If you do not remember who Coleen Rowley is, she was an FBI Special Agent and Lawyer in Minneapolis, where she served as chief legal advisor, who became well known because of the paper she wrote for FBI Director Mueller detailing how FBI headquarters had mishandled the request of the Minneapolis Field Office for a more complete investigation of Zacarias Moussaoui. He was in custody and the Field Office felt there was sufficient evidence to warrant examining his computer, a request that was denied by headquarters. Rowley became famous as a whistle blower, was one of three female whistle blowers (along with Sherron Watkins of Enron and Cynthia Cooper of WorldCom) named as Time Magazine's 2002 Persons of the Year. After retiring from the FBI she ran as the Democratic-Farm-Labor candidate for the 6th Congressional District of MN (against John Kline) in 2006.
In today's New York Times she has a series of 11 questions she believes Senate should ask of James Comey before confirming him as Director of the FBI. I strongly urge people to read Questions for the F.B.I. Nominee.
Below the fold I will explore several of those 11 questions.
1. Will you maintain the F.B.I. ban on torture and coercing of statements and confessions? Would you instruct F.B.I. agents to investigate all credible reports, including those involving other federal personnel, of violations of Sections 2340 and 2441 of Title 18 of the United States Code, which define torture and war crimes? (In 2002, according to a Justice Department report, F.B.I. agents at Guantánamo Bay created a “war crimes file” to document accusations of prisoner mistreatment by American military personnel, but an F.B.I. official ordered that the file be closed in 2003.)
One of the great failures of the current administration in the minds of many of us was its failure to honestly examine the misdeeds of the CIA and others in the mistreatment and torture of those taken into custody after 9-11. We know the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations that were a violation of US and International. We have known for some time that the FBI personnel on the scene objected to how prisoners were being questioned, among other reasons because of the ineffectiveness of such an approach to gaining reliable information (for examples of a more effective approach to interrogation one can explore the record of Lebanese-born FBI agent and interrogator Ali Soufan). Leon Panetta, as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency argued successfully for not looking back. I fear, and I am not alone, that in agreeing to this the Obama administration effectively validated what had been done in a fashion similar to Gerald Ford's pardoning of Richard Nixon for Watergate and related events - as the latter clearly leads to the abuses in the Reagan Administration of Iran-Contra, the former can be seen as an acquiescence in violation of law, Constitution and principles that points directly at the ongoing programs of the NSA and should lead us to wonder what else might still be being done ostensibly in the name of national security that would appall us and the international community. While the statute of limitations under US law has expired (except in any cases resulting in death, since there is no statute of limitations for homicide), there is no such limitation in prosecution violations of international law and if this nation is going to insist on being exempt from the reach of the International Criminal Court, then do we not have an obligation to investigate and if appropriate prosecute crimes that would normally be in their purview ourselves?
6. Do you believe there is a trade-off between civil liberties and national security, or do you think, as Mr. Obama stated when he ran for president, that this is a false choice? Where do you believe the balance between privacy and safety can be found, when the government has ready access to vast amounts of data collected by communications companies?
This is a critical question. The FBI is supposed to be responsible for providing protection against terrorism within the United States. If the Director of the FBI will not commit to drawing lines that protect our civil liberties, then do we still have civil liberties? Where does Comey, who approved "
13 harsh interrogation tactics, including waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, for use on suspects by officers of the C.I.A." (from question 4) draw the line, if at all?
I have quoted two complete questions and given you the heart of a third. Each of these questions is something about which we should be concerned. If the Senate is going to insist on protecting the rights of Americans - and accused foreigners - under the Constitution (whose texts talk about "persons" not citizens) does not it have an obligation to put the nominee on the record on these important issues?
We should remember that the long-time first Director of the FBI saw nothing wrong with running roughshod over the rights of Americans he did not like. To give a sense of how much the power of the FBI director can be used to abuse the rights of others, allow me to quote from this piece by Jeffrey Weiner on eradicating the Hoover legacy:
In his capacity as Acting Attorney General in 1975, Senior Federal Judge Laurence H. Silberman — subsequently appointed by President Reagan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia — read the entirety of Hoover’s secret files. In a July 2005 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece, he described the experience as“the singleworst experience of my long governmental service.” He went on to state:
I intend to take to my grave nasty bits of information on various political figures—some still active. As bad as the dirt collection business was, perhaps even worse was the evidence that he allowed — even offered — the bureau to be used by presidents for nakedly political purposes. … [T]he most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends.
I offer those words from Silberman not only because it is important to remember how the FBI has used information gathered in the past to distort the political as well as the legal processes, but because what we are seeing of information being gathered by the NSA represents a similar threat.
Rowley's last question is about as blunt as things can be, and to my mind puts it all in context:
11. Officials say that great national harm will result from the disclosure of secret activities that are legally questionable. What do you think of this proposed remedy: The government should abide by international law and refrain from infringing on the rights of American citizens in the first place?
That is a simple proposition.
Might I suggest that any person in any position of high authority - including the President of the United States, who is not willing to abide by Rowley's proposed remedy should be considered unworthy to hold that office. We can start by insisting that the person presiding over the primary domestic investigative body set an example.
If not, how do we have any guarantee that any of our enumerated rights still have any meaning?