|
Torture memo authors cleared
TWO top Bush-era lawyers who authorised waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics exercised "poor judgement" but should not be disbarred, an internal Justice Department review has shown.An initial investigation by the department's ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility, found that Jay Bybee and John Yoo engaged in "professional misconduct", a finding that could have stripped them of their law licences. But the agency's top career lawyer overruled the recommendations and concluded instead that while the controversial memos were "flawed", the pair did not act recklessly or knowingly provide incorrect advice, and thus should not face state disbarment or criminal punishment. "These memos contained significant flaws," Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a 69-page memo dated January 5 and released on Friday along with the report and other documents. "But as all that glitters is not gold, all flaws do not constitute professional misconduct... I conclude that Yoo and Bybee exercised poor judgment by overstating the certainty of their conclusions and underexposing countervailing arguments." President Barack Obama has banned the use of torture but resisted pressure from liberals within his Democratic Party to prosecute former George W Bush administration officials involved in the murky practices. The long-awaited and repeatedly delayed release of the final report by the ethics unit, which capped a two-year review, was hundreds of pages long and included emails exchanged between the Justice Department, the White House and the Central Intelligence Agency. It was dated July 29. The review also cleared Steven Bradbury, who headed the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel where Yoo and Bybee worked. Together, they outlined the legal standards for interrogations of top terror suspects and provided the legal justification for the methods used. But Margolis, who reserved sharp words for Yoo's work, noted that his decision "should not be viewed as an endorsement of the legal work that underlies those memoranda". The report criticised former attorney general John Ashcroft, then-chief of the Justice Department's Criminal Division Michael Chertoff and others for not critically examining the memos or recognising the documents' shortcomings. But it did not cite the officials for misconduct. At the centre of the review was an August 1, 2002, memo written mostly by Yoo - who now teaches law at the University of California, Berkeley - and issued under Bybee - currently serving as a federal appeals court judge - that provided a definition of torture that "covers only extreme acts". In April, the Obama administration released four partially blacked out memos authored by the government lawyers at the height of his predecessor's "war on terror". The documents blew the lid on harsh CIA terror interrogation techniques approved by the Bush administration, including waterboarding - a simulated drowning method - sleep deprivation and the use of insects. The lawyers argued that a long list of coercive techniques did not equal torture as they did not amount to inflicting severe mental or physical pain. Decrying the abuses of terror suspects in US custody as "a blight on our national honour", House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers said the report "makes plain that those memos were legally flawed and fundamentally unsound". His panel plans to hold a hearing on the matter. The top Republican on his committee, Lamar Smith, countered that Yoo and Bybee "did their best to follow the law". "In the wake of 9/11, attorneys at the Justice Department were faced with unprecedented challenges, not knowing whether other attacks were imminent," he added. Rights groups did not let up on their pressure for the Obama administration to prosecute those responsible for interrogation techniques widely considered torture. "Justice Department lawyers have an obligation to uphold the law, so when they write legal opinions that were designed to provide legal cover for torture, they need to be held accountable with more than a slap on the wrist," said Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel at Human Rights Watch. Posted by: tipper 2010-02-20 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=290988 |