Obstructing Justice, Bipartisanly

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Details this week on the thwarting of the most advanced attempt at prosecuting Bush adminitration torture and other war crimes.

David Corn's column is sub-headed, "A WikiLeaks cable shows that when Spain considered a criminal case against ex-Bush officials, the Obama White House and Republicans got really bipartisan."

Corn writes—

In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A "confidential" April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department—one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks—details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.

The prosecution would have been of

... former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, former chief of staff and legal adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney; William Haynes, the Pentagon's former general counsel; Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy; Jay Bybee, former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and John Yoo, a former official in the Office of Legal Counsel.

Among other actions, the Obama administration used Republican emissaries to Spain, Judd Gregg and Mel Martinez, to put a stop to this.

That was during April 2009.

By August, there this little development: "Holder Overturns Justice Jackson and Nuremberg."

Peterr wrote at the time that, with Holder's statement that "the Department of Justice will not prosecute anyone who acted in good faith and within the scope of the legal guidance given by the Office of Legal Counsel regarding the interrogation of detainees"

... Holder baptized the infamous OLC memos as legally binding doctrine that validates the conduct of anyone who wishes to offer the same defense put forward by the defendants at Nuremberg: "Befehl ist Befehl," or in English, "an order is an order."

Scott Horton here, on Spanish media coverage of U.S. interference in the country's criminal justice system. Horton writes of the background—

The cables also reflect a high level of concern at the prospect that Spanish and German prosecutors ...would share notes and begin taking action. In fact exactly this sort of cooperation occurred (as it has occurred between Spanish, German, and Italian prosecutors in several other cases involving the CIA extraordinary rendition program), and U.S. concerns that it would block their efforts were proven correct. After political pressure was applied to Germany to withdraw the arrest warrants, they were simply reissued by the Spanish magistrates, who were better shielded against political manipulation.

Shielded from domestic manipulation, perhaps; not shielded from the awesome might of American bipartisanship.