Posted on 01/04/2005 8:18:06 PM PST by Pikamax
Bush's Counsel Sought Ruling About Torture By DAVID JOHNSTON and NEIL A. LEWIS
ASHINGTON, Jan. 4 - Alberto R. Gonzales, the White House counsel, intervened directly with Justice Department lawyers in 2002 to obtain a legal ruling on the extent of the president's authority to permit extreme interrogation practices in the name of national security, current and former administration officials said Tuesday.
Mr. Gonzales's role in seeking a legal opinion on the definition of torture and the legal limits on the force that could be used on terrorist suspects in captivity is expected to be a central issue in the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings scheduled to begin on Thursday on Mr. Gonzales's nomination to be attorney general.
The request by Mr. Gonzales produced the much-debated Justice Department memorandum of Aug. 1, 2002, which defined torture narrowly and said that Mr. Bush could circumvent domestic and international prohibitions against torture in the name of national security.
Until now, administration officials have been unwilling to provide details about the role Mr. Gonzales had in the production of the memorandum by the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel. Mr. Gonzales has spoken of the memorandum as a response to questions, without saying that most of the questions were his.
Current and former officials who talked about the memorandum have been provided with firsthand accounts about how it was prepared. Some discussed it in an effort to clear up what they viewed as a murky record in advance of Mr. Gonzales's confirmation hearings. Others spoke of the matter apparently believing that the Justice Department had unfairly taken the blame for the memorandum.
A White House spokeswoman, Erin Healy, said Tuesday that while Mr. Gonzales personally requested the August opinion, he was only seeking "objective legal advice and did not ask the Office of Legal Counsel to reach any specific conclusion."
As the White House's chief lawyer, Mr. Gonzales supervised the production of a number of legal memorandums that shaped the administration's legal framework for conducting its battle against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. Of the documents that have been made public, only one was written by Mr. Gonzales. In that memorandum, dated January 2002, he advised Mr. Bush that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to fighters captured in Afghanistan. The next month the White House decided that the Geneva Conventions would be applied to Taliban captives but not to detainees linked to Al Qaeda.
As a result, a major area of questioning at his confirmation hearing is expected to be the role he played in the production of the other documents, like the August 2002 memorandum. That memorandum concluded that interrogators had great leeway to question detainees using coercive techniques that they could assert were not torture.
The Justice Department formally rescinded the August memorandum last week and in its place issued a legal opinion saying that torture should be more broadly defined and that there was no need to say that Mr. Bush had the authority to sanction torture because he has said unequivocally that it is not permitted.
The revision stated that "torture is abhorrent both to American law and values and international norms." It rejected the language in the earlier memorandum, which said that only physical pain "of an intensity akin to that which accompanies serious physical injury such as death or organ failure" constituted torture punishable by law.
Administration officials said over the last few days that Mr. Gonzales had played a role in the decision to issue the new legal opinion as well, but they did not offer specifics.
Mr. Gonzales's request resulting in the original August 2002 memorandum was somewhat unusual, the officials said, because he went directly to lawyers at the Office of Legal Counsel, bypassing the office of the deputy attorney general, which is often notified of politically delicate requests for legal opinions made by executive-branch agencies, including the White House.
The memorandum has become one of the most hotly debated legal documents in the so-called war on terror. Democrats and human rights groups have complained that it created a permissive atmosphere that led to serious abuses of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The memorandum was addressed to Mr. Gonzales and was signed by Jay S. Bybee, then the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department.
Officials dispute how much senior Justice Department officials knew of the memorandum as it was being prepared. A former official and a current one said that neither Attorney General John Ashcroft nor his deputy, Larry D. Thompson, were aware of the memorandum until it was about to be submitted to the White House.
Another former official said, however, that they were given progress reports as the memorandum took shape.
John Yoo, a senior Justice Department lawyer who wrote much of the memorandum, exchanged draft language with lawyers at the White House, the officials said. Mr. Yoo, now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said in an article published Sunday in The San Jose Mercury News that Mr. Gonzales did not apply any pressure on him to tailor the memorandum to accommodate the White House.
Instead, Mr. Yoo said that Mr. Gonzales was merely seeking to "understand all available options" in a perilous time, when the United States faced unprecedented threats.
But a senior administration official disagreed, saying that the memorandum's conclusions appeared to closely align with the prevailing White House view of interrogation practices. The official said the memorandum raised questions about whether the Office of Legal Counsel had maintained its longstanding tradition of dispensing objective legal advice to its clients in executive-branch agencies.
While the nature of Mr. Gonzales's specific discussions with the Justice Department remains unclear, administration officials said that Mr. Gonzales's customary way of dealing with Justice Department lawyers was to pose questions about issues rather than offer his own conclusions, although one said his preferences could sometimes be inferred easily from his questions.
Justice Department officials said that the timing of the revised memorandum, which was posted on the Justice Department's Internet site without announcement late on Dec. 30, was a result of instructions from James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general.
Mr. Comey, the officials said, told lawyers to complete the revised opinion before the end of the year. At the same time, officials said they were mindful that issuance of the new opinion might help neutralize the issue for Mr. Gonzales even as it served as a sharp critique of the earlier opinion.
Mr. Gonzales talked about the August 2002 memorandum in a meeting with reporters last June, when the White House sought to defend its actions at the height of the uproar over abuses of prisoners in Iraq.
Without discussing his own role in soliciting the document, Mr. Gonzales said that the memorandum was not a policy directive to officials in the field but a response to questions about the scope of the federal law prohibiting torture and the international convention on torture.
"The president has given no order or directive that would immunize from prosecution anyone engaged in conduct that constitutes torture," Mr. Gonzales said. "All interrogation techniques actually authorized have been carefully vetted, are lawful, and do not constitute torture."
Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, who has signaled an intent to question Mr. Gonzales vigorously about his role in the memorandums, said Tuesday that he has been continually frustrated by the White House in trying to obtain answers and documents.
In a letter to Mr. Gonzales on Tuesday, Mr. Leahy wrote, "I am disappointed that, contrary to your promises to me to engage in an open exchange and answer my questions in connection with your confirmation process, you have not answered my letters" requesting documents.
But Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and the new chairman of the committee, said that Mr. Leahy's complaints appeared unjustified.
Am I missing something here? Because it seems like the incredible amazing thing they're breaking here is that...he sought a ruling on how far interrogators could go while interrogating people who are killing our troops and are allies with people who want to get nuclear weapons and kill us all? I just wanna be clear on this...
I hate the rats
The Times is getting more and more comfortable tossing out the word "torture" when they write about U.S. intelligence-gathering.
I think we're all missing on how this is a bad thing for Bush or for Gonzales.
If you really think about it... If Bush were the cowboy, go it alone, arrogant S.O.B. the left says that he is... Why did he bother trying to set legal parameters and definitions for torture, and the extent to which interrogators may go on the express orders of the Chief Executive (aka the President).
In other words, let's define limits and then stay within those limits.
"But a senior administration official disagreed, saying that the memorandum's conclusions appeared to closely align with the prevailing White House view of interrogation practices."
What's this person's name?
In addition, Gonzales also advised the President that the Geneva Convention did not apply to terrorists -- something everybody (but liberals) already knew.
Earthshaking stuff. Can't imagine why the New York Times thought it worth 1300 words...
Maybe he got them from Dan Rather.
This effort will gain them rallying points with their choir, but will further erode their national support.
A person of Hispanic descent has strayed off the plantation, and the massas want him PUNISHED. Biden, Kennedy, Reid, Leahy and very possibly Chuck Schumer all want to make sure this breach is healed over toot sweet.
AHHHHHHH....NOW we're talking. Bush cannot be allowed to be seen as having the cabinet that looks like America.
This debate goes way back to Gitmo. Found this stored in my old files. I posted this at some site when there was a discussion about what could be done with terrorists and what powers a president has. The way I understand it, Bush and the administration wanted a ruling on what power the president had under 'certain conditions' to authorize 'torture'. My analogy compared getting a ruling on torture and using actual torture under certain condidtions to 'shooting down civilian aircraft' under extreme condidtions, which we have never done. Last I checked shooting down civilian aircraft violates US and International law, but ...... what I wrote a few years ago in this debate.
I’m against ‘real’ torture. And I’m against shooting down commercial airliners. Except as a real last resort.
I’m may be way off base here, but it is against US law and international law to shoot down commercial airliners but many 9/11 victims [and critics of the Bush administration] have complained since 9/11 that we did not have fighters in the air soon enough to shoot down the airliners heading towards the WTC and the DC.
How would the US military been able to do this? Only with authorization from the President [and maybe the VP’s]. Why is it OK for the President to give permission to shoot down commercial airliners and kill innocent civilians but not as a last resort to give authorization for ‘torture’? Both are against the law.
And if we had fighters in the air in time, when and where should we have shot down those airliners on 9/11? You can’t wait until they were right on top of the WTC or Pentagon? But if we had shot them down while they were still over Massachusetts or Connecticut or Ohio I can here the outcry against doing just that from the same people who are now asking why we did not have armed fighters in the air soon enough. Why? Because if we had shot them down, the government may never have been able to prove they actually intended to fly into buildings. When were we sure the first plane was actually going to fly into the WTC? I guess the rationale is that it would have been OK to shoot the last three aircraft down after the first one actually DID fly into the WTC.
But I take it shooting down airliners falls into the realm of ‘self defense’. But would it have been self defense to shoot them down before any of them had flown into a building? Could the use of torture EVER be considered ‘self defense’?
Either way, it seems that the President has extraordinary powers. And what if the airliners had been foreign? France, British? Would that change anything?
But a US President has never authorized the military to shoot down a civilian aircraft, and as far as I know, a President has never actually authorized ‘torture’. But I see no problem with the President having the Justice Department look into the ‘legalities’ of a President authorizing ‘torture’ just as I’m sure someone years ago at the Justice department looked into the legalities of the President being able to authorize the shooting down of commercial airliners.
Liberals can't stand the idea that someone like Bush must think the unthinkable, and see that all options are open. In their little fantasy world--and I don't think that's too tough a way to look at it--if they just cover their eyes and ears to horrible choices--dropping A-bombs, shooting down civilian aircraft--then the circumstances that might make those choices viable won't occur. It's like a kid covering his eyes when he hears a creaking sound he fears will be a scary monster--if he can't see it, then it can't see him.
The liberals value childlike feelings and expressions above all--they value "innocence" above all things. They despise even thinking about things that make innocents or children sad. It'd be nice if we lived in that kind of world. We don't.
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