Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has decided to appoint a prosecutor to examine nearly a dozen cases in which CIA interrogators and contractors may have violated anti-torture laws and other statutes when they allegedly threatened terrorism suspects, according to two sources familiar with the move.Holder is poised to name John Durham, a career Justice Department prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the inquiry, according to the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.
Durham's mandate, the sources added, will be relatively narrow: to look at whether there is enough evidence to launch a full-scale criminal investigation of current and former CIA personnel who may have broken the law in their dealings with detainees. Many of the harshest CIA interrogation techniques have not been employed against terrorism suspects for four years or more.
Doesn't look like you'll see anything going beyond a few agents. I think the way this is going, and the general lack of outrage from Americans, says a lot about what we value. I really have no doubt that we could--indeed would--start torturing again, in the event of another terrorist attack. Maybe not under Obama, but certainly the take-away is that the executive is going to get a great deal of lee-way on these cases.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
I'm a little more optimistic. Rolling up any criminal conspiracy starts at the bottom. Then the little guys roll over on their bosses, who roll over on their bosses...
As soon as a CIA guy tries to defend himself by claiming that his superiors explicitly or implicitly condoned what he was doing, the investigation can start marching up the chain of command.
Katherine
I'm going with this.
I'm not so sure that the American people aren't outraged so much as they're not listening, or they think it's over, or are just lazy (which, I will say, are all moral failings, but not quite of the same magnitude as actively knowing that something evil was done and not giving a shit).
I think a wise investigation would start small, get its facts iron-clad, and then watch as the shit starts to roll up the hill toward the big guys. And then move from there.
I'm reminded (as I am so much these days) of Lincoln and his incremental way of doing things. Start small, weather the outrage of those who think it's too much and those who think it's too little, get people used to the new normal, then go a little bigger, weather a little more outrage, get used to the new normal, then a little bigger, etc, etc.
Of course, if this is all there is, and the only people caught in any kind of net are the little guys way down the totem pole, it will be a shanda (disgrace) of the first order. No argument. I'm just not willing yet to assume that that's all it's going to be.
Also, and not for nothing, but if they were to go big straight out of the gate, it would blow up in their faces. If they're doing what you and I think they're doing, Katherine, it may do some real good.
Ok, must stop typing now so that I can go back to crossing my fingers!
I'm hoping this is a now-make-me-do-it strategy for Obama, and that he's looking to build, bit by bit, a critical mass in both evidence and in the mind of the general public to go after the folks at the top. I don't think he really has either, yet. As you say, prosecutors generally roll up a conspiracy starting at the bottom, and information that comes out of low-level prosecutions may build to a critical mass that will inexorably lead to the architects of the whole thing.
This is just terrible. Absolutely terrible. This is worse than nothing. They are now establishing Cheney's rules as the new legal basis on which to begin investigating torture claims. The new legal threshold is now absolutely criminal through and through. There really cannot be a worse outcome to this.
My only hope is that Durham's investigating somehow spirals out of control, and that it become impossible to investigate the underlings without somehow damaging or incriminating the higher-ups. I don't know. But if this is how this is going to play, I would they do absolutely nothing.
I would honestly not be shocked if we were still torturing now. After all, what would Obama do if this were the case? Prosecute?
I would honestly not be shocked if we were still torturing now.
I think that it's pretty clear that torture is the cornerstone of the intelligence-gathering program used to identify candidates for the targeted assassination strategy that Gen. McChrystal brought with him from Iraq to Afghanistan.
...start torturing again, in the event of another terrorist attack. Maybe not under Obama...
To paraphrase Obama: We're looking forward, not backward.
Aside from a few platitudes, Obama has shown absolutely no moral-backbone when it comes to torture.
F*cking coward...
They need to go after the lawyers and other enablers. They're going to prosecute the CIA equivalent of Lyndie England? Wow.
Not only should the lawyers carry a higher burden w/r/t following the law, they also had the benefit of making decisions far removed from the heat of actual battle.
I'm much more understanding of rule-breaking from a Jack Bauer type, compared to some soft-around-the-middle lawyer playing games with people's lives from a comfortable remove.
Disclsoure: I'm a lawyer, and I believe in the rule of law.
Indeed. Same with the doctors and psychologists who participated.
I agree with your reading of the law, but my understanding of this program, based on Jane Mayer's "The Dark Side" and Andrew Sullivan's blogging, is that the Bush administration didn't care whether they had a ticking time bomb scenario, they didn't care whether the program was illegal according to our own laws and treaties, and they didn't care whether it even worked to produce actionable intelligence. They just went straight to torture methods and retroactively justified it with those awful memos. That's why I can't support the Jack Bauer comparison - if we ever encountered that type of situation - it was nomenklatura making the decisions.
I know that there are other concerns at play, but I don't understand how this makes any political sense. Especially since, according to what's being reported, the really bad stuff like waterboarding and death threats were directed at high-level detainees like KSM (let's put aside for the moment the death of the detainee in Iraq). Does anyone believe that there's much public support for the prosecution of someone who tortured KSM, even it was against the law?
The President is currently hovering around a 50% approval rating, and the prospects for health care reform are hardly certain. The Democrats could lose a significant number of seats in 2010. Why the heck would the Administration choose this time period to announce that they may prosecute CIA interrogators? They don't need distractions.
Do I even need to point out just how many things are wrong with this statement?
Dear God, have people completely lost their moral compass?
You forget the cardinal rule: It's okay if we do it.
> Dear God, have people completely lost their moral compass?
Referring to our fellow citizens more generally, it's not a case of losing their moral compass as much as it is buying into the notion of American exceptionalism -- that we are more virtuous, more noble, more inherently decent that other peoples. We simply don't do those awful things, see? Thus what the North Vietnamese did to John McCain was torture, while what we did at Gitmo, Bagram and elsewhere was, well, merely an unpleasant necessity under the circumstances.
"Dear God, have people completely lost their moral compass?"
Who's moral compass are we talking about? Yours? Or America at large? Because depending on what poll you read, either a majority or pluraliry of people don't oppose the torture of "bad" people when its done to save American lives, and clear majorities oppose the prosecution of CIA and military people who they (rightly or wrong) believe were following orders when they engaged in torture. I'm not saying that some polls don't show significant opposition to torture in all circumstances, but there's clearly a lot of ebb and flow in public opinion. TNC has no doubt that we'd torture if we were attacked again, and I'm inclined to agree.
And I don't expect politicians to share your moral compass either. Sorry, I just don't see much empirical evidence for that ever being a common trait among elected officials, no matter how much one wishes that weren't the case. But I do see politicians exploiting controversial issues to distract legislation from being passed on a regular basis. And Obama may have just given Republicans another means to take away attention from health care reform.
It's not about sharing anyone's moral compass. It's about the US Constitution, our founding principles, the anti-torture agreements we've signed (including those signed by Ronald Reagan), and the protection of our moral authority on the world stage. The problem with your argument is that you're citing a poll to justify torture. Torture is not an object for democracy--It's banned, flat out, as one of the founding principles of this country. Even if I am THE ONLY person in the country who still believes this, that doesn't mean the majority gets to overrule me. Just like if the majority of Americans decided black people should be slaves again, doesn't mean they should. I deliberately use such a vile and contemptible comparison because that's how bad torture is, it's on the same level as slavery or murder or genocide. That's what you're discussing as if it were a matter for opinion polls.
Also note that the Bush administration was well aware of this metaphysical fact when they decided to institute torture. That's why they didn't come out beforehand and say 'We're thinking about doing this, we feel it's necessary, let's take a poll'. Because if they had done that, it would have been shut down out of hand. Instead they did it and covered it up and lied. Because taking a poll isn't a good way to institute torture, but it just might suffice to cover it up and get away with it, if hypocritical and unthoughtful hacks like the right wing of congress (and their man Jeff D) have their way.
AMERICA DOES NOT TORTURE. That's what makes us what we are. It's what makes us a symbol of freedom, of hope, of the better aspects of mankind everywhere on earth. We fuck with that at our own peril, and the peril of our captured soldiers everywhere else.
Oh here's another way that's bullshit that I didn't even point out before: "according to what's being reported, the really bad stuff like waterboarding and death threats were directed at high-level detainees like KSM (let's put aside for the moment the death of the detainee in Iraq)" - Okay, Jeff, let's put aside for a moment the death of an innocent person. Where is it being reported that only KSM was subjected to torture? Right-wing radio? Fox News? Because that's patent bullshit. The people who perpetrated these crimes are liars, and they have an entire team of professional liars masquerading as journalists who put out misinformation and minimize their crimes. They lied about WMD, they lied about wiretapping, they lied about torture, they lied about everything. How many times do they have to get caught lying before we don't just take their word for things anymore?
Jeff, it's quite well established that innocent people as well as lower-level flunkies were tortured severely- like the man whose release was just ordered, who was captured in Afganistan when he was between 12 and 15, for throwing a grenade at US troops. (Not a war crime, and not a terrorist act. At most he could have been a prisoner of war). Or Boumediene, who was completely innocent of anything. Or the Uiguhrs- likewise not terrorists in any sense.
And I don't give a flying fuck whether it makes any political sense or not. It usually makes more political sense to lie low and let sleeping dogs lie, but that's not what brought about the US constitution, which establishes rule- not of congress, not of the supreme court, not of the president- but of law. When we have lost that we have lost our political patrimony. The rule of law is what distinguishes us from tinpot dictatorships, and not just in terms of security- corruption and lack of legal authority make a thriving economy impossible. It's everything, politically. Nobody wants to hear that the foundation is crumbling, but that doesn't absolve anyone of the obligation to fix it.
Jeff, I looked up some things- the 12 to- 15 year old was named Jawad. Besides Boumediene, just looking briefly, I find Madni-
From the Guardian- "the case of Saad Iqbal Madni, whose legal case Reprieve begins today. Madni was seized in Jakarta on 11 January 2002, and badly beaten. The Americans put him in a coffin, and flew him to Egypt, apparently stopping off in the British colony of Diego Garcia en route. When Madni arrived in Cairo, he was still bleeding through his nose and mouth from his earlier abuse, yet this was soon relegated to a minor complaint. At the behest of the Americans, he spent 92 days being tortured with electric cattle prods, before being rendered to Afghanistan and ultimately to Guantánamo Bay.
from a followup article in the Guardian: "The government is refusing to provide details of the torture and wrongful detention of a man rendered through British territory, it was claimed today, depriving him of a remedy for "serious civil and criminal wrongdoing"
The man is apparently innocent of anything.
Mohamed Farag Ahmad Bashmilah- one of the co-defendants in Mohammed vs. Jeppsen- from the ACLU's accountability for torture site- "
"On the morning of October 26, 2003 he was turned over to agents who beat, kicked, diapered, hooded and handcuffed him before secretly transporting him to the U.S. Air Force base in Bagram, Afghanistan. ...Bashmilah was placed in solitary confinement and subject to intense torture and interrogation for six months. In April 2004 he was flown to a secret CIA “black site” where he was tortured. Trapped in horrific conditions, Bashmilah tried to commit suicide three times, once slashing his wrists and writing “I am innocent” with his blood on the walls of his cell. After having been told he would not be freed without first agreeing to never discuss his kidnapping, torture or captivity, he was flown secretly to Yemen in May 2005 where he was imprisoned once again. Bashmilah was finally freed on March 27, 2006, never once having faced any charges related to terrorism."
On March 16 CBS reported that 108 detainees have died in US custody.
Yeah, just the bad ones.
Yeah, just the really bad ones.
I think Ta-Nehisi hit the nail on the head by writing "I really have no doubt that WE could--indeed would--start torturing again" (emphasis added).
I think we're deluding ourselves if we think that the majority of Americans would be outraged to hear about torture. Most people are willing to let the government do some pretty bad things to the "bad guys" as long as it keeps the rest of us safe.
The MSM is fulminating over Abdul al-Megrahi, who was convicted of the Lockerbie bombing, and recently released to go home to die of prostate cancer.
He was an employee of the Libyan government. If he had worked for the US government, he presumably would have been eligible for the “following orders” defense that Uncle Sam affords to the state-sponsored torturers in its employ.
I honestly think that the Scottish idea of compassion - even to our enemies - is so admirable. It sickens me how vindictive Americans are as a whole. And yet, we claim to be a Christian nation, following the philosophies of the man who personified forgiveness.
Take a look at this piece from the UK Guardian:
“For 16 years now, our statutes have given us leave to release from prison anyone who is deemed by competent medical authority to have three months or less to live. It was a concession rooted in compassion, pity and forgiveness. Few in the United Kingdom have ever taken issue with it. It is a good and just law.
…
“But it has been the outrage of the Obama administration in Washington that has been most difficult to stomach. Hillary Clinton's cack-handed attempt to interfere in matters under the jurisdiction of Holyrood last week was highly dubious. Scotland needs no lessons in matters of fairness from a country that has been routinely waterboarding suspects in Guantánamo Bay.”
Well there you have it - we have lost our moral authority to call out another country for doing something as outrageous as what the UK did (and sorry Upsidedownpoint, but releasing this guy was an absolute outrage.) And these prosecutions by Justice? Worse than doing nothing. Go after the little pissants and all the scare merchants will crow that they were right, that the Obama Administration has it in for the CIA. And meanwhile you're sending the message to future administrations that, as long as they get it in writing from a lawyer-type guy like John Yoo, they can do whatever the hell they want. As soon as we have another attack, ruthless men who wield the levers of power will begin torturing people again, all couched in nice legalese. Unless there are real consequences for the people in high positions, then we are now and forever a torturing nation, and there is no going back from that.
Lockerbie was certainly a tragedy.
Our media has used it to reinforce its customary portrayal of good-guy Uncle Sam, beleaguered by terrorists who are coddled by a world full of appeasers.
But it’s not at all certain that Megrahi is guilty. He’s always maintained his innocence, and Hans Köchler, the Austrian philosophy prof appointed by the UN to observe the trial, said that Megrahi was the victim of a “"spectacular miscarriage of justice". A Scottish appellate court admitted that possibility in allowing his appeal in 2007 after an unexplained 4 year delay.
It’s possible that the real author was seeking revenge for Iran Air 655, a civilian airliner which the US missile cruiser Vincennes had shot down in Iranian airspace a few months before Lockerbie, killing nearly 300 Iranians, including 66 kids.
The US made a cash settlement in 1996, but never apologized or admitted wrongdoing. The Vincennes crew wasn’t prosecuted. They were given medals.
I’ve seen no mention of IR655 in the current round of media moralizing.
It sounds to me like the announcement means:
• The plan is to consider prosecuting people who violated the bogus legal memo.
• Torturers are safe if Yoo approved what they did--even though Yoo's advice was such bad legal work he should be disbarred.
• Torturers are in danger if they did stuff so bad even Yoo couldn't bring himself to call it legal.
• Torturers' bosses could be in danger if they can be connected to the stuff even Yoo couldn't defend.
That's way less than I want and way less than justice demands, but it's a real step forward.
Plus we keep hearing that these torture guys are terrified of any chance that any of them might do time. Prosecuting even a few of them might make all of them run home to mama and never interrogate anyone ever again. Cheney and Panetta keep saying it will work that way. If they're right, then the investigations just announced may be a BIG real step forward.
The headlines NYT homepage tells you all you need to know:
"Holder Names Prosecutor to Examine Abuse Cases"
"Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has selected John Durham, a longtime federal prosecutor, to examine prisoner abuse cases in which detainees were held by the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said."
followed immediately by...
"Rendition of Terror Suspects Will Continue Under Obama"
"The Obama administration will continue the Bush administration’s practice of sending terror suspects abroad for interrogation but will monitor to ensure they are not tortured, officials said."
What is the "logic" of rendition if not to torture or otherwise treat detainees in a manner which would be illegal on American soil?
Holder thinks like a Federal prosecutor, which is to say, glacially. He'll let his man gather evidence for a few months and move forward slowly and inevitably from there.
I would prefer more dramatic action, but we are in a condition like the new elected leaders of countries coming off a bout of military rule or dictatorship. The social oligarchy that rules Washington, and especially the military establishment has not yet accepted Obama as president or the rule of lowly Democrats. If Obama can get health reform passed and stabilize Afghanistan, he can be more daring.
I wonder what has changed. That is, we used to prohibit torture, and not torture. And of course if you look back 20 or 35 or 54 years, everything has changed. But why are we so fearful? Why are we willing to abandon the law in the face of threats much less enduring and widespread than the sufferings of the past? Or am I just ignorant of my history and we've always stepped outside the law to torture?
Torture used to be outside the moral and social norm, even if it was being used routinely by the neighborhood cops. It was never the standard for the American military. Not brutalizing prisoners was one of the ways American soldiers differentiated themselves from savages and servants of foreign despots, from the Revolution right through the 1990s. If brutality occurred, it was punished or alt least hidden to avoid the shame of it.
However, a speculation . . .
We are now forty years into the Dirty Harry generation. Anti-heroes are the American norm, people are brutalized and tortured routinely in every movie and on every television cop series. Multiple generations of Americans have been indoctrinated in nihilist philosophy, that manners are for weaklings, that rules are for losers, the law is an ass, that only the brutal cop gets results, and the brutality and violence are the only way to stop a bad guy.
In a culture that worships peaceful gods on Sunday mornings and the Boob Tube all the other hours of the week, I don't suppose that we should be surprised that not that many people are offended by seeing torture on their TV screens. Really, when you listen to our political discourse, a lot of politicians, a good share of their followings, and a majority of the national media seem routinely unsure of--or simply indifferent to--the difference between fact and fiction, between entertainment and information.
In other societies, one can always counter, the media is just as violent, but their culture is not. But, other societies raise their own children. We let ours be raised by their entertainments and their peers, and, for the most part, neither of those sources teach anything but self-indulgence.
As I said, just a speculation. Over the years, most actual research into the topic is hopelessly reductionist and too easily debunked or ignored.
This was a bad idea four months ago. It's a worse idea today. It's almost like the administration is trying to come up with a smoke screen to hide its political failures and moral ambiguities. It's probably not a good time to start talking about the beginning of the end, at least not for 2012. But 2010 is not looking good.
Since when is it a bad idea to enforce longstanding law? Since when is it a bad idea to seek justice for the victims of brutality and torture?
I made this point in an earlier thread: are we a nation of laws or not? We're talking about war crimes here. We have to do this if we ever want to be taken seriously again as anything other than a rogue nation.
I think he meant the idea of limited prosecutions as opposed to a full investigation.
Anyway, assuming that Obama and Holder don't want prosecutions of former top officials, probably because of the political implications, wouldn't a presidential pardon of such top officials be the next best maneuver?
The poetry of John Adams notwithstanding, I tend to think we’ve always been a nation of men. And no amount of poetry or misplaced idealism is going to change that. We the people create the laws. We the people can ignore them when we so choose. But that’s really not my point.
Do you actually believe any laws are about to be enforced? The scope of the investigation is to determine who broke the law more than the DOJ told them they could. This is show. It is going to amount to nothing. If you’re not going to go after the people at the top—and we all know that’s not going to happen—then it’s all bullshit. Doing this is worse than doing nothing at all. This will be nothing more than a distraction. Nobody’s going to be prosecuted. Nobody’s going to prison. And if anybody does, it’s going to be the ones at the very lowest end of all of this. Because, let’s be honest, Cheney’s never going to be charged with anything, and if he isn’t, then no one should. So all this becomes is a loud and bitter fight that ends where it began, only by then it will be late summer 2010, and the Democrats will be on their way back to the minority party.
So yeah, I understand your argument. I simply don’t think a masturbatory endeavor such as this is worth the inevitable cost.
Sorry, that was meant as a reply to dave in texas.
And I understand your argument, too. I just don't think the my idealism is misplaced (then again, does anybody ever think their own idealism is misplaced?), although I have to admit it may be futile, and for precisely the reasons you mention.
Gievn the extremely limited scope of what AG Holder is pursuing, we may be left with the hope, expressed by several folks above, that as further atrocities are brought to light, people will start rolling up on the people above them in the chain of command.
Seeing Dick Cheney in the dock at the Hague may be a pipe dream, but I refuse to believe that the hope that laws will be enforced is a masturbatory fantasy of some kind.