GOOD SOLDIER CONDI RICE
by Nat Hentoff
THE SECRETARY OF STATE IS AS CULPABLE AS EVERYONE ELSE IN THE ADMINISTRATION WHEN IT COMES TO THE TORTURING OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS.
Much has been made of George W. Bush’s having appointed not only a black secretary of state, but also a woman. But although constantly in flight around the globe, what has Condoleezza Rice actually accomplished— aside from being a loyal conjugator of the President’s chronic doublespeak?
For example, whenever questioned about her commander in chief’s having given special covert powers to the CIA to operate secret prisons where terrorism suspects are waterboarded— among other violations of U.S. and international laws—as well as to kidnap alleged terrorists from the streets of other countries to be tortured in the cells of Syria, Egypt, Jordan and other CIA soul brothers, Rice perkily echoes Bush’s story assurances: “The United States government does not authorize or condone torture of detainess. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under U.S. law, wherever they may occur in the world.”
As former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan says of Rice in his missile of a book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, “I was struck by how deft she is at protecting her reputation. … History will judge her harshly as the person responsible for overseeing a number of the defining…policies of the Bush Administration.”
Historians will take notice of references to Rice in Stephen Grey’s meticulously sourced Ghost Plane: The True Story of the CIA Torture Program. Grey asked former U.S. Ambassador Edward Walker, “When Condoleezza Rice and the President now stand in front of people and say we don’t send people to countries where they torture, are they telling the truth?”
“No,” said Walker,“they’re not telling the truth.”
But what startlingly revealed how unclean Rice’s hands are of torture was a May 20, 2008, report by a rare phenomenon in the administration: an insistently independent inspector general from the Justice Department who has been crucial in covering up Bush’s unprecedented lawlessness in the sacrosanct name of national security.
On the release of Inspector General Glenn Fine’s report, the American Civil Liberties Union triumphantly heralded the revelation that “officials at the highest levels of the government— including the White House—received reports on the abuse of prisoners in U.S. military custody overseas as early as 2002, [and] today’s government report is the first to identify that then- National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice received complaints of torture. ” (My emphasis.)
In addition to Rice, among the other very high-level officials who were given such proof—by aghast FBI field agents witnessing CIA torturing of prisoners—were Bush and Attorney Generals John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales. Worse yet, our chief law enforcers— without informing Congress or permitting judicial review—actually authorized these crimes. They signed off on justifying memoranda by such Justice Department lawyers as notorious John Yoo, the primary legal authority to enable the U.S. to become a torture nation.
The present attorney general, Michael Mukasey—steadfastly covering up for the ultimate lawbreaker in the White House—has also diligently tried to prevent any prosecution of the hands-on torturers in the CIA, the military or other government agencies. As he has testified in Congress, Mukasey maintains that none of these perpetrators of what our laws and the Geneva Conventions call war crimes can be held accountable because they acted on legal opinions from the Justice Department!
Under this reasoning, the circle of criminality must remain unbroken because it was the Justice Department that originally and subsequently issued opinions—classified until recently— authorizing the torturing that so appalled FBI agents in attendance that FBI Director Robert Mueller forbade his agents from taking part in those interrogations.
The no-nonsense director of the ACLU’s Washington legislative office, Caroline Frederickson, responds that “the filtering up of information from FBI agents to high government officials makes claims of immunity even more incredulous.”
Obviously, all these criminals—high, midlevel and underlings in the field—have nothing to worry about unless the next President and the next Congress demand and conduct investigations armed with subpoena powers. If they don’t, other countries may put these rampant abusers of international law on trial.
Should that happen, there are countries that Condoleezza Rice—once she leaves government service—may decide not to visit for fear of being put on trial. She is well aware that 25 CIA agents are currently being tried in Milan, Italy—in absentia—for abducting an Egyptian Muslim from Italian soil during one of their “extraordinary renditions.”
What is Condi saying these days about her role as a very major player in a foreign policy that has included sending persons under suspicion to foreign prisons, where electrodes are attached to their private parts? According to the Associated Press, on May 22, 2008, Rice— talking to Google employees at the company’s California headquarters—tried at first to emphasize that immediately after 9/11 the Bush Administration was “in an environment in which saving America from the next attack was paramount.”
Paramount to America’s rule of law? Well, Condi said, America was in “a different place then.” And with her customary resolve to keep her hands clean, the loyal servitor quickly added, “But even in that environment, President Bush made clear that we were going to live up to our obligations at home and to our treaty obligations abroad.” Indeed, as the AP reported, Rice assured her audience that even back then, “Bush’s top aides had been scrupulous in making sure the early interrogations conformed to existing rules.” The rules of the Spanish Inquisition or Stalin’s gulags? I have no doubt that after leaving her lofty post Rice will retain a prestigious role—perhaps as a college president—and will experience nary a pang of guilt.
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Nat Hentoff is a historian of the Constitution, a jazz critic and a columnist for the Village Voice and Free Inquiry. His incisive books include The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America ; Living the Bill of Rights ; and the forthcoming Is This America?
Tags: Nat Hentoff
November 30th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
LOS ANGELES: A federal jury here has handed down what legal experts said was the country’s first cyber-bullying verdict, convicting a Missouri woman of three misdemeanor charges of computer fraud for her involvement in creating a phony account on MySpace to trick a teenager who later committed suicide.
The jury deadlocked Wednesday on a fourth count of conspiracy against the woman, Lori Drew, 49, and the judge, George Wu of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, declared a mistrial on that charge.
While it was unclear how severely Drew will be punished – the jury reduced the charges to misdemeanors from felonies, and no sentencing date was set – the conviction was highly significant, computer fraud experts said, because it was the first time that a federal statute designed to combat computer crimes was used to prosecute what were essentially abuses of a user agreement on a social-networking site.
Under federal sentencing guidelines, Drew could face up to three years in prison and $300,000 in fines, though she has no previous criminal record.
In a highly unusual move, Thomas O’Brien, the U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, prosecuted the case himself with two subordinates after law enforcement officials in Missouri determined Drew had broken no local laws.
O’Brien, who asserted jurisdiction on the theory that MySpace is based in Los Angeles, where its servers are housed, said the verdict sent an “overwhelming message” to Internet users.
During the trial, prosecutors portrayed Drew as working with her daughter, Sarah, and Ashley Grills, a family friend in Dardenne Prairie, Missouri.
Testimony showed that they created a fake MySpace account to communicate with Megan Meier, who was 13 and had a history of depression and suicidal impulses. Megan hanged herself in October 2006, after, according to testimony, receiving cruel messages.
Legal and computer fraud experts said that the application of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, passed in 1986 and amended multiple times, appeared to be expanding with technology and the growth of social networking on the Internet. More typically, prosecutions under the act have involved cases involving people who hack into computer systems.
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December 3rd, 2008 at 8:01 pm
I HAVE A IDEA AND A LOOKALIKE FOR GEORGE W BUSH. HOW ABOUT A VIDEO OF HIM AND YOUR SARAH PALIN LOOKALIKE. WOIULD LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU HE IS WILLING.HAS FILM EXP.
March 2nd, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Well done Mr. Hentoff! It’s truly inexplicable how someone who endured Jim Crow laws and the whole outrageous inhumanity of the White Supremacy notion and all it entailed, could then become an ACTIVE policy-maker in this regard. It boggles the mind!
Sincerely,
W. Drezek III