Two weeks ago, Larry Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff at the State Department in Bush’s first term, made headlines for his blistering and unapologetic denouncement of the president and his foreign policy team.
Yesterday on NPR, Dan Froomkin noted, Wilkerson took his charges one step further.
NPR’s Steve Inskeep brought up U.S. policies towards detainees that have produced widespread reports of torture. Wilkerson said Donald Rumsfeld, “under the cover” of Dick Cheney’s office, and with legal help from David Addington (Cheney’s new chief of staff), approved procedures that pushed the limits too far. When Inskeep asked for evidence that the abuses led that far up the chain of command, Wilkerson said:
“I’m privy to the paperwork, both classified and unclassified, that the secretary of State asked me to assemble on how this all got started, what the audit trail was, and when I began to assemble this paperwork, which I no longer have access to, it was clear to me that there was a visible audit trail from the vice president’s office through the secretary of Defense down to the commanders in the field that in carefully couched terms — I’ll give you that — that to a soldier in the field meant two things: We’re not getting enough good intelligence and you need to get that evidence, and, oh, by the way, here’s some ways you probably can get it. And even some of the ways that they detailed were not in accordance with the spirit of the Geneva Conventions and the law of war.”
The audio of Wilkerson’s comments are online.
If there’s a paper trail to the Vice President’s office endorsing and encouraging torture, it’s the kind of thing that might require a little follow up.