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Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Getting To The Truth

When I was participating in TPMCafe’s discussion of Charles Homans’ article on investigating the former administration’s surveillance, detention and interrogation policies, I argued for investigations and criminal prosecutions of those involved if there was evidence showing that they broke the law. Mr. Homans had argued instead for some kind of truth commission at least partly […]

When I was participating in TPMCafe’s discussion of Charles Homans’ article on investigating the former administration’s surveillance, detention and interrogation policies, I argued for investigations and criminal prosecutions of those involved if there was evidence showing that they broke the law. Mr. Homans had argued instead for some kind of truth commission at least partly on the grounds that this process would be less politicized and would not be seen as a witch hunt. This was Homans’ proposal:

The findings of an investigation exclusively targeting a Republican administration, conducted under the auspices of a Democratic Congress, would be too easy to dismiss. Moreover, Schwarz notes, the legislative branch is deeply implicated in what the executive branch did during the Bush years, and investigating itself would be something of a conflict of interest.

This doesn’t mean that Congress should abandon the idea entirely. Instead, what Congress needs to do is figure out how to achieve the same goals while avoiding the political consequences. The best way to do this is to appoint someone else to do it, a panel that does for the wartime excesses of the Bush administration what the 9/11 Commission did for the September 11 attacks. In other words, a 9/12 Commission.

Naturally, then, the main objections to the truth commission Sen. Leahy has been trying to organize are that it will be highly politicized and will be nothing more than a witch hunt. Of course, the use of the phrase “witch hunt” today implies a hunt in pursuit of something that does not exist, while we are fairly certain that there were criminals in the outgoing administration who have thus far escaped the appropriate sanctions of the law. The best argument that witnesses testifying against the idea of forming a commission seem to have had is that the abuses of power and crimes in question are not as numerous as they were under Pinochet and apartheid. Now that‘s a claim to moral authority.

In my view, these criticisms and the problems in the preparation for the truth commission make the case for criminal investigation and prosecution even stronger. The complaints of politicization and persecution are going to be the same, and there are large numbers of people invested in ignoring or justifying these crimes because of their support for the decisions that led to them. There is no way to hold government officials accountable for systematic abuses of power that is not also at some level political in nature. At least if violations of the law are treated as crimes rather than unfortunate incidents to be understood for posterity, there will be some possibility of accountability and some chance that the rule of law will still apply to government officials in these matters. All signs from the new administration, however, are that the past is to be buried and legal remedies for past abuses are to be fought every step of the way.

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