{"product_id":"cheating-justice-isbn-9780807003381","title":"Cheating Justice","description":"\u003cb\u003eWhile the debate continues about impeaching President Trump, whether we're in a full blown Constitutional crisit, and which Trump administration officials should be prosecuted for illegal actions, \u003ci\u003eCheating Justice\u003c\/i\u003e serves as useful background for how we got here by examining how the Bush-Cheney administration broke the law—and how the people can bring them to justice.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003eDespite the many misdeeds of and abuses of criminal law by the Bush administration, there has been no accountability.\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eFormer U.S. representative Elizabeth Holtzman pairs with lawyer and journalist Cynthia L. Cooper to explain why we can’t “just move on.” They lay bare how the Bush-Cheney administration broke a multitude of laws and betrayed American values, and exactly why and precisely how we, the people, must bring them to justice for their crimes, their cover-ups, and their deceit. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Backed by strong evidence gleaned from “astounding”* research, Holtzman and Cooper argue that the Bush administration not only violated various U.S. laws but also \u003ci\u003echanged\u003c\/i\u003e many laws to escape prosecution for their crimes later. The authors demonstrate how a failure to hold George W. Bush and Dick Cheney accountable would set a dangerous precedent for the future leadership of America.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Bush and Cheney deceived Congress and the people to drive us into a war in Iraq; they claimed the right to wiretap illegally and to eavesdrop on citizens; and they authorized torture, upending laws and breaching international treaty obligations. Yet, both Bush and Cheney are boldly unabashed about their offenses. In his memoir, President Bush makes no apologies for his decision to start a war in Iraq, though no weapons of mass destruction, the ostensible reason for the war, were found there. And once out of office, Bush proudly said, “Damn right,” about his approval of waterboarding, a clear violation of the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law. Recent revelations about the extent and depth of their crimes, catalogued in detail here, make the need for accountability imperative.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As a member of Congress and part of the committee that investigated and held hearings on the conduct of President Richard Nixon in the Watergate scandal, Elizabeth Holtzman condemns Bush’s adoption of Nixon’s claim that he acted in the interest of national security. Using Watergate-era reforms as a model, Holtzman details the steps necessary to undo the damage that the Bush-Cheney administration inflicted and explains how we can establish new protections to block future presidents from similarly abusing the law. \u003ci\u003eCheating Justice\u003c\/i\u003e is not only a call to empower the American people, and a firm insistence that the nation’s leaders are not above the law; it is also a blueprint by one of America’s top legal minds for bringing Bush to justice and protecting the future of our democracy. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e *\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003eIntroduction: Why We Shouldn’t Simply Move On \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e1) Lies That Embroiled Us in War and Occupation in Iraq \u003cbr\u003e2) Wiretapping Americans \u003cbr\u003e3) Crimes of Torture \u003cbr\u003e4) Accountability at Home: Redressing Bush Administration Misdeeds \u003cbr\u003e5) International Justice: Accountability for the Bush Team Abroad\u003cbr\u003e6) What to Do: The Time Is Now \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgments \u003cbr\u003eNotes \u003cbr\u003eIndex\"Elizabeth Holtzman, who helped bring  President Nixon to justice in the Watergate hearings, now takes on the bigger,  deeper and even more crucial task of investigating—and exposing—exactly  how President George W. Bush and Vice President Cheney started an illegal war,  subverted civil liberties, human rights and the law itself, and then used the  national trauma following 9\/11 to cover it up. Start to read \u003ci\u003eCheating Justice, \u003c\/i\u003eand\u003ci\u003e y\u003c\/i\u003eou won't be able to put it down.\"—\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eGloria Steinem, co-founder  \u003ci\u003eMs. \u003c\/i\u003eMagazine, writer and feminist  activist\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A passionate book  grounded in law.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“This book makes a vital contribution to addressing the abuses of power of the Bush administration. Unfortunately today, nearly three years after the end of the George W. Bush administration, our nation still labors under the many excesses of that era. Holtzman’s book offers a cogent and elaborate account of that time period and important insights into how we can prevent those from recurring.”—John Conyers Jr., author of \u003ci\u003eThe Constitution in Crisis\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “George W. Bush and his administration are gone, but the wrongdoing they committed endures, exposed but unpunished. Extraordinary rendition, warrantless wiretapping, torture: we cannot live with this legacy, but neither can we seem to escape it. No one is better qualified than Elizabeth Holtzman—prosecutor, congresswoman, member of the Watergate committee—to confront this legal and moral conundrum and show the way forward. \u003ci\u003eCheating Justice, \u003c\/i\u003elike its author, is fierce, bold, and unflinching. A powerful, necessary book.”—Mark Danner, author of \u003ci\u003eStripping Bare the Body\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Here at last is a book for everyone who is outraged—or just bewildered—that Bush, Cheney, and other top officials escaped prosecution for their many flagrant violations of the law. Will there really be no consequences for the men who lied us into war, compromised our civil liberties, and made ‘waterboarding’ and ‘Guantánamo’ household words? Passionately, clearly, and concisely, Elizabeth Holtzman lays out how it happened, how the Bush administration secretly sought to immunize itself from prosecution, and how we can still hold the perpetrators accountable.”—Katha Pollitt, author of \u003ci\u003eSubject to Debate\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Holtzman’s book indicting the Cheney-Bush administration is passionate and persuasive. Whether it will be in a court of law or a truth commission, history demands a reckoning so that future administrations don’t also routinely act above the law. When that happens,\u003ci\u003e Cheating Justice\u003c\/i\u003e will be among the bill of particulars. Going from Nixon to Bush, Liz Holtzman has been a progressive patriot dedicated to the rule of law.”—Mark Green, coauthor of \u003ci\u003eThe Book on Bush\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Elizabeth Holtzman and I were in Congress at the same time: no one I know is more vigilant in holding those in power accountable for upholding our Constitution and the justice it demands. In \u003ci\u003eCheating Justice\u003c\/i\u003e, she recaps the incredible misdeeds of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and their team. Her cry for the rule of law to be applied to them is a cry every citizen should heed; if we don’t, our democracy’s future is in peril.”—Former congresswoman Patricia Schroeder\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eElizabeth Holtzman\u003c\/b\u003e is a practicing lawyer in New York and a former U.S. congresswoman.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eCynthia L. Cooper\u003c\/b\u003e is a journalist and former practicing lawyer.\u003cb\u003eFrom the Introduction: Why We Shouldn’t Simply Move on\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore  President George W. Bush left office, many people speculated that he  would pardon himself as protection against possible future prosecution  for crimes. People assumed he would do the same for Vice President  Richard B. Cheney and his top cabinet officials, advisors, and aides.  There was a good deal of discussion on cable TV news, blogs, opinion  columns, and political talk shows: How extensive is the pardon power?  Had self- pardons been tried before? When would it happen?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “In Bush Final Days, Are Pardons in the Works?”  asked NPR’s \u003ci\u003eAll Things Considered \u003c\/i\u003eon November 23, 2008.   “Will Bush Pardon  Himself ?” wrote  Human  Rights  Watch  director  Kenneth  Roth  in the  \u003ci\u003eDaily Beast.\u003c\/i\u003e “Get ready for mass pardons,” headlined a pundit in the \u003ci\u003eHill’\u003c\/i\u003es blog.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The president did nothing of the sort.  Instead,  he retired  without   a seeming  ruffle of tension,  helicoptering out  of Washington, D.C.,   and heading to a new home  in a Dallas suburb  and his ranch  in  Crawford, Texas.  When   he  publicly  emerged,  two  years  later,  he   was touting   a newly published  memoir,  and proudly proclaiming  that   he had approved a form  of torture, waterboarding—“Damn right,”  he   said in his memoir,  \u003ci\u003eDecision  Points.\u003c\/i\u003e The  former  president    had  no  apologies  for  starting a war in Iraq that  had taken the  lives of thousands  and ruined many more: he thought the world was  better  off for it, even though  no weapons  of mass destruction, his  ostensible  reason  for  the  war, were  found in Iraq.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe vice  president didn’t even wait for his term of office to end before he  started burnishing his role in waterboarding, war, and warrantless  surveillance. “Those who allege that we’ve been involved in torture or  that somehow we violated the Constitution or laws with the terrorist  surveillance program simply don’t know what they’re talking about,” he  said in an ABC News interview on December 15, 2008.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Neither seemed perturbed by the prospect of prosecution.  Now we know why.\u003cbr\u003e While in office, they had already created walls of protection to  prevent the sting of the law from reaching them.  Behind the scenes,  President Bush and Vice President   Cheney worked—tirelessly, it  seems—to inoculate themselves against every manner and form of  accountability for misdeeds.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey passed provisions changing the  laws that they had violated, then giving the changes retroactive  application. They made existing laws so convoluted and confusing that  probably no prosecutor could enforce them. E-mails in their computers  conveniently disappeared, and the retention systems failed. They stamped  “state secrets” on legal actions that might open their misdeeds to  scrutiny. They set up straw facades and fake justifications, and even  slipped them in the law as pop-up defenses.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In short, in an  unprecedented way in American history, they engineered and fixed the  system from the inside, building buffers of protection for  themselves—behind a moat, on a hill, locked and gated, seemingly above  the law. This book explores how the Bush administration used its power  to manipulate the system, cheat justice, and get away with crimes.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Except . . . they had a lot of ground to cover. Their transgressions  were so vast that they left open some small keyholes where the law can  still reach them. This book is also about how to hold them accountable  for the crimes they committed.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e In the years since they departed,   more information has emerged about their  actions—documents have been   declassified, investigative  reporters and authors  have probed,   nonprofit  groups  have filed Freedom  of Information  actions;  in   some  areas,  Congress  has conducted  inquiries.  Former White House  personnel have stepped forward; whistleblowers have revealed secrets and  leaked documents; lawsuits have pried open hidden truths. Bit by bit,  the record is unfolding. The president and vice president have even  incriminated themselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book describes the multifarious  ways in which President Bush and his team violated America’s criminal  laws and the sophisticated counter- measures they took to avoid being  held liable for these violations. Showing a breathtaking contempt for  the rule of law, they disregarded laws that got in their way and, when  exposed, rushed to Congress to push through a rewritten version of those  laws to their specifications to get off the hook. They did this while  much of the nation was still absorbing and rebounding from the attacks  of 9\/11.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Understanding the depth of their crimes highlights one  thing—it is even more important for our democracy that we refuse to let  them get away with it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e A president and vice president who have  committed serious misdeeds in office must be held accountable.   Fortunately, this is a situation that the framers of the Constitution  anticipated. The founders were wise enough to know that presidents would  be fallible and, as such, might commit a variety of crimes. The  presidency, the founders knew, was not always going to be held by people  who did the right thing or acted honorably; they explicitly provided  for impeachment while presidents held office and prosecution of  presidents after they left office, too.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Thus far, President    Bush, Vice President   Cheney, and their team seem to have gotten away  with their misdeeds. Their motto seems to be “Catch me if you can,” and  they remain unindicted, unprosecuted, and unaccountable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Why do  we need accountability at all? To ignore the misdeeds of the president  and vice president is to signal to the American people that their crimes  are of no importance.  To give them a free pass for their illegal  activities and violations is to send a message to future presidents—do  what you will break any law, don’t worry. To turn our backs and look  away is to say that we, the people, are oblivious, blinded, unaware of  their deceits and destruction—or, worse yet, that we are nodding  in  agreement  and giving our consent.  Without strong action holding them  responsible, the precedent of a runaway lawless administration will  continue to haunt us. Have we celebrated 220 years of our Constitution  to reach a point where, like a banana republic, our highest elected  leaders can engage in crimes of illegal surveillance, lying to take the  nation into war, torture, disappearance and degradation with impunity?  Let’s hope not. Failing to hold the most powerful among us accountable  is the sign of a democracy that is losing its way.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn order for a  movement for accountability to rise and for the sake of generations to  follow, it’s important to say that some of us were not blind, that some  of us were willing to act.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It may be a difficult path to follow,  but the alternative is more difficult to imagine—an America without  accountability and justice.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eThe Bush-Cheney Administration: Disaster for Democracy \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs  someone  who  witnessed  Watergate up  close—I  was on  the  House  Judiciary Committee that  voted  for the  articles  of impeachment  against President  Richard Nixon in 1973—I became increasingly concerned  about long-lasting  ramifications  of the illegal acts and injurious  decisions of the Bush administration.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e While President Bush and  Vice President Cheney were in office, I advocated for their impeachment.  For me, the model was what happened when President   Nixon committed    grave offenses against the Constitution and laws of the United States.  In response, the country came together and refused to allow a president  to take the law into his own hands. The American people were outraged by  his systemic abuses of power and his lies. The  House  Judiciary  Committee reviewed dozens of volumes of evidence  about  illegal  behavior  by President  Nixon  extending  over several years—including   the  covert  bombing  of Cambodia,  illegal wiretapping, the Watergate  break-in,  and the conspiracy to obstruct  justice, that is, the  cover-up—and  came to the  conclusion  that  impeachment was necessary.  The vote reached across party lines, and the country accepted the  verdict.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e All these years later, I still remember that it was  hard to vote for President Nixon’s impeachment, even though I was no fan  of his policies and particularly disagreed with his pursuit of war in  Vietnam. While few were eager to find our president engaged in  criminality, it strengthened the country to know that, in the end, most  Americans valued the rule of law more than the fate of any one person.  The process in Watergate had worked well to protect the nation from a  criminal president.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The Nixon impeachment process, because it  was done so fairly, has withstood the test of time, and remains a  high-water mark in the nation’s efforts to make sure its officials  respect the law.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI also believed that more than enough evidence  existed to conclude that President Bush and Vice President Cheney had  violated their oaths of office and committed  “high crimes and  misdemeanors”—and in ways especially damaging to our democracy.   But  unlike Nixon,  President  Bush and Vice President  Cheney did not face  impeachment proceedings,  nor did any significant legal review of their  actions take place.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn contrast to the situation with President  Nixon, there has been no official reckoning of the actions of President  Bush. A grand jury named President Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator. A  House Judiciary Committee impeachment report set forth his “high crimes  and misdemeanors.” An official record was made of his misconduct, so  that history could not mistake it and it could not be whitewashed with  propaganda, memoirs, or an attempt to rewrite the facts.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Even  without a Bush-Cheney impeachment, I knew that accountability could come  after they left office. That was another lesson from Watergate.  President Gerald Ford, who took office when Nixon resigned, recognized  that a former president could be prosecuted for his crimes in office.  President  Ford  took  the  extraordinary   step  of  issuing  a  pardon   to  former president Nixon, insisting that he had “suffered enough” by  having to resign in order to avoid impeachment. President Ford’s pardon  of Nixon to prevent a possible prosecution was roundly denounced at the  time because it created a dual sense of justice. The American people  did not want one set of criminal standards for a president and another  for the rest of us. This may well have been the most important factor in  Ford’s defeat in the next election.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e When I started thinking  about paths to accountability for the criminal misdeeds of President  Bush and Vice President Cheney, I intended to make the case for  prosecution.  Based on what I already knew and had researched and  written about, I expected to find a range of illegality—and I did. What I  hadn’t expected to find were the mounting pieces of information and  evidence  that  showed a pattern  and practice  by which President  Bush  and Vice President  Cheney, after undertaking illegal actions and  keeping them secret, went on to set up fake justifications for their  behavior, blamed others, inserted hidden defenses in the law, and  schemed to protect themselves from  the  consequences  of their   criminal  conduct  by every means  possible. As I examined the facts  more closely, I saw that they had even succeeded in changing laws in an  attempt—possibly successful—to exonerate themselves.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This could  happen only in a country still traumatized by the World Trade Center and  Pentagon attacks and willing to believe a president, no matter what.   Taking advantage of this post-9\/11 atmosphere, President Bush conducted  illegal wiretapping, lied about it, and when exposed, asserted that he  could flout the law. Surveillance of Americans—secret and unnoticed—can  do permanent damage by chilling diversity and depth of opinion and  speech. President Bush, no doubt, knew how sensitive Americans are to  invasions of their privacy. Before he left office, he pushed through  changes in the law that might protect him from prosecution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePresident  Bush secretly authorized and unleashed systemic torture and cruel and  inhuman treatment in the interrogation and handling of detainees. While  in the White House, he denied that he had authorized torture. “We do not  torture,” the president said on many occasions, even issuing a  statement to the United Nations on June 26, 2004, reaffirming  the  commitment  to the elimination  of torture  worldwide.     But he must  have realized that  torture  and cruel and inhuman  treatment could not   be hidden forever. While still in office, the president secured legal  opinions purporting to allow torture and pushed through provisions to  undermine the War Crimes Act and render it largely useless in affixing  criminally responsibility against him.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Torture and cruel and  inhuman treatment violate solemn treaties, as well as our own laws. The  horrid pictures of prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, according to various  testimonies, encouraged jihad against U.S. soldiers, endangering their  lives. As a former  district  attorney,  I know that  highly trained,   experienced  investigators  can frequently  obtain  vital information  without ever lifting a finger against the person being questioned.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e As for starting a war by lies and deception, no more serious legal  violations can be envisioned—thousands of lives lost, expenditures  of a  trillion dollars, and the violation of our treaty obligations  against  fighting an un- provoked war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The devastation caused by the Bush  administration is so vast that, in some ways, we have been numbed to  its extent and corrosiveness.  Now that they are out of office,  reasserting the rule of law and holding President Bush and Vice  President Cheney answerable, where possible, is a necessary task.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Active steps are  needed  to  investigate  the  misconduct  of the   Bush- Cheney  administration: a special prosecutor  to investigate  possible illegal actions and bring charges where appropriate;  a truth   commission to make sure that all of the facts and actions are  established for a historical record; new legislation by Congress to  patch holes in the law to prevent repetition of the same behavior;  citizen action to demand that our constitutional standards be upheld.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Prosecution is by no means a minor matter.  Prosecutors must analyze  the evidence and the law, persuade a grand jury to return an indictment,  try the case before a jury. The evidence must meet each element of the  crime in the statute and overcome defenses that those charged may  assert. Prosecution isn’t something to be approached lightly—but it is  critical to serious accountability.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe argument that conducting  investigations would tear the country apart is not true, but in any  case is no reason to desist from requiring accountability. America is  certainly strong enough to weather a fair and professional investigation  of presidential criminality.  During the Watergate inquiry, the same  argument that the country would somehow suffer harm turned out to be  untrue.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOur nation prohibits titles of nobility precisely in  order to guard against the formation of a legal hierarchy in our  society. Presidents are not kings; they are ordinary human beings,  subject to ordinary temptations, who must be treated like any other  persons if they have broken the law. We do not have an aristocracy of  former government officials with immunity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The danger to our  democracy is seen most starkly when former Bush administration officials  trumpet their crimes, proudly and publicly, with- out any fear that  they will be held to account. As with any crime that goes unprosecuted,  the failure to take action against a former president who has committed  crimes stands as an indictment of the society that permits the impunity.   The  failure to prosecute  trivializes the acts constituting the  crime, suggesting,  in the case of President  Bush, that  torture,  disappearance, cruel and inhuman  treatment, abrogation  of our   treaties,  violation of our laws on privacy, deception  of the Congress,   and subversion of the constitutional checks on war making are minor  matters, easily overlooked. It means rejecting what used to be regarded  as core American values, and even worse, sends a clear signal to future  presidents that they may act with similar disregard for the law.","brand":"Beacon Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46303841878245,"sku":"NP9780807003381","price":18.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780807003381.jpg?v=1767723605","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/cheating-justice-isbn-9780807003381","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}