The civil war between three Republican senators and the president over his treatment of imprisoned suspected terrorists has resulted in a public break with George W. Bush?s own former secretary of state, Colin Powell. But in all these stories about Powell?s mutiny, I?ve seen no mention of an angry, prophetic memorandum he wrote on Jan. 25, 2002, protesting the administration?s pending decision to scrap the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners in Afghanistan.
That warning becomes particularly timely now, because the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff anticipated the increasing disclosure ever since of Bush?s systemic lawlessness, especially his unleashing of the CIA, in the war on terrorism. Despite a widely hailed bill, the Military Commissions Act, that purports to curb the president?s excesses, that lawlessness will continue, courtesy of a so-called compromise between sponsoring senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham and the White House. Citing the fallout over Abu Ghraib, the CIA?s “renditions,” and the conditions at Guantanamo?for which Bush was rebuked by the Supreme Court in this year?s Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision ? Powell said on Sept. 19 that our professed “high moral standards” are being questioned around the world.
But the former Bush Cabinet member predicted the unraveling of American principles back in 2002, when he wrote to Alberto Gonzales, then serving as counsel to the president and orchestrating advice by the president?s lawyers on how to torture prisoners without admitting it. Powell warned him that ignoring Geneva Conventions “will reverse a century of U.S. policy … and undermine the protections of the law of war for our troops [and] make them more vulnerable to protections [abroad] and domestic charges.”
Ignoring his own top foreign policy adviser, Bush declared on Feb. 7, 2002, “that none of the provisions of Geneva apply to our conflict with al-Qaida in Afghanistan or ?elsewhere.? ”
Already, on Sept. 17, 2001, Bush had disregarded Powell and given the CIA, under Vice President Dick Cheney?s tutelage, a special license to violate both international and American law. Bush had earlier made Cheney “vice president for torture,” in the words of former CIA Director Stanfield Turner.
For years now, CIA agents have known they were in danger of prosecution for renditions and for whatever was going on in those secret CIA prisons. And that?s why, before “the compromise,” the Sept. 11 Washington Post reported: “CIA counterterrorism officers have signed up in growing numbers for a government-reimbursed, private insurance plan that would pay their civil judgments and legal expenses if they are sued or charged with criminal wrongdoing. … ”
But CIA agents will not have to worry any longer, let alone buy insurance, because if “the compromise” becomes law, they will be protected from any past violations of “aggressive” techniques or criminal wrongdoing. (Chilling accounts of horrific CIA war crimes can be found in a number of extraordinary articles by Jane Mayer in The New Yorker, as well as in reports by the ACLU, Human Rights First, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.)
Yet, on announcing the deal with the White House, presidential aspirant McCain declared: “The agreement we?ve entered into gives the president the tools he needs to fight the war on terror and bring these evil people to justice. There is no doubt that the integrity and spirit of the Geneva Conventions has been preserved.”
As he gracefully acknowledges applause around the country for his principled determination in forcing the president into a “compromise,” McCain may be hearing, in his inner ear, a future military band playing “Hail to the Chief”?only for him. The senator?s patriotism gets to remain intact because Bush approvingly says the compromise preserves “the CIA program to question the world?s most dangerous terrorists and to get their secrets.” The “black sites” live on.
Nat Hentoff writes a weekly column for the Village Voice and writes on music for The Wall Street Journal.
