There Are No Excuses for Ongoing Concealment of Torture Memos

by Glenn Greenwald
by Glenn Greenwald

Ever since October, 2007, the ACLU has been battling in court to compel the disclosure of three key torture-authorizing memos authored by Bush's Office of Legal Counsel chief Steven Bradbury and approved by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales in 2005.  Two of those memos – the existence of which was first disclosed in a well-documented October, 2007 article by The New York Times' Scott Shane, David Johnston and James Risen – are among the clearest, most specific and most vivid exhibits detailing how the U.S. Government formally "legalized" interrogation methods which unquestionably constitute torture.  They are, in essence, the Rosetta Stone for documenting the war crimes committed not by low-level CIA agents but by the highest-level Bush DOJ officials.  For that reason, the Bush administration vigorously resisted the ACLU's campaign of compelled disclosure.

Those are the torture memos that are now at the heart of a growing controversy, as the Obama administration has sought multiple delays (a total of four) of the court-imposed deadline for it either to (a) disclose those memos to the ACLU or (b) declare that it will refuse to do so and explain why.  The last deadline was Thursday, April 2, and on that date, the Obama DOJ obtained yet another extension, making the new deadline April 16.  Two weeks ago, Newsweek's Michael Isikoff reported that Eric Holder and White House counsel Gregory Craig had overruled the vehement objections from ex-CIA Director Michael Hayden and others in the intelligence community and had decided to disclose the memos.  But thereafter, the Obama DOJ, rather than release the memos, instead sought another extension of the deadline, and numerous sources – including The New York Times' Shane, Newsweek's Isikoff, and Harper's Scott Horton – then reported that the anti-disclosure crusade inside the Obama administration is being led by John Brennan.  

Brennan, of course, was a former top aide to CIA Director George Tenet and was Obama's first choice to head the CIA, a prospective nomination supposedly blocked by bloggers and others, who objected to Brennan on the ground that, though he condemned waterboarding, he had explicitly defended many of the "enhanced interrogation tactics" that these memos authorized.  Despite Brennan's defense of many radical Bush/Cheney policies (or perhaps because of it), Obama named Brennan to be his top White House counter-terrorism adviser, a position Brennan is now using – quite predictably – to block disclosure of evidence that incriminates the Bush administration.  Exactly as Brennan critics predicted (and as intelligence reporters far too close to and respectful of their sources denied would happen), Brennan has now become, as Horton put it, "Dick Cheney’s clear champion."

Read the rest of the article