What if Instead of the Nuremberg Trials There Was Only a Truth Commission?

Representatives John Conyers and Jerrold Nadler are officially asking
Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint an independent Special
Prosecutor "to investigate and, where appropriate, prosecute"
participants in the Bush-era US torture system. "A Special Counsel is
the most appropriate way to handle this matter," Nadler said. "It would
remove from the process any question that the investigation was subject
to political pressure, and it would preempt any perceptions of conflict
of interest within the Justice Department, which produced the torture
memos." But, as Politico reports,
"Holder is likely to reject that request - his boss, the president, has
indicated he doesn't see the need for such a prosecutor." The
Democratic Leadership, particularly Obama, Senate Majority Leader Harry
Reid and Sen. Diane Feinstein have pushed
for secret, closed-door hearings in the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Other Democrats, like Patrick Leahy, advocate establishing a Truth
Commission, though that is not gaining any momentum. The fact remains
that some powerful Democrats knew that the torture was happening and didn't make a public peep in opposition.

This week, Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to
Secretary of State Colin Powell came out in favor of prosecutions of
"the decision-makers and their closest advisors (particularly the ones
among the latter who may, on their own, have twisted the dagger a
little deeper in Caesar's prostrate body - Rumsfeld and Feith for
instance). Appoint a special prosecutor such as Fitzgerald, armed to
the teeth, and give him or her carte blanche. Play the treatment of any
intermediaries - that is, between the grunts on the ground and the Oval
- as the law allows and the results demand."

Wilkerson, though, understands Washington. "Is there the political
will to carry either of these recommendations to meaningful
consequences?" he wrote to the Huffington Post. "No, and there won't be."

As of now, Conyers and Nadler aren't exactly looking for over-flow
space for their meetings on how to get criminal prosecutions going.

Officially joining the anti-accountability camp this week was The Washington Post's David Broder who wrote this gem
in defense of the Bush administration: "The memos on torture
represented a deliberate, and internally well-debated, policy decision,
made in the proper places - the White House, the intelligence agencies
and the Justice Department - by the proper officials." (For a great
response to this, check out Scott Horton).
Broder is urging Obama to "stick to his guns" in standing up to
pressure "to change his mind about closing the books on the 'torture'
policies of the past." Don't you love how Broder puts torture in
quotes? I really wonder how Broder would describe it if he was
waterboarded (and survived). Can't you just imagine him making the
little quote motion with his hands? Broder's Washington Post column was titled "Stop Scapegoating: Obama Should Stand Against Prosecutions:"

[Obama was] right to declare that there should be no
prosecution of those who carried out what had been the policy of the
United States government. And he was right when he sent out his chief
of staff, Rahm Emanuel, to declare that the same amnesty should apply
to the lawyers and bureaucrats who devised and justified the Bush
administration practices.

But now Obama is being lobbied by
politicians and voters who want something more - the humiliation and/or
punishment of those responsible for the policies of the past. They are
looking for individual scalps - or, at least, careers and reputations.

Their
argument is that without identifying and punishing the perpetrators,
there can be no accountability - and therefore no deterrent lesson for
future administrations. It is a plausible-sounding rationale, but it
cloaks an unworthy desire for vengeance.

Obama has opposed even
the blandest form of investigation, a so-called truth commission, and
has shown himself willing to confront this kind of populist anger.

Thank goodness we have a president who opposes "even the blandest
form of investigation"-how uncouth such savagery would prove to be.
While the elite Washington press corp works hard to make sure things
don't get too uncomfortable at the wine and cheese cocktail parties,
some liberal journalists are also making the case against a special
prosecutor (or at least the immediate appointment of one). Last week it
was Elizabeth de la Vega, who made an interesting case for waiting to prosecute while evidence is gathered:

We must have a prosecution eventually, but we are not legally
required to publicly initiate it now and we should not, as justifiable
as it is. I'm not concerned about political fallout. What's good or bad
for either party has no legitimate place in this calculus. My sole
consideration is litigation strategy: I want us to succeed.

This week it is Mother Jones Washington editor David Corn,
who comes out in favor of a congressional investigation "that placed a
premium on public disclosure" or "an independent commission." Corn describes
how he recently warned a Congressmember who supports the appointment of
a Special Prosecutor, "That's not necessarily a good idea." Corn talks
about how a coalition of groups from the Center for Constitutional
Rights and the ACLU to Democrats.com and MoveOn.org have all petitioned
for a prosecutor:

These liberals all want to see alleged Bush administration
wrongdoing exposed. But there's one problem with a special prosecutor:
it's not his job to expose wrongdoing. A special prosecutor does dig up
facts-but only in order to prosecute a possible crime. His mission is
not to shine light on misdeeds, unless it is part of a prosecution. In
many cases, a prosecutor's investigation does not produce any
prosecutions. Sometimes, it leads only to a limited prosecution.

That's
what happened with Patrick Fitzgerald. He could not share with the
public all that he had discovered about the involvement of Bush,
Cheney, Karl Rove, and other officials in the CIA leak case... A special
prosecutor, it turns out, is a rather imperfect vehicle for revealing
the full truth.

[...]

Prosecuting government officials for
providing legal opinions that greenlighted waterboarding and the like
would pose its own legal challenges. Could a government prosecutor
indict the government lawyers who composed and signed the torture memos
for aiding and abetting torture without indicting the government
employees who actually committed the torture? (President Barack Obama
has pledged that the interrogators will not be pursued.) And could a
prosecutor win cases in which his targets would obviously argue that
they were providing what they believed was good-faith legal advice,
even if it turned out that their advice was wrong?... Several lawyers
I've consulted have said that a criminal case against the authors of
these memos would be no slam dunk. One possible scenario is that a
special prosecutor would investigate, find out that sordid maneuvering
occurred at the highest levels of the Bush-Cheney administration, and
then conclude that he or she did not have a strong enough legal case to
warrant criminal indictments and trials.

The bottom line: Anyone
who wants the full truth to come out about the Bush-Cheney
administration's use of these interrogation practices cannot count on a
special prosecutor.

Corn's advice to that unnamed Democratic Congressmember wasn't
exactly well received by lawyers who have been pushing for
prosecutions. Perhaps the most passionate advocate for the appointment
of an independent Special Prosecutor right now is Michael Ratner, the president of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

"To argue that we should not have prosecutions because it won't
bring out all the facts when taken to its logical conclusion would mean
never prosecuting any official no matter the seriousness of the
crimes," Ratner told me. "Right now is not the time to be backing off
on prosecutions. Why are prosecutions of torturers ok for other
non-western countries but not for the US? Prosecution is necessary to
deter torture in the future and send a message to ourselves and the
rest of the world that the seven or eight year torture program was
unlawful and must not happen again. The purpose of prosecutions is to
investigate and get convictions so that officials in the future will
not again dispense with the prohibition on torture."

Constitutional Law expert Scott Horton says that the problems with a
Special Prosecutor Corn lays out are "correct, but he makes the latent
assumption that it's either/or. That's absurd. Obviously it should be
both a commission and one or more prosecutors as crimes are identified."

Jameel Jaffer, one of the leading ACLU attorneys
responsible for getting the torture memos released by the Obama
administration, agrees with Horton. "I don't think we should have to
choose between a criminal investigation and a congressional inquiry,"
Jaffer told me. "A congressional committee could examine the roots of
the torture program and recommend legislative reform to prevent gross
human rights abuses by future administrations. At the same time, a
Justice Department investigation could investigate issues of criminal
responsibility. One shouldn't foreclose the other."

Jaffer adds, "It might be a different story if we thought that
Congress would need to offer immunity in exchange for testimony. But
many of the key players - including John Yoo, George Tenet, and Dick
Cheney - have made clear that they have no qualms about talking
publicly about their actions (Yoo and Tenet have both written books,
and Cheney is writing one now)."

The bottom line, Ratner argues, is that "prosecutions will bring out facts." He cites the example of the Nuremberg Tribunals:

What if we had had a truth commission and no prosecutions? Right
now we have many means of getting the facts: FOIA, congressional
investigations such as the Senate Armed Services Report, former
interrogators, document releases by the Executive. There are plenty of
ways to get information even if it does not all come out in
prosecutions. Many of the calls to not prosecute are by those,
particularly inside the beltway, who cannot imagine Bush, Cheney et al.
in the dock or by those who accept the argument that the torture
conspirators were trying their best. This is not a time to hold back on
the demand that is required by law and fact: appoint a special
prosecutor.

David Swanson, who
for years has pushed for prosecutions of Bush administration officials,
was one of the organizers of the petitions calling for the appointment
of a Special Prosecutor. "My top priority is not 'truth,'" he said. "My
top priority is changing the current truth, which is that we don't have
the nerve and decency to enforce our laws against powerful people."