The Washington Post has a pretty interesting scoop that of course wasn't touched on any of the morning news shows that I saw today:
The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing. The memos were the first -- and, for years, the only -- tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaeda leaders, the sources said. The story does suffer from bad timing -- presidential debate, economic meltdown, etc. -- but it also may die because in our TV-and-blog-crazed universe, traditional investigative-type newspaper stories seem to increasingly get lost, a trend that was duly noted at a recent journalism conference:
"One of the biggest casualties of new media—and I guess we're as guilty as anyone else—is consequential journalism doesn't feel as consequential as it used to be," said Jim VandeHei. "And I don't know if we've really reckoned with this."
"We haven't really reckoned with big issues, even with two wars going on and even with the economy being in the state that it's in," said Mr. Stengel. "We're still caught in these very small stories that happen all day long every day and who's going to win this news cycle? And I don't know if that's so great for the electorate."
Totally agreed. Recently, I was stunned that a recent New York Times front-page expose on McCain's ties to the gambling industry (and his own proclivities at the craps table) had almost no shelf life, not even on the liberal blogs like Daily Kos that currently are devoted to little else besides bashing McCain. It seems like we can't process anything beyond did you hear the latest outrageous thing that some B-list politico said on "Morning Joe" or "The Situation Room?"
Sad. And as for the issue at hand -- the Bush administration and its torture policies that I believe are illegal -- this article points to why I believe it is important to look at these potential crimes after 1/20/09 (something that Obama hasn't completely ruled out, as he told the Daily News in April). If punishment truly is a deterrence to crime, shouldn't we try to deter any criminal instincts among future White Houses, be they Republican or Democratic?
