Mukasey won't enforce Contempt Citations

Here is your Friday News Dump™. And boy howdy, is it the sort of thing a failed administration would really try to release after the east coast network news broadcasts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Friday rejected referring the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey says they committed no crime.

Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers were right in refusing to provide Congress White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

"The department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers," Mukasey wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The House voted two weeks ago to cite Bolten and Mukasey for contempt of Congress and seek a grand jury investigation. Most Republicans boycotted the vote.

Speaker Pelosi requested a grand jury investigation yesterday (Thursday) and gave Mukasey a week to reply. He wasted no time in responding, because he only had one crack at the news dump. Had he responded on Thursday of next week, it would have been THE STORY all day Friday and going into the weekend.

Pelosi is pissed, and apparently prepared to make good on her threat to file a federal civil suit if the attorney general dug in his heels and refused to act as the attorney the people of this country instead of the president.

Mukasey, taking a very Nixonian position, has maintained that Miers and Bolton were right to refuse to appear because Bush told them not to. And acting on the orders of the president means they committed no crime. Like I said - Nixonian, like when he said to David Frost "[W]hen the president does it that means that it is not illegal."

Folks, this is exactly why we need to ITMFA right now. Because if aWol is not impeached, he can pardon the whole lot of them, putting them out of reach of a future Justice Department. But a president under impeachment can't pardon a thanksgiving turkey.

And this prompted a rejoinder from Pale Rider: Say we're sitting here a year from now--and Attorney General John Edwards has just refused to investigate whether some Presidential aides to President Obama have to appear before Congress because some Republican Congressman thinks they might have something to say about why all of the deleted E-Mails suddenly appeared after a few very talented people were able to retrieve them from some tape backups that were found under Bradley Schlozman's cookie cabinet in his old office. How shrill do you think these hypocritical bastards are going to be? And how loud are we going to be laughing at them for being so shrill?

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The Torture-Tapes Story Isn't Fading Away

It isn't like the Bush administration needed yet another criminal investigation, but that's what they got earlier today when Attorney General Michael Mukasey appointed an outside prosecutor to head up a criminal investigation into the destruction of the tapes.

Last month, the CIA admitted that tapes of operatives using "harsh interrogation techniques" against torturing two terrorism suspects had been destroyed. The admission of the destroyed video evidence sparked a congressional inquiry and a preliminary investigation by the Department of Justice.

''The Department's National Security Division has recommended, and I have concluded, that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter, and I have taken steps to begin that investigation,'' Mukasey said in a statement released Wednesday.

The A.G. has tapped John Durham, an AUSA from Connecticut who has a reputation as a tough, no-nonsense, publicity-averse career prosecutor to oversee the case. He is best known for his role in sending several corrupt public officials to prison, including former Republican Governor Jim Rowland in 2005.

[Keep reading]

John L. Helgerson, Inspector General for the CIA, who worked with the DoJ on the preliminary investigation has recused himself from the criminal investigation. Additionally, the US Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia (where Langley is physically located) has also been recused.

Mukasey did not take the additional step of naming Durham a Special Prosecutor, but instead designated him the "acting U.S. Attorney" in the case. Durham will not have the same level of autonomy in conducting his investigation that Patrick Fitzgerald had in the Plame outing and treason trial of "Scooter" Libby.

The CIA has already acquiesced to congressional investigators, who have begun reviewing documents and files, and the former head of the Clandestine Services, Jose Rodriguez, has been summoned to appear before the House Intelligence Committee on January 16. Rodriguez was the official who ultimately gave the "destroy" order, after much internal wrangling by administration lawyers.

''The CIA will of course cooperate fully with this investigation as it has with the others into this matter,'' agency spokesman Mark Mansfield said.

Here is hoping that this investigation goes right to the door of the "fourth branch"...

Cheney in an orange jumpsuit would be a sight to behold - one that might make me pass out from a schaddenfreude overdose!

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Meet the New Boss...Same as the Old Boss

Well , it certainly didn't take the new Attorney General long to start throwing up roadblocks to interfere with congressional investigations that might expose the current occupant of the Oval office as a torture-lovin' thug who gave illegal orders and is absolutely guilty of every war crime the left has accused him of since the invasion of Iraq.

The Department of Justice is refusing to provide DoJ documents to congressional committees that might clarify any role the department had in the decision to destroy the video evidence. But the Department of Justice is not just refusing to cooperate with congressional inquiries into the destruction of videotapes by the CIA that show terrorist suspects being tortured - they are requesting that congress shelve their own inquiries into the matter.

The Justice Department request was met with anger from both Republican and Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, who said the department was trying to interfere with their investigation. The committee had summoned two C.I.A. officials to testify at a hearing next week, a session that will now almost certainly be postponed.

The inquiry by the House committee had been shaping up as the most aggressive investigation into the destruction of the tapes, and in a written statement on Friday, the two senior members of the panel said they were “stunned” by the Justice Department’s request.

The lawmakers, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, and Representative Peter Hoekstra, Republican of Michigan, threatened to issue subpoenas to get testimony and other information from the C.I.A. “There is no basis upon which the attorney general can stand in the way of our work,” they said.

The committee had demanded that the C.I.A. produce all cables, memorandums and e-mail messages related to the videotapes, as well as the legal advice given to agency officials before the tapes were destroyed. Friday’s deadline passed without the arrival of any of those C.I.A. records on Capitol Hill.

The DoJ and the CIA are conducting a theatrical exercise joint inquiryto determine how the tapes came to be destroyed, who authorized the destruction of evidence, and the legality of the action.

The Congressional inquiry follows the same path, but are also interested in determining if anyone in the Executive branch was involved in the decision to destroy the tapes in an effort to suppress evidence of torture.

Meanwhile, Hayden now finds himself in a difficult position - having pledged cooperation to all investigative bodies, the DoJ, the IG for the CIA and the Congress.

Mukasey was busy giving the high-hat to requests from Congressional committees that oversee Justice itself, while the committee members (some of whom confirmed his ass over the strenuous objections of left-wing nut jobs like yours truly...) sent along sternly worded letters demanding that, by golly, the time was nigh to come clean.

Mukasey's response? “At my confirmation hearing, I testified that I would act independently, resist political pressure and ensure that politics plays no role in cases brought by the Department of Justice,” Mr. Mukasey wrote in one letter. Accordingly, he went on, “I will not at this time provide further information in response to your letter.”

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And the more things change...the more they stay the same.

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Mukasey in the Hot Seat

During his confirmation hearings last fall, new Attorney General Michael Mukasey pledged to act independently and swore that he would not hesitate to pursue investigations that might displease the Bush administration.

A month in, he is faced with calls for an investigation into the destruction of video of interrogations of terror suspects that show the men being tortured. Such an investigation would delve into the heart of darkness itself, and expose some of the most closely guarded secrets of the Bush administration, highlighting the "aggressive interrogation" favored - nay lusted after - by the small men in the administration for what it is: Torture.

Torture is a crime against humanity, under treaty as well as international statute.

Last week, Senator Dick Durbin (D - IL) officially requested the Attorney General open an investigation into the destruction of the tapes. "The CIA apparently withheld information about the existence of these videotapes from official proceedings, including the 9/11 Commission and a federal court," Durbin charged in the letter he sent to Mukasey.

But this story just keeps getting weirder and weirder:

Justice officials refused to comment on what the new A.G. will do, but White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said that if he does open an investigation, the White House would support him. The videotapes, made in 2002, showed the questioning of two high-level Qaeda detainees, including logistics chief Abu Zubaydah, whose interrogation at a secret cell in Thailand sparked an internal battle within the U.S. intelligence community after FBI agents angrily protested the aggressive methods that were used. In addition to waterboarding, Zubaydah was subjected to sleep deprivation and bombarded with blaring rock music by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. One [FBI] agent was so offended he threatened to arrest the CIA interrogators, according to two former government officials directly familiar with the dispute. [emphasis added]

Yes. You read that right. An FBI agent was so put off by what he witnessed, he threatened to take the CIA interrogators into custody. And when an FBI agent threatens to arrest CIA agents,it is safe to say that the CIA agents have definitely crossed a bright line.

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Officials with the CIA claim that the decision was made three years ago to destroy the tapes. The "reason" the CIA gives for the destruction is laughable: The identity of the torturers interrogators might pose a security risk if the tapes were to leak.

Please.

Spare me.

The identity of the interrogators might pose an incarceration risk.

And if they were acting on orders from the White House, they would most likely say so before they went to prison for a long time for committing war crimes.

The CIA destroyed the tapes in spite of requests for records of interrogations by multiple entities, includign the Senate Intelligence Committee and the 9/11 Commission. Representative Jane Harman, then the ranking Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee had also submitted a written directive that videos of interrogations be preserved.

Additionally, in the trial of Zacharias Moussaoui , defense attorneys requested any video of interrogations, but the CIA told a Federal judge that no videos existed. (Got Perjury? Hows about Obstruction of Justice?)

A thorough investigation into the destruction of the video tapes by the Justice Department would be undertaken with one goal: Find out who issued the orders and make that person accountable. Porter Goss was the CIA Director at the time, and thought he had an "understanding" with ops officials that the tapes would be preserved. He reportedly was extremely unhappy when he learned that the tapes had been destroyed. Meantime, Jose Rodriguez, who as head of the Clandesting Service at the time and issued the destroy order has a reputation as a "loyal subordinate" who would never have taken it upon himself to make such a decision.

Whoever ordered that the tapes be destroyed, all eyes are on Mukaey now.

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