Why Are United States Taxpayers Funding Legal Insurance For Wrongdoing By Federal Employees?

Interesting story by Scott Shane in Sunday’s New York Times on the liability insurance carrier Jose Rodriquez, former head of the CIA Directorate of Operations (Clandestine division) and the other spooks involved in the torture tapes destruction, apparently as well as a whole boatload of other Administration officials and agents (an astounding 32,000 of them), are relying on.

Like a growing number of C.I.A. employees, Mr. Rodriguez, former head of the agency’s clandestine service, had bought professional liability insurance from Wright & Company. The firm, founded in 1965 by a former F.B.I. agent, is now paying his mounting legal bills.

The standard Wright policy costs a little less than $300 a year. The government pays half the premium for all supervisors and certain other high-risk employees, a group that includes hundreds of C.I.A. officers, including everyone at the agency involved in counterterrorism or counterproliferation.
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When Al Qaeda attacked the United States in 2001, Wright & Company was insuring about 17,000 federal employees against the legal hazards of their work. Today, that total has nearly doubled to 32,000, Wright executives say, spurred in part by a spate of lawsuits, investigations and criminal prosecutions related to mistreatment of detainees from Iraq to Guantánamo Bay, an immigration crackdown and other aftershocks of 9/11.
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The standard Wright policy pays up to $200,000 in legal fees for administrative matters like investigations by Congress or an inspector general, or cases involving demotion or dismissal. An additional $100,000 is available for legal fees in criminal investigations, and the policy pays up to $1 million in damages in a civil suit.

As the subject of both Congressional and criminal investigations, Mr. Rodriguez, former head of the C.I.A.’s clandestine service, has $300,000 in coverage for legal fees. How long that might last is anybody’s guess. He has hired Robert S. Bennett, a Washington lawyer who represented President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones sexual misconduct lawsuit and whose standard rate was described by colleagues as more than $900 an hour.
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The videotape case has brought claims for legal representation from several C.I.A. employees other than Mr. Rodriguez, said Mr. Lewis, who declined to name them. George J. Tenet, the former director of central intelligence; Scott W. Muller, the agency’s former general counsel; and John A. Rizzo, the current acting general counsel, are among those who have retained counsel. Spokesmen for the three men declined to comment.
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A new possible source of reimbursement for legal fees was created in 2006 by the Military Commissions Act, which requires the government to pay lawyers for C.I.A. and military officers facing lawsuits or criminal investigations for “authorized” actions involving detention of suspected terrorists. Whether the destruction of the videotapes would qualify is uncertain, but lawyers in the matter are studying the question. (Emphasis added)

Couple of thoughts here. In relation to the first portion bolded, what is the government doing underwriting insurance to cover wrongdoing by it’s employees? Is this a proper use of taxpayer money? Did Congress authorize this; if not, who did?

As to the second bolded portion, we know that Congress did pass the contemptible Military Commissions Act in 2006 thanks in a large part to the disingenuous actions of St. John McCain, Lindsay “Huckleberry” Graham, Mr. Liz Taylor John Warner and Harry Reid; not to mention the deception and outright lies of the Bush Administration. That aside, the question still remains, is this a proper use of taxpayer money? For 32,000 governmental employees? For my money, it most certainly is not.

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Are the CIA torture tapes MIA?

I received my No Quarter email last evening that alerted me to a Larisa Alexandrovna question of whether the CIA torture tapes were destroyed in 2005. Larry Johnson responded:

For starters [it] appears that the June 2005 decision of the Italian judge to issue arrest warrants for C.I.A. officers and contractors involved in the kidnapping of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr in 2003 may have been the precipitating incident convincing Jose Rodriguez that [the] Agency must destroy video tapes of terrorist interrogations. That operation was conducted with the full knowledge and approval of the Italians. If the Italians could flip on us that meant anyone could.

Then Larry laid out an extensive timeline filled with juicy details. A few to note: "Zubaydah is interrogated in Thailand, where the sessions were filmed. He was waterboarded sometime in the May-June 2002 time frame. Enhanced interrogation methods were used and approval for them came from Jim Pavitt... ...Deputy Director of Operations.... ...What we know for certain is that the CIA was keeping the President and his National Security team fully briefed on the methods and results of interrogating Abu Zubaydah. In fact, it is highly likely that George Tenet showed part of the videotape of the interrogation to the President."

That makes WH press secretary Dana Perino another willing shill for the Torturer-in-Chief who said he didn't remember "hearing about the tapes' existence or their destruction before being briefed about it last Thursday." And we can trust him because why?

On May 9, 2003, with regard to United States v. Zacarias Moussaoui, Larry wrote, "C.I.A. declares in sworn statement to Judge Leonie Brinkema that it was not recording interrogations of terrorist suspects in any format." Oops! Caught in a flat-out lie. If not for Bush, I'd say with certainty that someone's going to jail. After Scooter Libby, I'm not so confident.

On Nov. 14, 2005, the CIA reaffirmed the "U.S. Government does not have any video or audio tapes of the interrogations of (two terrorist suspects whose names are blacked out)” to the US District Court. Another lie.

Now let's fast forward to the 2007 portion of Larry's timeline that raises doubts about torture tapes having been destroyed.

[Keep reading...]

13 September 2007–C.I.A. notifies the U.S. Attorneys in Richmond, Virginia that it had discovered the videotape of the interrogation of terrorists whose names are blacked out in the declassified letter (see. p. 2 of the letter) [PDF].

19 September 2007–The U.S. Attorneys view the video tape. Attorneys direct the C.I.A. to search its files again for relevant material.

18 October 2007–C.I.A. provides the U.S. Attorneys with an additional video tape and an audio tape of an interrogation. The U.S. Attorneys compare the video tapes with the operational cables (i.e., written reports) reporting the results of the interrogations. They determined that the reports accurately reported what was viewed on the video tape.

This is an important point–the substance of what transpired during those interrogations was given to the Moussaoui defense team.

So. Who did what?

Jose Rodriguez has been fingered as acting unilaterally, but that is not true. He did check with both the IG and the DO’s assigned Assistant General Counsel before destroying the DO’s copies of the tapes. Although Jose is a lawyer, he made the mistake of trusting fellow lawyers, and now is likely to get chopped up in the political meat grinder while trying to clear his name and reputation. The only thing that might save him a bit is that he and Congressman Reyes are buddies, which is what Congressman Reyes may have meant when he told the NYT today that he (Reyes) “was not looking for scapegoats.”...

...Jose Rodriguez did not consult beforehand with Kyle “Dusty” Foggo. However, Jose did inform Dusty subsequently of the advice he received from the OGC’s counsel. Jose may not be in as much trouble as some imagined. If he destroyed the tapes before November 14, [2005] then the C.I.A. told the truth to the judge. The May 2003 date puts the onus on Jim Pavitt and George Tenet rather than Jose Rodriguez. They knew about the tapes and the C.I.A. General Counsel lied to a Federal Judge. Who told whom what then? That’s going to be the interesting question.

An interesting question for Michael Hayden as he testifies before the Senate and House intel committees today and tomorrow.

Where are the tapes the U.S. Attorneys reviewed in September and October of this year? Were they copies of edited versions? What about the Moussaoui defense team? What else is missing besides the tapes and the truth. So many questions yet to be answered.

On Thursday, Hayden told CIA employees that “videotaping stopped in 2002”, but another imprisoned detainee, Muhammad Bashmilah, said he saw cameras "both in his cells and in interrogation rooms, some on tripods and some on the wall." His detention began in 2003 into 2005 before his release. Adding more fuel:

In a related legal action, lawyers representing 11 inmates of the American military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, filed an emergency motion on Sunday seeking a hearing on whether the government has obeyed a 2005 judge’s order to preserve evidence in their case.

The C.I.A.’s destruction of tapes “raises grave concerns about the government’s compliance with the preservation order entered by this court,” the lawyers, David H. Remes and Marc D. Falkoff, wrote in their motion.

The June 2005 order, signed by Judge Henry H. Kennedy Jr., of the United States District Court in Washington, required the government to “preserve and maintain all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees” at Guantánamo.

Uh oh. I need to amend my order for a case of popcorn on this story.

Seriously, unless Congress appoints a Special Counsel to investigate the destruction of evidence, including millions of missing WH emails -- so much to probe -- I doubt we'll ever know the unvarnished truth and see justice served to a WH much, much worse than Watergate. Maybe that's the way they like it.

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