In an appearance Sunday on Face the Nation, former Vice President Dick Cheney repeated his call for the release of CIA memos that he says will prove the torture program was an “honorable approach” which saved American lives. Cheney also revealed that former President Bush “knew a great deal about the program — he basically authorized it.”

Law professor Jonathan Turley told MSBNC’s Keith Olbermann on Monday that Cheney is “almost becoming the Martha Mitchell of this administration” — a reference to the wife of Watergate conspirator John Mitchell, who repeatedly called the press with revelations about the conspiracy in the Nixon White House.

“He’s making the legal case all the stronger for a criminal investigation and prosecution,” Turley explained. “He most certainly just supplied a critical block that would have been the subject of investigation. We now have almost the entire puzzle.”

Turley emphasized that anything Cheney says in television interviews can be used against him in court and that even though Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is still insisting there may not be enough facts for a criminal investigation, “You got Dick Cheney saying, ‘Yeah, here’s how it went. The president knew about it, authorized it. I was all in favor of it. We did it.’”

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“This whole focus on whether torture works is expressly prohibited as a defense,” Turley added. “That defense is considered the worst thing you could possibly say about a torture program. … It’s like saying, ‘I robbed a bank but I got away with it’ or ‘I used the money in a good way.’”

“What we have here is a very clear conspiracy to commit a war crime,” concluded Turley. “These people are not stupid. They just had no morals. … The people who committed it remain criminals.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast May 11, 2009.