(continued)

We thought the ABC and AP stories were good. But it was no surprise that Bush and Cheney, and their deputies, were involved in approving these techniques given that they have been public defenders of them. Additionally, it has been made pretty clear by us and others that David Addington, Cheney's aide, played a key role in shaping the policy. So no surprise that the administration discussed and approved these policies at the highest levels. What the stories didn't have was the debate, who took which stand, whether anyone objected, etc. This continues to be missing, and we are still hoping like hell to nail that and other aspects of this story down.

I tried to find out why the Washington Post downplayed the story—and twice reported incorrectly that no state department official had participated in these meetings—but three e-mails to Leonard Bernstein and Rajiv Chandrasekaran on the Post's national desk did not produce any response.

The only person at the Post who made any effort to get to the bottom of this was washingtonpost.com blogger Dan Froomkin, who pointed out that the Post newspaper had never reported that Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft had participated in these meetings—"[a]nd the earlier article certainly didn't contain any admission by Bush that he had given the principals the go-ahead." But even Froomkin didn't notice the Post's error in leaving Powell out of the meetings as well.

Caroline Fredrickson, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office, urged Congress "to demand an independent prosecutor to investigate possible violations by the Bush administration of laws including the War Crimes Act, the federal Anti-Torture Act, and federal assault laws. No one in the executive branch of government can be trusted to fairly investigate or prosecute any crimes since the head of every relevant department, along with the president and vice president, either knew or participated in the planning and approval of illegal acts."

Froomkin pointed out that, unlike the news departments of most newspapers and television networks, the editorial pages of the Kansas City Star, the Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer had all vigorously endorsed a call from the ACLU for the appointment of a special prosecutor. (Yesterday, April 20, the New York Times also ran an editorial about the ABC story.)

Froomkin also quoted what Anthony Lewis had written in the New York Review of Books: "In these last weeks of turbulent events, the single most significant has not been the financial crisis, not the fall of a governor, not the passing of the fifth year of the war without end in Iraq. It has been an American president's formal blessing of the use of torture."

Apart from those editorial pages, practically everyone else ignored the ACLU's press release. Everyone except the blogosphere—and democracyforamerica.com, which immediately called for Rice's resignation because of her repeated denials to Congress that the United States had engaged in torture—even as she was chairing White House meetings to make torture possible. See the "Condi Must Go" video here—and sign the petition if you agree with it.

-Special thanks to FCP contributors DEK and MP

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Charles Kaiser is the author of The Gay Metropolis and 1968 in America. He has been media editor for Newsweek, a member of the metro staff of the New York Times, and a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, where he covered the press and book publishing. To learn more, visit charleskaiser.com.

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