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Leahy Proposes Truth And Reconciliation Commission

By blueness

In a speech Monday at Georgetown University, Senator Patrick Leahy proposed a truth and reconciliation commission for exposure of BushCo misdeeds, similar to the one proposed here December 27 by Alexa, and for similar reasons.

Leahy is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, from which such a commission could be expected to spring. The commission as envisioned by Leahy would be empowered to issue subpoenas, and would investigate, among other things, the warrantless wiretapping program, the politically motivated firings of US attorneys, and the treatment of prisoners in the War on Terra.
         

"Many Americans think we need to get to the bottom of what went wrong," Leahy said, "and I agree."
Monday Leahy said this:

The President is right that we need to focus on fixing the problems that exist and improving the future for hardworking Americans. I wholeheartedly agree and expect the Judiciary Committee and the Senate to act accordingly. But that does not mean that we should abandon seeking ways to provide accountability for what has been a dangerous and disastrous diversion from American law and values. Many Americans feel we need to get to the bottom of what went wrong. We need to be able to read the page before we turn it.

As to the best course of action for bringing a reckoning for the actions of the past eight years, there has been heated disagreement. There are some who resist any effort to investigate the misdeeds of the recent past. Indeed, some Republican Senators tried to extract a devil's bargain from the Attorney General nominee in exchange for their votes, a commitment that he would not prosecute for anything that happened on President Bush's watch. That is a pledge no prosecutor should give, and Eric Holder did not, but because he did not, it accounts for many of the partisan votes against him.

There are others who say that, even if it takes all of the next eight years, divides this country, and distracts from the necessary priority of fixing the economy, we must prosecute Bush administration officials to lay down a marker. Of course, the courts are already considering congressional subpoenas that have been issued and claims of privilege and legal immunities--and they will be for some time.

There is another option that we might also consider, a middle ground. A middle ground to find the truth. We need to get to the bottom of what happened--and why--so we make sure it never happens again.

One path to that goal would be a reconciliation process and truth commission. We could develop and authorize a person or group of people universally recognized as fair minded, and without axes to grind. Their straightforward mission would be to find the truth.

People would be invited to come forward and share their knowledge and experiences, not for purposes of constructing criminal indictments, but to assemble the facts. If needed, such a process could involve subpoena powers, and even the authority to obtain immunity from prosecutions in order to get to the whole truth. Congress has already granted immunity, over my objection, to those who facilitated warrantless wiretaps and those who conducted cruel interrogations. It would be far better to use that authority to learn the truth.

In her December 27 piece on this site, Alexa expressed, more baldly and eloquently than did the senator, the human reasons in support of such a commission. Some excerpts:

I think this is correct, the right path. A fact-finding or truth commission is essential in uncovering how much torture and how many disappeared we don't know about before demanding prosecution.

There can be no justice without a meticulous inventory.

It's easy to lose sight of the fact that between the ghost detainees, ghost ships, ghost planes, black sites, and the hundreds to thousands of civilians and military personnel who were either silent or complicit in the torture, we know only fragments of the story. These fragments are overwhelming, I know. They're shocking and deplorable--but they are fragments nonetheless.

I would much prefer to learn as much of the truth as we possibly can and favor full investigations, even with immunity, as there are (to borrow a phrase from Jackson Browne) literally thousands of lives in the balance.

There are APA and AMA members who witnessed crimes and didn't report them or have even participated in the cover-up.

There are tens of thousands of military, paramilitary and civilian witnesses to the ongoing crimes of the Torture Administration, including murder. Yes, I said murder. They have maintained silence almost to a person, but all this says to me is that they fear prosecution and would, if given a safe venue, tell us what they've observed, or some portion thereof.

If you had been shackled and silenced at Guantanano or Bagram for seven years, I think you deserve an explanation.

If you've lost your family, your home and your very life as you knew it due to Bush's misguided war of attrition on Iraq, I think you deserve some answers.

And if you are undocumented, a ghost detainee, one of the thousands hidden from the International Red Cross in a a living grave in Egypt or renditioned to the Uzbekistan or Diego Garcia black sites, then I believe that without a fact-finding commission, you are considered "evidence" more than a human being and calls for criminal investigation put you at more danger than this citizen would ever risk.

At least one other legislator, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, "immediately applauded," in Timespeak, Leahy's idea. "Chairman Leahy today summed up a belief shared by millions of Americans," Whitehouse said, "that we need to 'get the truth out' about the damage done to this country under the Bush Administration, and what we now must do to repair it."

President Obama, asked for his view at Monday night's press conference, demurred, claiming he had not seen Leahy's proposal, and declining to express an opinion "on something that I haven't seen."

Full post as published by Never In Our Names on February 11, 2009 (boomark / email).