|
NYT’s Lichtblau: Bush Torture
Program And CIA Tape Destruction ‘Could Lead To Criminal Action’
Think
Progress
Friday, April 18, 2008
ABC News recently revealed that President Bush’s most senior advisers
convened in 2002 and approved the use of harsh interrogation tactics. Days
later, Bush told ABC he “approved” of the tactics.
Questions have been raised as to whether senior officials, including
Bush, could be prosecuted for approving torture. ThinkProgress discussed
the issue with The New York Times’ Eric Lichtblau and Jeffrey Rosen,
law professor at George Washington University. Lichtblau won the Pullitzer
Prize for his December 2005 story breaking the news that Bush was illegally
spying on Americans after 9/11. As legal affairs editor of The New Republic,
Rosen is considered “the nation’s most widely read and influential
legal commentator.”
Discussing the potential for criminal prosecution against senior advisers,
Lichtblau argued that a more probable scenario is that low-level officers
who executed the interrogation orders face prosecution:
I certainly don’t think it’s likely that you would see
international war crimes or, even in a Democratic administration, criminal
prosecutions. … I think more likely, if you’re looking at
criminal action, the more likely scenario is against the low level case
officers who may have actually been carrying out interrogations and
using severe interrogation tactics bordering on torture. … If
that could be established or of course we have now the destruction of
the CIA tapes, and that cover-up could very well lead to, conceivably,
I should say, lead to criminal action if it were found that that were
done to withhold evidence from the courts or 9/11 Commission.
Rosen came to similar conclusions, but urged Congress to more strongly
assert its constitutional oversight role to “haul” Vice President
Cheney and chief of Staff David Addington to testify:
Congressional oversight, congressional hearings, censure, political
pressure. … The time is ticking away, and they have the ability
to haul these people up and ask Cheney and Addington what they were
thinking when they endorsed these programs. That’s the appropriate
remedy — not some hope of criminal prosecution.
Watch it:
Observing Congress’s aggressive and effective oversight during
the U.S. Attorney scandal, Rosen argued that the ongoing debate over FISA
and surveillance is lacking similar oversight, as Congress has not firmly
drawn the line in the sand:
When it comes to oversight of FISA, both to refining the law in ways
that would protect liberty and security and also holding Addington and
Cheney accountable for having arguably broken it, they have not done
so. … By contrast, Democrats are pretty undecided about exactly
where the line should be on FISA and in fact many of them seem inclined
to give the Administration far more than many in the civil liberties
community think is appropriate.
Lichtblau has published a book, Bush’s Law: The Remaking Of American
Justice, which details the development of the administration’s warrantless
wiretapping program and the White House’s attempts to thwart Lichtblau
along the way. Read an excerpt here.
|
