By Judge Andrew Napolitano
When the head of the CIAs torture unit decided to destroy videotapes of his teams horrific work he unwittingly set in motion a series of events that led to the release this week of the most massive detailed documentation of unlawful behavior by high-ranking government officials and intentional infliction of pain on noncombatants by the United States government since the Civil War era. Here is the backstory.
One of the reasons repeatedly stated by President George W. Bush for the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the maintenance of torture rooms by Saddam Hussein. While making this very argument Bush was secretly authorizing CIA agents to engage in similar unlawful behavior for similar purposes: intelligence and deterrence. Bush sounded credible when he claimed that his administration adhered to federal and international legal standards.
He knew he could make that claim because the torturers were sworn to secrecy as were their congressional regulators. The CIA charter permits Congress to regulate the CIA in secret. Congress has established two secret congressional committees one from the Senate and one from the House to serve as monitors and regulators of CIA activities. The stated reason for the secrecy is to keep our enemies from knowing what the CIA is doing. The effect of the secrecy has been a muzzled Congress lied to by law-breaking and rogue CIA officials.
Until now.
When the Senate Intelligence Committee staff learned of the destroyed videotapes (a federal crime the Justice Department declined to prosecute) and reported that destruction to Sen. Dianne Feinstein D-Calif. the committee chair she ordered an investigation to determine whether the CIA officials who had briefed her committee had told the truth. If they had been truthful she reasoned why destroy the tapes? In order to conduct that investigation Feinstein ordered the CIA to make available to her committees investigators whatever documents and digital data the investigators sought.
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995 during which time he presided over 150 jury trials and thousands of motions sentencings and hearings. He taught constitutional law at Seton Hall Law School for 11 years and he returned to private practice in 1995. Judge Napolitano began television work in the same year.
