Obama Released CIA Memos as Cheney Payback

Last week, the Washington Post ran an inside account of the process behind President Barack Obama's decision to declassify and release selected memorandums from the CIA which detail tactics used under the Bush Administration's enhanced interrogations program. The account is failry detailed, describing late night White House meetigs, secret CIA briefings, and secure conferences in the White House Situation Room. But the report demonstrates that the president's ultimate decision was far from focused on national security. Rather, it was steeped in politics. Specifically, the report shows the president's decision was a political attack on former vice president Dick Cheney.

"Several Obama aides said that his decision was in line with his frequent criticism during the campaign of President George W. Bush's policies on interrogations at secret prisons. On his second day in office, Obama banned the prisons and the tactics in an executive order.

The aides also said they hoped the memos' release will focus public attention on the coldness and sterility of the legal justifications for abusive techniques, with Obama telling reporters in the Oval Office last Tuesday that the documents demonstrate that the nation lost its "moral bearings" in the Bush years.

A source familiar with White House views said Obama's advisers are further convinced that letting the public know exactly what the past administration sanctioned will undermine what they see as former vice president Richard B. Cheney's effort to "box Obama in" by claiming the executive order heightened the risk of a terrorist attack."

Conspicuously absent from the Post's report is any indication of a discussion within the Obama Administration of the possible effects on U.S. national security from a decision to reveal the techniques that were used to extract what the CIA insists, and Obama Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis Blair agrees, was high-value information from terrorist detainees that helped keep the nation safe from attack in the years after September 11th. Some thought was given, however, to the opinions of foreign intelligence services, which are described as hesitant to turn over captured terrorists for fear of being implicated in alleged torture. But foreign intelligence agencies are not tasked with keeping the United States secure, and their views of U.S. policy should not have been used to overrule the CIA's determination that enhanced interrogations were a vital part of that effort.

On the campaign trail, President Obama often said that it was time to rise above the petty partisan politics of Washington. But if the Post's reporting is accurate, President Obama and his Administration themselves have politicized the most critical of issues, U.S. national security. Some Administration supporters might say that politics permeates every decision Washington. That argument is almost certainly true. However, Democrats criticized the Bush Administration relentlessly for what they saw as politicizing national security decisions, and Obama promised as a candidate that he would not engage in the "tired old politics" of Washington.

Hat tip: HotAir