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Congress Asks Attorney General: Why Are Counterterrorism Lawyers Innocent?

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

Attorney General Michael Mukasey thinks there's no need for pardons for government lawyers who approved President Bush's wiretapping and torture programs, but powerful House lawmakers chastised his remarks, saying the nation's top lawyer shouldn't be prejudging investigations.

Mukasey told reporterson Wednesday that there's no indication lawyers approving counterterrorism efforts skirted their duty to uphold the law or operated in bad faith.

?In those circumstances, there is no occasion to consider prosecution, and there is no occasion to consider pardon,? Mukasey said, according to The New York Times.

On Thursday, powerful Democrats Jerrold Nadler and John Conyers wrote the attorney general, asking him to explain his conclusions in light of multiple ongoing investigations into both programs. The duo invited him to retract his comments.

Michigan's Conyers heads the powerful Judiciary committee, while New York's Nadler runs a subcommittee on the Constitution.

The spat highlights a looming question for President Bush: Should he give preemptive pardons to government employees who could be prosecuted for torture or illegal wiretapping or do such pardons equate an admission of guilt?

Nadler and Conyers' letter(.pdf) telegraphs that their interest in lifting the veil of secrecy on the Administration's conduct in the so-called "War on Terror" is not going to be completely sidelined by the nation's economic crisis. Prior to the fall's economic calamity, many civil libertarians hoped that investigations and new privacy protections would be high on President-elect Barack Obama's agenda.

In the letter, the lawmakers point to the wiretapping showdown at the bedside of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, when top White House officials tried to browbeat a sick man into approving a wiretapping program that Justice Department lawyers had found to be illegal.

The much discussed effort by then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and other to circumvent Mr. Comey?s authority as Acting Attorney General by confronting John Ashcroft in his hospital bed also indicates serious ethical and legal disagreement within the Department and the Administration on these matters, and leaves room for an ultimate conclusion that some individuals may well have understood that they were circumventing legal or ethical requirements.

Current investigations into the wiretapping program include one that is examining whether the lawyers acted ethically, a Justice Department inspector general inquiry into whether Gonzales lied to Congress about the wiretap program, and a congressionally mandated joint investigation into the program by the inspectors general at the nation's intelligence agencies.

Photo: Attorney General Michael Mukasey (left)/ Courtesy Whitehouse.gov

See Also:

• Attorney General Pulls Immunity Trigger, Denies 'Dragnet ...
• AG Mukasey Says IP Theft Threatens Public Safety, Fosters ...
• If NSA Spying Not A 'Dragnet,' What Were They Doing?
• Bush Admin Rejects NYPD Spying Proposals as Illegal
• Dems Agree to Expand Domestic Spying, Grant Telecoms Amnesty ...

Full post as published by Threat Level on December 05, 2008 (boomark / email).