by hilzoy
This is the third post in a series; the first two are here and here. I'm going to put the whole post below the fold.
Besides explaining the backstory behind the administration's policy on torture, the Post's series of articles on Cheney (1, 2) also makes it clear that Dick Cheney is the co-worker from hell: secretive, devious, vindictive, backstabbing, and absolutely relentless in pursuit of his goals. Three examples, the first from Sunday's article:
"At the White House, Bellinger sent Rice a blunt -- and, he thought, private -- legal warning. The Cheney-Rumsfeld position would place the president indisputably in breach of international law and would undermine cooperation from allied governments. Faxes had been pouring in at the State Department since the order for military commissions was signed, with even British authorities warning that they could not hand over suspects if the U.S. government withdrew from accepted legal norms.One lawyer in his office said that Bellinger was chagrined to learn, indirectly, that Cheney had read the confidential memo and "was concerned" about his advice. Thus Bellinger discovered an unannounced standing order: Documents prepared for the national security adviser, another White House official said, were "routed outside the formal process" to Cheney, too. The reverse did not apply."
We learn from this that Cheney not only set up a system whereby he got to read supposedly confidential communications between Condoleeza Rice and her subordinates, but that he did this without notifying the subordinates in question. If I found out that every time I was talking "privately" with my boss, someone else got to listen in, I would resign.
The second is from today's article:
"On June 8, 2004, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell learned of the two-year-old torture memo for the first time from an article in The Washington Post. According to a former White House official with firsthand knowledge, they confronted Gonzales together in his office.Rice "very angrily said there would be no more secret opinions on international and national security law," the official said, adding that she threatened to take the matter to the president if Gonzales kept them out of the loop again. Powell remarked admiringly, as they emerged, that Rice dressed down the president's lawyer "in full Nurse Ratched mode," a reference to the head nurse of the mental hospital in the 1975 film "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.""
Stop and think about that for a moment. A memo making an absolutely radical, 180 degree change in US detention and interrogation policy in ways that will predictably have an enormous impact on our standing in the world is signed, and neither the Secretary of State nor the National Security Advisor finds out about it until two years later? From a newspaper article?
Third, from the first article again:
"Cheney's proposal had become a military order from the commander in chief. Foreign terrorism suspects held by the United States were stripped of access to any court -- civilian or military, domestic or foreign. They could be confined indefinitely without charges and would be tried, if at all, in closed "military commissions.""What the hell just happened?" Secretary of State Colin L. Powell demanded, a witness said, when CNN announced the order that evening, Nov. 13, 2001. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice, incensed, sent an aide to find out. Even witnesses to the Oval Office signing said they did not know the vice president had played any part."
Again, a major policy decision is made, one that will have huge effects on our relations with other countries, and Powel and Rice find out about it after the fact, from CNN.
This is insane.
***
Here's a reflection that is not exactly rocket science: it's much, much better to find out what's wrong with an idea before you adopt it, not afterwards. The way you try to maximize the chance of finding out what's wrong with your ideas before you adopt them is to make sure that your policy proposals are vigorously debated beforehand. Sometimes you can do a long policy vetting process involving zillions of people and inter-agency confabs and all that; sometimes you only have time for a vigorous brainstorming session among principals; but you should never, never make decisions without serious debate if you can possibly avoid it.
The corollary to this is: anyone who tries to circumvent debate within an organization is doing something that's extremely damaging: namely, trying to circumvent a process that is absolutely necessary if an organization is to avoid disastrous mistakes. If that person somehow has no better choices, then that's a sure sign that the organization itself is completely dysfunctional. If s/he tried to circumvent debate needlessly, in order to advance his or her own agenda, then s/he should be fired.
There is simply no way in which Dick Cheney could have operated as he did in an organization that was not utterly dysfunctional. None. And at least part of that dysfunction has to be put down to the astonishing passivity of his co-workers. (I will get to the other part later.) Mark Kleiman says (about my first example):
"What I do find surprising is Condoleeza Rice's passivity in the face of this interference in her communication with her own staff. Anyone with an ounce of self-respect would have gone to Bush and said, "This stops from right now or I'm out the door."A threat to resign over a major policy disagreement is dangerous. (...) But a threat to resign over this sort of official-personal affront is a different story. Precisely because it's personal to you but not to the others, it's a fully credible threat, and their threat to stuck to the insult and let you resign isn't credible. And because it's personal, letting you get away with it doesn't mean ceding you the right to block any substantive decision by threatening to resign, so it's not nearly as much of an affront to your co-workers.
The classic case here is George Schultz, who forced Ronald Reagan to back down from an already-signed Executive Order requiring cabinet officials to submit to polygraph examinations as part of leak investigations by saying he'd walk out rather than take one. Would Bush really have let Rice resign rather than telling Cheney to respect her privacy? Somehow, I don't think so."
Similarly, I find Rice and Powell's response to the second example absolutely extraordinary. They are the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State. An enormously important policy memo with huge ramifications for the fields for which they are responsible has been kept from them for two years. They find out about it from the newspapers. And what do they do? They go to the Attorney General White House Counsel, who is known to be dim, and threaten to go to the President if this ever happens again? Wrong: they should have gone to the President the first time something like this happened and said: we refuse to work in an environment in which we have to find out about things like this from the newspapers. Trust us or we're out of here.
(Really, it's not just the personal affront, or the fact that this sort of thing is insane. Either Rice or Powell might easily have been in a position in which they had to represent the position of the United States Government on detention and interrogation. Not letting them know what that position was risked letting them destroy their credibility completely. This is not a minor detail.)
Instead of which, they chew out an underling who they must know is not responsible for this stuff, and Powell comments "admiringly" on Condi's toughness. No wonder they got rolled.
These articles should be assigned to management classes as studies in what not to do. They describe the exact sort of decision-making process that reliably leads to disaster, and the kinds of personal dynamics that enable it. It's a model of complete organizational breakdown, and it should be studied for generations to come, so that it is never repeated.
hilzoy: I think Gonzales was WH Counsel at that time, not AG.
Posted by: Ugh | June 25, 2007 at 05:45 PM
Good point ;)
Will update.
Posted by: hilzoy | June 25, 2007 at 05:46 PM
Well, it was the only thing I felt like saying after reading the articles and your posts that wouldn't violate the posting rules and possibly get me, well, in trouble. Fortunately, it looks like the next two parts of the series focus on econ/environmental issues, which aren't as likely to get me upset (tho who knows).
I will just note that this series makes Bush look like a buffoon (not that that wasn't obvious before), is someone going to bring it up at the White House briefings (I would assume that happened today) or at his next press conference (assuming he ever holds another one).
"Mr. President, How does it feel to be the first figurehead President in United States history?"
"Mr. President, Should we just start adressing you as 'Mr. Sock-Puppet' from now on?"
"Mr. President, Cheney stole your job, what's next, your wife?"
etc.
Posted by: Ugh | June 25, 2007 at 06:06 PM
Ugh: yeah; I have to go out to dinner soon, but the plan is a last post on what this says about Bush. That's why I left him out. But jeez: he's sort of like the antiparticle for leadership, or something.
Posted by: hilzoy | June 25, 2007 at 06:10 PM
Why does Cheney have more power over the President's mind than Rice -- who is *far* closer to Bush personally and politically? Why would she have to let him read her correspondence with her subordinates and make policy changes behind her back?
I'm not saying I necessarily leap to the idea of blackmail, but his power must be coming from *somewhere*.
Karl Rove?
Posted by: Doctor Science | June 25, 2007 at 06:30 PM
Which is why Gonzales, Cheney, and Bush all must be impeached. I don't care if it can't be accomplished in the time left in their terms. I especially don't care if it might hand dead-ender Republicans another freaking grudge to act out on the next administration, which will be a Democratic one.
The only way to make sure that it's a democratic one, and I mean the small d, is to begin impeachment proceedings NOW.
You don't deal with a junta by ignoring its crimes and looking to the next election. You impeach the m*****f*****s.
Posted by: Nell | June 25, 2007 at 06:43 PM
Apropos of the Washington Post's exploration of Dick Cheney's role in the development of interrogations policy, TPMmuckraker has obtained a document from the 2002 trial of John Walker Lindh -- the American captured in Mazar-e-Sharif in 2001 fighting for the Taliban -- in which Donald Rumsfeld's general counsel, William J. Haynes II, is said to have advised the commander of U.S. forces in Mazar to "take the gloves off" when interrogating him.
The Los Angeles Times's Richard Serrano, in June 2004, first described the document, a statement of fact by Lindh prosecutor Paul McNulty (yes, that Paul McNulty) entered into the court record, about the circumstances behind Lindh's interrogation. But to our knowledge, this is the first time the document has become publicly available.
In the weeks after 9/11, the Bush administration feverishly debated what was legal and appropriate treatment for interrogations of al-Qaeda detainees. The Post reports today that the effort began with allowing the CIA access to interrogation techniques not permitted under the Geneva Conventions, but that Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted military interrogators to have the same expanded authority, a position shared by Haynes. According to the document, months before President Bush issued a February 2002 order calling for detainees to be treated humanely "subject to military necessity," Haynes instructed military interrogators to "take the gloves off" on an American citizen. From McNulty's discovery filing:
(An individual identified as U.S. Army #6)'s understanding was that he could not collect (intelligence from Lindh) that could be used in a criminal court. After the first hour of interrogation, he gave the admiral in charge of Mazar-e-Sharif a summary of what the interrogators collected up to that point. The admiral told him that the Secretary of Defense's counsel had authorized him to "take the gloves off" and ask whatever he wanted.
As Serrano and others reported, Lindh, an American citizen, was "was kept in harsh conditions, stripped and tied to a stretcher, and often held for long periods in a large metal container." When a Justice Department ethics attorney, Jesselyn Radack, told a counterterrorism prosecutor that Lindh could not be questioned without his lawyer present if DOJ wanted to build a criminal case against him, she was promptly pushed out of her job. The case against Lindh eventually came down to a 20-year sentence based on a plea bargain, prompting many to speculate that Lindh's harsh treatment -- apparently approved by Rumsfeld's top aides -- ultimately scotched the chances for a successful prosecution on bigger charges than his ties to the Taliban.
"We know he was tortured," says human-rights attorney Scott Horton. "There's no beating around the bush. This is clarifying that the authority was given at the highest levels for torture to occur. The strong suggestion here is that it's Haynes doing that, and the strong suspicion is that the authority for him to do so comes from the secretary of defense." The further suspicion, according to the Post piece, is that the authority for Rumsfeld's attorney to have authorized the abuse of an American citizen came from Vice President Cheney.
- TPM 6/25/2007
UN-FUCKING-BELIEVABLE!!!!!
Posted by: Garth | June 25, 2007 at 07:21 PM
Nurse Ratched?
and that would make Powell the big dumb chief that used all his strength to break free and run away?
Posted by: Garth | June 25, 2007 at 07:26 PM
and we are ALL jack nicholson...
Posted by: Garth | June 25, 2007 at 07:27 PM
karl rove is ellsworth toohey.
Posted by: Garth | June 25, 2007 at 07:28 PM
As usual, nicely put. I confess to complete bafflement about why,
as Jack Balkin also put it, Cheney always wins. All that comes to mind is that he does have some kind of blackmail-like hold on GWB--or else that GWB finds Cheney's absolute certainty (and apparent command of facts) persuasive. I do remember thinking, watching Cheney during the campaign debates, that if I didn't know better I'd think this guy was incredibly well-informed and clued-in; how else could he be so certain. We do know that GWB operates very much on the "how do I feel about this person" level, as opposed to :"does this person make sense".
All this said, the inability of Rice to have an impact is a mystery. I suspect she was incapable of threatening to leave--since if she lost, her career was likely over (from her standpoint).
Posted by: DCA | June 25, 2007 at 08:00 PM
Not letting them know what that position was risked letting them destroy their credibility completely
Wouldn't this imply that they had any credibility to begin with? Becuase, especially with Rice, I haven't seen that much.
Posted by: Jeff | June 25, 2007 at 08:14 PM
Really, the idea that Rice has a crush on Bush is as good an explanation as any.
But even without going there, she knows quite well who loses in any Cheney v. Rice showdown. And her reputation's already too shattered for a resignation to do much good. Her memoirs promise to rival Tenet's in shamelessness.
Posted by: Anderson | June 25, 2007 at 10:34 PM
"Really, the idea that Rice has a crush on Bush is as good an explanation as any."
It's pretty damn sexist, though. Every sort of vile criticism of Dean Acheson possible was said of him and Harry Truman, but no one considered the possibility, or suggested, that Acheson's alleged failings -- "losing China," say -- came because of his crush on Harry.
Posted by: Gary Farber | June 25, 2007 at 11:16 PM
"These articles should be assigned to management classes as studies in what not to do. They describe the exact sort of decision-making process that reliably leads to disaster, and the kinds of personal dynamics that enable it. It's a model of complete organizational breakdown, and it should be studied for generations to come, so that it is never repeated."
Of course, they also go against Dick Cheney's advice:
The third part is up, as you doubtless know.Posted by: Gary Farber | June 25, 2007 at 11:25 PM
Posting rules, Garth
Posted by: Slartibartfast | June 25, 2007 at 11:57 PM
Of course, that advice from Cheney was for the chief of staff. Later came greater wisdom:
Of course it should. Obviously.A shame Dan Quayle never thought of this. Or Spiro Agnew. Or John Nance Garner.
Or that, more to the point, for them, that their respective presidents, and others, didn't buy this.
Posted by: Gary Farber | June 26, 2007 at 12:04 AM
the inability of Rice to have an impact is a mystery.
No it's not. What on earth had she ever done that would make anyone think she was up to the job of National Security Advisor even in a normal administration?
She's no different than a thousand functionaries who'd have been in over their heads, with the crucial difference that her race and gender make it very difficult for people to say "She's in way over her head."
Posted by: Nell | June 26, 2007 at 12:12 AM
""Really, the idea that Rice has a crush on Bush is as good an explanation as any."
It's pretty damn sexist, though. Every sort of vile criticism of Dean Acheson possible was said of him and Harry Truman, but no one considered the possibility, or suggested, that Acheson's alleged failings -- "losing China," say -- came because of his crush on Harry."
Rice's case is a little different. Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm relying on memory, but Rice has in a press conference accidentally referred to Bush as "my husband", and she has accompanied the Bush family on some of it's vacations. Just to hang out, you know.
I don't know if that's a crush but it's kind of weird.
Posted by: DBake | June 26, 2007 at 03:03 AM
DBake: Not at anything so public or verifiable as a press conference. That was a gossipy anecdote, unsourced, supposedly something she blurted out at a dinner party in DC.
I don't know or care what the psychodynamics of her relationship with W are.
She'd be in over her head in her current and previous jobs no matter what, and she's there because she's both a convenient criticism-deflector and because Bush feels comfortable with her "loyalty" (willingness to look like a liar, fool, or lying fool as needed to defend the Bush policy of the moment).
Posted by: Nell | June 26, 2007 at 03:23 AM
Whatever Condi Rice's flaws are, and there appear to be quite significant ones, reducing the systemic problems of the Bush administration's foreign policy to an explantion that the primary, or even a significant, cause is someone's sexual "crush," as if everyone involved were in a freshman high school class, doesn't strike me as a particularly helpful, or on-point, focus of analysis. YMMV.
Posted by: Gary Farber | June 26, 2007 at 03:26 AM
"What on earth had she ever done that would make anyone think she was up to the job of National Security Advisor even in a normal administration?"
That, on the other hand, I think is somewhat unfair, in the sense that prior to the Bush administration, her credentials for the job were perfectly within line and reason with past jobholders, such as Zbigniew Brzezinski, Henry Kissinger, Walt Rostow, Richard Allen, Robert McFarlane, John Poindexter, Anthony Lake, Frank Carlucci, McGeorge Bundy, and the like.
First of all, I wouldn't claim all of these folks were shining examples of brilliant good judgment (Richard Allen? John Poindexter?) or American ideals (Henry Kissinger?), or that their reigns were all masterpieces of competence (Iran-Contra? Bay of Pigs? Iranian hostage crisis?), and I imagine you'll agree, and second of all, their previous credentials were similar: academic study of national security issues, mixed with previous lower level foreign policy/national security government jobs.
In Rice's case, she had been a Soviet and Eastern Europe expert/official on the NSC, including serving as Senior Director Soviet and East European Affairs, as well as Provost of Stanford. She'd been Special Assistant to the Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on the Council on Foreign Relations, as well as a variety of other positions in government, business, and academia.
On paper, prior to holding the job, her credentials were as perfectly reasonable as anyone else's who has held the job.
Beyond that, the only really important criteria, after all, is being who the president wants, anyway. How good or bad the NSA actually then is at their job is an entirely different question.
So far as I can see, the appointment was reasonably defensible/respectable on paper; at least, no less so than Reagan's choices were.
Without doubt as more memoirs are written, and documents emerge, and investigations are launched and eventually completed, we'll know far more of the details of where and how she failed.
Posted by: Gary Farber | June 26, 2007 at 03:51 AM
Thanks for clearing this up. I'll do my best not to spread poorly supported rumors in the future. I take some issue with the end though:
"Whatever Condi Rice's flaws are, and there appear to be quite significant ones, reducing the systemic problems of the Bush administration's foreign policy to an explantion that the primary, or even a significant, cause is someone's sexual "crush," as if everyone involved were in a freshman high school class, doesn't strike me as a particularly helpful, or on-point, focus of analysis. YMMV."
Is it not helpful because these people act more grown up than freshman?
So we're willing to explain the behavior, especially the blatanty irrational behavior, of famous dictators and such by referrring to their psychologies, and the weird dynamics governing how the people in their inner circle inneracted. For some reason we ought not to think that the psychologies of our own elites play any role in policy though. Even when the policy is blatantly irrational. Is this because we're a government of laws and not men, or what?
Another way of putting this: Come on, you don't think petty and silly psychological quirks of those in charge play a role in determining how government acts?
Posted by: DBake | June 26, 2007 at 01:42 PM
Thanks for clearing this up. I'll do my best not to spread poorly supported rumors in the future. I take some issue with the end though:
"Whatever Condi Rice's flaws are, and there appear to be quite significant ones, reducing the systemic problems of the Bush administration's foreign policy to an explantion that the primary, or even a significant, cause is someone's sexual "crush," as if everyone involved were in a freshman high school class, doesn't strike me as a particularly helpful, or on-point, focus of analysis. YMMV."
Is it not helpful because these people act more grown up than freshman?
So we're willing to explain the behavior, especially the blatanty irrational behavior, of famous dictators and such by referrring to their psychologies, and the weird dynamics governing how the people in their inner circle inneracted. For some reason we ought not to think that the psychologies of our own elites play any role in policy though. Even when the policy is blatantly irrational. Is this because we're a government of laws and not men, or what?
Another way of putting this: Come on, you don't think petty and silly psychological quirks of those in charge play a role in determining how government acts?
Posted by: DBake | June 26, 2007 at 01:42 PM
Thanks for clearing this up. I'll do my best not to spread poorly supported rumors in the future. I take some issue with the end though:
"Whatever Condi Rice's flaws are, and there appear to be quite significant ones, reducing the systemic problems of the Bush administration's foreign policy to an explantion that the primary, or even a significant, cause is someone's sexual "crush," as if everyone involved were in a freshman high school class, doesn't strike me as a particularly helpful, or on-point, focus of analysis. YMMV."
Is it not helpful because these people act more grown up than freshman?
So we're willing to explain the behavior, especially the blatanty irrational behavior, of famous dictators and such by referrring to their psychologies, and the weird dynamics governing how the people in their inner circle inneracted. For some reason we ought not to think that the psychologies of our own elites play any role in policy though. Even when the policy is blatantly irrational. Is this because we're a government of laws and not men, or what?
Another way of putting this: Come on, you don't think petty and silly psychological quirks of those in charge play a role in determining how government acts?
Posted by: DBake | June 26, 2007 at 01:42 PM
Either Rice or Powell might easily have been in a position in which they had to represent the position of the United States Government on detention and interrogation. Not letting them know what that position was risked letting them destroy their credibility completely. This is not a minor detail.
Nor was it a minor detail when the same BS was pulled with Christine Todd Whitman, whose credibility as head of the Environmental Protection Agency WAS destroyed completely, after she made an ass of herself in front of the American public and EU ministers, stating pro-environment policies that were then denied by the White House.
Of course, she at least had the self-respect to resign. Eventually.
Posted by: Shotrock | June 26, 2007 at 05:04 PM
One thing that Bush and Bill Clinton have in common is that neither one can control his Dick.
Posted by: George | June 26, 2007 at 06:09 PM