The Rogue's Gallery

Chris Matthews has Jon Ensign dancing on the head of a pin today, as he tries to distinguish between Gitmo and the exact same techniques and abuses at Abu Ghraib, as he tries to dismiss the Senate Armed Services Committee document as a "Democrat (sic) report" when the ranking member, one John McCain, signed off on it, claiming that the intelligence gained through torture stopped "a terrorist attack in California" when that attack was allegedly thwarted a year before KSM was captured, etc. It's just not worth the breath of the argument, though seeing the Republican Party become The Party of Torture right before our eyes just pushes them further into a cocoon of irrelevance.

What concerns me is whether or not we'll see any accountability for the architects of torture. Let's start with the California Two, Jay Bybee and John Yoo, one who has burrowed into the federal judiciary, the other who has no problem defending his discredited, insane theories of executive power. Yoo held a public event yesterday, in the middle of this:

At a spirited forum Tuesday at (Chapman University), Yoo, who was the author of much of the legal rationale for using waterboarding and other severe interrogation techniques, defended his legal guidance as correct and necessary to protect the nation.

"Three thousand of our fellow citizens had been killed in a deliberate attack by a foreign enemy," Yoo, unruffled by shouts that he is a war criminal and should be in jail, told a packed auditorium on the Orange County campus. "That forced us in the government to have to consider measures to gain information using presidential constitutional provisions to protect the country from further attack."

In a war with a non-state enemy that doesn't follow international law, getting information from captured combatants is vital, Yoo said, contending that 50% of U.S. intelligence about Al Qaeda was gleaned from interrogations.

"Was it worth it?" he asked, brushing off the reproachful reaction. "We haven't had an attack in more than seven years."

Correlation is not causation, and anyway, terrorism has of course skyrocketed worldwide since 9/11. John Yoo is a moral reprobate who would subvert the Constitution to use techniques that have not made us safer, have endangered our relations with allies, and quite simply violated both domestic and international law, not to mention the conscience of the sane. After the DoJ IG report, which I suspect will denounce his flawed reasoning, he should be disbarred.

Bybee burrowed into the federal judiciary so he won't go public on these issues, but for much the same reasons he ought to be impeached. John Dean doesn't seem to think it could happen, because of the precedent set by Justice Chase over "impeaching and removing an office holder for his or her official opinions", but other legal scholars disagree, and in this case, Nuremberg precedent shows that those opinions constitute a violation of war crimes statutes.

Moving on, we have a key architect, John Rizzo at the CIA, still working for the Obama Administration.

John Rizzo, the man who worked with both Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury to pre-authorize torture, is still being paid by you and me to make sure that the CIA follows the law.

As the SASC report notes, Rizzo is the man who provided the list of torture techniques to Jay Bybee for inclusion in the memo--the key link in turning SERE techniques into torture.

"According to Acting CIA General Counsel John Rizzo, the techniques that the OLC analyzed in the Second Bybee memo were provided by his office. In his testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Mr. Rizzo stated that his office was 'the vehicle' for getting the interrogation practices analyzed in the Second Bybee memo to the Department of Justice."

That information that Rizzo gave to OLC were a bunch of lies, by the way, and to the extent that they mitigated OLC opinions over torture, he certainly is implicated in designing the torture regime. How does he still hold a job in this executive branch?

Jane Mayer cites a couple other culprits for us:

The Levin report provides some new details. On April 16, 2002—a couple weeks after Zubaydah’s capture, and three and a half months before the Bybee memo—a military psychologist named Dr. Bruce Jessen was already circulating a blueprint for cruelly coercive interrogations based on torture methods used by Chinese Communist forces during the Korean War. The report describes Jessen’s blueprint as a “draft exploitation plan” for U.S.-held captives. (I wrote about Dr. Jessen’s partner, James Mitchell, in the July 11, 2005, issue of The New Yorker.)

By June 2002—again, months before the Department of Justice gave the legal green light for interrogations—an F.B.I. special agent on the scene of the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah refused to participate in what he called “borderline torture,” according to a D.O.J. investigation cited in the Levin report. Soon after, F.B.I. Director Robert Mueller commanded his personnel to stay away from the C.I.A.’s coercive interrogations.

What did the F.B.I. see in the spring of 2002? And exactly who was involved? How high up was this activity authorized? Is it off-limits for criminal investigation?

There are plenty of new names and details in the Armed Services Committee report, including a scene of two military men teaching the C.I.A. how to use Chinese torture techniques. One of the instructors, Joseph Witsch, played the “beater,” while the other, Gary Percival, became the “beatee.” By the mid-summer of 2002, beating was no longer just an academic exercise. Precisely when these tactics were used on live captives, and at what point top Bush officials endorsed them, may be a matter of serious interest to Attorney General Eric Holder.

The list goes on and on. And we should follow the lead of Dick Cheney and offer full disclosure, and then let the chips fall where they may. And that includes prosecution.

Torture Tape Update

So after belligerently trying to shut down the House Intelligence Committee investigation over the detroyed torture tapes, and faced with imminent subpoenas which would have bipartisan support, the CIA and the Justice Department relented, offering documents and allowing the CIA's top lawyer, John Rizzo, to testify to the committee. Whether or not they'll allow Jose Rodriguez, who is the prime subject for a committee subpoena, to testify is an open question. It's a minor victory for the separation of powers, but I stress minor. And so far, based not only on the documents given to the committee but also testimony from Michael Hayden, it looks like Abu Gonzales and John Bellinger advised against destroying the tapes, adding to other accounts that Harriet Miers advised against destruction as well. Only one lawyer known to have been present at the discussions is left out: David Addington, Cheney's lawyer. It was obvious that Addington would be the figure most likely to argue for their destruction, seeing as he's bathed in the light of Fourthbranch and believes himself to be not bound by any laws, a Javier Bardem-in-No Country For Old Men kind of person, if you will.

Additionally, a CIA lawyer has put to rest Hayden's ridiculous concern that the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the agents involved. There are ample ways to blur out faces or obscure identities, he said, plus they were in the hands of the CIA the entire time, and "If a tape is not safe in the CIA, we’re in trouble."

The 9/11 Commission is weighing in as well, claiming that the tapes were withheld from them prior to their destruction. This is almost the harmonic convergence of Bush Administration secrecy, because so many different groups, including Congress, independent panels like the 9/11 Commission with the force of law, and even the courts have been stonewalled. In the case of the 9/11 panel, the administrators are looking to see whether the CIA violated federal law.

A seven-page memorandum prepared by Philip D. Zelikow, the panel’s former executive director, concluded that “further investigation is needed” to determine whether the C.I.A.’s withholding of the tapes from the commission violated federal law.

In interviews this week, the two chairmen of the commission, Lee H. Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, said their reading of the report had convinced them that the agency had made a conscious decision to impede the Sept. 11 commission’s inquiry.

What may not pan out is the court case that some thought would pry open more documents into further view.

A federal judge appeared reluctant Friday to investigate the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes while the Justice Department is conducting its own inquiry.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy is considering whether to delve into the matter and, if so, how deeply. The Bush administration is urging him to back off while it investigates.

"Why should the court not permit the Department of Justice to do just that?" Kennedy asked at a court hearing.

Can I answer that? Because they're hopelessly partisan and implicated in the investigation at the highest levels?

It's very unclear where all of this is going. My goal would be to see Addington forced out of the shadows.

How Do I Lie? Let Me Count The Ways...

A brief sampling of Bush Administration lies over the past few days...

• Laura Bush sez many Iraqi refugees have been welcomed to the United States. If by "many," you mean less than 500 out of the nearly two million Iraqis who have fled their country.

• General David Petraeus completely focuses on Al Qaeda in Iraq as the source of the problems in Iraq, when they are maybe 3% of the overall insurgency. He's also claiming that the September date is not a deadline for a policy change, when it is to the Congress, who actually has the ability to make that determination and not some general.

• Former deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty just wasn't all that involved in the firing of US Attorneys or the hiring of replacements, or really anything in the Justice Department, so I'm not sure how he spent his time. Of course, the Attorney General has said that he relied on McNulty's advice in approving the firings.

• Tony Snow responded to the scandal of White House officials using RNC email accounts in violation of the Presidential Records Act by saying "Clinton did it too," which is, um, not true. It's so untrue, in fact, that then-staffer John Podesta wrote a specific memo stating that all email must be incorporated into the official records system.

To be fair, not every Bush Administration official lies. Some of them don't say anything at all.

John A. Rizzo, who has spent much of the past five years honing the CIA's interrogation policies, knows how to avoid answering questions under pressure -- at least in public. In nearly two hours of Senate testimony yesterday, his longest response by far was six sentences long.

For much of the session, Rizzo confined himself to "Yes, sir," "No, sir" and "I think I'd best address that in closed session." [...]

Asked if he approved of a Justice Department opinion that only pain resulting in "organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death" qualified as torture, Rizzo carefully said he "did not object." Perhaps it "did appear overbroad," he added, "but I can't say that I had any specific objections to any specific parts of it."

He may be the best Administration official yet, because he tries really really hard NOT to lie.