Tired of torture yet?
How do we make hard decisions?
Former CIA and congressional counsel Vicki Divoll makes an intelligent interjection in the ongoing torture debates in today’s New York Times.
First, she points out that the CIA notifying only four Members of Congress when it commenced coercive interrogations in 2002 essentially subverts the Constitutional allocation of power to Congress:
The framers of the Constitution gave aggregate, not individual, powers to the legislative branch. For the Gang of Four to have waved their arms and yelled at mid-level C.I.A. briefers, or written harsh letters to the president and vice president, would have been useless. Four members do not have the ability, on their own, to bring the great weight of the constitutional authority of Congress to bear.
This is a significant, but often overlooked fact in today’s political environment. During a time when people in congressional leadership positions sometimes appear as political superstars, we forget that, singly, they have no policy making authority. Congress derives its entire fiat from a collective voting act.
She also points out that the “Gang of Four” procedure applied is unprecedented. There are notification exceptions for national security emergencies, but even then notification must include “the majority and minority leadership of the House and Senate, in addition to the intelligence committee leaders.”
On Divoll’s account, oversight is why the intelligence committees exist:
“These committees were entrusted with the faith of the American people to oversee aggressive intelligence operations done in all of our names, and to ensure that they are necessary, effective and consistent with American laws and values.”
The real problem with the “Gang of Four” approach is that it eviscerates this public deliberation.
As Divoll concludes, “The framers of the Constitution never intended for small numbers of legislators to be culled from Congress and expected to act as a check on the excesses of the executive.”
What’s useful about Divoll’s approach is that it questions the decision procedure used to allow coercive interrogation techniques. Torture may be constitutional and may even accord with our basic values in some cases. Deciding that question takes reasoned moral reflection. Congress exists to perform that reflection on the part of the American people, and ensure that the executive branch is acting in accordance with our moral orientation.
No matter what the outcome of such deliberations, it’s becoming disturbingly clear that they were not undertaken in authorizing “enhanced interrogations.”
–Sam
Related posts:
- The people’s court
- Linker, Sullivan, and torture (continued)
- Term limit tensions
- Torture Photos
- I shall not tell a lie (unless I have to)
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