An open letter to Karen Hughes

Your duty is to defend America's reputation in the world. To do so, you must persuade the Bush administration to renounce its abhorrent and hypocritical policy on torture.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Read more: Politics, Sidney Blumenthal, Karen Hughes, State Department, Opinion, Torture, Alberto Gonzales

Photo: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Karen Hughes listens to President Bush before being sworn in as undersecretary of state for public diplomacy in Washington, Sept. 9, 2005.

Oct. 11, 2007 | Karen Hughes
Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
U.S. Department of State
2201 C St. NW
Washington, DC 20520

Dear Karen Hughes:

You may recall that we met briefly in January 2001, during the transition to the Bush administration, when you dropped by my office in the White House. You were filled with enthusiasm and I wished you good luck. Now I am writing you as the executive producer of a documentary, "Taxi to the Dark Side" (directed by Alex Gibney), to invite you to a private preview in Washington on Oct. 18. The film has been described by the New York Times as "a meticulous examination of American policy on the interrogation of prisoners. It traces the scandals at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere to official changes of policy originating in the vice president's office and approved by the secretary of defense. We see documents listing approved methods of interrogation, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning."

The film includes interviews with military interrogators, victims and families of those tortured, and with members of the Bush administration who opposed the policy, such as former general counsel of the Navy Alberto Mora and Lawrence Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

"Taxi to the Dark Side" has won the prizes for best documentary at the Tribeca, Newport and Ojai film festivals, will be aired this month on major television channels throughout Europe, is being shown next week by special request at the European Union's annual ministerial meeting, and will be distributed commercially by Think Films in theaters throughout the U.S. and Europe in January 2008, after which it will be broadcast on the Discovery Channel. The Times calls "Taxi" devastating." The Guardian of London says its documentation is "irrefutable."

One Defense Department official, believing the administration policy on detainees and torture to be illegal and counterproductive, told me that in his and others' efforts to reverse it they approached you as a last hope. After all, you have virtually unrestricted access to the president. But he recounted that you rebuffed them, and described your attitude as dismissive.

Your complicity in the torture policy is one reason that I am writing you. Despite the futility of those inside the administration in bringing the problem to you, you still remain in place to redress it. As the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, responsible for defending America's reputation in the world, you must engage the issue that has most seriously damaged our image. Your obligation will continue so long as you hold your post. Those who care about the good name of the United States will not cease viewing you as a last resort, even if you disdain or ignore them, because they cling to the desperate hope that a nagging conscience or its sudden awakening will compel you actually to do your job.

If you were to start performing your mission in earnest, you would have to persuade the president and his spokespeople to acknowledge the truth of their policy. On Oct. 4, the New York Times reported that in 2005 the Justice Department under former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales issued a secret opinion justifying torture despite President Bush's repeated claim, "We do not torture." According to the Times, "The new opinion, the officials said, for the first time provided explicit authorization to barrage terror suspects with a combination of painful physical and psychological tactics, including head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures." Then Deputy Attorney General James Comey opposed the policy and "told colleagues at the department that they would all be 'ashamed' when the world eventually learned of it." When the Times' story broke, White House press secretary Dana Perino responded with a familiar refrain: "We do not torture."

Yet the revelations in the Times fit with those disclosed by the former head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, Jack Goldsmith, in his new book, "The Terror Presidency." Goldsmith was appointed to this highly sensitive position because he was trusted politically as a conservative, a member in good standing of the Federalist Society and an ardent believer in President Bush's policies. Upon assuming office in October 2003, Goldsmith began a review of existing opinions, including those on torture. As White House counsel, Gonzales had called the Geneva Convention against torture "quaint," and the president had affirmed two opinions abrogating the convention. In a now notorious opinion, written on Aug. 1, 2002, deputy assistant OLC counsel John Yoo declared that torture consisted of pain "associated with a sufficiently serious physical condition or injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions." In other words, torture was whatever the president said it was. Goldsmith writes that the message of the OLC opinion was clear: "The torture law doesn't apply if you act under color of presidential authority."

In his review, Goldsmith found that the legal analysis behind these opinions on torture displayed an "unusual lack of care and sobriety" and was "deeply flawed." The stakes, moreover, put at risk the United States' "decades-long global campaign to end torture, relations with the Muslim world and the nation's moral reputation and honor." Goldsmith decided that the opinions underpinning the administration's interrogation regime could not be legally defended, and he withdrew them. While Comey supported him, "important people inside the administration had come to question my fortitude for the job, and my reliability." Goldsmith resigned on principle after serving less than a year.

You are the last member of the so-called Iron Triangle of the president's Texas political team still in government. The others have departed. In an article in the Washington Post on Oct. 7, former members of the administration gave interviews presenting themselves as increasingly embittered, disenchanted and alienated. The newspaper reports, "The long-term ideals that many of them came to the White House to pursue appear jeopardized, even discredited to many. They tell themselves that they have acted on principle, that the decisions they helped make will be vindicated. But they cannot be sure." You alone remain to alter the course of events that might somehow change the historical perception of the Bush presidency and those who served him, a legacy already deeply engraved.

The genius of your appointment is that the president and his advisors understood ahead of time that they would need your services to repair the nation's reputation. After all, this position has never existed before; and it has never been so drastically needed. While it is true that there have been organizations within the government, such as U.S. Information Agency, under directors such as Edward R. Murrow and John Chancellor, that built libraries and conducted international educational exchanges, the idea of a public diplomacy czar is novel. Having someone to paper over the country's mistakes by telling people what they should think despite the reality would in the past have been considered undemocratic. Form and content, it would have been said, needed to complement each other. But your position is one in which form and content (words and deeds) stand in opposition to each other. Ironically, therefore, your job has never been more important than now.

Next page: "To be honest, you have earned a reputation for being out of touch, for spouting platitudes without understanding the underlying issues"