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(ChicagoTribune) – The Justice Department released a declassified 2003 memorandum long sought by congressional Democrats and other administration critics that outlines the government’s legal justification for harsh interrogation techniques used by the military against captured enemy combatants outside the United States.
(Here are part one and part two of the memo – pdf files!)
The memo, written by John Yoo, then a key architect of legal policy in the wake of 9/11, dismisses several legal impediments to the use of extreme techniques.
Yoo was long a proponent of an aggressive approach in the war against terrorism and a believer in executive branch authority. But the memo was withdrawn as formal government policy less than a year after it was written.
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The memo was prepared by John Yoo for William Haynes, then the Pentagon’s general counsel and another key player in the administration’s legal strategy. It was declassified by Haynes’ acting successor, Daniel Dell’ Orto. Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley.
Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has repeatedly asked the Justice Department to release the memo and others like it, had this to say:
- “It has been more than four months since I asked the White House – again – to declassify the secret Justice Department opinions on interrogation practices. Today’s declassification of one such memo is a small step forward, but in no way fulfills those requests. The administration continues to shield several memos even from members of Congress.
The memo they have declassified today reflects the expansive view of executive power that has been the hallmark of this administration. It is no wonder that this memo, like the now-infamous “Bybee memo”, could not withstand scrutiny and had to be withdrawn. Like the “Bybee memo”, this memo seeks to find ways to avoid legal restrictions and accountability on torture and threatens our country’s status as a beacon of human rights around the world.”
John Yoo Argues Pres. George Bush Has Legal Power to Torture Children
NEW YORK – On the heels of an internal report criticizing the FBI for abusing its power to issue National Security Letters (NSLs), newly unredacted documents released today as a result of an American Civil Liberties Union and New York Civil Liberties Union lawsuit reveal that the Department of Defense (DoD) is using the FBI to circumvent legal limits on its own NSL power and may have overstepped its authority to obtain private and sensitive records of people within the United States without court approval. The previously withheld records also reveal that the military is secretly accessing these private records without providing training, guidance, or any real recordkeeping.
“It looks like the Defense Department is evading the legal limits placed on the military’s surveillance powers by simply getting the FBI to do its bidding,” said Melissa Goodman, staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “If the Defense Department is asking the FBI to get information it is not allowed to access on its own, there is a serious problem within both agencies.
After reading this post, Susie Madrak’s post, and Glenn Greenwald’s post on this matter, i have come to the conclusion that people like John Yoo must be publicly shamed.
So I have started writing letters, and I hope others here will do the same.
This is the “Principles of Community” statement at UCal Berkeley, where John Yoo teaches Constitutional Law.
This is the faculty listing at Boalt Hall School of Law, UCal Berkeley’s law school. As you will see, every single one of these professors and deans has an email address and a phone number.
I think you can see what I’m getting at.
Here is a copy of one of my letters to his colleagues/employers, in this case the Assistant Dean for Student Services. I will be writing several of these letters over the course of the week. I hope to make John Yoo’s continued presence at Boalt Hall radioactive, to the point where his colleagues won’t speak to him and students won’t sign up for his classes.
I hope others will follow this model. Maybe Yoo will never end up in the Hague, but his public reputation at home can be destroyed with enough work.
81 pages about avoiding liability for harsh techniques. This is how federal employees are spending their time.
People should be protesting his presence at Berkley and boycotting his classes. People like Yoo should not have access to a podium and a microphone; war crimnals belong behind bars.
No, they do NOT belong behind bars.
They belong in the gallows.
We need a “Shame Campaign” against John Yoo. Since he openly advocates the crushing of a child’s testicles as an interrogation technique-we need to put his in a vise grip-metaphorically speaking of course.