[Infowarrior] - Bush ¹ s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy

[Richard Forno]

Bush¹s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy

By STEVEN LEE MYERS
Published: March 9, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/washington/09policy.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slog
in


WASHINGTON ‹ President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of
fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a
Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency¹s latitude to
subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques.

Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from
using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which
restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the
subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are
prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

The veto deepens his battle with increasingly assertive Democrats in
Congress over issues at the heart of his legacy. As his presidency winds
down, he has made it clear he does not intend to bend in this or other
confrontations on issues from the war in Iraq to contempt charges against
his chief of staff, Joshua B. Bolten, and former counsel, Harriet E. Miers.

Mr. Bush announced the veto in the usual format of his weekly radio address,
which is distributed to stations across the country each Saturday. He
unflinchingly defended an interrogation program that has prompted critics to
accuse him not only of authorizing torture previously but also of refusing
to ban it in the future. ³Because the danger remains, we need to ensure our
intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,²
he said.

Mr. Bush¹s veto ‹ the ninth of his presidency, but the eighth in the past 10
months with Democrats in control of Congress ‹ underscored his determination
to preserve many of the executive prerogatives his administration has
claimed in the name of fighting terrorism, and to enshrine them into law.

Mr. Bush is fighting with Congress over the expansion of powers under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and over the depth of the American
security commitments to Iraq once the United Nations mandate for
international forces there expires at the end of the year.

The administration has also moved ahead with the first military tribunals of
those detained at Guantánamo Bay, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a
mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, despite calls to try them in
civilian courts.

All are issues that turn on presidential powers. And as he has through most
of his presidency, he built his case on the threat of terrorism. ³The fact
that we have not been attacked over the past six and a half years is not a
matter of chance,² Mr. Bush said in his radio remarks, echoing comments he
made Thursday at a ceremony marking the fifth anniversary of the creation of
the Department of Homeland Security. ³We have no higher responsibility than
stopping terrorist attacks,² he added. ³And this is no time for Congress to
abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.²

The bill Mr. Bush vetoed would have limited all American interrogators to
techniques allowed in the Army field manual on interrogation, which
prohibits physical force against prisoners.

The debate has left the C.I.A. at odds with the Federal Bureau of
Investigation and other agencies, whose officials have testified that harsh
interrogation methods are either unnecessary or counterproductive. The
agency¹s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, issued a statement to employees
after Mr. Bush¹s veto defending the program as legal, saying that the Army
field manual did not ³exhaust the universe of lawful interrogation
techniques.²

Democrats, who supported the legislation as part of a larger bill that
authorized a vast array of intelligence programs, criticized the veto
sharply, but they do not have the votes to override it.

³This president had the chance to end the torture debate for good,² one of
its sponsors, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, said in a statement on
Friday when it became clear that Mr. Bush intended to carry out his veto
threat. ³Yet, he chose instead to leave the door open to use torture in the
future. The United States is not well served by this.²

The Senate¹s majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said Mr. Bush
disregarded the advice of military commanders, including Gen. David H.
Petraeus, who argued that the military¹s interrogation techniques were
effective and that the use of any others could create risks for any future
American prisoners of war.

³He has rejected the Army field manual¹s recognition that such horrific
tactics elicit unreliable information, put U.S. troops at risk and undermine
our counterinsurgency efforts,² Mr. Reid said in a statement. Democrats
vowed to raise the matter again.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has
been an outspoken opponent of torture, often referring to his own experience
as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. In this case he supported the
administration¹s position, arguing as Mr. Bush did Saturday that the
legislation would have limited the C.I.A.¹s ability to gather intelligence.

Mr. Bush said the agency should not be bound by rules written for soldiers
in combat, as opposed to highly trained experts dealing with hardened
terrorists. The bill¹s supporters countered that it would have banned only a
handful of techniques whose effectiveness was in dispute in any case.

The administration has also said that waterboarding is no longer in use,
though officials acknowledged last month that it had been used in three
instances before the middle of 2003, including against Mr. Mohammed.
Officials have left vague the question of whether it could be authorized
again.

Mr. Bush said, as he had previously, that information from the C.I.A.¹s
interrogations had averted terrorist attacks, including plots to attack a
Marine camp in Djibouti; the American Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan;
Library Tower in Los Angeles; and passenger planes from Britain. He
maintained that the techniques involved ‹ the exact nature of which remained
classified ‹ were ³safe and lawful.²

³Were it not for this program, our intelligence community believes that Al
Qaeda and its allies would have succeeded in launching another attack
against the American homeland,² he said.

Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the chairman of the
Intelligence Committee, disputed that assertion on Saturday. ³As chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, I have heard nothing to suggest that
information obtained from enhanced interrogation techniques has prevented an
imminent terrorist attack,² he said in a statement.

The handling of detainees since 2001 has dogged the administration
politically, but Mr. Bush and his aides have barely conceded any ground to
critics, even in the face of legal challenges, as happened with the
prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or with federal wiretapping conducted without
warrants.

At the core of the administration¹s position is a conviction that the
executive branch must have unfettered freedom when it comes to prosecuting
war.

Stephen Hess, a presidential scholar at the Brookings Institution, said Mr.
Bush¹s actions were consistent with his efforts to expand executive power
and to protect the results of those efforts. Some, he said, could easily be
undone ‹ with a Democratic president signing a bill like the one he vetoed
Saturday, for example ‹ but the more Mr. Bush accomplished now, the more
difficult that would be. ³Every administration is concerned with protecting
the power of the presidency,² he said. ³This president has done that with a
lot more vigor.²

Representative Bill Delahunt, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has been
holding hearings on the administration¹s negotiations with Iraq over the
legal status of American troops in Iraq beyond Mr. Bush¹s presidency. He
said the administration had rebuffed demands to bring any agreement to
Congress for approval, and had largely succeeded.

³They¹re excellent at manipulating the arguments so that if Congress should
assert itself, members expose themselves to charges of being soft, not tough
enough on terrorism,² he said. ³My view is history is going to judge us
all.²

Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.