Whitehouse's Torture Hearings Begin as Dems Get Defensive on Issue

Sheldon Whitehouse kicks off Senate subcomittee hearings today on the Bush-era legal memos justifying harsh interrogation techniques. But it is, oddly, Democrats finding themselves on the defensive on the issue as questions linger about what Congressional leaders - particularly Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi - knew when about torture.

Leading Democrats are blasting Republican critics of the Speaker, arguing that the GOP is trying to distract from the real issue. And Whitehouse, himself, has maintained that there is little members of Congress could have done to stop the Bush Administration from pursuing waterboarding and other War-on-Terror naughtiness. From an article in Roll Call:

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who is chairing a hearing today on the Bush administration’s legal justification for harsh interrogations, agreed that there is little Members can do to object to something they have learned about in a classified setting.

“When this was brought to my attention, I moved legislatively to get something accomplished,” said Whitehouse, who joined the Intelligence panel in 2007. “But it never crossed my mind that writing a personal letter to [then-Vice President] Dick Cheney was going to change anybody’s mind. That was to me an exercise in folly. I mean, who’s kidding who here?”

Whitehouse, who chairs the Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts, said his hearing would dig into how the Bush Justice Department developed the legal opinions that were used to justify the use of harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding, sensory deprivation, stress positions and other tactics regarded as torture in the international community. President Barack Obama released the minimally redacted memos earlier this year.

The hearing comes as Democrats on the Hill anxiously await a report from the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility that is likely to recommend that the lawyers who wrote the “torture memos” be disciplined or disbarred for writing faulty legal advice.

Whitehouse said he hopes his hearing will examine “how widespread the legal dissent was at the time and how it was squelched and ... what the analysis is of legal misconduct from the point of view of attorney disciplinary action. That sets the stage for a better understanding of the OPR report when it comes out.”

Menwhile, Whitehouse tells MSNBC's Keth Olbermann that it would not be appropriate to call the Bush Administration lawyers before his subcommittee with the OPR report yet to emerge. The senator says he is confident that Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, will call the lawyers before Congress at the appropriate time. Leahy has drawn fire from liberals for resisting hearings to date.