Chris Hedges's Blog, page 594

History Lesson for Democrats: Think Winning Elections, Not Impeaching Trump

On a steamy day in July 1787, in the midst of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, the 55 state delegates who would come to be known as the Founding Fathers turned their attention to the issue of presidential impeachment.

Many weighed in on the subject, both pro and con, but none more memorably than Benjamin Franklin, who argued that the new nation’s charter should include a means for peaceably ousting a president who had “rendered himself obnoxious.” The alternative, Franklin quipped, was assassination.

George Mason of Virginia also famously spoke out during the impeachment deliberations, asking, “Shall any man be above justice? Above all, shall that man be above it who can commit the most extensive injustice?” In the end, all but two state delegations—from South Carolina and Massachusetts—voted to incorporate an impeachment process in the Constitution.

As Harvard history professor Jill Lepore observed in an online New Yorker magazine column last May, Mason’s query about whether anyone, including the president, is above the law “was as good a question then as it is now.” It’s the crucial question at the heart of the debate today over the possible impeachment of Donald Trump, our 45th president.

According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 71 percent of registered Democrats believe Trump has committed impeachable offenses. They want party leaders to initiate impeachment proceedings if the Democrats retake the House in November.

Nor is the impeachment fervor among Democrats and other Trump resisters likely to abate soon. If anything, it will probably build, fueled by the president’s unhinged temperament, narcissism and pathological lying—a toxic brew that has produced a policy agenda marked by racism and know-nothing nativism, unrelenting attacks on judges and the media, a dangerous denial of climate change and the transformation of the presidency into what some commentators charge is little more than a closely held kleptocracy.

The demand for impeachment will also be sustained by the many scandals and controversies that have plagued the Trump administration since its inception. Although the specific outrages tend to ebb and flow with the phases of the moon, several should have staying power till November and beyond. Topping the list are the mushrooming investigation of Trump’s hapless personal attorney, Michael Cohen; the president’s persistent prevarications about the pre-election hush money paid to porn star Stormy Daniels; and, above all, the looming final showdown with special counsel Robert Mueller.

But playing the impeachment card—especially now, ahead of the elections—may not be the best way forward, even with a president as unfit as Trump. If the history of impeachment in America teaches anything, it’s that impeachment can backfire on its proponents. As a remedy for misconduct, it both overpromises and underperforms.

Since the ratification of the Constitution, the House has impeached a scant 19 individuals: 15 federal judges, one Cabinet member, one senator and two presidents—Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton. Richard Nixon, the president most Americans associate with impeachment for his role in covering up the Watergate burglary, was never actually impeached. He resigned from office after the House Judiciary Committee passed three articles of impeachment against him but before the entire body voted on them.

Ironically and sadly, to invoke Franklin and the founders again, four American presidents—Abraham Lincoln (1865), James Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901) and John F. Kennedy (1963)—have been assassinated.

In its history, the Senate has conducted 16 impeachment trials, netting convictions of eight judges, who were subsequently removed from the bench. Every other impeachment case either resulted in the dismissal of charges or an acquittal by the Senate.

The reason for the low numbers has much to do with the unique two-step impeachment process the framers crafted. Instead of designing impeachment as a straightforward legal proceeding that would be litigated in the courts and subject to judicial review, they created a hybrid of law and politics to be overseen and carried out in phases by the two chambers of Congress.

As set out in the Constitution, an impeachment case officially begins with an accusatory phase and the adoption of at least one article of impeachment by the House on a simple majority vote. Technically, impeachment refers only to the passage of an accusation, not to the subsequent trial of an accused official in the Senate.

As the accusatory body, the House has the authority to decide what constitutes an impeachable offense in any particular instance. The Constitution provides only general guidance, defining the grounds for impeachment as “treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

While treason and bribery are clear enough, the meaning of “high crimes and misdemeanors”—the ground most commonly invoked over the decades—is not. In Federalist (Paper) No. 65, Alexander Hamilton described the concept as embracing not only criminal conduct but also abuses of power and violations of the “public trust.” On a more comical but still instructive note, in 1970 then-minority leader Gerald Ford, frustrated by his unsuccessful bid to impeach liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, remarked during a floor debate, “An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at any moment in history.”

In practice, both Hamilton and Ford have been proved correct, as charges of high crimes and misdemeanors have been alleged in impeachment cases for a dizzying array of wrongdoing, both criminal and noncriminal, particularly against judges. The annals of impeachment include two federal judges who were impeached and removed for holding court while drunk, the first in 1803 and the second in 1873. Another judge was impeached and dismissed in 1933 for running a private law practice as a side business while serving as a judicial officer.

Given the broad discretion accorded to the House, drafting articles of impeachment against Trump is easy. In fact, they’ve already been drafted. In November, Rep. Steven Cohen, D-Tenn., and six other Democrats introduced H. Res. 621, charging Trump with obstruction of justice stemming from the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, violations of the foreign and domestic emoluments clauses of the Constitution for using the presidency for personal financial gain, and abuse of power for undermining the rule of law and attacking the independence of the judiciary and the press. Proponents need only update the resolution to keep it current.

But even with a new Democratic majority come November, getting the full House to endorse the resolution would be a daunting task, requiring lengthy committee hearings and divisive debates. The second step of the impeachment process, which takes place in the Senate, would present even more daunting obstacles.

Once forwarded to the Senate, an impeachment article functions like a grand jury indictment. The president, much like a criminal defendant, is put on trial, with a team of House managers presenting the case for impeachment and a team of defense attorneys representing the president.

The Constitution vests the Senate with the sole power to try an impeachment case. And although the Constitution requires the chief justice of the Supreme Court to preside in an impeachment trial of the president, the Senate gets to decide, according to its internal procedural rules, whether to hold a full evidentiary hearing before its entire membership, as was done with the impeachment of Andrew Johnson, or to farm out the gathering of evidence to a subcommittee, as for Bill Clinton.

Conviction requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate, and removal from office follows upon conviction. A tally of less than two-thirds constitutes an acquittal. And no matter how the Senate votes, there is no appeal from its judgment, whether based on the evidence or purely on politics.

Given the two-thirds rule and the paucity of presidential impeachments, it’s difficult to discern a reliable impeachment template for the Democrats to follow that would conclude with Trump’s conviction and removal.

The House passed 11 articles of impeachment against Johnson, a Democrat reviled for his opposition to Reconstruction and the 14th Amendment, by overwhelming margins, based largely on his firing of Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s last secretary of war. Yet, at the conclusion of an 11-week impeachment trial that featured testimony from 25 prosecution and 16 defense witnesses, seven Republican senators crossed party lines and voted for acquittal.

Clinton, cited for lying under oath about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, also survived impeachment. He not only remained in office, but his popularity soared after the Republican-controlled House returned two articles of impeachment against him in December 1998.

Even Nixon, whose resignation in the face of near certain impeachment for obstruction of justice most closely parallels the case that could be constructed against Trump, offers only the faint outlines of a model for today’s more fractured political landscape. The Republican Party of the 1970s, which eventually abandoned Nixon, is a far cry from the grab bag of unprincipled zealots that currently dominates the Senate. In any impeachment crisis, the party would no doubt hold fast behind Trump. Nor is Trump capable of the kind of shame and self-reflection that finally led Nixon to give up the White House.

None of this means, of course, that calls for Trump’s impeachment should abruptly end, or that those who insist, as the founders did so long ago, that no one is above justice, should give up the fight.

What it means, in the simplest terms, is that those who see Trump as a threat to constitutional norms and values should concentrate less on the long shot of impeachment and more on winning elections by promoting a positive vision for the future, built around programs to advance the interests of ordinary people. That’s another political remedy for the removal of “obnoxious” leaders that the founders—white men of wealth who operated in an era when others were excluded from the franchise—didn’t much consider in 1787.

It’s by no means certain that the Democrats will be up to the challenge after blowing the last election so epically. But starting in November and continuing in 2020, they—and we—will have another chance.

CIA Nominee Reportedly Offered to Withdraw

WASHINGTON—Gina Haspel, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Central Intelligence Agency, offered to withdraw her nomination, two senior administration officials said Sunday, amid concerns that a debate over a harsh interrogation program would tarnish her reputation and that of the CIA.

White House aides on Friday sought out additional details about Haspel’s involvement in the CIA’s now-defunct program of detaining and brutally interrogating terror suspects after 9/11 as they prepared her for Wednesday’s confirmation hearing. This is when she offered to withdraw, the officials said.

They said Haspel, who is the acting director of the CIA, was reassured that her nomination was still on track and will not withdraw. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The news was first reported Sunday by The Washington Post.

Haspel, who would be the first woman to lead the CIA, is the first career operations officer to be nominated to lead the agency in decades. She served almost entirely undercover and much of her record is classified. Democrats say she should be disqualified because she was the chief of base at a covert detention site in Thailand where two terrorism suspects were subjected to waterboarding, a technique that simulates drowning.

Haspel has told lawmakers in recent weeks that she would stand firm against any effort to restart the brutal detention and interrogation program, administration officials told The Associated Press on Friday. She is expected to reiterate that publicly this week.

Haspel, one official said, was wary of suffering the same fate as failed veterans affairs nominee Ronny Jackson and of dredging up the CIA’s troubled past. She took over last month as the acting CIA director after the previous director, Mike Pompeo, was sworn in as secretary of state.

After her offer to withdraw, White House aides worked to reassure her that she had the president’s support.

As with other nominations, this one hit a roadblock but is back on track, said a third administration official familiar with the effort to get her confirmed.

Haspel’s conversations with senators continue ahead of Wednesday’s confirmation hearing at the Senate Intelligence Committee and a later full vote in the Senate.

In addition, the CIA has sent materials to the Senate, some classified, that the lawmakers can read to better understand not only her work in the Counterterrorism Center, which oversaw the harsh interrogation program, but also other aspects of her 33-year career, including more than 30 years undercover.

She has received robust backing from former intelligence, diplomatic, military and national security officials, who praise her extensive intelligence career.

On the opposing side are groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, which says she should have stood up against the interrogation practices then.

Raj Shah, a White House spokesman, on Sunday called Haspel a highly qualified nominee. “Her nomination will not be derailed by partisan critics who side with the ACLU over the CIA on how to keep the American people safe,” he said.

The Danger of Leadership Cults

No leader, no matter how talented and visionary, effectively defies power without a disciplined organizational foundation. The civil rights movement was no more embodied in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. than the socialist movement was embodied in Eugene V. Debs. As the civil rights leader Ella Baker understood, the civil rights movement made King; King did not make the civil rights movement. We must focus on building new, radical movements that do not depend on foundation grants, a media platform or the Democratic Party or revolve around the cult of leadership. Otherwise, we will remain powerless. No leader, no matter how charismatic or courageous, will save us. We must save ourselves.

“You didn’t see me on television, you didn’t see news stories about me,” said Baker, who died in 1986. “The kind of role that I tried to play was to pick up pieces or put together pieces out of which I hoped organization might come. My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.”

All of our radical and populist organizations, including unions and the press, are decimated or destroyed. If we are to successfully pit power against power we must reject the cult of the self, the deadly I-consciousness that seduces many, including those on the left, to construct little monuments to themselves. We must understand that it is not about us. It is about our neighbor. We must not be crippled by despair. Our job is to name and confront evil. All great crusades for justice outlast us. We are measured not by what we achieve but by how passionately and honestly we fight. Only then do we have a chance to thwart corporate power and protect a rapidly degrading ecosystem.

What does this mean?

It means receding into the landscape to build community organizations and relationships that for months, maybe years, will be unseen by mass culture. It means beginning where people are. It means listening. It means establishing credentials as a member of a community willing to make personal sacrifices for the well-being of others. It means being unassuming, humble and often unnamed and unrecognized. It means, as Cornel West said, not becoming “ontologically addicted to the camera.” It means, West went on, rejecting the “obsession with self as some kind of grand messianic gift to the world.”

One of the most important aspects of organizing is grass-roots educational programs that teach people, by engaging them in dialogue, about the structures of corporate power and the nature of oppression. One cannot fight what one does not understand. Effective political change, as Baker knew, is not primarily politically motivated. It is grounded in human solidarity, mutual trust and consciousness. As Harriet Tubman said: “I rescued many slaves, but I could have saved a thousand more if the slaves knew they were slaves.” The corporate state’s assault on education, and on journalism, is part of a concerted effort to keep us from examining corporate power and the ideologies, such as globalization and neoliberalism, that promote it. We are entranced by the tawdry, the salacious and the trivial.

The building of consciousness and mass organizations will not be quick. But these mass movements cannot become public until they are strong enough to carry out sustained actions, including civil disobedience and campaigns of noncooperation. The response by the state will be vicious. Without a dedicated and organized base we will not succeed.

Bob Moses was the director of the Mississippi Project of the SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee) in the early 1960s when that group organized to register black voters. Most blacks had been effectively barred from voting in Mississippi through poll taxes, literacy tests, residency requirements and other barriers. Moses, like many organizers, was beaten and arrested. Blacks who attempted to register to vote were threatened, harassed, fired from their jobs, physically attacked and even murdered.

“In essence, it was low-grade guerrilla warfare,” Moses said recently at an event at Princeton University, in New Jersey. “In guerrilla warfare, you have a community you can disappear into and emerge from. That’s what we had. We had a group of local activists who had been a part of the NAACP local organizations and who had a different sense after World War II. They were our base. I can go any place, any time of the night, knock on a door. Somebody was going to open it up, give me a bed to sleep in, feed me. They were going to watch my back.”

“We had a guerrilla community that we could disappear into and then emerge to take some people down to the battleground, the courthouse in some local town with people trying to register to vote,” he said. “At that point, you were exposed and possibly open to some danger. The danger came in different ways. There were the highway patrols, which the state organized. Then there were the local sheriffs. Then there’s the Klan citizens. Different levels of danger. The challenge is to understand that you are not always in danger. Those who couldn’t figure that out didn’t last. They didn’t join.”

“In guerrilla warfare, you have to have an end,” he said. “You learn that from people in the guerrilla base who had been fighting and figuring out how to survive and thrive in a guerrilla struggle. The only way to learn that is to immerse yourself. There’s no training. In Mississippi, most of the people who did that were young, 17, 18, 19. And they lived there.”

Organizing, Moses said, begins around a particular issue that is important to the community—raising the minimum wage, protecting undocumented workers, restoring voting rights to former prisoners, blocking a fracking site, halting evictions, ending police violence or stopping the dumping of toxic waste in neighborhoods. Movements rise organically. Dissidents are empowered and educated one person at a time. Any insurgency, he said, has to be earned.

“If you get knocked down enough times and stand up enough times then people think you’re serious,” he said. “It’s not you talking. They’ve heard everyone talk about this forever. We earned their trust. We earned the respect of young people across the country to get them to come down and risk their lives. This is your country. Look what’s going on in your country. What do you want to do about it? We established our authenticity.”

Moses warned movements, such as Black Lives Matter, about establishing a huge media profile without a strong organizational base. Too often protests are little more than spectacles, credentialing protesters as radicals or dissidents while doing little to confront the power of the state. The state, in fact, often collaborates with protesters, carrying out symbolic arrests choreographed in advance. This boutique activism is largely useless. Protests must take the state by surprise and, as with the water protectors at Standing Rock, cause serious disruption. When that happens, the state will drop all pretense of civility, as it did at Standing Rock, and react with excessive force.

“You can’t be a media person [the subject of media reports] and an organizer,” Moses said. “If you’re leading an organization, it’s what you do and who you are that impacts the people who you are trying to get to do the organizing work. If what they see is your media presence, then that’s what they also want to have. It’s overwhelming to be a media person in this country. To attend to the duties of being a media person, the obligations that follow a media person, really means that you can’t attend to the obligations of actually doing organizing work. Once SNCC decided it needed a media person, it lost its organizing base. It disintegrated and disappeared. You can’t do both.”

The mass mobilizations, such as the Women’s March, have little impact unless they are part of a campaign centered around a specific goal. The goal—in the case of SNCC, voter registration—becomes the organizing tool for greater political consciousness and eventually a broader challenge to established power. People need to be organized around issues they care about, Moses said. They need to formulate their own strategy. If strategy is dictated to them, then the movement will fail.

“People need to figure out for themselves what they want to do about a problem,” Moses said. They need “agency.” They do not get agency, he said, “by listening to somebody tell them things.”

“They can develop agency by going out and trying things,” he said. “It works, or it doesn’t work. They come back. They think about it. They reformulate it. Staff people are keeping track of what it is, who it is, what they’re working on. They are documenting it. This is the difference between a mobilizing effort, where you’re getting people to turn out for an event, and trying to get people self-engaged and thinking through a problem.”

“When you do civil disobedience, the question is not about the power structure but the people you’re trying to reach,” he said. “How do they view what you’re doing? Do you alienate them? It’s a balance between, in some sense, leading and organizing. When you do your civil disobedience, it may or may not help with expanding your organizing base.”

Moses, who believes that only nonviolent resistance will be effective, said the Vietnam anti-war movement hurt itself by not accepting, as the civil rights movement did, prison and jail time as part of its resistance. Many in the anti-war movement, he said, lacked the vital capacity for self-sacrifice. This willingness to engage in self-sacrifice, he said, is fundamental to success.

“The anti-war movement would have had a huge impact if it had been able to agree that what we’re going to do is go to prison,” he said. “We are going to pay a certain price. We’re going to earn our insurgency against the foreign policy establishment of the country. We’re going to say no and go to prison. That way, they could have emerged when the war was over as the insurgents who had paid, in their own way, the price of the war.”

Hawaii Volcano Destroys 21 Homes; 1,700 People Evacuated

PAHOA, Hawaii—The number of homes destroyed by Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano jumped to 21 Sunday as scientists reported lava spewing more than 200 feet (61 meters) into the air.

Some of the more than 1,700 people who evacuated prepared for the possibility they may not return for quite some time.

Hawaii officials said the decimated homes were in the Leilani Estates subdivision, where molten rock, toxic gas and steam have been bursting through openings in the ground created by the volcano. Officials updated the number of lost homes after an aerial survey of the subdivision.

“That number could change,” Hawaii County spokeswoman Janet Snyder said. “This is heartbreaking.”

Amber Makuakane, 37, a teacher and single mother of two, said her three-bedroom house in Leilani Estates was destroyed by lava.

The dwelling was across from a fissure that opened Friday, when “there was some steam rising from all parts of the yard, but everything looked fine,” Makuakane said.

On Saturday morning, she received alerts from her security system that motion sensors throughout the house had been triggered. She later confirmed that lava had covered her property.

“They don’t really understand,” she said about her children. “My son keeps asking me, ‘Mommy when are we going to go home?'”

Makuakane grew up in the area and lived in her house for nine years. Her parents also live in Leilani Estates.

“The volcano and the lava — it’s always been a part of my life,” she said. “It’s devastating … but I’ve come to terms with it.”

There was no indication when the lave might stop or how far it might spread.

“There’s more magma in the system to be erupted. As long as that supply is there, the eruption will continue,” U.S. Geological Survey volcanologist Wendy Stovall said.

Traditional Hawaiian beliefs say it depends on Pele, the volcano goddess who is said to reside in Kilauea.

“You have to ask Pele,” Steve Clapper said when asked whether he had any idea when he’d return to his Leilani Estates home.

Clapper had to put his ailing 88-year-old mother into a car and leave shortly after hearing an ominous rumbling behind the house. He believes he saw its roof still standing in photos of the area but can’t be sure. Still, the California native was sanguine as he assessed his situation.

“What can you do? You have no control over it,” Clapper said as he started his day at a nearby evacuation shelter. “Pele’s the boss, you know?”

Cherie McArthur wondered what would become of her macadamia nut farm in Lanipuna Gardens, another evacuated neighborhood near Leilani Estates. One of the year’s first harvests had been planned for this weekend.

“If we lose our farm, we don’t know where we’re going to go. You lose your income and you lose your home at the same time,” said McArthur, who’s had the farm for about 20 years. “All you can do is pray and hope and try to get all the information you can.”

About 240 people and 90 pets spent Saturday night at shelters, the American Red Cross said.

Officials let some residents return briefly Sunday to fetch pets, medicine and documents.

The number of lava-venting fissures in the neighborhood grew overnight from eight to as many as 10, Stovall said, though some have quieted at various points. Regardless, USGS scientists expect fissures to keep spewing.

The openings could eventually consolidate into one powerful vent, as has happened in some previous Hawaii eruptions, Stovall said.

Kilauea (pronounced kill-ah-WAY’-ah), one of the world’s most active volcanoes, has been erupting continuously since 1983. The USGS’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory issued a notice in mid-April that there were signs of pressure building in underground magma, and a new vent could form on the cone or along what’s known as the East Rift Zone. Leilani Estates sits along the zone.

The crater floor began to collapse Monday, triggering earthquakes and pushing lava into new underground chambers that carried it toward Leilani Estates and nearby communities. A magnitude-6.9 earthquake — Hawaii’s largest in more than 40 years — hit the area Friday.

It set Michael McGuire’s car rocking in his driveway, knocking things off his shelves and shattering glass in his cabinets in an area near Leilani Estates.

He hoped to check on his home Sunday. But he realized it was too soon to be sure when, or if, it would be safe from the moving lava.

“I’m somewhat fatalistic: if it happens, it happens,” he said. “And I’m enjoying life here, so you know, you put up with a lot of things here. This is one of them.”

Noah and Laura Dawn own a retreat center about 3 miles downhill from the most active vents They were clearing out items Sunday and relocating up the coast indefinitely.

“We’re just removing all things of value to us and precious things because I have the feeling it could get real – real, real fast,” Noah Dawn said.

___

Peltz reported from New York and Yan from Honolulu. Associated Press photographer Marco Garcia and videographer Haven Daley contributed to this report from Pahoa.

Trump’s Shameful Choice of ‘Bloody Gina’

Leave it to Donald Trump, besieged by denunciations of his torturous behavior toward women, to have nominated a female torturer to head the Central Intelligence Agency. It was a move clearly designed to prove that a woman can be as crudely barbaric as this deeply misogynistic president. When it comes to bullying, Gina Haspel, whose confirmation hearing begins Wednesday, is the real deal, and The Donald is a pussycat by comparison. Whom has he ever waterboarded? Haspel has done that and a lot worse.

They call her “Bloody Gina,” and for some of her buddies in the torture wing of the CIA and their supporters in Congress, that is meant as a compliment. For a decade after the 9/11 attacks, Haspel served as chief of staff, running the vast network of secret rendition torture prisons around the globe. As a definitive Senate Intelligence Committee report established, torture is not legal, according to U.S. law and international covenants signed by President Ronald Reagan, nor does it produce any actionable information in preventing acts of terror.

After the public revelation of the vast extent of the torture program horrified the world, Haspel deliberately destroyed 92 videotapes depicting the barbaric practice, violating a Justice Department order that the tapes be preserved, and thus clearly obstructing a criminal investigation. Yet in March, Trump chose to nominate Bloody Gina to be the new head of our super-spy agency.

Give Trump credit for consistency: He did campaign on the theme that torture—or “enhanced interrogation,” as his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, justified it—is only wrong when nations other than our own do it. And by nominating Haspel to head the CIA, Trump is clearly seeking to take torture out of the covert dark side, as former Vice President Dick Cheney termed his revival of the medieval dungeon art; Trump has branded it as a legitimate, made-in-America weapon, wielded by a woman, no less. Trump seemed to be saying, “Label me a bully; I’ll show you what a woman can do!” When it comes to authorizing the near-drowning of shackled prisoners and smashing their heads against prison walls, this lady is the equal of any macho man.

The best witness to the crimes of Bloody Gina is offered by a true hero of the real war against terrorism, former FBI agent Ali Soufan, who is credited with having done the most significant interrogation of captured terrorist suspects. Soufan shunned torture and skillfully gained the confidence of prisoners who went on to provide reliable information.

“It is a matter of public record,” Soufan wrote in The Atlantic magazine, “that Gina Haspel … played a key role in the agency’s now-defunct program of ‘enhanced interrogation techniques,’ an Orwellian euphemism for a system of violence most Americans would recognize as torture. … I know firsthand how brutal those techniques were—and how counterproductive. … Unsurprisingly, the CIA’s own inspector general concluded that the torture program failed to produce any significant actionable intelligence; and I testified to the same effect under oath in the Senate.”

While there is no evidence that this indelible stain on America’s legacy produced any reliable information, the nomination of Bloody Gina sent a message to the world from this president that torture is to be rewarded. There are many, including Republican Sen. John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner in Vietnam, who raised questions about Haspel’s support of the torture program. “The use of torture compromised our values, stained our national honor, and threatened our historical reputation,” McCain said.

But even some Democrats may support Haspel’s nomination given that members of their party have been complicit in excusing the heinous practice of torture. After all, it was Democratic President Barack Obama who decided not to prosecute anyone for ordering or committing the torture that is one of the great stains on American history. In fact, Obama prosecuted former CIA agent John Kiriakou after he revealed the torture program’s existence to a journalist. He did so after President Bush’s memorable statement that the United States “does not torture people!” Ironically, the Bush Justice Department cleared Kiriakou of any charges, while Obama revived them two years later and sent the former agent to prison for 30 months.

Whether or not the Senate confirms Haspel, the very fact of her nomination defines Trump as a fatally callous leader totally contemptuous of basic human rights and the rule of law.

Giuliani Won’t Rule Out Trump Taking the Fifth

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump’s new attorney, Rudy Giuliani, is delivering confounding and at times contradictory statements as he tries to lessen the legal burdens on his client from an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and a $130,000 hush payment to a porn actress.

The former New York City mayor is embracing his client’s preferred approach to challenges as he mounts Trump’s defense through the media. But it’s proving to be a bewildering display.

In an interview Sunday with ABC’s “This Week,” Giuliani dismissed as rumor his own statements about Trump’s payment to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels, said he can’t speak to whether the president lied to the American people when he denied knowledge of the silencing agreement and wouldn’t rule out the president asserting his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination in the Russia investigation. Giuliani also couldn’t say whether Trump attorney Michael Cohen had made similar payments to other women on the president’s behalf.

Giuliani said despite Trump’s openness to sit down with special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation, he would strongly advise Trump against it.

“I’m going to walk him into a prosecution for perjury like Martha Stewart?” Giuliani said, referring to the lifestyle maven convicted in 2004 of lying to investigators and obstruction in an insider trading case.

Giuliani couldn’t guarantee that the president wouldn’t end up asserting his constitutional right to refuse to answer any questions that might incriminate him.

“How could I ever be confident of that?” Giuliani said.

During a 2016 campaign rally, Trump disparaged staffers of his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton, for taking the Fifth during a congressional investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server when she was secretary of state.

“The mob takes the Fifth Amendment,” Trump said. “If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?”

Giuliani also suggested that Trump wouldn’t necessarily comply with a subpoena from Mueller, whose investigation Trump has repeatedly labeled a “witch hunt.”

A subpoena fight would likely find its way to the Supreme Court, which has never firmly decided whether presidents can be compelled to speak under oath.

Giuliani’s aggressive defense of the president in recent weeks has pleased Trump, though it exasperated White House aides and attorneys and left even supporters questioning his tactics.

“It seems to me that the approach last week of the Trump team plays into the hands of Mueller’s tactic to try, at any cost, to try to find technical violations against lower-ranking people so that they can be squeezed,” Alan Dershowitz, a Harvard law professor who has informally counseled the president, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Giuliani, who was hired by Trump last month, said he’s still learning the facts of the Mueller case and the details of Trump’s knowledge of the payment to Daniels, who has alleged a sexual tryst with Trump in 2006. The $130,000 payment was made by Cohen, Trump’s personal attorney, days before the 2016 election, raising questions of compliance with campaign finance and ethics laws.

When Trump was asked last month aboard Air Force One if he knew about the payment to Daniels, he said no. Trump also said he didn’t know why Cohen had made the payment or where he got the money.

Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to the president, said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that Trump meant that he didn’t know about the payment at the time it was made, not at the time the question was asked.

Giuliani said last week that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for that payment and other unspecified items.

Giuliani said then that he first made Trump aware of the payment shortly after joining the case but now says he doesn’t know when Trump found out about it. Giuliani told BuzzFeed last week that Cohen had complained after the election about not being paid by Trump for his work in silencing Daniels and that Cohen and Trump then met to work out a $35,000 monthly retainer.

Trump said Friday that Giuliani needed to “get his facts straight” but insisted they weren’t changing their story. He has called Daniels’ allegations of an affair “false and extortionist.”

When asked Sunday whether Trump knew about the payment to Daniels after the campaign, Giuliani demurred.

“I can’t prove that, I can just say it’s rumor,” Giuliani said. “I can prove it’s rumor, but I can’t prove it’s fact. Yet. Maybe we will.”

Giuliani also said he wasn’t sure whether Cohen had paid off any other women for Trump but indicated it was possible.

“I have no knowledge of that, but I would think if it was necessary, yes,” Giuliani said.

Cohen no longer represents Trump, Giuliani said, saying it would “be a conflict right now.” Cohen is facing a criminal investigation in New York, and FBI agents raided his home and office several weeks ago seeking records about the Daniels nondisclosure agreement and other matters.

Michael Avenatti, Daniels’ attorney, said Sunday on “This Week” that he thinks it’s “obvious … to the American people that this is a cover-up, that they are making it up as they go along. They don’t know what to say because they’ve lost track of the truth.”

Legal experts have said the revelation that Trump reimbursed Cohen raises new questions, including whether the money represented repayment of an undisclosed loan or could be seen as reimbursement for a campaign expenditure. Either could be legally problematic.

Both Giuliani and Trump have insisted the payment to Daniels was not a campaign expense.

Neither the payment nor the liability to Cohen was disclosed on the Trump campaign or the president’s financial disclosures.

Giuliani maintained Sunday that the payment can’t be considered an in-kind campaign contribution because there was another explanation for it.

“This was for another purpose, to protect him, to protect his family,” he said. “It may have involved the campaign. Doesn’t matter.”

Giuliani said the financial arrangement with Cohen wasn’t revealed on Trump’s 2017 personal financial disclosure because “it isn’t a liability, it’s an expense.”

Nude Way to See Art? Paris Museum Welcomes Naked Visitors

PARIS—Visitors to a leading contemporary art museum in Paris didn’t leave only their coats in the cloakroom—they left all their clothes.

The Palais du Tokyo museum opened its doors to nudists for a special visit Saturday. It’s part of growing efforts by France’s tiny nudist community to encourage acceptance of clothes-free activities, after a nudist restaurant and nudist park opened in the French capital.

The museum visit was arranged before regular opening hours so the nudists wouldn’t mingle with other visitors. They viewed an exhibit of contemporary works focused on “Discord.”

Organizers said they are hoping to attract younger members and get rid of “complexes” around their nudist practices, which they don’t wanted “limited to beaches, summertime or a certain category of the population.”

Spain Rescues 476 Migrants Crossing Mediterranean Sea

MADRID — Spain’s maritime rescue service says it has saved 476 migrants in a two-day span who were attempting the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean Sea from African shores.

The service says it pulled the migrants from 15 small boats on Friday and Saturday. There were no reported casualties.

Favorable weather in the Strait of Gibraltar appears to have sparked the surge in sea crossings.

Each year, tens of thousands of migrants attempt to reach Spain and other southern European countries by crossing the Mediterranean in smugglers’ boats. Most of the vessels are unfit for open water, and thousands of migrants drown each year.

The U.N. says 615 migrants have died crossing the Mediterranean so far this year. A total of 22,439 migrants have reached European shores, with 4,409 arriving in Spain, through the first four months of 2018.

Afghan Mosque Bombing: 14 Killed, Scores Wounded

KABUL, Afghanistan—A bomb blast inside a mosque in eastern Afghanistan that was being used as a voter registration center killed at least 14 people and wounded 33, officials said.

Habib Shah Ansari, the provincial head of public health, confirmed the toll from the attack, which took place in the city of Khost, the capital of the province of the same name.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but both the Taliban and a local Islamic State affiliate reject democratic elections and have targeted them in the past. Islamic State is not known to have a presence in Khost, but has expanded its footprint into other areas in recent years.

Last month, an Islamic State suicide bomber attacked a voter registration center in Kabul, killing 60 people and wounding at least 130 others.

Afghanistan plans to hold elections in October, the first since 2014.

The Taliban and IS have launched a relentless wave of attacks since the start of the year, killing scores of civilians in the capital, Kabul, and elsewhere. Afghan security forces have struggled to combat the groups since the U.S. and NATO concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, switching to a counterterrorism and support role.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan, a vehicle carrying shopkeepers on their way to a market struck a roadside bomb in Afghanistan’s northern Faryab province, killing seven of them. Police spokesman Karim Yuresh said another civilian was wounded in Sunday’s attack, in an area where both the Taliban and IS are active.

In the eastern Paktia province, a car bomb killed two people and wounded another three. Abdullah Hsart, the provincial governor’s spokesman, said the attack late Saturday targeted Hazart Mohammad Rodwal, a district chief, who was among the wounded. The Taliban claimed the attack.

North Sea Cleanup Costs Likely to Double

The UK’s North Sea clean-up costs – the price to be paid for decommissioning its oil and gas industry – will probably more than double, a British group says.

The group is the Intergenerational Foundation (IF), an independent, non-party-political charity which works to protect the rights of younger and future generations in British policy-making.

It says British children will face a bill for decommissioning the North Sea fossil fuel industry that is likely to be double the government’s estimate – £80bn, not the official target of £39bn. In arriving at the lower figure, the Foundation says, the UK government ignored evidence from its own industry regulator of typical overspending, leading to a serious underestimate of the real costs.

If the government allows North Sea oil and gas companies to escape their decommissioning obligations and proves IF’s estimate of an £80bn total correct, the Foundation says, this would equal a bill for each child in the UK of nearly £3,000.

A report by the Foundation estimates at least £80bn will be needed to decommission the North Sea’s 3,000 pipelines covering 8,000 kilometres, 5,000 wells, 250 fixed installations and 250 subsea production systems.

Instead of setting aside money to pay for the decommissioning, the report says, the North Sea oil and gas industry and the government are together handing a tax burden on to a younger generation who have not benefitted from the fuel extracted but who will be expected to pick up the bill for previous generations’ profligacy.

The report’s authors identify three main reasons which they think explain why the industry may double its costs.

Risky assumption

The first is that the UK government’s Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) uses something called a P50 figure in its 2017 Cost Estimate Report for North Sea decommissioning. That means, as the OGA puts it, that the basis of its own estimates is “ a decommissioning cost estimate (P50) value of £59.7 billion in 2016 prices.”

“Taking into account the shared goal of a minimum of 35% cost reduction, this results in a target of less than £39 billion,” the OGA continues. But the IF report says using a P50 target means accepting that there is a 50:50 chance of the costs being higher, not lower, than those quoted.

Secondly, the OGA thinks a 35% saving (to reduce the cost estimate to under £39bn) will be easily attainable. But IF says the OGA’s own review of UK oil and gas projects between 2011 and 2016 found exactly the opposite – an average overspend of 35% against estimates.

The IF report’s third reason for expecting a possible doubling of costs is what it says is a mistaken comparison by the OGA of North Sea decommissioning work with that in the Gulf of Mexico, where conditions are much easier and costs far lower.

Costs shed

Angus Hanton, IF’s co-founder, said: “It is extraordinary that there is no proper mechanism in place to protect our children from having to pay the clean-up costs for oil and gas they didn’t use, while the companies involved can essentially escape responsibility by off-loading their North Sea holdings onto smaller contractors and retain just one quarter of the costs of decommissioning while benefiting from generous tax breaks.” (On 31 January 2017 Shell announced a US$3.8bn sale of assets in which it would retain a set liability of just around one quarter of the costs of decommissioning.)

Andrew Simms, a co-author of the report, said: “The government is allowing these companies to break the principles of the [UK] Energy Act 2004, whereby builders and operators are ‘responsible for ensuring that the installation is decommissioned at the end of its useful life, and should be responsible for meeting the costs of decommissioning.’

“The next generation is expected to prop up an uneconomic industry harmful to their future that is trying to shirk responsibility for clearing up its own mess.”