On the painfully long list of Bush administration scandals, the politicization of the Justice Department and federal prosecutors has to be right up there near the top. It’s one of those controversies that not only points to widespread corruption, but it actually undermines our system of government, attacks the rule of law, and weakens public confidence in public officials.
But while the domestic prosecutions are offensive enough — prosecutors have gone easy on Republicans, and gone after Dems on dubious charges, especially before an election — it turns out the Bush administration’s shenanigans aren’t limited to the Justice Department.
Politically motivated officials at the Pentagon have pushed for convictions of high-profile detainees ahead of the 2008 elections, the former lead prosecutor for terrorism trials at Guantanamo Bay said last night, adding that the pressure played a part in his decision to resign earlier this month.
Senior defense officials discussed in a September 2006 meeting the “strategic political value” of putting some prominent detainees on trial, said Air Force Col. Morris Davis. He said that he felt pressure to pursue cases that were deemed “sexy” over those that prosecutors believed were the most solid or were ready to go.
Davis said his resignation was also prompted by newly appointed senior officials seeking to use classified evidence in what would be closed sessions of court, and by almost all elements of the military commissions process being put under the Defense Department general counsel’s command, something he believes could present serious conflicts of interest.
“There was a big concern that the election of 2008 is coming up,” Davis said. “People wanted to get the cases going. There was a rush to get high-interest cases into court at the expense of openness.”
Let’s not brush past this too quickly. The lead prosecutor for military commissions at Guantanamo resigned in frustration because he saw, first hand, the politicization of prosecutorial decision-making. And now he’s going public with his concerns.
In this case, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, a new legal adviser to the convening authority for military commissions, intervened to usurp Davis. Instead of leaving prosecutions to prosecutors, Hartman pushed political considerations.
Part of the new focus, Davis said, was to speed up cases that would show the public the system was working. Davis said he wanted to focus on cases that had declassified evidence, so the public could see the entire trial through news coverage. That would defuse possible allegations that the trials were stacked against defendants.
But Hartmann said he was satisfied with putting on cases that included closed sessions, because the law allows it.
“He said, the way we were going to validate the system was by getting convictions and good sentences,” Davis said. “I felt I was being pressured to do something less than full, fair and open.”
Politics dictates every decision this administration makes. Every decision. The Mayberry Machiavellis strike again.