Jack Goldsmith, former head of the Office of Legal Counsel, US Justice Department:
From YouTube:
"In these two excerpts from Bill Moyers Journal, Jack Goldsmith, former head the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, gives an insider’s view of advising the President on the limits of executive power during the war on terror.
In the second excerpt, Goldsmith recounts what he calls “the most amazing scene I’d ever witnessed”-the night then White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez and former White House chief of staff Andrew Card Gonzalez, went to the hospital to try to persuade Attorney General John Ashcroft to give his permission on a secret surveillance plan, overriding acting Attorney General James Comey."
(via: Crooks and Liars)
Mr. Goldsmith's blunt expose, The Terror Presidency - Law And Judgment inside the Bush Administration, was released last week. Additional comments from him are excepted today at Truthdig:
My actions in June 2004 contributed to a problem that has bedeviled the intelligence community since the 1960s. The executive branch and Congress pressure the community to engage in controversial action at the edges of the law, and then fail to protect it from incriminations when things go awry.
This leads the community to retrench and become risk averse, which invites complaints by politicians that the community is fecklessly timid. ... These cycles of timidity and aggression are the bane of the intelligence community, and are a terrible problem for our national security. They flow from the confluence of three related Washington pathologies: the criminalization of warfare, the blame game, and the cover-your-ass syndrome. Everyone agrees that risks must be taken to confront the terrorist threats.
But no one wants to be blamed when the inevitable errors occur. Everyone wants cover. The President wants plausible deniability, or blames bad intelligence. Congressional intelligence committees demand to be informed, but not in a way that will prevent them from being critical when things go badly. Intelligence agencies want explicit instructions from the White House and Congress, which are rarely forthcoming. The agencies thus increasingly demand cover from their lawyers. Their lawyers, in turn, increasingly seek cover from OLC. And, as my actions demonstrate, OLC opinions are not always reliable.
- Garry J. Wise, Toronto
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