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Life, Politics and the Law From ABC News Correspondent Jan Crawford Greenburg
Jan Crawford Greenburg is a correspondent for ABC News' bureau in Washington DC. She covers politics, the Supreme Court and provides legal analysis for ABC News. She is a graduate of the University of Chicago's law school and is a member of the New York bar.
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The Harsh Interrogation Investigation
May 05, 2009 6:42 PM
Bush Administration lawyers under investigation for memos that approved harsh interrogation techniques have mounted an aggressive defense to persuade the Justice Department to drop plans to refer them to state bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings, sources tell ABC News.
On Monday, lawyers representing former officials Jay Bybee and John Yoo filed detailed responses to a draft report by the Office of Professional Responsibility. The report is about 200 pages long and concludes that Bybee and Yoo should be referred to their state bar associations for possible disciplinary proceedings, including disbarment, sources close to the process said.
As part of their effort to persuade the Justice Department otherwise, the lawyers also have asked former Bush Administration officials, including high-ranking Justice Department attorneys, to offer comments defending the memos, sources said. Some former officials already have filed comments, sources said.
The confidential report was finished late last year and was highly critical of the two lawyers for their analysis approving the interrogation program. Yoo wrote the memos in 2002 and 2003. Bybee, the head of the Office of Legal Counsel and Yoo’s boss, signed the two written in 2002. Bybee is now a federal appeals court judge; Yoo is a law professor.
The memos adopted a narrow definition of torture and approved specific interrogation techniques, including waterboarding, as legal. Bybee’s replacement, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew some of them, finding them legally flawed.
Lawyers for Bybee and Yoo either declined to comment, citing confidentiality reasons, or could not be reached. A third lawyer under investigation, Steve Bradbury-- who became head of the Office of Legal Counsel in 2005 and wrote subsequent memos--also could not be reached for comment.
At issue is whether their legal advice was so off base it amounted to professional misconduct.
That’s an extremely high bar, but after a lengthy investigation, lawyers in the Office of Responsibility concluded Yoo and Bybee should be referred to their state bars for discipline, a source close to the process confirmed.
But former Attorney General Michael Mukasey was highly critical of the report, which he found went too far and amounted to an inappropriate exercise of OPR’s authority, sources said.
Mukasey wrote a lengthy memo, signed jointly with Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, that criticized the merits of the report. He requested that if OPR issued its report and recommended disciplinary action, his memo be attached and made public.
May 5, 2009 | Permalink | User Comments (2)
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They don't recommend prosecution because they know they would lose the case. But rather than giving these men their day in court and allowing them to obtain an innocent verdict, the administration says to leave it to state bar organizations hoping to slime them anyway. This hallmark of this administration is becoming the destruction of reputations of those that disagree with them.
Posted by: Terry | May 5, 2009 9:02:19 PM
"It's almost an out-of-body experience to me to listen to this debate going on," said General Barry McCafferey in an MSNBC interview last month, scolding pundits and policymakers who openly advocate a criminal torture regime. "We should never, as a policy, maltreat people under our control--detainees. We tortured people, unmercifully, we probably murdered dozens of them," he said. McCaffrey supports an investigation of the government lawyers who knowingly advocated illegal torture, and he specifically cited Bush's White House counsel and attorney general in the same discussion, emphasizing that "we better find out how we went so wrong."
Posted by: James B. | May 7, 2009 6:31:57 AM
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