I had a flashback while reading the Newsweek for November 14th, 2005. The story that tweaked my memory was “In The Bunker With Cheney”, which begins with The V.P. berating Senators at the Weekly Republican luncheon for overwhelmingly passing the McCain Amendment against torture by American troops and agents. The magazine quoted Senator McCain as shouting back at Cheney, “This is killing us around the world.” And it is, it truly is. Once presumed to be the good guys, we are now presumed to be defenders of oppression and torture. When we lecture China on “human rights”, we are now perceived as hypocrites. We have lost our moral authority around the world. And still Cheney persists.
Admiral Stansfield Turner, director of the CIA under Jimmy Carter, recently referred to Cheney as the “V.P. for Torture”. And yet Cheney persists in defending the indefensible and the unholy. It’s rare to see a lifelong politician and bureaucrat stand up in public for something so patently evil and unpopular, when any congressional measure could so easily be negated with a secret Presidential Finding which would define Al Qaeda as a “Clear and Present Danger” and authorize torture of its members, in secret. Of course the Administration would then have to take personal responsibility for such a finding, but I still found myself wondering, why the hell is Cheney defending torture so publicly?
That was when I recalled a cold and wet Wednesday evening in L.A. over a decade ago when Clint and Dave stopped by to dry out and warm up. They were cops in LAPD and their boss had them parked all shift long at Tommy Burgers on Rampart, ticketing J-Walkers. The heater in their car didn’t work so when they took their dinner break they came in out of the cold to our Hollywood home and entertained us for 45 minutes with cop stories. Just before they went back on duty they told a story that may be apocryphal – as so many cop stories seem to be – but I think it has a ring of truth. See if you agree.
Two experienced cops (not Clint or Dave) had just begun their evening shift. About six blocks from the station house, just before four in the afternoon, while they were pulled up at a stop sign a late model sedan approached the intersection. The white male driver looked directly at the cops, smiled broadly and rolled right through the stop sign.
It looked to the two cops as if the driver were challenging them to pull him over. Half expecting a chase to ensue the cops “lit him up”. But the driver immediately pulled to the curb. He kept his hands in plain sight on the steering wheel. He produced his license upon request. The driver had no wants and no warrants and the car was clean. When asked why he had run the stop sign the driver offered no excuse. “I was distracted,” he said.
It sounded reasonable, but this guy was setting off every alarm these cops had developed over years working the street. The two cops couldn’t say why, but both felt the hair on the back of their necks standing straight up. The guy was “hinky”, they were certain of that.
A search of the car turned up nothing. Where was he going? “To pick up my daughter. My ex-wife is leaving on a business trip tomorrow so I get Cathy for the next six days straight. We’re going to Disneyland tomorrow and to a ball game afterward.” He produced two third base line tickets for Saturday’s Angel’s game.
Again, it sounded reasonable but … continued below:
the cops couldn’t shake the feeling that something was seriously wrong with this guy. They called the suspect’s ex-wife. She confirmed that he was supposed to pick up their daughter ten minutes ago at her home two blocks away. No, he had never been violent toward her. The divorce, she said, was amicable.
At this point a sergeant arrived on scene. He listened to the cop’s concerns and then ordered them to cut the guy loose and get back to work. Reluctantly the two cops complied, but when handing the driver his ticket one of cops demanded to know why he had smiled at them. “You were challenging us,” said the cop. The driver apologized but insisted his smile was meant as no challenge. “My brother wanted to be a cop. His wife said it was too dangerous. When I saw your car I started thinking how much happier he would have been had he chosen your job over the bitch who is now divorcing him. That’s what distracted me.”
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Yet again, it seemed a reasonable explanation. So why did both cops have such a pain in their gut over letting this guy drive off? Why had he baited them? Why had he dared them to pull him over? They hesitated. The driver asked pointedly if there was anything else. No, said the cop. Was he sure? Yes, said the cop, I’m sure. The suspect returned to his car, waved, and drove slowly away. Three hours later the call came in – a double 187. Inside a modest bungalow were two bodies, a middle aged woman and a fourteen year old girl named Cathy, both shot once in the back of the head. Parked in front of the house was the stop-sign-runner. He surrendered without resistance.
“That chicken-shit”, said Clint “didn’t even threaten to shoot himself.” While Clint laughed at his own joke Dave shook his head sadly. “He wanted to make the cops his accomplices,” said Dave. “He gave them a chance but when they didn’t arrests him, he figured they were partly to blame for what he did later. I guess he thought that made him a little less guilty.”
And that, I realized, is what Cheney is up to. Call it “Guilty Behavior” or “behavior indicating knowledge of guilt”, his defense of the unholy makes sense only if crimes have already been committed. If not, why such a public battle that further weakens an already weakened administration?
But if the Senate reverses its course, if the Republican dominated House should turn down the McCain amendment then every politician in Washington and every one of us by connection will become accessories after the fact with whatever crimes against humanity this administration has already committed. We will be allowing Cheney and Bush to later excuse their own guilt by saying “But you okayed it”, just as they whine when Democrats complain about the conduct of this war to date.
All of us will say later, “We didn’t know what was being done in our name.” But history will ask, “How could you not have known?”
And there is no good answer to that.
