Another small piece is added to the torture tapes jigsaw puzzle. In this morning's New York Times Mark Mazetti reveals new actors in the scandal, at the same time raises dozens of new questions and suspicions. In C.I.A. Urged to Keep Interrogation Tapes Mazetti reveals that the White House, Justice Department and Members of Congress knew about the tapes and advised against their destruction as early as 2003. We already know that Democrats Jane Harmon and Jay Rockefeller knew about the tapes. While Harmon advised against the destruction, shame on both of them for not raising a hue and cry about the documentation of war crimes and demand a cessation of torture.
What piques my curiosity is the involvement of the White House and Justice Department. Harriet Miers, then counsel to the President, knew about the tapes. How credible is it that she didn't inform Bush of their existence and discuss how to handle them? Yet, Dana Perino assured the press corps yesterday that
President Bush had "no recollection" of being made aware of the tapes’ destruction before Thursday, when General Hayden briefed him on the matter.
Miers' fatal loyalty to Bush suggests she did discuss this issue with him -- she was his counsel, after all. If she did not, she committed gross malpractice by not advising her client of potentially damaging evidence of war crimes. The article suggests at least one other White House lawyer was involved but does not identify the individual.
No one in the Justice Department is named, but the discussions occured under John Ashcrofts watch. Of course, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse revealed yesterday that DOJ believed that the law is whatever the President tells them it is. Please see emptywheel's excellent article which contains Senator Whitehouse's entire speech.
All fingers are pointed at Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr. who was the chief of the agency's clandestine service. We are to believe that despite warnings from all three branches of government and all high officials in the CIA, Rodriguez took it upon himself and ordered the tapes destroyed. While I accept the reporting to this point, this scenario seems unbelievable to me.
So, now we have members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees from both parties, more than one lawyer from the White House, one of them the President's personal counsel, at least one lawyer from the Justice Department and various and sundry folks at the CIA who knew that there was a record of torture. All claim to have urged preservation, but none had the moral fiber to condemn these crimes against humanity. We have a President who pleads ignorance despite the fact that his lawyer knew all about the tapes.
Congress is obliged to take several steps:
- Either ask Rockefeller to step down as Chair of the Intelligence Committee or demand that he recuse himself as he should be called as a witness at a hearing;
- Enforce the current contempt of Congress by Harriet Miers and subpoena her again regarding this issue;
- Immediately enforce the subpoena should Miers not appear before the Committees;
- Immediately challenge any claim of executive or attorney-client privilege which is inevitable -- but Bush claims he didn't know about the tapes;
- Begin a serious consideration of impeachment.
I am sure that Mazzetti is not finished with this story, and I can only hope that he has taken up the dusty mantle left in a closet at the Washington Post by Woodward and Bernstein.
H/T to
Chapination386 for providing one of the most powerful statements on Constitutional duty:
Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.
. . . .
We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."² The framers confided in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.
Barbara Jordan 1974
Update: H/T to greenskeeper for finding and providing an additional and crtical quote from the print edition of the article.
The Justice Department, under questioning from the federal judge in the case in 2005, denied that any tape recording of the interrogations existed, only to concede last month that the C.I.A. had found three tapes that are apparently still in existence. It is unclear which Quaeda figures are on those tapes.
Don't be distracted by the recordings that they are telling us don't exist. That issue is of secondary importance. greenskeeper's comment.
Udate II (10:35 EDT): H/T to Talking Points Memo's Steven Benen for bringing us a snippet of Kevin Drum's analysis
So here's what the tapes would have shown: not just that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative, but that we had brutally tortured an al-Qaeda operative who was (a) unimportant and low-ranking, (b) mentally unstable, (c) had no useful information, and (d) eventually spewed out an endless series of worthless, fantastical "confessions" under duress. This was all prompted by the president of the United States, implemented by the director of the CIA, and the end result was thousands of wasted man hours by intelligence and law enforcement personnel.
Nice trifecta there. And just think: there's an entire political party in this country that still thinks this is OK.
Update III (10:50 EDT): H/T to Think Progress
Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ): "Next week, I plan to hold an oversight hearing in the Select Intelligence Oversight Panel with General Hayden to examine this matter in detail."
Time to cat-herd volunteers for liveblogging. I'll check the Oversight Panel's website for a date and post in Open Thread next week.
Update IV (4:12 EDT): Please check out revlectionsv37's diary And the Official Cover Up Begins which addresses the announcement today that DOJ and CIA are going to do a joint "inquiry." Interesting ploy.
Update V (5:10 EDT): Please read and recommend Troutfishing's excellent diary Let's See 2 Secret Directives Bush SIGNED Authorizing Torture.