Torture: More Leakage, More Spin

James Comey emails have been “leaked” to the NYT.

As Marcy Wheeler documents, the leak to the NYT was clearly from someone eager to defend Bush officials by suggesting that Comey's emails prove that all DOJ lawyers --- even those opposed to torture on policy grounds -- agreed these techniques were legal, and the NYT reporters, Scott Shane and David Johnston, dutifully do the leakers' bidding by misleadingly depicting the Comey emails as vindication for Bush/Cheney (Headline: "U.S. Lawyers Agreed on the Legality of Brutal Tactic"; First Paragraph: "When Justice Department lawyers engaged in a sharp internal debate in 2005 over brutal interrogation techniques, even some who believed that using tough tactics was a serious mistake agreed on a basic point: the methods themselves were legal").

I defy anyone to read Comey's 3 emails and walk away with that conclusion.

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The primary argument against prosecutions for Bush officials who ordered torture is that DOJ lawyers told the White House that these tactics were legal, and White House officials therefore had the right to rely on those legal opinions.

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Dick Cheney, David Addington and George Bush himself continuously exerted extreme pressure on DOJ lawyers to produce memos authorizing them to do what they wanted to do -- not because they were interested in knowing in good faith what the law did and did not allow, but because they wanted DOJ memos as cover -- legal immunity -- for the torture they had already ordered and were continuing to order. Though one won't find this in the NYT article, that is, far and away, the most important revelation from the Comey emails.

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The key excerpts tell the story as clearly as can be. Comey was vehemently opposed to a draft memo written by Acting OLC Chief Steven Bradbury -- ultimately dated May 10, 2005 (.pdf) -- that legally authorized the simultaneous, combined use of numerous "enhanced interrogation techniques" on detainees. This "combined techniques" memo was crucial because these were the tactics that had already been used on detainees, and -- after the prior OLC memos authorizing those tactics were withdrawn -- the White House was desperate for legal approval for what they had already done and what they wanted to do in the future.

Comey begins by noting that OLC lawyer Patrick Philbin had expressed numerous objections to the Bradbury memo -- all of which were being ignored in the rush to give the White House what it wanted.

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Comey then noted that he, too, had "grave reservations" about the DOJ legal opinion:

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”I expressed my concerns, saying the analysis was flawed and that I had grave reservations about the [...] opinion.”

Does that sound to you like there was unanimity in the DOJ about the legality of these methods?

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The following day, Comey noted that the loyalty of DOJ lawyers lay with the White House, not with the Justice Department, and they were thus willing to comply with the demands of Cheney and Addington even at the expense of their duties as DOJ lawyers.

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”I had just said things to [AG Gonzalez’s] chief of staff that would have lit the prior AG’s COS’s hair on fire. [...E]veryone seemed to be thinking as if they still work at the White House and not the United States Department of Justice.

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[My] job was to protect the Department and the AG and [...] I could not agree to this because it was wrong.”

  Glenn Greenwald

James Comey was the one Bush Administration official in the spotlight who showed some courage and integrity. Of all the Bush officials that Obama has seen fit to include in or nominate for his administration, James Comey stands out glaringly as the one passed over.

[T] those memos -- just like the pre-war CIA reports about The Threat of Saddam -- were coerced by White House officials eager for bureaucratic cover for what they had already ordered. This was done precisely so that once this all became public, they could point to those memos and have the political and media establishment excuse what they did. [...] That is the critical point proven by the Comey emails, and it is completely obscured by the NYT article, which instead trumpets the opposite point ("Unanimity at DOJ that these tactics were legal") because that's the story their leakers wanted them to promote.

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Other journalists, too slothful to read the Comey emails themselves, will get the message and go forth and repeat it, and it will soon be conventional wisdom that "everyone" at the DOJ agreed these torture techniques were legal.

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But that's how our media works: anonymous government officials tell them what to say; they write it down uncritically; and it then becomes conventional wisdom regardless of how false it is.

We call it propaganda. When other countries do it.

Now, Greenwald assumes that the leaker wanted the NYT to put this angle on the emails. I suppose it could be just as likely that the leaker wanted to make the points that Greenwald is making, but the NYT reporters themselves (and the NYT editors) decided to minimize the damage of the leak to the Bush Administration by painting it otherwise.

At any rate, here are the emails. Very interesting. Please read.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.