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Are Republicans Blackmailing Obama?
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If the president releases the Bush torture memos, Republicans are promising to “go nuclear” and filibuster his legal appointments. Scott Horton reports on a serious threat to Obama’s transparency.
Senate Republicans are now privately threatening to derail the confirmation of key Obama administration nominees for top legal positions by linking the votes to suppressing critical torture memos from the Bush era. A reliable Justice Department source advises me that Senate Republicans are planning to “go nuclear” over the nominations of Dawn Johnsen as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice and Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh as State Department legal counsel if the torture documents are made public. The source says these threats are the principle reason for the Obama administration’s abrupt pullback last week from a commitment to release some of the documents. A Republican Senate source confirms the strategy. It now appears that Republicans are seeking an Obama commitment to safeguard the Bush administration’s darkest secrets in exchange for letting these nominations go forward.
Not a single Republican indicated an intention to vote for Dawn Johnsen, while Senator John Cornyn of Texas was described as “gunning for her,” specifically noting publication of the torture memos.
Barack Obama entered Washington with a promise of transparency. One of his first acts was a presidential directive requiring that the Freedom of Information Act, a near dead letter during the Bush years, was to be enforced according to its terms. He specifically criticized the Bush administration’s practice of preparing secret memos that determined legal policy and promised to review and publish them after taking office.
But in the past week, questions about Obama’s commitment to transparency have mounted. On April 2, the Justice Department was expected to make public a set of four memoranda prepared by the Office of Legal Counsel, long sought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy organizations in a pending FOIA litigation. The memos, authored by then-administration officials and now University of California law professor John Yoo, federal appellate judge Jay Bybee and former Justice Department lawyer Stephen Bradbury, apparently grant authority for the brutal treatment of prisoners, including waterboarding, isolated confinement in coffin-like containers, and “head smacking.” The stakes over release of the papers are increasingly high. Yoo and Bybee are both targets of a criminal investigation in a Spanish court probing the torture of five Spanish citizens formerly held in Guantánamo; also named in the Spanish case are former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other Bush lawyers. Legal observers in Spain consider the Bush administration lawyers at serious risk of indictment, and the memos, once released, could be entered as evidence in connection with their prosecution. Unlike the torture memos that are already public, these memos directly approve specific torture techniques and therefore present a far graver problem for their authors.
The release of the memos that the Senate Republicans want to suppress was cleared by Attorney General Eric Holder and White House counsel Greg Craig, and then was stopped when “all hell broke loose” inside the Obama administration, according to an article by Newsweek reporter Michael Isikoff. Newsweek attributes internal opposition to disclosure of the Bush-era torture memos to White House counterterrorism adviser and former CIA official John O. Brennan, who has raised arguments that exposure of the memoranda would run afoul of policies protecting the secrecy of agency techniques and has also argued that the memos would embarrass nations like Morocco, Jordan, Pakistan, Tunisia and Egypt, which have cooperated closely with the CIA in its extraordinary renditions program. Few informed independent observers, however, find much to credit in the Brennan objections because the techniques are now well-known, as is the role of the cooperating foreign intelligence services—any references to which would in any event likely be redacted before the memoranda are released. Moreover, the argument that the confidence of those engaged in torture—serious criminal conduct under international and domestic law—should be kept because they would be “embarrassed” if it were to come out borders on comic.
The Justice Department source confirms to me that Brennan has consistently opposed making public the torture memos—and any other details about the operations of the extraordinary renditions program—but this source suggests that concern about the G.O.P.’s roadblock in the confirmation process is the principle reason that the memos were not released. Republican senators have expressed strong reservations about their promised exposure, expressing alarm that a critique of the memos by Justice’s ethics office (Office of Professional Responsibility) will also be released. “There was no ‘direct’ threat,” said the source, “but the message was communicated clearly—if the OLC and OPR memoranda are released to the public, there will be war.” This is understood as a threat to filibuster the nominations of Johnsen and Koh. Not only are they among the most prominent academic critics of the torture memoranda, but are also viewed as the strongest advocates for release of the torture memos on Obama’s legal policy team.
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Doesn't the Obama administration realise that they have a huge amount support from their constituents? One of the initiatives that the Obama admin has pushed for that we wholeheartedly agree with is greater transparency.
We aren't going to tolerate the Republicans f*cking with that. They could mess with a lot of other things but don't mess with what we have been waiting for, for the last 8 years. We want to know what Bush did, we want to find out about the torture, we want to know about his politicization of the DOJ.
Transparency should be at the foundation of government. If Republicans are unwilling to support that then they should removed.
This is the first big battle. If Obama plays this really well, and the R's keep defending the Cheney wing of the party, the moral depravity on display (combined with, say, being totally on the wrong side of history WRT recent economic policy) could be an existential crisis for the GOP. Gingrich is absolutely right that third parties would be formed to challenge the GOP as the second party.
Perhaps the odds are low but at this point it's certainly not unthinkable.
Here's one spectator ready to see the best fusillade the GOP can muster. Everyone pay attention with pens at the ready for who comes down on what side of this one.
This will cement the image of the GOP in the eyes of people under 40. Just as of us wants to get near an American car, to our deaths the GOP will stand for beating the shit out of taxi drivers.
BLACKMAIL ? definitely
Poor Obama , no matter how hard he tries, the obstacles mount.
Next they will blackmail him about HEALTHCARE
The Republicans are not the only ones who blackmail the Administration............WALL STREET also blackmailed the administration into SUBMISSION to their WILL.
see how tough it is to change things.
Good luck to Obama............we understand !!!
I think that's despicable behavior on the part of the Republicans involved in "blackmailing" the Obama administration. It's certainly not covered under the rubric of classified information - need to know.
Rather, we Americans have a right to know the illegal acts performed with the consent of the Bush administration - Truth & Reconciliation. The people from countries whose citizens were illegally tortured have a right to know as well.
I would suggest to Mr. Cornyn, et al. that such behavior on their part will all but guarantee Mr. Gingrich's belief that the 2012 elections will see a 3rd party. It might happen even sooner in 2010. Such arrogant people are certainly not representing their constituents in good faith. In comparison, what Mr. Dodd did regarding the AIG bonuses in ARRA is mild.
President Obama please do not give in to blackmail.let's give them transparency,Why do The republicans want to suppress information ?Rush where are you and fellow neocons.I can't hear you.
Go nuclear? I say let them. Let them take a public stand as the party of torture. Let them see who the public sides with on this one. The Obama Administration needs to go public with this threat, explain to the American people what the Senate Republicans are doing, and why - we'll do the rest.
Bring it on! Why back down? Let them filibuster. The public reaction would be rather decisive, I would think. Not every Senate Republican is going to stand on the side of torture. Does Olivia Snow believe in using torture? I think not.
I have to agree that these memoranda should see the light of day. This is one worth fighting over. Even Mcain would support it !!
This is scary stuff. The Administration must use every available means to expose these Republicans and bring them down. Now is the time. They are holding not only the Administration, but the Nation hostage in depriving the government of its personnel. This borders on criminal conduct, not only by the past perpetrators of torture, but by their colluding senators.
It's probably better stated that the Obama administration has and will continue to shut out the GOP. "What a tangeled web he weaves, Obama." And he now wants to ram down our throats the War Dead?
This is not really "politics" this is corruption, being covered up. I don't want to see the torture memos. The American public knows what went on. Keep them in a safe for the historical archives and get the nominations.
But let this be a lesson to people who like to go hard on Obama and soft on Bush: this is corruption, or "pay to play" chicago style politics. And it's being played by Republicans. Because Republicans are terrible people.
Prosecute.
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I can't wait to see attack ads against Repubs in 2010 for defending the Bush policy essentially advocating torture. I also don't think filibustering will necessarily work in the long run. Senate Repub leader Bill Frist and other Repubs threatened to change the rules several years ago and require only a majority to confirm appointments, so the Dems can do the same and point to that Republican precedent to justify it. Once again, Republican short-sightedness will turn out to bite themselves in the ass.
Why, this is exactly the way other thugs behave. Threats
and intimidation! No wonder things are all messed us right now. We have been RULED by thugs for a decade, and sort of got used to it. Karl Rove and Adolf Hitler were true geniuses.
Is this another attempt at shifting the blame and distracting?
Shouldn't the Obama administration focus on North Korea and the economy?
I thought Democrats have the majority in Congress; what do they need the Republican vote for?
BTW Obama is technically in office for 2 and 1/2 months; we all know that he will be PRESIDENT since Nov 4. Why didn't he prepare his appointment then?
Let's be clear, I'm not a Republican, I think that the Republican leadership has made many poor choices over the last 40 years and plunged this country into a crisis of ethics and morality that will take a while to fix.
But most Republicans are normal Americans that are a little gullible and very misled by these evil people.
Be clear that if the Republican leadership did publish what they were doing in full most Republicans would have abandoned the party - or even better thrown out those leaders and reformed the party back into a Pro-American political party.
As the article makes clear the Republican Leadership is running scared making threats of drastic action to avoid the sunlight. What we need to do is to make Republicans see this and demand that the dirty laundry be aired so they can once again hold their heads high.
Eliminate the anti-democratic super-majority requirement for cloture as the Republicans threatened with Roberts and Alito. It's time for the senate to start bringing itself out of the early 19th Century and become a modern legislative body rather than an obstructionist anachronism.
What's so infuriating about this story is that once again, Obama is portrayed as the victim at the hands of the "evil" Republicans. If the man truly deserves to be the leader of the most powerful country on earth, then he needs to grow a spine and stand by his supposed principals-even if "Republicans promise to go nuclear." Did we elect a President or a coward?
This article makes no sense. The same logic that says release of the country-names involved in rendition is comical also applies to the principals involved in the Bush administration. Everyone already knows everything--names, ranks, and--thanks to Google--home addresses!
If the current crop of government thugs aren't willing to sanction the techniques of the former thugs, then they should own that and tell everyone in plain English that when push comes to shove, President Obama is a push. It's a legitimate position for crying out loud.
The attempt to criminalize something that a woozy wimp like Christopher Hitchens weathered so easily is dumb. Okay Hitchens isn't woozy in the strict sense but he IS a wimp and everyone knows it. The libs should grow up, govern and quit acting like cry babies. Last time anyone looked they had the functional equivalent of a veto-proof majority, so they should get off the dime and see how fast they can screw-up the country. It took the neo-cons 8 years---if the libs can't can't do it in 8 months, they ain't crap.
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Typical GOP...putting self interest over the greater good.
The torture documents should be released for two reasons: 1. It's the right thing to do, and 2. The Republicans will filibuster Obama's nominees no matter what he does. Don't kid yourself.
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Take this fight to the people. Do not let the sleazy Repugs threaten with their empty threats. Go ahead with a filabuster. Get the information out to the public, prosecute the criminals and we will still get the judges seated. The people are behind this action. No Fear!
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