{"id":3327,"date":"2009-07-11T23:00:56","date_gmt":"2009-07-12T03:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=3327"},"modified":"2009-07-11T23:00:56","modified_gmt":"2009-07-12T03:00:56","slug":"no-exit-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2009\/07\/11\/no-exit-2\/","title":{"rendered":"no exit…"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Independent’s Day<\/strong><\/a>
NEWSWEEK<\/strong><\/font>
By Daniel Klaidman
July 11, 2009<\/div>\n

… These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. "I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda," he says. "But that can’t be a part of my decision"…<\/p>\n

But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general’s thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Depart ment office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as "the dark side." He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was "shocked and saddened," he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America’s name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I guess on paper, AG Eric Holder<\/strong>‘s got a choice. But from my perspective, it’s no contest. There’s too much in the air – a six year war; Yoo’s Memos; under the radar programs run from the OVP; massive overinvolvement of the White House in the doings of the C.I.A.<\/strong>, the F.B.I.<\/strong>, and the D.O.J.<\/strong>; a string of lies a mile long; a library of government reports, hearings, and investigations; and a Torture Program is in the middle of all of it. Nothing was done by the book – they fudged every piece of it mostly using secrecy and fuzzy legal logic. It would be like "looking forward" with Al Capone.<\/div>\n

The Bush Administration actually set up the situation themselves. In the outing of Valerie Plame, they denied everything about it until the couldn’t deny it any more. Then they openly said "if you can’t charge us with a crime, leave us alone." And the crime, outing a covert agent and knowing it<\/em>, couldn’t be proved. With the torture program, they did a lot of very shady things. They controlled their own legal advice. They instituted the program before they got it authorized. They suspended habeas corpus, right to trial, and human decency. Did they break the Law? That’s for a Special Prosecutor, a Grand Jury, a Judge, and a Jury to decide.<\/p>\n

The Newsweek Article talks about the political ramifications of appointing a Special Prosecutor. That coin has another side. The only way to contain the story is to "contain it" in our judicial system. If we don’t, the world is going to do it for us. This story just has too much momentum to be ignored…<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Independent’s Day NEWSWEEK By Daniel Klaidman July 11, 2009 … These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush […]<\/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-3327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3327","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=3327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3327\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}