Evidence Leans Toward Bush/Cheney Torture Conspiracy

Evidence Leans Toward Bush/Cheney Torture Conspiracy

by Patriot Daily News Clearinghouse



When government officials agree to torture prisoners, issue sham legal opinions to "authorize" the torture contrary to law and then enact laws designed to prevent prosecution, the law calls that conspiracy. Evidence that started as a sporadic trickle and is now flowing steadily indicates that former administration officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, conspired to commit torture.

Rep. John Olver (D-MA) has recognized the possibility that our "President, Vice President and other top officials conspired to create a policy" to sanction torture.

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The engine of that conspiracy is the War Council of lawyers for Bush and Cheney.

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Former defense and Bush administration officials have stated that the torture program was primarily the work of the "War Council," a group of five lawyers with key positions in the administration who "reinterpreted or tossed out the U.S. and international laws that govern the treatment of prisoners in wartime" in compliance with orders issued by Bush and Cheney. The War Council was convened by Cheney’s legal counsel, David Addington and included White House counsel Gonzales, Gonzales’s White House Deputy Tim Flannigan, the Pentagon’s General Counsel William Haynes and OLC lawyer Yoo.

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Torture Conspiracy Law

The U.S. anti-torture statute criminalizes torture and torture conspiracy. We can thank Bush (pdf file) for adding torture conspiracy as a crime in 2001.

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Thus, the statute of limitations clock starts to run only when Bush and Cheney have stopped trying to maintain their torture program. Technically, that day has not yet arrived because Cheney is still campaigning to persuade America and Obama to continue torture. However, even absent the Dickie/Lizzie pro-torture campaign, at the very least the crime continued until the end of the second Bush term, that is, noon on January 20, 2009. Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega summarizes:

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The statute of limitations for torture and torture conspiracy is eight years for noncapital cases. However, there is no time limit when the "commission of such offense resulted in, or created a foreseeable risk of, death or serious bodily injury to another person." Given that there has been only one torture prosecution under this law, I interpret the statute of limitations conservatively and thus would prefer a prosecution commenced within eight years or any legislative time extension as proposed by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers to avoid a 5 o’clock surprise.

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Cheney ‘Fesses Up that Rapport, Not Torture, Got Intelligence

By: emptywheel Tuesday June 2, 2009 8

Greg Sargent catches Cheney parsing carefully about whether the two CIA documents he's trying to get released will prove that torture works.

The key moment came when his interviewer said: “You want some documents declassified having to do with waterboarding.” Cheney replied:


Greg speculates:


Greg's right--Cheney's making a key retreat off his claims. That's because we know the CIA got a ton of intelligence from some of the detainees, particularly KSM. But I've shown repeatedly, with my half-completed review of the KSM intelligence used in the 9/11 Report, that the bulk of this information came long after KSM was waterboarded in March 2003. The first big chunks of intelligence came from him in July 2003, and there were big chunks in the months that followed. This is important because the CIA started using rapport as well as abuse. Though we don't know when they did so, it is likely that much of the intelligence they got from KSM came at least partly because of this rapport based interrogation.

So I'm not surprised that the program--including rapport--got intelligence. I'm just curious why Cheney is backtracking on his big claims now.