Radack’s comments came during the launch of a new campaign, “American
Lawyers Defending the Constitution.” The effort is backed by a
statement signed by more than 1,300 lawyers and law students around the
country, including former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former Reagan
administration official Bruce Fein, leaders of legal organizations and
more than 100 law professors in the U.S.
Their statement calls on House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers and
Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy to hold wide-ranging hearings
to investigate “unconstitutional and potentially criminal activity by
the Bush Administration.”
The “TapeGate” furor erupted after the New York Times revealed in early
December that the CIA in 2005 had destroyed at least two videotapes
documenting the interrogation of two Qaeda operatives in the agency’s
custody, “a step it took in the midst of Congressional and legal
scrutiny about its secret detention program, according to current and
former government officials.” An announcement was subsequently made by
the CIA.
The videotapes showed agency operatives in 2002 subjecting terrorism
suspects — including Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee in CIA custody —
to severe interrogation techniques. In a message to his staff, CIA
Director Gen. Michael V. Hayden reportedly said the tapes were
destroyed in part because officers were concerned that video showing
harsh interrogation methods could expose agency officials to legal
risks. He also said the tapes no longer had intelligence value.
The destruction of the tapes has raised questions about whether CIA
officials withheld information from Congress, the courts and the Sept.
11 commission about aspects of the program.
The CIA program that included the detention and interrogation of
terrorism suspects began after the capture of Mr. Zubaydah in March
2002. The CIA has said that the Justice Department (DOJ) and other
elements of the executive branch reviewed and approved the use of a set
of harsh techniques before they were used on any prisoners, and that
the DOJ issued a classified legal opinion in August 2002 that provided
explicit authorization for their use.
Other participants on the telephone press conference included Michael
Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, a legal
advocacy group, and Marjorie Cohn, president of the 6,000-member
National Lawyers Guild.
Ratner, whose organization has played a major role in providing defense
lawyers for detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, underscored the
importance of congressional action. He said, “For far too long Congress
has been the handmaiden of the Bush administration’s undermining and
subversion of basic constitutional rights. The right to be free from
torture; warrantless wiretapping; jailing without habeas corpus; and
disappearances into secret sites. Principles going back to the Magna
Carta are at stake.”
He called on Congress to “do its job: defend the Constitution from its enemies. Its enemies are the Bush administration.”
Ratner said, “Just announcing that investigations will be held and
subpoenas will be issued is terribly insufficient unless Congress is
willing to enforce the subpoenas by issuing contempt citations.
Congress has a constitutional duty to oversee the activities of the
executive branch and our entire system of government is threatened when
Congress simply folds before an obstinate executive.”
Cohn, author of the recently published book, “Cowboy Republic: Six Ways
the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law”, told us, “From the illegal war in
Iraq to the illegal torture of prisoners in U.S. custody to the illegal
destruction of evidence by the CIA, the Bush administration has become
an institution of lawbreakers. Congress must hold hearings to
investigate this lawbreaking, and should authorize the appointment of
an independent prosecutor since Michael Mukasey cannot be counted to
conduct an impartial investigation.”
Radack rose to prominence as a major whistleblower in the John Walker
Lindh case. In the course of Lindh's criminal prosecution, the court
ordered all documents associated with his interrogation to be turned
over. After some documents were turned over, Radack was asked about the
existence of more documents. At that time, she looked through the files
and discovered that the bulk of her work was missing and had not been
turned over. Radack was able to reconstruct much of her work, and
informed her supervisor that her department had not complied with the
court order.
She was forced to resign before the documents were turned over. A
criminal investigation into Radack’s actions was eventually closed with
no charges, but her case was referred to the state bar of Maryland,
which eventually cleared her of all wrongdoing. She has never been
called to testify before Congress.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) said it had no knowledge that Lindh was
represented by a lawyer prior to his interrogation, but this position
appears to be contradicted by material in Radack's files.
Radack told the news conference, “My e-mails documented my advice
against interrogating Lindh without a lawyer, and concluded that the
FBI committed an ethics violation when it did so anyway. Both the CIA
videotapes and my e-mails were destroyed, in part, because officials
were concerned that they documented controversial interrogation methods
that could put agency officials in legal jeopardy.”
In a related development, one of America’s leading constitutional
scholars said White House involvement in the CIA's decision to destroy
videotapes documenting severe interrogation techniques of suspected
terrorists could constitute as many as six crimes.
Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University law school
in Washington appeared on CNN to discuss a report by the New York Times
that four White House attorneys, including then-White House counsels
Alberto Gonzales and Harriet Miers, participated in discussions with
the CIA about whether or not the tapes should be destroyed.
Turley said, "There are at least six identifiable crimes here, from
obstruction of justice to obstruction of Congress, perjury, conspiracy,
false statements, and what is often forgotten: the crime of torturing
suspects.
He added, "If that crime was committed it was a crime that would
conceivably be ordered by the president himself, only the president can
order those types of special treatments or interrogation techniques."
The American Lawyers Defending the Constitution statement, along with
the list of 80 original signers, is available here.
The American Freedom Campaign (AFC) is a joint project of AFC, the
Center for Constitutional Rights, National Lawyers Guild, the Alliance
for Justice, the Equal Justice Society, and the American Freedom Agenda.
Opinion 
A former U.S. Department of Justice ethics adviser who came to prominence as a whistleblower after she objected to the government's treatment of John Walker Lindh — the "American Taliban" captured during the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan – has joined leading members of the U.S. legal community in calling on Congress to investigate the destruction of tape recordings of interrogations carried out by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
