Sen. John McCain explained Wednesday why he wouldn’t vote to confirm Steven Bradbury as the Department of Transportation’s top legal officer, citing his role in justifying torture practices during the George W. Bush administration.
“I will not support a nominee who justified the use of torture. Our enemies act without conscience – we must not,” the Arizona Republican tweeted.
McCain and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul were the only Republicans who voted against Bradbury’s successful confirmation Tuesday.
In a Medium post published Wednesday, McCain said Bradbury, while serving as the acting head of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel from 2005 to 2009, authored the “torture memos,” which provided legal justifications for enhanced interrogation techniques, including waterboarding and other methods used by the CIA for detainees held by the US under law of war authorities.
“Put simply, Mr. Bradbury’s memos were permission slips for torture,” McCain wrote in the post. “Let’s not pretend that there was no direct connection between the legal work done by Mr. Bradbury and the abuses that followed.”
He continued: “In voting against Mr. Bradbury’s nomination … I am making it clear that I will not support any nominee who justified the use of torture by Americans.”
A message left with Bradbury by CNN was not immediately returned Wednesday morning.
Bradbury once authored memos that noted nudity could be used as an interrogation technique.
“Detainees subject to sleep deprivation who are also subject to nudity as a separate interrogation technique will at times be nude and wearing a diaper,” one 2005 memo said, noting that the diaper is “for sanitary and health purposes of the detainee; it is not used for the purpose of humiliating the detainee and it is not considered to be an interrogation technique.”
Another memo authored by Bradbury laid out techniques and when they should be used in a “prototypical interrogation.”
“Several of the techniques used by the CIA may involve a degree of physical pain, as we have previously noted, including facial and abdominal slaps, walling, stress positions and water dousing,” it said. “Nevertheless, none of these techniques would cause anything approaching severe physical pain.”
McCain, who, himself, was tortured while a prisoner of war in Vietnam, wrote in the Medium post he understands why the methods were used to protect the US from terrorism, but he believed they were the wrong methods to use on detainees.
“I cast my vote against Mr. Bradbury not because I believe him to be unpatriotic or malevolent, but because I believe that what is at stake in this confirmation vote, much like what we stand to gain or lose in the war we are still fighting, transcends the immediate matter before us,” he said. “I cannot in good conscience vote to give him my trust to serve us again.”
Paul also cited torture in opposing Bradbury’s nomination, tweeting Tuesday, “I voted against Steven Bradbury’s nomination because you shouldn’t get to author memos on torturing people & then get another government job.”
Before the vote Tuesday, McCain sent a letter to his colleagues, co-signed by Democratic Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dianne Feinstein, urging them to oppose Bradbury’s nomination.