Scott Horton: “Hogan’s Heroes”: Bush knew nothing-From "Damage Control" To "Fall-Back Position"

[kpete]

The Scapegoat

My suspicion is that these tapes would have provided graphic evidence of the Orwellian sense in which these words must be read. So no doubt our friends at the APA are also delighted to know that the evidence has gone down a rathole.

By Scott Horton

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As the story concerning the CIA’s decision to destroy vital evidence of its program of detainee abuse unfolds, the Bush Administration’s posture on the matter is shifting decisively. This is called “damage control.” The Administration’s initial posture was to have CIA Director Hayden put the best face on the situation and argue that everything that was done was perfectly legal and correct.

So now we come to phase two: the fall-back position. In phase two, we learn that the president and other senior figures in the Administration know nothing about it. Instead, this was all a rogue operation by a second tier leadership figure at the CIA. And indeed, by midday yesterday, White House off-the-record explainers were extremely busy pointing fingers at one man, the designated scapegoat. The New York Times has the story:

White House and Justice Department officials, along with senior members of Congress, advised the Central Intelligence Agency in 2003 against a plan to destroy hundreds of hours of videotapes showing the interrogations of two operatives of Al Qaeda, government officials said Friday. The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said. . .

Top C.I.A. officials had decided in 2003 to preserve the tapes in response to warnings from White House lawyers and lawmakers that destroying the tapes would be unwise, in part because it could carry legal risks, the government officials said.

But the government officials said that Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., then the chief of the agency’s clandestine service, the Directorate of Operations, had reversed that decision in November 2005, at a time when Congress and the courts were inquiring deeply into the C.I.A.’s interrogation and detention program. Mr. Rodriguez could not be reached Friday for comment.

Jose A. Rodriguez, Jr., Designated Scapegoat
So the sacrificial beast now has a name: it is Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the head of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. The Bush Administration has always been a government with a completely unpredictable past. But note how crudely this historical transformation is being spun.

Yesterday we are told, in highly implausible statements coming from General Hayden, that the CIA had acted completely according to Hoyle. The issue had been considered, reviewed and cleared. Twenty-four hours later, there is a radical shift of course. Now we learn that the White House didn’t know about the decision and certainly wouldn’t have approved it. Here’s Dana Perino at the White House giving the new line, torn from an episode of “Hogan’s Heroes”: Bush knew nothing.

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much much more at:
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/05/hbc-90004876

[grasswire]

1. that guy looks like a thug

And thank you, Harpers, for being on the story.

[grasswire]

2. another clip

"One measure of the ultimate fairness of any justice system is whether it affords equal access to the poorest and weakest members of society. The whole story of torture accountability in the United States so far is a radical subversion of that notion. The weak and powerless figures at the bottom of the food chain are tried, condemned, and made into public examples. The great and powerful figures who secretly make policy for the government behind closed doors escape any form of accountability and have newspapers around the country who rush to defend them from “scapegoating.” It’s perverse."

[Old and In the Way]

3. "Do you know the way to (the) Can, Jose?"

So, either this is going to be fun when the return lob is fired or we can assume that Mr. Rodriguez has gotten some kind of incentive (+/-)to fall on the Bush sword.