In the coming weeks, the new Obama administration will run out of excuses for blowing off demands for an investigation into the full extent of Bush-era intelligence abuses.
On his first two full days in office, Barack Obama took a series of dramatic steps to roll back a number of heavy-handed Bush administration counterterrorism policies, including closing the prison at Guantanamo, so-called "black site" prisons run by CIA in foreign countries, and torture practices.
These bold steps forward are not, however, matched by a desire to determine the damage already done by Bush's extreme counterterrorist practices, including torture and extraordinary renditions.
The Obama administration's official non-answer to the number one question on the change.gov web site, as well as Obama's own statements to George Stephanopoulos earlier this month strongly indicate that the new administration isn't in a hurry to investigate all of the intelligence abuses related to torture and extrajudicial imprisonment.
"We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards," Obama told Stephanopoulos on the ABC News program, This Week With George Stephanopoulos, a scant few weeks ago.
The Legislative and Judicial branches of government -- as well as mounting public pressure -- are threatening to take the new Obama administration out of the driver's seat on the issue of accounting for past intelligence misdeeds.
Key members of congressional committees are already chomping at the bit to investigate these controversial counterterrorism measures. John Conyers Jr. of the House Judiciary Committtee has already introduced legislation to form an investigatory commission. Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, who sits on the Senate's intelligence oversight committee, is pressing his own fact-finding probe and seeking declassification of documents related to renditions and torture. Even Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi stated, "I want to see the truth come forth."
Meanwhile, Susan J. Crawford, senior Bush administration official in charge of the military commission process, told the Washington Post in the days before the Obama inauguration that Guantanamo detainee Mohammed al-Qahtani had been tortured and thus could not be tried by the military commission. With this admission, Federal prosecutors may now be required to pursue criminal charges of torture, adding judicial pressure for shining light on harsh counterterrorism practices, according to variety of legal and official sources described by salon.com's Glenn Greenwald.
Outside of the halls of government, the public and opinion makers are also clamoring for truth and reconciliation. On Obama's change.gov web site, the most often-asked citizen question (22,000 or so!) was whether the new president intends to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture and warrantless wiretaps. Observers as disparate as Thomas Ricks and Arianna Huffington have called for some form of truth and reconciliation commission, not unlike those set up in South Africa after apartheid and in Chile after Pinochet.
Presumably, such a commission would be independently empowered to elicit testimony and could offer amnesty to anyone who testifies before it.
Therein lies the Obama administration's opportunity to lead, and not merely follow or get out of the way of investigations and commissions.
The Obama administration ought to make at least one meaningful and practical gesture of leadership regardless of what form an inquiry assumes. That action would be to emulate past truth and reconciliation commissions by granting amnesty or some form of legal immunity for the mid- and junior-level personnel who were on the front lines of these odious Bush-era policies.
Such a move will be absolutely vital to getting to the bottom of the program of abuses of the past eight years. Failing to protect from prosecution or civil actions the ground-level national security drones who carried out these policies will:
--Destroy morale in the national security workforce;
--Force the people who can least afford it to "lawyer up;" and
--Probably bury forever any chance of understanding what happened at Guantanamo and countless foreign and US-run detention facilities worldwide.
Flag-level military officers (admirals and generals), senior executive service civilians, c-level contractor executives, political appointees, and elected officials, however, are the rightful targets of investigation into alleged intelligence and detention misdeeds. These are the individuals whose implicit responsibility was to not only carry out executive branch policies, but also to professionally guide policy in accordance with US law, applicable international law pertaining to warfare, and accepted norms of human rights.
In other words, these are the senior officials who chose not to fall on their metaphorical swords when they were asked to break the law, forgo human decency, and expose their Lieutenants and Sergeants and Petty Officers and GS-13 civil servants and junior contractors to future prosecution and litigation.
These senior officials didn't resign or protest in '02 or '03 or '04, and they should now come forward to explain themselves, and if necessary, take the fall for subordinates who didn't have the prerogative or power to thwart policies that are against American honor and tradition.
To be sure, Obama faces enough of an uphill battle in taking an inventory of the national security wrongs of the Bush years. Perhaps the biggest showdown looms between the White House and Capitol Hill: Senior Democrats in the House and Senate were aware of torture and domestic surveillance programs. Jane Mayer, who delved into Bush-era intelligence abuses in her book The Dark Side, said via a Washington Post online chat last July that legislators "in both parties would find it very hard at this point to point the finger at the [Bush] White House, without also implicating themselves."
The Obama administration will have its hands full with its own Democratic colleagues -- and lots of other adversaries -- if the badly needed cataloging of Bush-era national security blunders manages to get underway. Making sure that ordinary national security drones aren't vilified or set up to take the fall for their bosses today will strengthen tomorrow's national security.
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