bond
Senator Kit "Kindling" Bond

Yesterday, the Washington Times came out with a startling article which claimed that Senator Kit Bond (R, MO) had decided to vote in favor of Eric Holder’s nomination for Attorney General as a direct result of private assurances from Holder that Holder would not prosecute Bush Administration officials for their role in torure. The article has undergone many rounds of revision since first going up. It now leads with the claim that Holder will not prosecute intelligence agency interrogators. That brings the claim more in line with Holder’s previous statements about the difficulty of prosecuting interrogators who were operating under legal opinions authorizing their actions. Marcy captured an earlier version yesterday, where the language refers to "intelligence officers or political appointees who were involved in the Bush administration’s policy of ‘enhanced interrogations’". However, much of the material most damaging to Bond remains.

This is the part that concerns me most:

"I made it clear that trying to prosecute political leaders would generate a political firestorm the Obama administration doesn’t need," Mr. Bond said he told Mr. Holder.

"I was concerned about previous statements he made and others had made," Mr. Bond said. "He gave me assurances that he would not take those steps that would cause major disruptions in our intelligence system or cause political warfare. We don’t need that kind of political warfare."


This passage is now buried on page two of the article, but was still there this morning (Thursday, Jan 29).

Note that there are now denials from Holder’s office and from Senator Pat Leahy, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that Holder made any such assurance. For example, this passage is now on page one of the Times article:

However, an aide to Mr. Holder who requested anonymity because the nominee has not been confirmed, disputed this version of events. "Eric Holder has not made any commitments about who would or would not be prosecuted," the aide said. "He explained his position to Senator Bond as he did in the public hearing and in his responses to written questions."

When I called Senator Bond’s office this morning to ask if the Senator is going to clarify his remarks, I was told that there is no statement.

So, although the Times article has been walked back a bit from its original version, now not including political appointees among those who won’t be prosecuted, many questions remain. The primary question is whether Bond will back off the statements attributed to him by the article. Another question is whether the changes in the article were undertaken at the request of Bond or his office. If so, in my opinion, these changes are not sufficient to keep Bond out of legal jeopardy.

If Bond votes in favor of Holder’s confirmation without repudiating the statement, he should be indicted the second his vote is recorded. He will have done so in the belief that Holder has assured him that political leaders will not be prosecuted for the torture that has occurred. Such a vote would be no different, in my eyes (and in the eyes of Pat Leahy, according to his statement linked above), than what Rod Blagojevich was attempting in filling the Senate seat.

Finally, one more aspect of Bond’s statement needs discussing. Note that Bond predicts a "political firestorm" if political leaders from the Bush Administration are indicted. He doesn’t say anything about the worthiness of such charges. He just doesn’t want charges filed and promises dire political consequences if they are filed. Such a statement is just further evidence of the moral turpitude of Bond and the Bush cabal. The law, the Constitution and international treaties mean nothing and should be cast aside for political expediency and with no consequences, in their opinion.

That warped opinion, in my view, is at the root of the massive Republican losses at the polls in 2006 and 2008. Sorry Senator, that firestorm has already started and you are just about to become a piece of kindling.

Brun, baby, burn.