"Truth Commission" versus Special Prosecutor
Stephen Falgout, Psy.D. and Joanna Clark

Today in the United States we are faced with many, many complex problems affecting not only
our present situation but also our future prospects for prosperity and well being. While we must
look forward in order to chart our course, we cannot do this without also being mindful of
where we have been, what path has led us to this present moment. In looking both back and
forward we have the opportunity to make amends for past missteps and mistakes and to restore
our commitment to the ideals and principles upon which our wonderful nation was founded.

There are so many issues dodging about these days. Any one of them could be sufficient to derail
our nation, our democratic republic. Among the candidates are the banking and financial
scandals, the economic collapse that some are now calling a Depression, the shameless record
of many in the Congress and Senate who have labored for many years to enact legislation
needed to enable this economic Titanic to sail off into such perilous waters. In addition, there is
the bottomless pit of two unwinnable wars, the healthcare crisis, accelerating environmental
degradation that is sanctimoniously defended and justified as necessary for a functioning economy,
the deterioration of our schools and educational system, the crumbling of our aging engineering
infrastructure of roads, bridges, water and sewer systems, the antiquated power grid and
fossil fuel power generation. One issue that does seem to be paramount since it affects us here
at home while it also affects the whole planet is our nation's standing in the international community
of nations. This standing is in part based on our economy, in part on our environmental
stewardship, partly on our foreign relations, and partly on how the rest of the world views us,
our nation and its policies and how these policies are implemented.

More and more, the rest of the world is coming to regard the Land of the Free and Home of the
Brave as the Nation of Sanctimonious Bullies, Hypocrites, and Sadists. Torture? It's not just the
physical and psychological torture of suspected terrorists. It's not just the physical and psychological
torture of hapless bystanders swept up in a frenzy to rid the world of terror. It's not just
the tortured rhetoric and sophistry used to sell and justify sadistic interrogations to the American
people as necessary to protect them from attack and atrocity. The world now sees America
revealed as a brute nation of gluttons unwilling to obey its own laws, never mind the laws of the
international community. We are bound by international treaties that ban torture, the very
“harsh interrogation methods” we claim we do not use. The very same methods that have been
demonstrated over and over across many centuries of history to produce only lies and desperate
confessions offered in hope of escaping further cruel treatment that threatens to destroy the victim's
mind and sanity.

What are we to do about this mess? Would a truth commission help us find our way out of this
enchanted forest? What would a truth commission do? The last time we had a truth commission,
in the form of Congressional inquiries, was the inquiry into the Iran-Contra scandal. In
was nothing more than a ridiculous kabuki that culminated in a few convictions for crimes that
were then overturned by appeals courts because those convicted had been immunized by the
Congressional truth commissions. Others who might have been convicted were preemptively
pardoned by then-President Bush1, conveniently sparing him possible embarrassment or worse.
So much for truth. So much for justice. So much for what other nations might have thought
about the U.S. and how it dealt with its own miscreants.

The only hope we might have to rehabilitate our standing in the world must entail broad efforts
to restore the rule of law. Torture is insidious. Besides the obvious suffering it inflicts on the
subjects of such “inquiries” it also damages the thinking of the torturers, and not just the sadists
themselves but those who order the torture, and even those in whose name it is done. As torture
has become somewhat acceptable as U.S. policy it has also dragged us further along the path
Benjamin Franklin described when he said that those who would sacrifice liberty for security
deserve neither.

This means we must not only root out the truth about how we were lead so far off the path of
righteousness into the morass of using torture to further our international objectives, we must
show the world, and ourselves, that such crimes as torture will not be tolerated. The perpetrators
must be called to account for their illegal and immoral deeds; they must suffer severe penalties
and consequences for their crimes. They must be sent to prison where they will be
stripped of their liberty and be left with lots of time to contemplate the wrongness of their actions.
Yes, it is true, there have been a few show-trials of mid and low-level players in this tortured
tragedy, but this is not good enough, not by half. The ultimate responsibility for the use of
torture goes right to the top of the executive branch of our government, and the people in
charge of our military and intelligence organizations – former President Bush2, vice President
Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Attorney General Ashcroft, and
former Justice Department and White House lawyers including Yoo, Bybee, and others. This is
not the complete list of suspects. All of them, those named here and the others who contrived
with them to justify breaking laws prohibiting torture, prohibiting spying on American citizens
opposed to their designs, prohibiting kidnaping and assassination, all of them must be called to
the bar of justice. They must be put on trial, and those who are convicted for their crimes must
be sent to prison.

Their crimes can only be properly understood in the larger context of our nation's standing in
the world. Specifications for individual acts and wrongs must be evaluated together, as a whole.
Taken all together, the crimes surrounding this torture debacle amount to treason. The perpetrators
of this torture scandal, those at the very top of the chain of command, must be denounced
as traitors who sought to undermine, subvert, damage, and ultimately to destroy the United
States Constitution, even as they tried to preserve it as a hollow shell to give them a fig leaf for
their crimes.

Unless these perpetrators of torture as policy, these criminals, these traitors are made to suffer
the legal consequences of their wrongs, their high crimes that are so much greater than misdemeanors, the United States will not have much chance of regaining the respect of other nations.

Other nations that see the hypocrisy, the spineless, sanctimonious sophistry that will continue,
however subtly, so long as these traitorous criminals still walk free will not be so willing to
make common cause with us. Our economy will suffer as the world leaves us behind to stew in
our own predicaments. We will be less and less able to respond to the changes our evolving
world presents. We will be less secure. Perhaps the next attack will not be another explosion via
airplane, rocket, or car bomb. Perhaps it will be via the Internet, an attack to bring down our
electrical infrastructure as recent news reports have suggested may be in the works. Whatever it
is, a bomb, a cyber attack, or simply the plummeting value of the dollar, unless we improve our
standing in the world, we are sure of further decline, further economic erosion. Moreover, it is
not only in the eyes of the rest of the world that we must rehabilitate our nation. We must rebuild
our own esteem for our nation. Rote pledges and platitudes about patriotism are imitation
substitutes for integrity, honor, and love of country. The torture scandals have affected every
one of us because, whether we think of it in this way or not, the torture scandals have
besmirched the character of every American citizen since it was done in our names by those in
power in our government.

Could a Congressional truth commission accomplish this? Could a committee composed of officials
who have voted again and again for wars, again and again for expansion of military
spending, again and again for weapons based not on actual risk of attacks from without but on
the expectation of their own continued political power bought by ever expanding spending of
public money in their districts, money spent on weapons, spent on factories to make these
weapons, money spent on lulling their constituents, their fellow citizens into believing that
these weapons will make us safer? Really? Can we really be certain these weapons will make
us safer when the threats they are supposed to protect us from are known because of “Intel”
gained from torture?

If a Congressional truth commission cannot serve this need, then what about a special prosecutor
from the Department of Justice? This would be the same DOJ that is now going into the
Courts arguing in support of Bush-era policies regarding illegal wire tapping, illegal detention
of persons accused of intending to harm our nation. Accusations made without presentation of
evidence. Accusations made without legal representation for the accused. Detentions carried out
without any legal process, in violation of the Great Writ of Habeas Corpus, one of the foundation
principles of our republic. Maybe this could achieve righteous and noble goals, but it
would seem unlikely. Rather, it would actually only further aggravate the problems, as those
wielding this power would most likely seek to further consolidate this power and their grip
upon it, for power tends to corrupt.

What alternative is left if neither a Congressional truth commission nor a DOJ prosecutor can
do what is needed? We have ample precedent, from the Watergate era. An independent Special
Prosecutor needs to be appointed. A nominating committee needs to be assembled. This
committee could be composed of persons from independent public interest organizations not
beholden to positions in government such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty
International, the National Lawyers Guild, and People for the American Way, to name a few
possible sources. This Special Prosecutor would be legally empowered by the President and the
Congress but would operate entirely independently from them. Ultimately, his or her findings
would presumably lead to indictments, and those charged would be tried in the Federal Courts.
There should be no free passes given, no slaps on the wrist, no pre-emptive pardons, and those
persons convicted of crimes should receive prison sentences and other serious penalties.

To do less than this will only hasten the end of our great nation. Not that the United States of
America will cease to exist, but it will not be the same nation that emerged from the Declaration
of Independence and the Constitution. The choice is stark: Either we, the United States of
America, the people, the citizenry will stand up for our laws and the ideals upon which they are
based, or we will sit passively as one ego-driven despot after another shrugs off his duty to
uphold the laws and thus drags us closer and closer to our own eclipse. The great democratic
republic that was so recently touted as an empire by members of the Bush2 administration will
be neither. Not a republic, and not an empire, but only a zombie nation ruled by hypocrites and
liars who speak with forked tongues.

Stephen Falgout is a psychotherapist who worked for many years in mental health and has
taught psychology. In addition, he has been an activist working on civil rights and environmental
causes.

Joanna Clark is a human rights and environmental activist who served 19 years in both the US
Navy and US Army Reserve, including Vietnam. Employed as a Project Coordinator on the
Safeguard/Sprint anti-missile defense system in the early 70's, she has spent the last two
decades working on global AIDS prevention education.