A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers

[kpete]

Source: Newsweek

A Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble For Bush Lawyers
By Michael Isikoff | NEWSWEEK
Published Feb 14, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Feb 23, 2009


An internal Justice Department report on the conduct of senior lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics is causing anxiety among former Bush administration officials. H. Marshall Jarrett, chief of the department's ethics watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), confirmed last year he was investigating whether the legal advice in crucial interrogation memos "was consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys." According to two knowledgeable sources who asked not to be identified discussing sensitive matters, a draft of the report was submitted in the final weeks of the Bush administration. It sharply criticized the legal work of two former top officials—Jay Bybee and John Yoo—as well as that of Steven Bradbury, who was chief of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) at the time the report was submitted, the sources said. (Bybee, Yoo and Bradbury did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

But then–Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy, Mark Filip, strongly objected to the draft, according to the sources. Filip wanted the report to include responses from all three principals, said one of the sources, a former top Bush administration lawyer. (Mukasey could not be reached; his former chief of staff did not respond to requests for comment. Filip also did not return a phone message.) OPR is now seeking to include the responses before a final version is presented to Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. "The matter is under review," said Justice spokesman Matthew Miller.

If Holder accepts the OPR findings, the report could be forwarded to state bar associations for possible disciplinary action. But some former Bush officials are furious about the OPR's initial findings and question the premise of the probe. "OPR is not competent to judge . They're not constitutional scholars," said the former Bush lawyer. Mukasey, in speeches before he left, decried the second-guessing of Justice lawyers who, acting under "almost unimaginable pressure" after 9/11, offered "their best judgment of what the law required."

But the OPR probe began after Jack Goldsmith, a Bush appointee who took over OLC in 2003, protested the legal arguments made in the memos. Goldsmith resigned the following year after withdrawing the memos, and later wrote that he was "astonished" by the "deeply flawed" and "sloppily reasoned" legal analysis in the memos by Yoo and Bybee, including their assertion (challenged by many scholars) that the president could unilaterally disregard a law passed by Congress banning torture.

Read more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/184801

[RUMMYisFROSTED]

1. ...drip, drip...

[Dover]

2. So the 'buck stops' with the lawyers?

What if they turn on their masters to save their own skins?
Better avoid small planes....

[Mrs. Overall]

3. Ah, how nice to read this headline first in the morning....

[Berry Cool]

4. I love it when Bush administration officials are anxious! n/t

[truthisfreedom]

5. These people believed the BS bush and cheney and rove spread, that they'd be in power until the end

of time, and there would never be any day of reckoning, so they could operate with impunity.

Sorry, boys... you were all drinkin' the kool-aid. Time to sober up and face what you done.

[ixion]

6. yep, exactly

time to take a bit of a reality-based community sandwich.

[wroberts189]

8. Is that it? too much kool aid??? nt

[wroberts189]

7. Why did they all think there would not be consequences ?

for undermining and violating the law?

I do not get it.

[Baby Snooks]

16. There are consequences?

I don't seem them. I doubt I ever will. It is just another report. It means nothing. The Justice Department will not open the can of worms any more than Congress will. It is part of the show.

[salguine]

21. Are you joking? All the past administration did for the last eight years was break

every law in sight, and there have been zero consequences. ZERO. They can't even enforce a subpoena, for God's sake. Consequences? Gimme a f**king break.

[JDPriestly]

29. You park in the red zone. You get a ticket. These guys start

wars without justification, listen in to all of our calls, read all our e-mails and other electronic communications (in violation of our Constiution), and get by with it.

[MadMaddie]

27. They expected the 3rd Reich to last for hundreds of years!!

Just a guess!!:shrug:

[Bette Noir]

9. Next stop, prison?

[DCKit]

10. Yoo Stoopid. "Because I said so" is not a legal argument...

especially when the law, Constitution, Bill of Rights and international treaties say otherwise. If nothing else, we need to prosecute to destroy the concept of the Unitary Executive for all time.

Thanks KPete, good news has been too rare.

[vkkv]

11. They said they didn't torture before they said they did.

Mukasey, in speeches before he left, decried the
second-guessing of Justice lawyers who, acting under
"almost unimaginable pressure" after 9/11, offered
"their best judgment of what the law required."

Firstly, the 'law' - the CIA, prison guards, Bush Admin
officials, Gen. Miller and Sanchez, Blackwater and more BROKE
the law long after "911".

Secondly 'best judgment' - It has been well established that
no useful intelligence has been attained through torture. So
much for "best judgement"... and THIS guy was
running the Justice Dept ?!

[Jack Rabbit]

12. Investigate. Indict. Incarcerate.

And don't forget to disbar.

[NBachers]

13. "Filip wanted the report to include responses from all three principals"

Why not just let them write the damn reports?

[Vattel]

14. Yoo's reasoning is spectacularly bad

Was he knowingly providing thin legal rationalizations for the conclusions that the Administration wanted? I don't know. Yoo's book, though not a justice department document, is full of incredibly bad reasoning. Maybe his consistent stupidity will save him.

[Lerkfish]

15. Paraquay is probably starting to gear up for a new resident.

I"m just sayin. Even if they get indicted for war crimes, they'll skip town to Paraquay and avoid extradition. Its all the rage amonst war criminals these days.

[FraDon]

30. IRRC: Paraguay's new government has signed the international extradition treaty.

So they're going to have to find a new extradition free zone.

[Lerkfish]

31. ah! very good to know, and explains why they haven't moved there yet.

[Piewhacket]

17. John Yoo is a criminal.

National Lawyers Guild:
Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution
for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should
not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country’s premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed
from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal. http://nlg.org/news/index.php?m=04&y=08&entry=entry080409-083133

[Enthusiast]

18. These criminals chose to

torture even when it was known to be a less than effective technique.

When Bush was 'given' the Presidency in 2000, our country, then and there, passed into fascism. We will never know the full scope of the crimes committed by these modern day 'brown shirts'/SS troops.

[LynnTheDem]

19. Torture -such as waterboarding- is ILLEGAL. Period.

What's to "probe" or "report" on?

ILLEGAL.

FELONY.

WAR CRIME.

It's very simple.

[CLANG]

20. K&R

[FKA MNChimpH8R]

22. Few things would make me happier than seeing

John Yoo locked up. Preferably in a place like Leavenworth. Chimpy's "lawyers" are pure human sewage.

[earcandle]

23. Promising news on potential prosecution of war crimes!

I am all for that! 

[MetaTrope]

24. Just turn the lot over to the International Criminal Court

Justice can be served eventually.

[bottomtheweaver]

25. Looks like Yoo might be taking a ride in an icy plane.

Problem solved, Bushler style.

[MadMaddie]

26. Mukasey basically is saying that because the Repug

leadership and lawyers were scared they had no choice but to break the law?

<snip>
Mukasey, in speeches before he left, decried the second-guessing of Justice lawyers who, acting under "almost unimaginable pressure" after 9/11, offered "their best judgment of what the law required."
<snip>


Absolutely nothing surprises me about these criminals.

[The Stranger]

28. What in the FUCK ARE WE WAITING FOR?

Why can't the fucking Democratic leadership uphold the fucking law for once?

[Lerkfish]

32. because like Hoover, Bush and Cheney wiretapped the democrats and got blackmail dirt

on all of them.....that's my theory, anyways.

[Highway61]

33. Wishful thinking...again.

Wasn't Rove suppose to "show up" a few weeks back....and didn't? Nothing happened then....nothing will happen now and nothing will happen in the future. Don't ask me...would make a great episode of the "Untouchables", though.

[Bake]

34. Does this mean we get to waterboard Yoo?

Or perhaps slice his tiny little member and pour hot oil on it?

I mean, we're still at war ...

Bake

[No Elephants]

35. Consequences? I'll believe it when I see it. So far, the Democrats are doing NOTHING.