Michael Isikoff: Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble for Bush Lawyers
By Heather Wednesday Feb 18, 2009 9:00am
You Tube
Rachel Maddow talks to Michael Isikoff about his latest article in Newsweek, Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble for Bush Lawyers.
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 [the opinions by Justice attorneys]. 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."
You can read the rest of the article here as linked above: Torture Report Could Spell Big Trouble for Bush Lawyers.
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I see a fat boy like the one Rachel interviewed about Guantanamo last night shoving a Bush administration lawyer into a cage at Camp X-Ray where he can be well fed while enjoying the tropical climate.
nah just so much pie in the sky! no ones going to prison , no ones going to be investigated, the sheets in the wind bro!
I'm not holding my breath either, but think of this: at least the Bush (mis)administration's disgusting activities are finally getting some coverage in the MSM.
Will wonders never cease?!
Without the DOJ on the side of the law, it was not possible to uphold it. I am delighted, but not surprised. President Obama always referred questions about torture prosecution to the appointment of Holder. Why did you think it was held up?
These vigilantes don't have a clue to what "due process" or "discovery" means. They want Obama(a consitutional lawyer who understands this proceeding better than anyone at this site) to interfere(like Cheney did) with the slow grinding wheel of justice, find a tree and just hang the killers. Lol.
Not only would Obama's obstruction taint the process with prejudice, it also would galvanize the Republicans to side with the alleged war criminals on party loyalty lines. The Repukes then would accuse Obama of leading a partisan witch hunt(Bill Clinton II).
The war criminals aren't stupid and they won't go quietly. This will take time...probably years.
prejudice.
That's a pretty empty threat. That's saying, "if you do this, we're going to keep doing what we planned on doing all along."
But...I don't think anything will come of this. These guys all have way too much money to be accountable to the law.
Big trouble? Not when our "constitutional professor" of a president wants to negotiate with Turdblossom. Why is BO so afraid of upsetting the apple cart?
He's wanting to use turdblossom to catch the bigger fish.
Still...I'd rather see justice done upon every last bushco fascist...and no...I won't be holding my breath either...
"OPR is not competent to judge [the opinions by Justice attorneys]. They're not constitutional scholars,"
Apparently, neither are the asshat lawyers occupying the Bush Justice Dept., the Bush legal team or Mr. Muchhazy.
How often have you heard of a case of a multiple felony crime prosecution starting off with going after the laywers who gave their clients bad legal advice??? The ONLY way these crooked laywers are likely to be "in big trouble" is if the guilty felons are prosecuted first. And you've got everyone from Obama to Leahy trying to prevent that despite the fact that they themselves can face criminal prosecution for trying to shield the felons.
Good point.
I was thinking, poor Bush. He had bad intelligence advice and bad legal advice. You just can't find good help these days.
1. Invade, torture, spy
2. Justify
3. Justification proven incorrect
4. Elect new president
5. Invade, torture, spy
6. give taxpayer $$$ to bankers
7. elect new president
8. give taxpayer $$$ to bankers
9. Legalize marijuana at the state level
10. Get raided by the feds
11. Elect a president who says he'll stop the raids by the feds
12. Get raided by the feds
Anyone else want to join in on our Ode to Change?
As per this news item, with even more troops being sent into Afghanistan by the [alleged] antiwar president makes it a certainty that Afghans will feel tortured by seeing more foreign soldiers sent into their country by someone who claims to be an agent of hope and change, though it is extremely doubtful if the Afghans will feel much hope when more of their citizens are ripped apart by American bombs.
It makes one wonder who was elected president, John McCain or the [alleged] antiwar candidate, Barack Obama.
Why is C & L not covering this extremely important story?
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2009-02-17...
For the lawyers? Now, we're not talking about a young second-lieutenant on the battlefield deciding whether to rough up a newly captured prisoner to possibly save his surrounded squad.
We're talking about lawyers who specifically chosen for their result-oriented "analysis." While supposedly presenting a "neutral" memorandum on the state of the law, they actively advocated for the most extreme posture on executive power possible.
A lawyer advocating extreme positions is not necessarily a bad thing; if fact, when opposed by another lawyer, this advocacy can be useful in determining the truth. But that was not Yoo's role.
Yoo's role was to accurately reflect the state of the law. He was not an advocate; he was more in line with a judge giving an advisory opinion. Yet, if he fulfilled that role, he would not produce the desired result.
So Yoo was faced with a conflict between violating his ethics, and pleasing his boss.
At least we know where the "unimaginable pressure" came from.
n/t
.
C&L should feature this.
Check out the reviews and comments !
AmBushed by Conspirituality
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ypsEmg9yOs&fm...
either. I mean, here Yoo, Bybee & Bradbury overlooked the Constitution (cruel & unusual punishment), the Geneva Convention & still say it's OK for a President to order torture.
May those three rot in hell.
in DC parlance "big trouble" for establishment officials means something different than it would mean to you, me, everyone here.
i have zero expectations that the torturers and war profiteers from the bush admin will ever face justice. it helps that they are being defended by the media/govt/corp establishment.
WHO in this country is going to hold them accountable? Who? Give me a break. I'll believe it when I see it. Patrick Leahy who they sent Anthrax to? John Conyers? Obama? I don't see these guys having the testicular fortitude to do anything about it. Is the media going to hold them accountable. It isn't happening. We need to spend as much time finding the prosecutors as we do identifying the criminals. Because we know the criminals, we just can't find the prosecutors or those Americans willing to uphold the Constitution. Strange times indeed.
Who's going to defend this Country from leaders like George W. Bush?
I wouldn't limit your example to our penultimate President.
The Bottom Line is that NOTHING is going to happen to these sleazebags, or anybody else higher than an E-6 ...Bush and his cronies are going to get away with whatever they did. This is just a worthless exercise. If any blame is placed, it'll end up in the lap of some low-level grunt while the scumbags who gave the orders will get off scot-free. As Usual.
That Obama's people will do the right thing is not a certainty. Not with Obama sending more troops to Afghanistan, and the hints he's dropped about not pursuing BushCo crimes.
Show me, Barack.
Jimbo92107
Very well said. My comments at 9:20 echo what you had written.
n/t
...diplomacy and the two countries law enforcement organizations. If I were a soldier in Afghanistan I'd appreciate more help...if I'm going to be there.
LeftandLeft
I would like to think that a soldier in Afghanistan would finally come to the realization that he/she is not fighting for his country but rather is being lied to, just like I was while being in Vietnam. The Taliban can hardly be considered a threat to anyone living in the United States while the continuing presence of the United States military [despite your claim of Obama wishing to engage in "diplomacy"] will continue to justifiably breed resentment among the people of Afghanistan.
If an American soldier in Afghanistan had an ounce of brains he would realize that he is taking part in the illegal and unjust occupation of Afghanistan. What that patriotic soldier should be doing is urging other soldiers not to be part of an illegal occupying army. The best way to halt an occupation is to have it happen from within [as the GI movement demonstrated during the Vietnam War].
Afghans-resist the American empire.
Is that the Taliban is still a threat to the Afghan people, and was a working ally of Al Quada and Osama Bin Laden. Given that the Afghans seem most intent on fighting each other, it's hard to imagine that they'll be ready to fight the Taliban effectively any time soon.
As for the Paks, they are seemingly completely unreliable. They've been cozy with the crazy fringe Muslims in Afghanistan for decades (yes, thanks largely to the U.S.), and the Pak military and intelligence services are full of terrorist sympathizers.
Right now, I just don't see our occupation as wrong, but rather the only realistic option among a bunch of sub-optimal choices. Hopefully that won't last forever.
Bill Lumbergh opines that "Right now, I just don't see our occupation as wrong..." I remember those very same words being used to describe that fiasco in Viet Nam as the American military was supposedly in Vietnam to liberate the Vietnamese. That "liberation" ended up killing anywhere from two to three Vietnamese [though the Vietnamese government puts that figure at five million].
How extremely generous of Bill L. not to see the occupation of Afghanistan as wrong. One has to wonder how he would feel if there were foreign troops occupying the U.S. But Americans are always loath to engage in that type of thinking. Instead, like so many liberal interventionists, he is inclined to believe that the United States is using their military might as a force for good. I strongly recommend that Bill L. read The Liberal Defence of Murder by Richard Seymour [who runs the blog over at Lenin's Tomb]. This well-researched book might help dispel him of that fallacious notion [such as when Clinton ordered Kosovo bombed for 75 straight days]. Dennis Perrin's Savage Mules covers the same ground albeit in a somewhat more accessible manner as does The Democrats: A Critical History by Lance Selfa which demonstrates quite ably of what little difference there is substantially between the Democrats and the Republicans.
Obama has been in office a little over a month and already dozens of innocent civilians, many of whom are women and children, have been killed on his watch. As the above books point out, Democrats like Obama will use any excuse they can think of to send U.S. forces into foreign lands. As writer Marilyn Young pointed out on Bill Moyers' Journal a few weeks ago, one often sees in the media how a bomb looks when it is dropped from a plane but one never sees the viewpoint of the victim when that bomb is dropped on them.
It remains to be seen how many more innocent women and children will end up ripped apart and scattered across Afghanistan as Obomb-a orders those bombs dropped on those people with, as liberals do, their usual self-righteous and rational-saving proclamations.
Afghans-resist the American military.
We aren't even looking for Bin Laden. Who supposedly killed our buildings and three thousand of our fellow countrymen. Get that through your head. We don't care about this shit. Look what happened at Abu Ghraib. Some low level chick took the fall for these chicken hawk assholes like Rumsfeldt and Cheney. Those are the people these types of people are. Sacrificing low level women for their own power. Its a backwards world from what you ever thought. Backwards as hell.
"Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal."
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
Hah, is this a post about a video of a TV news show reporting on an article written on a different news organization's web site?
Oh no, I just commented about a post about a video of a TV news show reporting on an article written on a different news organization's web site!
Please don't reply to me, or you will be replying to a comment about a post of a video of a...
the Curtinlingus, They All Suck Ode to Joy loop.
How many citizens who have received subpoenas from a Congressional Investigation Committee have been given the opportunity to NEGOTIATE what they will and will not testify to? The precedent that Obama is allowing to be made is STUNNINGLY CONTRADICTORY to the procedures prescribed by Congress. The fact that the OLD commander-in-chief issued orders to Rove does not mean that the new commander-in-chief is prohibited from issuing NEW orders to Rove! New commanders/bosses do it every day. The only thing Obama is doing is empowering one of the WRONG things that Bush did and is giving the appearance of collaborating with a cover-up. Obama needs to worry more about doing what's RIGHT rather than pepetuating the WRONG things Bush did!
the obama DOJ's adoption of the bush admin's argument to stop an extraordinary rendition case (Mohamed et al v Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc.) should give some evidence of how holder will treat this issue.
i think both the dem and the GOP establishment wake up and go to bed everyday praying that these issues will just go away.
I'm holding out hope that the Bush holdover from DOJ spoke for Holder without authorization, but that's longer odds every minute.
I guess I'll write another letter.
I wonder of Sybil Edmonds has scheduled a meeting with Eric Holder and his staff yet so she and her lawyers can try to have her case looked into PROPERLY and CONSTITUTIONALLY?
Greenwald here:
Charlie Savage on Obama's embrace of Bush/Cheney "terrorism policies"
Why would 9/11 have put DOJ lawyers under "almost unimaginable pressure"? Just what does this mean?
Why were the DOJ lawyers under pressure, anyway? They were - or should have been - asked for a legal opinion. That means an interpretation, based on precedent and statute, or the law as it stands. They were NOT asked - or should not have been asked, either directly or implicitly, to come up with a tailor-made justification for de facto judicially-sanctioned retributive torture.
And why, if they did face some kind of incredible pressure to come up with the "right" legal interpretation of torture statutes and the Geneva Conventions, is this held to be a LEGITIMATE EXCUSE for breaking the law?? That's NUTS.
John Yoo is a big boy. If he f*cked up, let him wear it. Let the inquiries begin.
Excellent point.
Just what were they under pressure to do? Justice?
All of them should be wary ... the entire world is watching what we do regarding this matter. At a minimum, all of them should be disbarred for their actions. They don't deserve to be attorneys, and I certainly don't want someone like Yoo teaching law for Christ sake.
If America fails to prosecute those responsible, we have lost all our moral high ground and the world will not forget that!
But does Obama know that?
I am beginning to have my doubts.
I think the implication is that these asshats 'wrote' opinions that were based on the desired outcome for their bosses. That's the 'pressure' they were under. I say go after them, and see if they'll be scapegoats like Scooter, or maybe crack and give up the truth. Truth or jail, a fair choice if you ask me.
Hmmmm.
Where have we heard this record before??
Downing Street Minutes etc.??
Most informed progressives have decided that Obama, for what ever reason, will not prosecute Bush and Company. He drank the Kool Aid. The American People got suckered again. Palin and Joe the Plumber in 2012. You Betcha
Let's Have A Prosecution Commision, And We'll Get To The Truth Too.
http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum936.php
For further insight into John Yoo's theory of the unified executive, Google "Hitler's Enabling Act 1933". By a two thirds vote of the Reichstag, Germany's constitution was amended to allow Hitler to do whatever he felt necessary to protect the "Homeland" (I hate that word). Hitler promised to use the power rarely and wisely. (Does anything sound familiar yet?) The Nuremberg Court rejected the defense of "only following orders" even though, arguably, a case could be made that the orders that resulted in atrocities beyond imagination were, in fact, lawful. One of the lessons of Nuremberg is that there are some things that are so inhumane that they cannot be justified by a figleaf of law. I hope the new administration understands the wisdom of the Nuremberg Court and metes out justice to John Yoo and company as far up the Bush administraton as the evidence leads.
OLC was in on the whole thing. Setting up ass-covering ahead of time. That's called conspiracy. Torture victims were killed. We've got conspiracy to murder.
Defendents include:
Bybee, Yoo, Bradbury, Addington, Cheney and the perpetrators themselves, Rumsfeld and Bush.
Mukasey is at least obstruction or accessory after the fact.
Eggshell defense doesn't work when we've got intent.
"This war is so fucking illegal" - Pat Tillman
Yes, the unimaginable pressure of sitting in an office with secretaries, paralegals and catered lunches. My, what Real Amercian Heroes(tm) Yoo, et cie are!
On the upside, since this review started during the Bush reign it will be hard to make this a "partisan" issue. Won't keep 'em from trying, but it will be pretty easy to shoot down.
are knowledgeable persons as terrified as they were of the Bush Admihn. They have a lot of horrifying information to spill, and they'll do it thru the blogs, since the Media is corrupt.
Real change must happen from the bottom-up, not top-down. The process may be slow and messy, but change is coming.
So let's get it straight. Let's just call "unlawful combatants", " witches" for teaching purposes. Yoo said a witch is whoever the president or his agents decide is a witch. And if we decide a person is having witchy thoughts we can kidnap and torture them and get them to confess to being a witch and if they do confess, they're a witch. And if they don't confess they're a witch anyway because we said they were. Real bad legal advice. In fact the legal advice is absurd enough to bring to a bar and ask the who ever gave it, be disbarred.
Of course Yoo, Addington, Bybee, etc. should be disbarred; but it would be criminal to stop there. They should be in prison with Charles Manson and the other torture-loving, delusional, paranoid sociopaths.
By the way, John Yoo is currently employed by University of California Berkeley at Boalt Hall School of Law (and payed with your tax dollars.) His latest article is a screed about how quaint, democratic institutions like Congress are not efficient enough for the demands of modern warfare.
Why is Cal Berkeley employing this criminal?
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