Posted on 05/05/2009 10:56:23 PM PDT by freespirited
Former Bush administration officials have launched a behind-the-scenes campaign to urge Justice Department leaders to soften an ethics report criticizing lawyers who blessed harsh detainee interrogation tactics, according to two sources familiar with the efforts.
Representatives for John C. Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, subjects of the ethics probe, have encouraged former Justice Department and White House officials to contact new officials at the department to point out the troubling precedent of imposing sanctions on legal advisers, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the process is not complete.
The effort began in recent weeks, the sources said, and it could not be determined how many former officials had reached out to their new counterparts.
A draft report of more than 200 pages, prepared in January before Bush's departure, recommends disciplinary action, rather than criminal prosecution, by state bar associations against Yoo and Bybee, former attorneys in the department's Office of Legal Counsel, for their work in preparing and signing the interrogation memos. State bar associations have the power to suspend a lawyer's license to practice or impose other penalties.
The memos offered support for waterboarding, slamming prisoners against a flexible wall and other techniques that critics have likened to torture. The documents were drafted between 2002 and 2005....
The legal analysis on interrogation prepared by a third former chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven G. Bradbury, also was a subject of the ethics probe. But in an early draft, investigators did not make disciplinary recommendations about Bradbury.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
...in Cote D’Ivoire.
Bienvenue!
Sure they have. Not
NY POST.com: "'TORTURE' REGRETS CHEER OUR ENEMIES" by Adam Brodsky (SNIPPET: "Our new enemies require us to adopt new standards. But never for a moment should anyone think such changes compromise our moral standing. Self-flagellation and restraint won't make us more noble. But they might just make us more ... dead.") (Updated May 1, 2009, 4:33 am)
FRONTPAGE MAGAZINE.com: "THE BUSH 'TORTURE' LAWYERS: NO BETTER THAN TERRORISTS?" by Joseph Klein (SNIPPET: "Congress adopted this definition in a 1994 law criminalizing torture committed abroad. If Congress had wished to declare waterboarding or the other specific techniques used by the CIA to be included within the law criminalizing torture, they could have done so for the past seven years but did not. This is telling, considering Nancy Pelosi was briefed upon these techniques in detail. Like the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Torture, she is simply another in the long litany of government officials who seem to revel in their own tortuous reasoning, which invariably ends up protecting terrorists. They deserve to be ignored.") (May 5, 2009)
Experts.FOREIGN POLICY.com: "IRREPARABLE DAMAGE" by Thomas Hegghammer (SNIPPET: "Switch to the jihadi Internet forums, where thousands of radical Islamists log on every day to debate religion, politics, and the latest news from the war on terror. Last week there were debates on all kinds of topics, from swine flu to the financial crisis to the alleged capture of the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. But there was virtually nothing about the torture memos.") (May 4, 2009, 5:10 pm)
WEEKLY STANDARD.com: "PREENING & POSTURING Throwing those who guard us while we sleep to the wolves." by William Kristol (SNIPPET: "The dark and painful chapter we have to fear is rather the one President Obama may be ushering in. This would be a chapter in which politicians preen moralistically as they throw patriotic officials, who helped keep this country safe, to the wolves, and in which national leaders posture politically while endangering the nation's security. The preening is ridiculous, even by the standards of contemporary American politics and American liberalism. Obama fatuously asserts there are no real choices in the real world, just "false choices" that he can magically resolve. He foolishly suggests that even in war we would never have to do anything disagreeable for the sake of our security. He talks baby talk to intelligence officers: "Don't be discouraged that we have to acknowledge potentially we've made some mistakes. That’s how we learn."") (May 4, 2009 Issue)
WEEKLY STANDARD.com - blog: "GOSS: OBAMA DECISION "CROSSED A RED LINE"" -Posted by Stephen F. Hayes (SNIPPET: "Porter Goss, former CIA Director and past chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, blasted the Obama administration for releasing Justice Department memos on harsh interrogation techniques. "For the first time in my experience we've crossed the red line of properly protecting our national security in order to gain partisan political advantage," Goss said in an interview.") (April 23, 2009, 1:53 pm)
CNN.com: Washington - "EX-CIA CHIEF: OBAMA RISKS NATIONAL SECURITY" (SNIPPET: "A former head of the CIA slammed President Obama on Sunday for releasing four Bush-era memos, saying the new president has compromised national security.") (Updated April 19, 2009, 7:44 p.m. EDT)
Online.WSJ.com: "THE PRESIDENT TIES HIS OWN HANDS ON TERROR The point of interrogation is intelligence, not confession." by Michael Hayden and Michael B. Mukasey (April 17, 2009)
CIA.gov: "MESSAGE FROM THE DIRECTOR: RELEASE OF DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OPINIONS Statement to Employees by Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Leon E. Panetta on the Release of Department of Justice Opinions" (April 16, 2009)
FOX NEWS.com: "EX-CIA CHIEF CRITICIZES RELEASE OF INTERROGATION MEMOS Former CIA Director Michael Hayden says release of the memos will give terrorists a precise guide for what to expect in a CIA interrogation if those methods are ever approved for use again" (April 16, 2009)
FOX NEWS.com: "OBAMA MAY RELEASE DETAILS OF CIA's INTERROGATION METHODS USED ON TERROR SUSPECTS" by Brit Hume (SNIPPET: "The president's decision will tell us much about him.") (April 15, 2009)
So when is the report coming out of Nancy Pelosi’s involvement?
The idea of punishing these lawyers came up while Bush was still in office?! Hum...like jailing the border guards for doing their jobs.
When Jeb says “No more Reagan” all I can think is “No more Bushes, please.”
Huh? WHo prepared this "report" and why? I know that Bush was under attack from within his own administration, and because he never did the Clinton thing and got rid of people in the Justice Department who were opposed to him, he had a lot of internal subversion. The Dems and their committees were howling for blood on this one long before he left office, and I imagine they were behind it; but it would be worthwhile knowing the exact timeframe and history of this move.
Fascism is alive and well in the democrat party and they are bringing it to your home soon...
WAPO = PRAVDA, but not truth.
To alter the report? Sounds criminal!
How about to CORRECT the report?
Thanks for putting this together. Very useful.
You’re welcome Freespirited.
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