A Top Pentagon Lawyer Faces a Senate Grilling On Torture
With little advance notice, Pentagon general counsel William Haynes quietly resigned at the end of February to take a top legal job at Chevron. But Haynes, a close ally of Vice President Dick Cheney, remains a key figure in a sweeping Senate probe into allegations of abuses to detainees in Defense Department custody.
Haynes was thrust back into the spotlight last week after the disclosure of a March 2003 Justice Department memo concluding that federal laws against torture, assault and maiming would not apply to the overseas interrogation of terror suspects. Haynes requested the memo (which was written by the then Justice Department lawyer John Yoo) and he and his boss, the then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, later used it to justify harsh interrogation practices on terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay. The memo's disclosure raises new questions about the role that Haynes and other Bush-administration lawyers played in crafting legal policies that critics say led to abuses at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere.
It's a role that the Senate Armed Services Committee, overseen by Sen. Carl Levin and its ranking Republican member, Sen. John McCain, has been quietly but aggressively scrutinizing during a two-year investigation. Two sources familiar with the probe, who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, say the panel's investigators have grilled a number of key players—including Special Forces operatives and FBI agents—who were never previously questioned. The panel notified the Pentagon in early February that it wanted to question Haynes. Before receiving any response, investigators learned on Feb. 25 that Haynes was leaving for Chevron in San Francisco. "How often does somebody like that give two weeks' notice and leave town?" said one government source familiar with the sequence of events.
Haynes's departure initially raised concerns about obtaining his testimony without a subpoena, especially after the panel learned that he had retained top criminal defense attorney Terrence O'Donnell, who represented Cheney during the Valerie Plame leak investigation. But O'Donnell told NEWSWEEK that Haynes has agreed to be interviewed, adding that the committee's probe "had nothing to do" with his resignation. A Pentagon spokeswoman said that Haynes had discussed his departure "some months ago" with Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and that he "looks forward to … enjoying a promising private-sector opportunity."
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Member Comments
Posted By: getzel @ 04/21/2008 5:41:55 PM
Comment: Islamic terrorist culture wants you at the gas pump/ copyright Getzel 2002.
We will have a nice LONG lasting WAR and sell lots of weapons/copyright Getzel 1989 referring to the Islamic terror war that they were waging against us for a long time already/ yes I hand delivered the message to every member of Congress in 1989. Yes World leaders adopted my 1989 phrase: LONG WAR/ just Google Long War.
Theoretical telephone conversation : Khomeini talking to President Bush in 1989: Your rules violate our rules, here we rush-to die to protect us from the satanic verses of the west/ no no your rules violate our rules, here sticks and stones may break our bones but words can never hurt us/ copyright Getzel 1989/ Yes I hand delivered that exact message to every member of Congress in 1989. Salmon Rushdie era..
1986 delivered to 50-100 members of Congress: A complete change in the government operating out of Moscow will occur...the change will occur similar to the way the government changed in the Philippines. copyright Getzel 1986.
June 2003 I wrote the exact outcome of the Iraq war...it was easy... President Bush chose the plans for the exact outcome we got...A nice LONG lasting WAR and sell lots of weapons.
I most humbly submit that those are not my best work.
Intelligence analyst: Getzel
War ends We win: when we pass a law that makes the minimum price of gasoline at the pumps: $1.75/gallon.
The ethanol investors do not build ethanol distilleries because monopoly OPEC would lower the price of crude/gasoline to rust out the billion dollar/million barrel a day ethanol stills.
Brazil is energy independent: ethanol; All their cars come built running on ethanol; The gas station fills the tanks with ethanol, no gasoline.
Archer Daniel Midland made millions in the USA selling $1.00 gallon ethanol in the 1990s;
That trumps any canard/invalid objection to ethanol. Use Cellulose ethanol, not corn ethanol.
Cellulose Ethanol energy independence in the USA, will balance the trade deficit, create full employment, bring down the price of fuel, break the monopoly on the pricing of fuel, balance the USA government budget, create less pollution, make the USA energy independent, and end the war because we will stop funding the bad guys everyday at the gas pumps.
With all the cars running on ethanol; the price of oil will collapse and the radical Moslem hordes will no longer have the funds we used to give them from gasoline sales to finance the war against us.
Yes, by 1982 I built a distillery and converted my GM car run to 160 proof ethanol; specifically to keep us out of this war; yes I delivered the message to every member of Congress.
President Bush and your Congress people would rather YOU fight than switch to ethanol. Copyright Getzel: 2005
Posted By: michaelzap @ 04/14/2008 7:01:05 PM
Comment: What does it say about us that most of these folks leave government and go straight to lucrative jobs in the private industry? Now that Chevron is trying to get out their responsibility for cancer, birth defects, and deaths in Ecuador, they are paying Haynes a fortune to slander the environmental activists who helped to bring the case (even smearing the Goldman awards for giving them a prize). I guess he's got the right skills for the job. Mark Fiore has a great new animation about this, which you can watch here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bNjWA3-UGJM
Posted By: getzel @ 04/11/2008 9:15:50 PM
Comment: Islamic terrorist culture wants you at the gas pump/ copyright Getzel 2002.
We will have a nice LONG lasting WAR and sell lots of weapons/copyright Getzel 1989 referring to the Islamic terror war that they were waging against us for a long time already/ yes I hand delivered the message to every member of Congress in 1989. Yes World leaders adopted my 1989 phrase: LONG WAR/ just Google Long War.
Theoretical telephone conversation : Khomeini talking to President Bush in 1989: Your rules violate our rules, here we rush-to die to protect us from the satanic verses of the west/ no no your rules violate our rules, here sticks and stones may break our bones but words can never hurt us/ copyright Getzel 1989/ Yes I hand delivered that exact message to every member of Congress in 1989. Salmon Rushdie era..
1986 delivered to 50-100 members of Congress: A complete change in the government operating out of Moscow will occur...the change will occur similar to the way the government changed in the Philippines. copyright Getzel 1986.
June 2003 I wrote the exact outcome of the Iraq war...it was easy... President Bush chose the plans for the exact outcome we got...A nice LONG lasting WAR and sell lots of weapons.
I most humbly submit that those are not my best work.
Intelligence analyst: Getzel
War ends We win: when we pass a law that makes the minimum price of gasoline at the pumps: $1.75/gallon.
The ethanol investors do not build ethanol distilleries because monopoly OPEC would lower the price of crude/gasoline to rust out the billion dollar/million barrel a day ethanol stills.
Brazil is energy independent: ethanol; All their cars come built running on ethanol; The gas station fills the tanks with ethanol, no gasoline.
Archer Daniel Midland made millions in the USA selling $1.00 gallon ethanol in the 1990s;
That trumps any canard/invalid objection to ethanol. Use Cellulose ethanol, not corn ethanol.
Cellulose Ethanol energy independence in the USA, will balance the trade deficit, create full employment, bring down the price of fuel, break the monopoly on the pricing of fuel, balance the USA government budget, create less pollution, make the USA energy independent, and end the war because we will stop funding the bad guys everyday at the gas pumps.
With all the cars running on ethanol; the price of oil will collapse and the radical Moslem hordes will no longer have the funds we used to give them from gasoline sales to finance the war against us.
Yes, by 1982 I built a distillery and converted my GM car run to 160 proof ethanol; specifically to keep us out of this war; yes I delivered the message to every member of Congress.
President Bush and your Congress people would rather YOU fight than switch to ethanol. Copyright Getzel: 2005