White House lawyers knew all about the destroyed torture tapes

December 19, 2007

When it comes to the CIA’s destruction of video footage of U.S. torture of detainees, the White House, on the advice of counsel, has stopped commenting. About the only thing we’ve gotten from the Bush gang of late were vague comments from the president himself: “There’s a preliminary inquiry going on and I think you’ll find that a lot more data, facts will be coming out, that’s good. It will be interesting to know what the true facts are.”

It will be, indeed. Some of the “true facts” emerged late last week. Bush claimed, for example, that he just recently learned about the existence of the torture tapes, but his White House — and his White House counsel — has been aware of them for years.

Today, the NYT moves the ball forward a little more, reporting that White House lawyers weren’t just aware of the torture tapes, but discussed their handling in some detail.

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

Who would have guessed? Oh wait, that’s right, everyone could have guessed.

The next question, of course, is what these White House lawyers urged, or didn’t urge, the CIA to do with the torture tapes.

It’s a little unclear, but there’s some evidence the Bush gang urged the agency to destroy the tapes — which would certainly help ratchet this scandal up a few notches.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Marty Lederman highlighted three main angles to consider as the investigation(s) unfold.

First, as noted above, there was plenty of “advice,” but it appears that no one in any position of authority, inside or outside the CIA, actually instructed the CIA not to destroy the tapes. Why not? Perhaps because they were hoping their advice would not be heeded?

Second, given all the discussion and uncertainty about the issue, the logical, natural, thing to do would have been to ask the Justice Department for its legal views on the question — to seek an official OLC opinion, in particular, which would be informed by the views of the DOJ lawyers who were responsible for compliance with court orders concerning preservation of evidence. Yet as far as we know, everyone assiduously avoided asking DOJ for its views. Why? Perhaps because no one wanted to hear those views … and because once those views were provided, the CIA would have no choice but to preserve the tapes.

Third, a slew of people evidently advised the CIA that it would be unwise or even illegal to destroy the tapes. Thereafter, most or all of those officials, in the CIA, in the White House, in Congress, etc., eventually found out that the CIA did destroy the tapes — and not a single one of them did a thing about it. Why not? Well, perhaps it’s because this entire group finally issued a collective sigh of relief that, finally, the CIA had failed to heed their “advice.”

Stay tuned.

Tow words: Plausible Deniability

  • You know all those “special” people that make you crazy in your everyday life? You know, the ones who drive on the shoulder to get past the traffic jam, or who always ride in the lane they know is going to end, and then just butt in front of you at the last second – and get pissed off at you if you aren’t inclined to graciously let them do it? The ones who don’t take 17 items into the 15 item Express checkout, but take half a cart-full because, well, their time is so much more valuable than yours? The people who don’t park in the parking lot, but right in front of the store, even if it makes it harder for those in the parking spaces nearby to get out? The people who view signs like “right turn only” as mere suggestions, ones that certainly do not apply to them. The ones who think “no cell phones” is only for people not engaged in important business.

    You know these people – they are the ones who view the rules as being for everyone else; they just do not care about anything but what they want to do.

    That is the Bush administration – they do what they want, the way they want, and if they have to, they will get some yes-man or suck-up specialist to write up a memo that says it’s all okay. They see no need to inform anyone of their decisions, or even their actions, and even when they do, and even when there are objections, they thumb their collective noses at them and keep doing whatever it was they were doing when they were so rudely interrupted.

    Call me crazy – I’ve been called worse – but it seems to me that when you go down the list of things that have been tried in an attempt to rein these people in, and see that nothing on that list has worked to stop it, you have to wonder if whether the fact that “impeachment” was not only never on the list, but loudly announced that it would never be on that list, just might be at least one reason why it contimues unabated.

    If it were up to me, I’d like to haul all of them out of the WH in handcuffs and shackles; when you consider the harm they have done to this country, they ought to be treated like the enemy combatants they really are, and treated accordingly.

    But, not to worry – I’m sure that just a few more sternly worded letters or public statements from the Democrats will have the administration falling into line any day now.

  • Pingback: The Heretik : Let’s Not Go to the Videotape

  • Four lawyers discussing what to do with the tapes?
    This isn’t a legal gray area. The tapes were evidence. They couldn’t even consider getting rid of them. So what were they discussing?

  • Anne–always posting with thoughtful prose that more often than not mirrors my own views. I’m right there with you. We simply cannot function as a nation if the rule of law is not universally applied; when the rule of law can be bent or otherwise dissolved as it is now, how can trust be maintained? It is painful to be an American right now.

  • This is so Shakespearian, it’s ludicrous. Take the statement, “To be, or not to be; that is the question,” and apply it to this topic. A quartet of WH barristers gather to discuss and advise, and the only options even conceivable are (1) preserve the tapes, and (2) destroy the tapes. There’s just no such thing as an “option C,” or “D,” or any other blasted letter of the alphabet.

    Preserve, or destroy—and apparently, not one shred of this “vaguely-hinted-at advice” from the aforementioned quartet of WH legal lunkheads favored preservation.

    What we’re probably looking at here is the intentional plot to destroy evidence of criminal activity—itself being not only a crime, but an overt act to commit an organized crime.

    I look forward to seeing just how far up the command chain this thing goes—and how much of this mud sticks to Bu$h, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, and Rice. Something like this could bring them all before the international court—in chains….

  • Shredding wasn’t fast enough for Deadeye. It appears that he’s been burning evidence too.

    WASHINGTON – Thick black smoke billowed from a fire Wednesday on the White House compound in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.

    The blaze appeared to be located in Vice President Dick Cheney’s suite of ceremonial offices on the second floor of the building. Cheney and President Bush were across the street in the West Wing of the White House when the blaze broke out. It appeared to be under control within an hour.

  • Ah, yes, the old scandal road that we’ve been down dozens of times before. You know, the road that doesn’t really go anywhere. It just fizzles out someplace along the way.

    No thanks. I’m not driving down the road to nowhere again.

  • Article posted Dec 7th.
    http://abcnews.go.com/WN/story?id=3971180

    “Three officials told ABC News Miers urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes.”

    Let’s also be clear that every member of the Senate Intelligence Committee has known about the enhanced interrogation practices since 2002. If we want to pursue this as a criminal matter, we need to pursue everyone who made no effort to specifically ban these practices via legislation.

  • Amazing that Georgie boy doesn’t know what is going on in the WHITE HOUSE. I wonder where he is and what is he doing. Perhaps he is looking for a brain.

    How convenient is it that there is a fire in the VP’s office building at this time! Too bad the monster was not there, or does he just have an office (our tax $$) for show and DOJN’T TELL.

  • I think I’m in love – but this time it’s the real thing. Anne – you are so right on in your thinking and anologies!

    But, what can us “commoners” do? Our “representitive” government is completely out of control and out of our control. Democrats or Republicans, except for a few they are just a bunch of bad people doing bad things to us and to the world. Unprincipled. Crooks. Liars. Thieves. War mongers. Opportunists. And don’t forget – Bush can pardon everyone before he leaves office – so we really have no recourse.

    Jerry

  • Anne, your lengthy observvations above are very common sensical, yet we live in times of non-sense. And yes, my observation would be that lawlessness is beginning to permeate the work place, the public square and our sense of common identity. With the top of our structure of authority (the WH crowd) caught up in so many circumstances in which it has shown a total disregard for the law, and more injurious, for our demorcatic institutions, it has shown the way to discord for all who have borne witness to such foolduggery. We have a whole lot of democratic cleaning up to do when the Bush nightmare expires. -Kevo

  • The Chief Executive of the United States of America does not—regardless of what his “legal team” tells him—have the power to pardon the commission of international crimes—only an international court can do so. Neither does he possess the authority to pardon the commission of crimes committed on foreign soil.

    So—for the first part, Bush and his gang of criminal ruffians will eventually face the consequences of their actions, because the US will eventually have an administration that will not condone the actions of the Bush administration. There are certainly enough non-tainted courts left in the country to reject any and all attempts to fight extradition to the Hague. For the second part, the only way that Bush can wave the big pardon wand is if those tapes were on US soil when they were destroyed.

    And if they were, indeed, on US soil when they were destroyed, and discussions of their contents included members of the Congress, then the Unitary Executive who keeps everything to himself most certainly would have known about the existence of the tapes, their content—and the decision to destroy them.

    Finally, if the current administration argues that such “aggressive interrogative tools” are arguably both valid and legal evaluation protocols, then they would be equally valid and legal in obtaining informative details from—shall we say—certain members of that administration.

    Yes?

  • what a bunch of whining pansies crying about the tapes. who cares? these Al Qaeda idiots are the ENEMY. they want to KILL US. a little bit of torture is fine by me. i don’t give a rat’s ass what they do to these dogs. i can think of some interesting techniques, and i would KEEP THE DAMN TAPES WITH NO APOLOGY!

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