Circle of Bush Lawyers Sought a 'New Paradigm'

By JESS BRAVIN
NYT

WASHINGTON -- In the aftermath of the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, lawyers at the Justice Department and elsewhere in the Bush administration sought to construct a "new paradigm" for dealing with enemy prisoners, in the words of former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who later served as attorney general.

Even before the attacks, several of the lawyers working for the administration of former President George W. Bush had expressed strong views on issues such as the scope of presidential authority and the limits that international treaties place on U.S. actions.

Mr. Gonzales was part of a self-described "war council." The council also included Timothy Flanigan, the deputy White House counsel in Mr. Bush's first term; William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department general counsel; and John Yoo, then on leave from his professorship at the University of California, Berkeley, to work as a deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel.

Many of these lawyers shared a conservative academic pedigree, including associations with the Federalist Society and clerkships under influential federal judges such as Laurence Silberman and Michael Luttig of the appellate courts and Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court.

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