Newsweek Q&A: Justice Department Lawyer Who Defied White House

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'The Law Required It'

Former Justice Department lawyer Jack Goldsmith explains why he fought the White House’s aggressive legal maneuvers in the fight against terror.

By Daniel Klaidman
Newsweek
Updated: 4:38 p.m. ET Sept 8, 2007


Sept. 8, 2007 - Jack Goldsmith may not be a household name. But he was a key player in the post-9/11 battle over how much power the president should have in fighting terrorism. Hired in 2003 to run the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, Goldsmith was charged with advising the White House on the limits of executive power. He quickly found himself butting heads with fellow conservatives and longtime friends over the Bush administration’s aggressive anti-terror policies, chiefly torture and warrantless wiretaps. Goldsmith was even present at the dramatic hospital room showdown between Attorney General John Ashcroft and White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales and Chief of Staff Andy Card. Now a Harvard Law School professor, Goldsmith has written a new book, “The Terror Presidency” (W.W. Norton). In an interview with NEWSWEEK’s Daniel Klaidman, Goldsmith explains why he resigned after less than a year on the job, and why he stayed quiet after media reports incorrectly stated that he had helped craft legal justifications for domestic spying and torture—opinions that he actually fought against. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: You pretty much single-handedly rolled back the legal justifications for some of the Bush administration’s most aggressive and controversial anti-terrorism policies. When was the first time you realized the scope and potential impact of what you were doing?
Jack Goldsmith: Let me just preface this by saying I don’t think I single-handedly, I had a lot of help from a lot of people in the Justice Department. I would characterize it as trying to put important counter-terrorism policies on a firmer legal foundation. I first realized the problem about 8 weeks into my time in the Justice Department when, as I say in the book, Patrick Philbin brought one matter to my attention which was potentially problematic and I asked him whether there was anything else that was potentially problematic and he said, “Maybe.” And he brought me a short stack of opinions, and I read them and absorbed them and thought that some of them were indeed deeply flawed.

And the first one was a matter that’s classified—the administration’s warrantless eavesdropping program—that you’re not talking about?
That’s right. I can’t talk about the first matter. Sorry.

And then you got a stack of opinions and you realized there were more problems, especially a series of papers that justified harsh interrogation methods.
There were problems in the other opinions as well.

Entire article at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20659806/site/newsweek/page/0/