Playing Politics With Intelligence

"One, it's not fair. Our government told them that their participation was necessary, and it was -- and still is -- and that what we had asked them to do was legal. And now they're getting sued for billions of dollars -- and it's not fair, and it will create doubt amongst private sector folks who we need to help protect us.

"Secondly, such lawsuits would require disclosure of information, which will make it harder to protect the country. You can imagine when people start defending themselves, they're going to be asked all kinds of questions about tactics used. Makes absolutely no sense to give the enemy more knowledge about what the United States is doing to protect the American people.

"Finally, it'll make it harder to convince companies to participate in the future. I mean, if you've done something that you think is perfectly legal and all of a sudden you're facing billions of dollars of lawsuits, it's going to be hard to provide -- with credibility -- assurances that we can go forward."

Torture Watch

Ron Suskind wrote in his book The One-Percent Doctrine that Abu Zubaydah, one of the Bush administration's most celebrated terror suspects and a man responsible for many domestic terror alerts in 2002, was in fact a mentally ill minor functionary who under torture made up imaginary plots against Americans.

Joseph Margulies and George Brent Mickum write in a Washington Post opinion piece: "We represent Saudi-born Abu Zubaydah in a legal effort to force the administration to show why he is being detained. And this week, with our first meeting, we begin the laborious task of sifting fact from fantasy. Yet we worry it may already be too late. . . .

"Zubaydah's mind may be beyond our reach. Regardless of whether he was 'insane' to begin with, he has gone through quite an ordeal since his arrest in Pakistan in March 2002. Shuttled through CIA 'black sites' around the world, he was subjected to a sustained course of interrogation designed to instill what a CIA training manual euphemistically calls 'debility, dependence and dread.' Zubaydah's world became freezing rooms alternating with sweltering cells. Screaming noise replaced by endless silence. Blinding light followed by dark, underground chambers. Hours confined in contorted positions. And, as we recently learned, Zubaydah was subjected to waterboarding. We do not know what remains of his mind, and we will probably never know what he experienced. . . .

"It was the Cold War communists who perfected the dark art of touchless torture. And with it, they brought U.S. soldiers to the tipping point, where the adult psyche shatters, leaving behind a quavering child. At the end of their ordeal, these soldiers made fantastic admissions of American perfidity and spoke unreservedly about their supposed misdeeds. . . .

"What will we be able to learn, at this point, from Zubaydah? Will we be able to recreate the interrogations without the tapes? Will we get access to the material that led Coleman to a conclusion so different from the administration's? . . .

"The American system of justice is founded on the idea that truth emerges from vigorous and informed debate. And if that debate cannot take place, if we cannot learn the facts and share them with others, the truth is only what the administration reports it to be. We hope it has not come to that."

Waterboarding Investigation

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "An internal watchdog office at the Justice Department is investigating whether Bush administration lawyers violated professional standards by issuing legal opinions that authorized the CIA to use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques, officials confirmed yesterday.

"H. Marshall Jarrett, counsel for the Office of Professional Responsibility, wrote in a letter to Democratic lawmakers that his office is investigating the 'circumstances surrounding' Justice opinions that established a legal basis for the CIA's interrogation program, including a now-infamous memo from August 2002 that narrowly defined torture and was later rescinded by the department.

"'Among other issues, we are examining whether the legal advice contained in those memoranda was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys,' Jarrett wrote.

"This is the second publicly disclosed Justice Department investigation related to the CIA's use of waterboarding, a type of simulated drowning that is considered torture by most human rights groups and legal scholars. Jarrett's inquiry got underway in 2004, but was not confirmed publicly until now, officials said. . . .

"The results of OPR investigations are usually kept confidential because they focus on allegations of professional misconduct or other personnel issues. But in his letter Monday to Sens. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jarrett wrote that investigators will consider releasing a 'non-classified summary' at the conclusion of the investigation 'because of the significant public interest in this matter.'"

In a statement, Whitehouse asks how the Department of Justice could have overlooked its own precedents to authorize waterboarding and concludes that "the answer was preordained and the Department was driven by politics and obedience, not law and independence. I welcome OPR's report in our continuing effort to reclaim DOJ from the 'loyal Bushies' who have besmirched a great institution.'"

Scott Shane writes in the New York Times: "Mr. Jarrett's report could become the first public accounting for legal advice that endorsed methods widely denounced as torture by human rights groups and legal authorities. His office can refer matters for criminal prosecution; legal experts said the most likely outcome was a public critique of the legal opinions on interrogation, noting that Mr. Jarrett had the power to reprimand or to seek the disbarment of current or former Justice Department lawyers. . . .

"Mr. Whitehouse, a former United States attorney, said in an interview that he believed the August 2002 memo on torture, as well as classified opinions he had reviewed, fell far short of the Justice Department's standards for scholarship. He said that in approving waterboarding, the opinions ignored both American military prosecutors' cases against Japanese officers for waterboarding American prisoners during World War II and a federal appeals court's decision that upheld the 1983 conviction of a Texas sheriff for using 'water torture' on jail inmates."

Bush Library Watch

Michael Abramowitz writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush's future presidential library and public policy institute will be housed at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, officials announced yesterday, launching a project that could require hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations.

"The location of the project has not exactly been a state secret -- representatives of Bush's library foundation have been negotiating with the university for months -- but the announcement means Bush's friends and associates will soon begin raising money to bring the project to fruition."

In a letter to SMU's president, Bush wrote: "When he dedicated the first presidential library, President Franklin Roosevelt said that he hoped the public would use it to 'learn from the past' and 'gain judgment in creating their own future.' I hope the same will be true of this library. I look forward to the day when both the general public and scholars come and explore the important and challenging issues our Nation has faced during my presidency -- from economic and homeland security to fighting terrorism and promoting freedom and democracy."

The End Times

Here's Bush at a state dinner for the nation's governors last night: "You know, I've developed a unique perspective on this event. For six years I sat and watched the President speak; for eight years I was the President and spoke. (Laughter.) And next year, I'll be watching on C-SPAN. (Laughter.)"

Oscar Goes Easy

At last night's Oscars, host Jon Stewart's joke about the war in Iraq was directed more at Sen. John McCain than at Bush. Stewart: "The films that were made about the Iraq war -- let's face it -- did not do as well. But I am telling you -- if we stay the course and keep these movies in the theaters, we can turn this around. I don't care if it takes 100 years, withdrawing the Iraq movies would only embolden the audience. We cannot let the audience win."

And only one award winner said anything negative about the administration: Alex Gibney, the director of "Taxi to the Dark Side," who said upon winning the Oscar for best documentary feature: "This is dedicated to two people who are no longer with us. Dilawar, the young Afghan taxi driver, and my father, a Navy interrogator who urged me to make this film because of his fury about what was being done to the rule of law. Let's hope we can turn this country around and move away from the dark side and back to the light."

Cartoon Watch

Ann Telnaes on rendition flights; Jeff Danziger on Bush's America; Rob Rogers on Bush's earful; Joel Pett on Bush in foreclosure; and all 12 of the Bush cartoons that won John Sherffius the Herblock Award last week.