The Devil has an attorney and his name is David Addington....
He was the contemptuous, evil architect of the legal scaffolding that set up the U S torture chambers and assisted the Bush/Cheney administration in destroying and politicizing the DOJ. He was Gonzales' puppetmaster and Dick Cheney's consigliere....
Where is he now?
(Jacob Heilbrun reported in August in the National Interest)
Just wanted people to remember where his lair is....
Front Organizations. The next development, is the creation of front organizations designed to give outward, institutional credibility to the lies. This development begins to create a separate world in which the sympathizers can belong and move in without being challenged by "facts" that conflict with the believed lies. These organizations are usually created with a great deal of anonymity and obscurity. These organizations serve as the facade of the totalitarian movement to the nontotalitarian world and as the facade of this world to the inner hierarchy of the movement.
David Addington is coming out of the shadows. Addington, who served as legal counsel for vice-president Dick Cheney, is joining the Heritage Foundation as vice president of domestic and economic policy studies. He earned a reputation as the most hardline of hardliners--Cheney's Cheney--during his Bush administration tenure. In a fascinating profile in the New Yorker, Jane Mayer deemed Addington the legal mind behind the war on terror. Now Addington is returning to the political fray.
Fresh memories of the Bush-Cheney era will doubtless be stirred among both liberal and conservative critics of the imperial presidency and the approval of torture that were the hallmarks of the Bush administration's approach to battling terrorism. But how different, in the end, has the Obama's administration's stance been? Guantanamo remains open. There has been no attempt to prosecute CIA officials. In a sense, Cheney and Addington and John Yoo have prevailed. (Yoo, or at least his conception of presidential power, has even been defended by Gordon Wood in the pages of the National Interest.)
The most interesting aspect of the Addington appointment is that it may signal a fresh effort by Heritage to reinject itself into policy debates. In the 1980s, Heritage was a prominent voice in conservative economic and foreign policy debates. In recent years, it has not (with the exception of pushing for questioning President Obama's push for arms-control treaties with Russia). Addington could revitalize Heritage, staking out a hardline and drawing in many former Bush administration officials to form a kind of shadow government opposed to the Obama administration. It will be interesting to see if Heritage invites Sarah Palin to hold an address.
The National Interest
The Goals of American Leadership (Heritage Foundation)
OBJECTIVES
- To protect America’s leadership role in the world from the corrosive effects of terrorists, rogue states, rival powers, anti-American political movements, and weak allies. 2. To devise new ways to assert America’s leadership before we lose our sovereignty, our security, and our freedom.
- To devise strategies to win the global war of ideas for freedom and security. (uh-huh...we all know what that means)
Washington, D.C., Sept. 17, 2010—David S. Addington yesterday assumed full duties as The Heritage Foundation’s vice president for domestic and economic policy, when Heritage’s Board of Trustees approved the veteran federal official as a corporate officer of the leading Washington think tank.
Addington, most recently chief of staff and counsel to Vice President Richard B. Cheney, also served in senior positions at the CIA, the Department of Defense and the White House.
He succeeds Stuart M. Butler as Heritage’s top domestic policy official. Heritage President Edwin J. Feulner announced Aug. 27 that Butler, who remains on the senior management team, will run the think tank’s new Center for Policy Innovation.
"David is a brilliant policy expert and an outstanding administrator," Feulner said at the time. "He understands how Washington works at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and knows exactly what it takes to turn policy ideas into law. David will focus on running our domestic research operations, where analysts refine ideas and sweat the details."
Heritage Foundation