Finder Is CIA’s Keeper In Slanted NYT Op-Ed
As several here have noted, there is a particularly odious op-ed spinning the CIA torture innocence position in today’s New York Times by self professed novelist Joseph Finder:
Mr. Holder doesn’t seem concerned that each of these cases was exhaustively reviewed, beginning in 2005, by career prosecutors under the supervision of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Those men had access to the complete, unredacted report of the agency’s inspector general, an expurgated version of which was released on Monday. Yet these prosecutors recommended against criminal charges in all but one case. (That exception involved a contractor named David Passaro, who had assaulted a prisoner with a flashlight and kicked him in the groin, shortly after which the prisoner died. Mr. Passaro was convicted of assault and sentenced to eight years in prison.)
Mr. Holder’s decision, then, implies that justice wasn’t done five years ago probably because high-level officials in the George W. Bush administration put their thumbs on the scale of justice. This seems unlikely. The prosecutors in Virginia were well experienced in dealing with classified intelligence matters, as most of the federal intelligence agencies are in their district. They have a reputation for being hardheaded and unforgiving of C.I.A. transgressions.
Lacking reliable witnesses or forensic evidence, they made the only call they could have made: not to prosecute. In our nation of laws, that’s exactly the way you want government prosecutors to behave. And there is no indication that any of them has complained about being pressured to decide against criminal charges. If any new information has come out about these cases, any complaints about undue influence or any new witnesses, Mr. Holder hasn’t mentioned it. The prosecutors in this case had to abide by the Justice Department’s ruling, in August 2002, that no agency interrogator would face prosecution for exceeding the guidelines as long as he acted in “good faith” and didn’t have “the specific intent to inflict severe pain or suffering.” Not an easy distinction to make, surely, when the work you’re told to do seems to be designed precisely to inflict pain and suffering.
Fiction worthy of a novel indeed. As you may recall, it was only ten days ago we last ran into Mr. Finder doing what he apparently does best, spinning for the CIA sub-culture and Bush Administration leaders (who Finder swears is not Addington, but rather "someone who’s actually smart"). And here he is in a new and bigger forum, the august pages of the Times editorial pages, back at it.
The first 3/4 of Finder’s NYT op-ed are a tour de force of spook spin. He makes assumptions out of the blue about the state of evidence and witnesses there is no way in the world he has the first clue about, thinks EDVA supersedes DOJ Main, misrepresents the state of known facts on exceeding of guidelines by interrogators, assumes the relevant detainees were directly related to 9/11 with no evidence whatsoever to support the assertion, and claims to omnisciently and definitively know what a jury would do if deliberating on the case. He also confuses the different criminal referrals made in 2003, in 2004 and 2005; which are significantly different issues given the arrival of AGAG as well as the departure of John Ashcroft as AG and Mike Chertoff from the Criminal division (we’ll get back to Chertoff momentarily). Oh, and Finder doesn’t understand squat about the legal concepts of collateral estoppel/issue preclusion and double jeopardy, but proceeds to state to the world that they are controlling (an absurd statement and not even competent speculation).
Perhaps it is appropriate that Joseph Finder considers himself a novelist, in light of the pro-torture fiction he has written in his side job as a national security "reporter". Clearly, reporter is a subjective term in light of Finder’s background Jeff Kaye pointed out. Mr. Finder appears to be a card carrying member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO), but says:
I was never on the CIA’s payroll. I was recruited by the CIA, but when I got to Langley, they showed me the cubicle where I’d be sitting and translating Soviet economic journals from Russian into English, and I said, “No thanks.” That wasn’t exactly Jason Bourne stuff…
Finder isn’t an intelligence professional, but he pines to play one on the opinion pages of the New York Times. Booyah. I would have been tempted to ask where exactly Finder got his slanted views on all this, but Jason Leopold gave us a hint: Finder has been on the rubber chicken merry go round with Mike Hayden and Mike Chertoff. Must have thought that was a good substitute for talking to actual trial lawyers about how complex things such as estoppel/preclusion would really apply here (they wouldn’t; this is pure unadulterated bunk) or how fickle juries are and how only a fool would say with certainty (which is exactly what Finder did) how a jury would rule when he has no idea what the admissible evidence set would be. When you can do the rubber chicken with Mike & Mike, who needs accuracy I guess.
In fairness, Finder does get a little closer to reality toward the end of his piece with the discussion of the inequality of Holder not going after the higher ups and the way the investigation (that would actually be "preliminary review") is currently framed has the appearance of an abu-Ghraib/Lyndie England deal. So there is a minor bit of cogent discussion, assuming you can wade through the initial forrest. But that initial forrest is very dense.
Among other titles in the Finder ‘oeuvre’:
http://www.amazon.com/Company-…..0312319169
Oh, dear. I read the first few pages. I think that John le Carré can sleep easy.
Reference to John le Carré brings to mind both his extended scenes of & Alec Guiness’ portrayal of George Smiley in the questioning of the double-dealing spy Ricky Tarr in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, depicted starting here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..8;index=17
and even more particularly here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…..8;index=18
which to me represents a more decidly more effective approach to superjurisdictional interrogation than what IG Helgerson’s report depicts.
It’s been a while since I read the Smiley/Cold War series, but I seem to recall that even the smarter guys on the other side found other ways to make people talk than a whole lot of torture stuff.
(Of course, once your usefulness was exhausted or uselessness confirmed in those novels, you were likely to become the dead meat in some gallingly perfidious game.)
Great book, and mesmerizing TV film. I can’t think of another writer who has said of an actor, as le Carré did of Guinness, that he could no longer see his own character, Smiley, except as Guinness. And to watch Guinness play off Ian Richardson as Haydon — there be giants. (Sorry: that probably should have come with a spoiler alert.)
To your main point, though, and prostratedragon’s @ 10: Well, yes. There we all were, led to believe that these things were done with finesse, if always a lot of moral ambiguity and uncertainty, and le Carré had the experience — he is no fantasist. Yet here we sit, forty years later, reading about sheer thuggery and the adolescent whining of overgrown brats who threaten to down tools if people aren’t nice to them.
Wimps. And Cheney is the biggest wimp of all. Pass it on.
Jesus Christ, it just gets worse everyday.
hahahahah a little tom clancy, a little john grisham, a little daniel steele. puuuuuuuuuke
All that money chasing friendly talent, and they come up with THIS?
Krugman should bail on the Times before it comes crashing down like the Twin Towers. Common sense should speed him on his way. He can always join Froomkin at the Huffington Post…
The best terrorists the U.S. can find are the only dimwits who fall prey to U.S. entrapment. Do you really expect smart folks to get with the plan?
So people who are tortured can never be “reliable witnesses.”
The ones “we” torture cannot, apparently.
Great article, bmaz. Re the AFIO, I’m going to post this week an article that should shock all but the most jaded, reporting how a 2004 essay in the AFIO’s journal Intelligencer called for the killing of 100,000 jihadists, who the author considers “hard-core zealots… [that have] brains that are structurally and functionally different from ours.” Removing these “malignant cells” in the Muslim body politic “cannot fail to have some counterproductive side effects.”
Oh, yes, this author was also, at some point, Chief of Neuropsychiatry at Guantanamo Bay.
The article met only mimimal protest within the intelligence community.
(Don’t look for the article on line, as Intelligencer does not post its articles online.)
i should never underestimate the ability for cheney and co. to shock my conscious.
un-fucking-believable.
Be sure to make some noise about when & where you post it. Don’t want to let the Crusades numbering system down.
It really is appalling what people are capable of letting pass under the excuses of collegiality, gentility & getting along. Give me a sack full of shrill anyday.
It’ll post at FDL this week. I’ll jump in and give an OT announcement of approximate time the day it posts.
bmaz, caught by the curse of the lately informed school work… ah, myself spent the day reviewing what might disprove the closure of the set of integers according to this or that function. Hey, I didn’t even like math.
Thanks for that, and all you’ve done; let’s do a bit of integration, shall we? This will require just a dash of metaphysics.
What are we: beings, or machines? organisms, or mechanisms? self-sovereign citizens, or loyal subjects of pseudo-divine cosmic tyrants?
I deeply regret having to address my efforts at such a fundamental level. I realize the difficulty of addressing our very own sources in these little text boxes. Nonetheless, here I am.
If we are merely automata, Newtonian mechanisms in a lifeless cosmos governed by the laws of science; then we are not the rational beings we believe ourselves to be: just machines.
This view is very well summarized by Gordon Bigelow’s May, 2005 article in Harper’s titled, Let there be markets: the evangelical roots of economics:
Clearly, the envious attempt to base social sciences on the same Newtonian foundations as the natural sciences, the high priests of whom reap the largesse of whichever pharaoh occupies the White House, has led directly to attempts to machine human psyches to spec., aka manufacture evidence to order by torture.
I’m wondering: could it be said that Mitchell Jessen & Assoc. weaponized psychological methods in service to the bogus global war on terror? As in, reverse-engineering SERE methods (which, BTW, are taught within 5 miles of me: I live right on the edge of Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, close enough that I will hear the horn announcing sundown in about an hour); even applying methods from the Spanish Inquisition, and replicating Zimbardo’s Stanford Prison Experiment at Bagram, Gitmo, and unknown other sites?
Isn’t this all about machining human psyches into submission under the more general rubric of full-spectrum dominance?
Joint Vision 2020 emphasizes full-spectrum dominance
Thank you for explaining the problems of intellectual arguments these days. Also for your ’some of my best friends are black’ announcement of your vote for Obama. There is no litmus test for political persuasions amongst the writers and commenters on this site. There is however a rigorous insistence on logical argument. Are you suggesting that murders and other serious crimes should go uninvestigated properly b/c political fallout might redown to Democrats someday? Or are you arguing simultaneously that the insidious and pervasive corruption of the Justice Dept. somehow magically failed to land in VA whilst they investigated murders and other serious crimes b/c they previously enjoyed a good reputation? Note the comments of Former VP Cheney just today expressing amazement at the new DOJ acting independently of WH wishes. It simply and plainly, as expressed by your hero today, was not the way the Bush/Cheny WH was run. Any and all results garnered during that administration should logically be considered tainted, yes? And redone by a properly independent DOJ. Live with it.
Huh? I have no idea where you’re getting that. I’m astounded that anything I write could be so badly misconstrued.
I’m sorry, I hit the wrong reply button, was aiming for bottomfeeder.
Ahem. Left out a paragraph. D’oh! I’m trying to ask something absolutely foundational, and propose a civics that abandons the life as holy war frame, so gimme a break.
Take Mitchell & Jessen’s weaponization of psychology; add to it the weaponization of rhetoric displayed by Condi Rice and John Bellinger in the following account; place it all in the context of full-spectrum dominance, under which Obama presently operates; what do we get? It’s all about the dominance.
In the following excerpt from Scott Horton’s blog back in 2007, we see Condi Rice and John Bellinger attempt to substitute their own set of laws for the rest of civil society, evidence of the view that life is a holy war that literally displaces everything else:
Get that? According to Bellinger, there is no civil society, just one global holy war.
So, as a Buddhist and practitioner of psychology, I suggest this is the crux of the problem: Beings, or machines? Self-sovereign citizens, or loyal subjects? Life as organism, or life as holy war among Newtonian mechanisms?
Sorry for the loquaciousness, but I really do think we have to recast the foundation of our approach to foreign affairs at this most basic level, and I don’t see it being presented anywhere in the blogosphere. I hope this is a good place to start. We really must quit using, in reference to biological systems in general and ourselves in particular, the terminology of Newtonian mechanisms in the service of the holy wars of despots.
I mean, that’s so medieval!
Question: if not during wartime, when is CAT applicable?
Second LD @9.
Jeff,
Have you done much research of what may have happened in the way of illegal medical research at the facility the author worked?
Starting in 2001. Perhaps May of 2001?
And just a reminder to readers here’s the Nuremberg Code:
How quaint. /s
Consider that many OB/GYNs don’t even tell pregnant women all the risks posed in having a Cesarean, the most commonly performed major surgery in the United States.
If they can’t manage proper informed consent with a pregnant woman for a sadly routine and overused procedure, one scoffs at the notion of the
responsiblecontrolling parties bothering with informed consent with someone they are about to torture and possibly murder.(my bold)
We know for a fact there was Federal funding for research.
That’s why we have “torture” memoes trying to spin the definition of torture and human experimentation now included in our country’s history.
2nd to last paragraph
With articles like this and guys like Finder drooling to be Jason Bourne, one wonders why they would even need an Operation Mockingbird.
What, you never heard of a ho fickle jury?? Heh, thanks, I corrected a couple of typos. Sorry, got tied up helping daughter with a school project it turns out is due tomorrow morning.
And if she hadn’t completed it on time, it would have been totally your fault. Don’t you even care about her?
Least that’s what I used to hear…
Given there were a couple of estoppel/preclusions running around in there I did have to read it twice to make sure it wasn’t some sort of fancy lawyer talk /g
No, but I do know of some fickle ho’s.
That was damn funny.
I thought you would be onto this, bmaz.
Thanks.
Murder Murder Murder Murder Murder Murder
Over 100 Murders Focus on 100 Murders
THese were Interrogations with tracheotomy kits on hand for Christ’s sake doesn’t anyone else see a slight problem in how we were treating SUSPECTS ?
OT: emptywheel & bmaz, if you’re not watching the Bears-Broncos game, Teddy Bruschi has announced his retirement.
OK, folks, I don’t mind you disagreeing with my views. But if you want to insist that because I write fiction I don’t know anything, well, that’s the easy ad hominem attack. It’s not honest argumentation. This is the problem with intellectual argumentation in this country: the very people who I most expect to engage in open-minded inquiry are every bit as closed-minded as those on the far right. If you did your research, you’d find that I’m on record attacking George Bush’s nomination of Porter Goss to the CIA because I considered Goss a hatchetman sent into CIA to cover up crimes. (Search New Republic archives.) But that doesn’t fit your theory of who I am and what I write. Or if you get on GOogle you’ll see that I raised money for Obama and have declared publicly that I voted for him and continue to support him. But that doesn’t work for you guys either. When I was on Hannity in June and was asked whether I voted for Obama, I said, “I sure did.” And I got dozens of hate e-mails as a result of that. You guys aren’t much better. When I wrote a piece critical of CIA Director Panetta on August 18th and was attacked by the CIA . . .oh, that doesn’t fit with your theory either, right? But in order to attack that article, you have to defend Panetta’s declaration that he never told Congress the CIA had misled them, right? So how do you feel about the fact that the CIA is now saying Panetta never said that? Do you think 7 Democratic members of the HOuse oversight committee are liars? That’s the logical consequence. Now, did I say Holder’s decision to reopen these CIA cases was “double jeopardy”? I’m afraid it looks that way because of the overly clever headline the TImes put on my piece. But I didn’t say that. It’s not double jeopardy — the guys weren’t tried. Would it be a violation of estoppel for the government to choose to prosecute someone who’s been assured he won’t be tried and, relying on that assurance, made certain admissions in an administrative hearing, which are subsequently used against him? I’m no legal expert, but I did talk to a few friends of mine at Harvard Law School who told me it was. If I’m wrong, and they’re wrong — OK, fine, you know better. I’m not being ironic. I relied on the legal advice of these law profs. If I’m wrong, please explain it — but it doesn’t invalidate my central argument, that this whole process is a terrible idea, it’s unfair to people who’ve already been through the legal system, and it violates democratic principles. Because if you think it’ll end here — with Holder deciding to reverse the decisions of a previous administration on individual cases (not policy) because of policy differences — you’re wrong. THe next administration — oh, let’s say it’s Mitt Romney, huh? — will do the same. And you won’t like it. And neither will I. But here’s what I find strangest of all: none of you commenters are bothered by the monumental unfairness of scapegoating a handful of people and leaving the architects of the policy unscathed. Why that doesn’t bother you just baffles my mind. I agree with what Human RIghts Watch told Holder not that long ago:
“We would urge you, in defining the scope of such an investigation, to ensure that it reaches the officials most responsible for serious abuses. In particular, we would encourage you not to limit the investigation to low-level personnel who may have employed unauthorized interrogation techniques, but rather to look to the senior officials who planned, authorized, and facilitated the use of abusive methods that were in violation of US and international law. Any investigation that failed to reach those at the center of the policy, while pinning responsibility on line officers, would lack credibility both domestically and internationally.”
This is the central issue here. And I’m just sorry that you’re so obsessed with going after Voldemort — er, Cheney — that you can’t even see it.
Linked in text incorrectly to knowbuddhau, meant for bottomfeeder.
Hilarious. Thanks for the comic relief.
Of course you just said that they hadn’t been through the legal system but that seems like quibbling.
And again if admissions were made on the understanding that they would not be used for the purposes of prosecution, the route used to that information is tainted but if the DOJ obtains the same info without recourse or knowledge of the tainted route, yes, it can use that same information.
What democratic priniciples are violated?
I mean you do understand that you are talking about the Bush Administration, the worst fucking President in our history, an Administration that did all it could not to investigate its own illegalities precisely because they were their illegalities.
Then there is the accusation that we are only interested in the small fry but then you say we are only interested in Cheney. Are you saying that Cheney is a small fry?
By the way, I didn’t vote for Obama. What does your voting for an Establishment type like Obama have to do with anything anyway? How drunk are you? And has the crayon broken yet?
Dear
Joe Finderbottomfeeder,It would behoove one to actually have read EW’s (and others’) posts here over the last several years (as well as the thousands and thousands of comments from a ton of very bright and sagacious commenters) before one wrote such a blatantly ignorant, and most possibly, a very stupid set of remarks.
You convict yourself of the very crime that you inaccurately accuse of us.
And your post here gets to the very crux of your problem; you apparently consider that a few minutes of “research” or “consultation” makes you an expert. And it really shows!
Everybody is entitled to an opinion. Having one does not make one an expert nor correct.
So the question arises; are you going to stay and interact with some very talented and conscientious folks, or are you going to go having failed to defend your credibility?
The choice is not ours to make, but exclusively yours.
Just a tip: Paragraphs. They make it more likely your comment will be read.
Hi there Joe. To be honest, and I can only speak for myself, I may have had a little too much fun juxtaposing your work as a fiction author with the work here, which at least in the first part I took fairly serious issue with. But I will certainly say that there is no reason that one cannot wear both hats well. And I would also like to commend you for being willing to step in and engage an audience that you know may, shall we say, not be adulatory. I, for one, appreciate that.
I don’t want to ramble on, as to the factual merits, Mary above hit on many of them. However, with regard to the estoppel/double jeopardy question, I am no Harvard professor, but I have defended criminals for a long time and dealt with this area often. Collateral estoppel/issue preclusion requires a judgment on the merits of the issue/thing sought to be precluded. Without getting into the elements of the crimes that would be likely involved in this situation, and there is no need to, it simply cannot maintain because there has been no court that has determined anything to date. As to double jeopardy, it has always been iffy trying to argue double jeopardy from a civil penalty or sanction, especially of a workplace variety. But ever since the case of Hudson v. United States, and some progeny, it has been pretty much a total non-starter. In Hudson, the court held that the Double Jeopardy Clause does not apply to non-criminal penalties, even if the purpose of the penalty is to punish the offenders and deter future offenders. Since the first punishment handed down by the OCC – a Federal Banking Agency, not a court – was not a criminal punishment, the subsequent indictments were upheld. There are cases, were i to go research them, even closer on point, but I do not know them off the top of my head; suffice it to say that it is not impossible to say there is no chance whatsoever of double jeopardy being successfully invoked in a prosecution such as we are discussing here, it sure as heck is hard to see how it could happen.
Oh please. There’s no need to novelize this post and comments. If you think that saying you are absolutely wrong on estoppel in the context that you use it is ad hominen, and that you saying it is makes it so in some Picardian cum Finder sense, then I think you have highlighted “the problem with intellectual argumentation” but perhaps no from the approach you intended.
The relevant research isn’t your personal likes and dislikes whether they are in the DB or in NR archives. The relevant research is what you didn’t do for your piece. It’s not whether or not you considered Goss a hatchetman once upon a time, its whether you researched what you were saying on the ED VA prosecutors, estoppel, good faith, etc.
Who cares whether you voted for Obama and support him? A lot of the people here didn’t necessarily vote for him or if they did, they don’t support him in his “let’s pretend torture never happened and invoke states secrets to cover up CIA crimes” activities. Arguing your case isn’t about whether you support Obama or not, or lurve Hayden but not Goss and can point to a place where you said so – it’s about whether what you are saying about torture now makes senses or doesn’t. You’re the one off into the ad hominen weeds by saying this should be about whether or not you donated money to Obama forgoshsakes.
Seriously – if you think these criticisms of the Hayden/Chertoff salespitch are the same as hate emails you get from Fox viewers, then then eitehr you are hyperbolic by nature or what you are calling hate email is nothing like what I’ve seen in the comments alone on Fox sites.
Look at your own comment here and you will see how, over and over, you want to argue personalities, not facts. Oh, you guys must be Obama supporters so see, so was I, so now aren’t you sorry you criticized my logic? Oh, you guys must not like the CIA, so see, here I made CIA mad by criticizing Panetta so aren’t you sorry you criticized me …? This isn’t high school, it isn’t about the personalities.
Would it be a violation of estoppel for the government to choose to prosecute someone who’s been assured he won’t be tried and, relying on that assurance, made certain admissions in an administrative hearing, which are subsequently used against him?
A. That’s not what your op piece said – your op piece said that you thought having the “career prosecutors” decide not to follow up on criminal charges would make it estoppel now.
B. If you are saying for the record that agents made incriminating statements and admissions as to engaging in torture in a secret adminitrative proceedings, that’s much more newsworthy than anything else you said and interesting, but no, that still doesn’t get you to estoppel. I’m no legal expert, but I did talk to a few friends of mine at Harvard Law School who told me it was.
Again, oh please. Did they cite you to any authority? What facts did you give them? (How did you come into possession of those facts, how reliable are they etc.) The secret administrative proceeding which had admisions against interest might be barred from evidence, but what kind of assurances are you talking about? Are you saying that Chertoff or Fisher gave written non-prosecution agreements to the agents before their adminsitrative hearing testimony? Are you saying they said things that were not otherwise represented in cables, emails, etc.? In any event, no, you don’t have estoppel when someone makes admisssions against interest in an unrelated, non-criminal, non-judicial, secret (or not so much now if you are publishing the existence) proceeding involving other parties (the agency vs doj). If there was more, including a non-prosecution agreement, then you might end up somewhere else.
I relied on the legal advice of these law profs. Oh poohey. You weren’t “relying” on their advice in your op piece, if they gave you advice on administrative hearings and you then plop it in in connection with the prosecutors in VA not pursuing the case. And the Goldsmiths and Kagans and friends might not be the mostest bestest sources – and you aren’t revealing exactly what you told them or exactly what they told you for their advice to be delved into much. And if it is going to be delved into, you should let them at least have the option of trying to do that themselves instead of having you make an outofyourdepth defense that makes their advice look worse than it probably was.
it doesn’t invalidate my central argument, that this whole process is a terrible idea
You don’t have an “argument” that the process is a terrible idea, you have an opinion and it is based on inaccuracies which are being pointed out but can’t be adequately dealt with in blog commments anyway, and it is based on your one-sided input. Did you ever go interview Khalid el-Masri? If you knew that not only the current terrorism case pending in Germany but all kinds of future terrorism have been based and will be based specifically on the lack of justice granted to el-Masri as a CIA abuse victim – with everyone involved in his abuse acting voluntarily and for money – how does that affect your “terrible idea” approach. Since when is justice for victims of crime a terrible idea?
And guess what – if Mitt Romney’s AG has a case to make for Obama torture, you are so dead wrong to say that I or anyone else would be “against it” based on the fact that you would be.
none of you commenters are bothered by the monumental unfairness of scapegoating a handful of people and leaving the architects of the policy unscathed
What bull from someone whining about how no one has bothered to read his older stuff. This site and the commenters here have been REPLETE with criticism of that and also with some pretty detailed discussions of why it won’t work – that you can’t legitimately go after the lower level guys without opening the door on not jsut their supervisors and The Principals involved and the DOJ and folks like Bellinger etc. acting with Principals. But your naivete on this, that someone in a few comments on the your incomplete post on one topic, everything else under the sun and moon could and should be covered, is pretty weird.
But let me ask this – at what point did it become so acceptable to you for the CIA agents who were walking off with money and promotions and whose bodies were being buried – at what point did it become so acceptable to you for them to allow the scapegoating of the few soldiers at Abu Ghraib?
Why that doesn’t bother you just baffles my mind. Ditto – and why voluntary participation in torture ending in death, disappearing children, etc. doesn’t bother you, since after all – it’s “unfair” for people who have “been though” the non-legal adminsitrative process that was geared towards covering up crime to scratch ass while soldiers are punished for following their policies doesn’t bother you would be something I could add on if I were playing that same game, but that’s a game, not an argument or a set of facts for consideration. It wouldn’t be honest for me to do that and its not honest when you do it.
And btw – it doesn’t make any sense to your argument, which I’m sure a part of you will admit on re-reading and reflection – to both say that no one here is interested in Holder going after the primary movers instead of field agents and to then close with saying that everyone is so obsessed with going after CHENEY that they can’t see your points.
Aw crikey, they didn’t have shit in the way of a Garrity agreement letter or anything else; if they did, we would not be here discussing this. You and I should be getting nice salaries and a house next to Skip Gates if that is what is passing for Harvard Law professors these days.
That’s gonna leave a mark.
Jeebus, it really is. Seriously.
I will be making a donation to the Marcy fund soon. I think I will have it made in honor of you, Mary.
And bmaz,
Great post. Look at the life you brought to the Wheel. Nerve hitting post there. Thank you.
To be clear, we are looking at an invertebrate?
Probably one of the less-complex species, not a crustacean or a mollusc.
The aspect of “scapegoating” which disturbs me is the application of that term to those of the CIA interrogators who were shown by the recently released CIA inspector general’s report to have understood they were engaged in wrongdoing at the time they were committing it. Perhaps while you were talking to your Harvard law acquaintances one of them mentioned the term “mens rea“?
I would agree that it would be unjust (though not to any CIA interrogators who may prosecuted, if they broke the law) to insulate the policymakers from investigation or, if warranted, prosecution, but it could not have escaped your notice (indeed, others here have pointed it out) that Holder has characterized the investigation as “premliminary.” Of course the investigation should follow the facts where they may lead.
Finally, perhaps you might elaborate on why in the penultimate paragraph of the piece you elevate (it seems to me) the value of consistency from administration to administration above the rule of law?
To answer Finder’s initial question:
How about – a later in 2002 CIA analysis that the “way in which” a whole big bunch of the detainees being held at GITMO had conducted themselves as as human trafficking victims, purchased by the US but not having anything to do with 9/11. Or maybe discovering that, in addition to Geneva Conventions, all standards of humanity and morality were being abandoned, including prohibitions on torture. Or possibly discovering that there was an actual gameplan to institute a regime of torture, specifically calibrated to shock the conscience in an effort to reduce detainees – even knowing that many were innoncent – to a state of learned helplessness. Oh, wait – call on me, call on me! Maybe it would be using torture on detainees like al-Libi to gin up a war of aggression, kill thousands of Americans, horrifically injure tens of thousands more, kill and injure hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and create the largest refugee crisis in the world?
IOW – the deliberate use of GITMO and blacksite detainees, not to find Bin Laden but rather to engage in depravity for depravity’s own sake and to generate more depravity throughout the Middle East? Or how about freezing to death a 20 ish yo who had nothing to do with 9/11? Wait, no, maybe it was discovering that we were shipping stray Canadians to Syria for torture based on “ids” from a tortured teenager in GITMO? Or could it be the discovery that GTIMO was being used to house guys named Kurnaz who had the terpitude to generate hundreds of pages of information from multiple intelligence agencies all saying that – – he was innocent of any wrongdoing and in particular was innocent of having a relationship with a suicide bomber since the man identified as being a suicide bomber was at home in Germany and had never left. Could maybe be disappearing children permanently, ya think? Or the Abu Ghraib pictoral generated to show what exactly it was that Bush and Rumsfeld MEANT by saying, “no Geneva conventions.” Of course, it could also be the kind of cold chill you get from guys who not only got salaciously wedded to their torture rights, but who would sit back grinning while US soldiers who were doing what the CIA had declared “legal” got hung out to dry. Such a nice patriotic vignette, that.
And of course, there is the little skimped over fact that, when Holder was making statements about GITMO, not only was the innocence of GITMO detainees being kept secret, as was the US role in purchasing human trafficking victims and implementing torture experiments, but more than that – the CIA black sites had not been revealed at all.
If only I had the “smart guys” as sources that Finder has – maybe I could just skip all that too.
Who do you have to decide to be, in you soul, to publish something like that piece? What does it take to make the argument that if politics are expedient, it’s ok to
kill all the Jews and Gaystorture to death and experiment on innocent people, and when *politics* change, no one should be held to account.Something else Finder glosses – it was those “career prosecutors” in the ED VA who were the great guys who lied to the court the Moussaoui (and possibly other) cases. There’s some great credentials for deferring to an office’s secret investigation. And oh yeah, Paul McNulty from the ED VA office ends up in Oct 2005 (the same year the career prosecutors in his office are making that review and right before the destruction of the tapes he never told Brinkema about) getting the DAG nod. Oh, and from 1996-2001, served as the managing assistant USA in ED VA and he was busily concurring in at least one of the Bradbury get out of free memos and working to keep CIA agents safe while his old colleagues (whose boss is going to go take Comey’s place) were being asked to make the call that would affect both their old buddy now AG and their current boss on his way to becoming AG.
What a LOL to say that the ED of VA was “unforgiving” of CIA transgressions or that anyone in DOJ has been. Bush and the CIA started off their association with the CIA being directly involved in killing a missionary’s wife an infant and almost killing the missionary and his other child. The CIA heirarchy has since been found fibbing about the whole thing to Congress. Where were those unforgiving prosecutors? Hell and again – those unforgiving prosectors were hand in glove with CIA in lying to Judge Brinkema for the love of God. Jeeminee.
Hmm, Cloonan, Coleman, Soufan, videotapes, reams of cables, doctors, psychologists, contractors, bodies, etc. – uh, yeah – some smart guy figured out that all meant no witnesses or evidence. Of course, while those unforgiving prosecutors assist with allowing for the destruction of evidence like tapes I guess it does make it a bit harder.
And on the poor torturer, getting “maddeningly” different information on torture – go show me where anyone in the field was actually getting those Rizzo memos and esp not before they took action, and go show me where anyone forced any torture to do what it is that Finder himself admits they were doing – voluntarily undertaking to take actions that “seem[] to be designed precisely to inflict pain and suffering”
And in contrast to “adminsitrative sanctions” that Finder assures us he knows about and knows happened (I guess in line with handing out a 60 day home and chuch detention for torturing an Iraqi general to death in a sleeping bag) other reports are that, for example, the CIA agent who engineered to the hypothermia torture death of the 20 yo has been promoted and we kind of know that the CIA agent who ordered up the Abu Omar fiasco has been promoted.
Is it one of the *smart guys who aren’t David Addington* who told Finder there would be estoppel?!? bmaz is very right in almost choking on that one.
Interestingly – Finder specifically says Powell was one of the men who approved the waterboarding of high value detainees. If Powell has been telling the truth about being excluded from the Principals meetings involving those kinds of things (and I tend to think after the spanking Taft gave Yoo early on they were scared to have them in the loop) then Finder’s op ed is a lovely opportunity for him to step up to the public accusation Finder just laid down.
Dangit – I don’t have time to reread and edit all the crap I just spieled out, but this one jumped out to me:
Oh, and from 1996-2001,[James Comey] served as the managing assistant USA in ED VA and he was busily concurring in at least one of the Bradbury get out of [jail]free memos and working to keep CIA agents safe while his old colleagues (whose boss is going to go take Comey’s place) were being asked to make the call that would affect both their old buddy, now [D]AG
somedaymetypeprettyandproof
Mary, to be fair, I think the attorneys involved in the Moussaoui case were just incompetent, not evil. Brinkema was no prize in that trial either. The government presented a godawful case. Even so, it is pretty damn easy as we saw in another legal fiasco the Padilla case to get a conviction. Moussaoui’s case was a little different because he was so clearly nuts and a jury might have so found him. In any case, Moussaoui’s guilty plea saved the government’s case. The attorneys did tell Brinkema about the witness tampering in the penalty phase and came clean on some stuff of theirs that even had an appearance of being inappropriate, but like I said they were mostly incompetent. And if I remember correctly it was their later admission when they found out about tapes of some torture sessions that kind of blew the torture tapes scandal wide open. (But maybe I misremember that part.)
They were still lying when they “came clean” in the penalty phase; and when it doesn’t set aside the conviction, for a new allocution at the freaking least, it really isn’t shit (i.e. you have pegged Brinkema at least in one respect). But, even more importantly, the government was sandbagging on egregious evidence destruction; evidence Moussaoui claimed was exculpatory. That compounding the witness tampering was way more than enough that the whole damn case was required to be dismissed if you ask me. It is no different, and pretty much far worse, than what occurred in the Ted Steven s case that led to dismissal.
Well I won’t argue with you. That whole case made me cringe. There’s an old saw that goes: You can tell the real crazy people from those who are faking it. The fakers will swing into the room on the chandeliers. The real crazy people will swing into the room on the chandeliers that aren’t there. Moussaoui definitely belonged in the second category. He was just a sorry, sick, sad person. Our judicial system should have dealt with him as such. Instead prosecutors played along with his delusions and Brinkema was just all over the place but eventually let them (and Moussaoui) turn the trial into a non-stop travesty.
My point on the Moussaoui case is that the ED VA lawyers handling that case had all the normal requirements on them re: the production of the tapes as exculpatory evidence, but more so than that they had production and preservation orders from the court and that same office was handling, the CIA referrals. While the Moussaoui prosecutors may or may not have known about the tapes, they had some duties to send out the preservation notices and lit holds.
More to the point, Finder argues that the ED VA lawyers handling the CIA referrals were on the up and up bc they were “career” prosecutors and “They have a reputation for being hardheaded and unforgiving of C.I.A. transgressions.” But without regard to what the ED VA lawyers handling the Moussaoui case knew (or more importantly should have known after the exercise of minimal professional diligence) the ED VA lawyers handling the CIA referrals were aware of the Moussaoui and, by then, NUMEROUS other cases where allegations of abuse tainting information had been made (e.g., Padilla and numerous GITMO habeas cases pending) so those lawyers who were looking at all the info in the IG report knew that info was at issue in numerous pending Federal court cases, including in their own district and being handled by their own office, and yet far from being “unforgiving” of CIA mistakes, they helped the CIA hide the report and its evidence from the courts having production requests outstanding.
They are some guys whose names should damn well be revealed and they need to trot around to quite a few different courts answering questions from the judges as to their handling of evidence. They should not be the recipients of a syrupy mash note on the NYT op ed page that completely misrepresents their conduct – so that was what I was getting at, not so much motivation of lawyers in Moussaoui. All through the time that Rosenberg was getting to Judge Brinkema the information that McNulty had kept from her, no one mentioned to her that the ED of VA itself had been handling referrals of criminal charges involving the tapes that were not produced.
Brinkema may not have those attorney’s names yet, but she has McNulty’s. It’s a starting point.
This line is funny from any number of perspectives. Unlikely that the Bush DOJ steered justice like a bump car? Yeah, with guys like Ashcroft, Gonzales, and Mukasey who would ever think such a thing? This also lends much greater weight to the tentative, circumscribed effort that Holder has permitted than it deserves. And the NYT? It will let any neocon on to its op-ed pages, dead drunk, delusional, doesn’t matter as long as they can hold the crayon without breaking it long enough to scrawl the most recent talking point.
OT
Anyone who wants poltically correct zucchini bread (whole wheat flour, honey instead of sugar) hold out your plates.
Hey, who are we to argue with a man that can pose for a camera like THAT? Finder is obviously graduate of here:
http://handsomeboymodelingschool.com/
Wonder if he and Holder would ever start a firm together…Finder, Holder, and Keeper?
Nice.
Aw, hey now, Mr. Finder came to engage in good faith, let’s not insult him; engage on the merits.
Well, I stopped reading at this part thinking it was a joke commenter:
I’d rather go get my eyelids pierced. The New Repubic are “merits” I can live without.
Heh, yeah, ya got me there.
On the same day Big and Little Dick Cheney appear on two networks denouncing the AG’s probe as a partisan witchhunt the Times runs an op-ed that appears to reinforce their argument? Deja-vu all over again.
Mary, you give me the Holy Molies.
It never ceases to amaze, which I take as a good sign, that the NY bloody Times gives front OpEd page space to such poorly written propaganda. This work is on par with that of David Brooks and Ross Douthat.
Perfect new name for the NY bloody Times. Former home of Judith Miller, secret publicist for the Pentagon and head cheerleader for the Iraq War.
I don’t think it is a surprise at all. Bill Keller, the Times executive editor is a big time neocon. Andy Rosenthal on the editorial side is too. The Times will editorialize in a liberal way on a few social issues but on foreign policy/national security it is about as loony as you can get.
Any links to tie these guys to the neocons?
Keller came on at the Times after the Miller articles on WMD in Iraq but he kept on Michael Gordon who co-wrote some of them. Gordon shilled for the military over its attempts to sell an Iranian connection to the EFPs. I wrote posts chronicling these everytime he or the Times came up with one. Keller when he came on at the Times spoke about favoring a more robust, militarized American foreign policy and that is the essence of the neocon worldview. And Keller had John Burns as the Times bureau chief in Baghdad for years. Burns would moan about the difficulties that we faced there and then always conclude that the only course available to us was to continue on the one we were on.
As for Rosenthal, it has been just my experience of who has made it on to NYT’s op-ed pages over the course of several years. Like I said there may be some neocon lost in the Amazonian rainforest who hasn’t made it on to the Times op-ed pages but every other one has. And no surprise the quality of their arguments is really, really bad.
When Andrew J. Moonen an employee of Blackwater Security, murdered Raheem Khalif on Christmas Eve in the Green Zone Mr Moonen was whisked out of Iraq by his employer with State Department blessing. There was no intention to investigate let alone prosecute until it became clear the Iraqis would not drop the matter. DOJ very cynically assigned the case to it’s Seattle division knowing full well it would not have the resources or personnel to investigate a murder in Baghdad. The Seattle AG did the expected thing and declined to prosecute. Further outrage on the part of the Iraqi Government has caused them to again cynically re-open the case and keep it on the books as a “cold case” with no active investigation.
Bahaha! Phew, what a relief. No problem, I was just figuring that out myself.
So hey, how ’bout that ol’ existential dilemma: beings, or machines? Isn’t it obvious how torture is perfectly in character for the kind of mechanistic psychology preached by Mitchell Jessen & Assoc and their cohorts at APA? There’s big money in weapons contracts, so they weaponized psychology.
Matrix, or reality-based community; Newtonian automata, or self-sovereign citizens? IMO, that’s the dilemma we face in whether to investigate or not (not to mention fulfill treaty obligations).
Iris Chang wrote in the Rape of Nanking how the Japanese soldiers characterized the Chinese villagers as ‘logs’ – objects rather than people. Easier to abuse objects. An existential dilemma as old as murder, writ large when state sanctioned. How the US reaches a denouement to this sordid tale will say everything about us as a people that the world will ever hear, I think.
Re collateral estoppel, it is the decision of a court not to relitigate a matter upon which a determination was made in a previous court action. It is basically just a way of saying, listen that has already been decided, don’t waste the court’s time, move on. The important point here is that nothing has been litigated in the first place. No court has made any decision about anything. So there can be no collateral estoppel. Just my opinion. Also even if there is collateral estoppel, this in no way affects a party’s right to appeal the initial court decision.
What I was thinking of in my previous comment was that in the Blackwater shootings case. The issue was raised that some Blackwater employees made reports to the State Department about what happened on the understanding that those reports would not be used against them in any future litigation. This complicated but did not stop the later FBI investigation. What DOJ lawyers needed to show was that the information they developed was in no way connected to those reports. As long as they could do that, they could use whatever information they acquired as the basis for a subsequent prosecution. Just because the State Department made a promise about certain evidence did not preclude another government department from developing that info on its own and using it.
Hugh those “reports” in the Nissor Square massacre were exactly what I was referring to with the phrase “Garrity Agreement Letters” @57 above. Those are, at best, in the form of what is a commonly referred to as use immunity. A Garrity Agreement provides that information obtained from public employees, including Police Officers, after a threat of discharge, IF it is compelled, cannot be used in criminal proceedings. There is no reason in the world to believe that is involved here, if it was, you would have heard about it from the rooftops from the folks whose asses are on the line. And, honestly, I think the procedural posture is far removed from a Garrity situation here. Just ain’t happening.
Thanks for the clarification.
I should point out that in the Blackwater case, those involved were contractors not public employees. They were not threatened with dismissal (that I know of). And it was dubious to say the least that the State Department could make a use immunity agreement with them. It could and did say that the statements made by the Blackwater contractors would not be used against them, and to my knowledge they weren’t, and the FBI in its investigation would have taken precautions in its investigation to show that they weren’t.
Good lord, the NYT really will print anything. Depressing as hell.
Mr. Finder, just go back to your novels. Please.
Apologies if this has been posted before
The CIA and Interrogations: A Bad Fit from the Start By Robert Baer (former CIA)
http://www.time.com/time/natio…..tter-daily
Kind of makes the CIA out like confused kittens.
Baer has had some pretty interesting pieces. It may be off base, but the take I get is that he sees both how much we were at risk and damaged by a lack of enough, good human intel and also I think sees how much the conduct of the GWOT has hurt the ability to get “more better” human intel while at the same time increasing the pool of the angry. How do you reruit and manage sources when the acknowledged US policy is to be able to disappear Muslim men, women and children at will and do anything to them, guilty or innocent? It’s not necessarily ez recruiting sources as “the other” in the ME or Indonesia or elsewhere, even when “the other” has the reputation of being relatively the good guys. When, in addition to other, you are also now pretty predominantly seen as engaging in crusades against nationality, ethnicity and religion, what source is going to trust that he’ll get paid instead of disappeared? The risk/reward equation has to be getting pretty tough to balance.
************
Going back to estoppel, I will toss this in – collateral estoppel isn’t the only kind of estoppel out there. Other than that I’m only going to obliquely say that I wouldn’t completely exclude the possibility that there might be some issues of estoppel outside of claim preclusion estoppel, that a cagey lawyer might at least try to toss out there in connection with the OLC solicitations to act/memos. I’m not going to flesh that out and in the end I don’t see any of it as being well founded anyway, especially vis a vis the requisites of relationships and reliance and inducements and coverage of all the issues outstanding.
BTW – kind of a non-sequitor but related, I do notice that the unredacted IG report doesn’t even make an effort to hit on “the preliminaries” nor does it seem from the structure of it that the redacted parts do either. No one seems to want to deal with the Article 147 issues in their GWOT and the concept of rendition to blacksite torture and attainder instead of to courts in their civilian criminal law setting – and the anal assaults and drugging. The hint there is that those are not going to be easy to address and there are reasons everyone is staying away from them IMO.
Yeah, there are a whole passel of other sub-forms of estoppel arguments that could be made as equity pleas I suppose, but Finder was quite clearly pitching collateral/issue preclusion (as were the vaporous Harvard Law sources). It is all total hooey. I can intellectually accept someone arguing the targets here should not be charged and tried (disagree of course), but to take to the New York Times and tell me they can’t because of estoppel??? Get the fuck out, that is patent bullshit. And now LD is busting my chops for being to polite! Tee hee hee.
Holey soggy frijoles, did I ever miss out on some excitement: first a visit from a “published author”, then Mary takes over part of fearless freep’s job description & dusts him off. RIP bf. No ad hominem intended, pal, but so far it appears your op- could have done with a lot of -ed, & your blograp is in desperate need of a complete whine-ectomy. But as they say, everyone’s good at something, so it’s heartening to see you’ve got that novel-writing thing going; counter-intuitive, of course — straight out of Pollyanna College of rightin’, that seems plain — actually incredible — but heartening somehow, because otherwise you might be tempted to sell out like that other Joe with the really long last name [Notreallyaplumberbutaclownplant I think].
Oh, just noticed patrolman bmaz issued a neighborhood immunity card, so sorry, just ignore all the above.
But not without noting that the half-time score in the Estoppel Bowl:
That’s bmaz, Mary, hugh….ach, throw me in, too; I’ve dealt with a few really hairy estoppel challenges, i.e. 4 actual, real to god verifiable lawyers with degrees & licenses & experience in the area, & with reasons & capable of citing case law & legal rationales & exceptions & drawing distinctions & identifying nuances & all that good stuff [you don’t want to get me started, pal];
so that’s 4 for that side.
Versus “a few” unnamed, almost utterly unidentified, unverifiable, possibly completely out of their area or depth or both, for all we know possibly imaginary [fiction writers, go figure] purported Harvard law friends — sheesh, even the “friends” part is suspect; coming up with a carefully crafted & historically quite narrow legal concept with hundreds of years of history in the U.S. & in the U.K. & all through the world still reflecting the influence of the English legal system of common law & common pleas & criminal precedents & King’s Bench & Queen’s Bench administrative review challenges & that’s so unsupported on the known or in any way conceivable facts, I’m kind of getting impressed you even got through the whole word without a spelling error.
So that’s: Who in hell knows for your side.
Oh, oh, SORRY officer bmaz, I got carried away. My deepest apologies to the most aptly named bottomfeeder, esq.
c-span this a.m on Cheney. Felt like a failed trial baloon by republicans to check out whether his weekend foray on Fox had struck a chord.
Cherry picked paragraphs from NYT and Wapo…defending and making the “Cheney case” (necessary evil and how dare you?).
5 callers. End of story. Quickest top story I have ever seen…NEXT!!
1st caller made the republican case with a too nice radio voice. (this is ridiculous and Dems are showing they support the enemy. Caller was way too articulate for your average Josephine who would really believe that Dems support terrorists when they don’t want torture).
2nd caller…all about the constitution. Dem
3rd caller…all about our reputation abroad and the need for holding those accountable. Independent.
4th caller…all about our reputation abroad. Independent.
Next story about Japanese trade. Sleeper…5th call…republican line under new story…defending poor Cheney.
I’d say he didn’t help himself much if c-span was any indication. They clearly got off the topic as quickly as they could.
Maybe this is on a roll…
bmaz,
If I am not mistaken, this is not the first visit to EW or the Lake by our published writer?
Is there a way to check?
No, it is not. There is a link to his previous journey in my post. He was here about ten days ago in a Marcy post on Blackwater Circular Firing Squad.
Goodness, sorry I missed it bmaz. I knew I saw him before, because I had hit a nerve with my own comment which brought out a response.
And it reminds me, that not only addressing content of pieces, the spin of facts, but also, poor journalistic practices, is of great import in holding the fourth estate accountable. Unfortunately, the op-ed page can be the place of spin.
Well, in fairness, there is spin, and there is pure unadulterated hogwash; and the things I really objected to from Finder’s NYT piece fall directly in the latter category. By the way, I would like to suggest a group round of applause for the filleting and gutting Mary has performed on the specimen. Really something special this time (although always superb).
Well done Mary and you as well bmaz, concise and clear rebutting of hogwash deserving of a standing O for last night’s fine work.
i believe i have seen posts from bottomfeeder here on more then the 1 prior occasion cited.
but the real purpose for my post is to tell bmaz, mary, hugh, labdancer, ew & various others who contributed FACTS to this thread – you take my breath away.
if threads could be bronzed, this would be one, (of many here), i would choose.
bravo & thank you
Now, in fairness, I have no problem with pure unadulterated hogwash in fiction novels.
Yes, applause. Imagine an op-ed by Mary…(John Lennon playing in klynn’s head).
bottomfeeder
I’ll let bmaz and Mary set you straight on the legal issues per se.
But two points. First, your suggestion that there aren’t a lot of byzantine factions at the CIA–and among its former heads–is silliness, which makes your tiresome appeal to one attack on Porter Goss completely irrelevant. bmaz attacked this op-ed and I attacked your Daily Beast piece because you were spewing propaganda, either willingly or ignorantly.
But one more point. As everyone upthread has pointed out, I have LONG supported going after the lawyers. I’m just curious, though, how you think we might get to the lawyers without first going after the grunts? I have very specifically pointed out that once you get to Mitchell, you get to some of the more unsavory things that Yoo and Rizzo and Addingotn and Haynes did to give torture the illusion of legality. But you’ev got to get to Mitchell first. Maybe you’ve got some way to get there directly. And since neither your nor I are lawyers, I’ll let others weigh in on how well those means might work. But your unwillingness to go after those who broke the law lower down does seem to preclude going after those up the chain of command.
Those “means” you describe have a proven track record over hundreds of years; it is simply how criminal enterprises are attacked. They work as intended splendidly; but cannot do so if no one will have the common sense and duty to the rule of law to use them. And therein resides my profound problem with Mr. Finder, he prints a pile of claptrap about the law, that is patently disingenuous if not intentionally false, and then has the temerity to semi grouse about not going after higher ups at the same time as using the false memes to prevent it. Now I have just seen the tail end of him on MSNBC spewing the same baloney. It is patently dishonest argument.
Mary, I would dearly love to see you cut loose in a courtroom. Steel traps look at you in awe.
You must have to rein yourself in to keep the folks on the stand from stuttering during the cross, so as not to evoke pity for them from the jury. (Unless of course the person on the stand rates being taken down a peg or eight in public, as was the case here.)
Bravo, bravo, bravo!
Well, well. I see that the sophistry (in the modern sense) of Mr. Finder has has largely been dealt with, but there’s one part of his argument left I’d like to take a whack at. To wit:
This is a truly repugnant notion. The Bush administration entered office with the goal of corrupting the Department of Justice into a partisan political tool. To imagine that this corruption of the DoJ extended to the offering of internships and Hatch Act violations but didn’t touch the decisions affecting Cheney’s nearest and dearest policy initiative is absurd, but to argue that because they successfully corrupted the DoJ, we must now enforce that policy is truly hideous. If Mr. Finder finds his way back here, I’d suggest that he asks his CIA sources about Hiwa Abdul Rahman Rashul. Why did the career prosecutors at the DoJ decide not to prosecute that war crimes case? Perhaps because Donald Rumsfeld’s public statements implicated himself and George Tenet ?
Sadly, Joseph Finder appears to be a hit and run specialist that has his name tagged for a Google alert or something, and then shows up to leave one single self serving pile of tripe comment and then flees and cowardly refuses to engage on the merits.