You might reasonably have surmised that Dick Cheney fears where an investigation into the torture and mistreatment of terrorist suspects could eventually lead. Until now Cheney has restricted himself to lying about the effectiveness of the CIA and DoD interrogation programs, claiming to know decisive information that remains classified, and denouncing those who seek to investigate the government officials who abused prisoners under the color of law. But now we have some direct evidence of how rattled Cheney has become by Attorney General Holder's decision to initiate what is after all an extremely limited investigation. Its scope currently is limited to the CIA interrogations that employed even more abuse than the torture memos had actually authorized.
In an interview that will be aired on Sunday, Cheney made a couple of really remarkable statements
according to McClatchy's Warren Strobel. First, Cheney endorsed the behavior of CIA officers who blatantly ignored the restrictions placed upon interrogators by government lawyers. This only a few days after the release of a 2004 CIA Inspector General report that revealed lurid details of prisoner abuse! Cheney had to know that he would be derided and denounced for coming out in favor of such things as mock executions, promises to rape and murder the family members of suspects, and threats with a gun and electric drill.
And secondly, Cheney rather transparently tried to build distance for himself with regard to the use of waterboarding, for which he has been the
most vocal public advocate since at least 2006 (his original endorsement of waterboarding was a story
broken here at unbossed).
Cheney wants us to believe that though he was aware of the existence of the practice in general, he wasn't informed about any particular applications of waterboarding to specific prisoners. This even though reams of evidence have accumulated that interrogators who employed waterboarding were in very regular contact with CIA headquarters, and that the White House was deeply interested in the progress of those particular interrogations to the point of asking for multiple updates for days on end!
Here is how Strobel describes the Cheney interview:
Cheney, who strongly opposes the Obama administration's new probe into alleged detainee abuse, was asked in the Fox News interview whether he was "OK" with interrogations that went beyond Justice's specific legal authorization.
"I am," the former vice president replied.
"My sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks," he said. "It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well."
[...]
Cheney said in the interview with Fox's Chris Wallace, according to a transcript, that he was aware of the waterboarding, "not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved."
What Cheney fears is pretty obvious. First, he believes that the investigation into a few CIA officers who scandalously flouted the torture memos' rules for coercive interrogations could provide the sharp edge that might pry open the whole sordid program of systematized abuse and expose it to judicial and public scrutiny.
It was a program that Cheney
apparently sponsored and
helped to design.
Secondly, Cheney fears that he could then become a target of investigation. He is especially vulnerable to prosecution because of the close interest he took in the most abusive interrogations. One might be able to persuade a slightly gullible grand jury that the "conditioning" or "exploitation" of prisoners (hypothermia, for example) does not constitute torture. But waterboarding universally has been considered torture since at least the times of the Great Inquisition. Cheney seems to think now that he needs to build a case that he was no more aware of actual instances of waterboarding than anybody else who was briefed on the CIA program.
Update: Here is the
transcript of the Cheney interview on Fox News Sunday. Cheney's comments are even more over the top than one might have expected. Early on he insists that Attorney General Holder's decision to open a (very limited) review of potential CIA wrongdoing is "clearly a political move". "I mean, there's no other rationale for why they're doing this," Cheney adds. Obviously Cheney wants to avoid at all costs having to debate the issue on the grounds of whether laws were broken. When Chris Wallace raises the question of whether the DoJ will also investigate the lawyers who wrote the torture memos, Cheney expresses great indignation at the possibility and then quickly changes the subject.
Cheney also dodges the question of whether he knew about the scandalous details of abuse that were described in the CIA Inspector General's report. That is where Cheney admits to knowing about the existence of waterboarding in general, though not about who it was used against. But Cheney avoids addressing whether he was aware of any of the other types of abuse. He follows that with a blunt endorsement of those who engaged in abuse even beyond what the torture memos had authorized:
WALLACE: Let me ask you -- you say you're proud of what we did. The inspector general's report which was just released from 2004 details some specific interrogations -- mock executions, one of the detainees threatened with a handgun and with an electric drill, waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed 183 times.
First of all, did you know that was going on?
CHENEY: I knew about the waterboarding. Not specifically in any one particular case, but as a general policy that we had approved.
The fact of the matter is, the Justice Department reviewed all of those allegations several years ago. They looked at this question of whether or not somebody had an electric drill in an interrogation session. It was never used on the individual, or that they had brought in a weapon, never used on the individual. The judgment was made then that there wasn't anything there that was improper or illegal with respect to conduct in question...
(CROSSTALK)
WALLACE: Do you think what they did, now that you've heard about it, do you think what they did was wrong?
CHENEY: Chris, my sort of overwhelming view is that the enhanced interrogation techniques were absolutely essential in saving thousands of American lives and preventing further attacks against the United States, and giving us the intelligence we needed to go find Al Qaeda, to find their camps, to find out how they were being financed. Those interrogations were involved in the arrest of nearly all the Al Qaeda members that we were able to bring to justice. I think they were directly responsible for the fact that for eight years, we had no further mass casualty attacks against the United States.
It was good policy. It was properly carried out. It worked very, very well.
WALLACE: So even these cases where they went beyond the specific legal authorization, you're OK with it?
CHENEY: I am.
More tellingly still, Cheney refuses to be pinned down on whether he'd agree to speak to a DoJ prosecutor. He states, bizarrely, that his views are already sufficiently well known because he's been publicly outspoken. That suggests that a prosecutor may have to treat interviews such as this one as if they were held under oath.
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, Cheney also assures Chris Wallace that Democrats are soft on national security and national defense.
Posted by
smintheus at 21:04:49. Filed under:
politics
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