Attorney General Fears War Crimes Prosecution

Concern is growing within the White House that top members of the administration could be tried under the 1996 War Crimes Act. The law criminalizes violations of the Geneva Conventions and threatens the death penalty if U.S.-held detainees die in custody from abusive treatment. The Washington Post is reporting that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has spoken privately with Republican lawmakers about the need to protect administration officials and soldiers from being tried for war crimes:

Senior officials have responded by drafting legislation that would grant U.S. personnel involved in the terrorism fight new protections against prosecution for past violations of the War Crimes Act of 1996.

Instead of supporting the international protocol for detainee treatment, Republican officials are looking for ways to bypass the law. Of course, the person who first urged the President to look for a loop-hole was the now Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. Although his involvement with detainee abuse was well-known before he was promoted to Attorney General, "Democrat" Joe Lieberman still decided to rubber-stamp his nomination:

Since September 2001, however, Bush administration officials have considered the law a potential threat to U.S. personnel involved in interrogations. While serving as White House legal counsel in 2002, Gonzales helped prepare a Jan. 25 draft memo to Bush -- written in large part by David Addington, then Vice President Cheney's legal counsel and now Cheney's chief of staff -- in which he cited the threat of prosecution under the act as a reason to declare that detainees captured in Afghanistan were not eligible for Geneva Conventions protections.

Read the full Washington Post article here.