iglesias replaced. According to White House phone logs and emails, as well as Rove’s own testimony, Domenici spoke with President Bush’s Chief of Staff Josh Bolten about Iglesias on October 5, 2006, and during October 2006, Domenici or his staff spoke with Karl Rove at least four times.4
• Todd Graves removed in Rove–approved deal with Republican Senator – Kansas City U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was removed as part of a White House–brokered deal with U.S. Senator Kit Bond. In exchange for the administration firing Graves, Senator Bond agreed to lift his hold on an Arkansas judge nominated to the Eighth Circuit federal appeals court. A White House e-mail stated that “Karl is fine” with the proposal.5
• Miers obtained favorable statement on Rick Renzi in violation of DOJ policy – When rumors of the FBI investigation of Rep. Rick Renzi surfaced in October, 2006, one of Rove’s subordinates contacted Harriet Miers, who called Deputy Attorney General McNulty seeking a possible statement that would have “vindicated” Renzi. Even though this was contrary to standard DOJ policy, such a statement was issued several days later.6

“I have provided a copy of the materials released today to special U.S. Attorney Nora Dannehy to assist in her effort to determine whether federal criminal charges are appropriate and to pursue any such charges,” said Conyers. “In the meantime, the committee has honored its pledge to get on-the-record statements from Karl Rove and Harriet Miers, as well as the relevant White House documents, and is pleased to make this unprecedented collection of Bush administration materials directly available to the American people by posting it online.

“I am especially grateful to the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and the House Democratic leadership for their strong and unwavering support of this investigation, including the citations for contempt of Congress issued by the House in 2008. I also thank all members who voted in support of those citations and authorized the historic litigation that was instrumental in bringing us to this point. Today’s release marks a powerful victory for the rule of law, and should be celebrated by all who cherish our constitutional system of separation of powers and open, transparent government.”

An electronic copy of the materials released can be found on the Committee’s Web site at linked here. The release is pursuant to an agreement reached in March 2009 between the committee and the former Bush administration, with the assistance of the Obama administration, to resolve the committee’s lawsuit and the contempt citations issued by the Judiciary Committee and the full House of Representatives with respect to the refusal of the Bush administration to produce subpoenaed White House documents or permit the testimony of former White House officials Karl Rove and Harriet Miers on the U.S. attorney firings.

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1 May 2,2005, e-mail from Scott Jennings to Tim Griffin (HJC 00173); June 9,2005, e-mail from Harriet Miers to Leslie Fahrenkopf (HJC 00177);  June 28, 2005, e-mail from Scott Jennings to Tim Griffin (HJC 00180).

2 October 15, 2006, e-mail chain including Heather Wilson, Steve Bell, Scott Jennings, Karl Rove and others (HJC 00340-41).

3 Miers Interview Transcript at 40-48.

4 Josh Bolten phone log (HJC 00489); October 10, 2006, e-mail from Scott Jennings to Karl Rove (HJC 00334); Karl Rove phone log (HJC 00490); Rove Interview Transcript 123–24.

5 December 21, 2005, e-mail from Richard Klingler to Harriet Miers (HJC 00194-A).

6 October 24, 2006, e-mail from Harriet Miers to Scott Jennings (HJC 00344-45).

“For something that became this politicized it had to get his input his approval,” Iglesias said. “I suspect when all the evidence comes out he wasn’t just in the loop he approved it.”

Iglesias said he has long suspected that Rove’s “fingerprints were all over this.”

George W. Bush and his former top adviser, Karl Rove, were far more involved in the firings of nine U.S. Attorneys in 2006 than they had previously let on, according to internal Bush administration e-mails and interviews Rove gave to two major newspapers earlier this month.

The disclosures were made Thursday after Rove completed his second round of testimony behind closed doors before the House Judiciary Committee.

A Justice Department watchdog report released last year said the firings were largely politically motivated.

In March, Judiciary Commitee Chairman John Conyers and lawyers working with the panel, with the help of White House Counsel Gregory Craig, brokered the deal that resulted in Rove agreeing to testify before the committee privately with the possibility that may be called to testify publicly at a later date.

The deal between Rove, White House Counsel Harriet Miers and the Judiciary Committee was made during the course of a lengthy court battle between the White House and Congress over Bush’s broad claims of executive privilege.

According to a news release issued by Conyers in March, Rove and Miers, while not under oath, agreed to take part in “transcribed depositions under penalty of perjury.” Conyers said an agreement was reached “that invocations of official privileges would be significantly limited.”

The Los Angeles Times reported late Thursday that under terms of the agreement with the Judiciary Committee, Rove “agreed to field questions from one congressman and one staff lawyer from each party. Also in the room were staff members and lawyers for congressional officers, the Bush and Obama administrations, and the Justice Department, which appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the firings for possible criminal violations.”

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Burbank, led the questioning.

Rove sat down for interview with the Post and Times earlier this month and downplayed his role in the firings. The publications entered into an agreement with him that they would not publish a report until he completed his interview with the Judiciary Committee. Rove’s interview with the newspapers, in which he portrayed himself as a victim of “grievances,” appears to be an end-run around the Judiciary Committee’s imminent release of the transcript of his testimony.

Jonathan Godfrey, a spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee, suggested that the interviews Rove agreed to and e-mails obtained by Times and Post were leaked by Rove or his associates in an attempt to spin the story in his favor.

“It’s hardly surprising that Mr. Rove would minimize his involvement in the U.S. attorney firings or that selectively leaked documents would serve his version of events,” Godfrey said, adding that Rove’s role “was more substantial than his statements to the media indicate.”

Late Thursday, the Los Angeles Times reported that Rove made “prearranged deals with the New York Times and Washington Post, under which he allowed them to see some of his e-mail messages, which the White House had closely guarded.”

Schiff told the Los Angeles Times that Rove “is trying to jump ahead and shape the story before the documents and interviews are released.”

The e-mails shared with The New York Times and Washington Post, however, don’t show Rove as being disengaged from the scandal. To the contrary, the documents show him as being hands-on in the efforts to oust at least three U.S. attorneys.

The headlines the Times and Post used indicates how Rove tried to influence their reporting on his role in the attorney firings. He appeared to be successful in the case of the Times, which headlined its report: “Rove Says His Role in Prosecutor Firings Was Small.” The Post went in the opposite direction and headlined it’s story: “E-Mails Show Larger White House Role in Prosecutor Firings.”

According to several e-mails quoted by the Post, Rove was the recipient of complaints from lawmakers about former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias. Rove personally acted upon those complaints by communicating with Miers and the Justice Department in the months before Iglesias was fired.

Rove also told the New York Times that he believed Bush “had been informed of the decision to let the prosecutors go.”

In an interview with the Post, Rove also said he’s “sure” Bush was told about the firings in advance.

“Maybe Harriet [Miers] talked to him about it,” Rove said. “I’m sure they did walk in at the end and say, ‘Mr. President, we want to make a change here.’”

That revelation would contradict numerous public statements made by White House spokespersons Tony Snow and Dana Perino that Bush did not play a role nor was he involved in the decision to dismiss the U.S. Attorneys and that the decisions emanated from the Department of Justice.

“[T]here is no indication that the President knew about any of the ongoing discussions [about firing U.S. attorneys] over the two years, nor did he see a list or a plan before it was carried out,” Perino told reporters in March 2007.

There were also fierce denials from the White House that Rove was involved in the dismissals. In the interviews, Rove described himself as a “conduit” for complaints about the U.S. attorneys. But that’s not what the e-mails show.

In November 2006, one month before the firings, Rove asked Jennings to provide him with “a report on what U.S. Attorneys slot are vacant or expected to be open soon.”

“Yes, sir,” Jennings said.

Rove said he had received complaints during this time from top aides to former Sen. Pete Domenici, R-New Mexico, about the handling of public corruption and voter fraud cases by David Iglesias, the state’s U.S. Attorney, prior to the 2006-midterm elections.

“I was the recipient of complaints,” Rove told the Times, referring to Iglesias, “I passed them on to Harriet Miers to pass on to the Justice Department.”

One of the e-mails obtained by the Washington Post shows that Rove’s top aide, Scott Jennings sent Rove an e-mail on Oct. 10, 2006 stating that he received “a call from [Domenici’s former chief of staff] Steve Bell tonight. . . . Last week Sen. Domenici reached [Bush’s- chief of staff [Josh Bolten] and asked that we remove the U.S. Atty. Steve wanted to make sure we all understood that they couldn’t be more serious about this request.”

Rove added that he assumed Miers had informed Bush about the decision to fire Iglesias.

Last year, as reported by The Public Record, a 356-page report prepared by DOJ Inspector General Glenn Fine and the head of the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility H. Marshall Jarrett, concluded that Bush and Rove helped to orchestrate the firing of Iglesias after receiving complaints from Republican activists that Iglesias did not prosecute individuals for voter fraud before the 2006 midterm elections.

The report said Bush and Rove “spoke with Attorney General Gonzales in October 2006 about their concerns over voter fraud in three cities, one of which was Albuquerque, New Mexico” and concerns Domenici had about Iglesias’s job performance, but those specific findings went largely unreported.

In an interview Thursday, Iglesias said he was “not surprised” Bush “got involved in the decisions to dismiss the prosecutors.

“For something that became this politicized it had to get his input his approval,” Iglesias said. “I suspect when all the evidence comes out he wasn’t just in the loop he approved it.”

Iglesias said he has long suspected that Rove’s “fingerprints were all over this.”

In an on-camera interview with me two years ago, Iglesias said he believed “somewhere on an RNC computer – on some server somewhere – there’s an email from Karl Rove stating why we need to be axed.”

Back then, he said he believed a “smoking gun” would eventually surface and lead directly to Karl Rove and blow the scandal wide open.

Iglesias added that the complaints about him from Domenici’s office that accelerated in the weeks before the 2006-midterm election were “tied to [New Mexico Rep.] Heather Wilson’s reelection campaign.”

Wilson had been locked in a tight race with Democratic challenger Patricia Madrid and had won the race by 800 votes.

Iglesias said he had been pressured by Wilson and Domenici to secure indictments against state officials targeted in a corruption probe.

“The e-mail timing [in October 2006] corroborates what I suspected,” Iglesias said. Domenici and other New Mexico Republican Party officials “wanted me to file indictments and [Wilson] would benefit. They wanted to use me and my office as a political tool.”

The U.S. attorney scandal, which resulted in the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and numerous other Justice Department officials, is now a criminal probe being lead by Nora Dannehy, a federal prosecutor from Connecticut who was appointed special counsel last September by then-Attorney General Michael Mukasey. She is investigating whether former Justice Department and White House officials lied or obstructed justice in connection with the firings.

Dannehy has convened a grand jury and interviewed Rove and Miers and Jennings and subpoenaed documents from Domenici. [See this story for more details about Dannehy's investigation of Domenici and his chief of staff]. Dannehy has also been scrutinizing the Gonzales’s role in the matter, according to legal sources knowledgeable about her probe.

Iglesias said given that Dannehy has access to “a lot of the facts…there still may be obstruction of justice charges” filed.

“I can’t believe Gonzales did not know what was going on,” Iglesias said, suggesting that the former attorney general may be one of Dannehy’s targets.

Legal sources said Dannehy “is very close to wrapping up” her investigation, but it’s unclear whether she intends to file a public report. And unless she can prove there was a conspiracy to obstruct justice it’s unlikely any member of the Bush administration involved in the firings will be charged.

According a copy of the petition obtained by the Texas Tech’s student newspaper, The Daily Toreador, the nine-page petition, which includes an appendix, calls Gonzales’s one-year professorship “a troubling example of a ‘celebrity hire’” and claims that the hiring of Gonzales by his “good friend,” Texas Tech Chancellor Kent Hance, “cannot be seen as a commitment to ethical conduct.”

Hance was a Democratic member of Congress for six years. He switched parties, becoming a Republican in 1985. Hance said in a July 7, news release that Gonzales will bring “expertise” and “experience” to Texas Tech and “prepare our students for success.” Hance did not respond to the newspaper’s request for comment about the allegations .

“It is unclear what Gonzales has done that makes him deserving of employment at Texas Tech,” the petition states. “Does he have a noteworthy academic record? Does he have a record of publishing in law reviews? Was his service to his country particularly distinguished?”

Gonzales will earn a salary of $100,000. He was hired earlier this month to teach a class called “Contemporary Issues in the Executive Branch.” He was also tapped to help recruit minority students, the student newspaper reported.

Walter Schaller, a philosophy professor, circulated the petition opposing his hire. Schaller said Hance’s role in hiring Gonzales is not in accordance with his official duties, which “is to raise money and deal with the legislature.”

“The petition highlights in detail Gonzales’ controversies, or ‘ethical failings’ as attorney general and White House legal counsel including that he frequently misled or lied to Congress about the firing of U.S. attorneys; rejected the Geneva Conventions; denied the Constitutional right of habeas corpus; and appeared to be more loyal to President George W. Bush than to the Constitution,” according to the Daily Toreador.

Students have also protested Gonzales’s hiring.

The legal news website, Main Justice, reported that students have launched Facebook groups including “Alberto Gonzales Doesn’t Belong At Texas Tech” and “Texas Tech Students and Alumni Against Employing Alberto Gonzales.”

Gonzales, who also served as White House counsel, resigned in disgrace in 2007 following disclosures that he played a far more intimate role in the firings of nine federal prosecutors than he had admitted publicly.

In an interview in February with CNN, Gonzales characterized the U.S. attorney scandal and the public’s focus on it as “little negatives” and falsely claimed that a Justice Department watchdog report that probed the firings concluded that a majority of the dismissals were for “performance related reasons.”

Gonzales told CNN that Glenn Fine, the Justice Department’s inspector general, and H. Marshall Jarrett, head of the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility, “clearly found that there were performance related reasons for the removal of most of these U.S. attorneys and with respect to the remainder, they didn’t have enough information to draw definite conclusions.”

In an interview, David Iglesias, the former U.S. Attorney for New Mexico whose firing was deemed by the inspector general to be the most partisan of the nine, said Gonzales “needs to shoot straight with the American people.”

“Alberto Gonzales is showing the same remarkable disengagement he was criticized for by the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s report,” Iglesias told me. “This time, he is disengaged from the official findings of fact. The Inspector General’s Report officially found illegal political hirings of attorneys and immigration judges, an out of control Civil Rights section, and improper firings of U.S. Attorneys, myself included.

“The report, conducted by non-partisan, career investigators established our firings were ‘fundamentally flawed’ and rejected ‘performance-related’ reasons for seven out of nine U.S. Attorneys. In my case, the report examined and rejected every reason give for my firing as ‘disingenuous after the fact rationalizations.’ The Justice Department was a train wreck under the failed leadership of Gonzales.”

In fact, Gonzales’s is still under scrutiny by the special prosecutor appointed last year to conduct a criminal investigation into the attorney firings.

According to legal sources, Gonzales’s former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, has already provided information to special prosecutor Nora Dannehy, an Assistant U.S. Attorney from Connecticut, about the role Gonzales played in the dismissals.

Sampson is said to have told the special prosecutor that Gonzales was far more engaged in the attorney firings than he had previously disclosed during Congressional testimony and in interviews with Justice Department watchdogs.

In a Seattle University Law Review article published in early 2008, John McKay, the former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Washington, who was one of the nine federal prosecutors fired, said Gonzales and his underlings may well have been involved in a “criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice,” which is exactly what Dannehy has been investigating, according to legal sources knowledgeable about her investigation.

McKay said the firings of Iglesias and Lam appeared to show that Gonzales and top DOJ officials may have lied to Congress and obstructed justice by interfering with public corruption cases and ongoing criminal investigations Iglesias and Lam had been involved in at the time of their dismissals.

“The elements of a prima facie case of obstruction of justice are: (1) the existence of the judicial proceeding; (2) knowledge of or notice of the judicial proceeding; (3) acting ‘corruptly’ with intent to influence, obstruct or impede the proceeding in the due administration of justice; and (4) a nexus (although not necessarily one which is material) between the judicial proceeding sought to be corruptly influenced and the defendant’s efforts,” McKay wrote. “The [federal] omnibus clause is a ‘catchall’ provision, which is broadly construed to include a wide variety of corrupt methods.”

Gonzales, meanwhile, is unfazed by the resistance he faces from the Texas Tech faculty. He told the student newspaper that his critics will come to see his presence as a “net positive.”

“We live in a country where, in the academic world, people can express publicly their approval and disapproval of various issues,” he said. “What I’m focused on, is demonstrating that I’m serious about this teaching responsibility. I’m also serious about promoting diversity within Texas Tech. I hope that people will treat me fair and give me an opportunity to demonstrate that.”

Using American soldiers for domestic law enforcement purposes would have been unprecedented. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the armed forces from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

The Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated.”

“Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants,” says a report published Friday evening in the New York Times.

Bush ultimately opposed the idea.

But Cheney, according to the Times said a 37-page Oct. 23, 2001 legal opinion prepared by John Yoo, the former deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), authorized the president to use the military for domestic matters. Yoo’s legal opinion–“Authority for Use of Military Force to Combat Terrorist Activities Within the United States”–was declassified and released along with other OLC memos in April.

Yoo, who is a visiting law professor at Chapman University in Orange, Calif., asserted that the President had unlimited powers to prosecute the “war on terror” on American soil and could ignore constitutional rights, including First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press and Fourth Amendment requirements for search warrants.

“The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically,” Yoo wrote. “First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully. The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically.”

The memo also said Bush had the legal authority to order searches and seizures without warrants against individuals that he judged to be terrorists.

“We do not think a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a warrant,” said the memo, which was prepared by Yoo for then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Defense Department attorney William Haynes. Another OLC attorney, Robert Delahunty, was identified as a co-author of the memo.

“We think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks.”

Just three months before Bush exited the White House, Stephen Bradbury, as acting chief of the OLC, renounced the Oct. 23, 2001, legal opinion in a “memorandum for the files” that called Yoo’s opinion about suspending First Amendment protections “overbroad and general and not sufficiently grounded in the particular circumstance of a concrete scenario.”

In an Oct. 6, 2008, memo, Bradbury wrote that Yoo’s legal opinion “states several specific propositions that are either incorrect or highly questionable.” But Bradbury attempted to justify or forgive Yoo’s controversial opinion by explaining that it was “the product of an extraordinary period in the history of the Nation: the immediate aftermath of the attacks of 9/11.”

The Oct. 23, 2001, “memorandum represents a departure, although perhaps for understandable reasons, from the preferred practice of OLC to render formal opinions only with respect to specific and concrete policy proposals and not to undertake a general survey of a broad area of the law or to address general or amorphous hypothetical scenarios that implicate difficult questions of law,” Bradbury wrote.

It’s still unclear what prompted Bradbury to draft the memo to the file, although his legal work along with Yoo’s and that of Yoo’s boss, Jay Bybee, a federal judge, was the subject of an internal Justice Department investigation by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is expected to release its report sometime this summer.

Yoo was sharply criticized in an inspector general’s report released two weeks ago for using flawed legal theories and failing to cite legal precedent when he authorized Bush’s domestic surveillance program. The report said Yoo worked closely with Cheney’s attorney, David Addington, in drafting the legal memo that permitted domestic spying, which is the same memo Cheney cited when he told Bush he could deploy American soldiers to upstate New York to arrest suspected terrorists.

Some of Yoo’s thinking on domestic military operations was revealed in an even earlier memo than the one dated Oct. 23, 2001. There was another one, written 10 days after the 9/11 attacks, on Sept. 21, 2001. The memo was drafted in response to a question posed by Timothy E. Flanigan, the former deputy White House counsel, who wanted to know “the legality of the use of military force to prevent or deter terrorist activity inside the United States,” according to a copy of Flanigan’s memo.

Yoo suggested some scenarios, such as the need to shoot down a jetliner hijacked by terrorists; to set up military checkpoints inside a U.S. city; to implement surveillance methods far superior to those available to law enforcement; or to use military forces “to raid or attack dwellings where terrorists were thought to be, despite risks that third parties could be killed or injured by exchanges of fire,” according to Yoo’s memo.

Yoo argued that President Bush would “be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties. … We think that the Fourth Amendment should be no more relevant than it would be in cases of invasion or insurrection.”

Yoo wrote that his ideas would likely be seen as violating the Fourth Amendment. But he said the terrorist attacks on 9/11 and the prospect that future attacks would require the military to be deployed inside the U.S. meant President Bush would “be justified in taking measures which in less troubled conditions could be seen as infringements of individual liberties.”

In his 2006 book, War by Other Means: An Insider’s Account of the War on Terror, Yoo cites various arguments for local and federal law enforcement agencies, as well as a sitting U.S. President, to ignore the Fourth Amendment, especially regarding domestic surveillance.

“If al-Qaeda organizes missions within the United States, our surveillance simply cannot be limited to law enforcement,” Yoo wrote. “The Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement should not apply, because it is concerned with regulating searches, not with military attacks.”

The Times report said, “at least one high-level meeting was convened to debate the issue, at which several top Bush aides argued firmly against the proposal to use the military, advanced by Mr. Cheney, his legal adviser David S. Addington and some senior Defense Department officials.”

“Among those in opposition were Condoleezza Rice, then the national security adviser; John B. Bellinger III, the top lawyer at the National Security Council; Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation; and Michael Chertoff, then the head of the Justice Department’s criminal division.”

However, senior military officials, including Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were never consulted about the proposal.

“Former officials said the 2002 debate arose partly from Justice Department concerns that there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna” New York, the Times reported. “Mr. Cheney, the officials said, had argued that the administration would need a lower threshold of evidence to declare them enemy combatants and keep them in military custody.”

Bush eventually ordered the FBI to arrest five Yemeni Americans suspected of having ties to al-Qaeda in Lackawanna. A sixth person was arrested in Baharain immediately immediately thereafter. All six pleaded guilty to guilty to terrorism-related charges.

Two weeks later, Bush signed an action memorandum dated Feb. 7, 2002, addressed to Vice President Dick Cheney, which denied baseline protections to al-Qaeda and Taliban prisoners under the Third Geneva Convention. That memo, according to a recently released bipartisan report issued by the Senate Armed Services Committee, opened the door to “considering aggressive techniques,” which were then developed with the complicity of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and other senior Bush officials.

“The President’s order closed off application of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which would have afforded minimum standards for humane treatment, to al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees,” says the committee’s Dec. 11 report.

“While the President’s order stated that, as ‘a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of the Geneva Conventions,’ the decision to replace well established military doctrine, i.e., legal compliance with the Geneva Conventions, with a policy subject to interpretation, impacted the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.”

The Supreme Court held in 2006, in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, that the prisoners were entitled to protections under the Geneva Conventions.

Many of the classified policy directives, such as Gonzales’s memo to Bush, are now part of the public record thanks to the American Civil Liberties Union’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Bush administration, which has so far resulted in the release of more than 100,000 pages of documents that shows how Bush officials twisted the law in order to build a legal framework for torture.

These documents have been posted on the ACLU’s website. But several hundred of the most explosive records were republished in the book Administration of Torture along with hard-hitting commentary by the ACLU’s Jameel Jaffer, who heads the group’s National Security Project, and Amrit Singh, a staff attorney with the organization.

Rumsfeld Wanted a ‘Product

On Feb. 14, 2002, just one week after Bush signed the action memo, Maj. Gen. Mike Dunlavey was contacted by Rumsfeld who asked him to attend a Defense Department meeting with Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and others on Feb. 21 or 22. At the meeting, Rumsfeld told Dunlavey he wanted him to oversee interrogations at the Guantanamo Bay naval facility in Cuba. Prisoners captured by U.S. military personnel had first arrived at Guantanamo a month earlier. Dunlavey was a Family Court Judge in Erie County Pennsylvania when he got the call from Rumsfeld and placed in charge of interrogations at Guantanamo.

Rumsfeld told Dunlavey, according to a witness statement he on March 17, 2005, to U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt, who was investigating FBI complaints about abuse at Guantanamo, Rumsfeld said the Department of Defense had rounded up “a number of bad guys” and the Secretary of Defense “wanted a product and wanted intelligence now.”

Rumsfeld “wanted to set up interrogation operations and to identify the senior Taliban and senior operatives and to obtain information on what they were going to do regarding their operations and structure,” Dunlavey said, according to a copy of his witness statement. “Initially, I was told that I would answer to SECDEF (Secretary of Defense) and [U.S. Southern Command]. The directions changed and I got my marching orders from the President of the United States. I was told by the SECDEF that he wanted me back in Washington, DC every week to brief him…. The mission was to get intelligence to prevent another 9/11.”

Dunlavey did not explain what he meant by “I got my marching orders from the president.” But his comments suggest that Bush may have played a much larger role in the interrogation of prisoners than he has let on. Moreover, Dunlavey’s witness statement indicates that harsh interrogations, such as waterboarding, may have taken place earlier than previously known and may have preceded an Aug. 1, 2002 legal opinion issued by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel authorizing specific interrogation techniques to use against prisoners.

As early as December 2001, according to the documents obtained by the ACLU, high-ranking military officials began to implement an Army and Air Force survival-training program called Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE), which were meant to prepare U.S. soldiers for abuse they might suffer if captured by an outlaw regime.

In June 2004, Gen. James Hill of Southern Command, the Defense Department’s command unit responsible for military operations in Central and South America and the Caribbean, held a press briefing and confirmed that interrogation techniques specifically authorized by Rumsfeld for use at Guantanamo derived from the SERE school. In October 2002, Dunlavey wrote to Hill to seek authorization that interrogators be granted the authority to use methods that strayed from the Army Field Manual in order to extract information from prisoners.

Dunlavey, in making his case to Hill for authority to use more aggressive techniques, attached a copy of Bush’s then classified Feb. 7, 2002 action memo along with an analysis that said, “since the detainees are not [Enemy Prisoners of War] the Geneva Conventions limitations that ordinarily would govern captured enemy personnel interrogations are not binding on U.S. personnel.”

Hill sent Dunlavey’s request to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Myers discussed it with William Haynes II, the Defense Department’s general counsel, who briefed Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Doug Feith. The request ultimately ended up on Rumsfeld’s desk and he approved it, according to the documents.

“The documents establish that senior officials in Washington, including White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, constructed a legal framework that would permit the abuse and torture of prisoners,” the ACLU’s Jaffer and Singh wrote in Administration of Torture. “They establish that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, relying on this legal framework, expressly authorized the use of interrogation methods-including SERE methods-that went far beyond those endorsed by the Army Field Manual. They establish that Rumsfeld and Gen. Geoffrey Miller oversaw the implementation of the newly authorized interrogation methods and closely supervised the interrogation of prisoners thought to be especially valuable.”

FBI Objects

In early December 2002, FBI officials who had participated in some interrogations at Guantanamo complained to Miller that the methods used against prisoners at Guantanamo were unlawful. But Miller was not receptive. That led FBI officials to conclude that senior Bush administration officials and Rumsfeld were making decisions about interrogations in particular.

A Dec. 16, 2002 e-mail written by an FBI official expressed frustration that the Defense Department refused to budge from its controversial interrogation methods.

“Looks like we are stuck in the mud with the interview approach of the military vrs. law enforcement,” the e-mail says.

In May 2004, Miller told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he briefed Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense Stephen Cambone about his plan to “Gitmo-ize” the Abu Ghraib prison.

That month, an e-mail written by a senior FBI agent in Iraq in 2004 specifically stated that President George W. Bush had signed an Executive Order approving the use of military dogs, sleep deprivation and other tactics to intimidate Iraqi detainees.

The FBI e-mail–dated May 22, 2004–followed disclosures about abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison and sought guidance on whether FBI agents in Iraq were obligated to report the U.S. military’s harsh interrogation of inmates when that treatment violated FBI standards but fit within the guidelines of a presidential Executive Order.

According to the e-mail, Bush’s Executive Order authorized interrogators to use military dogs, “stress positions,” sleep “management,” loud music and “sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc.” to extract information from detainees in Iraq.

The May 2004 FBI e-mail stated that the FBI interrogation team in Iraq understood that despite revisions in the Executive Order that occurred after the furor over the Abu Ghraib abuses, the presidential sanctioning of harsh interrogation tactics had not been rescinded.

“I have been told that all interrogation techniques previously authorized by the Executive Order are still on the table but that certain techniques can only be used if very high-level authority is granted,” the author of the FBI e-mail said.

“We have also instructed our personnel not to participate in interrogations by military personnel which might include techniques authorized by Executive Order but beyond the bounds of FBI practices.”

The White House had emphatically denied that any such presidential Executive Order existed, calling the unnamed FBI official who wrote the e-mail “mistaken.” Prior to the May 22, 2004 e-mail, several others written by FBI agents that month were sent to Valerie Caproni, the FBI’s general counsel, about detainees being tortured before the unnamed agent sent Caproni the e-mail citing Bush’s alleged executive order.

On July 9, 2004, the FBI’s Office of Inspections distributed an e-mail asking its agents who were stationed at Guantanamo whether they had witnessed, “Aggressive treatment, interrogations or interview techniques…which were not consistent with FBI interview policy/guidelines.”

More than two-dozen agents responded that they observed numerous instances of detainee abuse. One FBI agent wrote that, despite Rumsfeld’s public statements to the contrary, the interrogation methods “were approved at high levels w/in DoD.” In addition to Rumsfeld, the FBI e-mails said Paul Wolfowitz, one Bush administration official who has largely escaped scrutiny in the torture debate, approved the methods at Guantanamo.

In 2006, Miller received a Distinguished Service Medal for “exceptionally meritorious service.” Dunlavey is an Erie County Judge.