In a Rolling Stone interview (relevant text is below the fold), Speaker Pelosi makes it completely clear that she intends to pursue Contempt of Congress charges against Karl Rove, Harriet Miers, and Josh Bolten. She’s unequivocal about it. On the larger issues surrounding war crimes, she’s less clear but certainly doesn’t rule anything out. What’s kind of striking is that she compare’s Bush’s America to Apartheid South Africa, genocide-ravaged Rwanda, and civil war-battered Lebanon.
What Mr. Leahy is putting forward, in terms of a truth-and-reconciliation committee, has always been helpful. It was helpful in South Africa, it was helpful in Rwanda, and they were
talking about doing it in places like Lebanon.
I never get the sense that the people on cable news think of the Bush years as an enormous crime scene and giant stain on our national reputation, comparable in some way to Apartheid. But that’s exactly what we’re dealing with now. And then there’s the economy…
The last administration didn’t place much of an emphasis
on accountability. Sen. Patrick Leahy called yesterday for a “truth
commission” to investigate abuses of power under Bush, and Rep.
John Conyers has sponsored a similar bill. Do you support such a
process?
I support what Mr. Conyers is doing. I look at it from the
standpoint of a separation of powers. We believe there was a
politicizing of the Justice Department under President Bush, that
conversations took place at the White House that supported that
activity. We asked for those documents, but we did not receive
them. We asked for those people to testify, but they did not come.
That, for us, is a violation of the Constitution. So what we’re
talking about is bigger than any specific activity. We’re talking
about contempt of Congress — Article One, the legislative
branch.I also support what President Obama has said: “My approach is to
look forward, recognizing that no one is above the law.” Both of
those approaches are correct. It is also correct for us, as the
first branch of government, to say, “The White House, no matter who
is in it, cannot violate the Constitution by not being accountable
to the Congress.” And we will continue to pursue our
contempt-of-Congress charges against these people for what we
believe has been the politicizing of the Justice Department.But Conyers is asking for more than that. He wants
subpoena power to investigate potential abuses of war powers, to
force people to testify about torture and find out what was done at
Guantánamo and the CIA’s black sites. Do you foresee a
scenario in which senior members of the Bush administration are
actually prosecuted?I think so. The American people deserve answers. Where we are now,
in terms of prosecution of White House staff, is that we have
charged them with contempt of Congress. We’re talking about Harriet
Miers, Josh Bolten and Karl Rove. The natural course of events from
here is that the speaker will determine what charge we’re going to
pursue, because there are more than one. Under Bush, the Justice
Department told the U.S. attorney not to prosecute the case. So the
beat goes on — it just gets worse. We don’t know what will
happen, because they’ve delayed it a long time.I’m talking more about the level of a Donald Rumsfeld
— people who authorized torture and greenlighted the
kidnapping and rendition of innocent people.
I didn’t like their policies, which is why we needed to win the
election — to get them out of power. But I don’t know what
the evidence is against them on any specific charge. When you have
a truth-and-reconciliation commission . . . look, I’m still
fighting the bombing of Cambodia. I still have my gripes with the
administration that bombed Cambodia before you were born, so I
think it’s important to bring these things out. If you have a case
against someone, you bring a case.With all due respect, we’ve had elections before that
tossed people out, but then the same people returned to power later
just as Dick Cheney did after leaving the Nixon administration. If
we turn the page without full examination and prosecution, aren’t
we in danger of seeing this again?
We should have full examination, I’m not denying that. You asked me
a specific question: “Should they be charged?” I think that further
information might take us to that place, but what we want to do is
unify the American people. The American people do not want
wrongdoing to go unaddressed. We don’t want any Democratic or
Republican administration to abuse power, and that’s what they
tried to do with wiretapping, that’s what they did with
politicizing the Justice Department, that’s what they did in many
more ways that we could see almost on a daily basis. And yes, that
should be stopped.What Mr. Leahy is putting forward, in terms of a
truth-and-reconciliation committee, has always been helpful. It was
helpful in South Africa, it was helpful in Rwanda, and they were
talking about doing it in places like Lebanon. Ultimately, only the
Congress can be responsible for preserving our constitutional
prerogatives — that we get information from the executive
branch when we ask for it, that members of the administration
appear before us when they are called to the Congress.
