Ethics Newsline®

Twice last week, Vice President Dick Cheney turned up in the news. The most obvious story concerns the indictment of his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, Jr., on charges of lying to investigators. But the more important story — because it goes to the heart of the way we think about ourselves as a nation — centers on the vice president’s position in favor of using torture to combat terrorism.

The topic of torture is a tough one — though it may not seem so to a number of people. Some feel that eliciting information from captured foreign nationals by subjecting them to extremes of deprivation and pain is simply unethical. To them, there’s nothing tough about this issue. Anyone who even needs to argue about torture is dead wrong.

But others are convinced that the West can be protected from terrorists only through better intelligence. To them, torture is the lesser of two evils. For them, the issue is uncomfortable but perfectly clear: Faced with getting information quickly or risking thousands of civilian deaths in another 9/11, there’s not even an argument.

Last week found Cheney on one side and Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) on the other. Sen. McCain, who survived torture as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, drafted an amendment to a $440 billion military spending bill that would prohibit the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of prisoners held by the U.S. government. His amendment passed the Senate last month in a 90-to-9 vote — which is why Cheney and CIA director Porter Goss met with McCain last week. They wanted an exemption for those engaged in “clandestine counterterrorism operations conducted abroad” when dealing with foreign nationals. Reason: In the global war on terrorism, they argued, the president needs lots of options.

Torture certainly is an option, but is it a good one? Start by weighing the moral case for each side by applying four paradigms for right-versus-right decision making:

• Individual versus community. The McCain side seeks to honor the individual by respecting everyone’s dignity and human values, friend and foe alike. The Cheney side, favoring the community, puts public safety and national security paramount.

• Truth versus loyalty. Here McCain might argue for the truth that torture is unreliable and too often elicits erroneous, dated, or self-serving information. Cheney, however, might cite a loyalty to practices of interrogation that at times have prevented attacks and saved lives.

• Short term versus long term. For McCain, the overriding interest lies in protecting the long-term standards of democracy, despite our immediate problems. For Cheney, information gained now rather than later can make the difference between a major catastrophe and a nearly invisible series of arrests.

• Justice versus mercy. Mercy, for McCain, cries out against torture. But justice, for Cheney, demands retribution for the mayhem wrought by the terrorists.

The moral arguments under these eight points (four on each side) can be fleshed out into a rich array of ethical concerns. But which side is right? The answer requires the application of ethical resolution principles.

Those, like Cheney, who follow an ends-based, utilitarian principle will argue that doing the greatest good for the greatest number does not rule out creating a small amount of bad for a few. Under this reasoning, if a few must be tortured for the good of the many, so be it.

By contrast those, like McCain, following a rule-based, Kantian principle will seek to build an invariable standard by which to act. To do so, they’ll seek to elevate a maxim or precept — like “never torture others” or “always avoid cruelty” — to the status of a universal law that everyone should always follow.

Finally, those who adhere to the care-based, Golden Rule principle — doing to others only what you would have them do to you — may define “others” as the ones most vulnerable to torture. Would you want to be tortured if the tables were turned? Then don’t torture others — a point that McCain, given his history, would find easy to argue. But Cheney, perhaps identifying the “others” as citizens of the United States vulnerable to terrorist attack, might ask what they would want from you if you were their leader? If they say, “Security above all,” then you need all the intelligence you can get, right now.

But there’s another “other” in the care-based resolution: the military and intelligence communities. Would I myself want to be the torturer? Would I want to live with my conscience after committing such acts? Would I even want to be a U.S. soldier — taught by my superiors and by the investigations at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison that cruel and inhumane treatment of prisoners is categorically wrong — who now sees his or her own government condoning torture in certain cases?

At bottom, the real difficulty of torture lies not in what it does to the victims but what it does to the perpetrators. If to sustain the values of democracy in principle we must violate those values in practice, we risk creating the very kind of culture we’re fighting. That strikes me as a tough ethical position to sustain.

©2005 Institute for Global Ethics

“At the end of the day what appears is that Mr. Libby’s story that he was at the tail end of a chain of phone calls, passing on from one reporter what he heard from another, was not true. It was false. He was at the beginning of the chain of phone calls, the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter. And then he lied about it afterwards, under oath and repeatedly.”

– Patrick Fitzgerald, U.S. attorney in Chicago and Justice Department special counsel in the CIA leak investigation, answering questions at a news conference last week about the grand jury indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, Jr., also known as Scooter Libby. (Transcript of Fitzgerald news conference, via the New York Times, Oct. 28)

WASHINGTON
Last Friday’s indictment of Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, Jr., left the White House facing another ethics crisis, though President Bush’s right-hand man, Karl Rove, escaped indictment in the CIA leak investigation — at least for now. Libby was indicted on five counts of obstructing justice, perjury, and making false statements to investigators. He immediately resigned and could face up to 30 years in prison if convicted on the charges, reported the Reuters news agency. While Rove was not indicted, special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald indicated that he remains under investigation.

Among the related developments in the wide-ranging case:

• The CIA leak investigation has become a test of journalistic as well as political ethics, with the specter of high-profile reporters being drawn into testify against their source raising some unprecedented issues. The New York Times reported that if the Libby case comes to trial, the prosecution is likely to use testimony by Tim Russert of NBC News, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, and Judith Miller of the New York Times to show that Libby lied to investigators. The Times said such a virtually unheard-of strategy puts the press in the position it fears most: becoming a de-facto investigative arm of the government. But as the Times also noted, such a prosecutorial strategy could be risky because it would pit the credibility of a government official against members of a profession whose ethics also have been under assault.
• Fallout from the case continues to pepper the New York Times, with the paper’s ombudsman last calling for a review of reporter Judith Miller’s practices to address “clear issues of trust and credibility.” Miller was a key figure in the genesis of the case, which started with the naming of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, who is married to Joseph Wilson. Wilson, a critic of White House Iraq policy, claims his wife was outed as an act of revenge against him. The grand jury probing the case asked Miller about her knowledge of the incident but she refused to comply, which landed her an 85-day jail term for contempt. She eventually testified after her source — Libby — released her from a confidentiality pledge in what remains a murky set of circumstances. Recent accounts, including some from the Times, portray Miller as reckless with facts and essentially unsupervised by editors — with the subtext being, as reported by the Globe & Mail, that Miller served as a conduit for the White House’s public-opinion campaign to whip up support for the invasion of Iraq and became too cozy with Libby, who spun information in an attempt to discredit administration critics. Miller’s attorney calls the Times’s criticisms of his client “shameless,” the AP reported.
• At the end of the day, the case revolved around truth telling, rather than the actual leak of the name. Critics of the indictment, including New York Times conservative columnist John Tierney, claim that bringing charges on the basis of manufacturing political spin is an overstep. “No one deserves to go to jail for leaking to reporters accurate information without criminal intent,” he wrote. “The special prosecutor was assigned to look for serious crimes, not to uncover evidence that bureaucrats blame other bureaucrats when things go wrong.” Others, however, note that cover-ups in politics are serious business in and of themselves. As the Detroit Free Press pointed out in an Oct. 29 editorial, “There’s doing the wrong thing and then there’s trying to hide it. The latter is usually the larger problem.”
• Political bad news also converged last week in what the National Law Journal described as a “perfect storm” that sunk the U.S. Supreme Court nomination of Harriett Miers. A weakened administration buffeted by a series of scandals found itself without support from many conservatives, and Miers withdrew her nomination. But an important component of the foundering nomination process was an ethical issue yet to be resolved: As Newsline reported last week, questions over whether Miers, a White House insider, could rule on policies she had a hand in crafting made many uncomfortable, as did the administration’s reluctance to release parts of her paper trail under the claim of executive privilege.
• In the wake of weeks of scandal, only a third of those sampled in an AP-Ipsos poll gave Congress high marks for ethics. Forty-five percent give Congress a poor grade for honesty and ethics, and 21 percent said congressional ethics were neither good nor poor. The AP said recent high-profile investigations, including a probe of stock sales by Senate majority leader Bill Frist and the indictment of Texas Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas), have contributed to the low numbers, but other factors such as the Iraq war and gas prices probably contributed to the dip. An ABC News poll conducted later in the week found more than half of all respondents saying that the Libby indictment was not an isolated incident but a symptom of broader ethical problems within the Bush White House.

UNITED NATIONS
More than two thousand firms involved in the U.N.’s Oil-for-Food Iraq relief program — almost half of all companies involved — paid kickbacks and illegal surcharges to the government of Saddam Hussein, according to a report by an independent inquiry committee.

Paul Volcker, the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman who headed the probe, said the schemes festered because of lax supervision by the United Nations and by major nations, according to the BBC.

“What I do want to emphasize is that the corruption of the program by Saddam … could not have been nearly so pervasive had there been more disciplined management by the U.N. and its agencies,” Volcker was quoted as saying in a report from the Associated Press.

Saddam Hussein’s government allegedly pocketed more that $1.8 billion by skimming from the program.

Many firms and nations named in the report have disputed portions the findings. The Dutch firm Saybolt, which was hired to verify that proceeds from Iraqi oil sales went only for humanitarian purposes, claimed that contrary to the Volcker report, the company properly carried out its mandate and initially brought the problem to light with its own internal investigation, according to Radio Netherlands. Reuters reported that Russian officials claim some of the documents used in the probe were fakes.

The scathing report is expected to lead to various national probes and prosecutions, with Volcker promising to cooperate in legal actions against alleged conspirators. The United Nations also is crafting several reform measures.

GENEVA
In a possible sign that “compassion fatigue” has set in after a series of natural disasters worldwide, several charities and organizations last week noted that contributions to relief efforts in earthquake-stricken Pakistan are falling far short of what is needed.

One of the harsher claims came from the charity Oxfam, which accused Germany, Italy, Japan, and the United States of not giving their “fair share” to the relief effort. Oxfam chided Austria, France, and Spain as being among the wealthy nations who have contributed nothing at all, according to the Guardian (U.K).

Oxfam calculated the amount that each government should give based on the size of its economy, alleging that Japan was the cheapest of the wealthy nations, contributing only 17 percent of what Oxfam claims would be its “fair share,” according to Japan Today. Oxfam said Germany, the United States, and Italy and gave just 14 percent, 9 percent and 7 percent respectively.

The unusually confrontational tone of the charity is seen as a sign of desperation on the part of relief agencies, which compare the low levels of humanitarian monies funneled to Pakistan with the relatively quick and copious funding of last year’s tsunami relief and the fundraising for victims of Hurricane Katrina.

The Reuters news agency reported that with winter approaching, international agencies fear massive death and starvation if more money is not forthcoming in a hurry. “We need at least $200-$250 million now,” U.N. emergency coordinator Jan Vandemoortele told a news conference. “‘It’s now or never,” he said. “We will not have a second chance.”

NEW ORLEANS
Louisiana’s attorney general has issued more than 70 subpoenas in an investigation into charges that staff at a hospital flooded by Hurricane Katrina considered or engaged in mercy killing of critically ill patients who may not have been able to survive the flood or an evacuation.

The subpoenas were served on employees at various levels at Memorial Medical Center, and the local coroner has ordered autopsies of about 30 patients who died in the facility in the days following the storm, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Attorney General Charles Foti, Jr., told CNN that the subpoenas were issued because staffers did not voluntarily appear for questioning when asked by his office. He said that a letter sent out by the hospital’s parent corporation urging anyone contacted about the probe to seek legal advice had a “chilling effect.”

The investigation began after a doctor told CNN that some of the 45 patients who died in the hospital around the time that Katrina hit might have been given fatal doses of narcotics to end their suffering. While the doctor said he did not witness any mercy killings, he said he overheard discussions of whether frail patients should be euthanized.

The investigation is part of a larger probe that includes St. Rita’s nursing home in St. Bernard Parish, where 34 people died after the flooding. The operators of that home, which is not connected with Memorial hospital, have been charged with multiple counts of negligent homicide for not evacuating residents, according to a report from UPI.

WASHINGTON
The Bush administration is seeking to exempt the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) from provisions of a law proposed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) that prohibits degrading and inhumane treatment of terror detainees.

Vice President Dick Cheney met with McCain last week to propose the exemption for national security reasons, according to a report from the Washington Post.

McCain immediately rejected the appeal, according to the Reuters news agency, characterizing the type of prisoner treatment under discussion as torture. “Any carve-out that would allow any agency of government to engage in torture would be legitimizing the use of torture,” he said.

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, attached the detainee-protection amendment to a $440 billion defense spending bill. But McCain’s provision faces stiff opposition in the House, which did not include similar wording in its version. McCain’s amendment also is opposed by the White House, which vowed to veto any bill that contains the McCain amendment, which it says would tie the president’s hands during wartime, UPI reported.

Siding with McCain, various human rights organizations are opposing the White House request to remove the detainee protections. Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, told the Post, “You can’t tell soldiers that inhumane treatment is always morally wrong if they see with their own eyes that CIA personnel are allowed to engage in it.”

OTTAWA
An independent fact finder has backed up a Canadian citizen’s claim that he was tortured in Syria after being deported to that country as a suspected terrorist.

The report, prepared by the former dean of McGill University’s law school, said that the claims of Ottawa software engineer Maher Arar were corroborated by other prisoners, and said that Arar has suffered severe psychological damage, the Globe & Mail reported.

Canadian officials have demanded an explanation from Syria, along with prosecution of any jailers found responsible, according to CFRA NewsRadio in Ottawa.

Arar, who holds dual Canadian-Syrian citizenship, was detained at a New York airport in 2002 as a suspected terrorist, and then deported to Syria. His case raised criticisms that the Canadian and U.S. governments engage in “torture by proxy” by deporting suspected terrorists to nations where it is widely know that torture will be used to extract information, according to reports from the Associated Press and CBC.

Arar has denied any connection with terrorism and no allegations against him have been proved, the AP reported.

DETROIT
General Motors (GM) has received a subpoena from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in a probe of accounting practices related to pension and healthcare benefits, the company said last week.

In its regular corporate filing, the auto giant confirmed the probe and also said the SEC is looking into “certain transactions” with parts supplier Delphi. The SEC is investigating the obligations that GM, the parent company of Delphi, will have in the wake of Delphi’s filing for bankruptcy reorganization earlier this month, according to USA Today.

GM decided to make the subpoena public after an earlier filing by DaimlerChrysler AG was made public, revealing that the SEC has subpoenaed information about how that company calculates pension benefits in an investigation also connected to GM and Ford Motor Co., according to the Detroit Free Press.

GM shares fell almost 7 percent late last week after the announcement of the probe, according to Forbes.

GM said it is cooperating with the probe but declined further comment, Bloomberg News reported late last week.

NEW YORK
An internal memo sent to Wal-Mart directors raised eyebrows last week when the New York Times revealed that the retail giant is considering cutting health-benefit costs by hiring more part-timers, discouraging unhealthy people from working in their stores, and promoting education benefits and de-emphasizing retirement benefits in hopes of attracting younger workers.

The memo, from M. Susan Chambers, Wal-Mart’s executive vice president for benefits, said that the “most troubling” aspect of the company’s health-care picture is that “the least healthy, least productive associates are more satisfied with their benefits than other segments and are interested in longer careers with Wal-Mart,” CNN reported.

Chambers also outlined what apparently was a scenario for discouraging sedentary and unhealthy employees from applying by insisting that physical activity, such as cart gathering, be required of every worker hired.

Chambers denied that the plan was purely a cost-cutting move, saying her memo reflected an effort to give workers more choice in their benefit package.

Last week Wal-Mart did in fact announce a health-care program that could offer lower costs to employees, along with a call for a higher minimum wage, the AP reported. But the move was undercut by the release of the memo, which according to one worker interviewed by the AP left many employees angry and suspicious of the company’s long-term plans.

A draft of the memo was leaked to the Times, and Wal-Mart later provided major news organizations with the final copy that was circulated to the board.

A paper that covers Wal-Mart from its hometown of Bentonville, Ark., reports that the firm has recently engaged in a PR makeover, stung by what it regards as persistent unfair criticism. The Morning Sun quotes Wal-Mart executive Doug McMillon as saying during a business luncheon Thursday that the recent publicity “felt like a reality show.”

“When you read a memo in the New York Times before you [got to see it] … you almost feel like pulling down the shades. It seems that every little chink in [Wal-Mart's] armor is put in the news,” he said, according to the Sun. “They pick up a draft of a memo that means nothing to us and hit us over the head with it.”

From the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press:

“Americans express increasingly negative views of a wide range major institutions, reflecting strong discontent with national conditions. Over the past year, ratings have tumbled for the federal government and Congress. And it is not just Washington institutions that are being viewed less positively. Favorable opinions of business corporations are at their lowest point in two decades. In the face of high energy prices, just 20% express positive opinions of oil companies.

“Favorable ratings for the federal government in Washington have taken the hardest hit, falling from 59% last year to 45% currently. The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press … finds that even positive views of the military, while very high, have slipped slightly (from 87% in March to 82%). Just two institutions are unscathed by public discontent. Ratings for the Supreme Court and the news media were unchanged compared to previous surveys.

“President Bush’s job approval rating is at 40%, just above its all-time low of 38% earlier this month, but favorable opinions of the president stand at their lowest point since he took office in 2001 (46%). Ratings for the Republican Party also have eroded in the past few months; more Americans now have a positive view of the Democratic Party than the Republican Party (49% vs. 42%).

“What may be more striking, however, is the growing public discontent with business corporations. Just 45% say they have a favorable opinion of business corporations, while the same number express a negative view. Since the mid-1980s, solid majorities have consistently expressed positive views of corporations, but just 49% did so in July. The erosion in perceptions of corporations has come among most demographic and political groups….

“The latest Pew survey finds that for the first time in his presidency, slightly more Americans say they have a generally unfavorable opinion of George W. Bush than a favorable opinion. The balance of opinion is even more negative when the intensity of peoples’ views is taken into account. Overall, just 18% say they have a ‘very favorable’ opinion of the president, down from 27% in early October of last year. By comparison, 29% say they have a ‘very unfavorable’ opinion of Bush, up from 20% a year ago.

“Recent legal troubles have negatively affected public perceptions of a number of political leaders. As many Americans hold an unfavorable as a favorable view of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist today. In January 2003, the public viewed him favorably by more than two-to-one.

“Opinions of Rep. Tom DeLay are even more negative. Overall, 40% of Americans view DeLay unfavorably, while 18% view him favorably and 42% can’t rate him. In an April 2005 Gallup survey the public was more divided, with nearly as many rating Delay favorably as unfavorably….

“Public opinion about business corporations has taken a nosedive, and favorable ratings for corporations are 20 points lower than they were in March 2001. The decline is seen across most groups in the population, with favorable views falling about as much among conservatives as among liberals….

“One specific industry asked about in the poll ¡- oil companies ¡- also has suffered a decline in its image, with just 20% now saying they have a favorable opinion of oil companies, down seven points since March. Fully 72% have an unfavorable view, with 34% holding very unfavorable views.

“By contrast, slightly more people have a favorable than an unfavorable view of the news media (52% favorable, 42% unfavorable), about the same as in March of this year and up nine points from December 2004….

“Despite falling ratings for the federal government in general and Congress in particular, the military and the Supreme Court remain well regarded among a majority of the public. Roughly eight-in-ten (82%) have a favorable opinion of the military…. About six-in-ten (62%) view the Supreme Court favorably, slightly better than in June of this year but down significantly over the past decade….

“Roughly half of the public now holds an unfavorable view of the federal government in Washington (48% unfavorable, 45% favorable), down sharply from February 2004 (59% favorable) and far below its high point this decade (73%, observed shortly after the invasion of Iraq in April 2003). Declining favorability toward the federal government is seen across the board politically, with double-digit drops among both Democrats and Republicans….”

“Luck never gives; it only lends.”

– Swedish proverb