Cheney's Cheney

Cheney’s Cheney

http://www.newyorker.com/online/cont...n_onlineonly01

Posted 2006-06-26

This week in the magazine, Jane Mayer profiles David Addington, the Vice-President’s chief of staff and longtime legal adviser. Here, with Blake Eskin, Mayer discusses Addington’s unorthodox reading of the Constitution and how it has shaped the Administration’s approach to the war on terror.

BLAKE ESKIN: Most people have never heard of David Addington. Why is he important enough to be the subject of such an in-depth piece?

JANE MAYER: Addington has been the single most influential legal thinker, according to other Administration lawyers, in shaping the Bush Administration’s legal response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He has left almost no paper trail, and has avoided all public scrutiny—as far as I know, he’s granted no interviews to reporters, and he even avoids having his photo taken by the press. It seemed important to me to hold the creator of these policies accountable, so that the public could understand better who is behind them and how he thinks.

How did David Addington get to know Vice-President Cheney, and how long have they worked together?

They met on Capitol Hill in the mid-eighties, when Cheney was a Republican congressman from Wyoming and Addington was a young staff lawyer working for the House Intelligence and Foreign Affairs committees. So they have worked together for about two decades. Their partnership was cemented when they worked together on the Minority Report on the Iran-Contra affair. Both Addington and Cheney took the idiosyncratic position that it was Congress, not President Reagan, that was in the wrong. This view reflected the opinion, held by both men, that the executive branch should run foreign policy, to a great extent unimpeded by Congress. It’s a recurring theme—pushing the limits of executive power and sidestepping Congress—in their partnership. One example is their position that the President, as Commander-in-Chief in times of war, had the inherent authority to ignore the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which Congress passed in an effort to make sure that Presidents don’t violate citizens’ right to privacy by spying on them without warrants.

After meeting and working together in Congress, Cheney and Addington continued their partnership at the Pentagon, where, during the Presidency of George H. W. Bush, Cheney was Secretary of Defense and Addington was his special assistant and, later, general counsel. There, Addington was known as a powerhouse, a stickler who controlled access to Cheney and marked up others’ memos in red felt-tipped pen, returning the memos for rewrites that would make them sharper—and more protective of executive power.

At the Pentagon, the two exhibited a similar pessimism about world affairs, in particular about the possibility that Mikhail Gorbachev represented true change, and also an unusually deep interest in “continuity of government” planning—how the government survives in the event of a doomsday attack. Addington kept the constitutional provisions for Presidential succession in his pocket at all times, a colleague told me.

Yet you write that some people—including some conservative Republicans—question whether Addington really respects the Constitution.

Some constitutional scholars have questioned whether Addington, in his eagerness to expand the powers of the Presidency, which he and Cheney see as having been unduly diminished since Watergate, gives enough weight to the legislative and judicial branches of the federal government. Some have suggested that he has aggrandized the powers of the President in such a way that the executive branch ignores the system of checks and balances set up by the Founding Fathers, so that its actions are unchecked and unaccountable. Bruce Fein, a Republican legal activist, told me that he regards Addington as an adequate lawyer but an inadequate student of American history, because he believes that Addington has failed to understand that the Founders designed the U.S. government specifically to insure that the executive would not have unlimited power. Fein suggests that the Founders, unlike Addington, understood the perils of concentrated power. They had seen in George III, among others, what tyranny meant.

What is the New Paradigm?

It’s a shorthand term that comes from a memo signed by Alberto Gonzales but believed to have been written in part by Addington, in which the authors articulated that the attacks of 9/11 required a legal response beyond the confines of ordinary criminal law and ordinary military law. Instead, they said, a “new paradigm” was called for, allowing the government to emphasize detection and prevention of crime, at the expense of more traditional notions of due process. Their aim was to stop terrorist attacks before they were perpetrated. To do so, they felt they needed to interrogate, detain, and try terrorist suspects in ways that would not be permissible under U.S. or international law. The New Paradigm has come to refer to all of the novel legal policies that the Bush Administration has forged in its approach to the global war on terrorism.

Following the September 11th attacks, the Bush Administration released memos asserting the President’s right to decide, among other things, how to wage war and treat prisoners. How much of this came from Addington?

Some lawyers in the Administration believe that, as one told me, “It’s all Addington.” While Addington, of course, could not have written every memo, his “fingerprints,” as Lawrence Wilkerson, the former assistant to Colin Powell, put it, were all over these policies.

Addington was merely the legal counsel to the Vice-President until last fall, so it is curious that he exercised so much influence. But, according to other lawyers who deal with national-security issues in the Administration, Addington exercised enormous influence in part because he was seen as Cheney’s representative, and Cheney was the epicenter of power on these matters.

Addington also had a forceful, aggressive, and, some say, bullying style that allowed him to dominate legal debates. In interviews, other lawyers told me how he dismissed their views, mocked their softness if they championed international law, and worked secretively and, one of them said, viciously, to outmaneuver critics.

Another reason Addington gained so much influence after 9/11 was that, unlike many other top Administration officials, he was not only a lawyer but also an expert on national-security law.

You argue that the September 11th attacks did not change Cheney and Addington’s expansive views of the power of the executive branch so much as allow them to implement their long-held views. What led you to this conclusion?

At least fifty sources were interviewed for this story. And those who knew Cheney and Addington during the Vietnam War and Watergate told me that, ever since then, both men have wanted to correct what they saw as a weakening of the Presidency. Cheney has participated in the writing of two reports reflecting this view, and he talked about it in a recent press conference. In many ways, 9/11 gave Addington and Cheney the chance to implement their views on the need for a stronger Presidency, since in times of war the President’s powers are greatly augmented.

Other Presidents have taken extraordinary legal measures during wartime—the suspension of habeas corpus under Lincoln, the internment of Japanese-Americans under F.D.R. Is there anything different about the Bush Administration’s assertion of executive power?

All Presidents, it is said, overreach during wartime, but, according to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., whom I had the pleasure of interviewing for my article, the Bush White House has done this differently. While earlier Presidents have, as you say, suspended ordinary laws, he suggests that earlier Presidents did not assert that this was their inherent constitutional right. In contrast, Schlesinger says, the Bush White House has taken these infamous aberrations and woven them together into a doctrine of Presidential power.

Last week, the U.S. Army recovered the bodies of two American soldiers who had been tortured. How does the Administration’s position on torture affect its ability to respond to such brutality?

Torture and abuse are perennial problems in all wars, but one could argue that, because the Bush Administration has blurred the lines concerning what sort of treatment of captured enemies is permissible, they have forfeited some of the moral high ground that the country could ordinarily occupy on this issue. It’s harder to condemn the outrageous treatment of our soldiers now that we are accused of treating detainees deplorably.

David Addington doesn’t speak to reporters, and he refused your interview requests. After speaking to many people about Addington, what would you like to ask him now?

I’d like to ask him whether, in his view, there is anything that the President cannot legally do in the service of national security. Bruce Fein, the Republican legal activist, suggests that, in Addington’s view, the President could kill someone in a public park if he deemed the person to be an enemy combatant. I’d like to hear Addington’s thinking about why such an extreme view might be justified, and also why it is that, according to colleagues, he sees no political downside to these extreme views. For instance, he has repeatedly argued that there have been no political costs associated with Guantánamo Bay. Yet even President Bush has acknowledged that the Defense Department’s camps there have hurt the image of the U.S. abroad. It would be interesting to hear why Addington doesn’t agree with the President on this.