New York Times Editorial: The Torture Debate: The Missing Voices/New York Times Editorial: The Torture Debate: The Lawyers

New York Times Editorial: The Torture Debate: The Missing Voices
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07thu1.html?th&emc=th


Last month’s release of memos prepared by the Bush Justice Department and the disclosure of a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross on the brutal treatment of detainees expanded public knowledge of an ignominious chapter in the nation’s history.

But these and other related disclosures do not provide a complete record of the government’s abuse of detainees. One missing element is the words of those prisoners subjected to waterboarding and other brutality.

Those voices remain muffled by a combination of Bush-era resistance to a reasonable Freedom of Information Act request by the American Civil Liberties Union, and the gag order imposed on lawyers representing Guantánamo detainees. Attorney General Eric Holder needs to promptly repudiate both.

For two years, the A.C.L.U. has been seeking complete transcripts of the hearings at Guantánamo for 14 men who were previously in C.I.A. custody, including Abu Zubaydah, who has been described as an operative of Al Qaeda and was waterboarded at least 83 times. But the publicly released version of these transcripts deleted all detainee statements about their ordeals.

The A.C.L.U. is appealing an ill-considered ruling by a federal trial judge in the District of Columbia, who refused to review the sought-after material before blindly upholding the bogus Bush administration claim that disclosure would damage national security.

Rather than simply adopt the Bush stand, the Justice Department has obtained a filing extension and is weighing what to do. Plainly, the right thing to do is to release the transcripts with the redacted portions filled in. The Bush team’s national security claim always had the odor of a cover-up. The interrogation program it was protecting has been discontinued, and crucial details are known. It is unsupportable to blank out grim details.

The same considerations apply to the protective order that prohibits lawyers for Guantánamo detainees from speaking publicly about their clients’ treatment unless they receive the government’s permission or the information otherwise becomes public. Disclosure of the torture memos and the Red Cross report gives detainee lawyers more leeway, but they should not have to parse their words under a threat of prosecution.

Destruction of the C.I.A.’s interrogation videos has eliminated crucial evidence of the horrors heaped on key detainees. It is unclear exactly when the torture began, and whether the procedures followed stayed within the limits set forth by the Bush legal team. That makes it all the more important for the Obama administration to let detainees’ voices be heard.

While such accounts are suppressed, culpable ex-officials are busily trying to rewrite history. Consider a recent chat at a college reception between a student and Condoleezza Rice, who as White House national security adviser was deeply involved in the development of the authorization of brutality and torture.

Among the many absurd things Ms. Rice did was to offer this argument that waterboarding is legal: “By definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

That notion is just as ludicrous today as it was when Richard Nixon used it more than 30 years ago to excuse his own brand of lawbreaking.





New York Times Editorial: The Torture Debate: The Lawyers
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: May 6, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/07/opinion/07thu2.html?th&emc=th



It is encouraging to see the Obama team moving toward some accountability for the Bush administration lawyers who justified torture.

Wednesday’s Times reported that the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility concluded that the lawyers were guilty of serious lapses of judgment when they argued that detainees could be subjected to interrogation methods long banned by American law, military doctrine and international treaties.

A draft report by the office does not call for prosecuting those lawyers, The Times said, but is likely to ask state bar associations to consider disciplinary action. We believe it must do so in unequivocal language. Bar association disciplinary committees are not set up to do investigations into torture, but they have no excuse not to use documentary evidence from the report to proceed.

When the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel renders an opinion, it has the force of law within the executive branch. It is obvious when the attorneys in that office under President Bush were asked for their legal opinion on detainee treatment, they did not make a cold, independent judgment. They deliberately contorted the law to justify decisions that had already been made, making them complicit in those decisions.

Their acts were a grotesque abrogation of duty and breach of faith: as government officials sworn to protect the Constitution; as lawyers bound to render competent and honest legal opinions; and as citizens who played a major role in events that disgraced this country.

The three primary authors of the torture memos were John Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury. Based on their own words and what we have read about the Justice Department investigation, it is hard to imagine any bar association allowing them to go on practicing law.

Mr. Bybee’s case is the worst. While Mr. Yoo and Mr. Bradbury returned to private life, President Bush rewarded Mr. Bybee with a lifetime position on a federal appeals court. The memos he wrote or signed made it clear that he was not fit to make judgments about the law and the Constitution. Congress should remove him.

The Justice report was finished last November, but withheld by the Bush team to give Mr. Bybee and the others a chance to amend it. The Obama administration should release the full report quickly. There can be no excuse or justification for the abuses — or the abuse of the law. But telling the truth about what happened is the best way to ensure that it never happens again.