PHILIPPE SANDS: "The Bush Six...Arent Going To Be Taking Vacations In Tuscany In Foreseeable Future"

[kpete]

New Yorker Correspondent Jane Mayer and British Attorney Philippe Sands on Bush Administration Torture and How Obama Should Address It

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PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, the Bush Six, amazingly and coincidentally, are the same six lawyers I happen to have focused on. And in that sense, I think the book contributed to a catalyzing effect.

The lawyers that you’ve got, in no particular order of significance: Alberto Gonzales, the former Attorney General and White House counsel; David Addington, who was Vice President Cheney’s counsel; Jay Bybee, who’s been very much in the news recently in relation to the second of his memos which has come out; John Yoo, who probably wrote large parts of that memo, still teaching at Berkeley Law School; Doug Feith, who was the number three in the Pentagon; and finally, Jim Haynes, who was Mr. Rumsfeld’s lawyer as general counsel.

I don’t think any of those individuals are going to be taking vacations in Tuscany in the foreseeable future.

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JANE MAYER:I mean, these—they are—a cloud hangs over this group. And it obviously doesn’t help their reputations to have been named in this case in Spain. They are in the midst of a sort of a growing political furor over their role. And I think that it will be clarified somewhat—that is, their role—when the Justice Department has a study that’s coming out very soon. It’s an investigation into whether the lawyers could be faulted for justifying America’s embrace of torture. They basically made it possible, by coming up with decisions that said that these kinds of techniques could be legal. And the Justice Department has been spending five years looking at their role and is due to release a report possibly at the end of this month.

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AMY GOODMAN: What is the evidence there?

PHILIPPE SANDS: Well, the evidence is one of the new documents that has emerged, which has had very little play here. It’s a chronology that is produced by the Intelligence Committee of the Senate in January of this year, detailing the circumstances in which the two torture memos, written by John Yoo, signed by Jay Bybee, were produced on the 1st of August, 2002. And that document was put out recently by Eric Holder, the Attorney General, who I think is very committed to getting to the root of what went wrong and what happened. And that document identifies two meetings that held in—were held in July 2002 and identifies by office, but not by name, the individuals who basically, it says, approved waterboarding at those meetings. And it included in the list of names Condoleezza Rice. That is pretty powerful evidence.

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AMY GOODMAN: And we’re talking about—they’re talking about something like forty of them, but we’re talking actually thousands, is that right?

PHILIPPE SANDS: Right, there are thousands.

JANE MAYER: There are thousands.

PHILIPPE SANDS: There are thousands of photographs. They are talking about releasing forty-four. And the significance of them is that they are not limited to Iraq. They include Afghanistan and Bagram, and they include Guantanamo.

And the release of the photographs is significant, because it will give full force to the lie that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were a few bad eggs. What will become impossible to withstand is the recognition that the abuse was the result of policy decisions and legal advices and was widespread.

We know some of the images that have been the subject of this litigation. It’s not right for President Obama to say these are not particularly inflammatory images. We know some of the stuff that is going to be coming.

AMY GOODMAN: And they are?

PHILIPPE SANDS: And it includes photographs, I’m told, of people’s heads being partly shaved, so that a cross is placed on the head of a Muslim man. That is one image that I understand is out there. They’re going to come out at some point. They ought to be gotten out sooner rather than later, and at that point people can then begin the process of moving on.

And coming back, I think, to the earlier point, it’s the same in relation to the issue of investigations. It’s not a party political issue. I completely subscribe to the view that Jane has just explained in relation to what Nancy Pelosi has said, but we shouldn’t be partisan about this. If there was knowledge, it doesn’t matter whether it was Independents or Republicans or Democrats. We need a full investigation. It needs to come out.

more at:

http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/20/torture