25 Feb 2010 // Washington, D.C. - Today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate the destruction of emails of at least two former high-ranking Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, John Yoo and Patrick Philbin, who were involved in drafting the Office of Legal Counsel’s (OLC) memoranda authorizing torture.Last week, DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) released a public version of a July 2009 report examining the actions of the OLC officials and concluded they had not violated any of their ethical obligations as lawyers. That report revealed for the first time that OPR’s investigation had been hampered by the destruction of most of Mr. Yoo’s emails as well as many of Mr. Philbin’s from the period when the torture memos were being drafted.
The destruction of emails from such high-ranking officials related to such a critically important matter clearly violates the agency’s obligations under the Federal Records Act (FRA). Among other things, the FRA requires agencies to preserve agency records and maintain safeguards against their removal or loss. The destruction of the key emails may also violate criminal laws, particularly if the destruction was intended to impede the investigation into the origin and preparation of the torture memos.
CREW Executive Director Melanie Sloan stated, “Given the disappearance of millions of Bush White House emails, we shouldn’t be surprised that crucial emails also disappeared from the Bush Justice Department.” Sloan continued, “The question now is what is the Attorney General going to do about it? Even if Mr. Yoo and Mr. Philbin did not violate their professional obligations by writing the torture memos, they – or others seeking to hide the truth -- may have broken the law by deleting their emails.”
http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/44227
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