Yoo case about politics, not ethics

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 2/23/10 | Debra J. Saunders

[SmithL]

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced what amounts to the end of its investigation of former Bush administration lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo for writing the 2002 memos that authorized the CIA to use enhanced interrogation techniques. While assailing Bybee and Yoo's "poor judgment," Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis rejected the "final report" written by the Department of Justice's Office of Professional Responsibility. It found that Bybee and Yoo had engaged in "professional misconduct."

As Margolis noted, the office failed to prove misconduct, even though in an attempt to discredit Bybee and Yoo, the office changed the standards by which it judged Bybee, now a federal judge, and Yoo, now a UC Berkeley law professor. As Margolis wrote, the office failed to identify a "known, unambiguous" standard that the two lawyers were supposed to have violated.

"They never actually followed the standards they're charged with keeping," Yoo told me - which is odd, because holding lawyers to professional standards is "all this office does."

Margolis' most damning conclusion: "In its final report, OPR's misconduct findings do not identify a violation of a specific bar rule."

In short, an investigation, which began in 2004 to determine if Bybee and Yoo deserved disciplinary action up to disbarment, was kept alive by changing the rules, and still the inquisitors failed to come up with any wrongdoing.

Had Margolis not put an end to this political witch hunt, if the ethics office report had prevailed, it would have been as if a court found someone guilty of breaking the law, but the judge and jury weren't sure which law.

And the hounds didn't limit themselves to Washington. Since 2004, critics have been working to get Yoo fired and Bybee to resign.

[DManA]

Seems to me there are some Justice department lawyers that deserve disciplinary action up to disbarment.