Glenn Greenwald has often been critical of Obama’s position on state secrets but he is willing to give Obama credit for what he did do in releasing the documents regarding Bush administration interrogation tactics:
In the United States, what Obama did yesterday is simply not done. American Presidents do not disseminate to the world documents which narrate in vivid, elaborate detail the dirty, illegal deeds done by the CIA, especially not when the actions are very recent, were approved and ordered by the President of the United States, and the CIA is aggressively demanding that the documents remain concealed and claiming that their release will harm national security. When is the last time a President did that?
Other than mildly placating growing anger over his betrayals of his civil liberties commitments (which, by the way, is proof of the need to criticize Obama when he does the wrong thing), there wasn’t much political gain for Obama in releasing these documents. And he certainly knew that, by doing so, he would be subjected to an onslaught of accusations that he was helping Al Qaeda and endangering American National Security. And that’s exactly what happened, as in this cliché-filled tripe from Hayden and Michael Mukasey in today’s Wall St. Journal, and this from an anonymous, cowardly “top Bush official” smearing Obama while being allowed to hide behind the Jay Bybee of journalism, Politico‘s Mike Allen.
But Obama knowingly infuriated the CIA, including many of his own top intelligence advisers; purposely subjected himself to widespread attacks from the Right that he was giving Al Qaeda our “playbook”; and he released to the world documents that conclusively prove how that the U.S. Government, at the highest levels, purported to legalize torture and committed blatant war crimes. There’s just no denying that those actions are praiseworthy. I understand the argument that Obama only did what the law requires. That is absolutely true. We’re so trained to meekly accept that our Government has the right to do whatever it wants in secret — we accept that it’s best that most things be kept from us — that we forget that a core premise of our government is transparency; that the law permits secrecy only in the narrowest of cases; and that it’s certainly not legal to suppress evidence of government criminality on the grounds that it is classified.
Still, as a matter of political reality, Obama had to incur significant wrath from powerful factions by releasing these memos, and he did that. That’s an extremely unusual act for a politician, especially a President, and it deserves praise. None of this mitigates any of the bad acts Obama has engaged in recently — particularly his ongoing efforts to shield Bush crimes from judicial review by relying on extreme assertions of presidential secrecy powers — but, standing alone, his actions yesterday are quite significant.
As is obvious from everything I’ve written over the past three years, I think the need to criminally prosecute those who authorized and ordered torture (as well as illegal surveillance) is absolute and non-negotiable (and, as I wrote earlier today, in the case of torture, criminal investigations are legally compelled). A collective refusal to prosecute the grotesque war crimes that we know our Government committed is to indict all of us in those crimes, to make us complict in their commission.
Criticisms directed at Obama and Holder for advocating immunity for CIA officials who relied in “good faith” on DOJ memos (a mere subset of the government criminals) is absolutely warranted. But, it is not Obama’s sole responsibility — or even his decision — to prosecute. As a strictly legal matter, that is a decision for the Attorney General, independently, to make; it is Eric Holder who has the obligation to enforce the law, independent of anything Obama wants or says and regardless of what public opinion demands.
But more crucially, it is also the responsibility of the citizenry to demand that this happen. What Obama did yesterday — whether by design or not — provided the most potent tools yet to create the political pressure for prosecutions. As Kevin Drum makes clear, no decent human being reading those memos would be anything other than repelled by what was in them. Polls already found that large percentages of Americans, majorities even, favor investigations and/or prosecutions for Bush crimes. The onus is on those who believe in the rule of law to find ways to force the government to criminally investigate whether they want to or not (this petition demanding that Holder appoint a Special Prosecutor is a very good place to begin, though it will require much more than just petitions).
The American Civil Liberties Union has posted the memos here.
I have seen the belief advanced that the release of the memos was not intended to ‘shed light’ on the Bush administration’s activities but rather to provide the interrogators with political cover by absolving them of responsibility due to the legal opinions of the Bush administration. This argument advances the notion that President Obama believes what was done was legal.
I don’t think immunity for the interrogators is necessarily wrong… but not based on ‘good faith’ arguments. This is a RICO case like any other. The interrogators should be encouraged to plead guilty and testify against their superiors in return for reduced sentences and immunity, up the ladder all the way it will go. Those that will not so testify should be prosecuted as Mafia soldiers would be prosecuted in the same circumstances.
I don’t expect this to happen, but it is what I would do.
Eclectic Radical is right on target.
Those following orders as a subordinate should be passed but only after those who handed out the orders and designed the policy are presented. That is the same thing we are looking at over at 1461 Days
OK, so let me get this straight. You advocate the prosecution of George Bush and his administration for authorizing techniques to obtain vital information from terrorists. Let me ask a question – if those techniques were used prior to 9/11 and we were able to stop it – would you still prosecute? The liberal mind set amazes me. You seem to think that all we need to do is be nice to the terrorists and they’ll sing like birds. Get this through your heads, THEY WANT TO KILL YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
One other question, when your president closes Guantanamo, do you want those terrorists living in your community????
Semperfi,
You miss the point. These techniques do not provide any meaningful information.
Nobody is advocating being nice to terrorists. We do support 1) adhering to international law and 2) prosecution of war criminals. Nor is anybody saying that terrorists from Guantanamo should live in our communities so you can drop your ridiculous straw man arguments.
Using torture before 9/11 would not have helped as torture does not provide accurate information. It was also unnecessary. We had the information to stop the 9/11 attacks. George Bush received warnings before the attack but ignored them.
Ron, we had the information in 1993 on how aircraft could be turned into guided missiles by terrorists. The Israelis acted on that info. Both the Clinton administration (for 8 years) and the Bush administration (for 8 months) did not. You can do your own math on which administration is more culpable.
Fritz,
Actually the Clinton administration tried to take action against al Qaeda but the GOP Congress blocked them. The Clinton administration also passed on warnings about al Qaeda when Bush took office. Not only did they ignore them, but Condi lied about receiving them and was later caught in her lie.
Are you saying the GOP kept the Clinton administration’s FAA from requiring hardened cockpit doors and changes in hijacking protocol? Because that is what I am talking about. As far as I know, neither the Clinton or Bush administration did squat — because they didn’t want any Americans concerned.
Fritz,
You are cherry picking just one possible action. It is rather absurd to say Clinton didn’t do x in 8 years and Bush didn’t do x in 8 months. What matters is all the things which Clinton did try to do which were blocked by Republicans. Clinton’s failure to do certain other things is a poor excuse for the failings of the Bush administration to respond to either the general warnings about al Qaeda or the warnings about the specific attack.
Ron, in this case it was not a *possible* action. It is an action that already occurred in 1993.
And I am not using the Clinton administration’s failings as an excuse for Bush administration failings. I’m pointing out that the US government had (and has) systemic problems in this area. Al Qaeda could have pulled off the same attack a year earlier on Clinton’s watch.
There is no way to say for sure what would have happened if al Qaeda had tried this a year ago, but it is less likely it would have worked. If Clinton received an intelligence memo regarding such an attack as Bush did in 2001, Clinton would have paid attention to it. Gore has outlined how he would have responded to such a memo. Of course it is far easier after the fact to say this, but Clinton did have a history of seeking to take action against al Qaeda, contrary to Bush.
Plus, getting back to the actual issue here, this could have been handled by conventional law enforcement. Torture would not have been necessary. Many of the people involved in the 9/11 attack were already on government watch list. Others shared either the same address or same frequent flier numbers with other 9/11 hijackers. If we simply had conventional police work done in response to the CIA’s memo warning of the attack it might have been stopped.
Oh — the torture hobby of the Bush administration was stupid, inhuman, and counterproductive. Someone had a serious Jack Bauer fetish going on.
I’m really not sure why anybody should believe that the Clinton administration would have reacted with greater vigor to a memo than it reacted to an actual hijacking with intent to crash the plane into the Eiffel Tower.
The fact remains that Clinton did both take action against al Qaeda when in office and that he did leave warnings about al Qaeda and plans for Bush when he left office. No matter how you try to spin it, it was Clinton who was interested in taking action against al Qaeda and Bush who ignored all warnings until after 9/11.
Fritz,
Also compare the threatened millennium terrorist attacks on Clinton’s watch to the 9/11 attacks on Bush’s watch. Clinton paid attention to the warnings and the terrorist attacks were stopped. Bush ignored warnings and we saw what happened.
I’ve got lots of beefs with President Clinton, but I have to agree with Ron here. The Clinton administration had made Al Qaeda a priority, the Bush administration deliberately chose to deprioritize them. It was more than just ignoring a memo, they stopped going after them at all after Bush was inaugurated.
“You miss the point. These techniques do not provide any meaningful information.”
I’m not taking sides in this debate, i.e., whether or not the memos should have been released (though in principle I’m against torture), however — heads up! Cheney’s not taken this lying down:
Cheney Calls For More CIA Reports To Be Declassified
Mon Apr 20 2009 16:20:53 ET, The Drudge Report.
In a two part interview airing tonight and tomorrow night on FOX News Channel’s Hannity (9-10PM ET), former Vice President Dick Cheney shared his thoughts on the CIA memos that were recently declassified and also revealed his request to the CIA to declassify additional memos that confirm the success of the Bush administration’s interrogation tactics:
CHENEY:
“One of the things that I find a little bit disturbing about this recent disclosure is they put out the legal memos, the memos that the CIA got from the Office of Legal Counsel, but they didn’t put out the memos that showed the success of the effort. And there are reports that show specifically what we gained as a result of this activity. They have not been declassified.”
“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven’t announced this up until now, I haven’t talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”
“And I’ve now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was, as well as to see this debate over the legal opinions.”
Humm . . . I think Obama’s position on the torture issue is correct, but if these docs. are declassified and they make Cheney’s case, then releasing these initial memos could backfire. That helps neither Obama nor the “cause.”
Obama is right — but was he “smart?”
Cheney making such claims does not make it true. These are just the claims of a war criminal trying to justify his crimes.
“The fact remains that Clinton did both take action against al Qaeda when in office and that he did leave warnings about al Qaeda and plans for Bush when he left office. No matter how you try to spin it, it was Clinton who was interested in taking action against al Qaeda and Bush who ignored all warnings until after 9/11.”
Ron is exactly right on this point — while it is (or should be) old news, the best reference on the national security failure of the Team Bush is Richard Clarke’s shocking and depressing “Against All Enemies: Inside America’s War on Terror”
For an encore, Clarke authored “Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters” last year. Clarke names names. People who were responsible for failures but never held to account. And people who have exemplified professionalism.
Of the Department of Homeland Security, Clarke gives them a failing grade: Clarke states that it presided over the most obvious domestic failure of the national government in generations, and is now laced with political hacks and private contractors. Unresolved problems to-date include fake IDs, failure to screen airplane cargo, little security effort involving trains and ships, illegal immigration, and non-functional software. Meanwhile, we have damaged our credibility and trust through hyping arrests and plots, and wiretaps.
Question: How come Clarke is part of Team Obama? If he’s not, he should be.
Correction
Question: How come Clarke is NOT part of Team Obama? If he’s not, he should be.
Richard Clarke, Robert Reich (though to be fair, Reich was part of the economic transition team, but he’s been replaced by neoconservatives since the administration took office), Wesley Clark, and John Corzine are just a few of the people who should be but are not part of the Obama administration.
Some of this is p0litical. I don’t believe Clarke could pass a Senate confirmation because of the enemies he has made among defense hawks, not only Republicans but Democrats like Jane Harman and Hillary Clinton as well. Likewise, Wesley Clark took a bullet for the Obama campaign, speaking some hard truths about John McCain’s much mythologized national security credentials for the record and having his comments disavowed so then-Senator Obama could remain one step removed from the attack.
Corzine and Reich most likely simply do not fit into the ‘business as usual’ neoconservative mindset of the Obama economic team.
“Corzine and Reich most likely simply do not fit into the ‘business as usual’ neoconservative mindset of the Obama economic team.”
Yes, ‘business as usual.’ What’s up with that? Changing the course on the “war on terror” was a big part of his campaign, however, the “new way” was always a bit vague to me. It seems like Obama was sincere, but it was an over promise to really change direction. Of course, to say now ‘oh, it’s harder than we thought,’ or ‘it’s all Bush’s fault for getting us into this mess’ (true enough) isn’t going to cut it. Obama has A LOT on his plate. Even exceptional major league hitters only hit 1 of of 3 balls. Obama’s going to have to bat 1000 to do everything he said he was going to do.
I don’t expect President Obama to bat anywhere near one thousand.
As for the issue of ‘change’… his biggest promises of ‘change’ were related to politics, and he has made some attempts to follow through on those promises. Certainly government transparency is up and access of lobbyists to government is down, which is a big change from the last several presidents and not just Bush.
Economic reform has been limited greatly by the perception of the political limitations on said reform. I am not certain how many of those limitations are real (certainly, as the polls quoted in Ron’s post about ‘socialism’ suggest, people are not scared of New Deal economics) and how many are in the minds of an economic team composed of Clintonista neocons.
As Ron has noted, the president himself is a lot closer to being a Friedmaniac than a Keynesian. I have to agree that I think that frame of economic thinking is the biggest reason we’ve seen the economic team we’ve seen and the economic moves we’ve seen. President Obama is trying to minimize the degree of intervention, and it is only growing gradually as believed necessary.
Saying Obama needs to bat near 1000 is a transparent way to call him a failure regardless of how successful he is. Nobody expects any president to be able to do this. Hell, after Bush batting 100 would look like a great success.
If Obama cannot accomplish anything more of what he promised during the campaign, we are already well ahead of were we were under Bush with accomplishments including an end to torture, ending the restrictions on stem cell research, and ending the global gag rule.