David Broder, the senior op-ed writer at the
Washington Post, has joined his colleagues (Fred
Hiatt, David Ignatius, and Richard Cohen) in
condemning Attorney General Eric Holder’s
decision to name a special counsel to examine
possible law-breaking by CIA interrogators.
And like his colleagues, Broder has put forth
a list of irrelevant reasons for turning away
from the abuses and violations of law during
the eight years of the Bush administration.
Although Holder’s inquiry will only target
those who acted beyond so-called legal guidelines,
Broder is concerned that we will ultimately
see Vice President Dick Cheney “standing
in the dock.” Broder should be concerned
with the need to explicitly repudiate the policies
and actions of President George Bush and Cheney
that violated domestic and international law.
These actions require a public hearing and an
open record of some kind. Holder’s inquiry
is the first step in what Mark Danner of the
New York Review of Books called a “complicated
political process.”
Broder’s lamest and most disingenuous
reasons deal with CIA director Leon Panetta
and the methodology of the Post’s news
staff. Broder calls Panetta a “conscientious
director” of the CIA, but Panetta has
surrounded himself with the ideological drivers
of the policies of detention and interrogation,
Steve Kappes and Michael Sulick, and has fought
every effort of the Obama administration to
bring transparency and accountability to the
Bush-Cheney policies.
Broder adds that Panetta’s “judgment”
is supported by the reporting of Ignatius and
others with “excellent sources inside
the CIA.” Their sources, of course, are
Kappes and Sulick, the very officers who seek
to cover-up their own activities and have the
freedom to talk to reporters. Good reporting
and journalism require an honest effort to seek
all sources and not merely those who reify one’s
own positions.
Broder echoes Panetta when he argues that any
investigation will have a “harmful effect
on the morale and operations of his agency.”
No, morale was compromised by high-level CIA
officials such as George (“slam dunk”)
Tenet, who tailored intelligence to go to war
against Iraq, and Porter Goss and Michael Hayden,
who used outside contractors to build secret
prisons, conduct extraordinary renditions, and
engage in torture and abuse.
The CIA Inspector General (IG) responsible
for the 2004 report on interrogations and torture
told Der Spiegel this week that he decided on
preparing a report because “some agency
employees involved with the program…were
uneasy about it; he told the Washington Post
last week that he “could not walk through
the cafeteria without people walking up to me,
not to complain but to say ‘More power
to you.’”
CIA torture and abuse as well as extraordinary
renditions also compromised valuable liaison
relations with European intelligence services
that are needed to combat international terrorism
and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
As a result of CIA’s illegal activities,
intelligence services in Germany, Italy, and
Spain were refusing to cooperate with their
CIA counterparts. Nevertheless, the CIA is still
resisting the release of hundreds of pages of
internal documents on detentions and interrogations,
arguing that national security is at stake.
No, national embarrassment is involved and not
national security.
At some point, Broder and his colleagues should
be forced to read the 2004 IG Report on detentions
and interrogations; the 2004 CIA report on interrogation
techniques; the 2004 Taguba report on military
abuse of detainees; the 2005 collection of “secret”
documents by Karen Greenberg and Joshua Dratel
in their The Torture Papers: The Road to Abu
Ghraib; the 2007 International Committee of
the Red Cross Report on CIA’s treatment
of detainees; the 2008 Senate Armed Services
report on U.S. treatment of detainees; and Jane
Mayer’s book The Dark Side.
Then, they need to compare the treatment of
the detainees, some of whom were totally innocent
or erroneously detained, with what the Justice
Department memoranda on interrogations permitted.
Of course, Broder believes that the Justice
Department torture memoranda demonstrate that
the Bush administration engaged in a “deliberate,
and internally well-debated policy decision,
made in the proper places…by the proper
officials.” Meanwhile, the Post has presented
no evidence of policy debates on torture and
abuse, extraordinary renditions, and secret
prisons.
Broder and his colleagues could also try to
interview those individuals who watched some
or all of the 92 torture tapes before they were
destroyed by high-ranking officials from the
CIA’s National Clandestine Service. This
destruction of evidence has been investigated
for the past two years by John Durham, who will
conduct the current inquiry for Attorney General
Holder.
Broder, Ignatius, Hiatt, and Cohen have relied
entirely on those CIA operatives who are trying
to put the best possible face on CIA transgressions;
the ethics of good journalism requires that
they seek sources to learn about the details
of the sordid and sadistic activities that put
the nation at risk. President Barack Obama should
be credited with closing the secret prisons
and ending the practice of torture and abuse,
but the nation still needs to confront and understand
the evidence and the events of the past six
years.
Finally, the news and editorial reporters of
the Washington Post need to compare their findings
of the evidence with the laws that govern the
illegalities that have taken place. They could
start with the 8th amendment of the Constitution
against “cruel and unusual punishments”
(it has the virtue of being short); the War
Crimes Act of 1996; the Convention against Torture
of 1984 (yes, the United States is a signatory);
and of course Common Article Three of the Geneva
Conventions.
Broder and his colleagues do not understand
that the stature of international and domestic
law is diminished when a nation violates it
with impunity. The stature of a nation is diminished
when it commits crimes against humanity. And
the national leadership and the nation itself
are diminished when it ignores the need for
accountability and explicit repudiation. Sen.
Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., had it right when he called
for a “truth commission” to gather
information on the CIA programs that the Bush
administration endorsed and protected.
This would represent a good start in restoring
our moral compass on the crimes of the post-9/11
era. The judgment of history will be harsh if
we choose not to do so.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University,
is The Public Record’s National Security
and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years
with the CIA, the National War College, and
the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of
Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
