Bush's Made Men

Jonathan Turley is a law professor at George Washington University. He testified in Congress against the NSA domestic surveillance program and last night, he appeared on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. You can view a video of it at Crooks and Liars.

On Olbermann, Turley stated:

From his very first term Bush shocked many officials by reaching out to people who had already been convicted of crimes. People who seemed to be accused of violating the law had rapid ascension.

He added that it almost seemed as though having a prior problem with the law was more like a criteria to be hired than a coincidence.

A rough transcript by Crooks and Liars has this by Turley:

Well, first of all this President's theory of his power I think is now so extreme that it's unprecedented. He believes that he has the inherent authority to violate federal law. He has said that. Not just the signing statements and the infamous torture memo-that Alberto Gonzales signed. It was stated that he could in some circumstances order federal officials to violate federal law and this is consistent across the board with this President. Frankly, I'm not too sure what he thought he was swearing to when he took the oath of office to uphold the Constitution and our laws. I've never seen a President who is so uncomfortable in his constitutional skin.

Turley penned an article for the Chicago Tribune on the subject (registration required). In it, he listed some of the Rogue's Gallery in the Bush Administration:

Some people were taken aback when, in his first term, Bush filled his administration with top officials accused of criminal and unethical conduct during his father's term and the Reagan administration. They included people like Elliott Abrams to oversee Middle Eastern affairs, despite his pleading guilty to a federal crime during the Reagan years. There also was Otto Reich, accused of running an unlawful domestic propaganda operation for Reagan; he was tapped as a special envoy. Bush also recruited Adm. John Poindexter, convicted of various federal crimes stemming from his service as national security adviser to Reagan. (The convictions were later overturned.) Poindexter was chosen by Bush to head the controversial Total Information Awareness data-mining project, an operation viewed as so dangerous to privacy and civil liberties that it was formally stopped by Congress.

There was also John Negroponte, accused of shielding human-rights violations and unlawfully supporting the Nicaraguan contras. After Negroponte's stint as ambassador to the United Nations, Bush made him the director of national intelligence.

Likewise, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales was accused of signing the infamous "torture memo" that not only approved of forms of torture but also suggested that the president could violate federal law. Gonzales was later made attorney general.

My "Sopranos" illustration springs directly from Turley's own words:

As these shadowy figures multiply, you can understand why civil libertarians increasingly see the White House like a gathering at Tony Soprano's Bada Bing! club. In Soprano's world, you cannot become a "made man" unless you first earn your bones by "doing" some guy or showing blind loyalty. Only when you have proven unquestioning loyalty does Tony "open the books" for a new guy.

Hayden earned his bones by implementing the NSA operation despite clear federal law declaring such surveillance to be a criminal act. He can now join the rest of the made men of the Bush administration.