David Addington and Alberto Gonzales
David Addington had decades of experience as a national security lawyer in Washington. He’s also – everyone who knows him says – among the quickest and most agile minds among all the lawyers they’ve ever met… David Addington was well-informed, experience, ascorbic, intimidating, a very powerful intellect, and quick reader. Albert Gonzales, then the White House counsel, was not those things. And he deferred very strongly to Addington on all these enormous questions that were suddenly put in his lap. Gonzales had a relationship with the president from back in Texas. But Addington had this whole arsenal of knowledge, very strong views, and he dominated the decision-making over what would be the government’s legal steps in “the war on terror.”
The plans for dealing with detainees began to be made within a couple of hours of the 9/11 strike --"By lunchtime! On 9/11!"
One of the biggest questions became, “We’re going to clearly retaliate. There’s going to be a war in Afghanistan.” That was obvious because the Taliban supported Al Qaida. Bin Laden at the time was in Afghanistan and there was just no doubt in the minds of any of the president’s advisors that the president would retaliate militarily in Afghanistan. So you’re going to start to pick up prisoners. And the question is then, what do you do with these people? They’re people you might want to interrogate. Do they go into a judicial process? Are they military prisoners of war? What will we do with them? And one of the early things that happened is that Cheney decides the thing he really wants to happen is there will be these military commissions, that prisoners will be brought down to Guantanamo, that – as it turns out – it will be outside any judicial process. ...They’re looking for a place that will be not under US sovereign law but also not under the sovereign law of another allied country – which is a tall order. The State Department legal adviser said they were really looking for the legal equivalent of outer space. And they thought they found it in Guantanamo.
Secrecy
This country has not had to think very hard in the past about what are the checks and balances on a vice president. We just haven’t had vice presidents with this much influence. But the caller is right. For example, the Freedom of Information Act – which entitles any citizen to request public records of the federal government, does not cover the vice president’s office. If a committee of Congress asks for the vice president or one of his people to testify, they don’t generally have entitlement to command that testimony. It’s hard for journalists to take a close look at Cheney’s office because it’s been very secretive. Cheney has broken with tradition and, for example, not published the names or numbers of his staff. By numbers I don’t mean their phone numbers, I mean how many people work for him. If you ask that of his office, they won’t answer. And so it just becomes harder, I think, that good Congressional oversight can probe this and good investigative reporting can do it. He’s been a hard target and that’s why the Washington Post has devoted two reporters for a full year.
Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman's full interview with NPR is available here.
