Robert Parry | Consortiumnews.com, July 10, 2008
Even Sen. Charles Schumer, whose vote last year ensured Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General, was left sputtering as Mukasey returned the favor by rebuffing Schumer’s concerns about the Bush administration’s political prosecutions.
At the end of his round of Senate Judiciary Committee questions, Schumer referred to allegations that White House political adviser Karl Rove had pressed for the selective prosecution of Alabama’s Democratic Gov. Don Siegelman, who was viewed as a threat to Republican dominance of the South.
“Do you think that someone in the Justice Department should ask Karl Rove whether he was involved, whether he did the things that are alleged – someone somewhere – or is there a possibility that no one should ever ask him?” the New York Democrat said, his voice rising.
Mukasey responded coolly that he would not endorse the questioning of Rove. In disgust, Schumer said, “I find these answers very disappointing.”
But Schumer was not alone. At the oversight hearings on July 9, the committee’s Democrats and the ranking Republican, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, voiced varying levels of disappointment at Mukasey’s refusal to look back at the misconduct – including criminal acts – that had occurred earlier in the Bush administration.
Indeed, Mukasey’s evasive answers recalled the stonewalling of his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales. Mukasey’s vague and meandering responses made two things clear, however: George W. Bush’s hubris about what he sees as his unlimited presidential powers continues and Mukasey will serve as Bush’s rearguard protector during his final six months in office.
In a separate confrontation with two House committees, Mukasey has promulgated a novel legal theory justifying his refusal to release FBI reports on interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney about their roles in exposing the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Even though Bush has not asserted executive privilege regarding the FBI reports, Mukasey has refused to honor subpoenas from the House committees on the grounds that to do so would threaten “core Executive Branch confidentiality interests and fundamental separation of powers principles.”
Mukasey’s theory ignores a variety of precedents, including the public release of criminal-case testimony by Bush’s three predecessors (Bill Clinton on the Monica Lewinsky case, George H.W. Bush on the Passportgate affair and the Iran-Contra scandal, and Ronald Reagan on Iran-Contra.)
Nuremberg Defense
In his Senate testimony, Mukasey also left no doubt that the Justice Department would take no action against anyone in the administration who violated criminal statutes in the “war on terror” if they were following legal advice from superiors, a modern version of the so-called Nuremberg defense.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, urged Mukasey to “follow what I think is the clear standard of the law within your own department and initiate those investigations” into the Bush administration’s abuse of detainees, including the use of “waterboarding,” a form of simulated drowning.
Durbin noted that retired Major General Antonio Taguba, who was in charge of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse probe, stated recently that “the Commander in Chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture” and that “there is no longer any doubt about whether the current administration committed war crimes, the only question that remains is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held accountable.”
Mukasey, however, responded that anyone who acted in “good faith” and relied on the Justice Department’s legal advice “cannot and should not be prosecuted.” The same protection should cover government lawyers who gave the advice, he said.
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