Surprise! We Can Still Torture

It turns out the DoJ has some secret legal opinions on torture from 2005 and 2006. A House Panel has demanded the documents be turned over. Because Congress has been so very successful in the past in getting material from the administration. They can’t even get them to turn over subpoenaed material.

[S]oon after Alberto R. Gonzales’s arrival as attorney general in February 2005, the Justice Department issued [a secret opinion on torture,] according to officials briefed on it, an expansive endorsement of the harshest interrogation techniques ever used by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics

[...]

Mr. Gonzales approved the legal memorandum on “combined effects” over the objections of James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general, who was leaving his job after bruising clashes with the White House. Disagreeing with what he viewed as the opinion’s overreaching legal reasoning, Mr. Comey told colleagues at the department that they would all be “ashamed” when the world eventually learned of it.

  NYT

Of course he was giving them credit for having shame.

Comey strongly objected and told associates that he advised Mr. Gonzales not to endorse the [torture] opinion. But the attorney general made clear that the White House was adamant about it, and that he would do nothing to resist.

Under Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Comey’s opposition might have killed the opinion. An imposing former prosecutor and self-described conservative who stands 6-foot-8, he was the rare administration official who was willing to confront [Dick Cheney's counsel David] Addington. At one testy 2004 White House meeting, when Mr. Comey stated that “no lawyer” would endorse Mr. Yoo’s justification for the N.S.A. program, Mr. Addington demurred, saying he was a lawyer and found it convincing. Mr. Comey shot back: “No good lawyer,” according to someone present.

[...]

[I]n July, after a monthlong debate inside the administration, President Bush signed a new executive order authorizing the use of what the administration calls “enhanced” interrogation techniques — the details remain secret — and officials say the C.I.A. again is holding prisoners in “black sites” overseas.

And now I know how Patrick Fitzgerald got to be the special prosecutor in the Plame case: James Comey appointed him, further pissing off the Bush cabal, or, as the NY Times article puts it, “irreparably offending” the White House.

They were offended that a “good lawyer” might get involved.

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

Mueller Backs Comey

FBI Director Robert Mueller testified today that then acting Attorney General James Comey's story about the night raid on John Ashcroft's hospital room by current AG Alberto Gonzales was true. (Surely there's nobody reading this that needs me to reference that incident yet another time.) He said he took notes.

More Comey Testimony

This time written.

It seems the Big Dick told the acting US Attorney General (Comey) that Comey's (and Ashcroft's) objections to the illegal wire-tapping were not appreciated the day before Card and Gonzales went to Ashcroft's hospital bedside to extort an approval of it, and then Big Dick blocked a promotion for one of the members of the DoJ who also objected to the wire-tapping.

What we still don't know is what exactly that program was at the time. We only know what it was after the DoJ fixed it so that they could approve its legality - some time after it had been in practice (two years or more) - and even that has proven to be controversial, if not objectionable.

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

Where Comey's Coming From

It would seem James Comey believes his personal integrity and the Constitution are both inviolable. Not to mention his lack of gullibility.

Soon after Gonzales became attorney general, his then chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, told Comey that Gonzales's "vision" was to merge the deputy's office with Gonzales's own office. That meant that Comey would have lost some of his autonomy, becoming less of a leader and more of a senior staff member. A source close to Sampson says he merely wanted Gonzales and Comey to operate as a "seamless leadership team," with "harmony rather than conflict," and never meant to "degrade the status or authority" of the deputy. Comey didn't buy it. "You may want to try that with the next deputy attorney general," Comey is said to have responded to Sampson. "But it's not going to work with me."

  US News

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

Comey's Testimony

I continue to present information on this, because I think there lurks in this story the essence of the criminal Bush administration, and as more information comes out, more evidence is offered. In case you didn't or couldn't view the video of Comey testifying, Michael Collins offers the major points we need to focus on, and what they imply, in an article at Scoop subtitled Bush, Gonzales, Card Clearly Implicated (in a crime).

Comey's Testimony

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker offers a synopsis of how it came about that James Comey tripped up the warrantless wiretaps program:

The warantless wiretap surveillance program stank. For two and a half years, Ashcroft signed off on the program every forty-five days without any real knowledge of what it entailed. In his defense, the advisors who were supposed to review such things on his behalf were denied access; to his everlasting shame, he did not press hard enough to have that corrected.

When Comey came on board, he insisted on being granted access, and had Goldsmith review the program. What they found was so repugnant to any notion of constitutional liberties that even Ashcroft, once briefed, was willing to resign rather than sign off again.

[...]

There’s hope we’ll find out what was really going on. I’d highlight this portion of Specter’s remarks from the hearing: “Mr. Comey, it's my hope that we will have a closed session with you to pursue the substance of this matter further. Because your standing up to them is very important, but it's also very important what you found on the legal issue on this unnamed subject, which I infer was the terrorist surveillance program. And you're not going to comment about it. I think you could. I think you could even tell us what the legalisms were. Doesn't involve a matter of your advice or what the president told you, et cetera. But I'm going to discuss it with Senator Leahy later and see about pursuing that question to try to find out about it.”

And then Leahy, in response: “We will have a closed-door hearing on this. Senator Specter and I are about to have a briefing on aspects of this.” Can’t wait to hear what leaks out of that.

Comey's Testimony

Josh Marshall has video of the testimony regarding the made for movie moment at John Ashcroft's hospital bedside. It's even more shocking than anything I've yet passed along to you. Marshall has two cut versions, one shorter one for those of you who don't have time, but I recommend the longer version (it's about 15 minutes) if you can manage.

Further on Comey's Testimony

I heard some of Comey's testimony on NPR. It was very damning of Gonzales and Andrew Card. Very. After the incident with the two sleezebags at Ashcroft's bedside, and their attempt to ride roughshod over the law and the Department of Justice, Comey considered resigning.

Comey said that on March 10, 2004, he got a call from Ashcroft's staff reporting that Gonzales and Card were on their way to see the attorney general at the hospital. Comey said he "rushed" to the hospital and called Mueller to go there too.

Gonzales and Card entered Ashcroft's hospital room, "And then Mr. Gonzales began to discuss why they were there -- to seek his approval for a matter, and explained what the matter was," Comey said.

Ashcroft "in very strong terms expressed himself" on the program, Comey said, and added, "But that doesn't matter, because I'm not the attorney general," alluding to Comey acting in his place.

Gonzales and Card left without acknowledging Comey, the former deputy attorney general said.

The program was reauthorized without the Justice Department's approval the following day, and Comey said he drafted a resignation letter.

"Mr. Ashcroft's chief of staff asked me something that meant a great deal to him, and that is that I not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me," Comey said.

  Bloomberg

In addition to Ashcroft saying he wasn't the AG, he pointed to Comey and said, "There's the Attorney General."

Comey also said that as soon as Card got back to the White House he phoned Comey and demanded his presence. Comey responded that after the behavior he had just witnessed he wouldn't come unless there was a witness present. He said Card said, in effect, "What behavior? We were just there wishing him well."

Goodfellas. Common thugs.

The White House is feeling a little snippy about Comey's testimony.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the president has "full confidence in Alberto Gonzales," and he refused to discuss what he termed "old conversations."

"You've got somebody who's got splashy testimony on Capitol Hill, good for him," Snow said.

  Bloomberg

We'll see how long that full confidence lasts. Unless Gonzo has something on him.

Those last two photos I snagged from W3IAI.

Has anybody else been struck by how much Comey looks like Ashcroft?

John Ashcroft

By the way, I read somewhere that it was Monica Goodling who covered the breasts of Lady Justice when Ashcroft was AG. ??

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

The Rest of the Story

Remember when James Comey testified regarding the attorney firings? He's testifying again. This time he's talking about the secret program to spy on U.S. citizens. Remember that he refused to give the okay on it when Ashcroft was in the hospital (prompting Bush to start referring to him as 'Cuomey')? And remember that Andrew Card and Torture Gonzales went to Ashcroft's bedside at the hospital to try to override Comey?

Well, it was a far, far better story than that. Read it here at TPM Muckraker.

And I'll give John Ashcroft (whom I've blasted in the past) his props on this one. He stood with Comey, prepared to resign over it if necessary.

Purge

James Comey was John Ashcroft's assistant AG. Shortly after Ashcroft was replaced by Torture Gonzales, James Comey resigned. Today, Comey testified before the Senate committee investigating the Gonzales DoJ attorney purges. Unfortunately, I was not able to watch the testimony, and so I have been reading some blog and news articles to get the flavor of what went down. I'll try to be relatively brief relaying it.

It seems that after US Attorney Bud Cummins was fired, he received an email from the former Assistant AG in which Comey wrote:

"I will not sit by and watch good people smeared," Comey wrote in early March. "What's that quotation about all that's necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to remain silent?"

I wonder if he chose his words with intent. Evil.

Let's take a look at this man, as he performed his office. Going back to the news when Comey retired, an article at Law.com said,

The DOJ announced Comey's resignation Wednesday afternoon.

Comey has not yet found a new job, according to a DOJ source, because to even look for something new could be perceived as unethical.

What? No revolving door for Comey? Even avoiding the perception of being unethical? Hello, Paul Wolfowitz. Keep in mind that Comey is a Republican, appointed to his AG position by the Bush administration.

As the Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Comey "directed several high-profile securities and fraud investigations, including WorldCom, Adelphia and ImClone." Bush nominated him to the AG position in 2003. I can't tell you how the apparently honest and dedicated Comey slipped through the Bush Administration vetting routine. But the Law.com article goes on to report...

He was rumored to be a candidate for attorney general after his boss, John Ashcroft, stepped down. But his chances weren't good from the start. Some of the president's top advisers felt he was insensitive to political concerns, according to a story in Legal Times, a Recorder affiliate.

Among other tensions, Comey pushed for the DOJ to release so-called torture memos to the media and for controversial legal analyses regarding the use of torture to be rewritten. He also appointed a special prosecutor to take over the investigation into whether a White House official leaked a Central Intelligence Agency operative's name to the media.

And that's how Patrick Fitzgerald got the Plame case.

Comey was against torture. No wonder he wasn't chosen to replace Ashcroft. Bush needed an AG who would condone and permit him to use torture.

When asked about the CIA leak investigation during his Senate confirmation hearing, Comey said: "I don't care about politics. I don't care about expediency. I care about doing the right thing."

Cleary, he would never do in a position of power in a Bush administration.

Comey knew the score. In February of 2006, Newsweek reported on the occasion of Comeys' resignation, in an article about a small group of attorneys within the administration going up against the Vice President's office and the administration's "riding rough-shod" over the Constitution.

Comey thanked "people who came to my office, or my home, or called my cell phone late at night, to quietly tell me when I was about to make a mistake; they were the people committed to getting it right—and to doing the right thing—whatever the price. These people," said Comey, "know who they are. Some of them did pay a price for their commitment to right, but they wouldn't have it any other way."

When Comey refused reauthorization of Bush's secret eavesdropping program (during a hospital stay by Ashcroft), Bush started referring to him snidely as Cuomey (apparently in reference to Mario Cuomo, a liberal Democratic New York Governor).

On the 31st of December, 2005, Firedoglake reported:

Comey announced his resignation from the Justice Department in March 2005. And when BushCo. tried to appoint a Skull & Bones crony to oversee Fitzgerald, Comey did an end run around them and appointed the extremely ethical David Margolis to the task as his parting shot out the door.

It seems that before his resignation, Comey had generated his own list of US attorneys to be fired. Unsurprisingly, the list was not the same as the one that the Gonzales DoJ finally used. According to TPM Muckraker,

A former Justice official explained the discrepancy: "Comey's definition of incompetence turned out to be quite different from Sampson's and had nothing to do with politics."

In fact, Comey commented in today's testimony about those who were purged:

"My experience with the U.S. attorneys just listed was very positive," said Comey, now general counsel of Lockheed Martin Corp. Firing them for poor performance would not be "consistent with my experience," he said. "I had very positive encounters with these folks."

The Gavel has a short clip of Comey's testimony today, including this quote:

“If that was going on [hiring and firing for political purposes], that strikes at the core of what the Department of Justice is. You just cannot do that, you can’t hire assistant US Attorneys based on political affilation, because it deprives the Department of its lifeblood, which is the ability to stand up and have juries of all stripes believe what you say, and have sheriffs and judges and jailers and the people we deal with trust the Department of Justice."

And Firedoglake also has an excellent timeline of what's been brewing at the DoJ (and for how long), including Comey's influence and acts (and including Comey's farewell speech at DoJ).

I think we sometimes forget that there are honest Republicans with integrity.

We don't see many of them in this administration.

Now we know why Ashcroft suddenly recused himself from the Plame investigation

It wasn't his choice.

Justice Department officials made the crucial decision in late 2003 to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the leak of the identity of undercover CIA officer Valerie Plame in large part because investigators had begun to specifically question the veracity of accounts provided to them by White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, according to senior law enforcement officials.

Several of the federal investigators were also deeply concerned that then attorney general John Ashcroft was personally briefed regarding the details of at least one FBI interview with Rove, despite Ashcroft's own longstanding personal and political ties to Rove, the Voice has also learned. The same sources said Ashcroft was also told that investigators firmly believed that Rove had withheld important information from them during that FBI interview.

[...]

Rove had earlier served as an adviser to Ashcroft during the course of three political campaigns. And Rove’s onetime political consulting firm had been paid more than $746,000 for those services.

[...]

"The new information, that Ashcroft had not only refused to recuse himself over a period of months, but also was insisting on being personally briefed about a matter implicating his friend, Karl Rove, represents a stunning ethical breach that cries out for an immediate investigation by the Department's Office of Professional Responsibility and Inspector General."

[...]

Indeed, the appointment of Fitzgerald as special prosecutor and the recusal of Ashcroft came just three weeks after Comey, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, was named to be deputy attorney general. Comey himself was no stranger to the issue—even before he took office.

[...]

The combination of Ashcroft's close relationship with Rove, the omission of critical information from the FBI by Rove during his initial interview with agents, that Ashcroft had been briefed about that interview in particular, and the-then recent appointment of Comey, all allowed for a forceful case being made by career Justice Department employees be made that the attorney general should step aside and a special prosecutor be named.

But says one government official familiar with the process: "When Ashcroft was briefed on Rove, that ended the argument. He was going to be removed. And there was going to be a special prosecutor named."

The new disclosures as to why Ashcroft recused himself from the Plame case and why a special prosecutor was named are important for a number of reasons:

First, they show that from the very earliest days of the criminal probe, federal investigators had a strong belief and body of evidence that Rove and perhaps other officials might be misleading them.

Second, the new information underscores that career Justice Department staffers had concerns that the continued role of Ashcroft and other political aides might tarnish the investigation.

Finally, the new information once again highlights the importance of the testimony of journalists in uncovering whether anyone might have broken the law by disclosing classified information regarding Plame. That is because both Rove and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney—who are at the center of the Plame investigation—have said that they did not learn of Plame's employment with the CIA from classified government information, but rather journalists; without the testimony of journalists, prosecutors have been unable to get to the bottom of the matter.

[...]

Last week, however, Comey announced he was leaving the Justice Department to become the general counsel of the defense contractor Lockheed Martin. In his absence, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is the most likely choice to be named as the acting deputy attorney general, and thus the man overseeing Fitzgerald's work. But McCallum has been a close personal friend of President Bush. Justice Department officials are once more grappling as to how to best assure independence for investigators.

  Village Voice article

The plot sickens

How to get around Fitzgerald's investigation, which seems to be tightening the screws on the Bush administration?

Aug. 15, 2005 issue - The departure this week of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who has accepted the post of general counsel at Lockheed Martin, leaves a question mark in the probe into who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Comey was the only official overseeing special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's leak investigation. With Attorney General Alberto Gonzales recused, department officials say they are still trying to resolve whom Fitzgerald will now report to. Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum is "likely" to be named as acting deputy A.G., a DOJ official who asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the matter tells NEWSWEEK. But McCallum may be seen as having his own conflicts: he is an old friend of President Bush's and a member of his Skull and Bones class at Yale.

  MSNBC article