{"id":3191,"date":"2009-06-06T16:37:41","date_gmt":"2009-06-06T21:37:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3191"},"modified":"2009-06-06T17:12:29","modified_gmt":"2009-06-06T22:12:29","slug":"the-eye-of-the-storm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/06\/06\/the-eye-of-the-storm\/","title":{"rendered":"given that I have already submitted my resignation&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p align=\"justify\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" hspace=\"4\" height=\"130\" border=\"1\" align=\"right\" width=\"130\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/comey.jpg\" \/>Back during the Hearings about the U.S. Attorney firings, we met an unusual character named James Comey. He was Deputy Attorney General under AG John Ashcroft. What was unusual about him was that he was an honest man, a person whose integrity was visible from a hundred yards. During his tenure, John Ashcroft got sick, and Comey personally staved off Alberto Gonzales&#8217; attempt to get Ashcroft to sign off on something Comey had refused [as acting AG] to sign. Also, when Ashcroft was forced to recuse himself in the investigation of the C.I.A. Leak, James Comey appointed Patrick Fitzgerald as Special Prosecutor, giving him the broad powers he needed to do his job. Not too long after Alberto Gonzales became AG, Comey resigned.<\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\">After Comey testified in the U.S. Attorney Hearings, there was some attempt to discredit him &#8211; something about some house he bought. I don&#8217;t recall the details, but it never went anywhere. But as you will see, there&#8217;s a new attempt to pre-emptively take him out in a manner similar to the Joseph Wilson take-down. If you have the time, look at the documents below in order:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><font color=\"#300030\"><strong>Comey&#8217;s leaked EMails<\/strong><\/font><\/li>\n<li><font color=\"#300030\"><strong>The Bradbury Memos from the O.L.C.<\/strong><\/font><\/li>\n<li>todays shameful <font color=\"#300030\"><strong>New York Times article<\/strong><\/font><\/li>\n<li>our voice of truth <font color=\"#300030\"><strong>[<\/strong><\/font><strong><font color=\"#336600\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong><font color=\"#300030\"><strong>] responding to the article<\/strong><\/font>.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"justify\">But first take a look at these lines from the leaked emails, lest you had any doubt that the White House was deeply involved in drafting the legal opinions they hide behind in the Torture Debates:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" height=\"195\" border=\"1\" width=\"520\" src=\"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/images\/comey_email.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\">So, what now? <strong>The New York Times<\/strong> has put a spin on these memos unequalled since the days of <strong>Judith Miller<\/strong> when they became a conduit for the <strong>Dick Cheney\/Scooter Libby propoganda<\/strong> as well as <strong>Amhad Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress<\/strong>. It&#8217;s the same attack being mounted against Pelosi. They say that these EMails prove that Comey approved Torture. They skipped the line, &quot;given that I have already submitted my resignation,&quot; meaning that he was powerless to effect the process. Rather than extracting pieces of the information as usual, I suggest reading the material in the raw. It&#8217;s not that long [except the memos themselves]. You might as well bite the bullet and read it all now. This is going to be the <font color=\"#300030\"><strong>Eye of the Storm<\/strong><\/font> on the <font color=\"#300030\"><strong>Torture Issue<\/strong><\/font>. <u>And don&#8217;t miss <strong><font color=\"#336600\">emptywheel<\/font><\/strong><\/u>. She&#8217;s on fire! <\/div>\n<hr size=\"1\" \/>\n<p align=\"center\"><font color=\"#000000\"><strong>JIM COMEY&#8217;S LEAKED EMAILS<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/static1.firedoglake.com\/28\/files\/\/2009\/06\/050427-comey-emails-compressed.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">Comey&#8217;s EMails<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"center\"><font color=\"#000000\"><strong>THE BRADBURY MEMOS<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<table cellspacing=\"0\" cellpadding=\"5\" border=\"0\" align=\"center\" width=\"98%\">\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\">05\/10\/05<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">Steven G. Bradbury.<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">Application of 18 U.S.C. &sect;&sect; 2340-2340A to Certain Techniques That May Be Used in the Interrogation of a High Value al Qaeda Detainee.<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">Concludes that the CIA&rsquo;s interrogation techniques do not violate the torture statute if used individually.<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net\/o10\/clients\/aclu\/olc_05102005_bradbury_46pg.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">LINK<\/a><\/strong>..<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td valign=\"top\">05\/10\/05.<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">Steven G. Bradbury.<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">Application of 18 U.S.C. &sect;&sect; 2340-2340A to the Combined Use of Certain Techniques in the Interrogation of High Value al Qaeda Detainees.<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\">Concludes that the techniques outlined in the other 05\/10\/05 Bradbury memo would not violate the torture statute even if used in combination..<\/td>\n<td valign=\"top\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/luxmedia.vo.llnwd.net\/o10\/clients\/aclu\/olc_05102005_bradbury_20pg.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">LINK<\/a><\/strong>..<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<p align=\"center\"><font color=\"#000000\"><strong>THE NEW YORK TIMES ARTICLE<\/strong><\/font><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<div align=\"center\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/07\/us\/politics\/07lawyers.html?_r=2&#038;ref=global-home&#038;pagewanted=all\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Lawyers Agreed on the Legality of Brutal Tactic<\/a><br \/>               New York Times<\/strong><br \/>               By SCOTT SHANE and DAVID JOHNSTON<br \/>               June 6, 2009<\/div>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>When Justice Department lawyers engaged in a sharp internal debate in 2005 over brutal interrogation techniques, even some who believed that using tough tactics was a serious mistake agreed on a basic point: the methods themselves were legal. Previously undisclosed Justice Department e-mail messages, interviews and newly declassified documents show that some of the lawyers, including James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who argued repeatedly that the United States would regret using harsh methods, went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>That opinion, giving the green light for the C.I.A. to use all 13 methods in interrogating terrorism suspects, including waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, &ldquo;was ready to go out and I concurred,&rdquo; Mr. Comey wrote to a colleague in an April 27, 2005, e-mail message obtained by The New York Times. While signing off on the techniques, Mr. Comey in his e-mail provided a firsthand account of how he tried unsuccessfully to discourage use of the practices. He made a last-ditch effort to derail the interrogation program, urging Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to argue at a White House meeting in May 2005 that it was &ldquo;wrong.&rdquo;<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>&ldquo;In stark terms I explained to him what this would look like some day and what it would mean for the president and the government,&rdquo; Mr. Comey wrote in a May 31, 2005, e-mail message to his chief of staff, Chuck Rosenberg. He feared that a case could be made &ldquo;that some of this stuff was simply awful.&rdquo;<\/sup><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><sup>The e-mail messages are now in the hands of investigators at the department&rsquo;s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is preparing a report expected to be released this summer on the Bush administration lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh methods. The inquiry, under way for nearly five years, will be the Justice Department&rsquo;s fullest public account of its role in the interrogation program, which President Obama has ended. In years of bitter public debate, the department has sometimes seemed like a black-and-white moral battleground over torture. The main authors of memorandums authorizing the methods &mdash; John C. Yoo, Jay S. Bybee and Steven G. Bradbury &mdash; have been widely pilloried as facilitators of torture. Others, including Mr. Comey, Jack Goldsmith and Daniel Levin, have largely escaped criticism because they raised questions about interrogation and the law.<\/sup><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\"><sup>But a closer examination shows a more subtle picture. None of the Justice Department lawyers who reviewed the interrogation question argued that the methods were clearly illegal&#8230;<\/sup><\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p align=\"center\"><strong><font color=\"#336600\">emptywheel<\/font>&#8216;s <font color=\"#000000\">Comments<\/font><\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2009\/06\/06\/pre-emptive-strike-on-opr-report-comey-said-waterboarding-legal\/\" target=\"_blank\">Pre-Emptive Strike on OPR Report: NYT Misrepresents Comey Emails, Claims He Approved Torture<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2009\/06\/06\/the-may-10-2005-opinions-were-retrospective\/\" target=\"_blank\">The May 10, 2005 Opinions Were Retrospective<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<li>\n<div align=\"justify\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/emptywheel.firedoglake.com\/2009\/06\/06\/all-the-news-nyt-does-not-print\/\" target=\"_blank\">All the News NYT Does Not See Fit to Print<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back during the Hearings about the U.S. Attorney firings, we met an unusual character named James Comey. He was Deputy Attorney General under AG John Ashcroft. What was unusual about him was that he was an honest man, a person whose integrity was visible from a hundred yards. During his tenure, John Ashcroft got sick, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}