Even though Paul Clement is Acting Attorney General, I've been informed that current Director of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff is on the short-list for permanent replacements. I'm off to Capitol Hill to make sure that doesn't happen. Meanwhile, you can hear me later on Democracy Now discussing Chertoff and his lies (in block quotes below) in my situation of being the whistleblower in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh. Here's the link: http://www.democracynow.org/...
I'm tired of being the stumbling-block to other people's promotions, especially Michael Chertoff--first promoted to be a federal judge, and now our current Director of the Department of Homeland Secutiry.
He has perjured himself to Congress as much as Alberto Gonzales. I'll just speak about my personal experience as the whistleblower in the case of "American Taliban" John Walker Lindh.
When questioned by the Senate Judiciary Committee to become a federal judge, Chertoff, incredibly, denied that my former office, the Justice Department's ethics unit, ever took a position on the Lindh interrogation (advising against it), despite the fact that the public record contradicted his denial.
I have to say, Senator, I think that the Professional Responsibility [Advisory] office was not asked for advice in this matter. I was involved in it.
He couldn't stop the embellishment.
Mr. Lindh was Mirandized, and had he requested counsel or requested to invoke his right to silence at the point at which the FBI was involved, they would have honored that request.
This second part was, at best, a gross mischaracterization of what happened and at worst, perjury. As Jane Mayer's uncontroverted article in The New Yorker documented, "[FBI Agent] Reimann read Lindh the Miranda warning. But, when noting the right to counsel, the agent now acknowledges, he ad-libbed, 'Of course there are no lawyers here.'"
Senator Kennedy asked Chertoff a second time, "[D]o you remember what the Professional Responsibility Advisory Office['s] . . . position was on this?"
I was not consulted with respect to this matter . . . There are other partes of the Department that generally render opinions in this area of the law and other expertise that was consulted.
Kennedy persevered. "Well, your statement that the Professional Responsibility Advisory Office did not have an official opinion on this--"
Chertoff interrupted,
I don't believe they had an official opinion on this.
It seemed so odd to me that Chertoff would deny that the ethics office ever took a position on the Lindh matter in light of stories to the contrary that had appeared in Newsweek and The New Yorker. It was clear to me that he was trying to protect Claudia Flynn, my former boss who had worked under him at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of New Jersey.
Senator Kennedy submitted written follow-up questions to Chertoff. I was incredulous that, this time around, Chertoff lied in writing, and that he didn't seize the opportunity to massage, clarify, or revise his earlier answers.
The written questions asked how the e-mails in Newsweek were consistent with Chertoff's testimony that PRAO never took a position on Lindh's interrogation. Chertoff repeated, again, that
[T]hose at the Department responsible for the Lindh matter before and during the time of Lindh's interrogations did not to my knowledge seek PRAO's advice. I am not aware taht PRAO ever took an official position about the Lindh interrogation or that any views expressed by an individual PRAO attorney were documented, factually and legally substantiated, reviewed and authorized as I would expect before an official opinion was rendered. The e-mail traffic that you cite appears to be the impressions of a single PRAO attorney, without factual analysis and case law discussion, and therefore would not constitute an official opinion.
Years later, when I obtained a copy of the infamous OIG "leak report" in my case, it revealed that Chertoff was upset that John DePue, the attorney with whom I corresponded, had sought PRAO's advice about Lindh's questioning. A supervisor "informed me that the Criminal Division's leadership was disturbed that I had sought PRAO's advice in this matter," DePue said in his statement to the OIG. Eric Lichtblau of the New York Times got DePue to go on the record that "[t]he front office was unhappy with the fact that I had gone to PRAO with my inquiry. I was more or less told that I was out of liine in making that inquiry. It was not a popular thing to do, but I thought at the time that it was the reasonable thing to do."
Chertoff becoming Attorney General would be the icing on the cake of my Kafkaesque experience. Then again, it would be fully consistent with the Bush credo: screw up, cover up, lie and get promoted.