Back to the Question of ABC’s Sources
Remember that series of stories from ABC about Bush’s top advisors choreographing torture techniques with Bush’s explicit approval? I know it’s hard to remember those stories what with your rabid obsession with flag pins and whatnot.
As a reminder, I had wondered who from the Principals Committee might have served as a source for ABC. Well, the Guardian just published this (h/t Ellie).
The US’s most senior general was "hoodwinked" by top Bush administration officials determined to push through aggressive interrogation techniques for terror suspects held at Guantánamo Bay, the Guardian can reveal.
[snip]
• Myers believes he was a victim of "intrigue" by top lawyers at the department of justice, the office of the vice president, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld’s defence department.
• Myers wrongly believed interrogation techniques had been taken from the army’s field manual.
The lawyers who pushed through the interrogation techniques – all of them political appointees – were Alberto Gonzales, David Addingon and William Haynes.
Others involved were Doug Feith, Rumsfeld’s undersecretary for policy, and Jay Bybee and John Yoo, two assistant attorney generals.
[snip]
The Bush administration has tried to explain away the ill-treatment of detainees at Guantánamo and the Abu Ghraib prison, in Baghdad, by blaming junior officials.
Sands establishes that pressure for the aggressive and cruel treatment of detainees came from the very top and was sanctioned by the most senior lawyers.
Myers, the most senior military officer of the most powerful country in the world, was one top official who did not understand the implications of what was being done.
Sands, who spent three hours with the former general, describes him as being "confused" about the decisions that were taken.
[snip]
"As we worked through the list of techniques, Myers became increasingly hesitant and troubled," Sands writes. "Haynes and Rumsfeld had been able to run rings around him."
Myers and his closest advisers were cut out of the decision-making process, so he was not given sufficient opportunity to object to measures he now says he strongly disapproved of.
He did not know that Bush administration officials were changing the rules allowing interrogation techniques, including the use of dogs, amounting to torture.
"We never authorised torture, we just didn’t, not what we would do," Myers said.
This piece certainly makes it clear that Myers would like to blame others for the torture regime in the US.
At the same time, the content of this article suggests it is unlikely for the following lines in the ABC story:
“It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time,” said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. “They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan.’”
[snip]
“These discussions weren’t adding value,” a source said. “Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it’s legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it.”
This source seems to admit that the techniques rehearsed in the Principals Committee amounted to torture. And certainly, the techniques he seems to refer to must include some of the techniques that Sands reviewed with the General. So either Myers played dumb with Sands and not with ABC, or there’s another source from the Principals Committee.
Finally, Myers seems aware of the lawyers-level machinations around torture, but he does not admit to being aware of the Principals’ level machinations (except, perhaps, for that of Cheney and Rummy). That would make him a more likely source for the earlier WaPo story than for the ABC stories.
bmaz has shared his typically sardonic impression of Myers offline–I’ll let him repeat it in the comments. But unfortunately, this portrayal of Myers getting "hoodwinked" doesn’t say much about the fact that Myers believes Dougie Feith is the fucking stupidest guy in the world. A reader reminds me that Tommy Franks, not Myers, is the one who thinks Dougie Feith is the stupidest fucking guy in the world. Presumably, then, Franks thinks the hoodwinked Myers is not quite so bad.
The “whatnot” is now Ayers, by the way.
As I said in another location,
Gee, I dunno, Myers is a little late to the parade eh? Doesn’t this “ignorance” have to make him, at a minimum, the second “fucking stupidest guy on the face of the planet”? I am happy to use this crap to nail Cheney, Addington, Bush etc., but have little sympathy for Myers, and an ocean of water wouldn’t wash this shit down.
Well, consider that it’s taken Congress years to assemble some of the pieces (and they literally stumbled on the USAG firings by accident, and even then it took Josh Marshall and TPM to assemble the information into a clear pattern), I’m willing to cut Myers a bit of slack.
After all, Cheney and Rumsfeld set up a parallel DoS operation, a parallel DoD operation, and were already spying on us by Sept 2001 — it looks as if Myers was lacking the information he needed to realize how they were punking him.
Let’s hope he decides to settle a few bureaucratic scores.
Wait a second here, Myers is either oblivious to what is being done under his command, is ignorant of the contents of his own controlling field manual, or both. No matter how you add that up, he was derelict and unfit.
Perhaps you are correct. The passage stated:
We’ve seen these people lie unremittingly. It’s as if they’re a bunch of Humbert Humberts and Iraq/Iran is their Lolita fixation.
I’m not holding Myers up for sainthood or martyrdom. However, these asshats lied to the US public (and our allies) about Niger yellowcake; given the scope and frequency of their lies, it’s a safe bet they also lied to Myers. I don’t think being lied to, and having to take a bit of extra time to figure out who’s lying, and about what, makes a person automatically incompetent. I think it makes them up against a more challenging, difficult situation.
I’m not excusing Myers.
I’m trying to point out, however, that the BushCheney + neocon (Wolfowitz, Hadley, Perle, etc, etc) must have been running rampant when Myers was COS. Having to track that many rats would have impaired anyone’s ability to look out for the military.
That’s all I’m saying.
Is this where all the rats start to flee the sinking ship? Are we there yet?
Bob in HI
I think they are packing their little bags and going over the pros and cons in their pea-like brains.
The ship tilting surge to the gang-plank hasn’t quite happened yet.
-GSD
EW, I didn’t mention my source guessitmate in any of your earlier posts on this topic, but I’ll do so now…just in case I forget. *g*
“One” of the sources I believe is FBI Director Mueller.
The rationale that led me to this is the following:
1. ABC’s Jan Crawford Greenberg’s bailiwick is the legal community, particularly the DC legal community. Like SCOTUS, the DOJ, and the FBI.
2. Mueller is on the record as opposing “enhanced interrogation” techniques; instead preferring the FBI’s own interrogation methodology to “gain the trust” of the suspect.
3. Mueller has shown a wee bit of spine in his pushback wrt to the Ashcroft Hospital scene via his willingness to “resign” rather than accept the White House’s illegal actions and policies.
4. Mueller is a lawyer (Hello Jan Crawford Greenberg), and seems to be one who takes most of his ethical and legal responsibilities seriously. I’m not saying he’s perfert; not at all! Just that he is not of the Addington, Yoo, Gonzales et al ethics-free school of law.
5. Lastly, I don’t know that Mueller was ever in attendance at some/most/all of these Torture meetings, but I do believe that he, as the Director of the FBI, the lead national law enforcement and domestic spy/terrorist catching agency, is in fact a “Principal” who would be in attendance at a “Principal’s Meeting”.
And as a second guess, a source might be someone on Mueller’s staff or a FBI subordinate in the immediate vicinity.
I’d say that’s pretty persuasive. I’d buy all but number 5 (because of the technical definition of the Principals Committee), but he may have seconded Ashcroft or been brought in anyway.
See what happens when you wake up sleeping Mad Dogs?
I’ll buy your technical definition (and Wiki concurs *g*), and as well that the AG and FBI Director, while not “statutory” members of the Principal’s meeting, may likely have been in attendance as SME (subject matter experts).
I’m mostly in lurking mode because of family issues today, but I can’t resist this one:
Would that be the reincarnation of Deep Throat?
Meant to reply earlier, but…you know how it goes. *g*
And yes, twould be in the highest traditions of the FBI to squeal on their law-breaking masters.
So in honor of the ghost of W. Mark Felt:
We doff our hats to those who
squealspeak truth to power.I am still for Ashcroft’s COS, David Ayers, as the second source.
1. He called Comey to stop Gonzo and Card.
2. He was one of the threatened resigners.
3. He is the right hand man of a Principal.
4. The ABC piece, and a lot of recent leaks, have painted Ashcroft in a better light than other Principals.
Isn’t two sources sort of a standard requirement of journalism? Maybe it’s Mueller and Ayers. Maybe there is even a third or fourth.
Working against the general hypothesis of a source in the DOJ is the very fact that it had been so overwhelmingly
Cheneyizedpoliticized with Regent U alumni, obscure Federalist Society wackos, and your ordinary run-of-the-mill wingnut Rapture Evangelicals.Your’s is an excellent choice however in that Ashcroft was likely to have one of his own as COS instead of a White House-
reportingsupplied weasel.And I believe we can convincingly say that one of Jan Crawford Greenberg’s sources just has to be a lawyer. But there’s small comfort in that since those are the only folks allowed in DC.
The Regent alum who was put in charge of federal hiring standards [sic] under Bush knew what they were about. They hired a pool of Regent grads, especially at the DOJ. It created not just another clique, as might someone from Harvard or Chicago or Stanford.
They created a pool of evangelicals that, as Bush claims to, adheres to the higher law of the Father. Combine that with the fact that the talent pool out of Regent is charitably a couple of rungs down the ladder from the DOJ’s usual hiring pool, which magnifies an already intense loyalty and group think, and you’ve created the perfect cohort to gin up a Cheney-style government within the government. All by accident, of course.
And quite coincidentally, these same folks all believe that the “Ends justify the Means!”. Funny that.
Like Bush, they report to a higher father. Their time at the DOJ was their place in the sun. They placed personal loyalty to leader ahead of their institutional and professional obligations, happily justifying it, which is emblematic of their approach to law and management issues.
Monica Goodling, for example, happily violated employment law requirements because they conflicted with her personal and religious beliefs. She’ll be a candidate for the federal bench under the next Gooper administration. She and her ilk are the farm team for the people Cheney actually trusts, like Addington.
What do I know, but I think that that’s an interesting thought, for one source, at least.
Check the spelling, though: David Ayres.
That’s a puff, of course, but he’s not in the wiki and I couldn’t find anything neutral quickly.
It was Franks not Myers who described Feith as the “stupidest fucking guy on the planet”. Abu Ghraib came out in 2004. The torture discussions took place in 2002-2003. Myers has had all these years to think about this stuff and he’s only now confused. Well if that’s the case, maybe Franks was wrong. Maybe there is somebody stupider than Feith.
Precisely my point; although I did confuse Myers and Franks in my haste, the point still maintains I believe.
Let’s be generous and say that all of them “are the stupidist people on the planet”.
I fixed mine, if it was me that was directed out. Sorry for the error though.
Just because Franks has the quote attributed to him, doesn’t mean a lot of others didn’t/don’t think it too.
The Guardian piece seems more a follow up the piece about Sands book that reveals Feith getting giggly over fibbing and parsing to Myers about things being done to real people in real time. For his part, though, I think Myers is trying to sound far too much like Ashcroft was trying to sound about Yoo.
I think for Myers purposes, they really out to have included Walker in the list, since she pushed through the working group report and blocked JAG and the civilian lawyers in the other branches, like Mora. But Myers had to be pretty willfully blind to not know that complaints began being pushed upchain from GITMO starting in Jan 2002 and to just never have heard a whisper of the Mora rebellion, never to have seen or heard about the JAG memos, etc.
Over and over with the BUsh guys and gals they end up in a position where they are faced with either opting to look horribly stupid, or criminal. It’s their “Safavian’s Choice” miniseries. And over and over they opt for the looking stupid part, only to have the evidence keep creeping in and creeping in on the criminal front.
Ashcroft’s parsing of not having “read” Yoo’s memo, when Yoo was a briefer to the Principals and when Ashcroft was the main person in the “Principals” from whom approval was being sought in all those detailed meetings – – the parsing falls apart under the facts. I think Myers is trying the same gambit – an eye batting Rice imitation of “who could have ever expected” that just doesn’t work.
Boy howdy; and not to mention that if nobody else at OLC/DOJ, including Ashcroft, countersigned off on Yoo’s memo(s), are they really OLC memos. All their little culpability/responsibility dodges leave gaping holes that are just not credible.
Myers at the very least was a toady so he was “duped” with his eyes open. God knows we’ve been burdened with enough stupid Generals e.g. Westmoreland and Franks and dishonest Generals like Powell and Betrayous.
I don’t think Franks was stupid so much as deeply cynical. He saw an opportunity to go down in the military history books as the commander of an audacious invasion and pushed back just enough at Rumsfeld’s idiotic economy of force theories to give himself a plan with a reasonable chance of pulling it off, which he accomplished. But my guess is that he also thought that Shinseki was right in thinking that the invasion force was nowhere near enough to keep the peace after he’d taken down the Iraqi Army. So he had his retirement letter all printed out in his desk drawer with only the date and signature to be filled in once he got to Baghdad.
It’s pretty damn serious for the Commander-in-Chief and his civilian crew, to intentionally mislead the most senior military officer under his “command” during a time of war…
There has to be a word for what it is.
Does Yoo-doo Voodoo fit?
Myers was chairman of the Joint Chiefs from October 1, 2001 to September 30 2005 and before that he was Vice Chairman for a year. So he came to the position on the heels of 9/11 but he wasn’t exactly out of the loop or wet behind the ears coming in. His tenure as chairman spans both the Afghanistan and Iraq campaigns. It includes the first use of Guantanamo as a prison for al Qaeda and Taliban (and lots of others who were in the wrong place at the wrong time), torture at Bagram, torture at Abu Ghraib, and torture at many other places as well. He managed to stay in his office for 4 years at the time that Rumsfeld’s power was at its zenith. (That alone should tell you a lot about him.) In short, he facilitated everything the White House, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld wanted. He even got a Medal of Freedom when he retired. He most definitely was not an innocent or uninformed bystander.
I’ve often wondered how things might have gone if Shelton had had a year or two to go on his term as CJCS instead of being on his way out on 9/11. He always struck me as someone Rumsfeld would have had a much tougher time pushing around, being ex-Special Forces and all.
Can Bush be court marshialed?
Good question, LS. Seems possible considering he’s in the chain of command. Something tells me, though, that the only recourse for prosecuting a sitting president is impeachment and trial in the Senate.
After he’s impeached by the House and convicted by the Senate he could then be tried by an appropriate court (civil or military) for any offenses he might have committed.
I was looking for an early document describing FBI interrogators sent to Gitmo, reporting to Mueller about the abuse of prisoners, then the FBI personnel receiving the reply that when illegal treatment occurred, the FBI people’s guidelines were to absent themselves from the illegal stuff. Since the filesearch was too complex, I opened what looked relevant yet likely slightly OffTopic, and found a five minute talk February 26, 2006 by a detainee’s counsel depicting the demographic at Gitmo:
“Vice President Cheney says these men were picked up on the battlefield. What do the data show? Five percent were picked up on the battlefield. Ninety five percent were not.”
“How did we get the rest? We distributed leaflets…Eighty-six percent were sold to us by people who got the flyers.”
“…Vice President Cheney says they (sic.) men are Al Qaeda fighters. What do the data show? Eight percent are al Qaeda fighters. Ninety two percent are not”
“Who’s at Guantanamo? Privates, orphans, the poor, conscripts, cooks, drivers. The mayors, the ministers, the Taliban generals – they’re not there. Take [my redaction of name]. He joined the Taliban as a young man. He became a party spokesman. Osama bin Laden came to his office. Is [my redaction of same name] at Guantanamo? No. He is a Freshman at Yale.”
errata: date=February 27, 2006
I had trouble with ew’s original focus on Myers but couldn’t say why exactly. The comments here are very clarifying. I do agree that Myers is not looking so good as he would like, but his confusion in Sands’ piece seems genuine. ABC’s source[s] feels 1. “legal” and 2. not confused. Mueller and Ayres are really good candidates. And since ABC implies sources, how about both?
I have an idea. Why don’t we ask them? Washington has been so flaky these last seven years that the idea that someone would play things straight doesn’t occur to us. On the other hand, these “sources” might be sitting at home by their phones waiting to be asked. This climate is getting close to being good “whistle-blowers” weather…
There was a Watergate figure — not Butterfield, but someone like him, who said something like this, something like “No one asked the right questions,” implying that he had been waiting to give some helpful answers. I can’t remember whether that happened during the process or afterwards, and I can’t remember who that was, nor is Google helping me. But we all knew and thought about that at the time.
I think it was Butterfield, responding to a query as to why he hadn’t previously mentioned the White House taping system prior to doing so before a Congressional committee.
29 – those numbers come from the Seton Hall study (which got ZERO MSM publicity – the Dems in Congress should have been calling those law students in and letting them testify – particularly before passing the MCA and DTA, but no)
The Pentagon has come out with its own “response” to that study. I have a bad sense of time, but I think it came out about a year ago, where they try to make a very different case on the numbers. It wasn’t too convincing IMO. Then there was a Harper’s interview with a CIA/Nat Sec analyst who interviewed at GITMO. He tried to broaden out beyond Al-Qaeda and Taliban and also give a benefit of the doubt to people who might have been mujahadeen of some kind, but even with that, he said a minimum of 1/3 of those at GITMO had never even been any kind of Mujahadeen. Just bought – I believe those are known as human trafficking transactions unless President Bush is the buyer.
For your search request, was this along the lines of what you were looking for?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..tanamo.usa
Over three years old, and no one has done much with it.
There are also the stories from the CTIF group including Fallon, which had to butt head with even FBI agents (who were wanting to ship a detainee to Jordan or Egypt for a little torture)
Are you suggesting that Yoo is the new Lyndie England? The low-level perp, who did enough to draw fire, exposed to protect those at the top who made policy and demanded the protection of his legal opinions.
As for Ashcroft hiding behind his “They just shoved in front of me and told me to sign it” schtick. That’s just a variation on the Nuremberg defense. Any competent corporate general counsel knows that you trust, but verify. It’s written in stone. Ashcroft might have trusted Bush and Cheney to do that right thing, in his words, but for someone with his years in the Senate and high state office, it’s the defense of an incompetent.
Sam Ervin, the poor little country lawyer (with the Harvard Law degree) who as Senator helped hold Nixon accountable for his crimes, would laugh at any Senator who proffered that defense as proof of his competence and good faith.
One thing about Ayres – everything about his hand offs of classified info to Abramoff in the Skybox has received no attention, no charges, no nothing – despite Abramoff’s publicized emails contemporaneously reciting to a client what Ayres was telling him. I guess if someone needed a little leverage – they might get it there. I’ve been at a loss for why Ayres has never been charged with what seems to be out there and solid evidence, and why there has been no follow up on the basketball with Ring Ashcroft meeting referenced, where they were going to “fix” the Mariannas report situation.
Some of the real deals, actually worried about nationally security and how to handle things, got screwed and then screwed again over that and its out there and documented in Abramoffs released emails – yet nothing. Nada.
But if Ayres talks and tells the truth, Ashcroft is shown for what he really is – – he doesn’t get to keep hiding behind his whine over a run amok Yoo and being out of the loop and not seeing the memos.
Mary, since we have intersected: a small Khadr update from the Globe and Mail.
Very briefly, in 2002, Canadian officials did try to talk the U.S. out of sending Khadr (then 16, captured at 15) to Guantanamo — the diplomatic letter has just been made public today. That protest didn’t work, obviously, and officials here stopped working much for Khadr, partly because at that point his family had acquired a pretty negative public profile.
So Colin Powell is not the only former top general to fail to relinquish his command when the commander in chief authorized torture, violating established armed forces policy in effect since the Revolutionary War.
Does that honor and code business only apply to those who can say semper fi, only to white guys or those on the battlefield, or does the grit of high politics just rub it off?
I don’t disparage military leaders alone. Their Congressional counterparts from both parties share the same failures, but they don’t live by the same code. The cohesion and camaraderie necessary to lead a soldier to do brave and foolish things, or give up his life for his mates, is a sacred thing. But I had hoped that leaders at the top developed that same relationship with their country, and not just their political leadership.
35 – thanks for the update, skdadl
29 – another piece, but this one from antiwar, on the FBI information:
http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fis…..cleid=4324
Of course, FBI is under DOJ and the AG. So if Ashcroft said these things were legal (or OLC perhaps – but FBI could have at least appealed to Ashcroft to overrule OLC) then the head of the FBI would either have to publically and noisily withdraw over disputes about torture – or be complicit. IMO, fwiw.
This linked piece at antiwar, btw, refers to Caprioni’s role in shutting down investigations of at least 17 of the abuse allegations made, bc SHE determined they complied with “approved” DoD practices. Even under those “permissive” rules (I wonder where the man left to freeze to death fits into those permission slips?) there were complaints about things that went beyond the “approvals” though, according to article referencing Caprioni.
The WaPo take on the revelations (after the elections of course)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/…..Dec21.html
37 – heh. *g* Unlike Lyndie, Yoo wasn’t in a chain of military command where refusing an order (especially an order declared by someone like Yoo to be “legal”) can get you shot. He’s a grown up, he’s a lawyer and he was in a very powerful position. But there is one person who could have called things to a halt. Ashcroft. He’s tried to pretend he just didn’t know anything – more the Mr. Magoo defense than anything – but each disclosure makes it more and more clear that he did know.
Fwiw, I look at the lawyers in the Admin: Yoo, Ashcroft, Bybee, Comey, Flanigan, Philbin, Addington, Gonzales, McNulty, Bellinger, Haynes, etc. – all the lawyers who were in on parts of this – the same way I would look at a lit team with a private firm. Just because the lead partner decides not to follow his professional responsibilities and to either destroy evidence, obstruct, lie, coerce or coach the client in lying, etc. – that doesn’t let any other lawyer on the team who knew about the any part of the ativity off the hook.
DOJ and most bar assocations would be happily merciless to a young 20something associate working on a case who knew about a Sr Partner destroying evidence for a client and did nothing. That’s part of being in a profession – the buck ALWAYS stops with you. There’s only so much upchain handoff you can do when it comes to knowledge of the handling of matters and evidence at issue in litigation. Yoo should not have any more protection than the 27 yo lawyer who silently watches a partner shred documents in anticipation of, or during, litigation.
Ashcroft’s “Mr. Magoo defense”. I like that.
As for the Cheney/Addington team of lawyers, I liken them not to a team of defense litigators, a la Michael Murphy. I think they’re more like the 1919 Chicago Black Sox, who are alleged to have thrown the Series for a couple of bucks and the lasting dismay of fans and peers everywhere.
Happy Friday to all…
bmaz – Haren v Maddux tonight… should be a good one, if the Padres players are out of bed by then!
Here’s Philippe Sands article in tomorrow’s Guardian Weekend:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worl…..techniques
-39, M, those cites you provided were about the same incident; it is widely commented, even at Congressional Quarterly, that the agencies had early disputes at the beginning of Gitmo regarding what was illegal, though material in links were appearing throughout the process from DTA to MCA as congress tried the bafflegab exercise one of whose most famous caricatures you also reference, not a hapless toad, just Mr.Magoo. I thought the ambience of anxiety motivated a lot of pols in congress to ignore the problem. Something like globalWarming, surely, if we sell credits, call it capAndTrade, it will be an issue that goes away, taking with it the fraction of the biota which less thermophilic than, say, mammalian existence and most cellular life, a disparate topic.
Catching up here. Was gone yesterday PM so missed this thread going up.
MD
to back you up on your theory…
Mueller has been a source for Jan Crawford Greenberg a few times. Why, just a year ago he confirmed that Gonzo was a liar for her news source on the UAAJ story.
that would be USAJ story…
I am reading this as a non-lawyer/non-law enforcment person and I all I can think of is: where does Pixie-dust come in?
The CQ article: published last week; what seemed striking was less what the ostensible theme of the article is, but more curious are the links, both viable and those of websites taken down since the article appeared, though the author cites passages that had been available; plus, in typical CQ fashion, the narrative provides a sense of the currents of influence in modern policy toward executive detentions.
It would seem that folks are getting in line to now get a free cup of Ignorance™. Which line were they standing in when all the torture caldron was a brewing?