The public was first introduced to Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff when he was a Republican operative advocating impeaching Pres. Clinton on cable talk shows during the 1990s. He was the boss of Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown during Katrina, and now comes the unsurprising news he was up to his neck in the Bush torture scandal:
To meet the definition of torture, Yoo wrote, “the victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result.”
When the CIA wanted assurances in the summer of 2002 that their agents would not be prosecuted for using brutal interrogation methods against a so-called high-level detainee in custody the agency turned to Michael Chertoff, the former head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Chertoff, now the director of homeland security, told the agency that an August 2002 legal opinion drafted by John Yoo, then a deputy assistant attorney general at the DOJ’s office of legal counsel, and signed by Jay Bybee, Yoo’s boss, would protect CIA interrogators from criminal prosecution if the methods of interrogation they intended to use against prisoners met any legal challenges, specifically, claims that the interrogators violated federal anti-torture statutes.
For an interrogation to meet the definition of torture, Yoo wrote, “the victim must experience intense pain or suffering of the kind that is equivalent to the pain that would be associated with serious physical injury so severe that death, organ failure or permanent damage resulting in a loss of significant body functions will likely result.”
Chertoff’s guarantee that CIA agents would not be prosecuted for breaking anti-torture laws led directly to the use of waterboarding against alleged al-Qaeda operative Abu-Zubaydah in August 2002, the first time that method of interrogation was used against a prisoner in the so-called war on terror, according to Pentagon and Justice Department documents, previously published news reports, and several books that have been written about the Bush administration’s interrogation methods.
Chertoff has denied he addressed the legality of water torture:
During his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2005, Chertoff vehemently denied allegations that he provided the CIA with legal guidance on the use of specific interrogation methods. Rather, he said he gave the agency broad guidance in response to questions about interrogation methods. He said he never addressed the legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.
“You are dealing in an area where there is potential criminality,” Chertoff said he told the agency, according to his Senate confirmation testimony. “You better be very careful to make sure that whatever you decide to do falls well within what is required by law.”
It is nothing less than a travesty that the drafting of torture guidelines by the most senior staff in the Bush administration is not being investigated. If there were an investigation, Michael Chertoff’s name would be added to the list of august officials that includes Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, George Tenet and their aides.
