It's been said with regards to the Watergate scandal and the
Nixonian presidency that the cover-up was worse than the crime. A month
after Nixon resigned, his successor, President Gerald Ford pardoned
him, and many observers believed his technically-less-than-one-term
administration never recovered from that action.
"The cover-up continues," a New York Times editorial declared on Sunday.
Unlike many of my progressive friends,
for me the current administration's behavior on torture is a glass
half full. In my view, the real scandal is how very few have taken
a sip.
Sure, President Barack Obama and Attorney
General Eric Holder have adopted some of the secrecy habits of the previous
administration. But, for heaven's sake, read what Obama and
Holder have gone ahead and released - and done - before you grouse any
louder about the torture photos and other data still suppressed.
Two investigating judges from the Spanish national security court,
the Audiencia Nacional, are asking the U.S. Justice Department for
details about the role played by Bush Administration lawyers in the
development and approval of torture practices that were apparently
applied to a number of Spanish subjects held in Guantanamo.
WASHINGTON - Even
as the issue of torture appears likely to burst back onto the public
agenda next week -- thanks to the much anticipated release of an
internal CIA report -- one of the most progressive voices in Congress
is arguing that the Obama White House has a legal obligation to
investigate the Bush torture legacy.
WASHINGTON — Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and
psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an
excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most importantinterrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.
The Washington Post Editorial Page -- keeper of all establishment Washington wisdom -- today advocates that low-level CIA interrogators who went beyond John Yoo's torture guidelines, and only them, be criminally investigated and prosecuted by the Justice Department:
Amazingly, reports that Eric Holder is considering commencing an
investigation into Bush-era torure crimes has created extreme
consternation in multiple Beltway circles despite how narrow and limited those investigations would be.
We’ve known for years that the Bush administration ignored and broke
the law repeatedly in the name of national security. It is now clear
that many of those programs could have been conducted just as easily
within the law — perhaps more effectively and certainly with far less
damage to the justice system and to Americans’ faith in their
government.
Wisconsin Sen. Russ Feingold, the chief
Senate critic of executive excess and wrongdoing during both
Republican and Democratic administrations, wants Attorney General
Eric Holder to appoint a prosecutor to investigate the CIA's harsh
interrogation program.
But Feingold wants Holder to do it right.
Today was supposed to be the day that the Justice Department --
after two delays -- released an unclassified version of the CIA
Inspector General's 2004 Report into the interrogations of "high-value
detainees" in the "War on Terror," which Democrat Congressional
staffers described as the "holy grail," according to Greg Sargent of
the Plum Line,
writing in May, "because it is expected to detail torture in
unprecedent
