I have various levels of disgust, including regular disgust, disgust as an American, and disgust as an attorney. This one lights up all three of those.
I see that this story was written about half a day ago, and it was the subject of a well-done and significant prospective diary yesterday, but I think that those of us on the night shift also deserve a chance to weigh in.
John Durham, the Special Prosecutor appointed by Bush Attorney General Michael Mukasey to look into CIA destruction of the tapes showing the torture of the 2002 interrogations and torture in Thailand of bad people Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri has decided that the government will not press charges against Jose Rodriguez, the man who ordered them to be destroyed. Previously, all records of investigations had been requested by the 9/11 Commission, but the CIA never revealed the existence of these tapes.
I feel compelled to add, for the benefit who many think that destruction of evidence that one knows is relevant to a Congressional case is now OK for everyone: "these are professional actors; don't try this at home."
I'm mostly just going to quote from the NY Times story, giving you all your time to collect your mordant, sarcastic, and just plain outraged comments.
First, let's hear from the good folks at the ACLU:
Documents released earlier this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union showed that the C.I.A. destroyed the tapes on the morning of Nov. 9, 2005. The five-year statute of limitations for filing charges of obstruction of justice related to their destruction expired on Tuesday.
Anthony Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned Mr. Durham’s failure to file charges. He noted that at the time the tapes were destroyed, they were pertinent to several pending legal cases, including a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the A.C.L.U. in 2004.
“It strains credulity that the conscious destruction of tapes depicting torture would not be a crime,” Mr. Romero said. “How the destruction of evidence in the middle of many pieces of litigation directly on point to what was captured on the videos is not seen as obstruction of justice is hard to imagine. The destruction of the tapes, and Durham’s conclusion, raise serious doubts about whether the government has the political will to police itself.”
For his part Attorney Robert Bennett said that the Justice Department "did the right thing" and that Mr. Rodriguez is "a hero and a patriot, who simply wanted to protect his people and his country." Then a rift opened up the the earth, swallowed Mr. Bennett whole, and closed quickly to grind him into a fine paste. No, I'm making up that last sentence. I feel entitled because he's making up the stuff in boldface.
How many people accused of political crimes, I wonder, could not argue that they "simply wanted to protect their people and their country"? The Al Qaeda captives could certainly make that same argument to justify their actions. The Japanese World War II waterboarders whom we executed for this same activity: yep, they just wanted to protect their people and their country too, along with their Emperor, so maybe that's what makes the difference. In fact -- no, I think that's as far into World War II as I'd like to delve, lest I sound like President Reagan at Bitburg cemetary. (Look it up.)
Robert Bennett, of course, has no sense of shame, which is why he is a prominent Washington attorney, but the rest of should feel at least a bubbling sense of nausea reading his defense of Rodriguez -- and of course reading about the exoneration itself, as well. Here's the argument: if the world knew what we did -- really knew, with a graphic sense even greater than the pictures taken at Abu Ghraib -- it would hurt Americans, because people wouldn't like us anymore. Well, guess what -- the world pretty much knows it anyway. And now they also know that our legal system, symbolized by blind Justice, actually has its eyes wide open and can see whose ox is going to be gored -- although to be fair this suggests that it has become deaf, lost its touch, abandoned its taste, and can no longer smell the worst things that it excretes, of which this is one.
Anyway, I don't think that this should pass without a little more note here than it has gotten. Thank you, Mr. Durham, Mr. Bennett, and whoever could have held you guys in check but did not, for this final dismantling of the fiction that justice would ever be done in this case. I'm reduced to calling, in the interest of deterrence of future wrongdoers, for Mr. Rodriguez to voluntary submit himself to 180-odd sessions of waterboarding in a period of a few months, so we can prove to the world that it's nothing to be ashamed of. It's the least he could do at this point.