The Washington Note: Lawrence Wilkerson comments on South Carolina's worst
The Democratic Daily: Freedomworks' Little Frankenstein Lab: Oregon
Matthew Yglesias: John Hannah, patriot
Lawyers, Guns and Money: The Tories and Europe
Newshoggers: Hooverville
alicublog: Notes from the 'compassionate conservative' front
August 20, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Maddow Show
MADDOW: Today, Tom Ridge says he stands by that statement about his own department. But in his new book, Mr. Ridge reveals his own suspicions that the Bush administration did try to use the threat of terror attacks for the political gain of the president and his party.
Of the days immediately prior to the 2004 election when polls showed Bush and Kerry in a virtual dead heat and when a new tape from Bin Laden surfaced, Ridge recalls, quote, "Attorney General Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. There was absolutely no support for that position within our department. None. I wondered, is this about security or politics? Post-election analysis demonstrated a significant increase in the president`s approval rating in the days after the raising of the threat level."
Tom Ridge is scheduled to join us on this show on September 1st. I very much look forward to the opportunity to interview him. Until then, his word, his written word taken in context from a pre-released copy of his new book stands as a powerful and credible suggestion that what Keith Olbermann and many others suspected at the time back in 2004 was indeed true.
The Bush administration did manipulate the public`s fear of terrorism quite literally in a day-to-day way in order to stay in power.
Joining us now is Ret. Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson. He was chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. Col. Wilkerson, thank you very much for joining us tonight.
RET. COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, UNITED STATES ARMY: Thank you for having me, Rachel.
MADDOW: What is your reaction to Tom Ridge`s accusations made in this book? Was the color-coded threat level increased for political reasons?
WILKERSON: The governor has a position from which, if he`s saying that, I have to give his saying it some respect and some credibility.
I also know from my position in the administration having witnessed Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman and others doing what they did as political strategists that much was driven by political interests, domestic political interests, not international relations and national security or other interests, and that oftentimes, we did develop policy that was focused toward domestic issues, political issues, that is, they would give the Republicans an edge when, in fact, that position might contradict national security interests.
So, you know, I don`t know whether the governor is right in what he`s saying or not, but I do know that there is an environment in which what he`s saying could have been true. And let me just say one other thing, this is really amazing to me as a Republican, watching this happen.
Rachel came to the same conclusion I did when first hearing about this story and trying to make some sense of it. Since it was public information that the CIA was going after al Qaeda terrorists, what made CIA Director Leon Panetta feel the need to come running to Congress as soon as he knew about this program, and to stop it immediately? Something isn't adding up here.
MADDOW: It has now been five full days since we first got news that the CIA had been operating some sort of secret program that it was actively hiding from the Congress. It‘s been three days since that allegation that the CIA was hiding that program at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney—in what would appear to be a direct violation of federal law.
Since the story broke, there has been lots of speculation about what the secret program was that Cheney didn‘t want Congress to know about. And while all the speculation is really titillating and makes for great headlines, it does seem—when you start to look more closely at it—that there‘s something not quite right here, at least something is yet unexplained.
Here‘s what we‘ve seen: “Newsweek” says, “CIA squads to track and kill al Qaeda terrorists.” “The Wall Street Journal” says, the program “was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.” “New York Times” says, “CIA Had Planned to Assassinate al Qaeda Leaders.” Liz Cheney, her own very special voice of America, described the program as “ways that we could capture or kill al Qaeda leaders.”
The reason that doesn‘t make sense is because this strategy of capturing and killing top leaders of al Qaeda, it‘s not exactly classified. It‘s not exactly a secret plan. That‘s the war on terror. That‘s the war on terror strategy we heard articulated again and again and again by the Bush administration.
Lawrence Wilkerson tells CNN's Rick Sanchez just who he thinks was running the show in the Bush administration, why the Cheney family is out in full force defending torture and suggests that a number of members of the Bush administration should avoid travelling.
Sanchez: You know the idea...I was struck by that because I heard the term "lawyer up" and I was trying to figure out what she meant, because it seems there's an implication with the quote lawyer up implying that these suspects shouldn't be allowed any kind of representation. And it makes me as an American then wonder, given the legal system that I know that we have in this country, if they don't have lawyers and there aren't any courts, then who decides that they're guilty or innocent? Did anybody ever ask that question?
Wilkerson: This is absolutely Orwellian. His speech yesterday was Orwellian too and George Orwell when he was with the BBC talked about this a lot--when lying drives out truth telling. And Mark Twain of course said a lie will make it around the world before the truth can pull its socks up. That's what they're involved in. That's what Karl Rove taught them. That's what they've been involved in for some time. And her bona fides scream at me that what in the world is America's media doing listening to this woman? This woman has absolutely no bona fides to talk about this.
Sanchez: She has made eleven appearances in nine days, so she certainly has been getting...um...a lot of us....
Wilkerson: They're scared. I think they're frightened. And I don't blame them for being frightened.
Sanchez: Why? Why would Dick Cheney be frightened?
Wilkerson: Well we've got the possibility, I realize the political will doesn't exist, but we've got the possibility of domestic problems for him, and we've certainly got the possibility of international problems. Judge Baltasar Garzon in Spain has started a case and if I were Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Haynes and a host of other lawyers in the administration, I wouldn't travel. I wouldn't travel anywhere.
May 20, 2009 CNN's American Morning.
CHETRY: Well, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi still under fire this morning for her words that the CIA misled her about enhanced interrogation tactics. Many responded with surprise and some outrage at the claim, but should we really expect America's chief spy agency, known for its covert operations and layers of secrecy, to tell Congress everything?
Our next guest says not necessarily. Joining me now from Washington is Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson. He was the chief of staff for former secretary of state Colin Powell. Thanks for being with us this morning. Good to see you.
COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FORMER CHIEF OF STAFF FOR COLIN POWELL: Thank you for having me.
CHETRY: So, let's listen again to what Speaker Pelosi said about the information that the CIA provided her and other members of Congress.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: I am saying that they are misleading, that the CIA was misleading the Congress.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHETRY: So, you say it's a common practice for the CIA not to tell Congress everything they're doing. It might not be policy, but you say it happens all the time. Give us some example.
WILKERSON: Well, it does happen, and let me say right off the bat -- let me just say something about my bona fides, as opposed to Michael Gerson's, for example, writing on the op ed page of "The Washington Post" this morning. "The Post" continues to stun me with what they allow to appear on their op ed pages, lambasting the Democrats and others who might as he calls it "attack the CIA." Well, Michael Gerson has no bona fidas. I got 35 years of bona fidas. I have used tactical operational, strategic and intelligence from the agency for 35 years in Vietnam all the way forward to Iraq.
I've studied this as an academic. I know about its origins in the OSS during World War II. I know about its installation in the 1947 National Security Act, and I know the crimes and ravages that have been perpetrated in the name of the American people, the blood and treasure that's being expended by the CIA over that half century. Plus, I also know the successes that it's achieved. So, it's a mixed bag.
But to answer your question directly, the CIA does not have the leadership, not the good people in the ranks of the CIA, but the leadership of the CIA does not have a stellar record about telling the full and unequivocal truth about its covert operations.
Lawrence Wilkerson responds to Liz Cheney's personal attack on him for about "making a cottage industry out of fantasies...about the Vice President since he left office". That Vice President being her father.
MADDOW: Joining us now is Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief-of-staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Col. Wilkerson, it is great to have you back on the show. Thanks for joining us.
WILKERSON: Good to be here.
MADDOW: I have to ask your reaction, first of all, to Liz Cheney attacking you in the way that she did yesterday morning on ABC.
WILKERSON: Rachel, I don‘t pay a lot of attention to Liz Cheney. Her bona fides are that she‘s the vice president‘s daughter just as her bona fide is when she was PDASS and DASS in the Secretary of State‘s Office for Middle Eastern Affairs, or that she was the daughter of the Vice President, meaning that for Dick Cheney, nepotism was alive and well in his government.
MADDOW: Well, you - as you‘ve gotten this pushback from Liz Cheney and from others, let‘s get specific about your accusation and the way that it‘s being taken apart. You wrote, quote, the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002.”
“Its principle priority,” you said, “for intelligence was not aimed at the preempting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qaeda.”
So you‘re saying the number one priority of those interrogations of the intelligence direction of those investigations was to get an Iraq and al-Qaeda link?
WILKERSON: I‘m saying that by that time, we had done some things that had severely limited al-Qaeda‘s operational reach. Not the least of which was to tear them a new rear end in Afghanistan. But we‘d done some other very sophisticated things, too, that had put al-Qaeda very much on the defensive.
At that point, even though the chatter might have gone up at times, I think those of us who were really in the business of looking at this knew that the possibility of another attack had receded somewhat.
So at that point, as we were building up a march to war with Iraq, it‘s come to my attention in a number of ways, independently corroborating one another, that our priorities at least were equal if not exceeding the priority to thwart another attack to find out intelligence that would link al-Qaeda with Baghdad with the Mukhabarat and give the administration a lot more weight in its marketing of the war with Iraq when that marketing commenced.
Sheldon Whitehouse while being asked about the torture bombshell that Lawrence Wilkerson dropped on Dick Cheney says that if what Wilkerson asserts is true and the Bush administration went outside of the OLC's legal justification for the torture, it raises the prospect for criminal prosecutions.
Sanchez: We're hearing from ex-Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson and he's making the argument that he believes that what the Bush administration was doing with enhanced interrogations was trying to make a case for the invasion of Iraq and trying to justify what happened in Iraq. So you believe that is actually what enhanced interrogation, "so called" torture was being used for?
Whitehouse: I've heard that to be true. There is some further evidence of that in Chairman Levin's Armed Services Committee report. There is not a great deal of evidence that came out in our hearing one way or the other about that. The one thing I will say about that is that if that is true, then it takes the application of these techniques out of the protected scope of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion.
Sanchez: And it makes this them political. It's not about we were scared, we wanted to defend the country any more. Now it's about we needed to have some political justification or something we wanted to do. (crosstalk)
Whitehouse: And that raises the prospect of there being a criminal prosecution that could justifiably emerge from these facts if that were in fact the motivation.
Sanchez: One quick thing before I let you go...Am I hearing you say that if there was evidence, enough evidence on this particular subject, that it was being used to try and get or boost the reason for the war in Iraq, that you would be more likely to push for criminal prosecution?
Whitehouse: Torture is criminal. If it's not justified by the OLC opinion. If there aren't any defenses that that raises because you've gone outside of it then it exposes people to that. That's a decision that should be made by the Attorney General, by an appropriate prosecutor or official...
Sanchez: But will you say on the record that if you find evidence of that you're more apt to want to push for a prosecution? Yes or no.
Whitehouse: One is more apt to do that--correct.
Rachel Maddow asks Lawrence Wilkerson if Dick Cheney's insistence on defending himself in public is helping to create the political will for torture investigations, and thus hurting the Republican Party. Lawrence Wilkerson wonders if there's anyone in the Republican Party with the intestinal fortitude to tell Cheney what he needs to hear if they're not going to remain a minority party forever.
Maddow: Col. Wilkerson, you're a Republican and I think that the, you're not a politician, but I think that the political implications of Cheney being out there so publicly on this issue are pretty obvious. Is there anybody in the Republican Party who might tell him to keep quiet or leave the stage or stop advancing his own agenda he seems to be pursuing at the expense of the party? Is there anybody who could tell him to keep quiet who he might listen to?
Wilkerson: I would have expected that George H.W. Bush would have said something in private certainly. I don't know that former Vice President Cheney would have listened at this point though. His attack on Colin Powell was something that stunned me. I didn't think that he would go that far. He's destroying what's left of the Republican party. I think the latest polls show we're down to 21% of Americans who identify as Republicans.
I suspect that if Cheney continues it will be down in the low teens. He's destroying the party. There needs to be someone with some, ahhh ... as we say in the Army, some intestinal fortitude, some guts, who steps forward and tells this man to go home and shut up.
Update: Lawrence Wilkerson was a guest blogger at the Washington Note.
April 24, 2009 MSNBC Rachel Madow Show
Rachel Maddow talks to Lawrence Wilkerson about Dick Cheney's request to selectively declassify documents to try to prove "enhanced interrogation techniques" can't be considered torture because they worked.
Rachel Maddow talks to Lawrence Wilkerson who recently slammed Dick Cheney in an op-ed at the Washington Note titled Some Truths About Guantanamo Bay. From the article:
But their ultimate cover was that the struggle in which they were involved was war and in war those detained could be kept for the duration. And this war, by their own pronouncements, had no end. For political purposes, they knew it certainly had no end within their allotted four to eight years. Moreover, its not having an end, properly exploited, would help ensure their eight rather than four years in office.
In addition, it has never come to my attention in any persuasive way--from classified information or otherwise--that any intelligence of significance was gained from any of the detainees at Guantanamo Bay other than from the handful of undisputed ring leaders and their companions, clearly no more than a dozen or two of the detainees, and even their alleged contribution of hard, actionable intelligence is intensely disputed in the relevant communities such as intelligence and law enforcement.
This is perhaps the most astounding truth of all, carefully masked by men such as Donald Rumsfeld and Richard Cheney in their loud rhetoric--continuing even now in the case of Cheney--about future attacks thwarted, resurgent terrorists, the indisputable need for torture and harsh interrogation and for secret prisons and places such as GITMO.
Lastly, there is the now prevalent supposition, recently reinforced by the new team in the White House, that closing down our prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay would take some time and development of a highly complex plan. Because of the unfortunate political realities now involved--Cheney's recent strident and almost unparalleled remarks about the dangers of pampering terrorists, and the vulnerability of the Democrats in general on any national security issue--this may have some truth to it.
But in terms of the physical and safe shutdown of the prison facilities it is nonsense. As early as 2004 and certainly in 2005, administration leaders such as Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England, and John Bellinger, Legal Advisor to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and, later, to that same individual as Secretary of State, and others were calling for the facilities to be shut down. No one will ever convince me that as astute a man as Gordon England would have made such a call if he did not have a plan for answering it. And if there is not such a plan, is not its absence simply another reason to condemn this most incompetent of administrations? After all, President Bush himself said he would like to close GITMO.
Recently, in an attempt to mask some of these failings and to exacerbate and make even more difficult the challenge to the new Obama administration, former Vice President Cheney gave an interview from his home in McLean, Virginia. The interview was almost mystifying in its twisted logic and terrifying in its fear-mongering.
As to twisted logic: "Cheney said at least 61 of the inmates who were released from Guantanamo (sic) during the Bush administration...have gone back into the business of being terrorists." So, the fact that the Bush administration was so incompetent that it released 61 terrorists, is a valid criticism of the Obama administration? Or was this supposed to be an indication of what percentage of the still-detained men would likely turn to terrorism if released in future? Or was this a revelation that men kept in detention such as those at GITMO--even innocent men--would become terrorists if released because of the harsh treatment meted out to them at GITMO? Seven years in jail as an innocent man might do that for me. Hard to tell.
As for the fear-mongering: "When we get people who are more interested in reading the rights to an Al Qaeda (sic) terrorist than they are with protecting the United States against people who are absolutely committed to do anything they can to kill Americans, then I worry," Cheney said. Who in the Obama administration has insisted on reading any al-Qa'ida terrorist his rights? More to the point, who in that administration is not interested in protecting the United States--a clear implication of Cheney's remarks.
But far worse is the unmistakable stoking of the 20 million listeners of Rush Limbaugh, half of whom we could label, judiciously, as half-baked nuts. Such remarks as those of the former vice president's are like waving a red flag in front of an incensed bull. And Cheney of course knows that.
Wilkerson expressed the same concerns about the fear mongering he saw from John McCain and Sarah Palin on the campaign trail during this interview.
