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The Case for a Truth Commission
More than 30 years ago, a special Senate investigation peered into abuses that included spying on the American people by their own government.
The findings by Senator Frank Church's committee, drawn from testimony spanning 800 witnesses and thousands of pages of government documents, revealed how powerful government surveillance tools were misused against the American people. For instance, the FBI's COINTELPRO operation spent more than two decades searching in vain for communist influence in the NAACP and infiltrated domestic groups that, for example, advocated for women's rights. The Church committee's work led to creation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and later to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--reforms that largely held until the Bush years. (See George W. Bush's biggest economic mistakes.)
The parallels with today are clear, and so are the lessons. Then, as in recent years, some were willing, in the name of security, to trade away the people's rights as if they were written in sand, not stone. For much of this decade, we have read about and witnessed such abuses as the scandal at Abu Ghraib, the disclosure of torture memos and the revelations about the warrantless surveillance of Americans.
So what is to be done about the abuses of the Bush years? Some say do nothing, and a few Senators even tried to make Attorney General Eric Holder promise in his confirmation hearings to launch no prosecutions for Bush-era lawbreaking. At the opposite end of the spectrum, others say that even if it takes many years and divides the country and distracts from the urgent priority of fixing the economy, we must prosecute Bush Administration officials to lay down a marker. The courts are already considering congressional subpoenas that were issued earlier as well as claims of privilege and legal immunities. Those cases will stretch out for some time, as would prosecutions--taking even a decade or longer. Moreover, it is easier for prosecutors to net those far down the ladder than those at the top, who set the tone and the policies.
There is another option, a middle ground whose overarching goal is to find the truth: we need to get to the bottom of what happened--and why--to make sure it never happens again.
One path to that goal is to appoint a truth-finding panel. We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair-minded and without an ax to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth. People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments but to assemble the facts. If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecution in order to get to the whole truth.
During the past several years, the U.S. has been deeply divided. This has made our government less productive and our society less civil. President Obama is right in saying that we cannot afford extreme partisanship and debilitating divisions. As we commemorate the Lincoln bicentennial, there is a need, again, "to bind up the nation's wounds." Rather than vengeance, we need an impartial pursuit of what actually happened and a shared understanding of the failures of the recent past.
This is not a step to be taken lightly. We need to see whether there is interest for this in Congress and the new Administration. We need to work through concerns about classified information and claims of Executive privilege. Most of all, we need to see whether the American people are ready to take this path.
In the meantime, Congress will work with the Obama Administration to fix those parts of our government that went off course. But to repair the damage of the past eight years and restore America's reputation and standing in the world, we should not simply turn the page without being able first to read it. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll showed that more than 60% of Americans agree that investigating the failed national-security policies of the past eight years should be considered.
Two years ago, I described the scandals of the Bush-Cheney-Gonzales Justice Department as the worst since Watergate. They were. We are still digging out from the debris. We need to get to the bottom of what went wrong after a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American law and values. The American people have a right to know what their government has done in their names.
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36 Comments so far
Show All"There is another option, a middle ground whose overarching goal is to find the truth: we need to get to the bottom of what happened--and why--to make sure it never happens again."
I've heard this many times. What I haven't heard is how Congress will make sure it doesn't happen again.
Englighten us.
It is not within Congress' power to ensure that the Bush travesties are not repeated. Any laws that Congress passes are subject to review by the Judicial Branch and dependent on the Executive Branch for enforcement.
q
Very good Senator, but your specific exclusion of criminal sanctions against the guilty makes it all quite dishonest--not credible in the least.
War crimes have been committed, the Constitution attacked with the help of your "esteemed colleagues", and you want to serve ice cream and cake to the guilty.
If these "Truth" Commissions are patterned on those over which Desmond Tutu presided in South Africa then there would be no criminal sanctions. The deal was that there would be no prosecutions in return for full disclosure of the truth.
q
This is not South Africa. We have not overthrown the apartheid regime. We cannot afford to be gracious as of yet.
The important difference is that in South Africa the apartheid regime was completely replaced by the ANC and its allies. Those who confessed had no chance to stay around and continue their activities.
In our current circumstances, a hearing specifying that punishment is off-the-table is a license to continue behaving in the same manner. Why would these folks stop what they were doing so well and go away?
The best it could do is educate the public, leaving us in a deeper state of inchoate rage. We must not pre-deny justice while the perps are walking around waiting to commit the next crime. That is absurd.
Joe
Senator Leahy's approach reinforces the position I posted in the comments to Scott Horton's piece:
Before I repeat myself (again), let me cite an ancient legal precept from "Blackstone's Commentaries"-- it's somewhere towards the back, I believe: where there's a will, there's a way.
If I were satisfied that the Ruling Class of political elites had a genuine will and desire to thoroughly and rigorously investigate, without fear or favor, the multifarious wrongdoing of the previous maladministration, I would agree with Horton's approach.
Unfortunately, I do not credit the political elite with that will. It can't be said too often that a righteous investigation would expose the complicity and criminality of BOTH parties; put another way, our modern Amerikan duopoly IS a crime family divided into two related camps. Therefore, I hold the view that since there is no GENUINE will to move forward as well-meaning persons of integrity like Horton recommend, the alternative will be to conduct what will ultimately become a reverse "show trial", i.e. an elaborate charade intended to spare heinous criminals and misfeasors any negative consequences for their actions and inactions, and placate or pacify We the People into continued submission.
Here's a slightly reworked response to a previous Horton article:
_____________________________________
For a change, I didn't have an apoplectic fit when he [Horton] proposed the establishment of a Blue Ribbon Commission as one viable route to the rigorous, comprehensive, and profound reform Glenn [Greenwald] laudably espouses.
For the nonce, I accept Glenn's recommendation as more of an attempt to validate the concept of-- gack-- Yes We Can take action to redeem our present decadent and malignant political process and culture; I trust that he understands, or will further consider, the superiority of options such as appointing a Special Prosecutor with plenary powers.
After all, the staggering magnitude of crimes and legal depredations generated by the moribund maladministration is at last a subject fit for the tireless and exhaustive efforts that Kenneth Starr once launched in a monomaniacal crusade to ferret out the details of the president's genital physiognomy, and whether the president was the center and facilitator of a vast conspiracy of venality and carnality that left a slime trail from Arkansas to the Oval Office.
Like Walt Disney, Starr labored like an elephant and brought forth a mouse. In star(r)k contrast, presently the tottering carcass of a rabid elephant stumbles into the twilight-- why not appoint a Patrick Fitzgerald to do justice to such a rogue behemoth now that the subject is finally commensurate with a full-bore investigation?
But I contend that the Blue-Ribbon Commission has become utterly discredited, perhaps beyond rehabilitation in contemporary Amerika.
Without elaborating upon the taxonomy of assumptions necessary to credit the operation and prospects of such a commission, merely consider that the infamous Warren Commission broke the mold. No one familiar with that enterprise can doubt or refute the appalling truth that no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States-- back when the SCOTUS was respectable-- allowed the President and the Attorney General's office to twist his arm into lending his prestige and personal authority to a reprehensible sham.
One doesn't have to don the tinfoil chapeau to acknowledge that the commissioners and their staff were tacitly charged with building a record of testimony and evidence to conclusively establish that the president was assassinated by a Lone Nut.
I submit that the atrocious and abominable Warren Commission abolished a reasonable belief that a group of Eminent Amerikan Statesmen, Soldiers, Judges, and Government Officials can be relied upon and trusted to conduct a scrupulous and comprehensive investigation of a critical event or pattern of conduct and present, without fear or favor, the naked truth.
It is, or should be, a foregone conclusion that, on the contrary, such a fellowship of elite, socially conservative, worldly, and politic icons will follow the cues, explicit or subliminal, from the powers who charged them, and readily collude and prevaricate in the interest of rocking the ship of state as little as possible-- lest the body politic long confined to the steerage-class bowels of the ship become uncontrollably aroused, even mutinous.
As a coda to buttress my well-founded skepticism, herewith an excerpt from a Keith Olbermann interview with John Dean:
OLBERMANN: Are you surprised by the president-elect's idea of this commission? Does it seem that it's treating this issue a little academically?
DEAN: Frankly, I am. I'm not sure it's academic the way they're thinking about it. It's clearly contrary to what we talked about earlier in a prior broadcasts how he told Will Bunch earlier this year, that immediately upon becoming president if he were elected, he would have his attorney general investigate this very question as to whether these war crimes are just stupid policies or very serious and egregious crimes. A commission is far away from that. A commission is passing the buck. And I've got to tell you also, Keith, in the unraveling of Watergate, we had many high level discussions about how to make it all go away without anybody having liability. We considered many times a commission.
· Yr Obd't Servant
We don't need no stinkin' commissions...we need PROSECUTION!
I remember Watergate and was relieved to see actions taken to prevent another Watergate. To be specific, it was the stonewalling that became so irritating. First there were no tape recordings, then there were but the public wouldn't have access to them. Then the court ordered the tapes be brought forward. Then we got the tapes with a section "accidentally erased." The Predential Transparency Act was passed and I thought we had put the right safeguards in place to prevent the same type of stonewalling. Right?
Wrong? All it took is yet another merry band of sociopathic SOBs in the White House and the stonewalling not only started all over again, but it was worse than ever. The current version of the same thing is yes there are e-mails pertaining to office business, but no, you can't see them. Then we find out the emails had been conducted on a Republican Party computer server instead of the official white house server. Then we hear the public can have access to some but not all of the e-mails. As John Dean has described it - it is worse than Watergate, and he should know because he was a part of that Nixon team.
I admire the work of Patrick Leahy, a tireless crusader for truth in government. This time around, I want real safeguards put into place. In combatting white house stone walling, we need an ultimatum and serve notice that no stone will go unturned.
The best possible loud and clear statement on this issue, that absolutely no one is above the law. We need to investigate George W Bush, Dick Cheney and Karl Rove and serve notice to all future wannabe Bush, Cheney and Roves.
I have no comment about Leahy's article other than what has been noted but I must take exception to the TIME article to which the link is provided after the second paragraph.
In the first place, the eight subjects discussed were not mistakes; they represent deliberate actions taken by the Bush administration to enrich his supporters at the expense of the general US population.
Secondly, the discussions of those points seem to be slanted to take as much heat off of Bush as possible, spreading the blame over previous administrations all the way back to Gerry Ford. Sadly, their arguments are entirely conclusionary; specifics are ignored.
q
PG; i agree; the american people can not handle the truth.
"...-to make sure it never happens again."
---The epitaph of 10 million and more.
I wonder if the economy was booming, would Obama's tune be different, leaning towards direct investigations? I've heard, though I can't remember where, that previous administrations actually took steps to create massive problems for incoming administrations for the sole purpose of hindering changes the new administration might want to make, especially social ones. This seems like a perfect example.
If the economy were booming, Obama would not have been elected.
q
Way to totally avoid the question. I think you have a future in politics.
Wow. Thin skinned, aren't we?
I simply pointed out that your question assumes a scenario that would never occur.
Your post also assumes that the republicans would willingly put themselves out of power in order to make the Dems look bad. They aren't that smart.
q
Not thin-skinned at all, just trying to generate some discussion about the notion of administrations tanking things to hamper incoming administrations. You're addressing a point that isn't in my post.
BTW, your points assume the only reason Obama was elected was because of the bad economy. I think that's a bad assumption. There's so much else wrong with the Bush administration I think a Dem, any dem, would have won regardless.
But what do you think about the idea of outgoing admins wreaking havoc to hamper incoming administrations?
QS; the repubs did not run their top dog this cycle because they knew what was coming. now they are truing to rewrite history as if the shrub years never happened. perle and the shrub regime, one in the same. it never happened. well it did happen the paper trail is there. a legacy of death, destruction, lies, shredding of the constitution can not be denied or rewritten. the dots are there.
PG; excuuuuuuuse me, for not using a catch phrase of your liking and intellect. leading contender, viable candidate, or what political correct phrase is it that would satisfy you. the problem with our species is that we are not street smart, and too book smart. theory is fine until it comes to the real world. having a bad day today? please do not take it out on me.
I'm all for a truth commission. But let's forget about the past because we can't change it and focus on the current corrupt administration while we still have a chance to improve our future.
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it, as we have been doing for 120 years or more.
A resounding NO! We the People, your employer, want a special prosecutor like the Repuglicans had on Clinton!
I'm not sure why - if congress has the ability to create a commission - it can't set up a commission that does NOT provide for immunity for testimony. Like any proceedings, perhaps immunity deals can be made for useful information, but why guarantee immunity simply for showing up?
There's no reason a commission of inquiry can't be established, with subpoena power, whose function is like that of a prosecutor/grand jury: investigate to make a determination as to the existence or non-existence of probable cause to indict.
If the commission - and I think a bi-partisan, or better yet, NON-partisan commission is a good idea - finds probable cause THEN a prosecutor can be assigned to bring the charges and try the alleged criminals in a court of law using regular rules of criminal procedure and with all the due process protections that remain in our Constitution.
The first two paragraphs of Senator Leahy's piece betray the great weakness of his position. Clearly it didn't work. The very fact that such a commission was set up 30 years ago and here we are AGAIN looking at excesses of our government and violations of the law proves that it didn't work - and won't work if we do it again. Unless there are consequences for for those that breakk the law, I don't think there is any incentive to follow the law for the next generation.
Interestingly, the very same actors - Rumseld, Cheney and others like Elliot Abrams and probably many more - were actually in that malfeasant government 30 years ago (a very young Rumsfeld was an economic advisor to Nixon). These folks lived on under Ford and reappeared under Reagan and H.W. Bush in time for Iran/Contra.
Recalling Nixon's pardon and the work that Leahy described of that early commission, I say that route was a complete failure as a means of preventing abuses of power.
Let's try full on INVESTIGATION and where warranted, prosecution and punishment. No doubt some complicit Democrats will be uncovered - but so be it. Party affiliation should not inhibit the rule of law and the restoration of Constitutional principles.
Exactly. Thank you dwg.
By the way, did anyone notice the figure of two thirds in favor of investigation was for just torture and wire tapping, not even including outing Valerie Plame and lying us into war? Why all this mincing about as if no one knows what facts will emerge from an investigation? Bush belongs in jail based on his public admissions of crimes alone. Argh!
Senator Leahy, your commission idea is just not good enough.
"During the past several years, the U.S. has been deeply divided. This has made our government less productive and our society less civil."
The US population may have been deeply divided, but the government has been fairly united. The Republicans leading, Democrats following. Impeachment off the table. Clinton promoting free trade and deregulation while being prosecuted for a sexual indiscretion which had little importance in our lives. Stealing elections and failing to contest election fraud. Clowning around for the cameras in place of fact-finding or sharpening bailout conditions. Allowing our wealth to trickle through all of their manicured fingers.
Complicity and cowardice by politicians have masqueraded as civility. Many citizens have felt left out or betrayed by this charade.
The problem has not been too much contention, but the certainty by lawbreakers that they belong to a club that will never prosecute them. If we do not investigate serious crimes, hold fair trials and hold people accountable for findings of guilt, then we can expect the pattern to continue. We will be covering over an abcess, not curing it.
This is not like South Africa. In South Africa, the whites were displaced, replaced by an overwhelming number of Africans. They would have no opportunity to repeat their activities and crimes. Here there is a distinct possibility that the confessers will stay around and regain power. Or some might say, they never lost it.
So hold your hearings if you must, but do not rule out accountability in advance because the culprits are important and high caste criminals. If there were equal justice under the law, every local burglar should then be given the opportunity to fess up and walk away.
Joe
ya that is it. lets have one more commission, and make sure lee hamilton is on it. that way we can null and void it before it even happens.
"... others say that even if it takes many years and divides the country and distracts from the urgent priority of fixing the economy, we must prosecute Bush Administration officials to lay down a marker."
"Lay down a marker"??? What the f does that mean? We must prosecute Bush Administration officials if (because) THEY BROKE THE LAW. It's about justice. It's about punishment for wrongdoing. It's about restoring a modicum of faith in our system of justice. Without prosecution we accept the dangerous precedent that the president and his entire administration is above the law. Why is it so goddam hard for people to understand that?
"Lay down a marker" my ass. These are the weasel words of a shit-for-brains politician.
The Glue That Holds Chaos Together
Immunity for war criminals and traitors is not an option. The Obama administration is under a mandate to restore our civil rights and to punish violaters of our civil rights, the Constitution, and international treaties. The people have spoken and you were given your orders. Try and prosecute.
just when i'm ready to hit the hay, i come across this pile of crap. fasteddie, re-read the article, then re-read it again. the whole thing is full of weasel words. is the senator making his pitch to author, or co-author, the book that he's certain will come from a "truth" commission? as if any politician could tell the truth, even if it bit him/her in the ass. if it's not the book he's got in mind, then it's most definitely a case of cover-your-ass. mr. leahy, i'm not sure who your target audience is, but it's not the folks frequenting common dreams.
this article has to be one of the most pathetic attempts at justification that i have ever seen, read, or heard. a six term senator????? time to take a rest, dude. you're way too tired. it's this sort of condescending attitude that really pisses me off.
We need truth and CONSEQUENCES. What are you...some new breed of ignoramus...perhaps an ostrich crossed with a lemming whose daddy was a sheep? There have been consequences for everyone else in this society and it's immoral, unethical laws from what flower can someone smoke out of a bong in SC to what can be done in secret. Time for Justice For All.
"The American people have a right to know what their government has done in their names."
Well, for a start, you COULD mention the human cost of the War in Iraq:
http://web.mit.edu/humancostiraq/
You might point to Joseph Stiglitz's book: "The Three trillion Dollar War." which details some future costs as well.
How about the destruction of the National Library in Bagdhad, looted and burned while just down the street, under the protection of U.S. Forces, not a single pencil went missing from the Ministry of Oil. And that was just the tip of the iceburg as far as world cultural artifacts many of which were more than 4,000 yrs old goes.
You have an opportunity here to explain in great detail what the government has been doing. You do not use that opportunity. Instead, you call for some "Truth Commission" in the future which will never happen, thereby hoping to absolve yourself of responsibility for the evils that occurred on your watch and which you voted to approve on practically every single occasion they came up for a vote.
No every voter in Vermont is as dumb as a cow.
Bring America Back !!!! Lessons, lessons, ...become as a child and you shall learn.....!!
**Republicans, as a party, failed to learn from Watergate ( John Dean, Worse Than Watergate..book), but they did learn how to do IT better, and unlike Nixon, how to get away with IT !! It being absolute and total corruption.
**Impartial Inquiry....extremely crucial is the makeup of the members of any Truth Commission..e.g., Prez Obama, due to his Senate Fisa Vote, is absolutely disqualified from being on the panel or appointing any member thereof. Therefore any member of the Truth Commission must have much higher integrity, character, and moral standards than our newly elected President!
**If the following American Patriots are NOT on the Commission then I would have great problems going forward=====Rep Dennis Kucinich, Sen Russ Feingold,
Rep John Conyers, Colleen Rowley, Cindy Sheehan, Cynthia McKinney, Jimmy Carter,
Keith Olberman, Prof David Ray Griffin, Ralph Nader, Don Paul & Jim Hoffman,
Ken Jenkins, Glen Greenwald, Sibel Edmunds, Eric Hufschmidt, Christopher Bollyn, Thierry Meyssan, and Kevin@MUJCA.com.
NOW THERE'S SOME REAL TRUTH SEEKERS FOR YOU, SEN LEAHY !!!!
Also former FBI Director Louis Freh, and Present Director Mueller are disqualified from the Truth Commission, as is Henry Kissinger, John Ashcroft, and anybody from NewsCorp or its affiliates.
With all due respect, this is nonsense! Truth finding panel! Middle ground!!! Middle ground!!! What are you guys, the UN! Criminals like bush, cheney, and rove will not be deterred by middle ground. This truth finding panel business in time will end up being ignored just like the Church findings. In fact the scoundrels will see it as another challenge to find a way around the law, for these types of people cheating the law creates a feeling of power!
The powers of investigation, indictment, prosecution, imprisonment are all in place, so, turn off the spicket of political pressure by the for profit lobbyists and their republican bully friends, and, also, even if it means giving your fellow dems a bloody nose in public to get them to fall in line, and get to work! Middle ground, no wonder this country has gone down the tubes! Truth finding panel, ha, the ghost of Nixon lives on!