Memos Suggest Legal Cherry-Picking in Justifying Torture
DOJ Lawyers' Analysis Changed Little Despite New Legal Backdrop
By Daphne Eviatar 8/27/09
The Washington Independent
On the same day that the government produced the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on interrogations, it also turned over seven more memos and letters from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The memos released on Monday were the Justice Department’s legal justifications for continuing to use those controversial interrogation techniques, despite a new law passed by Congress and an intervening landmark Supreme Court ruling that governs U.S. detentions overseas.
The Office of Legal Counsel is where John Yoo and Jay Bybee, beginning in 2002, wrote a series of what came to be called the “torture memos,” defining torture so narrowly and the law so permissively that near-drowning, prolonged sleep deprivation, stress positions and many more “enhanced interrogation techniques” were deemed legal. Yoo also concluded that the Bill of Rights didn’t apply to certain executive action during wartime, even in the United States.
The more recent documents, written by Steven Bradbury, who became acting assistant attorney general and head of the OLC in 2005, were the Justice Department’s attempts to deal with the ways the law had changed in the intervening years – and the clarifications from the Supreme Court that certain basic international laws, like portions of the Geneva Conventions, do apply to terror suspects held abroad.
What experts say is surprising about the 2006 and 2007 memos released on Monday, however, is how little the legal analysis changed, despite the new legal backdrop that had emerged, and how selectively the lawyers chose which laws and cases to apply.
(More here.)
By Daphne Eviatar 8/27/09
The Washington Independent
On the same day that the government produced the 2004 CIA inspector general’s report on interrogations, it also turned over seven more memos and letters from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. The memos released on Monday were the Justice Department’s legal justifications for continuing to use those controversial interrogation techniques, despite a new law passed by Congress and an intervening landmark Supreme Court ruling that governs U.S. detentions overseas.
The Office of Legal Counsel is where John Yoo and Jay Bybee, beginning in 2002, wrote a series of what came to be called the “torture memos,” defining torture so narrowly and the law so permissively that near-drowning, prolonged sleep deprivation, stress positions and many more “enhanced interrogation techniques” were deemed legal. Yoo also concluded that the Bill of Rights didn’t apply to certain executive action during wartime, even in the United States.
The more recent documents, written by Steven Bradbury, who became acting assistant attorney general and head of the OLC in 2005, were the Justice Department’s attempts to deal with the ways the law had changed in the intervening years – and the clarifications from the Supreme Court that certain basic international laws, like portions of the Geneva Conventions, do apply to terror suspects held abroad.
What experts say is surprising about the 2006 and 2007 memos released on Monday, however, is how little the legal analysis changed, despite the new legal backdrop that had emerged, and how selectively the lawyers chose which laws and cases to apply.
(More here.)
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