In his testimony before Congress during investigations into what is now called the Iran-Contra Affair, Vice Admiral John Poindexter stated: "I made a deliberate decision not to ask the President, so that I could insulate him from the decision and provide some future deniability for the President if it ever leaked out."
As I read this AP follow-on to ABC News' story on the creation of the Bush Administration's torture regime, that phrase sprang immediately to mind:
Bush administration officials from Vice President Dick Cheney on down signed off on using harsh interrogation techniques against suspected terrorists after asking the Justice Department to endorse their legality, The Associated Press has learned.
The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. The intelligence official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to publicly discuss the issue.
Between 2002 and 2003, the Justice Department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.
"If you looked at the timing of the meetings and the memos you'd see a correlation," the former intelligence official said. Those who attended the dozens of meetings agreed that "there'd need to be a legal opinion on the legality of these tactics" before using them on al-Qaida detainees, the former official said.
The meetings were held in the White House Situation Room in the years immediately following the Sept. 11 attacks. Attending the sessions were Cheney, then-Bush aides Attorney General John Ashcroft, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
There's only one problem with plausible deniability: if you're going to set it up, you better make sure that the president knows how to play along. ABC:
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday."Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
... In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling." The president had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before Wednesday's report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans -- down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner -- had never been disclosed.
Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.
In interview with ABC's Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: "It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States."
... In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.
"We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it," Bush said. "And no, I didn't have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew."
The president said, "I think it's very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack -- I mean, the 9/11 attacks."
Here's the thing that no one in the administration seems to understand: the law isn't simply what the president says it is, nor is it simply whatever the Attorney General declares. It exists independent of their actions and declarations. And it does not matter how evil the president or his advisors believe their suspect to be, because unless the law specifically includes an explicit exception for "evildoers," the law still applies to them.
The President and his team may not understand this, but the people in the CIA surely do.
"It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time," said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. "They'd say, 'We've got so and so. This is the plan.'"
Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved. "These discussions weren't adding value," a source said. "Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it's legal, [you should] just tell them to implement it."
The CIA knew what they were doing was questionable at best, and they returned time and time again to the highest levels of our government to get it in writing before they acted. They knew this program would eventually come back to haunt them, and this time they weren't willing to take the fall. This time they wanted proof that their interrogation programs had been explicitly and repeatedly approved by the president's most senior advisors. And this time they're going to leak to whomever necessary to make sure that they aren't made to take the fall.
And here's one really amazing fact. Of all of the people in the White House, only John Ashcroft seemed to have some idea of just how wrong things had gone:
Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."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.
At one meeting in the summer of 2003 -- attended by Cheney, among others -- Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.
A year later, amid the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the top al Qaeda suspects that was leaked to the press. A new senior official in the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo -- the Golden Shield -- that authorized the program.
But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns -- shared by Powell -- that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."
Were this happening in any other nation on Earth, our entire political and media establishment would be up in arms. Imagine for a moment what would happen if we learned that the Chinese had a program such as this. Or the French. Or the Russians.
Or forget your imagination. Go study history. Learn about the way the KGB used torture to coerce confessions out of individuals deemed enemies of the state. Learn about how the Nazis developed enhanced interrogation techniques - the exact translation of their words that we are ourselves using today - to protect the German homeland. Ask sen. John McCain about the use of water-boarding under the regime of Pol Pot. Do you honestly think that each of those regimes didn't each believe they were in the right? Do you not think that each constructed elaborate legal justifications for their actions? Do you not think that each argued that the magnitude of the threat they faced justified their actions?
What we are doing is no different. It is in every way precisely the same. For the illusion of security, we have abandoned some of our earliest and most cherished principles.
Under George Washington, the first American Army was explicitly ordered not to follow British example of torturing prisoners of war. Instead, Washington ordered that prisoners be treated "with humanity, and let them have no reason to Complain of our Copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren." If we were to be the army of freedom and liberty, Washington understood, we must be so in every way.
In keeping with this tradition, President Lincoln, a man with whom Bush loves to compare himself, instituted the first formal code of conduct for the humane treatment of prisoners of war in 1863. Called the Lieber Code, it was the first time in human history that the laws of war had been explicitly codified, and it included explicit prohibitions of torture in any and all circumstances.
Lincoln's orders soon became the model on which the entire world based their laws of war, eventually leading to the creation of the now-famous Geneva Convention of 1929. Although the US didn't sign the Convention until 1955, both Gens. Eisenhower and McArthur order it be carefully observed throughout all of WWII and the Korean War. And although the Convention did not require it, during the Vietnam War we once again extended its protection to our enemies in the Viet Cong.
That has been our tradition. From the war that gave birth to this nation until the Bush Administration, we have stood opposed to this sort of behavior. Whether most civilians realized it or not, opposition to torture has always been at the very center of the military code of conduct of our nation during both times of peace and war.
For the illusion of security, our leaders have thrown that entire history away. Rather than defend our ideals they chose instead to destroy them. And the worst part is, with the exception of John Ashcroft - John Ashcroft?!?! - none of them seem to realize or care.
This is not who we are. This is not the best we can do. We have always been better than this. Until now...
They offered the president plausible deniability, but he's apparently decided to turn it down. I don't even know what to say:
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
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