This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
A note on Moussaoui: despite strong encouragement from FBI special agent/attorney Coleen Rowley at the time, the government never interviewed Moussaoui for information on a possible “second wave” of 9/11-type attacks.Moussaoui knew Richard Reid, the shoe-bomber who almost downed an airliner on its way from London to the U.S., and might have provided forewarning, if he were asked in the three months between 9/11 and Reid’s attempt in December 2001. Given what amounted to a don’t-ask-don’t-tell policy, there is no telling, so to speak, what intelligence might have been elicited from Moussaoui.
It gets worse: it appears Reid was not effectively interviewed either. The nonchalant handling of Moussaoui and Reid greatly diminishes the credibility of arguments that torture was felt to be necessary because of the overweening fear of follow-up attacks. The administration claims it had to pull out all the stops—while in reality it failed to take rudimentary steps to acquire information from known terrorists already in U.S. custody.
In a recent article on torture, http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/041409a.html,
I asked what might be holding the Obama administration back from appointing an independent prosecutor to investigate all this, so that as a nation we could hold to account any proven guilty and put this shameful chapter of American history behind us once and for all.
A reader replied in an email offering this answer to what is holding the administration back: “John D. Rockefeller, IV, and the Democrats who knew [about the torture] and did nothing.” The sender signed the email: “Kathleen M. Rockefeller Uncowardly Cousin.”
The disclosures in the Shane/Mazzetti article, and plenty of other evidence suggest that this may not be far off the mark. The fact that so many Democratic leaders had complicit knowledge of the torture is no doubt one of the powerful forces working on our president.
Maybe, just maybe, the president insisted on releasing the torture memos with a view toward determining whether Americans really care, whether we would be appropriately outraged—so outraged that we would put inexorable pressure on him to hold everyone, repeat everyone, accountable.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour. Like many, he is sickened at the abuse of prisoners—yet hopeful that Americans will summon the moral courage to insist on holding to account those responsible, so that Americans will not sink to those depths again.
The original version of this article appeared at Consortiumnews.com.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
