Water(boarding)gate continues…<\/u><\/p>\n
Attorney General Michael Mukasey testified<\/a> before the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) this morning.<\/p>\n According to the live blog of the hearing at EmptyWheel<\/a>, Chairman John Conyers asked Mukasey whether he was ready to start an investigation into the CIA’s admitted use of waterboarding in the past. Mukasey replied<\/a> no. Below is a partial paraphrase (probably not directly quoted) of Mukasey’s response as transcribed<\/a> by EmptyWheel<\/a>:<\/p>\n John Conyers<\/u>: Any additional comments about waterboarding now that Hayden confirmed it?<\/em><\/p>\n Michael Mukasey<\/u>: Do you have a particular question?<\/em><\/p>\n John Conyers<\/u>: Are you ready to start a criminal investigation?<\/em><\/p>\n Michael Mukasey<\/u>: That’s a direct question. No, I am not. Whatever was done as part of the CIA program, was part of DOJ opinion, through OLC, permissible under law as it existed then. For me to use occasion of disclosure that that was once an authorized part of the CIA program would be for me to tell that they will now be subject to criminal investigation. That would put into question not only that opinion, but also any other opinion from DOJ. That’s not something that would be appropriate and not something I would do.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ladies and gentlemen, behold the Nuremberg defense<\/a> (“Don’t punish me for my atrocity. I was only following orders.”). Mukasey has already been accused of invoking the Nuremberg defense<\/a> on behalf of the Bush torturers by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse.<\/p>\n The HJC hearing continues this afternoon live at http:\/\/boss.streamos.com\/real-live\/judiciary\/17223\/56_judiciary-coj_2141_070212.ram<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n The stream linked to above is provided “By Direction of the Chairman<\/span>” John Conyers, according to the HJC website<\/a>. Curiously, we currently could not find a webcast of the hearing on C-SPAN<\/a>, despite the obvious importance and interest in the meeting.<\/p>\n UPDATE<\/u>:<\/strong><\/p>\n Water(boarding)gate continues… Attorney General Michael Mukasey testified before the House Judiciary Committee (HJC) this morning. According to the live blog of the hearing at EmptyWheel, Chairman John Conyers asked Mukasey whether he was ready to start an investigation into the CIA’s admitted use of waterboarding in the past. Mukasey replied no. Below is a partial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":733,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[650,1131,1141,2155],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-international-law","category-torture","category-us-law"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/733"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/stoptorture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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