Office of Legal Counsel

The Other Torture Memo: State Department Releases 2006 Dissent

Ryan J. Reilly | April 4, 2012, 11:30AM

Philip Zelikow was an aide to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in 2006 when he wrote a memo dissenting from the Bush Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel opinion that approved various forms of "enhanced interrogation techniques" that most considered forms of torture. Six years later, the State Department has finally made it public.

George Washington University's National Security Archive and Wired's Spencer Ackerman both obtained a copy of the memo through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests they filed three years ago. As the National Security Archive explains, the memo "concludes that because they violate the Constitutional ban on 'cruel and unusual punishment,' the CIA techniques of 'waterboarding, walling, dousing, stress positions, and cramped confinement' were 'the techniques least likely to be sustained' by the courts."

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Topics: Office of Legal Counsel, Torture

John Yoo

John Yoo On Libya: Obama Reached Right End Through Wrong Means

Ryan J. Reilly | June 23, 2011, 11:30AM

John Yoo, the former Bush administration official whose view of executive power holds that the president has the power to order a child's testicles to be crushed and an entire village slaughtered, thinks President Obama is breaking with tradition by overruling his advisers at the Justice and Defense Department and deciding he didn't need permission from Congress to continue the military's involvement in Libya.

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Topics: Barack Obama, Dawn Johnsen, John Yoo, Obama Administration, Office of Legal Counsel

Torture

Bybee: CIA Used Some Techniques We Didn't Authorize

Rachel Slajda | July 16, 2010, 10:59AM

In House Judiciary Committee testimony released yesterday, former Bush DOJ lawyer Jay Bybee said he hadn't authorized all of the enhanced interrogation techniques the CIA used -- a point that is at the heart of the criminal investigation into the CIA's use of torture.

Bybee, one of the authors of the infamous torture memos that authorized the use of waterboarding and other techniques, testified before the committee in May.

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Topics: Bush Administration, Central Intelligence Agency, House Judiciary, Jay Bybee, Office of Legal Counsel, Torture

Torture

House Judiciary Commitee Releases Testimony From Torture Memo Author

Rachel Slajda | July 15, 2010, 3:08PM

The House Judiciary Committee today released the transcript of the testimony of torture memo author Jay Bybee.

You can get the full transcript here (PDF).

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Topics: Bush Administration, House Judiciary, Jay Bybee, Office of Legal Counsel, Torture

John Yoo

Yoo: 'Sure,' The President Could Order A Village Of Civilians Massacred

Justin Elliott | February 22, 2010, 10:10AM

In John Yoo's vision of executive power, the president can legally order a village of civilians "massacred," according to the internal Justice Department report released Friday.

But in a letter (.pdf) sent to the DOJ last October, Yoo's lawyer, Miguel Estrada, accused the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility of ripping "out of context" Yoo's statement on the massacre question.

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Topics: Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Justice Department, Office of Legal Counsel, Office of Professional Responsibility