What We Need to Hear About the Torture Report

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

Author responds to your questions live on Facebook, Friday at 3:00

Cross-posted from Huffington Post.

At 10 a.m. on Friday, February 26, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the Office of Professional Responsibility’s investigation into the Justice Department memos that authorized the torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the Bush administration. That’s a good start for a committee that’s closely followed this issue, but it should be just the beginning. Human Rights First will be attending and blogging on the hearing. We’ll also be answering readers’ questions about the report, the Senate hearing, and the various ways of holding accountable the government officials who participated in plans to interrogate prisoners using torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment. So far, the only witness scheduled to testify at that hearing is Gary G. Grindler, the Acting Deputy Attorney General who’s temporarily replaced David Ogden, the senior DOJ official who resigned in December. Given that the OPR report found that Office of Legal Counsel lawyers deliberately or “recklessly” twisted the law to justify the use of interrogation techniques that amounted to torture, the Justice Department now has strong evidence of a criminal conspiracy. But we need to know more, and we hope the Senators on the Judiciary Committee tomorrow will be asking the right questions. Here are some questions we’d like to put to the Justice Department, and to the Committee: 1) Where will the Justice Department take this investigation from here? What are the next steps? 2) The OPR said its investigation was hampered by the mysterious disappearance of John Yoo’s e-mails, as well as those of his colleague, Patrick Philbin. The FBI has the technology necessary to recover deleted emails. Will the Justice Department employ that technology? 3) The disappearance of Yoo’s and Philbin’s e-mails are more than just suspicious. It may amount to a deliberate obstruction of justice. Will DOJ investigate when and why the messages were deleted, and whether their deletion amounts to a crime? 4) In addition to the missing e-mails, the OPR investigators noted that many key witnesses “declined” to speak with OPR, seriously limiting its investigation. Witnesses who refused to speak to investigators included every former White House official except Alberto Gonzales, and almost all of the CIA attorneys. CIA records also were not available. Only by collecting all of this relevant evidence can we know what instructions White House and CIA officials gave to the OLC lawyers, and whether the lawyers were told to draft legal justifications for what both lawyer and client knew was criminal conduct. Will DOJ use its subpoena power to require those witnesses to provide testimony and relevant records? 5) The Justice Department has so far suggested that it will not criminally investigate the conduct of any senior officials or lawyers in the prior administration. Will the Senate Judiciary Committee schedule further hearings of its own to find the answers to these questions? 6) Some lawmakers have proposed an independent, nonpartisan “Commission of Inquiry” to investigate how the U.S. came to abuse and torture detainees. A commission could go a long way toward revealing what really happened and making concrete recommendations to keep it from happening again. Will the Justice Department and Senate Judiciary Committee support creating a commission to ensure that we learn from our past mistakes? Please suggest any more questions you’d like to see answered, and follow up with any questions for us after the hearing!