A long, twilight struggle between Dick Cheney and the forces of evil is the subject of an impressive new Frontline documentary, “Cheney’s Law,” airing tomorrow on PBS. In the balance? The nation’s legal traditions over interrogations, detentions, surveillance and every other liberty-security tradeoff made since the Cold War.
Here’s a sneak preview:
Readers of Barton Gellman and Jo Becker’s Cheney series, “Angler,” will be familiar with a lot of this material. The battles fought by Cheney and his longtime legal counsel, David Addington, to expand unilateral executive authority over warmaking functions is the principal thrust of the narrative. But seeing many of the participants tell their stories on camera makes for compelling and vivid journalism. In particular, the documentary devotes a lot of time to Jack Goldsmith, the former Office of Legal Counsel chief who clashed sharply with Addington over interrogations and surveillance. Seeing Goldsmith’s frustration, seriousness and occasional anguish adds a layer of complexity to the story that print can’t often capture. It’s a shame that neither Cheney nor Addington consented to interviews.
But that’s not to say that Frontline doesn’t advance the story.
It deftly ties the Ashcroft-hospital bed incident to the appointment of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the subsequent U.S. attorney firings. Much of the film’s final 20 minutes presents the argument that the cronyization of DOJ occurred, with Cheney’s blessing, to ensure that the department didn’t balk, as Goldsmith and his allies did, over torture or surveillance or indefinite detentions. “It was an effort by the White House to gain control of Justice,” New York Times reporter Scott Shane tells Frontline, “to make sure there’s no repeat of that rebellion of 2004.”
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