Site Map OBAMA AND GOPers WORKED TOGETHER TO KILL BUSH TORTURE PROBE |
by David Corn
A leaked cable
shows that when Spain considered a criminal case
against ex-Bush officials, Obama and Republicans got
really bipartisan.
Wed Dec. 1, 2010 2:47 PM PST
In its first months in
office, the Obama
administration sought to
protect Bush administration
officials facing criminal
investigation overseas for
their involvement in
establishing policies the
that governed interrogations
of detained terrorist
suspects. A "confidential"
April 17, 2009, cable
[1] sent from the US
embassy in Madrid to the
State Department—one of the
251,287 cables obtained by
WikiLeaks—details how the
Obama administration,
working with Republicans,
leaned on Spain to derail
this potential prosecution.
The previous month, a Spanish human rights group called the Association for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners had requested that Spain's National Court indict six former Bush officials for, as the cable describes it, "creating a legal framework that allegedly permitted torture." The six were former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel. The human rights group contended that Spain had a duty to open an investigation under the nation's "universal jurisdiction" law, which permits its legal system to prosecute overseas human rights crimes involving Spanish citizens and residents. Five Guantanamo detainees, the group maintained, fit that criteria.
Soon after the request was
made, the US embassy in
Madrid began tracking the
matter. On April 1, embassy
officials spoke with chief
prosecutor Javier Zaragoza,
who indicated that he was
not pleased to have been
handed this case, but he
believed that the complaint
appeared to be
well-documented and he'd
have to pursue it. Around
that time, the acting deputy
chief of the US embassy
talked to the chief of staff
for Spain's foreign minister
and a senior official in the
Spanish Ministry of Justice
to convey, as the cable
says, "that this was a very
serious matter for the USG."
The two Spaniards "expressed
their concern at the case
but stressed the
independence of the Spanish
judiciary." On April 15, Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.), who'd recently been chairman of the Republican Party, and the US embassy's charge d'affaires met with the acting Spanish foreign minister, Angel Lossada. The Americans, according to this cable, "underscored that the prosecutions would not be understood or accepted in the US and would have an enormous impact on the bilateral relationship" between Spain and the United States. Here was a former head of the GOP and a representative of a new Democratic administration (headed by a president who had decried the Bush-Cheney administration's use of torture) jointly applying pressure on Spain to kill the investigation of the former Bush officials. Lossada replied that the independence of the Spanish judiciary had to be respected, but he added that the government would send a message to the attorney general that it did not favor prosecuting this case. The next day, April 16, 2009, Attorney General Conde-Pumpido publicly declared that he would not support the criminal complaint, calling it "fraudulent" and political. If the Bush officials had acted criminally, he said, then a case should be filed in the United States. On April 17, the prosecutors of the National Court filed a report [2] asking that complaint be discontinued. In the April 17 cable, the American embassy in Madrid claimed some credit for Conde-Pumpido's opposition, noting that "Conde-Pumpido's public announcement follows outreach to [Government of Spain] officials to raise USG deep concerns on the implications of this case." Still, this did not end the matter. It would still be up to investigating Judge Baltasar Garzón [3]—a world-renowned jurist who had initiated previous prosecutions of war crimes and had publicly said that former President George W. Bush ought to be tried for war crimes—to decide whether to pursue the case against the six former Bush officials. That June—coincidentally or not—the Spanish Parliament passed legislation narrowing the use of "universal jurisdiction." Still, in September 2009, Judge Garzón pushed ahead with the case [4]. The case eventually came to be overseen by another judge who last spring asked the parties behind the complaint to explain why the investigation should continue. Several human rights groups filed a brief [2] urging this judge to keep the case alive, citing the Obama administration's failure to prosecute the Bush officials. Since then, there's been no action. The Obama administration essentially got what it wanted. The case of the Bush Six went away. Back when it seemed that this case could become a major international issue, during an April 14, 2009, White House briefing, I asked press secretary Robert Gibbs if the Obama administration would cooperate with any request from the Spaniards for information and documents related to the Bush Six. He said [5], "I don't want to get involved in hypotheticals." What he didn't disclose was that the Obama administration, working with Republicans, was actively pressuring the Spaniards to drop the investigation. Those efforts apparently paid off, and, as this WikiLeaks-released cable shows, Gonzales, Haynes, Feith, Bybee, Addington, and Yoo owed Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton thank-you notes. _______________ Notes: [1] http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/04/09MADRID392.html [2] http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/spanish-investigation-us-torture [3] http://motherjones.com/politics/2004/03/longest-arm-law [4] http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2009/09/08/spanish-judge-resumes-torture-case-against-six-senior-bush-lawyers/ [5] http://motherjones.com/mojo/2009/04/white-house-joking-about-torture-investigation
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