The tortured logic of Senator Rockefeller
Wed Apr 02, 2008 at 10:34:01 PM PDT
Crossposted at West Virginia Blue.
Whenever someone tells me how Sen. Jay Rockefeller must be right about telecom immunity because as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee he must know what he's doing, I cannot help but scoff.
Afterall, this is a many who was wrong about the Iraq war, wrong with his vote on the Military Commissions Act, wrong about Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell. So why would some West Virginians still have blind faith in Senator Rockefeller on telecom immunity?
The answer, I think, is because he is on the good side on many other issues and he does have a personal charm.
But the truth is, blind faith in political leaders is what got the country into the mess we're currently in. We're not Republicans, who are knee-jerk supporters of authoritarians. We're Democrats. We're the reality-based community.
I've said before I liked Senator Rockefeller when I've met him. But I'm not going to let that lead me to ignore where he's wrong.
Let's look at his history. Put aside his Iraq war vote because he's apologized for his error there.
Instead, begin with his vote for the Military Commissions Act - aka the Torture Act of 2006. It was a bill so horrendous it not only endorsed torture methods used in the past, it did away with habeas corpus protections enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Here's what Senator Rockefeller voted yea to:
Sen. Leahy gave a superb closing speech, lamenting that the days when Congress imposes a meaningful check on the Presidency "are long past," and pointing out that the way our Government is operating contravenes all of the political values he was taught growing up. He was properly and genuinely angry as he described the simply astonishing fact that President Bush now has the power to abduct people from around the world and consign them to life in prison and torture them with no opportunity of any kind to prove one's innocence.
But Rockefeller voted to give Bush that very power.
Just as he was wrong on the Torture Act of 2006, he is wrong for telecom immunity. In both cases, those who committed torture and the telecom companies that allowed for warrantless wiretapping received legal "justification" from the partisan Department of Justice.
That's not just my view. That view is also held by Constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald in his post on the horrific John Yoo torture memo:
This incident provides yet more proof of how rancid and corrupt is the premise that as long as political appointees at the DOJ approve of certain conduct, then that conduct must be shielded from criminal prosecution. That's the premise that is being applied over and over to remove government lawbreaking from the reach of the law.
That's the central argument behind both telecom amnesty and protecting Bush officials from their surveillance felonies (it's unfair to hold them accountable for their illegal spying behavior because the DOJ said they could do it). It's the same argument that CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden just made on Meet the Press as to why CIA interrogators should be immunized from the consequences of their illegal conduct ("when I go and tell him to do something in the shadows and point out to him it is perfectly lawful, that the Department of Justice has reviewed it . . . I need him to have confidence in that DOJ opinion").
The DOJ is not the law. They are not above the law and they do not make the law. They are merely charged with enforcing it. The fact that they assert that blatantly illegal conduct is legal does not make it so. DOJ officials, like anyone else, can violate the law and have done so not infrequently. High DOJ officials -- including Attorneys General -- have been convicted of crimes in the past and have gone to prison.
Embracing this twisted notion that the DOJ has the authority to immunize any conduct by high government officials or private actors from the reach of the law is a recipe for inevitable lawlessness. It enables the President to break the law, or authorize lawbreaking, simply by having his political appointees at DOJ -- including ideologues like John Yoo -- declare that he can do it. As these incidents ought to demonstrate rather vividly, the mere fact that Bush officials at the DOJ declare something to be legal cannot provide license to break the law with impunity.
Telecom companies had high-priced corporate lawyers to tell them that the Department of Justice was wrong. Qwest executives declined to participate. The others, as we know, participated because it was profitable. They did not do it for patriotic reasons as they even stopped the warrantless wiretaps when the federal government was late with the bill.
How can one justify Rockefeller's judgment when he did this?
When he was defending the amendment he introduced to compel the CIA to disclose to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees information about their interrogation activities, he complained that the White House has concealed all information about the program and that the Intelligence Committee members (including him) know nothing about this interrogation program. His amendment was defeated with all Republicans (except Chafee) voting against it. He then proceeded to vote for the underlying bill anyway.
Which leads to DNI Mike McConnell. McConnell has been lobbying Congress for immunity for the telecom companies just as other Bush administration officials lobbied for legal protections of themselves provided by the Torture Act.
Here's what Rockefeller said of McConnell:
...today the Senate has confirmed the nomination of VADM Mike McConnell to be the next Director of National Intelligence. It is hard for me to imagine a better choice than Admiral McConnell.
snip
A quick review of his resume will show even the casual observer that Admiral McConnell is incredibly well qualified for this critical position. He retired from the Navy as Vice Admiral after 29 years of service. Most of his service during this distinguished career was as an intelligence officer.
snip
Upon retiring from the Navy, Admiral McConnell went to work for Booz Allen Hamilton where he has been a senior vice president for intelligence and national security. He also is currently chairman and chief executive officer of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance, an industry group that works with the Government looking for ways to solve some of our complex intelligence problems. He has the requisite Government experience supplemented by a decade in the private sector.
What Rockefeller did not mention was McConnell's work for the telecom industry.
But not only is McConnell's role arguing for telecom immunity tainted by his ties to the telecom industry, he's also shown a remarkable record of baldly lying to the American people and to Congress.
McConnell, whose nomination early last year was applauded by lawmakers from both parties, has twice provided false information to Congress -- and in both cases, they were statements that served to distort the surveillance debate. In the heat of the surveillance bill debate, McConnell claimed that three German terrorism suspects had been arrested due to intercepts made possible by the administration's Protect America Act; it turned out the intercepts were obtained under the old FISA bill. Only a couple weeks later, McConnell told Congress that rulings by the FISA Court had prevented the NSA from surveilling Iraqi insurgents who had kidnapped U.S. soldiers for 12 hours. That turned out to be, at best, a misleading explanation for the delay.
When Rockefeller has gotten so many things wrong in regards to his work on the Senate Intelligence committee, don't expect me to trust him on those issues. I'm sure many West Virginia Democrats would prefer I did not spend so much time criticizing a Democratic senator, who on many issues has been good for the state.
But I'm not going to quit. Instead of blindly following, I'd rather try to guide him to the right path. I have faith he can learn from his past mistakes.
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