Dick Cheney

  • August 28, 2009

    More OLC Memos:  "The Office of Legal Counsel, responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, has now released a treasure trove of new memoranda discussing the Bush Administration's war on terror policies," writes Prof. Jack Balkin at Balkinization. "The highlights include memos by Jack Goldsmith telling the CIA not to do anymore waterboarding in May of 2004, and a memo by his successor at the OLC, Daniel Levin, telling the CIA they can go ahead and do it on August 6, 2004. There are also two memoranda from John Yoo arguing for the President's right to use military force at any time without congressional approval and offering CIA interrogators a good faith defense to torture."

    Dick Cheney is Mad:  From Christy Hardin Smith: "Why is Cheney so irate? Because bluster gets him column inches without having any real fear of direct questions of his own involvement. Why? Because that just isn't how things are done in the Beltway. No inconvenient truths that might rock your access boat."

    Torture Doesn't Work, So ...  Richard Haas, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, is being held to account for what he said during an interview on Morning Joe, including this line: "I really think putting this in legal channels as opposed to just the policy channels is something, just like the politics, we as a society, will regret. We need to look at all of our tools. We may reject some of these things. Let's say on balance they're not worth it. But other things we may say to do it given who we're up against."

    "I'm with Jack Bauer on this one."  That's the quote from Fox's Chris Wallace. Here's the clip

  • May 15, 2009

    The American Constitution Society is proud to announce that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) will speak at the ACS National Convention.

    Whitehouse sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and serves as chair of the Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts. In his capacity as oversight subcomittee chair, Whitehouse recently convened a hearing on torture. Whitehouse has been an outspoken advocate of Truth Commission on torture.

    Continuing in his leadership role in the torture accountability debate, Whitehouse recently fielded questions about suggestions that then-Vice President Dick Cheney ordered a former Iraqi intelligence officer waterboarded in order to produce evidence of links betweeen al Qaida and Saddam Hussein. See Whitehouse's handling of the revelations below.

  • May 14, 2009
    BookTalk
    Bad Advice
    Bush’s Lawyers in the War on Terror
    By: 
    By Harold H. Bruff, Charles Inglis Thomson Professor of Law, University of Colorado at Boulder
    President Bush received bad advice from his lawyers regarding some crucial decisions in the war on terror, including National Security Agency surveillance of American citizens, detention and trial by military commission of suspected terrorists, and authorization of harsh interrogation techniques-the torture question. In each of these contexts, the President's lawyers made broad and even unprecedented claims of unilateral executive power after a secret process of decision. Their advice exceeded the bounds of professional responsibility.

    Legal advice to a President is always sympathetic to his policy goals. Advisers feel political and personal loyalty to the President who selected them. Competition for influence within the administration fosters telling a President what he wants to hear. Also, the culture of the Executive Branch ensures sympathy. Given these powerful incentives to support the President's policy agenda, what can and should constrain the lawyers? First, there is the obligation of the oath to defend the Constitution that they all take. The lawyers also have a second obligation in their professional responsibility to "exercise independent professional judgment and render candid advice." As Robert Jackson said, "the value of legal counsel is in the detachment of the advisor from the advised." We expect that distance from professionals of all kinds, our doctors for example.

    To buttress the duty of independent judgment, executive advisers need to accept the principle of the Steel Seizure case that Congress can lay down the law, even in time of war. Support of a broad initiative power for the executive is fully consistent with this principle. Some of President Bush's lawyers followed a theory that the executive has broad unilateral power in the foreign realm that Congress may not control, except perhaps by withholding funds or impeachment. This risks a destabilizing pursuit of executive hegemony, one very erosive of the rule of law.