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KEEPING SECRETS AT THE WASHINGTON POST
(Do our movers and shakers tremble?)
By Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at Law
lehtolawyer@hotmail.com
Knowing the locations where illegal torture of detainees is taking place is critical to the chances to stop it and to collect evidence about it. Why then did the Washington Post newspaper agree with the Bush administration to conceal the actual *locations* of at least eight U.S. torture facilities currently operating around the world? These eight do not include “Gitmo” (Guantanamo Bay, Cuba).
Whether or not it’s debatable in some quarters, from the perspective of avoiding being a defendant at an international war crimes trial, the illegality of torture and inhuman abuse is not debatable. Regardless of the recent U.S. Senate vote of 90 to 9 in favor of tightening existing laws against torture to include “cruel, inhuman and degrading” abuse, torture has been plainly illegal, morally reprehensible, and a violation of international law and norms so profound and universally accepted in the civilized world that under the doctrine called jus cogens, torture and inhuman abuse are violations of international law even if a country hasn’t signed on a specific treaty that specifically covers jus cogens violations like slavery, torture, genocide, and juvenile execution. Not only is torture and abuse wrong, the Post itself has printed an article this year showing rather definitively that torture is an ineffective and self-defeating method of gathering intelligence, and a boost for recruitment among the torturer’s enemies.
So why would the Washington Post freely admit that it is concealing the locations of torture and abuse facilities at the request of the US government, so as not to "open the U.S. government to legal challenges, particularly in foreign courts, and increase the risk of political condemnation at home and abroad"? Will this really “protect counterterrorism efforts” in those eight unnamed countries, or is it just protecting torture and abuse and/or making terrorism more attractive to potential enemies?
The Post’s stated rationale for concealment reveals a fatal flaw. This fatal flaw understands very well how to make deals to protect the interests of powerful sources, but willfully ignores that protectively concealing torture locations is morally reprehensible and legally prohibited. In fact, the very picture of criminal intent was formed when the Washington Post willfully ignored the laws that protect everyone from torture, while at the same time acting clearly and purposely to protect torture perpetrators from “legal challenges” and “political condemnation at home and abroad”.
To make a historical analogy, it is just as if the Washington Post believes that were John Wilkes Booth himself to show up at the Post’s door seeking refuge after assassinating Lincoln, the Post would offer Booth a place for the night, in order to better run an “Assassination Exclusive” by keeping the assassin’s location a secret. Keeping Booth’s location secret would help to not expose Booth to any “legal challenges” or any troublesome “political condemnation, at home or abroad.”
Admittedly, the Post must sometimes report about terrible crimes, but the Post’s agreements with persons committing or overseeing ongoing criminal offenses are highly unlikely to remain safely outside the realm of the criminal law and courts of justice for long. The confidentiality can’t itself be the crime. Judith Miller of the New York Times recently learned this lesson in only 85 days.
When the nation’s foremost political reporters choose to act as the conduit for and protector of the powerful rather than as a mechanism for fully informing the public, it gives the First Amendment a very bad name. The Post is not alone in defiling the First Amendment, given that the Associated Press is now openly advertising its own prostitution to pure profit by publicly seeking managers for its “election information services” division who by job description are obliged to “assure that
content matches business needs.” This slavish devotion of the press to power and profit über alles is so complete that it is expected that this essay will soon be denied publication in the Post, even though the offer will be to pay for the space required as would any commercial advertiser.
Make no mistake, this is not a situation where the Plame case offers guidance or precedent. Legitimate and legal covert government operations are entitled to the protection of the law and should not be exposed and disrupted by publication in the press, but in the case of torture and abuse the Post is improperly attempting to stretch considerations applicable to the protection of *legal* activity to the Post’s wish to protect plainly *illegal* activity. While legal matters are often debated, at the level of war crimes and jus cogens norms, fancy lawyering of profound moral prohibitions is inappropriate: No person wishing to avoid criminal charges of aiding and abetting or proceedings at international war crimes tribunals may safely remain morally neutral on torture and abuse.
The Nuremberg trials after WWII and the current trials at Abu Ghraib teach us that no person is justified in obeying an order to commit war crimes or to conceal the location of war crimes. There is also no Nuremberg precedent allowing the Nazi press to report about gas chamber operations and yet keep the locations of those gas chambers a secret in order to protect them from “legal challenges” and “political condemnation at home and abroad”. Yet this prevention of condemnation and disruption is precisely what the Washington Post set out to accomplish regarding torture facilities.
When our finest political “reporters” tell the Nation about torture centers, but refuse to reveal their location in order to maximize the torture centers’ chances of continued operations, Thomas Jefferson’s words regarding a violation of jus cogens norms during his time comes to mind: “When I think of slavery, I tremble to think that God is just.” Do our movers and shakers tremble?
---Paul R. Lehto, Attorney at Law
lehtolawyer@hotmail.com
I recommend to all the book “They Thought They Were Free” by Milton Mayer, showing that Germany’s path to utter moral ruin did not have a single point at which it was completely clear that Now was the time to stop it.
http://www.buzzflash.com/hartmann/05/11/har05011.html
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