Late yesterday, the Justice Department released nine internal Bush Administration documents used to shape U.S. war on terror policy following the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Written in the months immediately following the the attacks, the Office of Legal Counsel memos served as the justification for what many considered, best case, broad over reach and, worse case, blatantly illegal actions by the Bush Administration.
Prior to yesterday's document release, the Bush White House had acknowledged rescinding two of the documents, one granting the Executive Branch authority to inflict pain and suffering on detainees and the other providing the authority to interrogate suspects outside the United States. The OLC later repudiated or rewrote eight other opinions secret until now.
In one of the newly disclosed opinions, Justice Department appointee John
Yoo argued that constitutional provisions ensuring free speech and
barring warrantless searches could be disregarded by the president in
wartime... In another, the department asserted that detainees
could be transferred to countries known to commit human rights abuses
so long as U.S. officials did not intentionally seek their torture.
Yoo's previously secret 37-page memo asserting that the president could
authorize a broad use of military force to combat terrorist activities
inside the United States was completed six weeks after the terrorist
attacks. In it, Yoo said any terrorists in the United States could be
treated like an invading army, justifying warrantless searches and the
subordination of free speech and press rights if needed to "wage war
successfully.".
Nearly
seven years later, on Oct. 6, 2008, (OLC head, Steven) Bradbury
declared that the memo contained several "propositions that are either
incorrect or highly questionable." He said that in fact, the Fourth
Amendment prohibition against warrantless search and seizure was "fully
applicable to domestic military operations" and called the claims about
ignoring free speech and press rights "overbroad" and "not sufficiently
grounded."( Link)
To recap, the memos were written in late 2001, early 2002 and Mr. Bradbury repudiated these opinions on October 6, 2008. Hmmm, I wonder if that had anything to do with an internal Justice Department review of OLC lawyers, John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, to determine if those opinions were "consistent with the professional standards that apply to Department of Justice attorneys."
That review, recently reported by Newsweek, determined
OPR investigators focused on whether the memo's authors deliberately slanted their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted, according to three former Bush lawyers who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing probe. One of the lawyers said he was stunned to discover how much material the investigators had gathered, including internal e-mails and multiple drafts that allowed OPR to reconstruct how the memos were crafted. In a departure from the norm, (OPR head, H. Marshall) Jarrett also told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee last year he would inform them of his findings and would "consider" releasing a public version. If he does, it could be the most revealing public glimpse yet at how some of the major decisions of Bush-era counterterrorism policy were made.
The Washington Independent looked closely at one of the opinions on the use of extraordinary rendition, the practice of kidnapping foreign nationals and transporting them to other countries for interrogations that may include torture:
But
the 2002 memorandum (pdf) — one of seven previously undisclosed
Bush-era OLC documents released today by the Justice Department — goes
further than simply sanctioning the so-called “extraordinary rendition”
program that we already knew about. The memo concludes that there is no legal impediment to torturing suspects held abroad – even if they are in U.S. custody, such as at the U.S. prisons at Guantanamo Bay or Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
The evidence is becoming overwhelming. Bogus legal opinions, testimony by FBI agents, ex-Bush
Administration officials, allied intelligence, and military members all
point to a systematic policy of torture by the Bush Administration.
It's time for a truth commission NOW.
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