The Case for a Truth Commission

Here is Senator Leahy's take on why we need a "Truth Commission" to air the dirty laundry of the Bush administration. He makes some compelling points. In making his argument, Senator Leahy points to a Senate investigation of 30 years ago. Although that investigation revealed a great deal about what our government agencies had been up to - it did NOTHING to prevent the abuse of power which took place during the Bush Administration.

I am not in favor of a 'Truth Commission". I am of the opinion that if there has been any criminal wrong doing by the Bush administration, then those responsible should be held criminally responsible - and not just be given the opportunity purge themselves in public. We withstood the investigation into the sexual activities of a Democrat Commander in Chief - surely we can endure the investigation of illegal wiretapping, torture and the politicization of the justice department by Republicans. If we can't - shame on us.

By Senator Patrick Leahy

More than 30 years ago, a special Senate investigation peered into abuses that included spying on the American people by their own government.

The findings by Senator Frank Church's committee, drawn from testimony spanning 800 witnesses and thousands of pages of government documents, revealed how powerful government surveillance tools were misused against the American people. For instance, the FBI's COINTELPRO operation spent more than two decades searching in vain for communist influence in the NAACP and infiltrated domestic groups that, for example, advocated for women's rights. The Church committee's work led to creation of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and later to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act--reforms that largely held until the Bush years. (See George W. Bush's biggest economic mistakes.)

The parallels with today are clear, and so are the lessons. Then, as in recent years, some were willing, in the name of security, to trade away the people's rights as if they were written in sand, not stone. For much of this decade, we have read about and witnessed such abuses as the scandal at Abu Ghraib, the disclosure of torture memos and the revelations about the warrantless surveillance of Americans.

So what is to be done about the abuses of the Bush years? Some say do nothing, and a few Senators even tried to make Attorney General Eric Holder promise in his confirmation hearings to launch no prosecutions for Bush-era lawbreaking. At the opposite end of the spectrum, others say that even if it takes many years and divides the country and distracts from the urgent priority of fixing the economy, we must prosecute Bush Administration officials to lay down a marker. The courts are already considering congressional subpoenas that were issued earlier as well as claims of privilege and legal immunities. Those cases will stretch out for some time, as would prosecutions--taking even a decade or longer. Moreover, it is easier for prosecutors to net those far down the ladder than those at the top, who set the tone and the policies.

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