The confirmation hearings for Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey were a jumble of opinions.
On the abuse of executive power, Mukasey said Wednesday: "I would certainly suggest going to Congress whenever we can. It always strengthens the hand of the president...Unilateralism, across the board, is a bad idea." Sounds good.
(Chuck Schumer questioned Mukasey on executive power like a chatty book club member. The book, in this case, is Jack Goldsmith's Terror Presidency. Mukasey "couldn't put it down," BTW. And Schumer's copy was all Post-It noted.)
When asked his thoughts on Guantanamo, Mukasey hesitated a bit, but ultimately concluded: "I'm prepared to say we need to get the best advice and the best ideas we can, with the goal of closing it down." He joins the ACLU, and most Americans, (and the Secretary of Defense, and the Secretary of State, and Kofi Annan...) on that one.
When talk turned to torture, on Wednesday he said: "It's antithetical to everything this country stands for," and compared it to the Holocaust. That was in pretty stark contrast to former AG Gonzales calling the Geneva Conventions on torture "quaint" and "obsolete." Mukasey also claimed to not know what waterboarding entailed.
But on Day Two of the hearing, Mukasey called torture unconstitutional, but after hearing Senator Whitehouse's description of waterboarding, refused to call it torture. He even implied that torture would be okay if the president signed off.
(For a good example of double-speak on torture, check out ACLU attorney Ben Wizner's interview of Rendition director Gavin Hood, where Ben discusses former CIA director George Tenet's famous "we don't torture" interview on 60 Minutes.)
When it comes to an AG nominee, we're looking for someone who doesn't hedge. We're looking for someone who will promise the American public that he'll follow the rules; in this case, the rules outlined in the Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogations. (Check out the 177-page .pdf, if inclined.)
We'd also like a nominee who will commit to providing key documents supporting an illegal interrogation program. A little sunshine inside the DOJ sounds nice, doesn't it?
Senator Leahy says he won't hold a vote on Mukasey's confirmation until he receives written responses to some questions raised after the two-day hearing. Let's hope those answers include some reassurances that Mukasey will bring about changes that will restore dignity to a disgraced Justice Department.
