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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill04242009.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/scahill04242009.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Verdana" size=2 color="#990000">April 24-26,
2009<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Congress was
Briefed in Real Time on Bush-Era Torture Tactics. Is That Why They Prefer
Whitewash Commissions and Closed Door Hearings? <br><br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">Are
Leading Democrats Afraid of a Special Prosecutor to Investigate Torture?
</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4>By JEREMY
SCAHILL <br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">T</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>here are not exactly throngs of Democratic
Congressmembers beating down the doors of the Justice Department
demanding that Attorney General Eric Holder appoint a special Independent
Prosecutor to investigate torture and other crimes. And now it seems that
whatever Congress does in the near term won't even be open to the public.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said this week that he prefers
that the Senate Intelligence Committee hold private hearings. The chair
of the committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, has asked the White House not to
take any action until this private affair is concluded. She estimates
that will take 6-8 months.<br><br>
"I think it would be very unwise, from my perspective, to start
having commissions, boards, tribunals, until we find out what the facts
are," Reid said Wednesday. "I don't know a better way of
getting the facts than through the intelligence committee." It is
hard to imagine other Democrats bucking Reid on this and there is
certainly no guarantee that the committee will release an unclassified
report when it concludes its private inquiry. While Representative John
Conyers says he will hold hearings, that is not the same as the
independent criminal investigation this situation warrants.<br><br>
Then there is the deeply flawed plan coming from the other influential
camp in the Democratic leadership. The alternative being offered is not
an independent special prosecutor, but rather a more politically
palatable counter-proposal for creating a bi-partisan commission. This is
a very problematic approach (as I have pointed out) for various reasons,
including the possibility of immunity offers and a sidelining of actual
prosecutions. Michael Ratner from the Center for Constitutional Rights
has also advocated against this, saying this week it will lead to a
"whitewash:"<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>We have reached a critical political moment on this issue. Obama has
been forced or pushed to open the door to prosecutions, an opening I
thought would take much longer to achieve. If there was ever a time to
push that door open wider and demand a special prosecutor it is now. We
have documented and open admissions of criminality. We have Cheney and
Hayden admitting what they approved these techniques; and Cheney saying
he would approve waterboarding again. We have the Senate Armed Services
Report detailing how the torture program was authored and approved by our
highest officials in the White House and employed in Guantanamo, Iraq and
Afghanistan. And we have thousands of pages of proof. There is public
outrage about the torture program and the media in the U.S. and the world
are covered with the U.S. misdeeds.<br><br>
<dd>So at this moment, instead of human rights groups getting together
and calling for a special prosecutor what do they do? Call for a
commission. What this call does and it must be said strongly is take the
pressure off what is the growing public push for prosecutions and
deflects it into a commission. Outrage that could actually lead to
prosecutions is now focused away and into a commission. Think if this
list of human rights groups had demanded prosecutions. We would be closer
and not farther from the goal.<br><br>
</dl>There are some powerful Democrats who certainly would not want an
independent public investigation, particularly those who served on the
House and Senate Intelligence Committees when Bush was in power and
torture was being ordered and authorized. That's because in the aftermath
of 9/11, some in Congress were briefed on the torture methods in real
time and either were silent or, in some cases, supported these brutal
tactics or, as some have suggested, possibly encouraged them to be
expanded.<br><br>
While Republicans are flailing to find ways of defending all of this
torture and attempting to discredit or marginalize those who speak out
against it, it is interesting to note the Op-ed Thursday in The Wall
Street Journal by Reprentative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, called
"Congress Knew About the Interrogations." In the piece where
Hoekstra parrots the Dick Cheney blah-blah-blah about torture working, he
manages to make an important point:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>[M]embers of Congress from both parties have been fully aware of them
since the program began in 2002. We believed it was something that had to
be done in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks to keep our nation
safe. After many long and contentious debates, Congress repeatedly
approved and funded this program on a bipartisan basis in both Republican
and Democratic Congresses.<br><br>
</dl>Hoekstra cites the internal memo written last week by Obama's
Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, to his staff in which
Blair said "[h]igh value information came from interrogations in
which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the
al Qa'ida organization that was attacking this country." (This was
the memo that was originally released to the public with that sentence
conveniently ommitted).<br><br>
Hoekstra writes:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Members of Congress calling for an investigation of the enhanced
interrogation program should remember that such an investigation can't be
a selective review of information, or solely focus on the lawyers who
wrote the memos, or the low-level employees who carried out this program.
I have asked Mr. Blair to provide me with a list of the dates, locations
and names of all members of Congress who attended briefings on enhanced
interrogation techniques.<br>
<dd>House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) added to this mix by saying
that he had seen a partial list of Congressmembers "who were briefed
on these interrogation methods and not a word was raised at the time, not
one word."<br><br>
</dl>Among those on the House Intelligence Committee at the time was
current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. She has said, "we were not, I
repeat, we were not told that waterboarding or other enhanced methods
were used."<br><br>
"What they did tell us is that they had some legislative counsel ...
but not that they would. And that further, further the point was that if
and when they would be used they would brief Congress at that
time."<br><br>
But contrary to Pelosi's assertion, The Washington Post reported that
Pelosi and other Democrats were "given a virtual tour of the CIA's
overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had
devised to try to make their prisoners talk:"<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Among the techniques described, said two officials present, was
waterboarding, a practice that years later would be condemned as torture
by Democrats and some Republicans on Capitol Hill. But on that day, no
objections were raised. Instead, at least two lawmakers in the room asked
the CIA to push harder, two U.S. officials said.<br><br>
<dd>"The briefer was specifically asked if the methods were tough
enough," said a U.S. official who witnessed the exchange.<br><br>
<dd>[...]<br><br>
<dd>"Among those being briefed, there was a pretty full
understanding of what the CIA was doing," said [Porter] Goss, who
chaired the House intelligence committee from 1997 to 2004 and then
served as CIA director from 2004 to 2006. "And the reaction in the
room was not just approval, but encouragement."<br><br>
</dl>Only a complete and independent investigation by a special
prosecutor could get to the bottom of all of this with any credibility.
In his Op-ed, Hoekstra wrote:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>Any investigation must include this information as part of a review
of those in Congress and the Bush administration who reviewed and
supported this program. To get a complete picture of the enhanced
interrogation program, a fair investigation will also require that the
Obama administration release the memos requested by former Vice President
Dick Cheney on the successes of this program.<br><br>
</dl>While one must take anything Representative Hoekstra and his
belligerent, torture-loving colleagues say with a grain of salt (to put
it mildly), he has a point--even if he is making it in that Dick Cheney
kind of way. All of the documents relating to this torture program should
be released and the role of everyone involved should be brought out into
the light of day to determine who is responsible for every aspect of
these heinous crimes from top to bottom.<br><br>
Jeremy Scahill</b>, an independent journalist who reports frequently for
the national radio and TV program Democracy Now, has spent extensive time
reporting from Iraq and Yugoslavia. He is currently a Puffin Writing
Fellow at The Nation Institute. Scahill is the author of
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156858394X/counterpunchmaga">
Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army</a>.His
new website is
<a href="mailto:RebelReports.com">RebelReports.com</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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