Sheldon Whitehouse Destroys David Rivkin’s “Gallery of Horribles”
As I liveblogged here, the Republican response to Pat Leahy’s proposal to have a Truth Commission on Bush era crimes is to establish a set of straw men and then shoot them down, without ever addressing the problem that a number of high level Administration officials broke the law.
This exchange between Sheldon Whitehouse and designated Republican shill David Rivkin gets to the key aspects of tactic. Rivkin repeatedly introduced his own assumptions into what the Commission would do, all so he point to the constitutional challenges that only his imagined committee would have. And repeatedly during the hearing, Rivkin claimed the whole point of the commission was to select 12 to 13 high level officials and lay out the evidence of their criminal culpability.
I’m curious, though. If Rivkin has such an exact number of Bush Administration officials who broke the law, why hasn’t he called them out himself as prosecution targets? Or has he simply put his Republican affiliation before our Constitution?
And isn’t it charming that Rivkin is so concerned about the civil liberties of those who in 37 pages claimed to eliminate both the First and Fourth Amendment?
Here’s my liveblogged transcript (with all the errors that implies):
Whitehouse: Rivkin. You raise the gallery of horribles that might go wrong. If you assume that the purpose is advisory in policy only. If you assume that criminal law enforcement is properly cabined in Exec as it should be. If you assume coordination on issues like immunity. And if it is set up not as private entity but as delegated Congressional oversight authority. Still oppose, even in the absence of parade of horribles.
Rivkin: This assumes too much. To me law enforcement function has variety of aspects. Ultimate decision to proceed with prosecution.
Whitehouse: no one is suggesting otherwise.
Rivkin: Deciding as threshold determination whom to investigate.
Whitehouse: We do that in COngress every moment.
Rivkin: RIght in Congress.
Whitehouse: Right to delegate.
Rivkin: I do not beleve it is readily delegable.
Whitehouse: Now you use another hedge word. Properly appointed commission.
Rivkin: Appointments clause? If you could configure commission that makes it an extension of Article I branch. I don’t see how you can delegate oversight responsibility. If it walks like a duck and talks like a duck. WE’ve heard today about criminal investigation, PIN does, on 12 or 14 people, then passes the buck to PIN in public spotlight. If this were contemplated in different context, every law professor would be screaming about it.
Whitehouse: Every law professor? I’m trying to get an unhedged phrase out of you.
Rivkin: If Bush Administration had done an investigation on charitable organizations?
Whitehouse: organized criticism is an offense against their civil liberties.
Rivkin: Looking at individual criminal liability.
Whitehouse: nonono.
Rivkin: there’s no way to cabin this. How are you going to come up with analysis of two or three members of Administration. If you said Mr A committed torture, that reads like doc that AUSA sends to his boss.
Whitehouse; My time has expired. Until you know and we all know what was actually done, do not be so quick to throw other generations under the bus and assume they did worse.
The best part of his video, though, are two small details. In the background is the other witness (is that Admiral Gunn?) cracking up every time Whitehouse corners Rivkin behind the hedge of his own making. I do hope Rivkin noticed.
And then, at the very end, you’ve got someone responding to Whitehouse’s slapdown of Rivkin’s claim that prior generations have done worse in war than ours. You can hear someone say, "Ooh."
So please help me understand. Whitehouse-Leahy proposal is basically to round up all the Monica Goodlings, grant them limited immunity, and hope they finger the higher-ups, who will then be prosecuted?
How well did that work with the original Monica?
Or will it result in a platoon of Ollie Norths who can ride the wingnut circuit for years as heros, with their own tv shows on cable channels?
I’m trying to understand all this.
Bob in HI
It’s Dugg, folks!
Rivken is a tool
Wow, EW, you got this video fast! Any chance we could get video of Whitehouses’s question to Pickering? See my comment number 69 on the previous thread; I think Whitehouse may be sending a message to Obama and Holder that keeping things classified is a bad idea.
There was a panel February 8 2008 in which Rivkin appeared with an array of people at the time when preservation of records in the tocha scandal was thought to be an issue involving a few tapes, document is about 10pp. Some of the dynamics of the process today’s hearing is attempting to develop were in evidence at that other event, as well. One of Rivkin’s contentions at that time was G4-G8 was working fine but might improve if two experts from the office of each principal could participate.
It’s funny in light of our recent discussions how Rabkin and Rivkin raise the “objectionable” possibility of Bush forming a private committee to investigate charities that may have supported al Qaeda.
During the Administration, we had private entities effectively pushing prosecutions of “voter fraud” and porn, and someone had to have put all of the WSJ articles together for the Al-Haramain affidavit…. Are they trying to tell us something?
Rivkin does not appear to have noticed, even though the good admiral in the background was, in the words of the phrase, “rolling his eyes so loudly the whole room could hear them”.
Moving sideways: let’s all come up with our list of 12 or 13 names.
Here’s mine:
1. Bush
2. Cheney
3. Libby
4. Addington
5. Ashcroft
6. Rice
7. Yoo
8. Bybee
9. Delahunty
10. Haynes
11. Rumsfeld
12. Gonzo
13. Tenet
Then we can move on to the second-tier
14. Hadley
15. Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller
16., 17. those two angelic-looking Mormons who reverse-engineered SERE
18. Lt. Gen Sanchez
19. The head of the Salt Pit prison in Afghanistan (All of them)
20. Colonel Thomas Pappas
21. Commander Kirk Lippold
22. Admiral Mullen
Need I go on?
If so, I’m sure I could come up with a hundred – all those lawyers in DoJ who worked to hide the torture, black sites, wiretapping and all the rest could easily add up to over a hundred all by themselves.
I would add:
Feith
Perle
Wolfowitz
Ted Olson
Where’s Rove?
BillE @ 14:
Or a dessert topping. [Very old SNL reference. First or second season, maybe]
Good list, scribe, but I’d like to see Addington on it twice, just in case they miss him the first time.
I realize Rivkin knows Russian and is originally from Russia.
Does anyone have access to a good bio on him that includes his personal life? I understand he grew up in Russia. All I can find is that he was born in St. Petersburg and most online bios assume that is St. Petersburg, FL — funny enough.
Interesting the Repugs selected someone with such an interesting background to represent the concerns of a Democracy…
Interesting…when you put his comments today in this context.
Whitehouse’s comments in terms of Rivkin’s context that I noted at 8 are even more interesting…Especially Whitehouse’s last comment.
klynn, as I read your comment about Rivkin’s background, I immeditely thought of Henry Kissinger/Germany. He suffered as a youth, then look at the blood on his hands! It’s said the abused grow up to be abusers. Only explanation I can work out.
Be careful about arguing causality on the basis of correlation. You’re seeing a correlation. Not everyone who is abused becomes heartless. Indeed, most who are abused become extremely compassionate and empathic. But some do indeed take on the characteristics of those who abused them.
Regardless of how someone arrives at being perpetrator, it never excuses the behavior. (I didn’t think you were excusing it, but via your argument, someone might wrongly construe that.)
Poor wording on my part. I never lump everyone into any category. Matter of fact, I know a bit about abuse myself….
Remember that all those neocons worked for Scoop Jackson, Dem Sen from Wa State, back in the 70s. He’d hired Perle, who hired Wolfowitz… and one of his big hullaballoos was getting Jews out of Russia, as a ‘humanitarian’ issue. And he did.
I have no idea whether Rivkin was among that group of emmigrants, but it could make sense that he’s linked with the neocons that way. Just a guess, but that link would make sense.
I once worked with a woman who’d emmigrated from Russia in the early 80s (to Israel). Not liking it there, she’d emmigrated to U.S. Said to be fluent in at least four languages, I leave you to imagine her value to the employer. Where in the average American suburb, or college, do you find anyone with that breadth of background?
(Which, FWIW, makes me think that colleges must have snapped up young Mr. Obama. Overseas experience, multiple languages, and a first-rate education…. they don’t grow on trees, although that’s what the world needs.)
Do I understand Rivkin-the-smartest-kid-in-the-class to be saying that if some panel described the acts of any of his “12 or 14″ people that the text would be indistinguishable from a criminal indictment?
Holy Cow. What does *Rivkin* himself know? That says pretty terrible things about that group of people.
Did you notice Rivkin fighting his belches? His stomach was really churning. I think he is in very deep.
“…has he simply put his Republican affiliation before our Constitution?”
The answers is yes.
Yuck! Dyed hair AND a pinkie ring. Rivkin really repels.
You get the feeling he’s a swinger? Somehow I can imagine him swapping partners regularly with John Bolton at Plato’s Retreat.
But which one originally came with Craig and which one with Foley?
Eeeeewwwww.
Not. Enough. Brain. Bleach.
(More shuddering)
(klynn hears bmaz laughing across the miles…)
Oh they’re both MUCH too wrinkly for Foley. Didn’t you read those emails? Nubile flesh for Foley, thank you.
Now I need brain bleach and a shower…And I do not think that will be enough.
Eeewwww. (shuddering)
Marcy, please check my @ 15 & @16 over at your ‘Patience’ diary. I found some good background info on al Haramain in a 56 page report of The Council on Foreign Relations Independent Task Force on Terrorist Financing.
The assault on the al Haramain organization begins at top of page 5. I’ve only read thru pg 13. If you don’t have this, it will probably be of interest to you. I’ll try for link here.
Swinger? No.
Who wants to go out swinging when you have the gimp tied up in the basement.
I’d forgotten about this. Really, it’s the sort of thing that used to fill my favorite section of the baseball cards one of my brothers used to make from cut-outs on boxes containing some of the Post company’s line of breakfast cereals: the “Notable” part — by which one might keep track of details like that Reds pitcher Joey Jay was the first major leaguer ever to have played Little League ball, & how then young Angel’s phenom Bo Belinsky was spotted in the early hours tripping the light fantastic with Mamie Van Doren at the Peppermint Lounge the night before his no-no.
The goal of maintaining such timeless titbits on the members of the Bush-Cheney Rogues Gallery might be served by combining the Post’s concept with an expansion of scribe’s start on a complete list at #7. And in all fairness, this would seem a particularly suitable treatment of the group that brought us all Islamoterrorist playing cards.
Plus efforts could stand a lot of improvement:
http://tinyurl.com/37c5p
http://tinyurl.com/ahxgym
Oop – “Plus past efforts” etc.
Shirley, a Truth Commission would not limit itself to building successful prosecutions. They ought only to assist federal prosecutors in that, and importantly, NOT obstruct their work with ill-thought out grants of immunity.
There are also many wrong and illegal acts that are past prosecution, or for which there is substantial evidence, but arguably not evidence beyond a reasonable doubt. Enough evidence, though, to form the basis for new laws, regulations, executive orders, and staffing, management and oversight practices.
Those would affect thousands or millions, in addition to Mr. Rivkin’s infamous baker’s dozen. (He must have a director’s cut of A Manchurian Candidate. How many, how many Communists, exactly how many Communists, Senator Iselin, are in the State Department?)
Yes they would lessen the chance of prosecutions, because they would be seen as a substitute.
And stop calling me Shirley.
EPU from last thread
OT Interview with John Yoo
I particularly like his answer that the memos were not for public consumption and lacked a certain polish. I didn’t know that bull shit could double as polish, maybe a floor cleaner.
Speaking of corrupt administrative practices, how many White House officials are now authorized to communicate with the DOJ, and how many at the DOJ are officially allowed to talk back?
Pinky ring. Makes me think mafia for some reason. Russian mafia? Any Russian mafia members hanging around Washington D.C.? My tinfoil hat is getting tighter by the minute. ayeee.
Date on CFR report @ my 25 here was June 15, 2004. Chairman was Maurice R. (Hank) Greenberg.
You gotta be kiddin’ me.
‘Hank Greenberg’?
As in ‘Greenberg-Traurig’ (Abramoff’s law firm while he was in Denver, IIRC).
And as in ‘AIG’?
Okay, that’s it.
This is wayyyyyyy too crazy for me.
I presumed those who are members here are sufficiently aware of the ugly power of the CFR. If you go to the link you might be surprised at the power they weilded in the Bush administration. Do you see no advantage in knowing your enemy?
If you want to educate yourself about just how the al Haramain case came down, it’s page 5 at the site. There was much background work that went on before that.
This comment from you actually surprises me, ROTL. It’s not up to your standard.
If you’re only interested in immature performing, enjoy yourself.
Hey, I have a whole other life. This is kinda my ‘hobby,’ and I only have just so much time to catch up on it all, while also trying to figure out Wall Street weirdness. Omniscient, I ain’t.
However, funny you should mention the CFR, as I just left a comment two threads more recent than this one — Sheldon Whitehouse was a guest on KO’s show tonight, which I only got to view around 10 pm PST on my InternetMachine.
When KO gives an intro, wow, does he ever pack in content!
Anyway, about 1:28 into KO’s intro on the topic of the Truth Commission, leading up to his interview with Sheldon Whitehouse, KO shows a clip of Rivkin. And KO mentions that Rivkin is with the CFR. Which prompted me to have a fuzzy recollection of some snarky tidbit (perhaps at TPM) that the vile and despicable Eliot Abrams had landed a cush spot at CFR. So I googled it…. and sure enough, that’s where the bastid hung his hat: http://www.cfr.org/bios/1567/elliott_abrams.html
And as for ’standards’… I aspire to them, but rarely achieve them.
‘Immature performing’? Not.
Just tired on a weekday evening.
Will work on those ’standards’ some other day after some sleep…
Thank you, readerOfTeaLeaves. I hoped you’d reaffirm my faith in you. I apologize for my own not too well thought out remarks.
I’m retired, so have more time, still not enough to encompass the swirling storm of info hitting on every side about our livelihood, freedoms, and what those bastids have done to us and our country. I know others who are trying diligently to juggle a demanding job and family and still make sense of all this threatening crap. Don’t see how you all do it.
As for the CFR – there’s a lot of ‘bastids’ hanging their hats there. Yoo and Viet Dinh (mastermind of the Patriot Act) are members of CFR, as are quite a few people in Obama’s Exec branch…
As for standards: seems all we can do is reach for them, and I fall short all too often.
I look forward to your comments, ROTL.
OMG, talk about synchronicity! (which I try to deny). I went back to Marcy’s diary on Correcting the Inaccuracies About the Memos and reviewed most of what is there, including your comment @ 30 in which at #2 in your timeline you refer to one of the e-mails being found at Greenberg-Tuareg….That is fantastic work, ROTF !! Please continue to “junk up the thread” with more of the same!
I went back there to review (print out and study) the priceless advice given me specifically by lawyer, belewlaw. Until I found and began reading the CFR report on terrorist financing to which I gave the link up-thread, my ears were plugged with ignorance and I could not properly ‘hear’ him.
Well, my hair is not on fire and I’m not screeching that the sky is falling but I think it is time to put some thought into protecting what little assets I possess from swift seizure and freezing that is accomplished before I have a clue that I could be a suspect. There’s no reason that I would be a suspect, but Hell, ‘they’ aren’t bothered by a little thing like no reason….do they even know the meaning of that word?
If there are any who missed Marcy’s diary to which I link, IMHO it, and the comments there, are vitally important.
Thanks again for that @30 comment there, readerOfTeaLeaves.
First, thanks for such kind and heartening responses,
Second, the TIMELINES in my @30 on the thread that you reference are 100% EW’s (brilliant!) work, so all credit goes to her — but I think that like you I view them as tremendously valuable,
Third, it’s a credit to EW, bmaz, FDL [and also maybe to freepatriot’s (aka ‘freep’) passionate ‘threadBouncer’ role?] that they’ve been tolerant enough to allow such a phenomenal exchange of curiosity, information exchange, and witty remarks (too many of which go right over my head), so that some of us with passion can try to get some better sense of the times in which we live, and the greater forces that darken so many lives.
I’m not such a good juggler; however, after a very serious injury and recovery period I feel myself somewhat ‘liberated’ to focus on things that have meaning for me. Gone are long commutes, long meetings, and some other things in my past life. Gives me more time to focus on things that have meaning, while I telecommute or work at home. And EW is the bestest ‘water cooler’ evah, IMHO.
As for finding resources, MadDogs, JohnLopresti, WmOckham, scribe and others are nothing short of phenomenal, as you’ve no doubt noticed.
Onward.
Lotsa work to do keeping Sheldon Whitehouse’s back.
I didn’t know of your injury, ROTL. Hope the recovery has been complete. Those brickbats between the eyes do tend to make us reset our priorities, don’t they…
Is Sheldon Whitehouse your Senator? Wish he were mine (sigh- – Cornyn).
Agree with all you say about FDL and Company. I’m learning from you all as fast as I can…just hope it’s fast enough.
Keep well, and keep giving us things as you see them.
Injury = fine, but thx. I’m just near-fanatical about riding the stationary bike daily, and EW’s been a godsend, as the rides go very quickly with the daily revelations of contemptible conduct.
My senators = Patty Murray, who began long ago as a school board member and pre-school teacher, and originally ran for the state Senate in order to obtain better funding for schools. When she kept butting her head against federal rules, she got pissed and ran for US Senate. NO ONE gave her a chance.
My other is Maria Cantwell.
Either of the two probably outwork the entire Plantation Caucus and still have two days left over. But being West Coast, I’m sure their commutes are hellish, whereas the Plantation Caucus guys just jet an hour back home.
Think about it: Boxer, DiFi, Murray, Cantwell (and Merkely and Wyden) have a much worse commute than most members of Congress. Which means, IMHO, they all have to work harder, smarter, etc.
Patty and Maria both have one hell of a work ethic.
It looks as if the same can be said of Levin and Whitehouse.
Good to hear you’re back up to speed.
You are really fortunate to have DCers you can communicate with. I’ve never gotten a reply form mine that wasn’t BushSpeak BS. I usually just give up on that, then at times think, ‘if I don’t write/call then they can say my people must approve of what I do – not much negative mail….’
Cornyn is making as big an A.. of himself as Shelby. I’ve been trying to track Cornyn’s campaign $$$ (Rove campaigned for him out in El Paso); I know there’s something stinky there (CONTRAN, Bass Brothers)but not good enuf spy to root it out. CONTRAN is owned by guy named Simmons who dreamed up leveraged buy-outs, made a fortune in the crash of 1987, gave GWB $1 million for his library if located at SMU, etc. Seems everything Simmons wanted to do got approved by SEC… (TX politics is very dirty, didn’t know that, didja ? hee,hee while crying)
/s/ hopeless optimist; gonna be better Someday.
…now if a president were discovered to be ########### heterosex with an intern, then a truth commission is not only justified but our absolute duty to pursue criminal indictment, and unlimited political and military power for the next decade, possibly forever.
Was it just me, or did David Rivkin seem scared? At points he seemed to me to be on the verge of tears. I wonder what a thorough investigation into his activities over the last eight years would yield ?
Just my gut feeling,
Heather