The strange lies of Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney's extended attack on the Obama Administration in his 8/30 interview with Chris Wallace, focused chiefly on the Justice Dept. investigation into whether some CIA interrogators violated the limits set on interrogation techniques by the depraved torture memos, is full of lies. The repeated master lie, providing the theme and structure of Cheney's attack, is easily debunked. Here are three iterations:

We had the president of the United States, President Obama, tell us a few months ago there wouldn't be any investigation like this, that there would not be any look back at CIA personnel who were carrying out the policies of the prior administration. Now they get a little heat from the left wing of the Democratic Party, and they're reversing course on that.

Instead, they're out there now threatening to disbar the lawyers who gave us the legal opinions, threatening contrary to what the president originally said. They're going to go out and investigate the CIA personnel who carried out those investigations.

But my concern is that the damage that will be done by the President of the United States going back on his word, his promise about investigations of CIA personnel who have carried those policies, is seriously going to undermine the moral, if you will, of our folks out at the agency.

Reality check: when the Obama administration released the torture memos on April 16, both Obama and Holder made it very clear that they intended to rule out prosecuting CIA personnel who relied on Justice Department guidance when carrying out interrogations -- that is, who stayed within the limits imposed by the torture memos. Obama's April 16 statement said:

In releasing these memos, it is our intention to assure those who carried out their duties relying in good faith upon legal advice from the Department of Justice that they will not be subject to prosecution. The men and women of our intelligence community serve courageously on the front lines of a dangerous world. Their accomplishments are unsung and their names unknown, but because of their sacrifices, every single American is safer. We must protect their identities as vigilantly as they protect our security, and we must provide them with the confidence that they can do their jobs.

Holder was more explicit about the boundaries of this forbearance:

"It would be unfair to prosecute dedicated men and women working to protect America for conduct that was sanctioned in advance by the Justice Department," said Attorney General Eric Holder.

Also untrue: that "threatening to disbar" authors of the torture memos for their tortured legal reasoning that authorized the obvious abrogation of U.S. treaty obligations and violations of U.S. law constitutes going back on a promise. Obama indicated early that he would prefer not to prosecute the authors of the memos. The draft report by the Justice Dept.'s Office of Professional Responsibility, completed by May of this year, does not recommend prosecution. The still-unreleased report is, according to the Times, (May 6), "likely to ask state bar associations to consider possible disciplinary action, which could include reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions."

As a corollary lie to the lie that Obama has reversed himself, Cheney added this:

We ask those people [intelligence operatives] to do some very difficult things. Sometimes, that put their own lives at risk. They do so at the direction of the president, and they do so with the -- in this case, we had specific legal authority from the Justice Department. And if they are now going to be subject to being investigated and prosecuted by the next administration, nobody's going to sign up for those kinds of missions.

Again, Holder has directed the investigation at those who exceeded the boundaries imposed by the torture memos.

Cheney also lied regarding the import of the declassified CIA memos assessing the effects of the CIA interrogation program:

But the interesting thing about these is it shows that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaydah provided the overwhelming majority of reports on Al Qaeda. That they were, as it says, pivotal in the war against Al Qaeda. That both of them were uncooperative at first, that the application of enhanced interrogation techniques, specifically waterboarding, especially in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is what really persuaded him. He needed to cooperate.

As Wallace himself indicated in the phrasing of his question, the CIA reports do not show that "the application of enhanced interrogation techniques...is what really persuaded him." Here's how Wallace put it:

While they say that the overall program got absolutely crucial information, they do not conclude whether the enhanced interrogation programs worked. They just are kind of agnostic on the issue.

Every news organization that has reported the release of these documents has noted that they provide no information as to what techniques yielded what information. And it's a flat-out lie that Abu Zubaydah was "uncooperative at first." Zubaydah's first interrogator, the FBI's Ali Soufan, has written and testified that Zubaydah gave up reams of precious information in interrogations led by Soufan before the CIA intervened and began its escalating series of abuses and torture techniques. No one has contradicted Soufan's testimony.

There were other lies and distortions and misleading innuendos - e.g., that the torture memos provided direction as to how to keep the interrogation program in compliance with U.S. international treaty obligations, when in fact they simply denied the treaties' authority over the President's "article II" authority to conduct war in any way he sees fit; that the FBI is unfit to play the lead in detainee interrogation; that the Bush Administration did not deliberate in detail over the conduct of the interrogation of key detainees; and that the Obama Administration has not stepped up pilotless drone attacks on suspected Taliban leaders )fro better or worse).

Debunking Cheney's lies and distortions is a potentially limitless exercise -- worthwhile only because his slurs sit like time bombs, ready to detonate into full-scale "stab-in-the-back" paranoia after the next major terrorist attack.

Maddow, Isikoff trump up evidence of Obama 'politicizing' justice

Looks to me like Michael Isikoff and Rachel Maddow distorted the import of a testy exchange between Team Obama and human rights officials at the White House reported last night. Isikoff, appearing on Maddow, had the scoop on the substance of this off-the-record meeting.

To paraphrase closely -- there's no transcript yet -- Isikoff reported that one of the visitors

raised the idea of a criminal prosecution, even one criminal prosecution as a symbol, a trophy, I think the word was used, to show that such conduct - for torture - such conduct would not be tolerated again, and the president sort of curtly dismissed the idea made it clear he had no interest in that. What's interesting about that again was that his attorney general Eric Holder sat there silently and didn't say a word. The President could have said that's Eric Holder's decision. But he didn't -- he seemed to cut it off.

Maddow then jumped in:

That seems like the biggest news here. The President has publicly said it's up to the attorney general...

Both then elaborated at length the idea that the Justice Department does not work for the President, that criminal prosecutions ought to be left up to the Justice Department and thus depoliticized -- a point stated eloquently a few weeks ago by Philip Zelikow.

True enough. And Holder may have been notoriously silent in other parts of the meeting. But here, it seems plain to me that Obama "curtly dismissed" the idea of a show trial because it's patently ridiculous. One scapegoat for a course of conduct in which virtually every senior national security official from the President on down was complicit? Who would that be, exactly? Should we string up John Yoo? Dick Cheney? W.? Obama didn't need to look left or right to assess that proposal.

Update: Isikoff's writeup on the Newsweek site likewise highlights the fact that "sources, all of whom asked not to be identified" said that "Attorney General Eric Holder sat by silently while the president curtly dismissed the idea that his Justice Department should criminally prosecute at least one Bush administration official for torture, if only as a symbolic move to demonstrate that actions such as waterboarding will never be tolerated again." Someone, or group of someones, plainly regards the "trophy trial" as an option that requires serious legal study.

Zelikow: Obama is "potliticizing" detainee issue with attempt to forestall prosecution

Philip Zelikow makes a simple point about the limits of Obama's authority:

I am not eager to see any government officials prosecuted for crimes because of their zeal to protect their country. But crimes committed for worthy motives are still crimes, and we have institutions to sort this out.

So has anyone beside me found it troubling that President Obama is making announcements on who should be prosecuted for possible crimes? Whatever one's view of the matter, didn't the administration ardently announce its dedication to depoliticizing the Department of Justice? So why is it proper for the president to tell Attorney General Eric Holder what he should conclude?

Zelikow goes on to point out that the only constitutional way Obama can control the ultimate legal fate of those who designed or implemented the Bush Administration's interrogation policies is to issue a blanket pardon.

Update 4/21: It would appear that Obama at least half-agrees with Zelikow (my emphasis):

Mr. Obama said the memos "that were released reflected, in my view, us losing our moral bearings. That's why I've discontinued those enhanced interrogation programs. For those who carried out some of these operations within the four corners of legal opinions or guidance that had been provided from the White House, I do not think it's appropriate for them to be prosecuted. With respect to those who formulated those legal decisions, I would say that that is going to be more of a decision for the attorney general, within the parameters of various laws, and I don't want to prejudge that."

John Brennan, whipping boy

A little object lesson from Andrew Sullivan in how righteous indignation can overshoot:

"Holy hell has broken loose over this," is how one of Mike Isikoff's sources has described John Brennan's attempt to prevent release of three damning OLC memos drafted by the Bush administration in its systematic program for torturing terror suspects. One begins to realize how deeply important it was that Brennan didn't get the top CIA job.You see now his attachment to the torture regime he pretended to oppose and his fierce loyalty to CIA officers who may have committed war crimes and now seek to prevent the American people from finding out what was done in secret, against the law, in their name (my emphasis).

Brennan may indeed be acting out of "fierce loyalty" and still have opposed some, perhaps most or all, of the Bush Administration's worst crimes. Life is messy. He may have opposed some, stopped others, acquiesced in others, had no role in others.

Moreover, Andrew neglects to mention not only Brennan's reputed argument against releasing the memos -- "that release of the memos could embarrass foreign intelligence services who cooperated with the CIA" -- but also Isikoff's report that Brennan has won over anti-torture champion Leon Panetta, the CIA director, to his point of view.

I think that the memos have to be released (are redactions protecting cooperating countries feasible?) The crimes of the last Administration are like toxic assets on the national blaance sheet; the U.S. won't be fully "ready to lead again," as Obama proclaimed in his inaugural address, until it's all out and dealt with. But the (alleged) fact that Brennan could convince Panetta and stall the process is a reminder how easy it is for those of us on the outside looking in to fail to imagine how inside knowledge might bring people of good will with decision-making power to conclusions different from their (our) own.