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March 9th,
2008 - Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms Bush’s Legacy News article by the New York
Times |
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Veto of Bill
on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms Bush’s Legacy By Steven Lee Myers New York Times March 9, 2008 Washington - President Bush
on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive
powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the
Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh
interrogation techniques. Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that
would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods
like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened
with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and
abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law
enforcement agencies. The veto deepens his battle
with increasingly assertive Democrats in Congress over issues at the heart of
his legacy. As his presidency winds down, he has made it clear he does not
intend to bend in this or other confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq
to contempt charges against his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former
counsel, Harriet E. Miers. Mr. Bush announced the veto
in the usual format of his weekly radio address, which is distributed to
stations across the country each Saturday. He unflinchingly defended an
interrogation program that has prompted critics to accuse him not only of
authorizing torture previously but also of refusing to ban it in the future.
“Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our intelligence officials
have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,” he said. Mr. Bush’s veto - the ninth
of his presidency, but the eighth in the past 10 months with Democrats in
control of Congress - underscored his determination to preserve many of the
executive prerogatives his administration has claimed in the name of fighting
terrorism, and to enshrine them into law. Mr. Bush is fighting with
Congress over the expansion of powers under the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and over the depth of the American security commitments to
Iraq once the United Nations mandate for international forces there expires
at the end of the year. The administration has also
moved ahead with the first military tribunals of those detained at Guantánamo
Bay, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001,
attacks, despite calls to try them in civilian courts. All are issues that turn on
presidential powers. And as he has through most of his presidency, he built
his case on the threat of terrorism. “The fact that we have not been attacked
over the past six and a half years is not a matter of chance,” Mr. Bush said
in his radio remarks, echoing comments he made Thursday at a ceremony marking
the fifth anniversary of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.
“We have no higher responsibility than stopping terrorist attacks,” he added.
“And this is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven
track record of keeping America safe.” The bill Mr. Bush vetoed
would have limited all American interrogators to techniques allowed in the
Army field manual on interrogation, which prohibits physical force against
prisoners. The debate has left the
C.I.A. at odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other agencies,
whose officials have testified that harsh interrogation methods are either
unnecessary or counterproductive. The agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden,
issued a statement to employees after Mr. Bush’s veto defending the program
as legal, saying that the Army field manual did not “exhaust the universe of
lawful interrogation techniques.” Democrats, who supported the
legislation as part of a larger bill that authorized a vast array of
intelligence programs, criticized the veto sharply, but they do not have the
votes to override it. “This president had the
chance to end the torture debate for good,” one of its sponsors, Senator
Dianne Feinstein of California, said in a statement on Friday when it became
clear that Mr. Bush intended to carry out his veto threat. “Yet, he chose
instead to leave the door open to use torture in the future. The United
States is not well served by this.” The Senate’s majority
leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush disregarded the advice of
military commanders, including Gen. David H. Petraeus, who argued that the
military’s interrogation techniques were effective and that the use of any
others could create risks for any future American prisoners of war. “He has rejected the Army
field manual’s recognition that such horrific tactics elicit unreliable
information, put U.S. troops at risk and undermine our counterinsurgency
efforts,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. Democrats vowed to raise the matter
again. Senator John McCain, the
presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has been an outspoken opponent
of torture, often referring to his own experience as a prisoner of war in
Vietnam. In this case he supported the administration’s position, arguing as
Mr. Bush did Saturday that the legislation would have limited the C.I.A.’s
ability to gather intelligence. Mr. Bush said the agency
should not be bound by rules written for soldiers in combat, as opposed to
highly trained experts dealing with hardened terrorists. The bill’s
supporters countered that it would have banned only a handful of techniques
whose effectiveness was in dispute in any case. The administration has also
said that waterboarding is no longer in use, though officials acknowledged
last month that it had been used in three instances before the middle of
2003, including against Mr. Mohammed. Officials have left vague the question
of whether it could be authorized again. Mr. Bush said, as he had
previously, that information from the C.I.A.’s interrogations had averted
terrorist attacks, including plots to attack a Marine camp in Djibouti; the
American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan; Library Tower in Los Angeles; and
passenger planes from Britain. He maintained that the techniques involved -
the exact nature of which remained classified - were “safe and lawful.” “Were it not for this
program, our intelligence community believes that Al Qaeda and its allies
would have succeeded in launching another attack against the American
homeland,” he said. Senator John D. Rockefeller
IV of West Virginia, the chairman of the Intelligence Committee, disputed
that assertion on Saturday. “As chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that information obtained from
enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an imminent terrorist
attack,” he said in a statement. The handling of detainees
since 2001 has dogged the administration politically, but Mr. Bush and his
aides have barely conceded any ground to critics, even in the face of legal
challenges, as happened with the prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or with federal
wiretapping conducted without warrants. At the core of the
administration’s position is a conviction that the executive branch must have
unfettered freedom when it comes to prosecuting war. Stephen Hess, a presidential
scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Mr. Bush’s actions were consistent
with his efforts to expand executive power and to protect the results of
those efforts. Some, he said, could easily be undone - with a Democratic
president signing a bill like the one he vetoed Saturday, for example - but
the more Mr. Bush accomplished now, the more difficult that would be. “Every
administration is concerned with protecting the power of the presidency,” he
said. “This president has done that with a lot more vigor.” Representative Bill
Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been holding hearings on the
administration’s negotiations with Iraq over the legal status of American
troops in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush’s presidency. He said the administration had
rebuffed demands to bring any agreement to Congress for approval, and had
largely succeeded. “They’re excellent at
manipulating the arguments so that if Congress should assert itself, members
expose themselves to charges of being soft, not tough enough on terrorism,”
he said. “My view is history is going to judge us all.” Mark Mazzetti contributed
reporting. Copyright 2008 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html |