Hillary Clinton supporters, including the mainstream press, are outraged that if elected president, Donald Trump intends to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Clinton’s email scandal. They’re saying that that would be akin to converting America into a “banana republic.”
But why is that? In a banana republic a new ruler simply jails or kills his political opponents, without any judicial process whatsoever. Isn’t that different from a country in which an independent prosecutor employs a long-established judicial system to target an official who is accused of having committed a crime — a system that includes such procedural protections as a grand-jury indictment, due process of law, an independent federal judge, and trial by jury?
The question that naturally arises is: What’s wrong with using independent prosecutors to prosecute U.S. officials from a preceding administration who are accused of having committed crimes, including such crimes as kidnapping, murder, torture, wrongful incarceration, or rape? Isn’t the use of an independent prosecutor better, from the standpoint of ethical appearance, than using a new president’s attorney general to prosecute the accused official?
More fundamentally, why should U.S. officials in one administration, including presidents, vice presidents, and their subordinates, be immune from criminal prosecution by a succeeding administrations?
To be sure, that’s the way things have worked here in the United States for decades. One administration commits criminal acts and then escapes criminal liability either through pardons or through deliberate inaction by succeeding administrations.
Consider, for example, the military coup that U.S. officials orchestrated from 1970-1973 in Chile, along with their support of the Pinochet regime’s reign of terror in the aftermath of the coup.
After Pinochet took power, he, through his goons, and with the support of U.S. officials who orchestrated the coup, proceeded to incarcerate, torture, rape, and murder tens of thousands of innocent people, including his political opponents. He did it without prosecutors, grand-jury indictments, criminal prosecutions, trial by jury, and due process of law. What Pinochet did to people, including his political opponents, was what we normally associate with the term “banana republic.”
That’s not all he did. In conjunction with the CIA, he proceeded to establish a super-secret international kidnapping, torture, and assassination program called Operation Condor, which targeted people who were suspected of believing in socialism or communism as well as political opponents of Pinochet’s regime and reign of terror.
Once the Chilean people succeeded in tossing Pinochet out of power almost 20 years later, his goons argued that they should be immune from prosecution for the kidnappings, torture, rapes, and murders they had committed because, they said, they were just “following orders” and protecting “national security.” Chilean judges rejected those arguments and have been prosecuting, convicting, and incarcerating Pinochet’s thugs ever since.
Has Chile been behaving as a “banana republic” for going after the Pinochet criminals through their judicial system? Absolutely not! By using a judicial process that carefully determines whether the accused are guilty or not guilty of the crimes they are charged with committing, Chilean officials are doing things the right way. It was Pinochet and his goons who behaved as a banana republic when they rounded up people, and tortured, raped, and killed them for their beliefs or their political activity, without any judicial process at all.
Of course, the big crime was the coup itself, especially since all the other crimes— the round-ups, torture, rapes, and murder — flowed from it. Yet, interestingly enough, no U.S. official, including President Richard Nixon and other U.S. national-security state officials, including Pentagon and CIA officials, has ever been prosecuted for orchestrating the Chilean coup and for supporting and partnering with Pinochet in the aftermath of the coup, notwithstanding the fact that the kidnappings, torture, rapes, and murder of tens of thousands of innocent people were an integral part of the coup itself. Each U.S. administration since 1973 has permitted U.S. officials in the preceding administration to get away with what they did in Chile. That includes the U.S.-Pinochet executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, two innocent American men who happened to be living in Chile at the time of the coup. (See my article “The U.S. Executions of Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi.”)
What about those U.S. officials who orchestrated the kidnapping of the commander of the Chilean armed forces, Rene Schneider, a kidnapping that resulted in his murder? Why have none of them ever been prosecuted for the kidnapping-murder of Schneider, a man whose only “crime” was supporting the defending the constitution of Chile, which did not allow for a coup to oust a democratically elected president from office, including one orchestrated by the U.S. government. (See my article “The CIA’s Murder of Rene Schneider.”)
What about the slap on the wrist that CIA Director Richard Helms received for lying to Congress about the CIA’s actions leading up to the Chilean coup? Indeed, what about Iran-Contra? What about the torture and rendition scheme that U.S. officials authorized and participated after the 9/11 attacks? What about the CIA kidnappings in Italy and other countries? What about all the extra-judicial assassinations? What about the invasion of Iraq based on bogus WMD claims? What about the illegal telecom transactions? What about DIA Director James Clapper’s false statements under oath to Congress regarding the NSA’s secret surveillance of Americans? Indeed, what about Watergate itself, where Richard Nixon received a pardon for deliberately obstructing justice?
Every U.S. administration has concluded that it must continue the custom of pardon or inaction for criminal offenses committed by preceding administrations for one big reason: so that the new U.S. officials can engage in criminal activity too without fear that a succeeding administration will prosecute them.
But why should any government official be immune from criminal prosecution, and why isn’t the use of an independent prosecutor the best vehicle for doing that? If the U.S. policy of immunity for U.S. officials who commit crimes were to be abandoned, maybe U.S. officials would think twice before engaging in criminal activity.