Cheating Justice by Elizabeth Holtzman Page A

incriminated themselves.
    This book describes the multifarious ways in which President Bush and his team violated America’s criminal laws and the sophisticated countermeasures 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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    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.
    In order for a movement for accountability to rise and for the sake ofgenerations to follow, it’s important to say that some of us were not blind, that some of us were willing to act.
    It may be a difficult path to follow, but the alternative is more difficult to imagine—an America without accountability and justice.
THE BUSH-CHENEY ADMINISTRATION: A DISASTER FOR DEMOCRACY
    As 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.
    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