Comments (18)

Anonymous wrote on January 2, 2008 5:46 PM:

Conyers' statements about DoJ apply to Congress in re impeachment. Conyers should start doing by example what he expects DoJ to do.

Laughingly, this "Conyers"-man is the same one who whined, "We need history to know we tried to do something." His answer to this President? Nothing. Where's the impeachment investigation, Conyers? Americans are "disappointed" you didn't start an impeachment investigation. Our "disappointment" means nothing to you; why should your "disappointment" mean anything to the WH-OVP-CIA?

If, as Conyers alleges the DOJ has stepped "outside" its regulations, where is the "Congressional investigation into DOJ's handling" of this CIA tape destruction? Come on: CIA IG was investigated; why can't the Congress investigate DOJ?

To say, because of DOJ action, the public will be "denied" something is a farce: Conyers is "denying" the public an impeachment investigation. The Constitutional oath -- 5 USC 3331 -- demands an investigation. The DNC has the majority. Why is a DoJ "denial" of an investigation "bad"; but a DNC refusal to investigate "good"?

As to claims that DoJ is limiting it's investigation, well: Why isn't Congress expanding it's investigating into the impeachable offenses?

If Conyers wants some credibility, he should start showing -- by example -- what he expects the DoJ to do: Have a broad investigation to give the American public facts.

Refusing to conduct an impeachment investigation is the DNC's "answer" to the GOP: Sweeping the impeachable offenses under the rug.

Where does Conyers get off asserting this -- "the tests of independence, transparency and completeness" -- that standard doesn't appear to apply to this Congress when it comes to investigating the President's impeachable offenses. The pbulic needs to have an investigation of this US government -- all three branches. Apparently, Conyers has no solution.

Time to turn Conyers' statement to the ICC: "Look, the US government knows what needs to be done in re Geneva violations; but it refuses to take action. Time for the ICC to take over."

jimbo wrote on January 2, 2008 5:46 PM:

Observers of this administration's actions will likely suggest Mukasey is just another Gonzolez(sp?, I really don't care) who won't make some of the more egregious errors Gonzo did. File it under more time and money wasted in an effort to further defraud the people. Apparently Conyers believes the same, just says it more nicely. Oh, and Mukasey, how you gonna live with being lumped with Gonzo? Course we know the decision came from the administration, you will never have that degree of decision making. Have a nice year.

Agathena wrote on January 2, 2008 5:58 PM:

This is ironic - having a partial investigation on evidence that the White House blocked a partial investigation on 9/11.

According to the authors of the 9/11 Report (aka 9/11 Whitewash), Dean & Hamilton claim that the existence and subsequent destruction of the interrogation tapes hampered their investigation of 9/11.

See link above:
9/11 Commissioners Wag Finger at CIA

Anonymous wrote on January 2, 2008 6:00 PM:

Another letter from Congress. Yawn.

Start an impeachment investigation. Otherwise the States will have to arrest the President and VP, and conduct a trial at the state level.

Al in Austex wrote on January 2, 2008 6:40 PM:

Here's another alternative theory as to why Cong Conyers is not pushing impeachment - what if the Select Committee already has the goods on Bushcheney re the war crimes involving torture . What if some of the old hands at the CIA ,wishing to avoid being made the scapegoats again - ala Ollie North & the Contra War - what if the old hands at Spook Central -ratted out the OVP bad actors ie Addington , Yoo, and even Cheney himself to Conyers . And maybe the plan is to run out the clock and go for criminal indictments after President Bush leaves office.
Meanwhile lets all sign Cong Wexlers petition to impeach the VEEP..

Anonymous wrote on January 2, 2008 7:03 PM:

Al,

I appreciate your optimism, but am not persuaded. Yet. But am open to your vision. If true, you've made an excellent case for malfeasance in re 5 USC 3331 against Members of Congress. You might be right.

The CIA-tape/9-11 commission "concern" is there's been a "delay" and "failure to fully cooperate." If what you are saying is true -- and it might be -- then the Congress is doing exactly what the 9-11 Commission is accusing the CIA of doing: Delaying.

Al in Austex wrote on January 2, 2008 6:40 PM:

AL: "Here's another alternative theory as to why Cong Conyers is not pushing impeachment - " -- Agree this could be possible; but am not clear that the "decision not to impeach" is logically connected with a decision to "not admit we have the evidence warranting removal." Could it not be that the Congress has an interest in not impeaching: In that Congress knows the answers, and doesn't want to be implicated in the alleged failure to enforce Geneva since 2001, when the JAGs raised the prospect of ICC prosecution of civilians?

AL: "what if the Select Committee already has the goods on Bushcheney re the war crimes involving torture." I think you're right; the issue is why isn't that Select Committee formatting the data in the form of an impeachment, not just an inquiry? Conyers already did this with his "Constitution in Crisis"-outline.

AL: "What if some of the old hands at the CIA ,wishing to avoid being made the scapegoats again - ala Ollie North & the Contra War" -- I agree some at the CIA are likely going to jump ship, and turn over evidence. They've already done this: CIA types have worked with the EU in re rendition, that thing the Roberts "Kangaroo Court" says is a "state secret." Might as well get the indictments ready against the Supreme Court, and bring those before the ICC as well.

AL: "what if the old hands at Spook Central -ratted out the OVP bad actors ie Addington , Yoo, and even Cheney himself to Conyers." I think they did that, and because Conyers wasn't listening, this is what prompted them to take their evidence to the EU in re rendition.

AL: "And maybe the plan is to run out the clock and go for criminal indictments after President Bush leaves office." If this is true, then this doesn't address teh problem of war crimes: There is no statute of limitations. So, "running out the clock" isn't a credible excuse/defense/explanation as far as prosecutions go. It may be a _voting_ objective to deny information to the public the voters would need; and this might be an effort to minimize teh GOP losses in 2008.

But before we throw aside the GOP, the DNC needs to show some leadership. Sure, we have alleged war crimes in the US government; but the DNC needs to show some competence in managing that information and leading some investigations. Sure, GOP may control DoJ/prosecutions; but the DNC has not shown it can lead fact finding. They've bungled itin Congress; what's to say they won't bungle it when they're in charge of DoJ?

As with 2006, just because the DNC promises change, doesn't mean they'll deliver it, much less investigate it.

"Meanwhile lets all sign Cong Wexlers petition to impeach the VEEP.." WHile you're at it, support efforts to
- remove Pelosi as Speaker
- arrest the President,
- start State-level prosecutions of the President, and
- forward evidence to the ICC to prosecute US government civilians, judges and lawyers.

moondancer wrote on January 2, 2008 7:12 PM:

Not only no special counsel, but Mukasey went outside the proper jurisdiction. I can only guess this was to retain some control and be able to limit the investigation and/or stop it from getting to cheney/bush/addington where most know it belongs.
I'm not a lawyer but if this was referred to the NoVa AGAG it would proceed as a criminal investigation and be hands off by Mukasey. We couldn't have that now could we?

brian wrote on January 2, 2008 7:24 PM:

Why would one believe that there are no copies of the tapes, in computer files, on DVDs, on any sort of storage device ?

If you believe the 'tapes were destroyed', please explain why you believe it.

Is it because someone from the Agency said so ?

Copies of the 'tapes' exist. I would bet serious money.

MrJJ wrote on January 2, 2008 8:12 PM:

AG Mukasey has a conflict of interest problem already, and should recuse himself and appoint a Special Prosecutor (someone from outside the DOJ)

Jose Padilla's lawyers argued before the Florida Federal Court that Abu Zubaydah was tortured into saying Padilla was an al Qaeda associate. The DOJ dismissed Padilla"s allegations as "meritless," asserting Padilla"s legal team could not prove that Abu Zubaydah had been tortured. Well, it"s clear now that they certainly COULD have, if the tapes of the interrogations of Abu Zubaydah had been made available!

Now here is where Mukasey's role comes into question. U.S. District Judge Mukasey, now attorney general, was the one who signed the warrant used by the FBI to arrest Padilla in May 2002. Court records show the warrant relied in part on information obtained from Abu Zubaydah"s interrogation. So we have a problem Houston.

The then Judge Mukasey could only issue a warrant based upon legally obtained evidence, and confessions under torture are certainly not "legally obtained". So either Mukasey misrepresented the evidence, and would be liable to be potentially a party in those who were presented with "perjured evidence"; or he knew that torture was used in obtaining the confession and ignored it.

In either case he is unsuitable to run an investigation, as it will, inevitably, involved himself. Thus a Special Prosecutor is necessary... Odds that this will happen? Zero percent.

parrot wrote on January 2, 2008 8:24 PM:

You know, he might be right, about this requiring a special Prosecutor...but, um, Skippy, where is the impeachments that should have been brought months (if not years) ago by the Congress against the continuing violations of federal and international laws and treaties that supposedly America's word was affixed to?

FMArouet wrote on January 2, 2008 8:28 PM:

AG Mukasey is the Bush/Cheney team's designated "closer." His job is to shut down the opposition.

As was obvious during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Mukasey's assigned role is to deflect and delay investigations of the Bush Administration's violations of the Anti-Torture Statute and the War Crimes Act (not to mention violations of FISA, the Fourth Amendment, and assorted privacy statutes).

The strategy will continue to be to "gum to death" and string out any real investigations. The White House knows it. Mukasey knows it. Congress knows it. Even we simple citizens know it. The strategy has worked pretty well so far. Even Scooter Libby ended up with no more than a little black commutation asterisk attached to his name. Scooter's full pardon will take a while longer, about 12-and-a-half months to be exact.

By declining to name an independent special prosecutor to investigate the destruction of the interrogation tapes (not to mention the torture most probably documented therein), Mukasey ensures that he retains ultimate control of the direction of the case. He will certainly be keeping the White House in the loop.

VP Cheney and his chief attack dog, David Addington, can rest more easily at night.

And Congress can continue to snooze as well, though perhaps troubled by a sporadic bout of unfocused flailing ending in the occasional issuance of stern letters and of ignored and unenforced subpoenas.

What was that notion about checks-and-balances again? Should not a few of the more reality-based Republicans start soon to wake up and ask themselves if they really want to risk passing Bush's "unitary executive" powers on to a Democratic Administration a year from now?

Al in Austex wrote on January 2, 2008 9:04 PM:

Anonymous at 7:03 pm 2 January
"The pessimist may be right in the end , but the optimist has a better time getting there ." Samuel Clemons.
Anonymous you argue rather like a lawyer. I am not sanguine on all the ICC rules etc-is that the same venue as the Hague ?
What I was wondering about though was this -let me try it again - Conyers knows that Pelosi will not let him have a full blown Impeachment Investigation. But Conyers also has the goods on Cheney . So rather then try a doomed attempt to remove Cheney - Conyers decides to slow walk this whole illegal clusterf__ck , to seek indictments for obstruction of justice etc-after Dubya can no longer pardon /commute any wrong doer.
And anonymous wouldn't some criminal convictions in CONUS add value to any international criminal proceedings? Could not the EU prosecutors build on whatever the court cases turned up here.
But anyway anonymous I am not attorney -don't even play one on the "INTERNETS " - but I do recall many good & patriotic men being ruined by Frank Church -and the "Scooter Libbys" of that time walking away unscathed -so I do wonder what Conyers is keeping in his briefcase- that the current crop of good & patriotic men may have supplied to him - God Speed to these good patriotic men & women ..

Joe wrote on January 2, 2008 10:14 PM:

The outside prosecutor appointed in the CIA tapes case, John H. Durham, is who brought down Whitey Bulger's corrupt Boston FBI guys without any help from the people in charge of the FBI at the time. He sent a large segment of the Boston mob to prison. If Mukasey wanted to undermine the case, this is the last guy he would assign to it. We can speculate that the White House washed its hands of this a while ago, since Harriet Miers and friends told them not to destroy them. The people under investigation are most likely career CIA. Valerie P. can attest to how unfriendly the White House can be to career CIA officers, and these guys don't even have her smoking hot body to deflect the darts.

Helena Montana wrote on January 3, 2008 4:33 AM:

Conyers, Rockefeller...what a pathetic pair of excuses for legislators. The two most corrupt Democrats in Congress, and we're supposed to believe they're going to take on the Bush administration? Please.

joojoo wrote on January 3, 2008 8:22 AM:

Hey John, we're all a little disappointed......

PrismaticSprings wrote on January 3, 2008 2:06 PM:

Emptywheel.com

Of course, that’s not too far from saying to someone outside Washington “Who will rid me of these troublesome tapes . . . before they land on my desk and become my problem?”-------

porter goss has no tape to defend himself, so he has left himself WIDE OPEN to a charge of CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

I’m not competent to agree or disagree with your statement about admissibility. But it’s interesting, because presuming it’s correct, we get something maybe more like: W, Dick, Addington, Goss, et al. have no tape to defend themselves, because .Rodriguez. has left THEM wide open to a charge of… well, dunno about ‘CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY’, but according to my limited understanding, war crimes at a minimum.
---------

Without relocating the source for an early description online now, there was a commentary describing a series of “rendition” aircharter flights for one of the individuals on the original tape, which history ended in abeyance at the prospect of having to delve again into the mutable tail nunmber log buffs’ plane watching records; but the gist was at least one of those prisoners was flown both to foreign sites as well as US onshore sites; the writer of that weblog opined that the one prisoner was interrogated in many sites. That might make for a variety of tapes, some made domestically, others elsewhere; or a tape could accompany the transported prisoner.-----

Given these past attempts to hide documentation and the proximate location of the decision makers in these attempts, I suspect that Rodriguez can pin somebody higher than Goss, and the lawyers are merely the next feeble firewall between the decision makers (deciderers?) and the “tapes”, and all the semantics in-between are parry and thrusts to buy time.

This situation certainly seems ripe for extortion…a third-party country with copies of Blackberry communications could do some real damage, yes?

PrismaticSprings wrote on January 3, 2008 2:13 PM:

LibertyForum is still down - does anyone have any information?

Jim Martin wrote on January 4, 2008 5:26 AM:

Thank you, Rep. Conyers, for that sternly-worded letter, one in a string of sternly-worded letters from yourself and your Democratic colleagues. Why, without these sternly-worded letters, the American public might get the false impression that Congress was failing in its Constitutional duty to exercise oversight over the executive branch. Should the Bush administration by some freak chance fail to respond to your sternly-worded letter, I recommend you follow it up with several more sternly-worded letters. Thank you for your sternly-worded letters on behalf of the Constitution, the American public and the rule of law.