ABC News reported this week that a group of so-called “Principals” — including Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet, Attorney General John Ashcroft, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice — met dozens of times in the White House to “discuss and approve” specific interrogation techniques to be used against suspected terrorists.
The AP added to the revelations yesterday, noting, among other things, that Cheney & Co. “took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.”
Yesterday, perhaps anxious to dispel the notion that he was out of the loop, the president said — arguably, bragged — that he endorsed the Principals’ work from the outset.
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”
When faced with more than seven years of scandals and outrages of various shapes and sizes, it’s easy to get inured to low expectations. Indeed, it’s difficult not to get hardened. But that’s all the more reason to pause to consider just what the president was conceding yesterday.
The top members of Bush’s team, including a constitutional officer, sat in the White House on multiple occasions to discuss in detail which torture techniques U.S. officials would use against detainees. The president of the United States a) doesn’t find these revelations especially “startling”; and b) is comfortable telling a national television audience that he was “aware” of the meetings and “approved” of the Principals’ efforts.
Digby’s take was spot on:
There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about “defiling the white house” with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.
The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president’s cabinet sat around the white house “choreographing” the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn’t occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.
Curiously, the president’s concession to ABC seems to be of only mild interest this morning. The WaPo had an item on page A3, but the NYT didn’t mention the remarks, and there’s no AP story. Even ABC News itself is downplaying the significance of its own story — on its website, the main story is the debate over whether Obama is right about working class families’ “bitterness,” followed by an item about Hillary telling Bill to stop talking about Bosnia. (The lead video on ABC News’ site isn’t the Bush interview, it’s “Dumb Robber Leaves Resume.”)
Then there’s a story about the president endorsing his team’s torture efforts.
Somehow, it seems like this story deserves a little more attention.