David Addington

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04/15/2009
Guantánamo

Mr. Panetta: Call Off the Wrecking Ball

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 12:43pm

Last week, the CIA announced it would shutter its overseas black sites, where many current Guantánamo detainees, including the former CIA detainees profiled in the Red Cross report declassified last week, were held — and tortured — after their initial capture.

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10/20/2008
David Addington

"Torturing Democracy" Connects the Dots

By Jenny Egan at 11:45am

I'm not saying that obsessively watching episodes of Mad Men is a waste of your intellectual powers, but there are a few things on TV worth watching besides Joan Holloway and Torturing Democracy is one of them.

The documentary traces the evolution of the policies that took the United States from being an advocate for human rights to a nation that uses torture to interrogate prisoners. The award-winning producer Sherry Jones connects the dots using documents obtained by the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits. 

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06/23/2008
David Addington

Next Week on the Hill, June 23 – June 27, 2008

By Rachel Perrone, ACLU at 10:21am

Since you read the ACLU blog, you likely already know that the House of Representatives voted to pass the sham FISA “compromise” bill on Friday, and the Senate’s slated to take it up this week, with a vote expected Tuesday or Wednesday. If you haven’t contacted your senator yet and urged him or her to stand up for the Constitution, there’s still time! Do it now!

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06/12/2009
David Addington

Accountability Is Coming to the USA

By Philippe Sands at 11:23am

The world is watching as America attempts to come to terms with the abuse it unleashed in the aftermath of 9/11, and trying to assess whether there will be any sort of accountability for the perpetrators of the abuse. With a wide-ranging Spanish criminal investigation into torture at Guantánamo threatening to embarrass the U.S., Barack Obama recently decided to declassify legal memos prepared under the Bush administration, apparently in the hope the country would move on. The opposite has happened. Ever more documents set out in meticulous detail the full extent of the cruelty: who was abused by whom, how they did it and what was done. The truth is gradually being revealed in stark detail, from the number of times waterboarding was used to the legal deliberations that led to it. New photos have not yet been released, but it seems inevitable that in due course more graphic details will emerge. President Obama has even raised the possibility of a U.S. criminal investigation, although his opposition to a truth commission or other forms of inquiry may be undermining his credibility in some quarters. Nevertheless, developments since he took office have been significant.

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09/17/2008
David Addington

Dick Cheney Wants to Confuse You

By Jenny Egan at 2:12pm

In the course of the NSA spying saga that has unfolded over the past three years, the Bush administration has benefited from the tangling of plain language and the byzantine inner-workings of Executive branch bureaucracy to shield it from public outrage.

Unlike Watergate or even the Clinton impeachment, there are no burglars or stained dresses to hook the news story onto. Those very colorful details were often used to start a discussion about the underlying issues of importance (okay, maybe the dress was pretty much the whole focus of that story, but you get the idea.) It’s just harder to follow a story when it takes three paragraphs to explain that the Undersecretary of Agency X spoke to the Junior Assistant Solicitor Y who reported to the General Counsel of the Office of Confusing.

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09/15/2008
David Addington

Ashcroft Defends Constitution in Spying Clusterfrack. Happy Opposite Day!

By Amanda Simon at 5:52pm

Barton Gellman at The Washington Post has a book about Vice President Dick Cheney called Angler coming out tomorrow. In anticipation of that release, the Post has printed back to back excerpts. I’m fired UP. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, honestly, what are you doing with your time? Go ahead. I’ll wait.

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09/07/2007
Detention

Mr. Addington Gets Called Out

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 12:10pm
When the historians get their mitts on the Bush presidency, the one essential book that probably will never be written is a biography of David Addington, Vice President Cheney's former top lawyer and current chief of staff (the replacement, of course, for Scooter). Of all of the executive supremacy guys, Mr. Addington is the most prodigious, the most zeal
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07/06/2007
Detention

Clients vs. Acolytes

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 4:00pm
Rosa Brooks, law professor and LA Times columnist, nails it once again, ridiculing the media's incredulity at the recent Libby commutation, the Cheney power-grab reported in the Post and the rest of the "oh, wow" newfound fright at the Bush admin
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06/08/2007
Detention

Executive Primacy & Gitmo

By Gabe Rottman, Legislative Counsel, ACLU Washington Legislative Office at 2:17pm
Rosa Brooks, Georgetown law professor and LA Times columnist extraordinaire, unpacks the Khadr/Hamdan dismissals today in an op-ed (incidentally, fun fact: most folks think op-ed stands for "opinion-editorial" when it actually means "opposit
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09/17/2008
David Addington

The Unitary Executive…Is…What Again?

By Suzanne Ito, ACLU at 4:27pm

One aspect of the Bush administration that's been especially pernicious is its — or shall we say Dick Cheney and David Addington's — belief in the unitary executive. Remember in June when Addington was testifying before the House Judiciary Subcommittee, and he was asked about the unitary theory? He replied: "I don't know what it is."

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