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Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) is asking Attorney General Michael
Mukasey to clarify a statement indicating that officials who signed off on
torture and surveillance policies believed they were acting within the law. The House Judiciary Committee chairman, as well as Rep. Jerrold
Nadler (D-N.Y.), who chairs the Judiciary subcommittee on the Constitution,
civil rights and civil liberties, in a letter Thursday asked Mukasey for the
basis of a statement he made Wednesday.
The attorney general had said: “There is absolutely no evidence
that anybody who rendered a legal opinion either with respect to surveillance
or with respect to interrogation policy did so for any reason other than to
protect the security of the country and in the belief that he or she was doing
something lawful.”
Conyers and Nadler said they were “troubled” by the “breadth” of
the statement, especially because there was significant opposition at many
levels of the federal government. Vocal opponents included military lawyers,
and Justice Department officials who wrote legal opinions warning about
overreaching. Conyers and Nadler cited “the stark warning by then-Deputy
Attorney General James Comey that the department would be ‘ashamed’ if the
world learned of the legal advice it had given on torture issues.”
The FBI, for instance, was so troubled by some of the approved
interrogation methods that it refused to participate, Conyers and Nadler noted.
DoJ spokesman Peter Carr said the department would
review the letter and respond “as appropriate.”
“The attorney general’s comments yesterday reiterated a
message he delivered to Chairman Conyers in a letter last July and more recently
in his November speech before the Federalist Society,” Carr said.
"It is important to acknowledge the distinction
between whether a course of action is permitted as a matter of law, and whether
that course of action is prudent as a matter of policy,” he added. “The
attorney general’s recent statements do not imply, any more than his previous
statements, that he has prejudged any pending investigations.
Instead, he said Mukasey simply reiterated that he is
unaware of any evidence of criminal misconduct or “bad faith” with respect to
the DoJ’s legal advice concerning counterterrorism programs.
"It is hardly surprising that, in the wake of the
September 11th attacks, there was debate and discussion concerning where the
legal lines are to be drawn in the war on terror and, as a matter of policy,
how close to those legal lines we should go,” Carr stated. “The existence of
debate and discussion over these matters, however, does not suggest any
evidence of bad faith, much less criminal misconduct."
The senior Democrats on Judiciary also asked whether relevant DoJ
probes have been completed, such as the widely reported but never published
2004 Special Review by the CIA inspector general. If the investigations are
over, Conyers and Nadler asked to see their conclusions.
“To the extent such reports are classified, we are willing to make
arrangements to receive this information in an appropriate fashion,” they wrote.
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