MONDAY
E-mail a friendSen. Dick Durbin
airdate December 10, 2007
In '06, Time magazine listed Sen. Dick Durbin as one of the America's 10 Best Senators. He's Illinois' senior senator and Senate Majority Whip—that body's second highest ranking position. He sits on the Appropriations and Judiciary committees and is the founding member of the Senate Global AIDS Caucus. Durbin previously served seven terms as congressman and as legal counsel to the Illinois lieutenant governor and the state senate Judiciary Committee. He holds a J.D. from Georgetown University.
Sen. Dick Durbin
Tavis: Pleased to be joined now by the majority whip in the U.S. Senate, Illinois Democrat Dick Durbin. He's also an influential member of two key Senate committees, judiciary and appropriations. He joins us tonight from Capitol Hill. Senator Durbin, nice to have you on the program, sir.
Sen. Dick Durbin: Good to be with you.
Tavis: Before I talk about these tapes, let me ask a quick question about the conversation we just had, of course, New Orleans two years later now, protests earlier today against a HUD decision to tear down public housing. I don't want to get into the particulars with you, but I would like your assessment of where we are, where we are not, and why we are stuck where we are with regard to New Orleans two years later.
Durbin: Tavis, if this would have happened in Chicago or New York or Los Angeles, I can guarantee you two years later we wouldn't be having this conversation. I can't quite understand it. This administration got it wrong from the start, and we have provided them with the funds, every single dollar and more that they have asked for, to try to put this community back on its feet.
Senator Mary Landrieu has done a great job here in Washington in bringing in literally billions of dollars, and here we have a situation, understandable, where people who are low income, poor families, wonder if you're going to tear down the old public housing. What's going to replace it? Where are we going to go? These questions should have been answered a long time ago.
Tavis: Let me jump right now to these tapes, so much to talk to you about in the few minutes I have. First of all, let me ask what you made of this story when you first heard of it.
Durbin: Let me tell you, you don't have to graduate from law school to figure this one out. You don't destroy evidence unless the evidence is troubling - at least troubling, maybe incriminating. In this situation, the CIA admits that they destroyed tapes that showed the interrogation of prisoners. Understand this happened at a time after Abu Ghraib, after we had seen those horrible images which are sadly emblazoned on the minds of people all across the world.
And the decision was made, about the time that we were debating the McCain torture amendment, to destroy these tapes. And I think this calls for a full-scale investigation. If someone did this in private life and destroyed evidence of the commission of a crime or something that was wrong, they would be held accountable.
Tavis: There are any number of calls, as you certainly well know, in Washington for an investigation, to use your phrase, a full-scale investigation. I guess the question is whether or not that full-scale investigation ought to be done internally - that is to say, by the Department of Justice - or whether or not we're calling here for an independent prosecutor.
Durbin: Well, I voted against Michael Mukasey because of his answers to my questions about waterboarding. I wasn't confident that he would do the right thing if he faced just this kind of situation. Now he's going to be tested. He wants to start the investigation, I want to see if he'll do it, but I want to make sure that we do our part. Congress has its own separate responsibility.
The intelligence committee, under Senator Rockefeller, is going to initiate an investigation into this, as well, so we should have at least tandem investigations going on. The Department of Justice and in the Intelligence Committee.
Tavis: Back to your point a moment ago of your voting personally against Mukasey because of a lack of forthrightness, if I can put it that way, about his views of torture and what waterboarding is or is not. Not casting aspersion on the AG, but how do you trust any person to investigate something that he or she would not talk frankly about in their Senate confirmation hearings?
Durbin: Well, that's sure a good question. I know why you have your job. And I think there's a right to be skeptical. Everybody knows that Judge Mukasey danced around this issue about waterboarding and torture. But here's his chance. You cannot, if you are serious about law enforcement, stand idly by and watch people destroy evidence.
This is as close to, if not actually is, obstruction of justice. I can't say for sure until all the facts are in, but you've got to treat it as a potential crime. Let's see if he aggressively investigates it. At the same time, keep that Intelligence Committee doing its work.
Tavis: The argument you've made in this conversation is that they destroyed evidence, and anybody didn't go to law school knows you don't destroy evidence. The flip side of this argument, though, or conversation, Senator, that I keep reading and keep hearing is that the CIA, if they - well, they did destroy it, but they destroyed it in part because they argued one, that it was old stuff that couldn't be used anymore, number two, that there were CIA personnel on the tape who would be outed if those tapes ever came to light.
They didn't want those persons to be identified. And then let me just take it a step further. If you are the CIA and your job is to, by any legal means necessary, get information out of people in this fight against terrorism, you don't want your tactics out there. So I'm just trying to figure out, with all that said, whether or not there's any daylight here for the CIA to have done what they did without getting in trouble for what they did.
Durbin: Well, Tavis, let's walk through the points that you've made, and they were good points. First about outing the identity of these CIA agents, well, we all know that you can do digital changes on the face and protect the identity of any person on tape, so that certainly is not going to be the disclosure of an identity of a CIA person.
Secondly, whether or not they were using legal means really gets down to the heart of the issue. If they were using legal means historically recognized as valid interrogation techniques, then there's no one to blame. And the third point is that if there's something they're doing they don't want the enemy to see there are ways to protect, with classified information, things that might be delicate.
But this goes way beyond that. This notion that they could destroy this with impunity, they had been advised repeatedly by people in the White House, Department of Justice, and others not to do that. They did it anyway. They were covering their tracks in this situation, and that, I think, is why the investigation is needed.
Tavis: So finally, then, what does this story say about the new and improved CIA post-9/11, and what does it say about the Senate's oversight role here?
Durbin: Well, I could tell you that General Hayden's new to the job; he wasn't on board when this decision was made. I don't know that he had anything to do with it. I thought his explanation in defense of it was extremely weak, saying it was in line with the law when we know it wasn't, and secondly about the identity of CIA agents. I want to give him his day in court; I want him to have his chance to tell his side of the story to the committee.
But when it come s to the oversight of Congress, Tavis, the honest answer is this: there has been more oversight this year since Congress changed leadership, since the president's party's not in charge, than there was in the preceding five years leading up to it. And it just tells us that if Congress is not doing its job, the executive has this temptation to reach too far, do too much, and perhaps cross the line that ultimately is going to embarrass this nation.
Tavis: He's the number two guy in the Senate; he's the majority whip, Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. Senator, nice to have you on, thanks for your insight.
Durbin: Thanks, Tavis.
Tavis: Glad to have you here.
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