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Democrats May Be Headed to Showdown With Obama Over Bush Probes
2009-02-16
Feb. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Some Democrats in Congress don’t want to let George W. Bush leave town. They want to continue investigating alleged wrongdoing by former administration officials like Karl Rove just as President Barack Obama is urging them to turn the page. House Judiciary Committee Democrats have a long bill of particulars. They want to force Bush-era officials to testify about the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and alleged politicization of law enforcement. They want to press inquiries into Bush’s program of warrantless wiretaps and into allegations that suspected terrorists were tortured in U.S. custody or turned over to other countries for such mistreatment. Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who leads the Judiciary Committee, has called for a “truth and reconciliation commission” to investigate such Bush administration tactics. So far, Obama hasn’t endorsed the probes. “I’m more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards,” the president said, in telling reporters Feb. 9 that he would examine Leahy’s proposal. “My general orientation is to say, ‘Let’s get it right moving forward.’” The first opportunity for an intraparty clash among Democrats may be over a subpoena of Rove, the man who helped guide Bush’s political fortunes. The House Judiciary Committee wants to ask Rove his possible role in firing U.S. attorneys. No Stonewalling “We are going to finish the investigation we started,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat who heads a judiciary subcommittee on constitutional rights. “The committee can’t allow any administration to just stonewall, run out the clock and say goodbye.” The possibility of criminal prosecutions may spark the type of partisan bickering Obama wants to avoid. Eric Holder, Obama’s new attorney general, assured Republicans at his Senate confirmation hearing that he isn’t planning a wholesale criminal investigation of current or former government officials, though he wouldn’t rule out going after lawbreakers. There won’t be any attempt to “criminalize policy differences” with the Bush administration, he said. Obama, in his first days in office, ordered the closing within a year of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp for suspected terrorists in Cuba and banned U.S. intelligence agencies from using the harshest interrogation techniques. Sept. 11 Responses That isn’t enough for some Democrats who want to probe the Bush administration’s responses to the Sept. 11 attacks that reset the rules for counter-terrorism. Leahy said his proposed truth commission would help get to the bottom of how the previous administration authorized and employed such tactics as waterboarding, the interrogation technique used by the Central Intelligence Agency to simulate drowning. Obama’s Justice Department angered civil liberties groups this month when it sided with the Bush administration and invoked the so-called state-secrets doctrine to try to block a lawsuit accusing a Boeing Co. unit of helping the CIA deliver terrorist suspects to be tortured in foreign countries. Within days, lawmakers proposed legislation to give courts more power to review such secrecy claims. Pressure from human rights groups for a full accounting of the government’s terrorist detention and interrogation programs may sharpen differences between Congress and the president. ‘Confusing Messages’ “There are very confusing messages coming from the Obama administration,” said Margaret Satterthwaite of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University. The nation is “poised” to learn whether Obama will “account for this abusive program” or “we are going to continue to have stonewalling and silence.” The Rove subpoena will test Obama’s willingness to give Congress the information it seeks. Rove has been ordered to appear Feb. 23 for closed-door questioning by lawyers with the House committee probing the firing of nine U.S. attorneys and allegations that politics prompted the prosecution of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman of Alabama. Siegelman is appealing a 2006 bribery conviction and seven- year prison term for taking a $500,000 campaign contribution from HealthSouth Corp. founder Richard Scrushy in return for a seat on the state’s hospital regulatory board. Executive Privilege Bush invoked executive privilege to bar congressional testimony by Rove and other White House aides about the firings. The Obama administration must now decide whether to side with its predecessor. The subpoena is an opportunity for Holder “to send an early signal of how he intends to handle some of the leftover baggage of the Bush administration,” said Representative Artur Davis, a Democrat from Alabama who is running for governor. “The subpoena raises complicated legal questions” because the administration’s “obligation to protect the institution of the presidency” is “in conflict” with the committee’s “desire to get to the truth,” presidential spokesman Reid Cherlin said in an e-mail. House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan is one of the Democrats seeking to complete the Bush probes. The congressman also proposed a “blue-ribbon commission” to review Bush’s use of wartime powers to authorize surveillance, detention and interrogation techniques. Not all Democrats in Congress favor continued investigations. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein of California is reserving judgment. Legal Opinions “We’ve got a new CIA director; it is pretty clear there is going to be a major change,” she said in an interview. She said Congress should still get to see the legal opinions of the Bush Justice Department that authorized detention and interrogation policies. “That’s important,” she said. Democrat Charles Schumer of New York, who led the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the U.S. attorney firings, said he supports congressional restraint. “There should be a general inclination not to look back” except for “egregious cases,” Schumer said. Some say that while the nation’s economic crisis may be pushing other concerns aside, it doesn’t eliminate the need to uncover past mistakes. “There is room for members of the Senate or the House to do what we are supposed to do, which is oversight,” said Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Congress “can walk and chew gum.” To contact the reporter on this story: James Rowley at jarowley@bloomberg.net
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