Condi Rice Pulls A Nixon: When the president approves it, it is not illegal

[Amerigo Vespucci]

http://rawstory.com/08/blog/2009/04/30/cent-uygur-condi-rice-pulls-a-nixon/

Published: April 30, 2009
Updated 2 hours ago



When Stanford University students recently asked former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about waterboarding and torture, her response was uncannily close to Richard Nixon’s infamous claim, “When the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”

Students toting a video camera approached Rice and asked her about a new Senate Intelligence Committee report which states that she gave the CIA its go-ahead for the use of waterboarding in July 2002.

Rice responded by saying, “The president instructed us that nothing we would do would be outside of our obligations, legal obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

“I didn’t authorize anything,” Rice insisted. “I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency.”

“By definition,” she repeated, “if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture.”

[MrCoffee]

1. Well duh. That's what "unitary executive" means.

Is anyone actually surprised by this?