Yoo Two and The Torture Memo Family

[L. Coyote]

Yoo Two
April 3 - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/04/hbc-90002785

Yesterday another of the long-withheld torture memoranda was released. In early 2003, beginning after the Ashcroft Justice Department dispensed advice to the Central Intelligence Agency authorizing the introduction of torture techniques, Rumsfeld’s lawyer, William J. (“Jim”) Haynes II–now the general counsel of Chevron–was prodding OLC for a memorandum to help him in a battle with lawyers at the Pentagon. On March 14, 2003, John Yoo issued an 81-page memorandum of law to Haynes (I’ll call it “Yoo Two”). In most respects, it follows the previously published August 1, 2002 memorandum (though it does have some bombshells ......

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The Torture Memo Family
We now know that there are at least six memoranda crafted by OLC that discuss the torture issue; we do not know the details on the more recent of them. But for analytical purposes it is important to group them together and to view the undisclosed subsequent memoranda as the progeny of Yoo Prime and Yoo Two. Attorney General Mukasey insists that those who received these memoranda were entitled to rely on them, and they cannot be prosecuted. In other words, Mukasey is saying that the OLC can legitimately be used as a printing press to issue get-out-of-jail free cards to be distributed at will. ............

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[L. Coyote]

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

Post: Ashcroft Didn't Sign Off on Yoo Pentagon Torture Memo
Paul Kiel - April 4, 2008 - http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/post_ashcroft_didnt_sign_off_o.php


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." .............

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[Supersedeas]

13. heckuva unit over at the DOJ

[The Magistrate]

2. Mukasy, Sir, Is Full Of Manure

Most people convicted of various financial and bureaucratic crimes had legal advice stating they were committing no crime when they broke the law. In the flagship instances of prosecution for crimes against humanity, people were conmvicted, and hung, for enforcing laws on the books directing the actions they carried out. These 'memoranda' are not legal defenses, but rather evidence for the prosecution....

[L. Coyote]

4. Well stated = "These 'memoranda' are not legal defenses, but rather evidence for the prosecution....

[The Magistrate]

5. Thank You, Sir, But It Is Too Obvious Really To Take Credit For

Mukasy, by refusal to prosecute on the basis of the conclusive evidence already in his hand, simply joins the felons in their crime, even though he was not in office at the time....

[Supersedeas]

15. when will the ABA wake the hell up

[L. Coyote]

16. When they call for impeaching, we'll know.

[L. Coyote]

3. The Green Light = "extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Con

The White House
The Green Light
by Phillippe Sands May 2008 - http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/guantanamo200805?printable=true¤tPage=all

As the first anniversary of 9/11 approached, and a prized Guantánamo detainee wouldn’t talk, the Bush administration’s highest-ranking lawyers argued for extreme interrogation techniques, circumventing international law, the Geneva Conventions, and the army’s own Field Manual. The attorneys would even fly to Guantánamo to ratchet up the pressure—then blame abuses on the military. Philippe Sands follows the torture trail, and holds out the possibility of war crimes charges.
The abuse, rising to the level of torture, of those captured and detained in the war on terror is a defining feature of the presidency of George W. Bush. Its military beginnings, however, lie not in Abu Ghraib, as is commonly thought, or in the “rendition” of prisoners to other countries for questioning, but in the treatment of the very first prisoners at Guantánamo. Starting in late 2002 a detainee bearing the number 063 was tortured over a period of more than seven weeks. In his story lies the answer to a crucial question: How was the decision made to let the U.S. military start using coercive interrogations at Guantánamo?

The Bush administration has always taken refuge behind a “trickle up” explanation: that is, the decision was generated by military commanders and interrogators on the ground. This explanation is false. The origins lie in actions taken at the very highest levels of the administration—by some of the most senior personal advisers to the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense ................

[L. Coyote]

6. visibility kick This sunk with few views?????

[L. Coyote]

7. "

[L. Coyote]

8. Conyers Schedules Hearing with John Yoo

Conyers Schedules Hearing with John Yoo
By Paul Kiel - April 8, 2008 - http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/conyers_schedules_hearing_with.php


House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI) wants to former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo to discuss his now-infamous March 14, 2003 memo that broadly authorized the use of torture by military interrogators of unlawful combatants.

Conyers has gone ahead and scheduled a hearing for May 6th on the memo and invited Yoo in a letter today. But it's apparent from the letter that Yoo is not too enthusiastic about the prospect of testifying to Congress. He's apparently raised concerns to committee staff that the topics covered might "implicate executive confidentiality interests" and generally indicated that he'd rather not appear.

.... while Conyers has invited Yoo to appear voluntarily, he makes it clear that he will issue a subpoena if Yoo declines.

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The full letter is below.

[annabanana]

9. "executive priv" again, no doubt.. . . . n/t

[L. Coyote]

12. Conyers made the point, he's already blabbed everywhere else ... So "Forget that"

[Supersedeas]

10. Where the hell is the 'liberal' media establishment!?!?!?! Barely any mention of Yoo memos in the

television 'news'

[spanone]

11. K&R

Error: you can only recommend threads which were started in the past 24 hours

[L. Coyote]

14. NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON BOALT HALL TO DISMISS LAW PROFESSOR JOHN YOO ....

NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON BOALT HALL TO DISMISS LAW PROFESSOR JOHN YOO, WHOSE TORTURE MEMOS LED TO COMMISSION OF WAR CRIMES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 9, 2008 - http://nlg.org/news/index.php?entry=entry080409-083133
Contact: ......


NATIONAL LAWYERS GUILD CALLS ON BOALT HALL TO DISMISS LAW PROFESSOR JOHN YOO, WHOSE TORTURE MEMOS LED TO COMMISSION OF WAR CRIMES

New York. In a memorandum written the same month George W. Bush invaded Iraq, Boalt Hall law professor John Yoo said the Department of Justice would construe US criminal laws not to apply to the President's detention and interrogation of enemy combatants. According to Yoo, the federal statutes against torture, assault, maiming and stalking do not apply to the military in the conduct of the war.

The federal maiming statute, for example, makes it a crime for someone "with the intent to torture, maim, or disfigure" to "cut, bite, or slit the nose, ear or lip, or cut out or disable the tongue, or put out or destroy an eye, or cut off or disable a limb or any member of another person." It further prohibits individuals from "throwing or pouring upon another person any scalding water, corrosive acid, or caustic substance" with like intent.

Yoo also narrowed the definition of torture so the interrogator must kill the person or cause organ failure or permanent loss of significant body functions in order to constitute torture; Yoo's definition contravenes the definition in the Convention Against Torture, a treaty the US has ratified which is thus part of the US law under the Constitution's Supremacy Clause. Yoo said self-defense or necessity could be used as a defense to war crimes prosecutions for torture, notwithstanding the Torture Convention's absolute prohibition against torture in all circumstances, even in wartime. This memo and another Yoo wrote with Jay Bybee in August 2002 provided the basis for the Administration's torture of prisoners.

"John Yoo's complicity in establishing the policy that led to the torture of prisoners constitutes a war crime under the US War Crimes Act," said National Lawyers Guild President Marjorie Cohn.

Congress should repeal the provision of the Military Commissions Act that would give Yoo immunity from prosecution for torture committed from September 11, 2001 to December 30, 2005. John Yoo should be disbarred and he should not be retained as a professor of law at one of the country's premier law schools. John Yoo should be dismissed from Boalt Hall and tried as a war criminal.

The National Lawyers Guild was founded in 1937 as an alternative to the American Bar Association, which did not admit people of color, the National Lawyers Guild is the oldest and largest public interest/human rights bar organization in the United States. Its headquarters are in New York and it has chapters in every state.

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