I recently received a privately-printed card from what purports to be Fors Marsh Group, IRS Wage and Investment Customer Satisfaction Survey, Accounts Management/Adjustment, P.O. Box 42048, Arlington, VA 22204-9048. The signature on this card, allegedly, is "BRIAN K. GRIEPENTROG, PH.D., Director of Research, Fors Marsh Group LLC." (No "Order of the Coif" this time, "Malbus"?)
Interestingly, at the bottom right-hand corner of this card is the following code number: "L3_13257-F." (N.J.'s Law Division? OAE?)
Perhaps I have been unclear in previous comments on this matter. The IRS is required to comply with confidentiality provisions of the law. Private information concerning the assets and income, if any, of "tax payers" (the IRS does not have "customers") is not and cannot be disclosed to private parties, such as management consultants. Incidentally, it is "Ph.D." and not "PH.D."
The IRS was astonished to learn of this claim by "Fors Management Group" (CIA front? Or is this latest communication yet more unethical nonsense from New Jersey's OAE morons?) that is designed to obtain information from me about my family's finances. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
The "docket number" appearing over my name and my wife's name is: "#ADJWIXXXX1305522275201305." ("ADJ" usually refers to Appellate Division Judge or judiciary in New Jersey. The "X" may suggest top secret designation.)
I am embarrassed for whoever sent this card. Repeating this transparent lie will not help, even if the IRS can be persuaded to lie for Mr. Rabner, the OAE, or Bob Menendez. This level of incompetence in "covert operations" will get Americans killed in many places in the world.
I seem to be dealing with the "F-Troop" of intelligence or government agencies. At the risk of stating the obvious, I should point out that I am the victim of crimes rather than the criminal(s) in this matter.
I love the United States of America. I can only hope that the security of this great country does not depend on the person(s) responsible for sending these idiotic letters to me or on others like them. By the way, the letters have no postmark. Dodi? Joe? Is someone in my building being told to place such items in my mailbox?
Paul Lauritzen, The Ethics of Interrogation: Professional Responsibility in an Age of Terror (Georgetown: Georgetown U. Press, 2013).
Michael B. Mukasey, "Torture and Terror," First Things, August/September, 2013, pp. 60-63.
Supplemental Works:
David Cole, The Torture Memos (New York: The New Press, 2009).
Mark Danner, ed., Abu Ghraib: The Politics of Torture (Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 2004).
Mark Danner, ed., Torture and Truth, America, Abu Ghraib, and the War On Terror (New York: NYRB, 2004).
Ronald Dworkin, Justice in Robes (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 2006).
Charles Fried, Right and Wrong (Cambridge: Harvard U. Press, 1978).
Maria Pia Lara, ed., Rethinking Evil: Contemporary Perspectives (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001).
Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford U. Press, 1986). (Part IV, pp. 351-502.)
I.
Michael Mukasey's recent review of a book by theologian Paul Lauritzen is clear and well-written. I plan to read the book by Professor Lauritzen with whom I expect to agree on a great deal since, I believe, that Mr. Lauritzen is essentially correct on the torture issue and concerning the warnings he offers to members of the legal profession and therapeutic communities regarding ethical limitations on what they may do in interrogating suspects.
Mr. Mukasey served as a District Court Judge from 1998 to 2006, then as Attorney General of the United States from 2007 to 2009 under President George W. Bush.
I suspect, although this is not explicitly stated, that Mr. Mukasey has intelligence and/or law enforcement experience, either with the C.I.A. or F.B.I. I further detect some level of military experience since battlefield metaphors and reasoning surfaces with alarming regularity in Mr. Mukasey's otherwise good, solid, and unpretentious prose.
Mr. Mukasey wishes readers to know that he is a plain-spoken man from a good middle-class background. This commendable persona may be part of the problem in his analysis.
Lawyers often seek to simplify and get to the "bottom-line," as it were, in controversies. However, there are situations in which the complexities simply cannot be "refined" away.
The complexities surrounding the discussion of America's interrogation and/or torture policies after 9/11 cannot be ignored or placed beyond the analysis of legal issues bearing on the "criminality" of the nation's practices in the so-called "War on Terror."
We cannot define away the issues nor deploy, say, the concept of "relevance" as against "prejudicial effect" in evidence law to dismantle the crux of the problem as regards torture. Hideousness and moral outrage at the reality of torture -- what we have done -- is precisely what must be confronted and dealt with, or resolved somehow.
It may help to focus on what, I believe, is a serious logical or philosophical error in this review of which Mr. Mukasey, whose good faith and sharp intellect I do not question, may be unaware:
"If even those who refuse to adhere to the rules get the benefit of the rules, who would voluntarily adhere to the rules?" (p. 60.)
Mr. Mukasey inserts a hidden philosophical premise that has multiple aspects and complexities: 1). compliance with international legal provisions is assumed to be exclusively based on the "rational self-interest of states and individuals," whether in the case of terrorists or those who capture them, both of whom are, allegedly, motivated exclusively by rational self-interest at all times; 2). "rational" self-interest is understood in narrow material and externalistic as well as behaviorist terms; and 3). "benefit" of compliance with human rights laws is also assumed to be based, on a game theory analogy, on reciprocity exclusively. ("John Rawls and Justice.")
All of these assumptions are false from the perspective of many scholarly and legal experts on these matters. I am sure that Professor Lauritzen was drawing on these sources which are not seen by Mr. Mukasey. Accordingly, Mr. Mukasey -- two pages after the above quote -- drives the final nail in his own coffin when he concludes:
"On 9/11, after two planes hit the World Trade Center and one hit the Pentagon, those in the White House were confronted with the decision of whether the order should be given to shoot down the fourth plane, even though the crew and all passengers, except the hijackers, were innocent. That order was in fact given. Was that the right decision? Why?" (p. 62.)
Mr. Mukasey's consequentialist and numerical basis for ethical reciprocity along with jurisprudential validity of decision-making is obvious, except to the author of this review, who feels no need to defend the positivist, utilitarian, and "numerate" philosophical commitments postulated or implicit in what he is saying.
In a publication entitled First Things it may be useful to define key terms and identify the philosophical options which cannot be avoided whatever decision is made in "hard cases." Hard cases do indeed make bad law because general principles are difficult to formulate from uniquely challenging scenarios that are usually about exceptions to general principles and rules.
II.
The reason to adhere to human rights laws that prohibit torture and to respect the dignity of persons -- including the most heinous criminals such as terrorists -- is first and foremost our own sense of self as Americans, as individuals and as a great nation. This has nothing to do with what we expect in return from such evil persons. ("Manifesto For Unfinished American Revolution" and "Ronald Dworkin's Jurisprudence of Interpretation.")
In addition to consequentialist and, specifically, utilitarian considerations, there are deontological factors having to do with the dignity of persons and OUR duty, regardless of what others do or fail to do, to respect that dignity despite the consequences of doing so in terms of unpopularity or risks of non-reciprocity. ("Zero Dark Thirty.")
If the decision is made to sacrifice the lives of 200 persons on a hijacked plane -- a plane which may be flown into a building killing several thousand more persons, or (equally likely) landed with the hijackers arrested -- then the 200 murders become the responsibility of the official ordering the plane to be shot down, if it is shot down, no longer the sole fault of the hijackers. This responsibility cannot remain a secret, but must be acknowledged and defended, publicly, in a democracy. No secret court's decision in such a matter is valid or worthy of respect in a democracy. ("America's Star Chamber" and "New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System.")
Several classic novels and works of philosophy have explored these scenarios pitting numerical considerations against choices at the level of principle. An entire issue of Philosophy and Public Affairs was devoted to this question (Volume #3, as I recall) which certainly interests me. Dramatic illustrations of these issues may be found, specifically, in novels by William Styron and John Fowles as well as many others, like Anthony Burgess. Mr. Mukasey failed to recognize the entire controversy in law and ethics dealing with these issues.
Ethics, right and wrong, is not exclusively about numbers. Ethics is about more than good and bad outcomes. Ethics and law are also about right and wrong choices, together with assigning responsibility for actions to particular agents, whatever the outcomes or consequences of such choices may be. Derek Parfit's work is centrally concerned with precisely these questions. ("Derek Parfit's Ethics" and "What is Enlightenment?")
Charles Fried has written extensively about these technical issues in law and metaethics. Professor Fried served as Solicitor General of the United States under President Reagan.
Actions are indeed measured by their consequences or effects, to be sure, but also by their motives and the range of alternatives available at any given time in light of "probable" as well as "possible" outcomes.
The killing of thousands of persons that results from a plane being flown into a building is the terrorist's evil. It is not the evil of a public official or nation unable to prevent this horror which may bear a much lesser degree of fault, or no fault for tragic events and actions that sometimes occur.
The world contains and will always confront us with evil, but it cannot present us with predetermined ethically or legally correct responses to such evils. We will be forced to interpret and choose among options, with no guarantees about outcomes, and should try to do so with some sense of fairness following general principles, like the categorical imperative and basic notions of justice:
"Standing behind the emphasis on right and wrong and on personal efficacy is a commitment to the moral situation of the individual. Individualism is often seen as a selfish doctrine allowing individuals to ignore the interests of others. Right and wrong, however, emphasize NOT the individual's selfish concerns [rational self-interest understood narrowly,] but his moral integrity, [or the integrity of law in Ronald Dworkin's term, the conscience of a free people,] and in this we come closer to the historic heart of individualism. If deontology, the theory of right and wrong, is solicitous of the individual, it is primarily solicitous of his claim to preserve his moral integrity, to refrain from being the agent of wrong, even if such fastidiousness means foregoing the opportunity to promote great good or to prevent great harm." (Fried, p. 2.)
I direct the reader to Justice Kennedy's opinion for the majority in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. ___, pp. 25-26 (2013), (slip opinion). (Use of terms "dignity," "demean," "disrespect.")
To suggest or endorse the proposition that "detainees [in America's concentration camps] were more likely to suffer injury from playing soccer or volleyball during recreational periods" (p. 62) is to insult the intelligence of readers of this publication. Worse is to say with a straight face that "there was no interrogation at Abu Ghraib." (p. 61.)
Mr. Danner's comments and evidence make such claims about Abu Ghraib absurd. There was interrogation and deliberate psychological torture of inmates at Abu Ghraib. Evil has a tendency to make even good men and women dissemble and evade the truth. (Mr. Rabner?)
We must stare evil in the face and be honest about what we, as a society, have done and will remain responsible for in terms of torture. As America's first African-American president, Mr. Obama may well be judged even more harshly than President George W. Bush for these sins.
III.
America's legal profession and therapists have failed, ethically, in this crisis of conscience concerning torture. Professor Lauritzen is correct to note we have eroded "society's trust in [both professions] by allowing for [the use of specialized learning] for a narrow political end" and to bring about great evil. (p. 61.)
Therapists have assisted in the actual infliction of torments on persons not charged with any offenses; lawyers have fashioned causistic and mendacious arguments, or ostensibly truthful reasoning (as in this review), to justify and defend what can only be called "evil." ("Is America's Legal Ethics A Lie?" and "Legal Ethics and Torture" then "American Doctors and Torture.")
The same sad conclusion applies to the New Jersey Supreme Court and legal establishment's efforts to lie and cover-up crimes committed against me and so many others. America has been stained and diminished by torture, drones, and other targeted assassinations. It is time to tell the truth to Americans and the world in order to make necessary amends.
