Fresh Evidence that Bush Administration Approved Torture as Early as 2002; Meanwhile, Obama Walks Back "No Accountability" Policy

Photo by Salim Virji | pursuant to CC license

by Damozel | First a ride on the wayback pony.  On April 11, 2008, ABC News reported the following:

In dozens of top-secret talks and meetings in the White House, the most senior Bush administration officials discussed and approved specific details of how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, sources tell ABC News....Highly placed sources said a handful of top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects -- whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding.

The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed -- down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy....

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.  As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies....

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News..(ABC News April 11, 2002; see also Sources Tell ABC News: Bush Administration Officials Participated in War Crimes)

At that time,Marc Ambinder speculated that a Democratic Justice Department would be very interested in this information.  Less so, it turns out, than some of us would like -- though Obama, after promising that the CIA agents involved in torture wouldn't be prosecuted,  did a sort of 180 degree flip yesterday that left some of us scratching our heads.  

This was after Rahmbo blathered to ABC that Obama would not only not prosecute the agents, but also would let those who devised the policy off the hook. At Digby's, dday says:  "I don't think you can debate whether or not to have an investigation on the Bush torture regime anymore, because the investigation is happening regardless."

Anyway, the allegations of the ABC sources are turning out -- will this surprise you? -- to be backed up by fresh evidence. The Washington Post now writes:

At a time when the Justice Department is deciding whether former officials who set interrogation policy or formulated the legal justifications for it should be investigated for possible crimes, the timeline lists at least a dozen members of the Bush administration who were present when the CIA's director or others explained exactly which questioning techniques were to be used and how those sessions proceeded....

Rice gave a key early green light when, as President George W. Bush's national security adviser, she met on July 17, 2002, with the CIA's then-director, George J. Tenet, and "advised that the CIA could proceed with its proposed interrogation of Abu Zubaida," subject to approval by the Justice Department, according to the timeline....

Rice and four other administration officials were first briefed in May 2002 on "alternative interrogation methods, including waterboarding," the timeline shows. Waterboarding is a technique that simulates drowning.

A year later, in July 2003, the CIA briefed Rice, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, Attorney General Ashcroft, White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales and National Security Council legal adviser John B. Bellinger III on the use of waterboarding and other methods, the timeline states. They "reaffirmed that the CIA program was lawful and reflected administration policy."

"This was not an abstract discussion. These were very detailed and specific conversations," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. "And it's further evidence of the role that senior administration officials had."

Scott Horton explains Obama's apparent backing off from his and his representatives' blanket statements of non-accountability, not so much because he changed his mind as because the DoJ pointed out to him that it's not the president's place to make these calls.   

[T]he winds of change blew in from an address just down Pennsylvania Avenue. The Daily Beast has learned that senior Justice Department lawyers were “incensed” at the Emanuel....statements, as one put it—not because they disagreed with Obama’s apparent opposition to an investigation and prosecution, but because the statements violated well-established rules separating political figures in the White House from decisions about active criminal cases. The statements were viewed as a frontal assault on the autonomy and independence of the criminal-justice system. “Emanuel got far ahead of the process and described it in a way that clearly suggested that political judgment was driving the entire process,” one senior Justice official told me. “It was depressing and amateurish.”

Now the White House misstep may in fact be propelling the process in the opposite direction.... Demands for the appointment of a special prosecutor have been proliferating in recent days following the release of the torture memoranda on April 16....

The demand for accountability gained an additional influential voice on Tuesday with a statement issued by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “I have recommended to Attorney General Holder,” he said, “that he select a distinguished individual or individuals—either inside or outside the Justice Department, such as retired federal judges—to look at the volumes of evidence relating to treatment of detainees, including evidence in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s report, and to recommend what steps, if any, should be taken to establish accountability of high-level officials—including lawyers.”

Levin justifies the call for a special prosecutor on the grounds that the inquiry will inevitably need to focus on internal dealings inside the Bush Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel that prepared the torture memos, the Criminal Division, and the attorney general’s office. No currently serving prosecutor would have the required measure of detachment to handle such an investigation.  (The Daily Beast; emphasis added)

Sen. Jay Rockefeller, unsurprisingly, isn't so much about accountability for all.  He thinks that Obama should hold off till the Senate finishes investigating the interrogation methods used by the administration.

“I do not believe that front-line counter-terror professionals who relied in good faith on Department of Justice legal opinions should face prosecution,” Rockefeller said. “But I am not prepared to say the same for the senior Bush administration officials who authorized or directed these policies in the first place. The focus for right now should be on finding the facts.  (The Hill; emphasis added)

Um....one of which may well be that Rockefeller himself was briefed on the policy and failed to object to it.   See Did Congressional Democrats Condone the CIA's Secret Interrogation Program? (Dec. 2007).  

Senator Feingold agrees with Rockefeller that the president should wait for the Senate Select Committee's findings before all these blanket assurances that nobody anywhere is going to be held accountable.  .

Feingold released a letter to President Obama earlier Wednesday in which he said he applauded the president’s decision last week to release memos concerning possible torture, and said he was “convinced that the program was illegal as designed and as implemented.”

“The details of this program were authorized at the highest levels, which is where the need for accountability is most acute,” Feingold wrote. “While I understand your motivation to protect those who may have relied in good faith on OLC [Office of Legal Counsel] guidance, I believe that blanket assurances are premature. I urge your administration to wait to consider the findings of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's review of the program, and the Department of Justice's investigation, before making any decisions related to prosecutions of any persons involved in these interrogations.”

Feingold also threw his support behind a so-called truth commission that has been long proposed by Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). (emphasis added)

Will that happen?  If it does, it will be much against the wishes of the administration, which sincerely wishes to move on.  WaPo further reports:

Obama apparently thought he could avoid what is now playing out. In the weeks when he was weighing the release of the memos, a vigorous debate took place within his administration. There was, according to a senior official, considerable support among Obama's advisers for the creation of a 9/11 Commission-style investigation as an alternative to releasing the documents. But the president quashed the concept.

"His concern was that would ratchet the whole thing up," the official said. "His whole thing is: 'I banned all this. This chapter is over. What we don't need now is to become a sort of feeding frenzy where we go back and re-litigate all this.' "

Obama knew he could not stop Congress from doing whatever lawmakers decided to do, but he was reluctant to give a presidential imprimatur to a national commission that would keep the controversy alive for months or years. He had his own agenda and wanted to move on. Putting out the memos seemed to be the cleanest way to accomplish his twin goals of making a break with the previous administration and avoiding a lengthy and partisan debate over his policy vs. Bush's.....

White House officials have expressed confidence that a congressionally backed investigation will not come to pass. But they have been drawn into a debate they did not foresee. The president has a full plate, domestically and internationally. He had hoped that, in winning the election and moving quickly to change his predecessor's policies, he could close the books on Bush's presidency.

Well, he was wrong about that, wasn't he?

More at Memeorandum

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