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Goldsmith: Cheney Lawyer Is Frothing Lunatic
If there's a villain in Jack Goldsmith's account of his time in the Justice Department, it's David Addington, Dick Cheney's legal alter ego. Addington, who became the vice president's chief of staff after Scooter Libby resigned following his indictment, served as Cheney's eyes and ears in the legal battles within the administration over warrantless surveillance, coercive interrogations and indefinite detentions. His style of argument, as recounted by Goldsmith, isn't exactly a subtle one.
[W]hen Goldsmith tried to question another presidential decision, Addington expressed his views even more pointedly. “If you rule that way,” Addington exclaimed in disgust, Goldsmith recalls, “the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on your hands.”
Jane Mayer's profile of Addington introduced him as a zealot for unchecked presidential power during wartime. Barton Gellman and Jo Becker's series on Cheney added crucial detail, including Addington's role in functionally authoring White House opinions denying al-Qaeda detainees Geneva Conventions protection.
Goldsmith delves even further in establishing Addington as a relentless legal force for unbridled executive authority. Take the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Since 9/11, the court has rejected only four requests for surveillance in the U.S., about as many as it's rejected in its entire 30-year existence. Yet for Addington, the court's requirements for niceties like probable cause represented an unacceptable hindrance, putting the country at risk of devastation.
“We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court,” Goldsmith recalls Addington telling him in February 2004.
From Goldsmith's description, Addington can be reasonably said to consider the machinery of republican government to be a strategic asset of al-Qaeda. If the FISA Court was a meddlesome institution that needed scaling back, an impertinent bureaucrat like Goldsmith was vastly more irksome, representing as he did a mere executive appendage like the Justice Department. Addington would rebuke Goldsmith with stunning phrases like this one:
"The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,” Addington replied angrily, according to Goldsmith. “You cannot question his decision.”
Somehow, Addington got into his head the idea that he alone represented President Bush's interests.
Again and again the two lawyers clashed. In 2004, Goldsmith threatened to resign unless the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel formally repudiated an August 2002 memo justifying torture. Resignation would have meant intensifying a very public controversy over interrogations in the middle of an election year. Addington viewed Goldsmith, who had withdrawn a number of over-broad opinions on wartime authority during his tenure at OLC, as unconscionably willing to sacrifice national security out of legal squeamishness. He confronted Goldsmith in Gonzales's White House office:
[Addington pulled] out of his jacket pocket a 3-by-5 card that listed the withdrawn opinions. “Since you’ve withdrawn so many legal opinions that the president and others have been relying on,” Addington said, according to Goldsmith, “we need you to ... let us know which [of the remaining] ones you still stand by.”
Ultimately Goldsmith prevailed. The OLC rescinded the memo in December 2004. But it says a lot that Goldsmith is out of government, about to publish a book and testify to the Senate, and Addington has only ascended in the veep's office.
Comments (20)
Bill in Chicago wrote on September 4, 2007 10:43 AM:No, the blood of the hundred thousand people who die in the next attack will be on the hands of you and your boss, for spending the past six years scrambling around on your knees kissing Saudi royal ass instead of defending this country:
www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
Grumpy wrote on September 4, 2007 10:48 AM:The problem with these guys is not that they're ideologues. It's that they're incompetent, moronic ideologues.
“We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court” lets you use the headline "Cheney's Chief of Staff Dreamed of Bombing Surveillance Court"? Isn't it more likely that Addington was imagining that another 9/11-type attack would demonstrate that FISA was obstructing national defense, rather than explosives targeting the court itself?
Glenn wrote on September 4, 2007 10:54 AM:Yeah, guys, Grumpy's right. Addington may be a loon, but no one would understand that statement as contemplating a bombing of the FISA court itself.
Steve wrote on September 4, 2007 11:05 AM:It's nice to see that even conservative lawyers who work for the Bush Administration, like Jack Goldsmith, have to deal with this "the blood will be on your hands!" crap that I had previously seen only from lunatics in blog comment sections.
drational wrote on September 4, 2007 11:06 AM:“We’re one bomb away from getting rid of that obnoxious [FISA] court”
One way terrorists damage America is forcing us to abandon our freedoms. The Madrid Train Bombing occurred one day after the Ashcroft Hospital Showdown where it was clear that the Administration was about to lose the Warrantless Wiretap capability.
It is interesting that those seeking to expand Presidential Authority and eliminate civil liberties benefit from terrorist attacks, and come to view terrorism as a helpful tool in reshaping our government.
Anonymous wrote on September 4, 2007 11:16 AM:Addington and Cheney and the rest of the lunatics need to be legally removed from power. They are fascists. They secretly hope for another attack (maybe a false-flag one they help along with a wink and a nod) so they can seize even more power, burn the Constitution once and for all from the hollow shell they have gutted it into, spy on us with impunity and breathtaking brazenness, smash Habeas Corpus for U.S. every citizen, install corporation-appointed representatives into the Legislative Branch as our de facto representatives, concentrate all executive level agencies including intelligence and law enforcement into political hands, and codify their idea of the'unitary executive' (SIEG HIEL THE NEW KING) idea into permanent legislation. Oh yeah, that's all happening now, isn't it?
neo1 wrote on September 4, 2007 11:18 AM:yea come on, please change that headline, it only detracts from your credibility as a website, for no reason.
Bill Peterson wrote on September 4, 2007 11:23 AM:Cheney is the real problem. Bush needs to start sending Cheney out to attend foreign dignitaries' funerals, like a VP should. Otherwise, malignant Cheney will ruin us all.
BP
The Lump wrote on September 4, 2007 11:34 AM:We are only one political party away from being an enemy to the entire world. Whether or not that political party can save us from the one in power remains to be seen.
interested litigant wrote on September 4, 2007 11:38 AM:We are only one order away from ending the lunacy and saving this nation. Chin up, my lib friends. All is not as it seems. It can only get better from here.
moondancer wrote on September 4, 2007 11:38 AM:I wonder how bemused they were, when congress gave them EVERYTHING they were trying to obtain illegally. All those cabalistic machinations for naught.
Bruce Webb wrote on September 4, 2007 11:49 AM:I dont know who it reflects worse on congress or the neocon thugs.
The other thing that becomes more clear every day, is how shrub and Reagan are alike in one way. That is they were both minimal in the important events of their administration. Being an inept figurehead leaves you at the mercy of your surrounding staff, the effectiveness of is painfully obvious.
Well neo1, I suggest that headline is if anything measured. And grumpy that is a strawman argument. Since the FISA court assembles in secret at undisclosed times it would be an extraordinary coincidence if a terrorist attack would take it out, and it could be reconsituted within hours by appointing another panel of judges. Clearly Addington meant that they could and would take advantage of another terrorist attack to seize even more power. And nothing Ackerman says would lead any reasonable person to conclude anything else.
What makes him a frothing lunatic is the notion that any attack could take out 100,000 people at a single stroke. Even a smuggled tactical nuke would probably not have that many casualties. Of course you could theoretically bury the bomb at the 50 yard line of the Superbowl and blow it at half-time. If we were living in a cartoon world. It is this same sort of thinking that suggests that a single vial of biological weapon material could kill tens of thousands. No it doesn't work that way, you send some people to the hospital, may a person or two dies. But really only a chickenshit or someone with delusions really believes you should spend 80+ American lives and $12 billion a month insuring against what rationally is an insignificant threat.
Of course this requires engaging the cortex rather than the limbic system and so may be out of reach for many.
Glenn wrote on September 4, 2007 11:59 AM:Um, Bruce, the headline for this story originally stated that Addington was in favor of bombing the FISA court itself, ok? TPM has now, thankfully, changed the headline, but Grumpy didn't just make it up. Get the facts before being such an ass next time.
chabuka wrote on September 4, 2007 12:21 PM:Isn't David Addington another one of those dual citizens....? Israel and the U.S.? The neo-cons seem to be all mostly dual citizens of Israel...and Israel wants the U.S. to "attack" their enemies"..send our young men and women to die for Israel..? Seems treasonous to me...
Addington's 2 inch cock wrote on September 4, 2007 1:24 PM:Would the FISA court be shut down if someone bombed Addington only?
illlich wrote on September 4, 2007 2:16 PM:If all it takes is one bomb to do away with the FISA court, and he wants the FISA court done away with anyway, why not do everything he can to ALLOW the next bomb to go off? Or better yet, make one himself.
Barry Champlain wrote on September 4, 2007 2:40 PM:Website headlines notwithstanding... are any of the apologists here actually attempting to make the case, that David Addington (and his colleagues in that cabal) would not have WELCOMED another "Reichstag Fire"?
The one traditional benchmark of logic that, in the wake of 9.11, is now considered too rude for any "mainstream American" to discuss, has always been the tried-and-true, "Who benefits?"
Well... who DID? Can a case honestly be made that the 19 dead hijackers "benefited"? That Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaida "benefited"? That, for God's sake, Iraq and Afghanistan "benefited"?
Conversely, can a case honestly be made that the Bush administration, in its relentless quest for absolute, "unitary" power, DID NOT "benefit"?
In light of all the above, please explain why it is it still impolite, above ground, to discuss this?
lespool wrote on September 5, 2007 12:10 AM:chabuka,
An interesting point, because IIRC Trotskyists (Jewish Communists and followers of Leon Trotsky who were persecuted, deported, and murdered by Stalin) became the first self-anointed "neocons" upon immigrating to the US from Russia. Perhaps even more cogent, Stalin vehemently opposed the one view that Trotskyists strongly advocated; worldwide revolution.
The Oracle wrote on September 5, 2007 2:15 AM:Addington hopes for a terrorist attack so the FISA court can be destroyed.
Ann Coulter wishes that someone would blow the New York Times to smithereens.
Bolton dreams about someone blowing up the U.N. building in New York.
Someone sends lethal anthrax in envelopes to two U.S. Senators, both Democrats. Countless other "someones" send countless envelopes filled with non-lethal powder to other U.S. citizens and liberal organizations like Planned Parenthood.
Who needs to fear the threat from al Qaeda when we have so many evil people running loose in America who hope that harm befalls other U.S. citizens?
This period of time reminds me of the 1960s.
Are we getting ready to see a flurry of assassination attempts against Democrats and other progressives in our liberal democracy, similar to that which happened in the 1960s with the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy?
I'm just saying that the same hate-filled rhetoric spewing out of hate-filled mouths from a bunch of hate-filled racist, religious fundamentalist, authoritarian conservatives seems to be rising in volume, primarily in response to true, patriotic U.S. citizens challenging their fascist plans for our society.
And except for a comparable period in the early 1930s when certain conservatives did the same thing in reaction to FDR's efforts to pull our country out of the Great Depression (even going so far as to try to assassinate him), the closest approximation is the 1960s, when three great Americans were gunned down.
So, with today's right-wing AM radio talk shows, Faux News, and a slew of right-wingers spewing the same type of anti-Democrat and anti-democracy language, some of the more-gullible, less-restrained conservative listeners might just get some insane and violent ideas into their heads, and switch from their terroristic non-lethal powder mailings into doing something more lethal.
I pray to God I'm wrong, but when certain Republicans, through their discourse, indicate they no longer value our nation's principles and institutions, then all patriotic Americans that do still believe in our nation's principles and institutions should be especially vigilant and alert.
getalife wrote on September 5, 2007 11:25 AM:Geez.