S. Hrg. 111-200
GETTING TO THE TRUTH THROUGH A NONPARTISAN COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
MARCH 4, 2009
__________
Serial No. J-111-8
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on the Judiciary
----------
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Washington, DC 20402-0001
COMMITTEE ON THE JUDICIARY
PATRICK J. LEAHY, Vermont, Chairman
HERB KOHL, Wisconsin ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania
DIANNE FEINSTEIN, California ORRIN G. HATCH, Utah
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, Wisconsin CHARLES E. GRASSLEY, Iowa
CHARLES E. SCHUMER, New York JON KYL, Arizona
RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois JEFF SESSIONS, Alabama
BENJAMIN L. CARDIN, Maryland LINDSEY O. GRAHAM, South Carolina
SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, Rhode Island JOHN CORNYN, Texas
RON WYDEN, Oregon TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
AMY KLOBUCHAR, Minnesota
EDWARD E. KAUFMAN, Delaware
Bruce A. Cohen, Chief Counsel and Staff Director
Nicholas A. Rossi, Republican Chief Counsel
C O N T E N T S
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STATEMENTS OF COMMITTEE MEMBERS
Page
Feingold, Hon. Russell D., a U.S. Senator from the State of
Wisconsin...................................................... 5
prepared statement............................................... 72
Leahy, Hon. Patrick J., a U.S. Senator from the State of Vermont. 1
prepared statement............................................... 122
Specter, Hon. Arlen, a U.S. Senator from the State of
Pennsylvania................................................... 3
WITNESSES
Farmer, John J., Jr., Partner, Arsenault, Whipple, Farmer,
Fassett and Azzarello, LLP, Chatham, New Jersey................ 12
Gunn, Leet F., Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (ret.), and President, The
American Security Project, Washington, D.C..................... 10
Pickering, Ambassador Thomas, Vice Chairman, Hills & Company,
International Consultants, Washington, D.C..................... 7
Rabkin, Jeremy A., Professor of Law, George Mason, University
School of Law, Arlington, Virginia............................. 19
Rivkin, David B., Baker & Hostetler, LLP, Washington, D.C........ 16
Schwarz, Frederick A.O., Jr., Chief Counsel, Brennan Center for
Justice, New York University School of Law, New York, New York. 14
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Atlanta Journal-Constituion, February 13, 2009, article.......... 36
AVAAZ.org, 70,000 support the U.S. Senate........................ 38
Buffalo News, March, 9, 2009, article............................ 50
RussBaker.com, March 11, 2009, article........................... 51
Bush, George, Houston, Texas, letter............................. 53
Capitol News Company, LLC, March, 3, 2009, article............... 54
Commoncause.org, Washington, D.C., statement..................... 57
Constitution Project, Washington, D.C., statement................ 62
Davis Group, Austin, Texas, statement............................ 64
Farmer, John J., Jr., Partner, Arsenault, Whipple, Farmer,
Fassett and Azzarello, LLP, Chatham, New Jersey, statement..... 68
Fidell, Eugene R., President, National Institute of Military
Justice, Washington, D.C., statement........................... 74
Fletch, Laurel E., Director, International Human Rights Law
Clinic, University of California, and Eric Stover, Faculty
Director, Human Rights Center, University of California,
Berkeley, California, statement................................ 78
Fredrickson, Caroline, Director, American Civil Liberties Union,
Washington, D.C., statement.................................... 90
Globe and Mail, a division of CTV globemedia Publishing Inc.,
March 4, 2009, article......................................... 98
Gunn, Leet F., Vice Admiral, U.S. Navy (ret.), and President, The
American Security Project, Washington, D.C., statement......... 100
Human Events.com, February 25, 2009, article..................... 106
Human Rights Watch, March 4, 2009, statement..................... 110
Investor's Business Daily, February 11, 2009, article............ 115
Killmer, Revern Richard L., Executive Director, National
Religious Commpaign Against Torture, statement................. 117
Las Vegas Review-Journal, February 12, 2009, article............. 120
Lucas, Margaret M., Washington, D.C., statement.................. 124
Magarrell, Lisa, U.S. Accountabiltly Project Director,
International Center or Transition on Justice, New York, New
York, statement................................................ 125
Massimino, Elisa, Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director
of Human Rights First, Washington, D.C., statement............. 130
Miami Herald, February 23, 2009, article......................... 136
National Religious Campaign Against Torture, Washington, DC:
U.S.-Sponsored Torture: A call for a Commission of Inquiry,
joint statement............................................ 138
Religious Leaders call for torture Commission, joint,
statement.................................................. 140
New York Times, March 4, 2009, article........................... 143
Patten, Wendy, Senior Policy Analyst, Open Society Institute,
Washington, D.C., statement.................................... 147
Physicians for Human Rights, A. Frank Donaghue, Chief Executive
Officer, Washington, D.C., statement........................... 149
Pickering, Ambassador Thomas, Vice Chairman, Hills & Company,
International Consultants, Washington, D.C., statement......... 153
Rabkin, Jeremy A., Professor of Law, George Mason, University
School of Law, Arlington, Virginia, statement.................. 157
Rivkin, David B., Baker & Hostetler, LLP, Washington, D.C.,
statement...................................................... 162
Schwarz, Frederick A.O., Jr., Chief Counsel, Brennan Center for
Justice, New York University School of Law, New York, New York,
statement...................................................... 169
Scripps Howard News Service, February 19, 2009, articles......... 211
Sessions, William S., former Chief of Government Operations
Section, Department of Justice, Washington, D.C., statement.... 213
U.S. Intelligence Community, R. James Woolsey, Michael Hayden,
James Schlesinger, William Webster, and John Deutch, are all
former Director of Central Intelligence, Washington, D.C.,
joint letter................................................... 215
USA Today, February 17, 2009, article............................ 217
Walsh, Joan, March 5, 2009, article.............................. 219
Washington Post:
February 17, 2009, article................................... 229
November 26, 2008, article................................... 232
Washington Times, March 3, 2009, articles........................ 234
GETTING TO THE TRUTH THROUGH A NONPARTISAN COMMISSION OF INQUIRY
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WEDNESDAY, MARCH 4, 2009
U.S. Senate,
Committee on the Judiciary,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:10 a.m., in
room SD-226, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Patrick J.
Leahy, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.
Present: Senators Leahy, Feingold, Whitehouse, Kaufman,
Specter, and Cornyn.
OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. PATRICK J. LEAHY, A U.S. SENATOR FROM
THE STATE OF VERMONT
Chairman Leahy. Thank you all for being here, and a very
distinguished panel.
I could not help but think, in the wake of the tragic
attacks on September 11th, we all came together as Americans.
Party labels meant nothing. Being Americans meant everything.
We need to do so again in these difficult economic times.
Regrettably, too many seem mesmerized by the siren call of talk
radio personalities and extreme special interest groups. And
far from grasping the bipartisan hand that President Obama has
extended, many want to play out the conservative play book to
``obstruct and delay.''
This is a time when conservatives, liberals, Republicans,
and Democrats should be setting aside party labels to come
together, first and foremost, as Americans.
We saw nothing more to damage America's place in the world
than the revelation that our great Nation stretched the law and
the bounds of executive power to authorize torture and cruel
treatment. When the last administration chose this course, it
tried to keep its policies and actions secret. I think they did
that because they knew they could not withstand the scrutiny of
an open public airing. How many times did President Bush go
before the world and say that we did not torture and that we
acted in accordance with law?
Now, there are some who resist any effort to look back at
all; others are fixated only on prosecution, even if it takes
all of the next 8 years, or more, and divides this country.
Over the last month, I have suggested a middle ground to
get to the truth of what went on during the last several years
in a way that invites cooperation. I believe that that might
best be accomplished though a nonpartisan commission of
inquiry. I would like to see this done in a manner that removes
it from partisan politics. Such a commission of inquiry would
shed light on what mistakes were made so that we can learn from
these errors and not repeat them, whether in this
administration or the next administration.
Today's hearing is to explore that possibility. I am
encouraged that many have already embraced this idea, including
several of the distinguished witnesses who will testify today.
These are witnesses who speak from experience about the need to
uncover the truth and shed light on our policies for the good
of our Nation, to ensure that we have strong national security
policies and to ensure that we do not make repeat mistakes. I
look forward to that discussion.
As Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the recent
Supreme Court decision restoring the our great writ of habeas
corpus, the Constitution is not something that any
administration is able ``to switch on or off at will.'' We
should not be afraid to look at what we have done or to hold
ourselves accountable as we do other nations when they make
mistakes. We have to understand that national security means
protecting our country by advancing our laws and values and not
by discarding them.
This idea for a commission of inquiry is not something to
be imposed. Its potential is lost if we do not join together.
Today is another opportunity to come forward to find the facts
and join, all of us, Republicans and Democrats, in developing a
process to reach a mutual understanding of what went wrong and
then to learn from it. If one party remains absent or
resistant, the opportunity can be lost, and calls for
accountability through more traditional means will then become
more insistent and compelling.
I held early hearings exploring how our detention policies
and practices, from Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib, have seriously
eroded fundamental American principles of the rule of law. I
think that we are less safe as a result of the mistakes of the
last administration's national security policies. I also
believe that, in order to restore our moral leadership, we must
acknowledge what was done in our name. We cannot turn the page
unless we first read the page. I do not want to see us in a
case where we are lectured for mistakes we made by countries
who themselves have some of the worst and oppressive policies.
President Obama, Attorney General Holder, and others in the
new administration are already hard at work on detainee and
interrogation policies to determine the best way to form
effective and lawful national security policies. I think a
commission of inquiry would address the rest of the picture.
With a targeted mandate, it could focus on the issues of
national security and executive power in the Government's
counterterrorism efforts, including the issues of cruel
interrogation, extraordinary rendition, and executive override
of laws. We have had successful oversight in some areas, but on
others we have remained too much in the dark.
People with firsthand knowledge would be invited to come
forward and share their experiences and insight, not for the
purposes of criminal indictments but to gather the facts. Such
a process could involve subpoena powers, and even authority to
obtain immunity to secure information, in order to get to the
whole truth. Of course, as in any such inquiry, it would be
done in consultation with the Justice Department, and no such
inquiry rules out prosecution for perjury.
Vice President Dick Cheney and others from the Bush
administration continue to assert that their tactics, including
torture, were appropriate and effective. I do not think we
should let only one side define history on such important
questions. It is important for an independent body to hear
these assertions, but also from others, if we are going to make
an objective and independent judgment about what happened, and
whether it did make our Nation safer or less safe.
Just this week, the Department of Justice released more
alarming documents from the Office of Legal Counsel
demonstrating the last administration's pinched view of
constitutionally protected rights. The memos disregarded the
Fourth and First Amendments, justifying warrantless searches,
the suppression of free speech, surveillance without warrants,
and transferring people to countries known to conduct
interrogations that violate human rights. How can anyone
suggest that such policies do not deserve a thorough, objective
review?
I am encouraged that the Obama administration is moving
forward. I am encouraged that a number of the issues we have
been stonewalled on before are now becoming public. But how did
we get to a point where we were holding a legal U.S. resident
for more than 5 years in a military brig without ever bringing
charges against him? How did we get to a point where Abu Ghraib
happened? How did we get to a point where the U.S. Government
tried to make Guantanamo Bay a law-free zone in order to try to
deny accountability for our actions? How did we get to a point
where our premier intelligence agency, the CIA, destroyed
nearly 100 videotapes with evidence of how detainees were being
interrogated? How did we get to a point where the White House
could say, ``If we tell you to do it, even if it breaks the
law, it is all right because we are above the law'' ? How do we
make sure it never happens again?
Senator Specter?
STATEMENT OF HON. ARLEN SPECTER, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE STATE
OF PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Specter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I have repeatedly said on the Senate floor that the period
from 9/11/2001 to the end of the Bush administration has seen
the greatest expansion of executive power in the history of our
country. And as Chairman and later Ranking on this Committee
and on the Senate floor, I have taken very positive steps to
try to deal with that, for example: pressing for judicial
review of the Terrorist Surveillance Program; pressing the
Sixth Circuit and later the Supreme Court of the United States
to review the decision of the Detroit Federal court declaring
the Terrorist Surveillance Program unconstitutional; offered
amendments on the Senate floor for votes to reinstate habeas
corpus in the wake of action to deny habeas corpus; led the
fight to eliminate the impact of signing statements to try to
provide some balance with the need for the fight against
terrorism, which I supported; managing the PATRIOT Act to try
to provide some balance.
When this idea of the so-called truth commission first
surfaced, I said it was unnecessary because you had a change in
administration. You could walk in the front door, ask for
directions to the relevant filing cabinet, go in and open the
drawer, and find out anything you wanted to know. Well, that
has been done, and it is being done to a greater extent.
You have had some rather startling disclosures with the
publicity in recent days about unusual, to put it mildly, legal
opinions which were issued to justify executive action; very
curious use of the doctrine of self-defense. That is a doctrine
for justifiable homicide. And it is then stretched to say for
defense against potential terrorist attack, the whole range of
activities could be undertaken.
Well, they are all being exposed now. They are, in fact,
being exposed. According to the New York Times this morning,
they are going further than just the exposes, but they are
starting to tread on what may disclose criminal conduct. But
the Times reports this: ``The Office of Professional
Responsibility at the Justice Department is examining whether
certain political appointees in the Department knowingly signed
off on an unreasonable interpretation of the law to provide
legal cover for a program sought by...White House officials.''
Well, if they did that knowingly, there is mens rea. I
would have to search the criminal code. But it sounds to me
like it may fall within criminal conduct.
What we do in our society is we undertake those
investigations where we lawyers use the word ``predicate''--
that is, some reason to proceed. We do not go off helter-
skelter on a term which has been frequently used--I do not care
much for the term, but it articulates a ``fishing expedition''
as to what we are going to do.
So it seems to me that we really ought to follow regular
order here. You have a Department of Justice which is fully
capable of doing an investigation. They are not going to pull
any punches on the prior administration.
I would ask unanimous consent--I do not often insert things
into the record, and this is my first time inserting an article
from Politico. But there is one from yesterday's edition which
is by a former Justice Department official, Hans A. von
Spakovsky, who raises it and succinctly stated that ``we have
never seriously indulged in criminalizing our political
differences''--the point being that the current administration
will have a successor; all administrations have successors. I
would ask, Mr. Chairman, also to put in this elegant picture of
the Chairman, if that can be----
Chairman Leahy. I could care less about the picture, but,
of course, the article will be put in the record. And insofar
as it is full of not only ad hominem attacks but more straw men
than you would have in a hayloft, I will then put a response to
it in the record.
Senator Specter. Well, I have seen a lot of pictures of
Senator Leahy, few as good as this.
[Laughter.]
Senator Specter. Many that I have seen with him, I am in
the picture, too, obstructing his handsome profile. But the
substance here is, I think, worth noting. We have had the
statements by President Obama wanting to look forward and not
backward. I think that is really the generalization, although I
would not mind looking backward if there is a reason to do so.
There is a predicate if we have evidence of torture. Torture is
a violation of our law. Go after them. If there is reason to
believe that these Justice Department officials have knowingly
given the President's cover for things they know not to be
right and sound, go after them.
I think it underscores another issue, if I may say this
parenthetically. The Office of Legal Counsel is a powerful
office, and some of the opinions that are now disclosed are
more than startling. They are shocking. When we look back at
prior Presidents, most of them have not been lawyers. President
Eisenhower, President Kennedy, President Johnson, President
Nixon was--although he did questionable legal things. President
Carter was not. President Ford was. Neither President Bush was,
and President Clinton was. So you have Presidents taking advice
from lawyers where they do not have legal training themselves.
We are considering Office of Legal Counsel today, a very,
very important position, and I think what we have seen Office
of Legal Counsel do in the past ought to give us pause to do a
little better job perhaps in this Committee on whom we confirm.
I regret that I have other commitments. I am going to have
to excuse myself, but I hope to return to participate in the
questioning.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman Leahy. I have noticed that Ambassador Pickering
also has to leave early because of a commitment out of the
area.
Senator Feingold is the Chairman of the Constitution
Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over this matter, and I
yield for a brief statement.
Senator Kaufman, why don't you move on down here with us,
please?
STATEMENT OF HON. RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF WISCONSIN
Senator Feingold. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I really do
regret not being able to stay. I am going to see the British
Prime Minister at a joint meeting. But this is a terribly
important hearing.
Mr. Chairman, I commend you for having this hearing and for
your proposal to establish an independent commission of
inquiry. Long before the election, it was clear to me that one
of the most important tasks for the new President was going to
be restoring the rule of law in this country. I chaired a
hearing on this topic in September, and nearly 40 law
professors, historians, advocates, and experts testified or
submitted testimony, including one of our witnesses today--Mr.
Schwarz. The record of that hearing is the most detailed
collection of analysis and recommendations on what needs to be
done to reverse the most damaging decisions and actions of the
last administration.
The Obama administration has already taken several
enormously important steps in the right direction, among them
ordering the closing of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in
a year; requiring adherence to the Army Field Manual's guidance
on interrogation techniques; reinstating the presumption in
favor of disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act;
ending the very possibly illegal detention of Ali al-Marri by
indicting him in a criminal court; and just last week,
releasing nine Office of Legal Counsel memos that the Bush
administration had insisted on withholding from Congress and
the American people.
So I am pleased and gratified that President Obama and his
advisers recognized the need to take these actions and actually
took them quickly. It gives me great hope for the future.
A crucial part of restoring the rule of law, in addition,
is a detailed accounting of exactly what happened in the last 8
years and how the outgoing administration came to reject or
ignore so many of the principles on which this Nation was
founded. I regularly hear from my constituents back home about
this, and they are absolutely right. There can be no doubt that
we must fully understand the mistakes of the past in order to
learn from them, address them, and, of course, prevent them
from recurring.
At the same time, there should not be a focus on
retribution or payback, and such an effort should not be used
for partisan purposes. That is why your proposal, Mr. Chairman,
is so important. Your proposal is aimed at finding the truth,
not settling scores.
On the question of immunity, I think we should tread
carefully. There are cases that may require prosecution, and I
would not want a commission of inquiry to preclude that. Those
who clearly violated the law and can be prosecuted should be
prosecuted. On the other hand, the country will really benefit
from having as complete a telling of this story as possible. So
the ability of the commission to seek immunity for low-level
participants certainly needs to be considered. How to do this
is one of the complex questions that I hope will be explored in
this hearing.
I do support the idea of an independent fact-finding
commission as opposed to relying solely on the regular
Committee structure. I am on two of the relevant Committees,
and the Members of Congress who serve on them are very hard-
working. There is much important investigative work that can be
done in Committee, but there are also significant time,
staffing, and jurisdictional constraints. I think a truth
commission, as the Chairman has proposed, is the best way to
get the comprehensive story out to the American people and the
world.
One final point, Mr. Chairman. While a commission of
inquiry is the best way to get the facts out, Congress, the
Justice Department, and the public should decide what to do
with those facts. So I would be reluctant to task the
commission with coming up with detailed recommendations for
action. If we focus the commission on gathering the facts,
there may be less wrangling about who is going to be on it,
which could move the process forward a lot more quickly. I
would rather see investigative professionals on this commission
than policymakers and partisans.
So I am looking forward to reviewing the testimony later,
and, again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you so much for your very
strong and important leadership on this issue, and I thank you
for the opportunity to make a statement.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very much. I know you are one of
the Judiciary Committee members who also serves on the
Intelligence Committee, and without going publicly into some of
the briefings we have all had on that, you understand the need
for it.
Our first witness is Ambassador Thomas Pickering, who
currently serves as Vice Chairman of Hills & Company.
Ambassador Pickering has a distinguished Foreign Service
career, including as Under Secretary of State for Political
Affairs from 1997 to 2000. The Ambassador holds a personal rank
of Career Ambassador. That is the highest in the United States
Foreign Service. Prior to becoming Under Secretary, he served
as an ambassador to numerous countries, as well as Ambassador
to the United Nations under President George H.W. Bush. He won
the Distinguished Presidential Award and the Department's
Distinguished Service Award. He has received honors from
numerous universities. He is a member of the International
Institute of Strategic Studies, the Council on Foreign
Relations; has a Bachelor's degree cum laude from Bowdoin, a
member of Phi Beta Kappa, a Fulbright Scholarship to the
University of Melbourne, where he received a second Master's
degree.
On a personal basis, I have been briefed in various
countries and at the U.N. by Ambassador Pickering, and I hold
that as an example to new Ambassadors. When we come there, we
actually want to have briefings in depth and in substance. He
fulfilled that. We would have public briefings, and then
occasionally briefings when we would go into a secure place,
one of the bubbles, go into even more depth. In every single
instance, he answered every question that was asked by both
Republicans and Democrats. He told us what was going right and
what was going wrong.
Ambassador, I just want to state publicly how much I have
appreciated those briefings over the years. Please, go ahead.
STATEMENT OF THOMAS PICKERING, VICE CHAIRMAN, HILLS & COMPANY,
INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANTS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Ambassador Pickering. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, very much
and thank you for your very kind introduction, and thank you,
members of the Committee, for having us here and affording the
opportunity to testify on this extremely important subject. I
am honored to appear before you today and to join and be a
member of this very distinguished panel.
I believe that the question of how we, as Americans, should
come to grips with our handling of detainees in recent years is
critically important for our country. It is essential to have a
full understanding of what happened, why, and the consequences
of those actions in order to chart the right course for the
future.
I come before you today to urge you to support the
establishment of a commission to examine the detention,
treatment, and transfer of post-9/11 detainees. In calling on
the President to create such a commission, I have joined with a
number of others, including a former U.S. Army general, a
former FBI Director, the President of the United Church of
Christ, and an internationally respected lawyer and scholar,
and others who are experts on commissions of this nature. My
convinced support for the commission stems from my over 45
years of service to this country in the military, in diplomacy
overseas, and as a senior official at the Department of State.
I believe that a commission on the handling of detainees is
vital to our country's future--to its security, to its standing
in the world, and to our collective commitment as a people to
honor, respect, and remain committed to our founding ideals in
all that we do. Let me be clear as well that I am not a lawyer
and am not qualified to address technical legal questions
involving the advice of trained counsel.
I would like to speak first very briefly on the purposes of
the commission and then talk about some of its principal
features.
A commission of the kind we are proposing is needed in
order to arrive at an in-depth, unbiased, and impartial
understanding of what happened, how it happened, and the
consequences of those actions. By gathering carefully all of
the facts, the commission can tell the whole story and not just
of each individual agency, studied in isolation, but of how all
parts of the U.S. Government interacted in the handling of
detainees. Indeed, the sainteragency aspect is crucial, as is
how the various agencies related to the most senior officials
in Government. On the basis of this full and comprehensive
review, the commission can then make recommendations which will
help guide us in the future. This process is fundamentally
about understanding where we have been in order to determine
the best way forward.
Some might argue that such a commission is not needed.
After all, President Obama has issued a series of Executive
orders that chart a new course on detention and interrogation
policy. As important as these orders are, I believe that
something more is needed. It is not enough to say that America
is discontinuing the policies and practices of the recent past.
We must, as a country, take stock of where we have been and
determine what was and is not acceptable, what should not have
been done, and what we will never do again. It is my sincere
hope that the commission will confront and reject the notion,
still powerful in our midst, that these policies were and are a
proper choice and that they could be implemented again in the
future.
Such a commission will strengthen our credibility in
promoting and defending our values and advancing a better and
safer world. As the 9/11 Commission found, the United States
must engage in the struggle of ideas around the world in order
to combat extremism and ultimately to prevail against
terrorism. To do that effectively, Mr. Chairman, the Commission
found that the U.S. Government--and I am referring to the 9/11
Commission--``should offer an example of moral leadership in
the world, committed to treat people humanely, abide by the
rule of law, and be generous and caring to our neighbors.''
It is far better for American foreign policy if we
acknowledge willingly what went right and what went wrong than
to address by bits and pieces of the story as they emerge over
time this particular question. It is far better for our country
and our standing in the world if we examine critically our own
record and take account of what happened. To the extent that
the Guantanamo detention camp, Abu Ghraib, secret detention
sites, and torture and abuse enhance the efforts of our
adversaries to recruit others to join their ranks and to make a
case against us, we simply cannot quietly turn over the page.
We must engage in a genuine effort to take stock of these
policies and actions. We ought to acknowledge mistakes that
were made, but we also ought to commit not to do them again.
It is a crucial step in neutralizing our adversaries'
narrative about the U.S. abuse of detainees. Only in doing so
can we say to ourselves and to the world that we have not just
turned the page on the past, but we have confronted it, learned
from it, and strengthened our resolve to remain true to our
principles. Only great countries, Mr. Chairman, confident in
themselves, are prepared to look at their most serious
mistakes, to learn from them, and to lead on forward. The
United States has been and still is today, I believe, that kind
of country.
Let me conclude briefly by just reviewing a few principle
features of the commission.
On the question of what a commission should look like, its
most important attribute is that it should stand above
politics. It should report to and answer to the American
people. To achieve this vital purpose, the commission ought to
be comprised of persons whose duty is to truth and to our
Nation's founding principles.
Second, the commission should operate in public to the
maximum extent possible. Public proceedings and reports should
be the norm.
Third, the commission should be a separate and distinct
process from any investigation or prosecution of unlawful
conduct. The establishment of a commission would not, in my
view, in any way preclude the possibility of criminal
investigation or prosecution, but the purposes of the
commission would not be prosecution. That is the job of our
national criminal justice system.
Fourth, the commission should have the subpoena power in
order to gather and tell the full story of what transpired. I
would hope that the President would ensure as well that all
Government documents are made readily available to such a
commission.
Fifth, and finally, there is the difficult issue of whether
the commission should have the power to grant immunity which
has engendered and I know will engender a great deal of debate.
I am not an expert on this technical legal issue, but I would
hope that policymakers would consider it very carefully.
Persons who are called upon to testify, I am informed, can
invoke their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination.
In my view, the commission should not have the power to grant
blanket immunity, meaning immunity to all who testify
truthfully or full immunity--in effect immunity for what may
have been done rather than just for what is being said in the
testimony being given. Rather, the commission should grant
immunity to witnesses only in very limited circumstances.
Mr. Chairman, I thank you again very much for this
opportunity to testify regarding a commission, and I look
forward to your questions.
[The prepared statement of Ambassador Pickering appears as
a submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very much, Ambassador.
Our next witness is Retired Vice Admiral Lee Gunn. Admiral
Gunn is now President of the American Security Project, served
in the U.S. Navy for 35 years, served as the Inspector General
of the Department of the Navy for the last 3 years. His awards
include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Defense Superior
Service Medal, six Legions of Merit, two Meritorious Service
Medals, the Navy Commendation Medal, Combat Action Ribbon, and,
of course, numerous theater and service awards. Admiral Gunn
holds a Bachelor's degree from the University of California,
Los Angeles, and a Master of Science degree in Operations
Research from the Naval Postgraduate School.
Admiral, it is good to have you here. Please go ahead, sir.
STATEMENT OF LEE F. GUNN, VICE ADMIRAL, UNITED STATES NAVY
(RET.), AND PRESIDENT, THE AMERICAN SECURITY PROJECT,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Admiral Gunn. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much. It is a
pleasure to be a part of this esteemed panel and to have an
opportunity to talk about this important issue.
In addition to the other things you mentioned that I am
involved in, I have been a member for the last 3-plus years of
a group of 49 retired flag and general officers who have spoken
extensively on the issue of detainee treatment and its
importance both to the men and women in the military and for
the men and women in the execution of their duties. I would
like to talk a little bit about that and, in doing that,
elaborate on the written testimony that I have submitted.
I would like to say at the outset that my views are those
of a sailor conveying concerns about the serious problems
created for service men and women by choices made in Washington
over the last 7 years. So what are those problems?
Strained alliances comes first in my list, and in this day
and age, the American military operates by itself almost never
in the world. And the importance of being able to work with our
allies and our friends cannot be overstressed.
Confusion about detainee treatment, number two on my list,
means to me that we have provided unclear guidance--that is,
choices made in Washington have resulted in guidance that was
not clear, that was in many cases ambiguous, and in some cases
was flat wrong about the requirement to treatment detainees
humanely and in accordance with international conventions, and
the Geneva Convention in particular, and also with American
law.
Third on my list is exposure to greater risk of abuse if
those soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, coast guardsmen are
captured. No one is going to--we are not kidding ourselves that
our opponents, our enemy, will be inclined to treat our people
humanely if they fall into enemy hands. On the other hand, it
is important that we be able to mobilize international opinion
in support of people taken by our enemy and the treatment of
them in a humane way.
We have, as Ambassador Pickering mentioned, furnished
extremists with recruiting materials extensively, and that is a
consequence that we should have envisioned when we made many of
the choices about how we were going to act and how we were
going to talk about how we acted.
And, finally, in the problems list is that we further
damage the reputations of Americans who are working in this new
realm of winning hearts and minds and trying to convince people
that America has ideals and ideas to which they should
subscribe, and we have disadvantaged our military people who
have been involved in that. And I would argue that we have
similarly disadvantaged the other members of the American
administration, other public servants in that regard as well.
We are not done, and that is why I think that we need a
serious inquiry into the way we have behaved for the last 7
years and the kind of orders we have given and decisions we
have made. The enemy is still the enemy. The stress on our
people, in uniform and out, who are charged with dealing with
this enemy will continue. The pressure on our country and on
our leaders will remain. And we need to understand the
circumstances under which choices were made by leaders in the
past in order that we can anticipate those same circumstances
or others in the future and avoid making what we consider to be
mistakes.
So the question is to me: What has happened to us? What did
we do wrong? What did we do right? And I would like to mention
that the military examines itself often and in depth. We do
that with after-action reviews and hot wash-ups following
exercises and operations. We do it with in-depth studies when
those are called for. We conduct Uniform Code of Military
Justice investigations, as I know you are well aware, Mr.
Chairman. And we conduct aviation safety investigations and
examinations as well.
The last one is kind of an interesting case in which the
testimony seeking the truth and having lives depend on finding
the truth in which the testimony is generally firewalled
completely from legal proceedings that may eventuate from these
investigations.
But whatever the appropriate names, the services together
have to find out what happened and be in a better position in
the future to provide the kind of clear, unambiguous guidance
that is necessary on the pressure-filled front line and in the
detainee treatment arena.
The outcome is that soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen,
coast guardsmen deserve and require that kind of guidance and
those orders. Structure is essential to you when you are under
pressure, particularly in combat, and also in the elevated
tension of taking care of detainees.
American values have to be our test with regard to the
application of those orders and that guidance. We have failed
American service men and women over the last 7 years, and we
have to stop doing that. We need to do better, and we need to
get on with it.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Admiral Gunn appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very much, Admiral.
The next witness is John Farmer. He is a partner at
Arsenault, Whipple, Farmer, Fasset and Azzarello, and former
Attorney General of New Jersey. He created the Office of
Inspector General and served as a Federal prosecutor; adjunct
professor of national security law at Rutgers. He has written
extensively on terrorism issues. He previously served as
Special Adviser to General Jones regarding Middle East issues.
He was senior counsel and team leader for the 9/11 Commission
and really led the team in investigating the Government's
response to the 9/11 attacks. That included evaluating the
response by the various agencies of the executive branch,
including the offices of the President and Vice President of
the United States and the Department of Defense. Then he served
in a variety of other investigatory commissions. Mr. Farmer
received his law degree from Georgetown University Law Center,
as did I, and his B.A. from Georgetown University.
Mr. Farmer, glad to have you here.
STATEMENT OF JOHN J. FARMER, JR., PARTNER, ARSENAULT, WHIPPLE,
FARMER, FASSET AND AZZARELLO, LLP, CHATHAM, NEW JERSEY
Mr. Farmer. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and let me echo my
colleagues in thanking you and the Committee for the invitation
to appear today. Like my colleagues, I have submitted more
formal testimony, and my purpose in speaking now is simply to
summarize in a more abbreviated fashion what is set forth at
length in my formal testimony.
The obvious threshold question facing this Committee is
whether an investigation should be conducted of the practices
and policies that have been employed concerning detention since
9/11 in our country's struggle against transnational terrorism.
I want to emphasize at the outset that I have a lot of
empathy for those who, like President Obama, have expressed a
desire to move forward rather than look back. When I was
Attorney General in New Jersey, I expressed similar sentiments
when my department was under investigation by our State Senate
Judiciary Committee. And make no mistake about it. The time
devoted to preparation for testimony and responding to such an
investigation can be diverting and for a time can disrupt
normal operations.
I have come to see, however, that there are some issues
that touch so directly upon our identity as a people, that
touch so directly upon the values we profess, that no amount of
internal bureaucratic review will suffice to allay public
concern about the way its Government has been conducting
itself. In the absence of public fact finding, people will be
left to believe the worst, and the lack of public trust will
ultimately undermine any effort to move forward. I have come to
believe that our Government's handling of detentions since 9/11
is such an issue. Why? The turning point for me was the
convening authority's decision recently that Mohammed al-
Qahtani, the alleged 20th hijacker--whom Mohammed Atta had
driven to meet at the airport in Orlando Florida, on August 4,
2001, but who was turned away, only to be captured in December
2001 in Afghanistan--could not be tried because of the way he
had been treated. She concluded that he had been tortured.
Think about that for a moment. We have now reached a point
where the tactics we have adopted in the struggle against
terrorism have compromised our ability to respond to the 9/11
conspiracy itself. In my view, that fact calls into question
exactly what we have done, to whom, why, when, and on what
basis. There are many other alleged examples, but for me the
dismissal of charges against al-Qahtani elevates detention to
one of those issues that touch so directly upon our identity as
Americans that a public accounting of what occurred is
necessary.
Assuming that there is eventual agreement on the need for
an investigation of detention practices, the next question is
what form that investigation should take. One obvious option is
a criminal investigation, either by the Justice Department or
by a special prosecutor. This option has limited appeal in this
context, in my opinion, for three reasons:
First, prosecutions are necessarily narrowly focused on
proving the elements of crimes in specific cases; whatever
broader context they provide is incidental to that primary
purpose.
Second, in the absence of generally accepted, neutral fact
finding, criminal prosecutions by a successive administration
may appear to be politically motivated.
And, third, it is not clear that criminal prosecutions will
be efficacious in this context; potential targets may well be
able to invoke a viable advice-of-counsel defense.
Another option would be congressional hearings. Certainly,
Congress is capable of conducting thorough, bipartisan
investigations as part of its oversight responsibility of the
executive branch. In my view, however, the highly charged
politics of congressional hearings on this subject would
frustrate any fact-finding effort.
In my view, these considerations argue in favor of
establishing an independent body to conduct fact finding with
regard to detentions. Such fact finding need not foreclose
prosecution in appropriate cases; indeed, it may even serve to
identify those cases.
Structuring an investigation into detention policies and
practices involves, in my view, four interrelated
considerations: composition, scope, powers, and product.
With respect to composition, the commission should be
independent and nonpartisan in composition. Bipartisan
commissions can reach nonpartisan results; the 9/11 Commission,
under the leadership of Governor Kean and Congressman Hamilton,
succeeded in that respect. The enabling statute for a
commission on detentions should spell out specific professional
qualifications that will ensure a nonpartisan composition. The
commission should also have a professional staff, a definite
timetable for completion of its work, and a budget adequate to
its mandate.
Perhaps the most difficult aspect of structuring such an
investigation is determining its scope. If the mission is
defined too broadly, it may not be achievable, and the breadth
of the mission will also drive the potential cost of the
project. In the context of detentions, I believe a focus
strictly on Guantanamo Bay would be too narrow, while an open-
ended mandate to investigate all tactics employed in the war on
terror would be much too broad. One limiting principle the
Committee might consider would be to link the investigation to
the facts and circumstances surrounding detentions carried out
pursuant to Congress' resolution of September 2001 authorizing
the use of force to respond to the 9/11 attacks.
The scope of the inquiry, once it is determined, will
determine what powers the commission will need to employ in
conducting its work. Essential to any investigation, in my
view, will be the ability of the commission to compel
cooperation. Compulsory process is essential; it was vital to
the success of the 9/11 Commission, and its lack can be a real
handicap. So at a minimum the commission should be given
subpoena power.
A trickier problem is whether the commission should be
allowed to confer immunity in order to obtain testimony from
witnesses who might otherwise assert their Fifth Amendment
privilege against self-incrimination. Given the extremely fact-
sensitive nature of this inquiry, where individual exposure may
be an issue in every case of alleged abuse, some form of
limited immunity may be essential. The issue must be handled
with care, however, as the grant of even limited testimonial
immunity may jeopardize a current or future prosecution. That
is a potential tradeoff that must be considered by the
Committee in forming the commission.
Finally, with respect to the product, the enabling
legislation should also set forth the expected end product of
the investigation. The 9/11 Commission was given a broad charge
to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the
attacks, but also to formulate recommendations based on those
findings. In my view, such a broad mandate would be appropriate
to the detention context we are talking about. I believe that
the commission should be charged simply with writing a report
setting forth the facts and circumstances surrounding the
practices and policies relating to detentions carried out in
the war on terror. Although the commission would be completely
separate from any criminal investigation, it should have the
power to refer appropriate cases, if it finds them, to the
Justice Department for potential prosecution. To the extent
possible, the report should be a strictly fact-based narrative,
and the report should state the evidentiary bases for the
factual conclusions it reaches to the extent consistent with
national security interests.
Once the facts are known, legislators and policymakers can
debate the broader implications of these facts and move forward
with a clear understanding of where we have been and what we
have done.
I look forward to answering any questions you may have and
to working with you to address these difficult issues in the
future. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Farmer appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very much, Mr. Farmer.
Frederick Schwarz, Professor Schwarz, is Chief Counsel at
the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law
School. In his legal career, he has combined a high level of
private practice at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, with a series of
critically important public service assignments. Mr. Schwarz
served as Chief Counsel of the Church Committee. That is about
the time when I came to the Senate and, I think, when we first
met. He has also served as Chief Counsel to the Senate Select
Committee on Intelligence. He chairs the board of the Vera
Institute of Justice, recently received the Gold Medal Award
for Distinguished Service in the Law from the New York State
Bar Association. He received an A.B. magna cum laude from
Harvard University, his law degree from Harvard Law School,
where he was editor of the Law Review.
Professor Schwarz, it is always good to see you here.
Please go ahead, sir.
STATEMENT OF FREDERICK A. O. SCHWARZ, JR., CHIEF COUNSEL,
BRENNAN CENTER FOR JUSTICE, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW,
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Mr. Schwarz. That was quite a few years ago when we first
met.
Chairman Leahy. It was. I actually had hair back then, and
it was a little bit darker.
[Laughter.]
Mr. Schwarz. And I had solid black hair back then, too.
Thank you for convening this hearing. Thank you for your
proposal for the commission, which I support.
How wisely to handle counterterrorism is an ongoing issue
for our Nation's future. How to handle counterterrorism is too
important to sweep the past under the rug. The public, and not
merely insiders, need to understand what has happened. Those
who do not understand errors of the past are condemned to
repeat them, and surely will.
We all want to move forward wisely, but it is not possible
wisely to move forward unless we fully understand what we have
done.
The first step must be to know all the facts. Beyond basic
facts, we need to know: how were decisions made; who was
consulted and who was not consulted. We also need to know
beyond the basic facts what were the consequences of our
actions. And we need to know beyond the basic facts what are
the root causes of having gone down a path that was
inconsistent with our values and seems to have broken the law.
I would put excessive governmental secrecy and limited
oversight as among the most important root causes.
I personally believe and have testified before that our
descent into tactics like torture abandoned the rule of law and
undermined American values and that doing so made us less safe.
That thesis needs to be tested, for if it is true, it is surely
important to our country and its public, as we consider what to
do when there is another terrorist attack in this country, as
there surely will be--hopefully not as horrible as the one
before. But we surely will get it, and we have to make sure
that the next time we do not make mistakes of the sort that
seem to have been made in the prior years.
Now, the benefits of a nonpartisan commission of inquiry
which you have proposed go far beyond understanding the facts.
Such a commission can help bring all Americans together,
because, after all, issues like belief in the rule of law,
issues like understanding and appreciating the basic American
values do not divide the parties in this country. So a
commission that proceeds fairly and is nonpartisan actually can
help to bring our country together.
And, second, a commission that investigates the facts, puts
forward a report that tells the country and tells the world
what has happened, admits to mistakes when we have made
mistakes, praises things that we did well when we did them
well, that commission and its hearing and its report can help
restore America's reputation in the world and, thus, increase
our strength and, thus, make us more safe.
The bottom line is we owe it to ourselves and to our
country to learn the facts about our Government's
counterterrorism policies. We know that abuses may have
occurred and that the perception of these abuses has undermined
our standing in the world and our fight for the hearts and
minds of those who could be persuaded to do us harm. We must
not flinch from learning the truth. That is the only way to
stay true to our principles, to correct our course, and to
restore our moral standing in the eyes of the world. That in
turn will make us safer and stronger. For as has been true
throughout our more than 200 years of history, America is at
its best when we confront our mistakes and resolve not to
repeat them. If we do not confront our mistakes, we will
decline. But if we do--as this commission can help us do--our
future will be worthy of the best of our past.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Schwarz appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very, very much, Mr. Schwarz.
Our next witness is David Rivkin. He is a partner at Baker
& Hostetler. Mr. Rivkin served in the Department of Justice and
the White House during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush
administrations. He has practiced in the area of public and
international law. He is experienced in international
arbitration, policy advocacy, and a wide range of issues. He
has testified before this Committee before. He is a member of
the Council on Foreign Relations. He has published numerous
papers and articles on a variety of legal, foreign policy, and
other issues. He received his law degree from Columbia
University School of Law, his M.A. in Soviet Affairs from
Georgetown University. He has written op-ed pieces saying why
my idea is terrible.
So, Mr. Rivkin, welcome.
[Laughter.]
STATEMENT OF DAVID B. RIVKIN, JR., BAKER & HOSTETLER, LLP,
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Mr. Rivkin. Mr. Chairman, members of the Committee, thank
you very much. I would not use the word ``terrible,'' of
course. I would be much more judicious. But I am pleased to
appear before you and testify as part of a distinguished panel.
I do believe, however, that a commission of whatever variety to
investigate the Bush administration activities and its
officials is a profoundly bad idea, a dangerous idea, both for
policy but, even more importantly to me as a lawyer, for legal
and constitutional reasons.
Now, there is nothing wrong, of course, with creating
``blue ribbon'' commissions, provided they exercise
constitutionally-appropriate responsibilities. And on its face,
the proposed commission to investigate the Bush administration
appears advisory and geared toward policy review. In my view,
however, many of its advocates express much more.
In this regard, I am somewhat discouraged by the ongoing
discourse about the intent and purpose of this commission. Far
from seeking to establish a body to make recommendations on
policy, as was the case, for example, with the 9/11 Commission,
most commission supporters clearly want to establish a body
that would engage in what would in essence be the criminal
investigation of the former Bush administration. Their desire
to target a relatively small number of the former Bush
administration's most senior lawyers and policymakers is not
concealed. The fact that the subject matter areas which the
commission would investigate--among them are the interrogation
and handling of captured enemy combatants and some people all
suggest the gathering of electronic intelligence--are heavily
regulated by comprehensive Federal criminal statutes ensures
that the commission's activities would inevitably involve areas
that are traditionally the responsibility of the Department of
Justice. Congress, of course, can also constitutionally
properly delve into these matters as a part of its oversight
and legislative activities. The proposed commission, I submit
to you, cannot.
Let's recall that the power to investigate and bring
criminal charges against individuals is the Government's most
formidable domestic power. As such, it is heavily circumscribed
by the Constitution and Federal statutes. In my view, any
effort to outsource any aspects of this power to entities
operating outside of the structure of Government established by
our Constitution is extremely troubling and must be strongly
resisted by all who are concerned with protecting the
Constitution's fabric.
The very decision to initiate what amounts to a criminal
investigation, whether or not it is formally designated as
such, is too weighty to be outsourced to commissions operating
outside of the constitutionally prescribed tripartite framework
of our National Government. In this regard, I would like to
remind the Committee of the strident criticism which attended
the alleged loosening, by the FBI during the Bush
administration, of the threshold determinations that had to be
made before national security investigations were commenced. I
also vividly recall the indignation which attended the claims
that the Bush administration's Justice Department may have been
seeking to investigate Democrat-leaning groups and elected
Democrat officials at the Federal and State level for election
fraud and other alleged election offenses. In all candor, I
fail to see why having Congress task a group of private
citizens to investigate former Bush administration officials
does not implicate exactly the same, if not far greater, civil
liberty concerns. The fact that a number of people targeted for
investigation is quite small potentially makes the commission's
threat to civil liberties all the more acute.
Let's also reflect briefly on how the proposed commission
might operate. In order to compel people to testify, such a
commission would have to possess subpoena power, which it,
presumably, would have to go to court to enforce in particular
cases. Given the vague nature of the commission's
responsibilities, as well as its blending of law enforcement
and policy investigations, I find it difficult to imagine how
the Federal judiciary would meaningfully police such subpoena
requests.
There is also the question of how to balance the
constitutionally protected interests of the commission's
targets, for example, their Fifth Amendment protection against
self-incrimination, with its desire to get information. I am
not clear, by the way, how an entity that is neither executive
nor legislative could grant immunity all on its own such that
it would be respected in the future by Federal and even State
law enforcement officials.
To the extent that grants of immunity, including the
specific parameters of the immunized testimony, would have to
be approved by the executive branch, here again I am troubled
by the difficulty of coming up with a mechanism for meaningful
review, as distinct from a rubber stamp.
And then there is the question of how the commission would
protect the privacy interests of its targets. The commission
would go about quite publicly what are essentially law
enforcement investigatory functions, which are typically held
(despite some inevitable and unfortunate leaks) confidential by
the Department of Justice, in a non-public manner.
Now, even setting aside the constitutional concerns--and
there are several more--raised by charging a commission with
the discharge of what are really law enforcement
responsibilities, there is another large problem that looms, in
my view. It is important to recognize that the commission's
most deleterious and dangerous impact would be to greatly
increase the likelihood of former senior U.S. Government
officials being tried overseas, whether in courts of foreign
nations or before international tribunals. And the reason for
it is because the matters to be investigated by the commission
implicate not only U.S. criminal statutes but also
international law, and which are arguably subject to claims of
``universal jurisdiction'' by foreign states. I have no doubt
that foreign prosecutors would eagerly seize upon a supposedly
``advisory'' determination that criminal conduct occurred,
especially if it is the only ``authoritative'' statement on the
subject by an official U.S. body as a pretext to commence
investigations and bring charges against former Government
officials. If they were clever--and most of them are--they
would argue that the mere fact that the commission was
established vividly demonstrates that grave crimes must have
occurred and interpret the U.S.' non-prosecution of the
individuals concerned through formal prosecutorial channels as
a mere technicality to be repaired by their own broad
assertions of jurisdiction.
Indeed, in my view, all of these circumstances appear to be
tailor-made to support the invocation of universal jurisdiction
by foreign judicial bodies as the basis to launch prosecutions
of Bush administration officials.
Let me close by pointing out a great and perhaps unintended
irony. Much of the anger about the Bush administration's war on
terror policies has been focused on its treatment of captured
alien enemy combatants and especially its rendition policy. It
would be rather sad, in my view, that in an effort to
``investigate'' these matters, the proponents of a commission
pay no heed to the civil liberties of Americans and are
perfectly happy to outsource law enforcement functions to
private entities, and are even willing to practice a soft form
of rendition, and virtually inviting foreign courts to go after
American citizens. I would respectfully suggest that this is a
very bad way to proceed.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rivkin appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. Thank you very much, Mr. Rivkin.
Jeremy Rabkin is a professor of law at George Mason
University School of Law. Prior to that, he was a professor at
Cornell. He is an international law scholar. He was recently
confirmed as a member of the Board of Directors for the United
States Institute of Peace. Professor Rabkin has written
numerous chapters and book articles in academic journals and
essays. Professor Rabkin teaches courses on both constitutional
and international law as a Ph.D. from the Department of
Government at Harvard. He graduated summa cum laude from
Cornell University.
Mr. Rabkin, Professor Rabkin, welcome, and go ahead. Press
that little red button. There you go.
STATEMENT OF JEREMY A. RABKIN, PROFESSOR OF LAW, GEORGE MASON
UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW, ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA
Mr. Rabkin. Thank you. I also will try to avoid simply
repeating what was in my written statement and take advantage
of being the last speaker here.
Chairman Leahy. The whole statement will be made part of
the record, of course, and also the transcript will stay open
after the hearing is over, and if you see things you wish to
add to it, we are not playing ``gotcha'' here. We want to learn
from this, and it will be kept open for that.
Mr. Rabkin. Thank you.
I want to start by talking about the context of this which
I think nobody has mentioned and it is rather important. Last
summer, the first time I met Mr. Schwarz, there was a hearing
of the House Judiciary Committee which was called a ``pre-
impeachment hearing,'' and there were a lot of serious people,
including some Members of Congress, who said even in the last
months of the Bush administration, ``even though Bush will be
leaving office soon anyway, we have to have an impeachment
because what the Bush administration did was not just
regrettable, deplorable, mistaken, but high crimes and
misdemeanors.'' A lot of people are still revved up with
indignation. Just go on the Internet. We can find this in
published columns, too. People say the Bush administration was
``guilty of war crimes,'' they are in the same category as
``notorious war criminals of foreign countries.''
Now, I think that is just wildly exaggerated and really
inappropriate, but a lot of people feel that way. If you say we
are going to have a truth commission, people immediately think,
``Oh, yes, that is what is done with war criminals when you
cannot prosecute them.'' So that is the first point I want to
get everyone to focus on.
I do not think it is sufficient for Senator Leahy or
Senator Feingold to say, ``Well, I view it in a more moderate
way.'' I think this will be taken as ratifying the backroom
view that, yes, these were extraordinary crimes----
Chairman Leahy. Without disagreeing with you, I have had
something like 65,000 e-mails. I have yet to have one single e-
mail suggest that we are doing this as a war criminal thing. I
am not suggesting you are putting up a straw man here, but
please feel free to----
Mr. Rabkin. Could I just say we seem to have different e-
mail lists? When I said at that hearing last summer, ``Come on
now, let's not be crazy,'' I got not 60,000 but hundreds of
people saying, ``I saw you on C-SPAN, and I am not crazy, and
he is a war criminal and he should be tried.'' A lot of people
feel very vehemently about this.
If you say ``truth commission,'' people immediately think
about these famous--the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in
South Africa, the Commission on Truth and Reconciliation in
Chile. We are not in remotely that situation. In those
countries, they had to have these commissions because they
could not have prosecutions, and they could not have
prosecutions because the countries were so deeply divided and
they had made promises in order to secure a peaceful
transition. Peace was really in doubt in those countries, so
they had to back off of prosecution and say, ``Well, we will
have a truth commission instead.'' We are not in that
situation. If people think that there should be prosecutions,
well, then, there can be prosecutions.
I want also to just focus attention on this. The experience
of those truth commissions in other countries, they had some
success--I think they had considerable success in focusing on
narrow factual questions. One of the really important
achievements of the Chilean truth commission was just to get an
accounting. A lot of people had disappeared. What happened to
them? And they were able to come up with a list. And they were
also able to establish a number which got to be generally
accepted, about 2,000 victims of political killings. That was
very helpful to come up with a number, names, some information
about them.
I do not think that is at all what we are talking about
here. I heard Mr. Schwarz say--and I am talking about Mr.
Schwarz because I think he is very thoughtful. Mr. Schwarz said
it is not enough to get the facts. We also have to know the
root causes, and we also have to test the theory that this has
made us less safe. We should all think about what that
involves.
To say that we have been made less safe is to make an
assessment which we are going to put out through the country as
authoritative that, let's say, ``The world reacted to our
torture and that made us less safe, and that is not offset by
information which we gained.'' How could a commission determine
this? And why would people accept that because the
commissioners said it, it was true? And if you can do it for
debates about Bush policy in regard to detention, why not for
every act of every Presidential administration?
Secretary Clinton is now going to talk to Iranian
representatives, is what I hear, and she is talking to people
in the Government of Syria. Is that making us safer or less
safe? Maybe it is making us less safe because it is implying
weakness. Why don't we have an independent commission to assess
that? I do not think that is silly, but I think it is really a
bad idea, and I think we are going down this road now of saying
if there is enough controversy and it is sufficiently intense
controversy, we have an outside commission which purports to
tell us authoritatively what it all means and what were the
causes and what were the consequences. And we cannot do that.
That is not a substitute for people making political arguments
which can be responded to politically.
I want to say just briefly in conclusion, I share many of
the concerns of my colleague and friend here, David Rivkin. If
we go into this with the notion that this is a substitute for
criminal trials, you are authorizing this commission to paint
particular individuals in the Government as if they had somehow
done something analogous to war crimes, something which
undermines our values as Americans, something which threatens
our identity as Americans, as was said.
This is a pretty serious charge. Do these people get to
defend themselves? I mean, I am sure they get to show up, but
none of this would be tested before an ordinary criminal
process. You will have some people, maybe well-meaning people,
write a report saying, ``I think what John Yoo did has
undermined our safety.'' And I just think we should not be
authorizing people to make categorical judgments like that on
behalf of the American people where you are naming names and
shaming people, and they do not get a chance to defend
themselves before a jury. That is not, I do not think, a
category that we should bring into our country. That is
something they had to do in totally traumatized countries which
could not have criminal process, and we are not in that
situation.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Rabkin appears as a
submission for the record.]
Chairman Leahy. Thank you. I appreciate your testimony, but
I must say, as I have said before--and you will have plenty of
time to respond--that most haylofts I have been to in Vermont
could not make the number of straw men that you and Mr. Rivkin
have brought up. But we will--I know Senator Cornyn wants to
ask you questions, and what I am going to do is begin, and you
will be given plenty of time to respond to that. But I hear
your talking about hearings that apparently you were at, I was
not at, and they were not the hearings we are holding here.
Ambassador Pickering is going to have to leave. I wanted to
ask him first: During your tenure--and I will make absolutely
sure, Mr. Rabkin, you have plenty of time to respond on that.
Ambassador Pickering, 45 years as Foreign Service officer,
all over the world, you have negotiated with other countries.
You have worked to implement American foreign policy. What
impact do you think the Bush administration detainee policies
had on our foreign policy and on our national security?
Ambassador Pickering. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have
thought a lot about it. As you can see in my prepared
testimony, I listed a number of results of that. I think it is
hard to contest the view that public opinion about the United
States, not just in the Muslim and Islamic world but around the
world, has fallen to a new low. I do not have the polling data
in front of me, but I think we are all familiar with the
polling data. And it is not just one poll; it is numerous
polls.
I think the second point to make and drive home is that
this, in my view, provided a sense of ire, a sense of
disturbance, a sense of deep concern among many people who
began by not liking the United States, and so it heightened
that. Whether that resulted in recruitment of new people to al
Qaeda, to the Taliban, to other organizations that are in arms
against the United States is hard for me to tell in a specific
sense, but I think it is not totally irrelevant to that point;
that, indeed, individuals who were--and we have seen many
anecdotal histories of this. Parts of the Abu Ghraib tape and
pictures were, I think, deeply offensive-offended because of
the cultural insensitivity, offended because of the use of
force, offended because of all aspects of the treatment.
So it is, in my view, a serious and real and major point
that this certainly contributed to extreme anti-Americanism and
probably was one of those things that helped recruit people to
take up arms and to act violently against the United States.
Chairman Leahy. If the United States is seen as doing an
open and honest review of what happened, setting up policies if
we find that we did not follow our own laws and our own
policies, to make it very clear mistakes would not be made in
the future, does that help or hurt us around the world?
Ambassador Pickering. I do not know that we are going to
convince the most extreme people oriented against us merely
because we have done this. But I think a lot of people who are
sitting on the fence who have admired the United States over
the years, who were deeply disturbed by what they saw the
United States was doing, which was so seemingly out of
character with our background, our past leadership, and our
principles, would certainly be, I think, moved.
As I said in my statement, great countries do not often go
into deep introspection about their problems and the
difficulties and, indeed, then move to cure them. But, in my
view, that is the essence of rational action, and it is the
essence, Mr. Chairman, I think, of what Admiral Gunn said about
how the Navy behaves under difficult circumstances. I spent
some time in the Navy as well. I admire people who are prepared
to look carefully at their mistakes and to rectify them, and I
suspect that that is a widely held belief around the world, and
I suspect that people expect nothing less of the United States.
Chairman Leahy. We actually saw something interesting in
the news this morning about a tragic plane crash out on the
West Coast of marines and the review that was made of the
mistakes that occurred there.
Mr. Farmer, I get the impression from your testimony, when
you spoke of al-Qahtani, the man who has been referred to as
``the 20th hijacker'' and the fact that he could not be
prosecuted because of the national security policies of the
last administration, I got the impression that that was the
turning point for you. If so, what do you believe would be the
benefit of a review such as what I have suggested in this
inquiry?
Mr. Farmer. Well, as I said in my testimony, the fact that
the tactics that we have employed are now making it difficult
to deal with the 9/11 conspiracy itself to me simply raises the
question of, you know, how did we get here; what was done
specifically by whom, to whom, on what justification. And as I
said, as a former head of a major State department, I
appreciate the need to move forward and the disruption that
investigation may cause. But, in my judgment, a serious
compromise of our ability to deal with the 9/11 conspiracy
itself elevates the detention issue to the point that an
independent investigation is warranted.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you. My time is up. I will come back
with further questions.
Senator Cornyn.
Senator Cornyn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Chairman, I would ask unanimous consent to introduce
several op-eds and letters in opposition into the record. The
authors are James Woolsey, William Webster, Michael Hayden,
John Deutsch, James Schlesinger--all former Directors of the
CIA.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you, and I will also introduce--
actually, we will keep the record open for this because, of
course, there are equally impressive people who take an
opposite view, and those letters will also be placed in the
record. But both pro and con, the record will stay open for 24
hours for any such letters.
Senator Cornyn. Mr. Chairman, I thank you for having this
hearing. I am on record as saying that the idea of creating an
independent--and I am not sure how independent it would
actually be--unaccountable truth commission is a bad idea, with
all due respect. And the suggestion that this subject can be
delved into somehow in a nonpartisan fashion to me asks us to
suspend our power of disbelief, those who have worked here over
the last 6 years, in my case, and ignore the fact that we have
already had 150 oversight hearings on these subjects, we have
logged more than 320 hours of witness testimony in unclassified
settings, transcribed more than 3,200 pages of witness
testimony, and printed more than 17,000 pages of unclassified,
publicly available reports. And to me the idea that this so-
called truth commission would somehow resolve the good-faith
disagreements that I think many of us have had and that have
divided the country over this subject is, I think, just asking
us to believe in the tooth fairy, that somehow this is going to
settle the score.
Let me just give you one example. In a statement
accompanying the Senate Armed Services Committee's release of
the December 2008 report on terrorist detainee treatment, the
Levin report, Chairman Levin noted that, ``In the course of its
more than 18-month-long investigation, the Committee reviewed
hundreds of thousands of documents and conducted extensive
interviews with more than 70 individuals.'' The unclassified
Executive Summary of the Levin report totals 19 pages and
includes the same number of conclusions.
I disagree with those conclusions, but I certainly do not
believe a truth commission is necessary to somehow arbitrate
the differences between me and the Levin report.
So I think, with all due respect, again, I think seeking
this commission is, in fact, an indictment of congressional
oversight responsibilities--not that I think Congress has
failed, because we have, as I indicated, extensively inquired
into these matters. Congress has legislated, with the Detainee
Act, with the Military Commissions Act, in response to Supreme
Court opinions and otherwise. And so I am just not willing to
join in the acknowledgment of failure of Congress performing
its vigorous oversight responsibilities, which I think creation
of such a commission would amount to.
Mr. Schwarz, I recently re-read Jack Goldsmith's book,
``The Terror Presidency,'' and in there he said that the Church
and Pike investigations of the 1970s and the Iran-contra
scandal in the 1980's taught the intelligence community to
worry about what the 1996 Council on Foreign Relations study
decried as ``retroactive discipline,'' the idea that no matter
how much political and legal support an intelligence operative
gets before engaging in aggressive actions that he or she will
be punished after the fact by a different set of rules created
in a different political environment.
Are you concerned about the possibility of this retroactive
discipline and the unfairness of changing the rules of the road
after the fact and its impact on our intelligence officials who
may be persuaded that maybe more passivity is to be embraced as
opposed to aggressive gathering of actual intelligence?
Mr. Schwarz. I do not personally believe that CIA
operatives ought to be accused or brought before a criminal
court. I think they acted in good faith because they had legal
opinions which said what they were doing was OK, and because
their bosses high up in the Government told them to do what
they did.
Now, turning to the actual record of the Church Committee,
the Director of the CIA said that what we had done by bringing
the intelligence services into the realm of the law, instead of
being outside of the realm of the law, helped the intelligence
services, and the General Counsel of the CIA, the famous
General Counsel Lawrence Houston, said that the conduct of
Congress before the Church Committee in turning a blind eye to
what was going on actually harmed the intelligence services.
Moreover, the Church Committee in its recommendations way
back in 1976 said this country should start paying more
attention to terrorism. Way ahead of its time.
So the people who said the Senate investigation had
anything to do with injuring as opposed to strengthening our
intelligence services were flat wrong.
Senator Cornyn. Well, you disagree with them.
Mr. Schwarz. No. They were wrong. I mean, the--I will give
you one----
Senator Cornyn. Well, do not--excuse me, Mr. Schwarz. So
you disagree with Mr. Goldsmith's statement that the Church and
Pike investigations resulted in what the Council on Foreign
Relations study in 1996 called ``retroactive discipline.'' You
disagree with that.
Mr. Schwarz. The Pike investigation was not handled as well
as the Church investigation, and the----
Senator Cornyn. Well, would you answer my question? Do you
disagree----
Mr. Schwarz. Of course, I disagree with that.
Senator Cornyn. Okay. I appreciate that you disagree, but--
--
Chairman Leahy. Senator Cornyn----
Senator Cornyn.--to say that it was flat wrong is a
statement of your opinion and not necessarily fact.
Chairman Leahy. Senator Cornyn, I do not mean to cut you
off, but I kept to the 5 minutes myself. I let you go over
time. But just simply because we want to finish so Ambassador
Pickering can leave, and I wanted to have Senator Whitehouse,
who has been here through the whole hearing, have a chance.
Certainly I will go back to you if you have further questions.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, let me thank you for your leadership in
holding this hearing. There are very, very important questions
that have been raised and discussed here today, and you have
assembled an extremely distinguished panel of witnesses here to
help us consider them. I appreciate it very much.
As the son and grandson of Foreign Service officers, I have
some idea of what a Career Ambassador is, and so, Ambassador
Pickering, first let me thank you for your extremely
distinguished service to our Nation over many years, both in
the military and in our Foreign Service. I would like to ask
you first, because I know you have obligations elsewhere--and
anybody else can chime in if they wish--the following question.
We do not know yet what was done, and there has been
considerable sentiment expressed by several of the witnesses
here that it is in our interest for a whole variety of
reasons--because it helps define who we are as a Nation,
because it rebuilds our credibility and our relationships
abroad, because it is a return to the rule of law, and so
forth; that it is distinctly in the public interest for this
information to come out.
Let me ask you if you think there is a point where the
conduct in question was so abhorrent to decent and civilized
people in America and around the world that at that point the
public interest that you have described reverses itself. And at
some point if it is awful enough, does it become in our public
interest as a Nation to try to keep this swept under the rug
or, to use Mr. Schwarz's phrase that ``we must not flinch,''
must we not flinch irrespective of how painful this view will
be for our country? Ambassador Pickering?
Ambassador Pickering. Thank you, Senator Whitehouse. Thank
you for your kind comments, and I had the privilege and honor
of working with your father.
My answer to your question is a very simple no. I do not
believe that any degree of abhorrence, any degree of violation
of values, principles, trust, laws, should be swept under the
rug because it is so devastating for the reputation of the
United States that it must be kept secret. In fact, the laws on
secrecy do not provide for that in the first place.
Second, it does not, in my view, hold water to believe that
anything quite so notorious will ever remain secret in this
town or in this country or in this world.
And, third, if indeed it took place and was of such
character as to put it into that category, then it is the duty
and, indeed, the requirement of all branches of the U.S.
Government to do everything in their power to make sure that it
never happens again, which is the major purpose for the
commission that I support and the major purpose for my being
here to try to support that type of commission.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Ambassador Pickering.
Attorney General Farmer, you and I were Attorneys General
together. I am delighted to see you here with us, and I
appreciate very much your distinguished career of public
service.
The issue that a commission is going to face, as a former
prosecutor--and the Chairman is a former prosecutor, Senator
Cornyn was Attorney General with all of us also. It is sort of
a little reunion here today. There are obviously some
hindrances to a prosecution based on this conduct. Reliance on
the legal opinions of the OLC is one. Some sort of theory of
equitable estoppel might be another. What reliance did to
intent might be another. But in each of those areas, they are
of limited protection.
For instance, a mobster cannot paper over a racketeering
conspiracy with his mob lawyer saying this is a legitimate
business and make the risk of prosecution go away. The doctrine
of equitable estoppel is disfavored against the Federal
Government, almost never applied, ``rigid and sparing'' I think
is the phrase used about when its application is permitted. And
intent obviously, as we all know, is a question of fact, which
is determined by the ultimate fact finder. So immunity is going
to become a significant question, I think, in this.
Should we try to build into--assuming that the commission
should have some immunity--and I think most of the witnesses
agree, if they think there should be such a one, that it should
have power to grant immunity. How should the relationship
between the commission and prosecutors be described in any
legislation that might establish such a committee? Should they
be required to coordinate with the Department of Justice?
Should they be required to obtain the sign-off from the
Attorney General before they grant immunity?
You wanted to kind of steer clear of an active prosecution,
not just on the question of immunity but on the question of not
trampling the prosecutive strategy of the Department of
Justice. How would you work that?
Mr. Farmer. I think the issue of immunity is one that will
be driven by the previous issue, which is what is the scope of
the investigation going to be. And I think that is really, I
think, the toughest issue that the Committee has to address. If
the mission is drawn too broadly--and I would argue if it is
drawn so broadly that it captures issues such as did these
tactics make us less safe, as opposed to simply finding what
the facts are, I think the commission will lose credibility
because you will end up having to prove a negative.
But assuming that the mission and the scope of the mission
as defined by the Committee does have the commission focusing
on individual cases, it seems to me that immunity is going to
be an issue that has to be dealt with, and my suggestion would
be that some form of coordination with the Justice Department
would be appropriate. What the specifics of that coordination
would be would depend, again, on how the scope of the
commission's job is defined.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you.
Ambassador Pickering, I want to keep to our commitment and
please feel free to leave, sir.
Ambassador Pickering. Thank you.
Chairman Leahy. On the immunity, Mr. Schwarz, to follow up
a little bit on the question you were asked before, you noted
in your testimony the Church Committee had the authority to
grant immunity, but uncovered a great deal of illegal activity
without ever exercising that authority. Am I sort of stating
your testimony correctly?
Mr. Schwarz. Yes, you are. We had hundreds of witnesses.
Many of them admitted to acts that could have led to
prosecution. Nobody asked for immunity. We had one witness who
would only testify with a bag over his face because he had been
an informer and did not want to----
Chairman Leahy. I remember that one.
Mr. Schwarz. Yes. But nobody asked for immunity, and I do
not know quite why. I think high-level people do not want to,
and low-level people, I think they understand they are not
going to be prosecuted. And, frankly, I think it might be in
the public interest for the Justice Department pretty quickly
to come to a conclusion now about low-level people.
I personally--again, I want to say what I said to Senator
Cornyn. I do not think we should think about prosecuting CIA
agents. I think that is going to turn out to be inappropriate,
and if it were taken off the table early, that would be a good
thing, too.
Chairman Leahy. What I have found in some of the
investigations that have taken place in the past, boy, we are
going to get those corporals and sergeants, but we do not go
above. And I really am always worried that in such an
investigation there is an effort to go after what are really
the minor players. And I think the Justice Department--I know
they are working on just the issue you raise. And I am more
concerned about those who made the decisions or the policies to
basically say if the White House gives a directive to break the
law, you are not breaking the law. From a prosecutor's point of
view, it is awfully hard to say how you go after the person who
then broke the law. But I would like to know why we had people
who felt that somehow a President could be above the law.
We saw what happened when a former President years ago,
prior to my being in the Senate, said if the President does it,
it is not breaking the law, and the reaction of this country by
both Republicans and Democrats against such a thing, and the
statement of any of us, including the three of us on the other
side of this table, know, having been prosecutors, we do not
have any provisions in our Constitution that puts some people,
elected or otherwise, above the law. None of us are.
Admiral Gunn, I discussed the damage to America's laws and
values and to this country's image abroad. You have expressed
similar sentiments, but you have a different perspective. You
are a long-time military officer. You commanded ships. You were
in the field. You were in combat. You led large numbers of
military men and women. But you were also the Inspector
General, so you have kind of seen it from all angles in the
military.
Based on your experience and expertise, what do you believe
has been the effect of the past administration's justification
of torture and other abusive treatment on this country's
strategic and national security interests?
Admiral Gunn. I would have to refrain from spreading my
experience too broadly in my answer to this, but----
Chairman Leahy. Well, let's put it this way: on the
military morale and the safety of our military men and women.
That stays well within your frame of reference. What about
there?
Admiral Gunn. Yes, sir, and I think the effect there has
been profound. We have depended over the years on important
alliances, military relationships, for decades. In my personal
experience, members of the United States military have invested
their own time and credibility and building relationships
around the world with the militaries of other countries. I was
thinking, as you were asking the question, about the
relationship that I established while I was on active duty as a
consequence of having certain jobs with the naval attaches who
represent countries around the world of great importance to the
United States, allies and friends. And when those attaches
return to their home countries, there are no more solid
advocates of American military positions and there are no
better fans of American values and how those are translated
into the way we do business than those people are who go back
to responsible positions in their governments.
I cannot think of a one with whom I have stayed in contact
who has not told me over the last 6 or 7 years how difficult it
is in his or her country to be a friend of America. And that, I
think, sows the seeds of a serious problem that has to be
overcome.
In terms of the effect on the people at the point of
capture, when detainees are taken, the folks who are charged in
the high-pressure cauldron of dealing with detainees once they
are within the custody of the United States, those kinds of
high-pressure environments in which we ask young Americans to
do their duty require, in my view--and I think in the view of
most military officers--that there be this clear, unambiguous
set of guidelines.
What is more, young Americans do not join the military with
the idea that they are going to be asked to violate their own
principles and the principles of their country. And my personal
view is that the things they were asked to do or allowed to do,
whether they were in uniform, whether they were military people
or who were in the CIA, violated their own principles in a way
that has added dramatically to their stress and caused them to
suffer many of the same kinds of consequences personally that
people who have been involved in street combat have suffered
under.
Chairman Leahy. My youngest son is a former marine, and we
have talked about this at great length. And without putting him
on the spot, he said exactly the same thing. It was drilled
into him--a lot of things were drilled into him in his basic
training, but that was one of the things--and, again, when he
was preparing to be deployed for Desert Storm.
Senator Cornyn.
Senator Cornyn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rivkin, Admiral Gunn suggests that when it comes to the
product of a truth commission, that such a truth commission,
its byproduct will actually improve cooperation between us and
our allies when it comes to gathering and sharing intelligence
and defeating a common enemy when it comes to Islamic
extremism. Do you agree that such a commission would improve
intelligence cooperation among allies? Or do you think it is
more likely to make our foreign allies more skittish when it
comes to these matters?
Mr. Rivkin. I think it is the latter. I do not see how
going through another self-referential and self-absorbed
exercise that would not lead to any kind of national consensus
but basically would dwell at great length on our alleged sins
would improve our relations with our allies and, by the way, we
are all entitled to our opinions, but I fundamentally disagree
with the narrative that has been portrayed here of the Bush
administration's alleged misdeeds. Yes, mistakes were made.
Yes, some bad things happened. But compared with the historical
baseline of past wars, the conduct of the United States in the
last 8 years, Senator Cornyn, has been exemplary measured by
any objective indicia of misdeeds, eg abuse of detainees per
thousand captured, excessive use of force per thousand troops
in the field, etc. So I do not see that at all.
But, again, to me--and I am taking the liberty of going
beyond your question--it does not matter how you assess the
projected policy benefits of a commission. If we take the
Constitution seriously, if we take our political culture
seriously, just like critics argue that there are some things
you should not do in terms of torturing people, no matter what
utilitarian benefits it may have, you do not outsource law
enforcement; you do not warp the constitutional fabric. That is
not the right thing to do. That is a fundamentally wrong thing
to do. So to me, even if all sorts of huge policy benefits are
going to flow from this truth commission, this is just not what
we are supposed to do as a country.
Senator Cornyn. Admiral Gunn, to give you a chance to
respond, since I referred to your testimony, you said it is the
responsibility of the Commander in Chief and of Congress to
ensure and demand that the behavior of Americans toward those
in custody complies with the Geneva Conventions and with the
highest standards dictated by international conventions on
detainee treatment. I hope you would agree with me that
Congress has at least played some role in trying to deal with
these subjects. For example, I mentioned the Detainee Treatment
Act, which we passed and was signed by the President in 2005 in
the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld.
Of course, we also passed the Military Commissions Act to
create a tribunal where some of these detainees could actually
be tried.
I understand that people may agree or disagree with the
wisdom of those individual pieces of legislation. But wouldn't
you agree with me that Congress has been very much involved in
oversight into these issues? And I am just curious why it is
you believe that it would now be necessary for Congress and the
executive branch to, in effect, delegate our investigative
function to an unaccountable so-called truth commission.
Admiral Gunn. Yes, sir. Well, there are a number of
questions there, and I certainly agree that Congress has been
involved and has done things that have helped to ameliorate the
situation. And in some cases, Congress has tried to do things
that were--where the efforts were thwarted by the President.
The 2005 amendment that Senator McCain advocated, and actually
was the nucleus around which our group of retired flag and
general officers organized in order to support him in that
effort, was successful in Congress and not successful at the
White House.
Do not get me wrong when I talk about what I think the
Government as a unit, both executive and the legislative
branch, owe to the people in the field. The collective effect
of what is done here must be that the people in the field
understand their duty and their obligations entirely and do so
in a context that allows them, when the utmost pressure is
applied, to perform in ways that we are proud of and they are
proud of. That has been missing in very important ways
recently.
To the issue of whether we should have a commission of a
particular form or not, I am advocating not a special form
because I have no informed legal opinion on the various
approaches that might be used. I am advocating that would get
to the bottom of things and that at the end of the day we
establish what went wrong, and what is sort of missing in the
conversation is that the same inquiry could identify what went
right. I mean, that is a feature of the kinds of inquiries and
investigations that I referred to in my testimony and also as I
spoke before.
The military works very hard to understand what went well
so that we can reinforce that, as well as what went wrong and
how we can remedy that. And I suggest that maybe more emphasis
on the commission's ability to identify the good things might
blunt some of the criticism and concern about its solely
focusing on errors.
Senator Cornyn. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is up.
Chairman Leahy. Thank you, Senator.
Senator Whitehouse.
Senator Whitehouse. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Rivkin, you raise a sort of gallery of horribles of the
things that might go wrong with such a commission. Let me ask
you just to sort of narrow the point. If you assume that the
purpose of this commission is advisory and policy only, if you
assume that criminal law enforcement is properly cabinned then
the executive branch, as it should be, if you assume that we
set it up so that its coordination with law enforcement on
issues like immunity is properly coordinated so that it does
not intrude into that function, and if it is set up not as you
suggest as a private entity but, rather, in the proper exercise
of delegated congressional oversight authority, do you still
oppose the commission even in the absence of the parade of
horribles that you suggest?
Mr. Rivkin. Thank you for your question, Senator
Whitehouse. With respect, this assumes too much, and let me
unpack it.
To me, a law enforcement function has a variety of aspects,
as you well know. Having a situation where the ultimate
decision to proceed with an indictment, bringing the case
before a grand jury, and proceeding with a prosecution, is
reserved to the Department of Justice, and I am sure that would
be the case. This is still not a cure for the commission.
Senator Whitehouse. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.
Mr. Rivkin. Right, but to me that is not enough. I can give
you at least several examples where other aspects of law
enforcement function--namely, deciding as a threshold
determination--which is why I mentioned the controversy about
the alleged loosening of threshold determinations--whom to
investigate, particularly if you are talking about a small
group of easily----
Senator Whitehouse. We do that in Congress every moment.
Mr. Rivkin. But you have the right, with all due respect,
Senator, to do that in the exercise of your legislative and
oversight function. The Constitution allows----
Senator Whitehouse. And we usually have a right to delegate
it.
Mr. Rivkin. No, I do not believe you do have this right.
Senator Whitehouse. You do not believe that the
congressional oversight function is delegable?
Mr. Rivkin. I do not believe that the congressional
oversight function is readily delegable----
Senator Whitehouse. ``Readily'' is a big hedge. Do you
believe it is delegable or not?
Mr. Rivkin. To a private commission, I do not. You
certainly can organize yourself----
Senator Whitehouse. Well, now you have used another hedge
word. You have said ``a private commission.'' That is not a
word that I used. Assume that it is delegated to a public,
properly appointed commission that is exercising delegated
congressional authority.
Mr. Rivkin. Appointed in accordance with the Appointments
Clause? That would make a huge difference. Appointed in a sense
that you and members of the minority choose people and the
President appoints some people, no.
If you could configure a commission in a way that makes it
an extension of an Article I branch, I would not have
fundamental problems with it. I do not see how that is
practicable or possible. And you can call it public, but I do
not see how you can delegate your oversight responsibilities.
But consider another question. If the real intent--and,
again, I hate to sound trite, but if it talks like a duck and
walks like a duck, whether it is called a policy exercise or
not--even today we have heard several times from my colleagues
on this panel about the need to come up with criminal
prosecutions. What this commission does, basically, it comes up
with a bunch of files, the kind of things that a Public
Integrity Section, a National Security Section, the U.S.
Attorney's Office does, on 12 or 14 people and then passes the
buck to the Department of Justice in the public spotlight.
I would submit to you that this approval fundamentally
subverts the most basic constitutional protections, and with
respect, if this was contemplated in a different political
context, every law professor I know would be screaming about it
in terms of what a horrible violation of civil liberties it is.
Okay?
Moreover, this commission----
Senator Whitehouse. Every law professor you know would be
screaming about this?
Mr. Rivkin. Yes. If it was done in a context of a
conservative----
Senator Whitehouse. Oh, if. OK. I am sorry.
Mr. Rivkin. No. If it was done in a context of a
conservative administration----
Senator Whitehouse. I am trying to get an unhedged phrase
out of you during the course of this.
Mr. Rivkin. I will give you an example. My colleague
Professor Rabkin mentions in his prepared testimony, a
hypothetical: the Bush administration, in the aftermath of the
9/11 disaster, suggesting a private commission to investigate
certain organizations in this country, charitable and
otherwise, to look at the nefarious influence and the extent to
which they made this attack possible, with a view toward
possible prosecutions through appropriate channels. Do you not
think that most of the law faculties in this country would be
up in arms about this? The fact that there are Bush
administration officials here does not make any difference.
They are Americans. They are entitled to the full panoply of
constitutional rights. You do not get--and the fundamental
point that I make about----
Senator Whitehouse. So organized criticism of past
administration officials is an offense against their civil
liberties?
Mr. Rivkin. Organized criticism in the policy context is
not.
Senator Whitehouse. I thought that was another thing that
you signed up for when you took these jobs.
Mr. Rivkin. Organized criticism in the context of looking
at individual criminal culpability----
Senator Whitehouse. No, no, no. No, no, no. There you go
again. We just discussed that this would not be looking at
individual culpability. My assumption at the very beginning of
our discussion was that we had properly cabinned the criminal
law enforcement role.
Mr. Rivkin. And I said, with respect, that that assumes too
much. There is no way to cabin that.
Senator Whitehouse. Of course there is.
Mr. Rivkin. Pray tell how are you going to come up, if you
are a member of this commission, with an analysis of--and I do
not want to use names--how two or three members of the Bush
administration allegedly violated, for example, a statute
against torture, which is a criminal statute, as you very well
know. How would you exactly write this up in a way that does
not come to conclusions about individuals? Because if you say
Mr. A committed torture--and, by the way, if you say it
properly, not only in terms of the physical acts but also
adequate mens rea--that reads like a document that an Assistant
U.S. Attorney prepares to send to his boss to get a decision
whether or not to prosecute. How else would you write it up?
Senator Whitehouse. Well, my time has expired, but I would
suggest, Mr. Rivkin, that until you know and we all know what
was actually done under the Bush administration, you not be so
quick to throw other generations of Americans under the bus and
assume that they did worse.
Chairman Leahy. Mr. Rabkin, I spoke to you earlier, and I
said if you wanted to take a minute or so to add to anything I
had to say, please feel free to do so. You were invited by the
other side of the aisle, but they have all left. They have all
left, and so this side of the aisle will give you a chance to
say something further, if you want.
Mr. Rabkin. Just very briefly, I think one difficulty that
we have had this morning is that we do not have a bill in front
of us, so we are speaking about a hypothetical commission, and
we do not have a very clear notion of----
Chairman Leahy. But isn't that something, one of the
reasons why you have hearings, before you write a bill?
Mr. Rabkin. Yes. I am not criticizing anyone.
Chairman Leahy. At least that in my 36 years here seems to
be the way we do it.
Mr. Rabkin. I am not criticizing anyone for this. I am just
saying it is somewhat difficult to address a proposal that is
at this point not well defined, and I wanted to just emphasize
this before we end, which is it is one thing to try to find
specific facts--What was the worst thing done to someone in
American custody? I am not sure that is secret, but if that is
what we are talking about, I think that is a different thing
from making an assessment of what were the causes of this, what
were the consequences of this. Then you are really getting into
a statement about how foreign policy should have been
differently conducted or how security policy should have been
differently conducted. And I think that is almost certainly
asking too much of a commission.
And putting aside whether there are constitutional
difficulties or civil liberties difficulties, just ask
yourself: Is it reasonable to think that any group of experts
could speak to the country not on the specific findings of fact
but on how we should assess this? And the country nods and
says, ``That is right.'' I think we are not that kind of
country.
Chairman Leahy. So if somebody--you think that we cannot
find--if somebody at the highest level--the White House, for
example--directs people to break the law saying this is an
exigent situation, whether it is on wiretapping, various search
and seizure matters, putting people's names into databases,
secret databases where their jobs are then affected, their
ability to get on airplanes is affected, and so forth, and that
is done in violation of specific statutes and the Constitution,
you do not think we should at least ask that question, who did
it and why?
Mr. Rabkin. Oh, absolutely, and if you think that there
were legal violations, then I think there should be U.S.
Attorneys asking those questions and possibly filing
indictments. I am not quarreling with that at all.
Chairman Leahy. Well, we have asked those questions. Of
course, a lot of it was stonewalled. We are now getting the
answers, and we are realizing, especially with the OLC opinion
that has been released, we are beginning to see why, why we
were still involved, because some of them, I think by both
conservative and liberal commentators who have looked at them
and said that they were completely a misstatement of the law.
That is all we are asking for. Who said break the law and why?
And was it broken?
I mean, the ramifications, especially in the digital age,
are amazing. We have seen in just some of the things that have
become more publicized when a year-old child, the parents
bought their Super Saver fares to take the child with them to
visit relatives, and the child cannot get on the airplane
because they are on a--the child, not the parents but the child
is on a terrorist watch list. They missed their plane. They
have to get a passport, file for a passport, get a passport to
prove this year-old child is not some 45-year-old terrorist.
The longest serving member of this Committee, Senator
Edward Kennedy, half a dozen or a dozen times was told he could
not board a flight he has been taking for 40 years because he
is on a watch list. President Bush even called him to
apologize. He said he appreciated the apology, but it was not
the President's fault. He just wanted somebody to get him off
the list, and they could not.
I mean, some of these things worry us if from illegal
wiretaps, for example, your name gets on one of these lists, if
from an illegal search and seizure your name gets on some of
these lists, we ought to at least know who came up with the
bright idea.
Mr. Rabkin. Could I just respond to this?
Chairman Leahy. Of course.
Mr. Rabkin. I think what you have just been talking about
almost certainly should be reviewed and reconsidered. I am not
at all questioning the validity of your criticism or concern.
What I am concerned about is that you take one disputed
policy or one series of mishaps or even abuses, unlawful acts
from this area; you take another example from there; you take a
third example from there. What you just talked about seems to
me to have nothing at all in common with allegations of----
Chairman Leahy. Well----
Mr. Rabkin. Let me just finish--allegations of torture at
Guantanamo.
Chairman Leahy. But, Mr. Rabkin, we have not even got into
the torture part. I am going through a series of things that
were all----
Mr. Rabkin. I understand, but if you have----
Chairman Leahy. Let me finish. Let me finish.
Mr. Rabkin. Sure.
Chairman Leahy. If you violate the Constitution in wiretaps
and specific statutes, if you violate the law in not using the
FISA Court, something set up after the Church Committee's
hearings, if you violate the law on torture condoning things
that we have actually prosecuted other people for doing, if you
then have people come before the Congress and lie about it,
they may be all individual things, but they are all part of the
same mix. And what I want to do--others have said, ``Let's turn
the page.'' Fine. But read the page before you turn it. And it
is a concern to me that some want to ignore that.
Now, I am well aware of hearings and investigations going
on in other committees, and, of course, we will continue to ask
questions in this Committee. But what only worries me is I want
the American people to see something that is outside of the
political arena, like the 9/11 Commission or others, to find
out what is going on.
Mr. Rabkin. If you bundle all of these disparate things
together and you do, as people used to say in a different
context, connect the dots, you can draw a very, very disputable
picture, because you are asking, ``What was the root cause of
all of these disparate things? '' and the root cause will come
down to something like ``the general orientation of the Bush
administration was lawless'' or ``they were obsessed with
terrorism.'' And when you get to that level of generalization,
I think it is bound to be extraordinarily controversial. And
the idea that this will reconcile the country, this will bring
us all together, this will establish a consensus, the more
general it is, the more hopeless it is----
Chairman Leahy. Mr. Rabkin, you stated what the conclusion
is going to be. You have far more experience than I. I would
like to ask the questions and see what the conclusion is going
to be.
With that, we will--go ahead, Mr. Rivkin.
Mr. Rivkin. Thank you for your indulgence----
Chairman Leahy. Another one of the Republican witnesses. I
am trying to be fair to you even though the Republicans who
asked you to be here did not want to bother to stay and listen.
But please go ahead.
Mr. Rivkin. You are exceptionally fair, and I appreciate
it. But I just wanted to say briefly that the very examples you
used to me clearly attest that this commission cannot
fundamentally escape passing assessments and making judgments
about criminal liability of a small circle of people. And, with
respect, that is what the executive branch can do through
proper channels; that is what you can do operating in the
Article I oversight. That is not what a commission can do. And
we can--even if we agreed on the portrayal of the problem, the
genius of the Constitution is that no matter how pressing and
compelling the need, you cannot proceed through
constitutionally improper channels. There has never been a case
in American history where a commission was set up with this
heavy of a prosecutorial burden. It would be fundamentally
illegitimate, no matter how strongly you believe it would have
a curative effect.
Chairman Leahy. Was the 9/11 illegitimate? Was the
Watergate hearing----
Mr. Rivkin. Of course not. The 9/11 Commission looked at--
the worst thing that would have happened is some agency got
slammed, their budget got cut, bureaucratic chairs got
reshuffled. The 9/11 Commission had no mandate or interest in
going after people. What, you were incompetent in how you
analyzed intelligence? Would that lead to an indictment?
The circumstances of how this dialog has been driven
inescapably make it a criminal process.
Chairman Leahy. Mr. Rivkin, I am trying to be fair to you.
As I said, the folks who invited you here did not stay to ask
you the questions. I have been trying to keep it open for you.
Frankly, let me--and I will have the last word, one of the
advantages of being Chairman, and we will keep the record open
if people want to add to it.
If criminal conduct occurred, this Senator wants to know
about it. Now, I began my public career as a prosecutor. I am
trying to give the ability to find out if criminal conduct
occurred so it would not occur again. That does not necessarily
mean there is even going to be prosecution for it. But if
crimes are committed, I do not think we sweep them under the
rug.
We stand in recess.
[Whereupon, at 12:05 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
[Questions and answers and submissions for the record
follow.]
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