Bill Moyers interviews Jane Mayer, author of The Dark Side: THE INSIDE STORY OF HOW THE WAR ON TERROR TURNED INTO A WAR ON AMERICAN IDEALS
A couple of excerpts below. Emphasis added, mine.
BILL MOYERS: Who were some of the other conservative heroes, as you call them, in your book?
JANE MAYER: A lot of them are lawyers. And they were people inside the Justice Department who, one of whom, and I can't name this one in particular, said when he looked around at some of the White House meetings - he was in where they were authorizing the President, literally, to torture people - if he thought that was necessary, he said, "I can't, I could not believe these lunatics had taken over the country." And I am not talking about someone who is a liberal Democrat. I'm talking about a very conservative member of this Administration. And there was a-
BILL MOYERS: Your source?
JANE MAYER: My source.
BILL MOYERS: And, yet, when these conservatives - as you write in your book - when these conservatives spoke up, Cheney and company retaliated against their own men.
JANE MAYER: People told me, "You can't imagine what it was like inside the White House during this period." There was such an atmosphere of intimidation. And when the lawyers, some of these lawyers tried to stand up to this later, they felt so endangered in some ways that, at one point, two of the top lawyers from the Justice Department developed this system of talking in codes to each other because they thought they might be being wiretapped. And they even felt-
BILL MOYERS: By their own government.
JANE MAYER: By their own government. They felt like they might be kind of weirdly in physical danger. They were actually scared to stand up to Vice President Cheney.
***
BILL MOYERS: What do you think the country would gain or lose from pursuing war crimes?
JANE MAYER: Well, you know, I think that it could be very toxic in some ways to hold people as criminals who were doing what they thought was right for the country. But, at the same time, I have to say I think that we need accountability in this country in order to make sure that people abide by the laws. And I can tell you when I interview people at the CIA, a number of people said that they didn't want to get involved in this because they thought there'd be criminal repercussions. So, if there never are any criminal repercussions, I'm not sure where that leaves us.
***
"Do as I say, not as I do", said Uncle Sam to the rest of the world.
3 comments:
I'll have two shelves dedicated purely to books of this era. Fascinating interview... but...
Well, you know, I think that it could be very toxic in some ways to hold people as criminals who were doing what they thought was right for the country.
What the flying fuck? Did she not get the whole point of the Nuremberg Trials?
Bruce Fein quoting Tacitus at the much ignored Congressional Hearings on Case for Bush Impeachment:"Let me just conclude...from a quote by Tacitus which I think explains the dilemma we confront now...'The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more and tolerated by all.'"
http://www.amazon.com/Eichmann-Jerusalem-Report-Banality-Evil/dp/0140187650
Not sure how to embed links.
I was reading the other day someone's defense of Colin Powell, that he knew in early 2003 the war was inevitable, that Bush and Cheney were already convinced, and that he stayed on (and gave his UN presentation) because if he didn't do it, they would simply move someone else in to do it instead.
That seemed to miss the mark in so many ways (that war was still inevitable, etc.), but also that Powell was lending his considerable stature to the enterprise by wilfully lying to the world.
Slightly different than your DoJ bureaucrat, but maybe not so much. The process by which people permit themselves to do worthless things is fascinating.
Reminded of the nicely prosaic Upton Sinclair quote that's been floating around: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Post a Comment