David Addington: The Bush Administration's Secret Torture Advocate

Speaking of torture (see last Sunday's post), Georgetown law professor David Cole published a damning profile of the Bush Administration in a recent issue of The New York Review of Books.

Cole, reviewing The Terror Presidency by former Bush Administration official Jack Goldsmith, focused on the little-known but enormously powerful administration lawyer named David Addington.

According to Cole, Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, is the author of many of the administration's most aggressive and secretive policies. Addington has been so influential in advocating for the expansion of executive power that some observers call him "Cheney's Cheney."

Addintgon has also been the behind-the-scenes architect of some of the administration's most controversial (and illegal) anti-terror policies. Here's one choice sentence from Cole's review of Addington's work:

Among the measures we know about [implying there are many we don't] are the disappearances of detainees into secret CIA prisons, the use of torture to gather evidence, rendition of suspects to countries known for torture, and warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

Cole's review, published Dec. 6, 2007, can be found here.