I’ve read through the Bybee memo and the first Bradbury memo and I’ve skimmed the last two Bradbury memos. I’m not a law professor but what struck me most strongly wasn’t the legal interpretations. I have the strong impression that people within the CIA badly misled the Office of Legal Counsel about the nature of the people they had in custody and the quality of information they were obtaining from them. Many of the representations that they made to the OLC appear to have been thoroughly debunked or called into serious question since, especially, 2002. If you’re looking for the makings of a recommended diary and you have access to Lexis-Nexis, I suggest doing a timeline on when information that the Bybee memo relied upon was publicly disputed.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Now it is up to the citizenry to demand prosecution on these matters to force the administration’s hand. Well he was telling the truth when Obama said we’d have to do the hard work.
Time to get started
Thanks for the link, BooMan.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-eastman9-2009apr09,0,1890401.story
“Complicit in Torture: Berkeley Law School”
Something that generations of law students could confirm.
Which means that CIA agents who lied to OLC are on the hook.
I’m sorry.
I’m still trying to come to grips with the fact the Bush administration had to actually spend time advising the CIA on the ramifications of a plan to break a supposedly hard-core AQ terrorist with vital, earth-shattering info by using a fat, harmless leaf-munching caterpillar.
This makes me…strangely sad.
I have the strong impression that people within the CIA badly misled the Office of Legal Counsel about the nature of the people they had in custody and the quality of information they were obtaining from them.
and that would somehow make these memos less heinous?
I think the point being made is that the absolution of the agents that provided false information to obtain a legal ruling on their actions might possibly be revokable for that reason.
Am I just imagining that it is a possibility?
I think it makes the whole program more heinous, in light of the quoted statement in your comment, AliceDem.
Mislead? Who is to say that there wasn’t an informal understanding on what the Justice Department needed to be told in order to be able to sign off on those torture techniques?
One thing seems clear: the Bush Six have it coming, domestically too now. They will take the fall for all this. Whether they were misled or not is completely irrelevant from a legal point of view.
Myself I am not sure how well I will sleep tonight after reading the stuff about the insect and the box.
John Yoo is a tenured professor at a public law school and a member in good standing of the ABA.
Jay Bybee is a Federal Judge
You mean to say that you expect the Bush Six to mount a “we were misled” defence?
I’m sure that will happen. The original point was that Holder’s pledge not to prosecute does not apply to people who told OLC that they were interrogating Bin Ladin’s second in command, and not some hapless driver or who misrepresented conditions – e.g. this 1 hour max in the little box.
But to me, the fact that Yoo has been able to walk to class at UCB, retain his tenured position, in fact participate as a member on a top ABA board, and otherwise escape even the mildest rebuke is unbearably shameful.
That will be a hard defense to mount though in light of the fact that key luminaries of the ancien regime such as Uncle Dick and, in this morning’s WSJ, Hayden and Mukasey, are still arguing that torture was not only necessary at the time, but, in fact, still is.
Reading that article made me ill.
The insect and the box. I cannot get over the fucking insect and the box.
ick.
Don’t be surprised when there is no American prosecution of these people, or at least no meaningful prosecution of any of them.
These people are above Presidential authority and they are above the law.
Kafka wrote a short story on it.