Civil liberties advocates are criticizing an expected decision by Attorney General Eric Holder to limit a criminal probe of the Bush administration’s torture practices to CIA interrogators who exceeded Justice Department guidelines.
“There simply is no legal, moral or principled reason to insulate those who authorized the torture of detainees, either through legal reasoning or other policy directive, from investigation,” Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat and chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, said in a letter to Holder.
Nadler’s letter of Aug. 4 was followed on Sunday by a report in the Los Angeles Times that Holder was likely to sign off on a criminal probe, but would limit its scope to CIA interrogators who exceeded interrogation limits set in 2002 by Justice Department attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee in memos that authorized waterboarding and other brutal acts against suspected terrorists.
“A senior Justice Department official said that Holder envisioned an inquiry that would be narrow in scope, focusing on ‘whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized’ in Bush administration memos that liberally interpreted anti-torture laws,” the Los Angeles Times reported.
Nadler’s letter reiterated his previous calls for a special prosecutor with broad authority to investigate violations of federal laws that prohibit torture. He also objected to any investigation limited to “activities by interrogators, working in bad faith, that fell outside the ‘four corners’ of the legal memos” provided by lawyers of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, where Yoo and Bybee worked.
“First, such an investigation would fail to consider the possible violation of laws by high-ranking officials and lawyers who, through legal advice or otherwise, may have authorized torture,” Nadler wrote.
“This country has been instrumental in establishing the principle that high-ranking officials and lawyers who use legal reasoning to justify or otherwise authorize war crimes can, and should, be held legally accountable. The ban on torture is absolute and we have a legal obligation to investigate torture and all of those who may have been party to its use.”
Nadler’s letter was prompted by several news reports published over the past month indicating that Holder was leaning toward a limited criminal probe after reviewing a classified CIA inspector general’s report that reportedly called into question the legality of the Bush administration’s torture program.
The secret findings of CIA Inspector General John Helgerson led to eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department for homicide and other misconduct, but those cases languished as Vice President Dick Cheney is said to have intervened to constrain Helgerson’s inquiries.
Holder may reopen those cases, but if an investigation is narrowly focused on the CIA interrogators and outside contractors and does not include the Bush administration officials who authorized the policies then the probe would likely amount to a whitewash, much like the Abu Ghraib case.
Of the 12 investigations launched in the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, not one scrutinized the roles of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or any other senior Bush administration official. The inquiries concentrated instead on the military police identified in the photographs, like Private Lynndie England and Corporal Charles Graner Jr.
Such a limited approach would also ignore evidence that senior Bush administration officials and high-level officials at CIA headquarters in Langley micromanaged the torture of at least one high-level detainee.
As first reported by The Public Record, documents released earlier this year in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit between the American Civil Liberties Union and the CIA showed that CIA interrogators provided top agency officials at Langley with daily “torture” updates of Abu Zubaydah, an alleged “high-level” terrorist detainee who was held at a secret “black site” prison and waterboarded 83 times in August 2002.
Additionally, alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times in the span of a single month. CIA Inspector General Helgerson also “had serious questions about the agency’s mistreatment of dozens more,” according to Jane Mayer, a reporter for The New Yorker and author of the book The Dark Side.
Senior Bush administration officials were known to be closely following these developments and pressed the CIA for more and more results.
Last year, in several interviews prior to exiting the White House, Cheney admitted that he personally authorized the waterboarding of three so-called “high-value” prisoners.
“I signed off on it; others did, as well, too,” Cheney said.
In waterboarding, interrogators strap a person down to a board with a cloth covering his face and then pour water over the cloth, causing the victim to feel as if he is drowning. It is a torture technique dating back at least to the Spanish Inquisition.
“I thought that it was absolutely the right thing to do,” Cheney said of what he called the “enhanced interrogation” of the detainees. “I thought the [administration’s] legal opinions that were rendered [endorsing the harsh treatment] were sound. I think the techniques were reasonable in terms of what they [the CIA interrogators] were asking to be able to do. And I think it produced the desired result.
“Was it torture? I don’t believe it was torture,” Cheney said. “The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately. They came to us in the administration, talked to me, talked to others in the administration, about what they felt they needed to do in order to obtain the intelligence that we believe these people were in possession of.”
In his letter to Holder, Nadler suggested statements, like those uttered publicly by Cheney, needed a closer look to determine whether war crimes were committed.
“The Geneva Conventions obligate High Contracting Parties such as the United States to investigate and bring before our courts those individuals ‘alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed grave breaches of those Conventions.
“The War Crimes Act… specifically identifies torture and cruel or inhuman treatment, as well as the conspiracy to commit those acts, as punishable war crimes. The federal Torture Statute … criminalizes torture and the conspiracy to commit torture.”
Nadler said if Holder decides to sign off on a criminal investigation a prosecutor must probe whether “federal criminal laws were violated by individuals who authorized or participated in the interrogation of detainees, including high-ranking officials and lawyers from the Department of Justice itself who allegedly approved or ordered the use of enhanced interrogation techniques that amounted to torture.”
Nadler added, “The ban on torture is absolute: ‘no exceptional circumstances whatsoever . . . may be invoked as a justification of torture,’ and ‘an order from a superior officer . . . may not be invoked as a justification of torture.’
“It may prove true that some interrogators faced difficult choices – pressure from superiors to obtain intelligence information from detainees coupled with directives or advice indicating that harsh interrogation methods were lawful – but limiting the scope of investigation to exclude individuals up front ignores the absolute bar on torture and our legal obligation to investigate torture, and is not necessary.
“If, indeed, laws were violated, the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 provides a limited defense for those interrogators who show that they relied in good faith on legal advice in using interrogation methods that they did not know, and that a reasonable person would not know, were unlawful.
“These determinations are necessarily fact-based, and making ultimate decisions as to what the facts might prove or disprove, before any independent investigation has occurred, is unwarranted and would undermine the credibility of any investigation.”
In April, Holder declared that it “would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department.” That meant any possible criminal investigation would be limited to examining actions that went beyond what was sanctioned, such as repetitious use of waterboarding.
Last year, in the heat of the presidential campaign, Holder, who was a featured speaker at the American Constitution Society’s annual convention, told a packed crowd that the “American people are owe[d] a reckoning” as a result of the “abusive” and “unlawful” policies of the Bush administration.
“Our government authorized the use of torture, approved of secret electronic surveillance of American citizens, secretly detained American citizens without due process of law, denied the Writ of Habeus Corpus to hundreds of accused enemy combatants, and authorized the use of procedures that both violate international law and the United States Constitution,” Holder said in June 2008. “We owe the American people a reckoning.”
Obama, however, has been resistant to any investigation that would “look backward” and divert attention away from his domestic agenda.
Yet, Nadler said that can’t happen without a wide-ranging investigation.
“I appreciate and share the desire to put this unfortunate chapter in our nation’s history behind us, but we cannot do so without fulfilling our legal and moral obligation to investigate whether laws were broken by those who conducted and those who authorized the enhanced interrogation practices.”
What is the definition of Colonialism? The invasion of weaker countries by the Europeans and Americans through the centuries, on their corporations and conglomerates behalf, to plunder their natural resources and lands for colonization. As well as the enslavement, slaughter and genocide of the Indigenous inhabitants. Theft and Murder.
India, Iran, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Phillipines, Algeria, Hawaii, Venezuela, Canada, America, South America, the Europeans and Americans were there, assassinating, manipulating, and setting up puppet regimes to ensure their access to their resources. Like leeches and other parasites.
The Neo Cons and their bought off American government will never admit their policies of Colonialism is Theft and Murder and results in Terrorism. To do so, they’ll have to admit they’re guilty of Theft and Murder and are ultimately responsible for the attacks against the United States, including the bombing of the Marine Barracks in Beirut, the USS Cole bombing, and the 1993 attacks against the World Trade Center and again on 9/11 with the murder of 3,000 Americans.
Theft and Murder
Britain is investigating Tony Blair for his part in the run up to the Iraq War. There have already been many threats by the European community to arrest various Bush administration members should they present themselves inside their borders. Who do we think we’re fooling? We would just make ourselves look even more foolish than we do now with our ridiculous arguments about whether a technique for which we have already tried, found guilty, and punished severely war criminals from other wars. The investigation has to be thorough and soon – or Europe will do it for us!
“It is always easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”
— US Marine Proverb
The Bush administration did not ask for our permission to break laws which it had assumed were liabilities in war. To fail in war, after taking so much power to ones self, without even a weak apology!
The laws the Bush administration broke did more than maintain the balance of power between the branches of government. They were also to prevent a single incontestable personality from dominating the decision processes of going to, and in prosecuting, a war.
He hid and distorted facts, so that any independent or contrary point of view would not have any support. The facts that he released would only support his predetermined actions. The laws he broke were the ones that would have had more eyes looking at the information and more minds looking for patterns that would bring success in avenging 9-11.
He restricted our options and bungled our opportunities to avenge 9-11. He put us in a position where the enemy could kill more of us. He has made himself Shogun to a hostage Constitution and the only acceptable apology would be Seppuku.
But Bush is not a Shogun,
and he is not above the law.
Eric Holder’s Conflict of Interest
by Dana Jill Simpson Page 1 of 1 page(s)
http://www.opednews.com
For months, we have been trying to get to the bottom of why Eric Holder would not really investigate the cases of Mr. Siegelman and Mr. Scrushy, Mr. Minor, the two other judges in Mississippi and Charles Walker. Well, I finally have the answer . I got it from writing my Greg Craig article that was located on the Jason Leopold website Public record.
I got a tip and I researched it. And boy, was I shocked at what I learned. Seems Mr. Holder, before being selected Attorney General of the United States of America, worked for a firm called Covington and Burling. The tip I got was that the firm had a very important client whose name was George W. Bush and they represented a very important organization I am sure ya’ll all have heard of – the Republican National Committee. I was in shock when I checked it and it was true. My favorite research item I ran across is when they were protecting the RNC from having to turn over Karl Rove’s emails that were run on the RNC Servers. It shocked me. Plus I found it mighty interesting that AG Eric Holder never enlightened anyone about his conflict of coming from a big Washington DC law firm that represented the Republican National Committee and George W. Bush in the 2000 election contest.
But then, it all made sense to me. He would have had to appoint a special A.G. to be over the Stevens case, over the Tobin case, and over the Kott case, and over the Abramoff/Feeney case. But if he just kept his mouth shut maybe just maybe no one would catch him dismissing all those cases. Which no one did until the tip came in. It has long been reported that the expenses in those cases were picked up by the RNC. That same RNC that paid A.G. Holder’s law firm, that same law firm then paid A.G. Holder over two million dollars last year. Shame on A.G. Holder! He had an ethical duty to tell the citizens of America he had a conflict in investigating all these cases and all the torture cases. Instead, he tried to ignore it or hide it instead of doing the right thing and getting out of the cases.
Additionally, he has ignored to date all the Democrats in this country who are complaining and have proof that they were politically targeted by the RNC and Karl Rove. He has not done the right thing – ask President Obama to appoint a special counsel, all along knowing he has a conflict because of his firm’s representation of the RNC. Since Holder has done all this, he should be immediately removed from this position of power. Innocent men are in jail and he has played games.
The United States citizens should have the right to know when their A.G. has a conflict of interest; the A.G. has a professional duty to tell them and take appropriate action. Mr Holder failed to do the right thing as A.G. He should be removed. If you doubt me, google Eric Holder and Covington and Burling. Then google Covington and Burling and George W. Bush, and also google them and Karl Rove and RNC emails. Shame on you, Holder! You are caught!
Simpson is a country lawyer who resides in Rainsville, Alabama. She has appeared on 60 Minutes and Dan Abrams MSNBC. Stories were written in Time Magazine, Harpers Magazine, and the New York Times about her being a witness in the Don Siegelman case (more…)