CAUGHT RED HANDED!--Top Officials Endorsed Torture
Top Administration figures signed off on water boarding and other torture.
The establishment press is finally beginning to wake up to just how high and deep the scandal of the U.S. Governement’s enthusiastic commitment to the use of torture became under the Bush maladministration. The alternative press and blog-o-shere have been sniffing around this story for years. But when ABC News on Wednesday ran with the story with a new few juicy details it became impossible for the highest echelons of the government to deny detailed knowledge and approval of torture by the CIA.
Truthout today reprinted summaries from the Associated Press (AP) and the Washington Post as well as excerpts from comments by top blogers.
To summarize, shortly after the 9/11 attacks the Principals Committee of the National Security Council, chaired by then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice began a series of meeting to examine, in excruciating detail, exactly what sort of harsh and coercive interrogation the Central Intelligence Committee (CIA) would be allowed to conduct. In addition to Rice the committee included the highest echelon of administration figures from torture enthusiast and cheerleader Vice President Dick Cheney-who began gushing over the opportunity to torture while the smoke and dust was still rising from the World Trade Center and Pentagon rubble-to supposed moderates like Secretary of State Colin Powel. Also present were Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General John Ashcroft and CIA Director George Tenent.
While President Bush was not personally in attendance of any of the meetings, the results of conversations by his most senior cabinet level officials had to be shared with him and he had to sign off on their decisions.
Most of the meetings came at the urging of a very nervous Tenent who clearly understood that the Administration was ghoulishly eager to torture, but worried frantically that he and his agents might subsequently be held liable under U.S. or international law for using interrogation techniques here-to-fore against U.S. domestic law, not approved by the Army’s Field Manual on interrogation, and in violation of the Geneva Conventions.
Cheney operatives and loyalists planted inside the Ashcroft’s Department of Justice, notably John Yoo, had already drafted opinions that placed “Enemy Combatants” outside the jurisdiction of the Geneva Convention and defined torture so narrowly that "only extreme acts causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure” qualified. These opinions became the so-called Golden Shield to protect CIA personnel and the basis of the Presidents repeated bald faced claims that the United States “doesn’t torture.” Later, in March 2003 yet another Justice Department opinion held that it wasn’t torture if “interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.”
Despite all of this Tenent repeatedly asked the committee to explicitly sign off on specific interrogation techniques each time a so called “high value” al Qaida operative was captured. These techniques, which included hitting, slapping, kicking, sleep deprivation, prolonged subjection to “uncomfortable” positions and water boarding, were laid out in detail. The committee approved equally detailed authorizations.
In 2004 the Golden Shield opinions leaked to the press resulting in an uproar of public revulsion and outrage. The Justice Department was forced to rescind the memos, while the Administration continued to insist that harsh interrogation techniques were not torture and were essential to intelligence gathering.
An even jitterier Tenent returned to the Committee when another high profile al Queda figure was captured. to ask for authorization to use “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Despite alleged queasiness about torture by Powel, an assertive Rice told the CIA Director “This is your baby. Go do it.”
Powel was evidently not the only one to harbor second thoughts. At one point Ashcroft, whose Justice Department had issued the sweeping opinions in support of abusive interrogation, was heard to say after a meeting, “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not be kind to us.”
Bingo! Ashcroft could not be more right. He knew, even if the others thought that they could clamp down on the flow of information out of the White House with tight secretly controls, that the story would emerge sooner rather than later. Having high level officials sign off in such detail-and in the White House no less-stripped them and the President of all important “plausible deniability” as gruesome details became public. He, and probably other members of the committee, resented Tenent for putting him in this position.
Previous CIA directors would have been satisfied with a wink and a nod. And if caught, like they were in Central America, they were willing to chalk up abuse to isolated “rogue” elements. They saw “protecting the President” as part of their job. Not Tenent, who already knew that he was going to be made the fall guy for the failure to find the predicted “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. He wanted to make sure that if he went down for torture, they all would.
It looks like his wish-and Ashcroft’s nightmare-may now come true.
Some blogers are speculating-and gloating-that these revelations might eventually lead to indictments or impeachment. Fat chance. In one of their most disgraceful movements Congressional Democrats caved in to administration threats and passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 which protected the big shots from prosecution under the War Crimes Act.
On the other hand, Committee members might want to reconsider any foreign travel plans that they may have without the explicit protection of Diplomatic Immunity. It is not beyond the realm of possibility that they could be arrested and prosecuted for violation of international law. Now wouldn’t that be just too bad?