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Page 2 of 2 AMY GOODMAN: I want to talk about some of the other people, outside of Donald Rumsfeld. For example, former Assistant Attorney General, Jay Bybee and the former Deputy Assistant Attorney General, John Yoo, who's a professor at UC Berkeley right now.  MICHAEL RATNER: Those two people are remarkable. I mean, they -- one, of course, as you said, is a judge, and one is a professor. And, you know, they keep saying, “Well, we just wrote these sort of abstract legal memos on the lengths to which you could go to carry out certain kinds of interrogations.” And, of course they say they narrowly define torture so that everything from being strapped down and using dogs to waterboarding doesn't constitute torture. And then they actually say in these memos that the President, in the name national security, can use torture. Their claim is these were abstract legal opinions, and they're not liable. Our claim is very different. Our claim is that these memos were written specifically, first to justify what was already going on in terms of torture, and they knew that, and they were also written to justify going forward to allow this whole series of interrogation practices that we all know that was authorized by Donald Rumsfeld and others, from waterboarding to stress positions to a variety of other kinds of torture. They were written specifically for that purpose. These were not simply lawyers in an academic exercise. These were lawyers at the Justice Department whose opinions were influential, in fact, instrumental, in our belief in aiding and abetting the torture that has occurred. AMY GOODMAN: What about Stephen Cambone, the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, as well as David Addington, the new Scooter Libby, the Vice President's chief of staff? MICHAEL RATNER: Well, we believe all of these people named, that -- really there was a torture program created in the United States after 9/11. The key players were people like Stephen Cambone, people like Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington, who’s the President's chief of staff now. He was the counsel. But we believe that Addington was one of the people, again, pushing for tougher and tougher interrogation tactics that we believe amount to violations of the Geneva Conventions. This was a group of people who aided and abetted really the torture program in the United States. What is critical to us is, first of all, really to bring public attention to this matter, to say that these people have engaged in a torture program and that there be some accountability for it. Whether we ever put Donald Rumsfeld in jail or not, I cannot say, but hopefully, hopefully, this case and other kinds of investigations will expose, stop, and hold accountable these officials. One part of this effort, of course, is at the Center for Constitutional Rights, people can go, as they did last time, but even more important now, can go to the Center's website at ccr-ny.org and actually send a letter to the German prosecutor, urging the German prosecutor to open a prosecution in these cases. AMY GOODMAN: How significant is it, Michael Ratner, that Donald Rumsfeld will soon no longer be Secretary of Defense, in terms of this criminal complaint? MICHAEL RATNER: Well, it's of some significance. I mean, first, as I've said, you know, the US has given these guys immunity. That immunity doesn't apply outside the United States. So, they're in trouble on that. But there is also an immunity that people in office have -- the President, most likely the Vice President and the foreign -- the Secretary of State, as well as probably Donald Rumsfeld -- that many would argue, make him immune while he's in office from any kind of a lawsuit. So, the fact that within a short period of time from now -- maybe a week, maybe two weeks, maybe a month, whatever it is -- he will no longer be in office actually exposes him to this kind of investigation and prosecution. He's in a dangerous situation. One of our hopes is, really, we believe, and we have believed for 30 years, that torturers deserve no safe haven. They should not be free to travel around the world and go wherever they want, once they've been seriously accused of torture. And they can be tried in those countries. And one of our goals here is to really turn, I would hope, a Donald Rumsfeld into a Henry Kissinger, where he will be not free to travel from country to country. AMY GOODMAN: Finally, you mentioned that some of the people you're suing are currently in Germany on US military bases? MICHAEL RATNER: Well, they certainly were in 2004. General Sanchez was here. Colonel Pappas was here, who’s one of the people in the Military Intelligence Brigade that was involved in Abu Ghraib. A man named, I think pronounced, Wojdakowski was here. We are no longer as sure as we were then that they're here, but we don't have contrary information. So, there are big military bases in Germany. Germany, therefore, has an ability to do an investigation here that should allow it to go forward. We also, as you will be interviewing, we have a witness who can actually testify and help Germany go forward with the investigation, and that's Janis Karpinski. AMY GOODMAN: And we're going to go to Janis Karpinski right now. Michael Ratner, I want to thank you for joining us. When we come back from break, we're going to go to the former brigadier general to talk about these military officials right up to Donald Rumsfeld. And then we'll speak with Gita Gutierrez of the Center for Constitutional Rights. She represents Mohammed al-Qahtani, who is at Guantanamo and says he was tortured. She'll talk about her attempts to meet with him and finally having those conversations with him. Recommend this article...
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