MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript
Interview
MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" - Transcript
MSNBC "Countdown With Keith Olbermann" Interview With Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) Interviewer: Keith Olbermann
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MR. OLBERMANN: Tomorrow morning we'll see the first public hearing in Congress on the Bush administration's legalization of torture. It will come from the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts.
We're joined now by the chairman, Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democrat of Rhode Island.
Great thanks for your time tonight, Senator.
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Thank you. Wonderful to be with you.
MR. OLBERMANN: As a result of your hearing, is there a specific fact that we, the country, should know by tomorrow afternoon that we don't know tonight?
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I think what I'm really more doing is trying to build a foundation for looking at the Office of Professional Responsibility opinions that will come out about the OLC torture memos. So I hope what America will learn is that the facts that were alleged in the torture memos are very likely not true. The legal theories were contested even by Bush administration lawyers, who weren't in on the fix; and a little bit about what the consequences are for lawyers who commit professional malfeasance.
MR. OLBERMANN: You mentioned some of that blow-back inside the Bush administration. Philip Zelikow was the counselor to the secretary of State, Dr. Rice, and wrote the now famous anti-torture memo a couple of years after the torture occurred, 2005. Why is he relevant? What do you plan to do about whoever ordered that anti- torture memo destroyed?
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: He's relevant because he's one of a number of government officials who got a look at these Office of Legal Counsel torture memos and were appalled at what they saw -- the shoddy legal scholarship and the preposterous conclusions. And like some of the judge advocate general lawyers who fought back, he too fought back.
And what's interesting is not only that the opinions were so bad, but it produced this result from the State Department and from Mr. Zelikow. But when he fought back, the response wasn't, "Oh, my God, we've got to get to the bottom of this; let's get the real legal answer here," the response was, "Withdraw your memo. Tear up all copies. You're silenced."
MR. OLBERMANN: Your other central witness on the docket here, Ali Soufan, who participated in some of the interrogations, that's field experience. How's it relevant to the legal calls that these Bush lawyers made?
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Because the predicate in the OLC opinions for a lot of these legal calls are assertions of fact about how imminent the need was, about how effective the techniques were, about how there weren't adequate alternatives to get information, and about how sort of amateurish regular interrogation was compared to the so-called CIA experts. And Ali Soufan does a wonderful job of blowing up those factual predicates that OLC swallowed hook, line and sinker.
MR. OLBERMANN: And Senator, isn't the fundamental question about those memos whether they gave honest legal opinions or if they amounted to kind of a legal self-fulfilling prophecy set? "We need a memo that makes this legal. You go write one." And if that's the case, why aren't the authors or the instigators of those memos testifying tomorrow?
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: Well, we don't even have the Office of Professional Responsibility report out. So I think it would be premature to bring them in until we know what that report says. This is a foundation-setting hearing. Once the OPR report is out, I'm confident that Chairman Leahy will either authorize hearings or most likely conduct them in the Judiciary Committee himself, and then we'll go on from there. So this is the beginning of a several-step process, and more to come.
MR. OLBERMANN: On the eve of this, can you address those people who say better just to leave this alone?
SEN. WHITEHOUSE: I don't think that's right. For one thing, the difference between an education in the ongoing experience that is American democracy and a blueprint hidden away for somebody else to come back and do this all over again is sunlight. And sunlight has to be cast on this.
Second, there are two problems here. The first is the torture itself, as abhorrent as that was. The second is all the damage that was done in the structure of government to make that torture possible. That's an equally important story, and it has to be told, because American democracy is important.
MR. OLBERMANN: Indeed, sir. The chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, Senator Whitehouse of Rhode Island. Again, thanks for your time tonight. Good luck with it tomorrow.
END.
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