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.

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.