Post: Ashcroft Didn't Sign Off on Yoo Pentagon Torture Memo

[housewolf]

Post: Ashcroft Didn't Sign Off on Yoo Pentagon Torture Memo
By Paul Kiel - April 4, 2008, 2:17PM

More evidence that John Yoo was the most powerful deputy assistant attorney general in the Justice Department's history. The Washington Post reports this morning that when Yoo issued his now-infamous March 14, 2003 memo to the Pentagon, neither Attorney General John Ashcroft, nor his deputy Larry Thompson "were aware."

As Marty Lederman has pointed out, the fact that the memo was issued under Yoo's own name is further indication that this was a back door authorization of interrogation practices.

The Post also sheds light on Yoo's earlier October 23, 2001 legal memo, the one that declared that the Fourth Amendment had "no application to domestic military operations." The memo "focused on the rules governing any deployment of U.S. forces inside the country 'in the event of further large-scale terrorist activities' by al-Qaeda" according to "a Justice Department official." Just what that sort of operation that might have been discussed or how long that memo remained in effect are unclear. In fact, it's unclear whether it might still be relied upon:

Although the memo has not been formally withdrawn, the Justice Department yesterday repudiated the idea that there are no constitutional limits to military searches and seizures in a time of war, saying it depends on "the particular context and circumstances of the search," according to a statement.

All that is clear is that Department officials are insistent that that memo had nothing to do with the warrantless wiretapping program. But as the AP has shown, that appears not to be entirely true.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/post_...

[marmar]

1. You know your administration is f**ked up when Ashcroft is the voice of reason.....

:scared:

[Old and In the Way]

2. Was this even a document with legal standing?

Why wouldn't Ashcroft sign it? Did he believe it to be unconstitutional? Obviously, Bush/Cheney wanted unchecked powers to do whatever they wanted. I imagine they did what they wanted, then found some lackey who'd write an opinion that would give them legal cover. Seems to be their MO.

Like to see Ashcroft get summoned to the Hill for questioning, under oath, about this.

[ThomWV]

4. It may very well be that he didn't sign it because he never saw or heard of it.

The bastards are all a bunch of Lone Rangers, every one of them convinced he is the smartest guy in the room and above the petty annoyance of established procedure, precidence, and evey less so the word and intent of the law. Any there you have Mr. Yoo.

[housewolf]

5. Any there you have Mr. Yoo... who is currently spread his brilliance

to a new generation of law students at UC Berkeley. Don't you just love it????


:sarcasm:

[ConcernedCanuk]

3. USA is just a new version of Hitler's Germany - but with more power.

.
.
.

Genocide is rife (think Depleted Uranium that was banned for 60 years but used by the USA since Bush 1 in the ME)

Invasion of other countries that were no threat

Spying on their own citizens

Detention without legal recourse

Passports required for travel to their "friends" - Canada and Mexico

And all that wiretapping shit . . .

I'm sure I left something out

The list of the United States crimes around the globe is just mind-boggling

How long are we all going to let this go on?

Methinks not much longer.

. . Hopefully . . .

[Solly Mack]

6. ...

From John Ashcroft's Justice Department to Abu Ghraib

"John Yoo's key memorandum on the Geneva Conventions, dated Jan. 9, 2002, argued that they should not be applied to prisoners captured in Afghanistan because the Taliban and al-Qaida had systematically violated the laws of war. (He reiterated essentially the same arguments in this paper, published at Berkeley in August 2003.) According to an attorney who has seen the document, it was circulated to Attorney General Ashcroft; White House counsel Alberto Gonzales; David Addington, counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney; and Defense Department general counsel William J. Haynes. Less than three weeks later, Gonzales sent a memo to the president that endorsed Yoo's arguments and added new conclusions of his own, denigrating the Geneva restrictions on coercive interrogation as "obsolete" and "quaint" in the war on terrorism.

As Newsweek reports in its current issue, the only negative internal response to Yoo's "bold" departure originated in the State Department, which was unsurprisingly excluded from the policy deliberations. In a memo to Yoo disputing his views, the department's chief counsel, William Howard Taft IV, warned against "repudiating obligations under the conventions." Newsweek has already posted the Gonzales memo and used one of Yoo's memos to illustrate an investigative report, "The Roots of Torture," in its May 24 edition."


The Roots of Torture

"And on Jan. 9, 2002, John Yoo of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel coauthored a sweeping 42-page memo concluding that neither the Geneva Conventions nor any of the laws of war applied to the conflict in Afghanistan."



Torture Memos - Actual Documents - 2002-2003

January 9, 2002 Yoo memo that Ashcroft DID see.

I don't believe Ashcroft was unaware of the March 14 Yoo Memo either. The January 9, 2002 Yoo memo was "circulated" to him....he didn't "sign off" on that one either. It was signed by Yoo...and only Yoo - but Ashcroft was aware of it. You don't gotta put your name to a piece of paper to know exactly what the paper says.

Ashcroft's Senate hearing testimony on the January 9, 2003 Yoo memo.

SEN. PATRICK LEAHY, D-Vt.: Did your department issue a memorandum that would suggest that torture is allowed under certain circumstances, as the press has reported?

ATTORNEY GENERAL JOHN ASHCROFT: I want to confirm that the president has not directed or ordered any conduct that would violate the Constitution of the United States, that would violate any one of these enactment's of the United States Congress, or that would violate the provisions of any of the treaties as they have been entered into by the United States, the president, the administration and this government.

SEN. LEAHY: Has or has not been any order directed from the president with respect to interrogation of detainees, prisoners or combatants, yes or no?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: I'm not in a position to answer that question.

SEN. LEAHY: Does that mean because you don't know, or you don't want to answer? I don't understand?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: The answer to that question is yes.

SEN. LEAHY: You don't know? Is there such an order?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: For me to comment on what the president -- what I advise the president --

SEN. LEAHY: I'm not asking that.

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: -- what the president's activity is, is appropriate. I will just say this, that he has made no order that would require or direct the violation of any law of the United States enacted by the Congress, or any treaty to which the United States is party, as ratified by the Congress or the Constitution of the United States.

SEN. TED KENNEDY, D-Mass.: There are three memoranda -- January 9, 2002, signed by John Yoo; the August 2002 Justice Department, the memo -- and the March 2000 -- the inter-agency working group. Those are three memoranda. Will you provide those to the committee?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: No, I will not.

SEN. KENNEDY: Under what basis?

JOHN ASHCROFT: We --

SEN. KENNEDY: What's the justification not providing it?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: We believe that to provide this kind of information would impair the ability of advice-giving in the Executive Branch to be candid, forthright, thorough, and accurate at all times.

SEN. KENNEDY: We've been looking to about where the president -- because we know, when we have these kinds of orders, what happens. We get the stress test, we get the use of dogs, we get the forced nakedness that we've all seen on these, and we get the hooding. This is what directly results when you have that kind of memoranda out there.

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: First of all, let me completely reject the notion that anything that this president has done or the Justice Department has done has directly resulted in the kinds of atrocities which were cited. That is false. It is an inappropriate conclusion.

SEN. KENNEDY: General, has the president authorized you to invoke the executive privilege today on these documents?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: I am not going to reveal discussions -- whether I've had them or not had them with the president. He asked me to deal with him as a matter of confidence. I have not invoked the executive privilege today. I have explained to you why I'm not turning over the documents.

SEN. KENNEDY: Well, what are you invoking then?

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: I have not invoked anything. I have just explained to you why I am not turning over the documents.

SEN. JOE BIDEN, D-Del.: Thank you very much. Well, General, that means you may be in contempt of Congress then. You got to have a reason not to answer our questions, as you know from you sitting up here. There may be a rationale for executive privilege that misses the point, but -- but, you know, you have to have a reason. You are not allowed, under our Constitution, not to answer our questions. And that ain't -- that ain't constitutional.

SEN. DIANNE FEINSTEIN, D-Calif.: So these memos actually either reverse or substantially alter 30 years of interpretation by our body as well as the executive of the Geneva Conventions.

ATTN. GEN. ASHCROFT: But the only people who are accorded the protections of the Geneva Convention are, number one, according to the convention itself, those nations that are high contracting parties to the convention. Al-Qaida is not a high-contracting party to the Geneva Convention. It repudiates the rules of war.

Now, the law against the torture applies. When the Congress enacted the torture statute, it enacted a law that said it applied everywhere outside the United States. But when the Congress defined the United States, it's not simple: It will sometimes include military bases, it will sometimes include consular offices, it will sometimes include the residences or embassy offices. And when the Congress of the United States makes these definitions, that's what I have to live by.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Solly Mack

[Solly Mack]

8. My pleasure, seemslikeadream!

Once it was decided that the Geneva Conventions didn't apply to a certain,targeted,group of people...abuse became the name of the game and anyone labeled the "enemy" was in danger of being tortured and illegally detained.

Wasn't aware, my ass.

[brer cat]

9. Thanks Solly Mack.

All I know to do is bang my head against a brick wall. I guess if they can stonewall I can too...it doesn't change anything, just gives me a headache. When are we going to become Americans again?

[eppur_se_muova]

10. It's not just Ashcroft -- *TAFT* is sounding reasonable compared to this bunch. nt