City Council Hearing Today on Ravenstahl's Honoring of Bush's NSA/CIA Dir. Michael Hayden (Updated 1x)

Michael Hayden seated at the center of the table
Of all the boneheaded moves by Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, this may be the most inexplicable and easily avoidable.

Here's a clue, Lil Mayor Luke: You don't honor a man who has a record of condoning torture, destroying evidence and misleading Congress about Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program which Hayden himself helped to implement.

Pretty simple, huh?

But that's precisely what Ravenstahl has done.

From WDUQ News:

A small nameplate honoring Gen. Michael V. Hayden at the corner of Allegheny Avenue and North Shore Drive will be the subject of what could be a big public hearing today before Pittsburgh Council. Greg Barnhisel of Pittsburgh’s Park Place neighborhood noticed the nameplate while visiting the Carnegie Science Center. Barnhisel says he does not question the debt of gratitude owed to the general for his service in the U.S. Air Force but he does question the wisdom of honoring him for his work after leaving the military. Hayden left the Air Force as a four-star general to become the Director of the National Security Agency and then the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. While in those post Hayden became a lightening rod for the left when he helped to implement the Bush administration’s warrantless-wiretapping program and then helped defined the CIA’s interrogation program that many have equated to torture. Hayden is a native of Pittsburgh and Mayor Luke Ravenstahl honored him with the plaque but did not get it approved by the city council. Something he did not have to do but is customary. Barnhisel Gathered the needed signatures on a petition to get the hearing scheduled. He says the way the mayor posted the nameplate should be part of the debate at today’s public hearing and so should an examination of the appropriateness of honoring Hayden. What he does not want is to have the public hearing devolve into a debate about Bush era policies. The hearing begins at 9:00am in Council Chambers.

And, if you're wondering about the illustration at the top, I created it back in 2006 for a post entitled Bush's Made Men. In that post, I quoted Jonathan Turley, law professor at George Washington University, on Hayden's nomination to CIA Director by George W. Bush:

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.

Heck of a job, Lukey!

*********************************************************

UPDATE:

WPXI coverage here.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette coverage here.
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review coverage here.
.

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.