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1727 search results for: torture

1681

Immunity

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I’m all in favor of holding the several people in the White House who intervened to destroy evidence responsible for their actions.
But as we begin to hear about Jose Rodriguez considering immunity it might be well to remember what I pointed out when Rodriguez was first floating the idea of immunity.

In the hands of a less than shrewd majority and a politically reliable minority leader, immunity can be counter-productive. In the case of Monica Goodling, the Dems basically gave Monica a get out of jail card for nothing in exchange. Until I see that Crazy Pete Hoekstra’s heart is in the right place on this issue (which would, frankly, astound me), then I’d suggest we want to be very careful before we give Rodriguez something for nothing.

1682

Timing, Again

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Marty Lederman suggests that BushCo timed their terror tape destruction for a moment when they might technically evade obstruction charges for doing so. That might explain the general dodginess surround public reports of White House opposition to the torture tape destruction.

1684

Dates

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The AP has a story out that seems to clear all the White House lawyers of supporting the destruction of the torture tapes. All of them, that is, except David Addington.

But it also raises still more questions about timing, focusing (as a WaPo article yesterday did) on discussions in 2004. If the substantive discussions happened in 2004, then why did the tapes get destroyed in 2005?

1686

Sub-Heading: White House Panics

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The White House has gone to the trouble of making the NYT correct their headline indicating that news of the involvement of Addington and Gonzales in discussions of the terror tapes differs from the story the White House was pitching–that Harriet Miers was the only one involved.
While the White House is correct that they never officially claimed that Harriet was the only one involved, someone has certainly been shopping that story for over a week. Which is why it behooves those who received that story to out their source, particularly if that person is in the White House.

1687

Henry Gets Impatient

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Apparently, I’m not the only one who noticed that, since the time when Henry Waxman first asked Michael Mukasey to hand over the White House-related materials from the CIA Leak Case investigation, he has proven to be mighty responsive to requests from Congress when it involves covering up for the White House.

1690

Oversight or Politics?

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Michael Mukasey has engaged in a remarkable bit of sophistry with his refusal to clue Congress in on the joint DOJ/CIA IG investigation into the destruction of the torture tapes. He explains his decision as an attempt to avoid “any perception that our law enforcement decisions are subject to political influence.”

Of course, the “political influence” Mukasey was asked to address during his nomination hearings was the kind exerted when a Senator or a Congresswoman called the Attorney General privately to demand that a USA either accelerate the prosecution of a political figure or be fired. In this matter, Mukasey has been asked to respond to what is an almost unparalleled degree of bipartisan support for an open inquiry into a matter that just stinks, already, of a cover-up. Leahy and Specter (and Reyes and Hoekstra and Durbin and Biden and more) called for a procedure that had oversight built in.

And Mukasey said no.

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