Bill Moyers Journal (2007-2010); 1215; Torture Hearings; Jane Mayer; Former Senator Ernest F. "Fritz" Hollings

This week on Bill Moyer's Journal, what does that mean? What does it matter how we treat our prisoners of war? If any of these techniques were used on an American serviceman, this country quite rightly would say these standards are not being met, they are being violated. A gripping journey into the dark side. Nobody ever asked the American public, do you want to start torturing people? It happened in secret. And why doesn't government work? The game is money, I got to get the money, the Heckrich constituents, I got to get the interpreters. Stay tuned. Funding for Bill Moyer's Journal is provided by the Partridge Foundation, a John and

Polly Gutt Charitable Fund, Park Foundation dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues. The Colbert Foundation, the Herb Alpert Foundation, Maryland and Bob Clements and the Clements Foundation, Bernard and Audrey Rappaport and the Bernard and Audrey Rappaport Foundation, the Petser Institute, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the Orphala Family Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation and by our sole corporate sponsor, Mutual of America, providing retirement planned products and services to employers and individuals since 1945. Mutual of America, your retirement company. From our studios in New York, Bill Moyer's. Welcome to the journal. As I watched those congressional hearings on torture last week, I thought of John McCain in the five and a half years he spent as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam.

He was tortured severely, tied and beaten so badly he tried to kill himself. After four days of this brutality, he gave in and agreed to make a false confession, telling lies to end the unbearable pain. Years later, he wrote, I had learned what we all learned over there. Every man has his breaking point. I had reached mine. Before Vietnam, there was the war in Korea, where the Communist Chinese used similar techniques on American prisoners of war, forcing them to confess to things they didn't do, including German warfare. In 1957, an American sociologist studied the Chinese methods and their effects. He made this chart. It reappeared in 2002 at Guantanamo Bay, where it was being used in a course to teach our military interrogators, quote, coercive management techniques. In other words, we had adopted the inhumane tactics of our enemies. Tactics we once were quick to call torture.

The searing of the subcommittee on the Constitution, civil rights and civil liberties. On Capitol Hill over the past weeks, members of Congress and witnesses have been fighting over the treatment of detainees suspected of terrorism. Here are some excerpts. Today, the subcommittee continues its investigation into this administration's interrogation policies, which have brought disgrace to our nation. Whatever euphemism one chooses, harsh interrogation, enhanced interrogation, or whatever justification might be offered, I believe, given all we know now, that it is clear that this administration has authorized torture, and that under its authorize, that's under its auspices, torture has been inflicted on people in U.S. custody, the picture that has emerged from our investigations, despite the administration's stonewalling, is deeply disturbing. It seems clear from the evidence that we have been able to assemble so far, that the administration decided early on to engage in torture, because any rationale to do or generations of soldiers understood we could not do, and to conceal that fact from the American people and from the world.

Republican Trent Franks took issue. Mr. Chairman, just a personal note. I believe this is about the 10th hearing that we've had in this subcommittee that was dedicated primarily to making sure that we were protecting the rights of terrorists. And I understand that, but we've had none that I know of that are dedicated to trying to protect the lives of American citizens. And I think 10 to zero is a little out of balance. And Democrats fired back. We're not here protecting to protect rights of terrorists. This is the Constitutional Committee of the Judiciary, and it's to protect the rights of Americans, and to prevent our own government from violating the laws and treaties that obtained to torture. So here's the problem the Committee on the Constitution finds itself engaged in this morning. We can't investigate those who did the waterboarding because they had legal approval.

We can't investigate those who gave their approvals because our intelligence agents relied on them for advice. It's a perfect circle that leads us round and round and round and nowhere closer to the truth. From Deborah Purlstein, a constitutional scholar and human rights lawyer who has spent time monitoring conditions at Guantanamo, came this accounting of the facts. As of 2006, there had been more than 330 cases in which US military and civilian personnel have incredibly alleged to have abused or killed detainees. These figures based almost entirely on the US government's own documentation. These cases involved more than 600 US personnel and more than 460 detainees held at US facilities throughout Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay. They include some 100-plus detainees who died in US custody, including 34 whose deaths the Defense Department reports as homicides.

At least eight of these detainees were, by any definition of the term, tortured to death. Not only is torture inhumane, she said, it's counterproductive. A remarkable recent study by the British Parliament found that US detainee treatment practices led the UK to withdraw from previously planned covert operations with the CIA because the US failed to offer adequate assurances against inhumane treatment. But I think it was the statement of a young army intelligence officer who put the intelligence impact most succinctly. The more a prisoner hates America, the harder he will be to break. The more a population hates America, the less likely its citizens will be to lead us to a suspect. Committee members complain that officials have covered their collected back sides with a mix of legal ease and double talk. Their frustration mounted during the testimony of Doug V, who had been the number three man at the Pentagon under Donald Rumsfeld, and a key player in US policy toward detainees. The fact is we had a clear policy from the top of this government that was against torture, against illegality,

against inhumane treatment. And I don't deny that there were terrible, reprehensible cases of abuse and bad behavior, and possibly even torture in various places against detainees. None of them was sanctioned by law or policy. One key question, were detainees subject to the Geneva conventions against mistreatment of POWs? The decision that the president made on February 7, 2002 was that the Geneva conventions don't apply to our conflict with al-Qaeda. The lawyers in the government made a distinction between the conflict that we had worldwide with al-Qaeda and the conflict we had with the Taliban in Afghanistan. And what the president said is, the Geneva conventions do not apply to our conflict worldwide with al-Qaeda, because al-Qaeda is not a party to the Geneva conventions. And it does apply to our conflict with the Taliban. In your book War and Decision, you state that Attorney General John Ashcroff said the main problem

with applying the Geneva conventions is that it would preclude effective interrogation. Do you know why the Attorney General would believe that you could not effectively interrogate a detainee? I would assume that he was reflecting the view of our military lawyers, that the way the Geneva Convention provision on POW interrogation reads, you can't even offer any kind of inducement positive or negative to a POW to answer a question. I mean, you can't say, you know, we'll give you cigarettes if you answer the question. We'll give you, you know, anything of that type. And so the view that many people have is that you, unless a detainee is completely voluntary and offering information, you're not going to be able to get any information from him if he has a POW status. Thank you, Mr. Feith.

Representative Nadler, press for clarification. Do you believe that the interrogation techniques to which you recommended Secretary Rumssel give blanket approval, stress positions, isolation, nudity, the use of dogs, the use of 20-hour interrogations, hooding, removal of clothing, use of detainee individual phobias, such as fear of dogs to induce stress? Wouldn't that be the normal definition of anyone's concept of torture? Hadn't it always been? I don't believe so, but especially not... No, I'm sorry, let me rephrase that. It shouldn't be torture. Are those humane treatments as that we should apply? Okay, this... The way one could... I imagine one could apply these things in an inhumane fashion, or one could apply them in a humane fashion. The general guy is... Yes, how could you force someone to be naked and then go with 20-hour interrogations? It doesn't say naked. It's a removal of clothing. Removal of clothing is different from naked.

It talks about removing of comfort item and of clothing that would make... The idea was to induce stress they talked about, but one could induce... In our police stations around America every day, American citizens are subjected to stress as part of interrogations. It can be done in an inhumane way. It could be done in a humane way. The general guidance... Are you saying... I find it hard to imagine, I should say, how someone can have a hood placed over his head, or be it not restricting his breathing, undergo a 20-hour interrogation, while having his clothing been removed, and using his fear of dogs or other... Mr. Chairman, what about her? And how that could not be considered humane. Deborah Pearlstein said the lack of clarity along the chain of command, whether deliberate or not, caused treatment that went beyond inhumane to fatal. Wellsoffer claimed that he was not at all trained for the interrogation of captured detainees.

This is the young soldier put on trial for the murder of a detainee who was stuffed into a sleeping bag wrapped with rope and suffocated to death. He testified that he understood that he was authorized to force this detainee into a sleeping bag based in part on a memorandum from General Ricardo Sanchez, the highest ranking military official in Iraq at the time. In that memo, General Sanchez authorized harsh interrogation techniques, including sleep and environmental manipulation in the use of aggressive dogs and stress positions, even as General Sanchez acknowledged that other countries would view these techniques as inconsistent with the Geneva Conventions, that memorandum was the only in-theater guidance that Wellsoffer testified he received. The use of the sleeping bag technique was also authorized by his immediate company commander. But just who was responsible? I mean, the way the US government works is people have responsibility at various levels, and if people are not fulfilling those responsibilities, then the higher level people have to make sure that they get fulfilled. I'm not arguing with you, Mr. Professor Fife.

I'm just trying to get clarification of whether you were saying that there is no upward responsibility for decisions that get made. I presume the book stops, the book stops with the command and chief. Oh, the book stops with the president. I mean, Harry Truman said. That wasn't a trick question. I'm just trying to get clarification on what it was you were saying. There's been a lot of dispute about who has responsibility here. Is there any dispute about Professor Pearlstein's testimony that there has, in fact, been torture? No, as I said, there were cases. That only requires, is there dispute about that? The answer to that is no. There is no dispute that it was tortured.

That's all I'm asking, Professor Fife. At the time the policies were adopted, John Ashcroft was Attorney General. Attorney General Ashcroft, there's no question that torture is illegal. That's correct. Is there an exception to that if it is done during a crisis? There is no exception that I know of that allows people to violate the law. Suppose you got some good information as a direct result of torture. Would that be an exemption to the statute? No, the outcome or product of torture doesn't justify it. You've made a comment that we have not been attacked since 9-11. Are we to surmise that that is a direct result of the fact that people have been tortured and we got good information? Well, first of all, I don't know of any acts of torture that have been committed by individuals in developing information.

I would not certainly make an assumption. I would attribute the absence of an attack, at least in part, because there are specific attacks that have been disrupted to the excellent work and the dedication and commitment of people whose lives are dedicated to defending the country. We're here today. That includes interrogators and who have used enhanced interrogation techniques, but they haven't used torture. And so it went. We'll post more excerpts from the hearings at our site on PBS.org. But with me now is Jane Mayer, one of the country's top investigative reporters. 12 years with the Wall Street Journal covering the White House, war, and foreign crises, and twice nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. Best Selling author, Jane Mayer, is now based in Washington as staff writer for The New Yorker. In the past several days, her new book The Dark Side, The Inside Story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals, has created even more passionate discussion than the hearings themselves. Jane Mayer, welcome.

Thanks so much. Glad to be with you. You've been attending some of these hearings. Are you certain that the witnesses who came from the government knew they were talking about torture? Well, I think they knew they were being asked about torture. I mean, they danced around the question. They've redefined the term torture. So that what was torture before 9-11, they say has not been torture since. Why? Because they wanted to interrogate people in completely brutal ways, and they wanted to avoid being accused of war crimes. So one of the witnesses there, Doug V, in particular, who was the number three in the Pentagon, argued right after 9-11 that the Geneva Convention should no longer apply to anybody that was picked up in the war on terror. That was a terror suspect. And so they took away the rules of war, which were the Geneva Conventions, which America really pioneered in many ways. And they also said that the criminal laws didn't apply to the same suspects. So they were left with kind of a legal limbo, and they made up the laws as they went along. Can we fault them for wanting to put first the safety of the United States in the hours, days, and weeks after 9-11?

Well, you know, this isn't really so much about fault. It's a question of seven years later if what they did in those panicky moments right after 9-11 were the right choices and whether they're still the right choices. I think that there's been a reconsideration from many quarters. And one of the things that I write about in this book is that, that unseen by the American public, there were many people really early on who had big problems with what this program was. And they were not just liberals at the ACLU. Well, they were conservatives inside the government. They were. And in particular, the first line of dissent came from the United States military leaders, and particularly the military lawyers who were experts in the laws of war. And they said, this is dishonorable. This is not how we fight wars. And if you do this to these people, it's going to inflame them, and it's going to endanger our own men and women when they get taken captive. And another very early line of dissent came from the FBI, who when they first saw what the CIA was doing, when they started interrogating high value detainees, a couple of the FBI agents who were there said these people, the CIA should be arrested for criminal behavior.

What they're doing is the quote was borderline torture. And some FBI agents, as I read your book, refused to take part in this brutality. They did refuse. Absolutely. They said, we're not going to have anything to do with this. And in fact, it wasn't just on the low level. It was a completely remarkable situation where the issue went all the way up to the top of the FBI, where the director of the FBI took a look at this, and he said, well, we're not going to be involved. So we've had a war on terror, where the FBI has pretty much taken a backseat or no seat, because they don't want to have any part of this thing, because they know that they think some of it's criminal. Who was some of the other conservative heroes, as you call them in your book? Well, a lot of them are lawyers, and they were people inside the Justice Department, one of whom I can't name this one, in particular, said when he looked around in some of the White House meetings he was in, where they were authorizing the president literally to torture people. If he thought that was necessary, he said, I can't. I could not believe these lunatics had taken over the country.

And I am not talking about someone who is a liberal Democrat. I'm talking about a very conservative member of this administration. You're source. My source. And yet, when these conservatives, as you're writing your book, when these conservatives spoke up, Cheney and Company retaliated against their own men. Well, people told me you can't imagine what it was like inside the White House during this period, that there was such an atmosphere of intimidation. And when the lawyers, some of these lawyers tried to stand up to this later, they felt so endangered in some ways that, at one point, two of the top lawyers in the Justice Department developed a system of talking in codes to each other, because they thought they might be being wiretapped. They even felt by their own government. They felt like they might be kind of weirdly in physical danger. They were actually scared to stand up to Vice President Cheney. And you say that the policies were maintained by top down quality control. How did they do it? Well, I mean, I think this is important, because we'll remember when the pictures of Abu Ghraib came out, the Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld said, you know, these were, you know, just a few rotten apples.

There wasn't a policy here. So part of what I spent a lot of time trying to do was to figure out what was policy, what was official U.S. policy. And there's a paper trail that goes right to the top of our government. And Congress is beginning in some of those hearings that you showed. They've begun to ask questions and subpoena documents. Are they getting to the truth? You've been watching here. You think they're getting to the truth? I think they're beginning to piece it together. It's a humongous jigsaw puzzle. I mean, and there are many, many secrets we still don't know. There are legal memos that nobody's ever seen. There's a memo, for instance, that exists still that defines all the interrogation techniques that were allowed. And for some reason, the government, the White House, won't allow even Congress to see it. Even the members of Congress with top security clearances can't see it. You have to wonder, a certain point is this, because they're afraid of hurting national security, or are they afraid of being ashamed in public when that list comes out.

But there is also this fact, which is that there was a briefing at which four top members of Congress, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was present, were present. And they were told what was going on. Have they been compromised by their knowledge of what was happening? They've been very defensive about it, the Democrats in particular, because they've said that in private they complained about this. And they felt they were not allowed to speak out because they'd be accused of violating national security. I've talked to some of them who say that while the CIA explained what it was doing, it didn't explain it thoroughly. So they used a lot of euphemisms as the kind of euphemisms we've been hearing, which are enhanced interrogation or special interrogation. The other side of it was raised by Representative Trent Franks, a Republican on the committee. Let me play this for you. CIA Director Michael Hayden has confirmed that despite the incessant hysteria in some quarters, the waterboarding technique has only been used on three high level captured terrorists, the very worst of the worst of our terrorist enemies.

What are these people like, Mr. Chairman? When the terrorist Zubata, a logistic chief of al-Qaeda, was captured, he and two other men were caught building a bomb. A soldering gun used to make the bomb was still hot on the table, along with the building plans for a school. CIA Director Hayden has said that Muhammad and Zubata provided roughly 25% of the information CIA had on al-Qaeda from all human sources. What he is saying is that torture works. Right. That's been the argument. And what is your conclusion after these many years of reporting this? There are a couple things I want to say about this. One is to say that there is a special exception here. We won't torture, except when we will torture, is a legal problem. The convention against torture, which the United States Senate ratified, has no exceptions. It's a major felony. There is no excuse for doing it for war. There is no excuse for national security. It doesn't have exceptions.

So this is a serious legal problem. Secondly, what did they get from, let's take his case of Abu Zubata. There was a soldering iron, as he says, and they were building a bomb. What led them to Abu Zubata? Was it torture? It wasn't, actually. It was a $10 billion bribe that they gave to the Pakistanis that got them to Abu Zubata. Bribing people does work, and that you can see again and again in the war in terror. Then what did they get out of Abu Zubata when they brutalized him? It turns out, I've talked to, for instance, Dan Coleman, who's an FBI agent who knows a lot about Abu Zubata and this interrogation. He questioned, he thinks they got nothing out of him. First of all, he was mentally unstable. He said all kinds of crazy things. He later said that he made up half of the things that he told them. The reason that people don't torture is not just because it's a moral issue. It's because when we move to a system of law that was on the principles of the Enlightenment, the effort was to get it the truth.

And you don't torture because people say anything under torture. And according to a very top CIA officer, I spoke to, who was very close with tenant. He said 90% of the former director of the CIA. He said 90% of what we got was crap. And he said, and that was true of every method we used. Torture, non-torture. There have been some suggestions recently that they may have begun to torture Abu Zubata before the Justice Department drew up this memo justifying it. The torture memo, the famous torture memo that was written in August of 2002, mostly by John Yu, was written to justify these harsh interrogations, whatever you want to call them. But when John Ashcroff, the former Attorney General, testified recently, he was asked, well, when did these interrogations on Zubata begin? It turns out they'd been interrogating him since March, which is several months before they had legal approval to do so.

That's an area where there seems to be super legal exposure for the people involved in this program. The interrogators, the people at the CIA who authorized it. And in particular, there were a number of psychologists who were contract psychologists who designed that program. Yeah, that's a fascinating part of your book. You talk about the doctors and the psychologists who participated in the government's program of torture. What? Tell us about it. They're civilians and they had these psychologists had never actually interrogated anyone. They trained in this odd little program where they did mock torture on people. And they had studied how to break people down. And one of them, in particular, a fellow named James Mitchell, spoke according to my sources about how the science behind breaking someone down psychologically is based on experiments shocking dogs, using electric shocks on dogs. There's this of this theory called learned helplessness where if you keep shocking a dog in a cage in a random way so that there's no sense to it, the dog will just kind of give up. They won't even try to escape after a while when you open the door because they're completely despondent. And this particular psychologist, James Mitchell, showed up near Abu Zubata and started talking about this theory of learned helplessness and how the science was great.

And you could sort of break resistance of detainees if you applied some of these same methods. Now, just for legal reasons, I need to say that a lawyer for James Mitchell says that he never really believed this yet. I have people on the record in here in this book talking about how he talked about it all the time. You write movingly in here about your concern over the participation in the torture program of these civilian doctors and psychologists. That to me is actually a terrible something I still can't fathom, which is how can doctors who take a Hippocratic oath to do no harm be involved in a program that call it torture or not. It's purposefully cruel and they pop up again and again doing what what were they doing there? They measure people's blood pressure. They make sure that detainees are strong enough so that they can continue to be tormented.

I mean, they're serving the torture. Some of the enhanced interrogation. They are. In one case, Muhammad al-Katani, who is a detainee down in Guantanamo, falls apart. His, all his vital signs are, you know, cratering and they, he gets emergency medical care so that they can make sure that then he can be brought back and go through more of this. And I guess, you know, everybody knows in World War II that science was perverted by the Germans. And this is, I don't want to draw this parallel because what we did is is not on an order of that. There's an international oath that doctors take to do no harm. And it's particularly horrible, I think, to see people use their psychological and medical expertise to hurt people. Some of these doctors and psychologists who participate with their watching the torture, as you say. Did you talk to them? Yes, I have talked to them. I've talked to the James Mitchell I interviewed at one point. He said he felt he had nothing to be ashamed of.

Why? I think he feels that he was doing the right thing. Because? Because he thought he was protecting the country. Torture can become an accepted way of life for a society. And you can get used to it. Or you can know it's going on and realizing that it doesn't affect you so it doesn't matter to you. Is there a possibility that that's happening here? Well, you know, there's a great book out called Torture in Democracy by Darius Regale, which is about how torture has worked over the years. And one of the things he writes about is that it has a very corrupting effect on a society and also on military discipline. On anybody involved in it, there's this tendency to get rougher and rougher. You don't get the answer you want. You up the level of aggression. It also has a horrific effect on the outlook of the people who are involved in the program. And I do describe how one of the interrogators in particular who did waterboarding at the CIA is racked by nightmares now, according to one of his friends.

You can't go to that darker place without it affecting you. Why did you go to the dark side? I mean, you spent three or more years there. I became, I have to admit, somewhat obsessed with this subject because when I did the first story for the New Yorker of the series of stories, which was about this program called Rendition, in which American government officials working for the CIA had black hoods over their heads. No one knew who they were and they were kidnapping people, snatching them off streets and throwing them basically in dungeons where they could never be heard from again. The more I found out, the more disturbing it became. And also, I was told that every step you can't know this. And for an investigative reporter, you know, it's like someone waving a red flag at a bull. Where did these three years take you? Where did you spend these three years? Well, I was just sitting at my desk in Washington, really. I've been to Guantanamo.

In the past, I've been in the Middle East. And to some extent, I think that made me interested in this. I was actually in Beirut on October 23, 1983, when the U.S. Marine barracks was blown up by terrorists. So I was kind of there when America started dealing with this issue. And it was the most horrific thing I'd ever seen. And I wondered, well, what mindset makes a terrorist like this? And how do you deal with this? But I knew enough about the Middle East when I saw, for instance, the Abu Ghraib pictures to know, if you're going to humiliate people like this, you're going to have a powerful backlash in the Middle East. And many people I interviewed said, the war on terror is a war on hearts and minds. We've got to win over the next generation of young Muslims. And if you start torturing their relatives, it's going to be pretty hard. What's the most horrific thing you found on the dark side? The worst thing for me is reading and finding out about innocent people who were taken by mistake and put through this program. And there's one German citizen, Khalid El-Mazri, who was locked up for months.

And the CIA actually had doubts that he was a terrorist from the start. And they wouldn't do anything about it, which I think is unconscionable. They just kept him in there to the point where he lost 70 pounds. Everybody around him was banging their heads against the walls trying to commit suicide. It's really awful to see the psychic destruction of people for no reason. It just doesn't seem American to me. On the basis of what you report in the dark side, do you think that these high officials, present and former, have any fear of prosecution? I think that especially after the Supreme Court ruled in the Hamden case, which was in 2006, that actually the Geneva conventions should cover detainees. That was just a chill that went through the top ranks of the government, because they suddenly realized that if you violate the standards in those conventions, it's a war crime, which is just an incredibly serious situation. Yes, I mean, and you begin to hear in some of the meetings I described, Vice President Cheney and the former Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez literally start saying, well, we better be careful.

If we move these detainees out of the black prison sites, people are going to wonder where they've been and what have we been doing with them. I mean, they're getting sort of spooked about the whole thing. So, yes, I think they're worried, and I think they have to defend this at this point, because they're up to their eyeballs in it. So they have to say it worked, and it was necessary. Well, that explained why the President of Attorney General McKeezy recently made a speech saying that Congress, not the courts, should define how the detainees can appeal their cases. Turning it into a political rather than a legal issue? Well, I guess, I mean, the thing is, the courts, in my view, anyway, have been terrific in standing up for the rule of law in this country, and for American ideals, as we've known them since the founding of the country. And the congressmen tend to have a little less spine, especially as we approach an election, which we are. So, if you put this issue in Congress now as we're facing an election, it's going to be demagogued, and I think there's some sense that a lot of people know that.

Some observers, like the lawyer, Glenn Green, will say that what Congress is doing, and this is a direct quote, is to immunize the administration's law breaking and retroactively protect it. What would be the impact of that? I think that there's been a lot more discussion recently about whether or not President Bush might issue blanket pardons of some sort retroactively to anybody involved in this program, and that is the program of detention and interrogation. You know, I think it might happen. There have been blanket pardons before. I'm not sure, again, I don't know where the American public really is on these issues. Nobody ever asked the American public, do you want to start torturing people? It happened in secret. Not that the American public did want to be protected from a second strike after 9-11. I think they did, and I think they were told that this would work, and the question is now, I think it's worth knowing a lot more about, did it really work, and was it necessary? And what are the long term consequences of this?

What do you think the country would gain or lose from pursuing war crimes? Well, you know, I think that it could be very toxic in some ways to hold people as criminals who were doing what they thought was right for the country. But at the same time, I have to say, I think that we need accountability in this country in order to make sure that people abide by the laws. I can tell you when I interview people at the CIA, a number of people said that they didn't want to get involved in this because they thought there'd be criminal repercussions. So, if there never are any criminal repercussions, I'm not sure where that leaves us. Do you think that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and John U and David Addington and all of the participants in these decisions would have done the sort of unthinkable things you described in here before 9-11? Well, I think the panic certainly unleashed them. And it's not that I think they were sitting there saying, I can't wait to torture people.

What I do think, though, is that there was a long, festering political agenda, which was to gut international law. There's been a movement in conservative legal circles to try to push back international law and to also to not coddle criminals, which is what, you know, how they see Al Qaeda in some instances, to get tough. I mean, right after 9-11, there's a speech from President Bush in which he says, you know, we've been too soft. So, they felt that they had to get tough, and this is what they thought being tough was, being macho. And I think the Bush administration really thought, okay, we'll take this shortcut, and we've got to do it, and so they did it. And in the face of this, why is Congress so quiet? Well, I think politically this is not a winning issue to look like you're standing up for terrorists, and it's really not about standing up for terrorists.

And that's why I have to say I admired a statement from John McCain, where he said, it's not about them, it's about us, and it's about our country. You know, you don't want to imitate the terrorists. We're better than that. The Dark Side, the inside story of how the war on terror turned into a war on American ideals. Jane Mayer, thank you very much for the book and for being here. Glad to be with you. My arms, all of these entities, they're just happy. No. It's a necessity, I can't move my arm away. It ain't quite as many, but for a long time, you haven't been hitting a horse. No, I mean, they don't look like they're killing more of me. You know, I'm not a doctor, but I think you're getting good medical care. No, I'm not, you're not here. Another Washington journalist, the late Meg Greenfield, covered the city for a long time and knew how it worked.

She got the connection between money and politics in ways that some reporters never do. Trying to rid politics of money, she wrote, is akin to the quest for a squirrel-proof bird feeder. No matter how clever and ingenious the design, the squirrels are always one mouthful ahead of you. Those squirrels came to mind last week when we reported on the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The two mortgage giants survived scandal and crisis over the years by spending nearly $200 million on lobbying and campaign contributions. We've posted on our website a story about Politico's Lisa Lair, on how insiders help Fannie and Freddie stave off scrutiny and avoid taxes even as their top executives pull down multi-million dollar paychecks. The New York Times also reported bluntly that their rapid expansion was at least in part the result of artful lobbying. What a lovely term, artful lobbying.

In other words, a better bird feeder built by the squirrels themselves. For more on-money in politics, let's go now to a man who saw firsthand how the city's money chase has crippled and corrupted Washington. His name is Ernest Fritz Hollings and he spent 38 years in the United States Senate, a long and colorful run, during which he made a name for himself as a passionate advocate for the hungry, a champion of balanced budgets, and a fighter for jobs in the textile industry. He called it quits four years ago and went home to South Carolina, but he was back in town recently to see old friends and sign his new book, making government work. I talked with Fritz Hollings at a Senate office building on Capitol Hill just before his book party. Why did you write this book now? I wrote the book because I could see what was wrong. I was raising money. I wasn't running for re-election. As a senator in your last year. As a senator in the last two or three years, that's all I was doing. It was raising money and working for the campaign and for the party. The hottest working people in the world, the congressman and senators, we work from early ballin to late at night and all weekend and everything else, but we work in now not for the country, but for the campaign.

What do you mean? All the time is fundraises. All the time is money, money, money, money. In 1998, 10 years ago, I ran and I had to raise eight and a half million, the record is there. Eight and a half million is 30,000 a week, every week for six years, each and every week for six years, all Dick Russell of Georgia. He said, now, a senator has given a six-year term rather than a two-year term. He's given six years, the first two years to be a statesman, then the second two years to be a politician is last two years of demagogue. We use all six years to raise money. That's why I wrote the book to try to get the government off its fanny and cut out all the politics and let's work for the country. What do you mean it's not where you say you can't get anything done and worst any more? What's not getting done?

It's legislation, anything meaningful. They fill up the tree, both sides. It's nothing wrong with Harry, Reed or Mitch McConnell. They're in good leaders and they're doing what the senators won't done. And they're all smart senators and they're all responsible people. But they play in the game and the media hadn't exposed. That's why I wrote it. I'm trying to expose what's the game. The game is money. I got to get the money. The heck with constituents. I got to get contributors. I've talked to the senators. You ask them. They know they're not getting anything done. And they're grown man and they're conscientious women. Everything else. They're outstanding. But they know that all they're doing is on the money treadmill. That's all it is. You're right. When I first came to the Senate 40 years ago, Senator Mansfield, he was the majority leader there. Yes, I agree. Had a vote every Monday morning to get a quorum. To get a quorum. And we worked until five o'clock on Friday.

That's right. We didn't go home on the weekends. We tried to get on Thursday afternoon or night or at least early Friday morning to go to the West Coast for fun races. That's why Hollywood and that's why Wall Street has got that much influence. I'm not going to South Carolina. They got no money for a Democrat. I have to travel all over the country years ago. You write on Washington's birthday. A freshman senator would read the farewell address at 12 o'clock noon. And then we'd have votes. Now we've merged Lincoln's birthday with Washington's birthday and take 10 days off in February for fun reason. We have St. Patrick's Day, 10 day break for fundraising. Easter, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, the month of August, Labor Day, Young Kippa and Columbus Day. That's 10 days gone. And October, September, October, the fundraiser. Everything is attuned for the campaign, the hell with the country. A constant permanent campaign. That's exactly what it is. There's commercial televisions, the big winner in this, because that's where so much of the money goes.

Well, that's right. The rich have got all the speech they want. The poor have got lockdown. He can't articulate out onto the television. And that's the poor can. And that's the voice. And that's the trouble. They tell you don't go to West Time and don't go see people and everything. Get on television and get a little tricky television and everything else like that. So all these artists have got all kind of different ways and different things like that to bring up and tricks to play. The clear message is money has a stranglehold on our democracy. You've got to untie that money not, and then the government will begin to work. So you conclude, therefore, if we limit the money, Congress will have time to work for the country, rather than the campaign. That's exactly right. They can talk to each other. They can deliberate. You fill up the tree with amendments. The leaders know that legislation has made down on K Street. They tell you when to vote, when they got the votes.

The leader brings up. He knows where it's going. And it's not going anywhere, but he'll get a vote to make him embarrassed about immigration or about energy or about subprime mortgages. The votes are made for the campaign. It's not to get anything done. You don't miss a bar humbug. Forget about that, boy. They're not doing anything up here. And the senators and congressmen know it. What do you make of the fact as you poured out in your book? Three days before the first presidential primary in Iowa, the New York Times listed the positions of all the candidates on eight important issues. Not one of them on trade or outsourcing of jobs. That's right. And they came where we had in South Carolina since President George W. Bush has been in. We've lost 94,500 manufacturing and net loss. We're getting small jobs and BMW and Spartanburg, but a net loss. And they never mentioned it in their early democratic primary.

Because they've got to get the money. And who gives the money? Wall Street, the banks, and business. You say, President's negotiate trade agreements not to open markets, but to protect corporate America's foreign investment. That's how you see it. That's exactly what I know it. Look at the Congress. On the Article I section 8, the Congress shall regulate. Not free. Congress will regulate trade, both domestic and foreign. And you say in your book, the Congress is not doing that. They can't do it because they've got to get the money. You put in a trade bill. And down on your head comes the Wall Street Journal and the big banks and the business round table and the National Chamber of Commerce and the National Association. The manufacturers are not for domestic, therefore Chinese and Indian manufacturer. Even the National Chamber of Commerce is not worried about Main Street, Peoria, Illinois, Main Street Shanghai. You see Henry Ford built up the middle class along with organized labor.

He said, I want to fill up, making the car to be able to buy the car. So he doubled the minimum wage. He put in health care and retirement costs and everything else of that kind, benefits. So we had a good work in relationship between labor. Now all of these trade agreements are for the investors to protect their investment in China and India. But forget about labor. You're right. You're a country in mind. That's the United States of America is going out of business. What hadn't been outsourced is being bought with that cheap dollar. Vodafone has gone to the Germans. Bell Labs has gone to the French with all their research and everything else. Westinghouse nuclear with all of their research and technology and everything has gone to Toshiba, Japan. And Anisah Bush, the Belgians, Anisah Bush is beholden to the stockholders. But nobody is beholden to the people other than Congressman Insanitus and they're not doing the job. But they're voting for an after. They're voting for these trade agreements.

We've gone to an outright trade wall and globalization and that's where we a wall. We had to get free trade as raise a barrier and remove them both. Then you got free trade. But when you were chairman of this very powerful commerce committee here in the Senate and you'd make these cases, they would call you protectionists. They would call you... I'm a protectionist. You've got social security to protect you from the ravages of old age. Medicare to protect you from ill health. You've got food and drug to clean air to water. We drink to food. We eat antitrust to protect the openness of the market and everything else. Before I open up Moyers manufacturing, you've got to have clean air, clean water, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, plant closing, notice, parental leave, safe work in place, safe machinery, antitrust. You can go to China for $0.58 an hour. They get you the plant. They own the workers and you don't have any investments. You don't have to worry about it. You say all we need to do to make the country work is follow the lead of the forefathers to compete in globalization.

To build the country's economy, Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson and Madison, made sure the first bill to pass the Congress in its history on July 4, 1789 was a protectionist bill, tariff bill on 60 articles. And we financed the country's development with tariffs. That's the Treasury Building is the best building here in Washington. The best building in Charleston is the Custom House. The best building in Brooklyn is the Custom House. Treasury had the money. Teddy Roosevelt said, thank God I'm not a free trader. All Lincoln, everybody says I'm either a Roosevelt, I'm a Lincoln Republican. He was a big protectionist. Oh, he raised tariffs. They were going to build a transcontinental railroad on the Abraham Lincoln. And they said, we can get the steel cheap from England. He said, we're in a minute. We're going to build our own steel mills and then we'll have not only our steel capacity, but we'll have the railroad.

And so he was a builder. Everybody was a builder. Eisenhower, he protected oil, Jack Kennedy. I went to him. He protected textiles. Ronald Reagan, he protected computers and Hollywood Davidson. He saved it. I saw George W. the other day of about three weeks or a month ago, he was at the Hollywood Davidson plant, but protectionism saved it. That's why they were making money at Hollywood Davidson. He got voluntary spray. Reagan got on steel, computers, machine tools, and automobiles. He got voluntary spray. And that's the only way to do it. So we're up. Do you take any hope on this issue of money and politics from McCain and Obama? Are they saying anything that are doing anything? I happen here, and I don't know, but the finance chairman from Obama was just told to get up 300 million for the rest of the campaign until November. Also get up millions for the Denver Convention.

And that's all they're doing is raising money. You and John McCain set on the same committee. You were chairman of the Commerce Committee. Oh yeah, we had any good friends, and I love him. And he used to be thought of as being an advocate of campaign finance before. And exactly right. And he was an advocate against these tax cuts. But now they've taken the Maverick McCain in trying to make him the Christian right and the money reason. And everything else like that, they tried to make him an ordinary Republican. And you can tell his LEDs. John McCain is not happy campaigning right now. I can tell you that. He, the media loves him. Oh, he had a room up there by the Commerce Committee with Donuts and coffee and all in the press room and go to the press gallery. They'd go to McCain because they could get a statement out of him. And he was honest. He'd tell you how he felt. So the press loves him and everything else, but they disappointed him now because they're trying to change him over to qualify him as a Republican. What would you do about the power of the press in our society?

Tell them, they're bygones, tell the truth. You know the debate between Walter Lippman and John Dewey. And Walter Lippman said, what we ought to do is get the experts in finance and defense and education and the various elements of government. And let them determine the country's needs and give it to the Congress and let them pass it. John Dewey, the educator said, no, no, let the free press report truth to the American people and the needs will be reflected in their congressmen and senators in Washington. And he was right. But they're not telling the truth anymore. They all are doing the headlines rather than headway. They're all getting by with perceptions. They're all getting by with posted politics. They're not talking about the needs. The country is really willing to be able to work. The government's not working. And the book is making government work. Senator Fritt Holland, it's been good to see you again. Good to be with you. Always. Thank you very much.

Tell the truth, says Fritt Hollings, and we depend on reporters like Jane Mayer and Meg Greenfield to do just that, to keep telling the story of how big money corrupts government absolutely and how the trampling of civil liberties corrupts us all. That's it for the journal. See you next week. I'm Bill Moyers. I've covered a lot of presidential elections. This is the single most important one. Everything about this campaign is unusual or unpredictable. There are no advertisers to be satisfied, only an audience to be satisfied. This election is important because the stakes have never been higher. Where do you stand in the debate over the use of torture techniques? Log on at pbs.org.

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