Crimes and Misdemeanors - Slate's interactive guide:
Who in the Bush administration broke the law,
and who could be prosecuted?
http://www.slate.com/id/2195533/
By Emily Bazelon, Kara Hadge, Dahlia Lithwick, and Chris Wilson
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET
Emily Bazelon chatted online with readers about this project.
Read the transcript.
The recent release of Jane Mayer's book The Dark Side revealed that
a secret report by the International Committee of the Red Cross
determined "categorically" that the CIA used torture, as defined
by American and international law, in questioning
al-Qaida suspect Abu Zubaydah.
The question of criminal liability for Bush-administration officials
has since been in the news. It's also getting play because
retired Gen. Antonio Taguba, lead Army investigator
of the prison abuses at Abu Ghraib, wrote in a recent report,
"There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration
has committed war crimes." (Update: And today, the
ACLU released three new memos from the Department of Justice
and the CIA, which for the first time show DoJ explicitly authorizing
"enhanced" interrogation tactics for use on specific detainees.
One of the memos states, in this context, that "interrogation techniques,
including the waterboard, do not violate the Torture Statute.")
One response to the amassing evidence is Nuremberg-style
war-crime prosecutions.
The opposite pole is blanket immunity for all lawbreakers in advance.
Somewhere in the middle lies a truth-and-reconciliation commission
that would try to ferret out the truth.
To enter into the debate,
you might ask which Bush administration officials did what
and which could actually be prosecuted.
Slate has answers.
What kind
of lawbreaking has happened on President Bush's watch,
among his top and mid-level advisers?
What hasn't?
Who is implicated and who is not?
Despite the lack of oral sex with an intern,
the past seven years have yielded an embarrassment of riches
when it comes to potentially prosecutable crimes.
We have tried to sketch out a map of who did what and when,
with links to the evidence that is public and notes about
what we may learn from investigations that are still pending.
We looked specifically at the White House,
the office of the vice presidency,
the Department of Defense,
the Justice Department, and
the State Department.
We started with a question about whether anyone
could be prosecuted for war crimes relating to the torture
identified by the International Committee of the Red Cross.
We soon spiraled out to trace related loops:
warrantless wiretapping and the destruction of CIA tapes
of the interrogations of two high-level suspects.
And then we added in scandals that involve many
of the same players and that have spawned investigations:
the firing of the U.S. attorneys in 2006 in the Justice Department
as well as politicized hirings there.
In the main, the laws and treaties we concentrated on
were the Geneva Conventions, the War Crimes Act, the
Convention Against Torture, obstruction of justice
and destruction of evidence, perjury, lying to Congress,
the Civil Service Reform Act, and the Hatch Act.
The accompanying diagram (click here or on the
module above to launch it) highlights a truth of criminal conspiracy:
Whenever legal liability is spread among many actors, it becomes
difficult to ascertain with any specificity who's on the hook for what.
This, to steal a phrase from Douglas Feith, is "the whole point."
Another truism of criminal prosecution
is that it's easier to go after
the coverup than the crime.
For that reason, we think the likelihood that, say,
Alberto Gonzales gets nicked for lying to Congress
or that someone gets nailed for destroying the CIA tapes
is higher than the chance that John Yoo ever goes to court
for suggesting that an interrogation tactic is torture
only if it causes pain on the level of organ failure.
Or that David Addington or Gonzalesor Dick Cheney or
President Bushever gets nailed for urging or accepting that advice.
Whether that is fair or right or just is for you to judge.
Because our focus here was on the architects of the lawless acts,
we have stayed high on the chain in command,
rather than naming specific interrogators for acts of alleged torture
or indicting specific telecoms for warrantless eavesdropping.
The lower-level players we did include are those we think
may have helped shape administration policy. Often, these underlings
have been left holding the legal bag. In fact, a pattern emerges:
Time and again it appears that fairly low-level or inexperienced lawyers
were encouraged to write "blue sky" memos authorizing
the broadest range of abusive or improperly partisan behaviors.
Their superiors never seriously vetted those memos.
And, again, that's the point: The higher-ups have cover.
They can both claim that the memos were merely thought experiments
and, if push comes to shove, leave the low-ranking attorneys
in the line of fire.
This, we think, helps explain why high-level officials like Jim Haynes,
former DoD general counsel, have gone to such length
to insist that the call to expand the interrogation arsenal
came from the "bottom up," not the "top down."
How likely are the prosecutions that we make a theoretical case
for or against? For the most part, that's a political question,
not a legal one. In general, we doubt that we'll see a host
of criminal prosecutions anytime soon, but we are also waiting
on criminal investigations, several key inspector general's reports,
and still-classified documents. Who knowsmaybe this diagram
will change shape over the coming months or years.
Click here for the diagram, and here for a text-only version.
back to top
slate:http://www.slate.com/id/2195533/
document.write("") Emily Bazelon document.write(''); is a Slate senior
editor.
Kara Hadge is a Slate intern.
Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor. document.write("")
Chris Wilson document.write(''); is an editorial assistant at Slate in
Washington, D.C.
Interactive diagram designed by Natalie Matthews.
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http://www.slate.com/id/2195892/
Crimes and Misdemeanors By Emily Bazelon, Kara Hadge, Dahlia Lithwick, and
Chris Wilson
Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008, at 6:55 AM ET
Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses
the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see,
many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more
of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles
(Venn-diagram heaven!).
The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over
the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated.
For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares
George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington,
John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales.
At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into
the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring.
Mouse over a person's name
for information on how each person is involved.
Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics
about the particular scandal.
And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule
of wrongdoing in the White House:
All roads lead to Gonzales.
Mouse over the scandals, and click on the scandal titles
and the names in the diagram for more detailed information.
If not visible:
http://www.slate.com/id/2195892/
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