February 24, 2006

Semi-Humorous Watch

Rumsfeld:

Q Mr. Secretary, I wanted to ask you about a memo that was written by Alberto Mora, the former Navy general counsel, which details the internal debate about the interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. The memo was first reported on by The New Yorker and it's now become public. And in the memo he refers to your December 2nd, 2002 memo authorizing some procedures, which you then rescinded in January. And he says that you got, essentially, very bad legal advice in signing that memo and that the memo itself had a deeply flawed representation of what the law was.

Do you feel that you were ill-served by the advice you got when you signed that memo, considering that you then had to rescind it just a month later, or a little over a month later?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Well first, that's roughly my recollection of the situation; that the -- Chairman Myers and I were -- recommended that we sign -- that I sign this. I did sign it. And it was staffed around in the department, and as always, there are people who have different views. It went out. And then, I think within four or five, six weeks, we heard that there was concern about that, in which case we stopped it immediately -- retrieved it and put it on hold, and then undertook an investigation and consulted with the people who were in the Judge Advocate offices, and had a discussion about what the concerns were, because we didn't want to be doing something that people were concerned about in the department. And I had not been aware about any debate or concern prior to that. And in which case then it was revised in some ways and sent back out.

You know, I expect to have differing views. It's my responsibility to listen to differing views and to make judgments, and I do. And when, after the fact, it turns out that there is concern about it that concerns me, then I'm happy to rescind it and take another fresh look at it and talk to more people about it and see what ought to be done.

Q Do you recall on this memo that you wrote a little notation at the bottom about standing more than four hours because you stand at your desk?

SEC. RUMSFELD: I do. I do.

Q This attorney argued that that was -- it was badly advised to allow it to go out with that notation on it because that could be interpreted by some as a wink and a nod that it would be okay to go beyond the techniques that were prescribed in the memo.

SEC. RUMSFELD: No. No, no. There's no wink and a nod about anything. It was a semi-humorous remark that a person in his 70s stands all day long, and there was one provision in there that they would have people stand for several hours, and I just mused that.

And maybe it shouldn't have gone out, but it did, and I wrote it, and life goes on.

Q Part of it was that you should have gotten much better advice from your legal staff --

SEC. RUMSFELD: I heard your question the first time. I get differing views all the time, and it's not their fault for having differing views. It's -- if there's something that's done that is not the best as it might have been done, then it's my fault for having agreed to it, not the advice I get.

More on this soon.

Posted by Gregory at February 24, 2006 03:38 AM | TrackBack (0)