Meanwhile, the future of one of the authors of some of the “torture memos” now being investigated remains iffy. He is Steven Bradbury, who has been nominated by President Bush to be chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). One of the DOJ’s most influential offices, OLC is responsible for drafting the legal opinions of the Attorney General and for providing legal advice to the executive branch on all constitutional questions and reviewing pending legislation for constitutionality. 

Senators Whitehouse and Durbin – and a number of other lawmakers - have called on Mr. Bush to withdraw the Bradbury nomination.  Senator Whitehouse, a former United States attorney, said that the so-called “torture memos”, as well as classified opinions he had reviewed, failed to meet the Justice Department’s standards for scholarship.  

He said that in approving waterboarding, the opinions failed to recognize U.S. prosecution of cases against Japanese officers for waterboarding American prisoners during World War II, and the 1983 opinion of a federal appeals court upholding the conviction of a Texas sheriff for using “water torture” on jail inmates. 

Bradbury’s recent congressional testimony could not have provided much comfort to his critics. Appearing before a House committee,  Bradbury maintained that the Bush administration allowed CIA interrogators to use tactics that were "quite distressing, uncomfortable, even frightening," but did not cause enough severe and lasting pain to meet the definition of torture.  

In surprisingly direct testimony, Bradbury described in chilling detail how waterboarding was used to compel disclosures by prisoners suspected of being member of al-Qaeda.  One of those subjected to this tactic, he said, was Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged masterminded of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. He is one of six detainees at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who is scheduled to be tried by Military Commission. That raises the question of whether evidence obtained through torture will be admitted as evidence in his trial. 

But Bradbury denied that the CIA’s waterboarding techniques were similar to the "water torture" used during the Spanish Inquisition and by the security services of dictatorial governments during the 20th century. He said that no water entered the lungs of the three “high value” prisoners who were subjected to the practice in 2002 and 2003.  

Bradbury joined his boss, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey, in declining to say whether waterboarding is torture, or whether it is illegal under laws passed in 2005 and 2006 to regulate abusive treatment of detainees.  He did acknowledge that the Military Commissions Act and other newer laws "would make it much more difficult to conclude that the practice was lawful today," but added that this was not the case in 2002, when the CIA's interrogation program began.  

These developments would not be nearly as remarkable absent the steel curtain of secrecy behind which the Bush Administration has hidden for the past seven years. Perhaps we’re about to get our first peeks behind that curtain – albeit reluctantly and glacially.  

In the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation, students of politics posited the notion that the cover-up is always worse than the crime. The modus operandi of Bush Administration has managed to debunk that old saw.  In the world of George W. Bush, the crime and the cover-up are equally disgraceful.  

For more from this writer, go to: 

THE WORLD ACCORDING TO BILL FISHER    

 1  |  2