Tag: Jay Bybee

That would be a Country that doesn’t follow Law nor the Human Rights of Others!!

Government Lawyers Get Hand Slapped

Today is Friday, January 29, the year 2010.  Remember this full moon evening.  

According to Newsweek’s Declassified Blog, http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs…

two Department of Justice anonymous sources said that a Senior DOJ official who finalized an Office of Professional Responsibility report, changed the assessment of the torture memo’s creator’s  Jay Bybee and John Yoo’s behavior to “poor judgement.”

But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.)  The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action-which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.  

/snip

Two of the most controversial sections of the 2002 memo-including one contending that the president, as commander in chief, can override a federal law banning torture-were not in the original draft of the memo, say the sources. But when Michael Chertoff, then-chief of Justice’s criminal division, refused the CIA’s request for a blanket pledge not to prosecute its officers for torture, Yoo met at the White House with David Addington, Dick Cheney’s chief counsel, and then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales. After that, Yoo inserted a section about the commander in chief’s wartime powers and another saying that agency officers accused of torturing Qaeda suspects could claim they were acting in “self-defense” to prevent future terror attacks, the sources say. Both legal claims have long since been rejected by Justice officials as overly broad and unsupported by legal precedent.

John Yoo, a graduate of Harvard and Yale law school, who clerked for SC Justice Clarence Thomas, and served as a torture enabler in the Bush administration at the Dept of Justice from 2001 to 2003, is currently a law professor at the University of CA at Berkeley. http://www.law.berkeley.edu/ph…

Jay Bybee, a graduate of Brigham Young University and BYU’s J Reuben Clark Law School, helped John Yoo write the torture rationalization memos for President Bush during his Dept of Justice Office of Legal Counsel tenure from 2001 to 2003.  Bybee currently serves on the US Court of Appeals of the Ninth Circuit. http://www.fjc.gov/servlet/tGe…

It is not known at the current time when they will be displaying “poor judgement” again, nor how many fatalities might result.

Crossposted from Antemedius

A new draft Department of Justice report, not yet approved by Attorney General Eric Holder, is recommending that Bush administration torture memo authors Jay Bybee, John Yoo, and Steven Bradbury not be prosecuted, but will apparently ask for disciplinary reprimands and/or disbarment by state bar associatons.

“The report by the Office of Professional Responsibility, an internal ethics unit within the Justice Department, is also likely to ask that state bar associations consider possible disciplinary action, including reprimands or even disbarment, for some of the lawyers involved in writing the legal opinions, the officials said,” reported the New York Times.

“The conclusions of the 220-page draft report are not final and have not yet been approved by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. The officials said it is possible the final report might be subject to revision, but they did not expect major alterations in its main findings or recommendations.”

“Lawyers familiar with the process said the department’s willingness-as recently as this week-to solicit responses from the former officials indicated that there were no plans to conduct a criminal investigation,” reported Politico. ‘They don’t let you comment if they’re going to refer you for prosecution,’ said one former Justice Department official, who asked not to be named.”

Crossposted from Antemedius

Not a single Democrat questioned Bybee at the session, and the proceedings came to a quick conclusion. The following month he was confirmed by the full Senate. Just six months prior to the hearing, Jay Bybee had signed legal memos providing cover for CIA agents torturing detainees — yet Congress voted him to a lifetime on the federal bench. How did this happen? And what will become of Judge Bybee now?

Dear President Obama;

Sir I have written you multiple letters on the frank necessity of the need to investigate the Bush Administration State Sponsored Torture program. This need was based on the public information available, which to me, as a citizen who believes that unprosecuted apparent crimes undermine the very basis for our justice system and the rule of law.  

Also posted at AlterNet and Invictus

Reading the just released August 1, 2002 memo by John Yoo (reportedly ghosting for Jay Bybee, then Assistant Attorney General of the United States, and now an Appeals Court Judge for the Ninth Circuit), to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel for the CIA, on the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, is a surreal experience. There is so much that is strange and awful in it, it's hard to know where to begin.

But one thing that struck me right off the bat was the similarity of the statistics presented in the early part of the memo with the statement of Dr. Jerald Ogrisseg, a psychologist with Joint Personnel Recovery Agency, United States Joint Forces Command, before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on June 17, 2008.

Let's review some of the relevant text.

The Dog is not a believer in many things but gods is one particular category. As such he almost never uses the word evil, but there are times when this religiously based word is the only apt one in English. Today the Dog has seen evil, in the form of a memo which does a legal tap dance to justify a torture technique known as waterboarding.  

Cross-posted at DailyKOS

Memos written at the request of high-ranking government officials by Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo on August 1, 2002 (also signed by Jay Bybee, now a federal judge) and March 14, 2003, assured the Bush administration that

. . . . the Department of Justice would not enforce the U.S. criminal laws against torture, assault, maiming and stalking, in the detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.”

Of course, we know that the purpose of Yoo’s memos were simply established as a means of legal clearance for all that ensued thereafter.  

Daniel Levin, Acting Assistant Attorney General Office of Legal Counsel (December 30, 2004)

. . . . specifically rejects Yoo’s definition of torture, and admits that a defandant’s motives to protect national security will not shield him from a torture prosecution.  The rescission of the August 2002 memo constitutes an admission by the Justice Department that the legal reasoning in that memo was wrong.  But for 22 months, the [sic] it was in effect, which sanctioned and led to the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.”

Note:  all quoted material above from Marjorie Cohn, President National Lawyers Guild.