Golden Shield

by digby

Following up on my post yesterday about the Bush administration being very well aware that the FBI and others in the administration objected to the use of torture and refused to allow their agents to participate, Bob Fertik emailed me to remind me of this:

April 24, 2008, 1:39PM Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday, FBI Director Robert Mueller made it as clear as he could what the FBI’s reaction to the CIA’s use of waterboarding and other forms of torture in 2002 had been: keep FBI agents out of trouble. But when House Democrats pressed as to why the FBI hadn’t investigated the abuses, Mueller said his hands were tied. The CIA and the Defense Department had the green light. “There has to be a legal basis for us to investigate, and generally that legal basis is given to us by the Department of Justice.” Thanks to John Yoo and others in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the CIA had its “golden shield.” He also testified that in 2002, he’d “reached out” to the Pentagon and the Department of Justice “in terms of activity that we were concerned might not be appropriate — let me put it that way.” Mueller said he couldn’t testify as to what the reply was, since it might be classified. Given the fact that a group of senior administration officials had agreed on the use of the techniques, you can guess what the answer was. Here’s video:

Now that the OLC memos have been declassified maybe it’s time to ask Mueller about this again.

The point in bringing this up isn’t to say this stuff is news. It isn’t. But the torture apologists are behaving as if government experts were of one mind on this and that any patriot would have gone along. But the FBI disagreed and withdrew themselves from the program entirely because they believed it was illegal. This was something that people in the Justice Department knew, the Pentagon knew, the NSC knew and certainly the White House knew. And it meant nothing to them. Theyjust had some lackeys write a couple of secret memos and went right on torturing.

Giving Bush administration officials any credit for acting in good faith — or out of ignorance — is totally absurd in light of this. The FBI’s adherence to the rule of law in this situation (and the fact that the Bush administration let them do it without reprisals) proves that others could have done the same thing. It’s quite clear that Bush and Cheney knew they didn’t really have a leg to stand on.