William J. Haynes has been nominated to a Virginia seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. He is responsible for much of the "legal opinions" that put in place the policies of condoning torture by the military. This is the second time Bush has nominated him for this position. He was initially nominated in 2003 and the Democrats blocked a vote on his nomination (not without consequences, I might add, but I digress). He was renominated for the same seat by Bush on 2/14/2005.
IT IS imperative that his appointment be blocked. As general counsel for the Department of Defense, he has claimed essentially that the president can choose to disregard any law that he, the president, in his sole opinion, believes to conflict with his duties as commander in chief. No court review. No appeals. No oversight by any other person or entity in this government.
From sourcewatch.org:
The Fourth Circuit is widely viewed as the most conservative federal appeals court in the country. Known for its aggressive decisions on such hot-button issues as states' rights, driver privacy, Miranda rights and other rights of the accused, civil rights, violence against women, and other issues, some speculate that the court's more extreme judges intentionally break new legal ground to try to push the Supreme Court further rightward. It has also heard, or is likely to hear, several cases involving the issues of enemy combatants and responses to terrorism including cases involving Yasir Hamdi and Zacarias Moussaoui. ...If Haynes were confirmed, he would tilt this court even more dangerously to the right.
During his tenure as General Counsel, Haynes was responsible for the development, implementation and promotion of three controversial Bush Administration policies:
The refusal to treat any of the hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay as prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions of 1949, and conversely, the refusal to apply Contsitutionally mandated due process to these Guantanamo Bay prisoners, who are detained with a status of Non-POW by the United States Government without being convicted of any illegal act.
Haynes appointed a working group led by John C. Yoo and Air Force general counsel Mary Walker that produced a report proposing ways in which existing international treaties banning torture could be circumvented, either through legal technicalities or by invoking the President's ultimate authority to wage war as he sees fit.
The Defense Department's military tribunal plan for trying suspected war criminals. The indefinite detention of U.S. citizens by the Executive Branch without legal counsel or judicial review.
It gets confusing trying to keep all of this straight. But independentjudiciary.org has an excellent timeline of events that help sort it out:
CHRONOLOGY OF FOURTH CIRCUIT NOMINEE WILLIAM J. HAYNES' INVOLVEMENT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DoD INTERROGATION POLICIES
November 27, 2002: Haynes recommended that Secretary Rumsfeld approve the use of newly-proposed counter-resistance techniques for detainee interrogation that amounted to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. (Memorandum, William J. Haynes, II to Secretary of Defense re Counter-Resistance Techniques, November 27, 2002)
December 2, 2002: Secretary Rumsfeld approved all of Haynes' recommendations. (Action Memo, William J. Haynes, II to Secretary of Defense, Subject: Counter-Resistance Techniques, December 2, 2002)
January 15, 2003: Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora "delivered an unsigned draft memo to Mr. Haynes, and said that he planned to `sign it out' that afternoon - making it an official document - unless the harsh interrogation techniques were suspended. This draft memo described U.S. interrogations at Guantánamo as `at a minimum cruel and unusual treatment, and, at worst, torture.'" (Memorandum, Alberto J. Mora to Inspector General, Department of the Navy, re: Statement for the Record: Office of General Counsel Involvement in Interrogation Issues, July 7, 2004; Jane Mayer, The Memo, How an Internal Effort to Ban the Abuse and Torture of Detainees Was Thwarted, NEW YORKER, Feb. 27, 2006 [hereinafter "Mayer, The Memo"])
January 15, 2003: Secretary Rumsfeld rescinded his approval of the techniques Haynes recommended and ordered Haynes to convene a working group to study the issue and make further recommendations. (Memorandum, Donald Rumsfeld to Commander USSOUTHCOM re Counter-Resistance Techniques, Jan. 15, 2003; Donald Rumsfeld, Memorandum for the General Counsel of the Department of Defense re Detainee Interrogations, Jan. 15, 2003)
Late January 2003: Haynes went to John Yoo, his close friend at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and solicited a legal opinion that authorized the cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees with few restrictions. (Mayer, The Memo)
Mid-February 2003: Top military officers objected to the working group's use of the Yoo memo as the basis for the draft working group report, and Navy General Counsel Alberto Mora told Haynes that the draft report was "deeply flawed" and should be "locked in a drawer ... and `never see the light of day again.'" (Mayer, The Memo; Dana Priest & Bradley Graham, U.S. Struggled Over How Far to Push Tactics; Documents Show Back-and-Forth on Interrogation Policy, WASH. POST, June 24, 2004)
April 2, 2003: In a letter to the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, Haynes declared that the "United States does not condone torture." (Letter from William J. Haynes, II to Kenneth Roth, Executive Director, Humans Rights Watch, Apr. 2, 2003)
April 4, 2003: Without informing top military officers who had objected to earlier drafts of the working group report, Haynes and his allies in the working group secretly issued a final report, which adopted many of the interrogation techniques previously recommended by Haynes and rescinded by Secretary Rumsfeld and, consistent with the Yoo memo, advised that laws banning torture were "inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to [the president's] Commander-in-Chief authority." (Working Group Report on Detainee Interrogation in the Global War on Terrorism: Assessment of Legal, Historical, Policy, and Operational Considerations Apr. 4, 2003; Mayer, The Memo)
April 16, 2003 Unbeknownst to many military officials, including members of the working group like Mora, Haynes provided Secretary Rumsfeld the April 4 report, and Secretary Rumsfeld approved 24 of the 35 interrogation techniques the report recommended. (Memorandum, Donald Rumsfeld to Commander USSOUTHCOM re Counter-Resistance Techniques in the War on Terrorism, April 16, 2003; Dana Priest & R. Jeffrey Smith, Memo Offered Justification for Use of Torture; Justice Dept. Gave Advice in 2002, WASH. POST, June 8, 2004)
Spring 2003: Unbeknownst to many military officers, including members of the working group, Haynes either disseminated or permitted the dissemination of the working group report to the staff judge advocate at the Baghdad command in Iraq, which used the report to advise General Sanchez about permissible interrogation techniques. (Mayer, The Memo; LTG Anthony R. Jones, AR 15-6 Investigation of the Abu Ghraib Prison and 205th Military Intelligence Brigade, Aug. 23, 2004)
June 25, 2003: Haynes wrote a letter to Senator Leahy stating that the military's policy did not permit the use of "cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment." (Letter from William J. Haynes, II to The Honorable Patrick J. Leahy, June 25, 2003)
June 26, 2003: On U.N. International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, the White House issued a statement declaring "its strong solidarity with torture victims across the world," and called "torture an affront to human dignity everywhere." (Statement by the President, United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, June 26, 2003)
March 17, 2005: After the torture scandal broke, the Pentagon, with Haynes' approval, declared the working group report a "non-operational `historical' document." (Memorandum, Daniel J. Dell'Orto for William J. Haynes, II to the Judge Advocates General and the Staff Judge Advocate to the Commandant, Subject: Department of Defense Interrogation Policy, March 17, 2005; Mayer, The Memo)
Late 2005: At a meeting of top military officials called by Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England, Haynes and Stephen Cambone, under-secretary of defense for intelligence, rejected an otherwise unanimously-supported proposal to bring official Pentagon policy regarding detainee treatment in line with Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. (Mayer, The Memo)
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http://www.independentjudiciary.com/...]
Mr. Haynes has been nominated to a Virginia seat on the Fourth Circuit, although his connection to that state is tenuous at best. When he was initially nominated, he did not even live in Virginia. He was living in D.C. He reportedly has recently purchased a house in northern Virginia, which is apparently enough to satisfy Republicans. His nomination is strongly opposed by NELA as well as many other organizations.
He is not a member of the Virginia Bar, and of all the other states in the Fourth Circuit, he has been a member only of the North Carolina bar, where his membership was "inactive" for "a number of years." In fact, Mr. Haynes is not admitted to practice in any court in the Fourth Circuit - including the appellate court to which he has been nominated - except for a district court in North Carolina. Despite having been nominated to one of the most influential federal appeals courts in the country, Mr. Haynes has almost no trial court experience, and no appellate experience at all. In his Judiciary Committee questionnaire, Mr. Haynes was able to list only three cases he litigated himself, none of which were in federal court. With respect to the other cases he handled, he took on an admittedly "supervisory role," which amounted, often times, to nothing more than reviewing briefs. He has tried only one case to verdict or judgment.
[
http://www.nela.org/...]
In 2002, Haynes announced that some suspects might not be freed, even if they were found innocent. He has said, "We may hold enemy combatants for the duration of the conflict and we don't see an end in sight right now." (Chattanooga Free Press article by Sally Buzbee, 3/22/02)
When the Center for Biological Diversity sued the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense because of their violation of a treaty prohibiting the killing of migratory birds in 2002, the DoD (of which Haynes was the general counsel) actually argued that killing the birds was helpful to birdwatchers because it would make them more rare and thus more thrilling when they saw them. When questioned about this brief by Senator Feingold, he stated that he had played no role in developing the arguments set out in the brief. But the case was one of those he listed in response to the Judiciary Committee questionnaire asking for the ten most significant cases he personally litigated (although he made distinction that he had not personally litigated it - he could only list 2 cases that he had personally litigated.) The other 8 cases he listed as having personally reviewed the briefs. However,his response to Feingold suggests that he did not even look at the arguments being made in the case.
Even more egregious is that he appears to have been responsible for disseminating 2 different sets of information - one to those who were critical of the military allowing torture and one to those who were not. In this regard, on June 25, 2003, in his capacity as Defense Department general counsel, Haynes responded to a letter from Senator Leahy who was expressing his concern about rumors of prisoner abuse and torture and assured Leahy in a carefully worded letter that the Administration's "policy" was "to comply with all of its legal obligations in its treatment of detainees, and in particular with legal obligations prohibiting torture."
During the hearings after his first nomination,
Senator Durbin asked him about a speech in which he defended the enemy combatant policy as an appropriate exercise of the President's authority to use deadly force, and therefore any lesser force necessary to capture terrorists. Senator Durbin asked Haynes whether, based on the argument he made in this speech, he believed the President had the authority to use deadly force against American citizens on U.S. soil. Instead of answering, Haynes wrote: "`[T]he President has authority under the Constitution to take action to deter and prevent acts of international terrorism against the United States.'" When Senator Durbin asked him again to answer the specific question, he reiterated his earlier answer.
In addition, when asked by Senator Kennedy in written questions why juveniles at Guantanamo had not been kept separate from adults as required by international standards, Haynes replied: "Because I am answering questions in my personal capacity, I am limited in my ability to answer certain questions" and improperly referred Senator Kennedy to the Department of Defense to receive an answer.
There are INFINITE reasons to oppose this appointment. We already have Bybee on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals - who worked hand-in-hand with Addington, Yoo, Haynes, and Gonzalez to craft the torture memos. Let's not have another sorry excuse for a judge be confirmed.
You can take action here below. Call and email the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee TODAY!!!! The Minority Members (Democrats)
Patrick J. Leahy (D-VT)
[Ranking Member]
202-224-4242 202-224-3479
[http://leahy.senate.gov/]
Edward M. Kennedy (D-MA)
202-224-4543 202-224-2417
[http://kennedy.senate.gov/...]
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D-DE)
202-224-5042 202-224-0139
[http://www.biden.senate.gov/...]
Herb Kohl (D-WI)
202-224-5653 202-224-9787
[http://kohl.senate.gov/...]
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)
202-224-3841 202-228-3954
[http://feinstein.senate.gov/...]
Charles Schumer (D-NY)
202-224-6542 202-228-3027
[http://schumer.senate.gov/...]
Russell D. Feingold (D-WI)
202-224-5323 202-224-2725
[http://www.senate.gov/...]
Richard J. Durbin (D-IL)
202-224-2152 202-228-0400
[http://durbin.senate.gov/...]
Majority Members (Republicans)'
Arlen Specter (R-PA) [Chairman]
202-224-4254 202-228-1229
[http://specter.senate.gov/...]
Orrin G. Hatch (R-UT)
202-224-5251 202-224-6331
[http://hatch.senate.gov/...]
Charles E. Grassley (R-IA)
202-224-3744 202-224-6020
[http://grassley.senate.gov/...]
Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
202-224-4521 202-224-2207
[http://kyl.senate.gov/...]
Mike DeWine (R-OH)
202-224-2315 202-224-6519
[http://dewine.senate.gov/]
Jeff Sessions (R-AL)
202-224-4124 202-224-3149
[http://sessions.senate.gov/...]
Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
202-224-5972 202-224-3808
[http://www.senate.gov/...]
John Cornyn (R-TX)
202-224-2934 202-228-2856
[http://cornyn.senate.gov/...]
Sam Brownback (R-KS)
202-224-6521 202-228-1265
[http://brownback.senate.gov/...]
Tom Coburn (R-OK)
202-224-5754 202-224-6008
[http://coburn.senate.gov/...]
OR you can take action at the following websites:
[http://www.pfaw.org]
[http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/...]
[http://www.pfaw.org/...]