rssLeahy Calls on Bybee to Testify
Wednesday, April 29, 2009 at 5:40 pm
- 2 Comments
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) has invited Jay Bybee, the former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer and current judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, reports Ryan Grim of The Huffington Post. Is this the beginning of a broader Senate Judiciary Committee probe?
In a letter sent to Bybee on Wednesday, Leahy notes the recent contradictory reports in The Washington Post and The New York Times — one which recounted Bybee saying he regrets signing off on the torture memos while at OLC, the other saying he stands by them. And he offers Bybee “the opportunity to come forward and clarify what you meant in your public discussion of these matters, and so that we can establish the facts and get to the truth.”
Leahy, of course, has been calling on Congress to create a “Truth Commission” or “Commission of Inquiry” that would look broadly at Bush administration policies that authorized the abuse of detainees, but wouldn’t lead to prosecutions. Many Republicans have claimed such a commission is unconstitutional and unnecessary, while President Obama has said it would be too politically divisive and that he prefers to look forward rather than backward. Others have criticized the idea because it could offer immunity to witnesses who some believe should be prosecuted.
In short, it hasn’t had much support.
Meanwhile, Leahy has avoided having the Judiciary Committee, which he chairs, hold hearings on the questions of how the OLC memos came to be drafted; what directions the lawyers were given; and exactly how and why they ignored so much of the relevant law that they were able to conclude that brutal interrogation tactics don’t violate the United States’ legal commitments against torture and “cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” Yet he’s also said repeatedly that those questions need to be answered.
Asked whether he would hold hearings on these questions Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Leahy said he preferred the commission approach, but carefully avoided saying what he’d do if he couldn’t win support for the idea.
Maybe calling Bybee to account for his actions before the Senate Judiciary committee is the beginning of an answer.
2 Comments
Comment posted April 30, 2009 @ 2:36 pm
Attorney David Addington would be the star witness, the John Dean of the hearings — if Leahy et. al. ever got around to it. Across how many administrations have Addington, Cheney, and Rumsfeld been outsmarting Congress and the political process? How about starting with the Iran-Contra hearings? Who started that cocaine drug importation scheme? Who's making money from selling Tamiflu? Did swine flu send a message to President Obama when his driver in Meico City died the next day? Did the 747 fly-by – unauthorized by the President – through Wall Street send a message about who in the White House wasn't under the President's control? Barton Gellman has already told the story in Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency so the Bybee inquest would slowly unfurl a long pattern of above the law, behind the law, around the law, and beneath the law by Attorney Addington and his graduate school drop-out friends Cheney and Rumsfeld. Great patriots and public servants they have been — but President Obama was right — when you drop out of school you don't just hurt yourself; you hurt your country. Addington is the Constitutional brains behind Bybee and Woo. But the sad part of it was that it took so little to convince former President Bush that enhanced interrogation would be okay.
Comment posted April 30, 2009 @ 9:36 pm
Attorney David Addington would be the star witness, the John Dean of the hearings — if Leahy et. al. ever got around to it. Across how many administrations have Addington, Cheney, and Rumsfeld been outsmarting Congress and the political process? How about starting with the Iran-Contra hearings? Who started that cocaine drug importation scheme? Who's making money from selling Tamiflu? Did swine flu send a message to President Obama when his driver in Meico City died the next day? Did the 747 fly-by – unauthorized by the President – through Wall Street send a message about who in the White House wasn't under the President's control? Barton Gellman has already told the story in Angler: The Cheney Vice Presidency so the Bybee inquest would slowly unfurl a long pattern of above the law, behind the law, around the law, and beneath the law by Attorney Addington and his graduate school drop-out friends Cheney and Rumsfeld. Great patriots and public servants they have been — but President Obama was right — when you drop out of school you don't just hurt yourself; you hurt your country. Addington is the Constitutional brains behind Bybee and Woo. But the sad part of it was that it took so little to convince former President Bush that enhanced interrogation would be okay.
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