Book Review: The Dark Side

I just finished reading Dark side : the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on american ideals (Linkcat) by Jane Mayer of the The New Yorker. This tremendously important book details the deeds that the Bush Administration has been doing in our name. Torture, illegal spying, kidnapping, suspension of habeas corpus, secret prisons and so on. I found it to be both extraordinarily compelling, but also painful to read.





It is frightening what a very small group of very high administration officials were able to do through the use of fear and panic. Below is my full review.

You may never have heard of David Addington. You should. Here is a New Yorker story by Mayer: Letter from Washington: The Hidden Power: The New Yorker. Another story from WAPO: David Ignatius - Cheney's Cheney - washingtonpost.com. And finally this profile: Right Web Profile David Addington

If you want to fight for the rule of law, you could do a whole lot worse than making a tax deductible donation to the folks at the Center for Constitutional Rights.



(Here is the Amazon link if you don't want to wait for a library hold: The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How The War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals by Jane Mayer)




‘The Dark Side’ by Jane Mayer tells one of the most profoundly disturbing stories that I have ever read. Mayer details how the Bush Administration led America to what VP Dick Cheney called ‘the dark side’ in order to fight terrorism. A small coterie of officials at the highest level of the administration took this country down a path that ignored and thus destroyed the rule of law. Whether the damage is permanent remains to be seen.

Here are some of the most salient points:

Mayer confirms what others have asserted: that Cheney runs the national security apparatus. At least in this realm, Cheney operates like the prime minister. What is less known is the extraordinary power exercised by his legal counsel, David Addington. Cheney and Addington share a belief in an extreme view of the proper powers of the President in the national security area. In their view, the President has no limits on his power. None. Cheney used 9/11 to snatch greatly increased power for the executive.

To be fair, the top officials felt a huge personal responsibility to protect the US from another terrorist attack. One can only imagine the burden. This burden caused them to act out of fear and panic. Any action that might help reduce the chances of another attack even by a small amount was worth doing. They acted as if they and all Americans were cowering weaklings willing to jettison liberty for security. As Ben Franklin’s aphorism concluded, we got neither.

As a lawyer, I found it personally distressing that lawyers played the key role in providing the ‘golden shield’ of legal immunity for all manner of horrific acts in the quest for ‘actionable intelligence’. Lawyers, especially government lawyers, are supposed to tell their clients ‘no’ when a proposed action crosses the line into criminality. A handful of lawyers, John Yoo, Alberto Gonzales, and Addington in particular, always gave their bosses the answer they wanted, ‘yes, we can torture, spy, kidnap, hold secret prisoners in secret prisons without charges’.

A few lawyers within the administration did resist. When Jack Goldsmith the newly appointed head of the DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel discovered John Yoo’s secret ‘torture memo’, he moved successfully to get it revoked. Less known is that after Goldsmith left under extreme pressure, a new memo authorizing torture was issued by Steven Bradbury. Most other lawyers either caved in to Addington’s bullying intimidation or were simply cut out.

Mayer’s triumph was getting so many people to talk to her both on and off the record about closely held administration secrets. The reliance on unnamed sources necessarily forces the reader to place a certain amount of faith in Mayer’s judgment (although certainly not to the extent of Bob Woodward).

Mayer established that the US killed several subjects during interrogation and kidnapped (‘extraordinary rendition’) at least 8 entirely innocent people, tortured them, and held them in secret prisons. Mayer was able to establish that one of these people was held on the ‘hunch’ of the head of the CIA’s al Qaeda unit and was not finally released until weeks after it was clear he was just had the same name as a wanted suspect. The fate of the other seven is unknown.

Did torture, kidnapping and illegal detentions work? Was it worth it? Should we do these things even they do work? Mayer’s judgment, which I share, is ‘no’ on all counts. Some in the CIA claim that ‘this stuff works’, a claim that is difficult to evaluate given the extreme secrecy. The claims of success, of course, are made by those close to the torture and have not been subjected to any independent evaluation. Based on what we do know, even possibly sound information was tainted as a byproduct of torture. Information from tortured witnesses lacks credibility by its very nature.

Beyond dispute is the affect the torture and kidnapping regime had on America’s reputation. It will take at least a generation to recover it. Perhaps most worrisome is that these actions will serve as a precedent for future administrations, which only criminal prosecutions would obviate. Mayer provides the basis for the indictments. Highest recommendation if you can stomach it.