Jay Bybee

Jay Bybee's 'Torture Memos' Legal Bill Totaled $3.4 Million

Ryan J. Reilly | October 24, 2011, 11:58AM

Federal Judge Jay Bybee accepted $3.4 million in free legal assistance from 2007 to 2010 as he was under investigation for his role in the so-called "torture memos," the National Law Journal reported. Much of the money -- $3,251,893 of it -- came from the Latham & Watkins law firm, whose lawyers previously appeared before Bybee in the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.

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Bush

Human Rights Group Demands Obama Investigate Bush Over Torture

Ryan J. Reilly | July 12, 2011, 1:40PM

A leading human rights group is criticizing the Obama administration for failing to criminally investigate anyone from the Bush administration for approving the use of torture against detainees. They say that since the U.S. wouldn't act, the international community should step in.

The 107-page report from Human Rights Watch, "Getting Away with Torture: The Bush Administration and Mistreatment of Detainees," presents "substantial information warranting criminal investigations of Bush and senior administration officials, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and CIA Director George Tenet, for ordering practices such as 'waterboarding,' the use of secret CIA prisons, and the transfer of detainees to countries where they were tortured," according to a press release.

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Bradley Manning

Obama Faces Criticism From Mentor Over Bradley Manning Treatment

Melissa Jeltsen | April 11, 2011, 4:50PM

The man who taught President Obama constitutional law is now accusing him of violating it in his own administration. Laurence Tribe, who was one of Obama's professors at Harvard and served as a Justice Department legal adviser until last December, has signed onto a letter with over 250 other legal scholars assailing the Obama administration for its treatment of Bradley Manning, the soldier accused of divulging classified documents to Wikileaks.

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War on Terror

Cheney: 'All Well And Good' That Obama's Using Our Tactics Now (VIDEO)

Rachel Slajda | January 18, 2011, 9:48AM

Former Vice President Dick Cheney (R)

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said in an interview that President Obama has finally learned to use Bush administration tactics in the War on Terror.

"I think he's found it necessary to be more sympathetic to the kinds of things we did," Cheney said on the Today Show, noting Obama's use of drones in Pakistan and elsewhere.

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Alberto Gonzales

Alberto Gonzales: My Book Will 'Set The Record Straight'

Ryan J. Reilly | November 20, 2010, 9:23AM

Fmr. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and President George W. Bush

George W. Bush isn't the only official in the prior administration with writing chops. Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is also hard at work on a book that he told TPM will "set the record straight" on his public service and offer a "very candid, very honest" assessment of the people he worked with and decisions he made in the White House and at the Justice Department.

Gonzales also told me that he's in the midst of reading Bush's book Decision Points -- and while he's found his former boss' memoir "insightful," he remembers some events a bit differently than the former president.

"I would just simply urge your readers [to note] that he and I could observe the same thing and come away with completely different conclusions or memories of what we observed," said Gonzales. "So the fact that I might observe something or remember something differently than what he writes about in the book is just, I think, the human condition of people remembering something or observing something differently."

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Jerrold Nadler

Nadler: 'Shameful' For Holder To Ignore Bush Waterboarding Admission (VIDEO)

Ryan J. Reilly | November 11, 2010, 9:39AM

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) said Wednesday that President George W. Bush's recent admission that he approved the waterboarding of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was "a smoking gun" and renewed his call for Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate torture.

But Nadler, the current chair of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, doesn't expect Holder to act.

"Judging by the record of this Attorney General, he will not pay attention, he will not respond," Nadler said in an interview on MSNBC on Wednesday. "And that is shameful."

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Justice Department

DOJ: No Charges In CIA Torture Tape Destruction

Ryan J. Reilly | November 9, 2010, 12:37PM

Attorney General Eric Holder

Federal prosecutors will not file criminal charges against anyone for destroying CIA videotapes that depicted the harsh interrogation of terrorism detainees during the Bush administration, the Justice Department confirmed on Tuesday.

A Justice Department spokesman said in a statement that after an "exhaustive investigation into the matter," a federal prosecutor "has concluded that he will not pursue criminal charges for the destruction of the interrogation videotapes."

The news was first reported by NPR's Carrie Johnson. NPR's report cites two sources close to the investigation who said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Durham has concluded there is not enough evidence to bring an indictment.

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'Decision Points'

Bush: Waterboarding Legal 'Because The Lawyer Said It Was' (VIDEO)

Rachel Slajda | November 9, 2010, 9:01AM

President George W. Bush in an interview with Matt Lauer

Former President George W. Bush was asked during an interview last night why he believes waterboarding is legal.

"Because the lawyer said it was," Bush said. "He said it did not fall within the Anti-Torture Act. I'm not a lawyer, but you gotta trust the judgment of people around you and I do."

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George Bush

Bush: I Gave The Order To Waterboard

Rachel Slajda | November 4, 2010, 9:38AM

George W. Bush

In his new memoir, former President George W. Bush says he personally gave the order to waterboard Khalid Sheik Mohammed in 2003.

According to the Washington Post, Bush writes that the CIA asked him if they could use the torture technique on Mohammed.

"Damn right," he said.

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CIA

Man Who Allegedly Threatened Detainee With Gun, Drill Back On Government Payroll

Ryan J. Reilly | September 8, 2010, 10:08AM

An ex-CIA official named Albert who ran a drill near the head of a terrorism suspect and threatened him with a gun during an interrogation is back on the government payroll as a contractor, and had even trained other CIA operatives, the Associated Press reports.

A review by the CIA inspector general said that the 60-year-old man named Albert, whose last name is being withheld at the request of the government, used unauthorized interrogation techniques against Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a USS Cole bombing plotter, at a secret CIA prison in Poland in late 2002 and early 2003.

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Torture

Bybee: CIA Used Some Techniques We Didn't Authorize

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

Jay Bybee

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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Torture

House Judiciary Commitee Releases Testimony From Torture Memo Author

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

Jay Bybee

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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Justice Department

Holder: CIA Torture Review Almost Done

Justin Elliott | June 18, 2010, 11:23AM

Attorney General Eric Holder

Attorney General said Thursday evening that the Justice Department prosecutor conducting a review of torture of detainees by the CIA, which was launched last August, is "close to the end of the time that he needs and will be making some recommendations to me," Main Justice reports.

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Immigration

Could Another Bybee Memo Help Preserve Arizona Immigration Law?

Zachary Roth | May 18, 2010, 10:00AM

Jay Bybee

A coalition of civil and immigrants rights groups has filed suit against Arizona's draconian immigration law. But efforts to challenge the law could be complicated by a memo written by one of the Bush Justice Department lawyers who also drafted some of the key opinions greenlighting torture.

Fourteen groups -- among them the ACLU of Arizona, the NAACP, and MALDEF -- filed the suit yesterday. They charge, among other things, that Arizona's law violates the federal Supremacy Clause by trying to bypass federal immigration law, and that it deprives minorities of their equal protection rights.

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John Yoo Emails

Watchdog Group Sues DOJ Over Missing Yoo Emails

Derek Hawkins | May 11, 2010, 2:35PM

John Yoo

The good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has filed a lawsuit against the Justice Department, contending that the group's requests for records related to missing emails in the torture memo investigation have gone unfulfilled.

In February, an internal report from the DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility noted that key emails from John Yoo, the former Bush Justice Department official and one of the authors of the memos, had been deleted and could not be recovered.

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CIA Tapes

Docs Show Goss May Have Agreed With Destruction Of Interrogation Tapes

Zachary Roth | April 16, 2010, 10:13AM

Former CIA Director Porter Goss

Porter Goss, then the head of the CIA, said at the time that he agreed, after the fact, with the agency's 2005 decision to destroy videotapes showing brutal interrogations -- and even joked wryly about the issue, new documents released yesterday by the CIA suggest.

Goss told Jose Rodriguez, then the head of the CIA's clandestine service and the official who ordered the destruction of the tapes, that he "agreed" with the move, according to a CIA email message, reports the New York Times. "PG laughed and said that actually, it would be he, PG, who would take the heat."

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Guantanamo

ACLU Denies Lawbreaking In Case Of Photographed CIA Officers

Justin Elliott | March 23, 2010, 11:00AM

Detainees at Guantanamo and U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald

In a case that has all the ingredients to explode into a national controversy, Attorney General Eric Holder has appointed star prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to investigate whether laws were broken after "paparazzi style" photographs of CIA officers were found in the cell of a Guantanamo inmate accused of financing the 9/11 attacks, Newsweek is reporting.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker, the top official for the ACLU project that provided assistance for the defense of the detainee in question -- and hired private investigators to take the photos of CIA officers thought to be involved in torture -- said that no laws had been broken.

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Marc Thiessen

New Yorker Fact-Checks Ex-Bush Speechwriter's Torture Claims

Justin Elliott | March 22, 2010, 8:31AM

Marc Thiessen

The public profile of Marc Thiessen, former chief speechwriter for Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush and current terrorism pundit, soared this year following the publication of his book Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama Is Inviting the Next Attack, which was blurbed by such conservative luminaries as Dick Cheney.

But now the New Yorker's Jane Mayer has published a scathing review of the book that challenges not only Thiessen's defense of "brutal interrogations" but also some of his basic factual claims.

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Liz Cheney

Did Liz Cheney's 'Department Of Jihad' Ad Backfire?

Zachary Roth | March 9, 2010, 1:41PM

Liz Cheney

Has Liz Cheney damaged her cause, and her reputation, by running an ad that questioned the loyalties of Justice Department lawyers who defended Guantanamo detainees? After a barrage of attacks on the ad, including some from prominent conservatives, it's worth asking the question.

Last week, Keep America Safe, the pro-torture advocacy group that Cheney co-chairs with Bill Kristol, ran a web ad that labeled seven DOJ lawyers who had previously represented detainees at Gitmo -- or simply filed amicus briefs in their cases -- "the Al Qaeda Seven."

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John Yoo

Yoo On Missing Emails: Leahy Is 'Chasing His Own Tail To Feed Left-Wing Conspiracy Theories'

Zachary Roth | March 1, 2010, 9:54AM

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and John Yoo

In his op-ed on the OPR report that we just told you about, John Yoo also appears to claim ignorance on the subject of those missing emails, and accuses the Senate Judiciary committee chair of "chasing his own tail to feed left-wing conspiracy theories." But Yoo's bravado raises as many questions as it answers.

As we've detailed, OPR wrote that its probe was "hampered" by the fact that it didn't have access to many of Yoo's emails, and was told that they were missing and unrecoverable. Numerous observers, including the National Archives and Sen. Pat Leahy (D-VT), the Judiciary committee chair, have expressed concern about that omission, and asked for more information on what happened to the emails.

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John Yoo

Yoo: OPR Probe Was A 'Farce'

Zachary Roth | March 1, 2010, 9:20AM

John Yoo

John Yoo is celebrating the Justice Department's finding that his Torture Memos did not violate standards of professional conduct, while calling investigators from DOJ's internal ethics unit "incompetent" and "obviously biased," and describing their probe as a "farce."

In a Philadelphia Inquirer column -- his first public comments since the release of the Office of Professional Responsibility report -- Yoo accuses the OPR investigators of "the politicization of national security." He describes their probe as a "witch-hunt" against Bush administration lawyers, and asserts that "OPR's political bias was legion." As evidence, Yoo cites the fact that former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy had argued that there were errors in the report.

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Jerry Nadler

Dem Rep Sends Yoo And Bybee Materials To Bar Associations For Potential Discipline

Justin Elliott | February 26, 2010, 4:55PM

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) has forwarded materials on the writing of the torture memos to state bars where John Yoo and Jay Bybee are licensed, calling on the bar association to consider possible disciplinary action, Nadler's office announced today.

The torture memo report produced by the Justice Department's ethics office concluded that Yoo, now a professor at Berkeley, and Bybee, now federal judge on the ninth circuit, committed professional misconduct in their drafting of the memos that authorized torture.

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John Yoo

Former DOJ-ers Doubtful On Missing Yoo Emails Story

Zachary Roth | February 26, 2010, 2:37PM

John Yoo

An internal Justice Department report on the Torture Memos noted that investigators were told that key emails from John Yoo had been deleted and could not be retrieved. But several former DOJ staffers expressed intense skepticism that the emails could in fact have been rendered unrecoverable -- at least without a deliberate effort to destroy them.

"It's hard for me to believe that those emails weren't kept -- unless somebody didn't want them kept," one career Justice Department lawyer, who left in 2005, told TPMmuckraker.

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John Yoo

National Archives To DOJ: About Those Missing Yoo Emails...

Zachary Roth | February 26, 2010, 12:24PM

John Yoo

The National Archives has written to the Justice Department, looking for answers on the question of John Yoo's missing emails -- and has given the department 30 days to respond.

In a letter to Jeannette Plante, the director of DOJ's Office of Records Management Policy, NARA director Paul Wester wrote:

In accordance with 36 CFR 1230.16(b), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is writing to the Department of Justice (DOJ) with a request for a response within 30 days of the date of this letter. If DOJ determines that an unauthorized destruction has occurred, then DOJ needs to submit a report to NARA as described in 36 CFR 1230.14.

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John Yoo

DOJ Urged To Probe Deleted Yoo Emails

Zachary Roth | February 26, 2010, 9:36AM

John Yoo

The Justice Department is being urged to probe claims that emails written by John Yoo could not be provided to internal investigators because they had been deleted and were unrecoverable.

As we reported last week, the Office of Professional Responsibility noted in its report on the Torture Memos:

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Eric Holder

Despite Harsh Criticism Of Torture Memos Report, Holder Has 'Utmost Confidence' In DOJ Ethics Office

Justin Elliott | February 24, 2010, 6:55PM

Attorney General Eric Holder and Associate Deputy AG David Margolis

Attorney General Eric Holder has "the utmost confidence" in the Justice Department's ethics office, despite the fact that it was recently overruled by a top Holder aide in its most high-profile case in years, a DOJ spokeswoman tells TPMmuckraker.

The 290-page torture memo report produced by the Office of Professional Responsibility, which is tasked with investigating misconduct by DOJ attorneys, found that Bush-era attorneys John Yoo and Jay Bybee had committed professional misconduct in writing the legal opinions that authorized torture.

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Jennifer Koester

The Torture Memo Author You've Never Heard Of

Zachary Roth | February 22, 2010, 11:28AM

Jennifer K. Hardy (formerly Jennifer Koester)

The Torture Memos will forever be known as the work of John Yoo, the former Office of Legal Counsel lawyer who took the lead in preparing them. But the internal Justice Department report on the memos, released Friday, reveals that a less experienced OLC attorney, working under Yoo, played a key role in the process -- in some cases writing initial drafts of the opinions before getting feedback from Yoo and others.

The name of that lawyer is redacted throughout the report. But in what appears to be an oversight in the redaction process, a footnote identifies her as Jennifer Koester. (The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to a request for comment about the reason for the redaction, and about the oversight.)

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Marc Thiessen

Thiessen Mourns Loss Of CIA Torture Program -- O'Donnell Having None Of It (VIDEO)

Justin Elliott | February 12, 2010, 9:51AM

On MSNBC this morning, former Rumsfeld and Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen went after President Obama for barring torture by the CIA in his first week in office, only to be rebuffed by an animated Lawrence O'Donnell on the Bush Administration's terrorism record.

"Barack Obama has eliminated the CIA's interrogation program, which is the single most successful and importance intelligence program we have in the war on terror and possibly in the history of the CIA," Thiessen said.

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John Yoo

Yoo: Je Ne Regrette Rien

Zachary Roth | February 10, 2010, 11:36AM

John Yoo

John Yoo has no regrets.

At a University of Chicago Law School event, the author of the torture memos was asked whether he would do anything differently if he had the assignment to do over again. According to a correspondent for the Above The Law blog:

Yoo said that he would draw the line in "exactly the same place," but that he would have been sure to "say nice things about everyone, I guess" if he had known that the torture memos would have been made public.

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Torture

CIA Man Who Claimed Waterboarding Worked Admits He Was Wrong

Rachel Slajda | January 27, 2010, 9:33AM

In his new book, the former CIA operative who made the bombshell -- and thoroughly debunked -- claim that a terrorism suspect was made to talk after one waterboarding session has admitted he was wrong.

John Kiriakou made waves, and supplied the pro-torture crowd with ammunition, when he told ABC News in December 2007 that al-Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah gave information that prevented dozens of terrorist attacks after being waterboarded once, for about 30 seconds.

The claim was full of holes, and ABC admitted so, quietly. For one, Zubadayah was actually waterboarded at least 83 times, according to a Justice Department memo. And Kiriakou, the head of the man's capture team, was not present for his interrogation and instead relied on reports.

Kiriakou admits he was wrong on the second-to-last page of his new book, titled "The Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA's War on Terror," according to Foreign Policy.

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Torture

ACLU Sues Justice Department On Torture Report

Zachary Roth | January 25, 2010, 9:08AM

John Yoo

The ACLU filed suit Friday in a bid to force the Justice Department to release its internal report on torture.

The long-awaited report from the department's Office of Professional Ethics considers whether DOJ lawyers like John Yoo broke ethics rules in writing the memos that approved torture.

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Mohammed al-Awfi

Ex-Gitmo Detainee Who Joined Al Qaeda Accuses U.S. Of Torture At Bagram

Justin Elliott | January 14, 2010, 10:16AM

Mohammed al-Awfi

In a new interview with the BBC, a former Gitmo detainee and former member of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula accused the United States of torturing him while at Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

The BBC interviewed Mohammed al-Awfi in the well-appointed apartment where he is being held by Saudi authorities. A Saudi national, al-Awfi's journey took him from Bagram to Guantanamo to the Saudi rehabilitation program to the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and finally back into the hands of Saudi authorities.

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John Yoo

Yoo: I've Never Met Bush

Zachary Roth | December 30, 2009, 12:40PM

John Yoo

George W. Bush, you say? Never heard of him.

That's the tack that Torture Memo author John Yoo seems to take in a new interview with Deborah Solomon of The New York Times Magazine.

The parley was to promote Yoo's new book, Crisis and Command, which the Times describes as "an eloquent, fact-laden history of audacious power grabs by American presidents going back to George Washington" -- a subject with which Yoo, who was a lawyer in the Bush Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, has some familiarity.

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CIA Tapes

New Docs Shed Light On White House Role In CIA Tape Destruction

Zachary Roth | December 2, 2009, 9:20AM

Bush White House officials met with top CIA honchos to discuss the agency's torture tapes that later were destroyed, according to new documents obtained recently by the ACLU.

An email from February 22, 2003 reveals that the meeting was called to discuss how the CIA should respond to a letter from Rep. Jane Harman advising the agency not to destroy the tapes. The White House's participation in discussions of the issue of the tapes was previously known. But the February 2003 email is the earliest known record of the White House's participation.

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Torture

Despite Holder's Pledge, Justice Department Torture Report Not Yet Out

Zachary Roth | December 1, 2009, 11:21AM

Attorney General Eric Holder

That long-awaited Justice Department report on torture may keep us waiting a little longer.

Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress in mid-November that the report would be out by the end of the month. So today, we asked the Justice Department where it was.

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Paul Bergrin

Feds: Former US Prosecutor Helped Rub Out Witnesses For Gangster Clients, Ran Drugs And Call-Girls

Zachary Roth | November 24, 2009, 12:14PM

Paul Bergrin

From federal prosecutor to accused violent gangster, pimp, and drug-dealer...That's the unusual career trajectory taken, say the Feds, by Paul Bergrin, who was indicted earlier this month in a 39-count racketeering indictment.

In a drama that could have been made for HBO, Bergrin -- a white-collar defense lawyer who once represented, pro bono, a solider accused of abusing Abu Ghraib detainees -- seems to have allowed his gangster clients to drag him into a world of violent crime. And he may have gone a lot further than Maury Levy ever did for Stringer Bell.

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Jay Bybee

Legal Defense Fund For Torture Memo Author

Zachary Roth | November 19, 2009, 2:35PM

Jay Bybee

One of the authors of the Bush Justice Department's notorious memos approving torture has set up a legal defense fund to help pay anticipated lawyers' fees in connection with the episode.

A website for the Bybee Legal Defense Fund "explains how contributions may be made to help Judge Jay S. Bybee pay costs and expenses he is incurring or may incur in connection with claims, investigations or proceedings relating to his service as Assistant Attorney General for the Office Legal Counsel in the U.S. Department of Justice or his service on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit."

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CIA

Schakowsky: GOPers Who Slammed Pelosi On CIA Lie Charge Should Apologize

Zachary Roth | October 28, 2009, 6:25PM

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

A top Democrat on the House Intelligence committee says Republicans who criticized Nancy Pelosi's claim that the CIA lied to her now owe the Speaker an apology.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who has been helping lead a committee probe into the CIA's process for briefing lawmakers, asserted yesterday that the agency had misled or outright lied to Congress five times since 2001. One of those cases, Schakowsky confirmed, concerned the 2002 torture briefing at which, Pelosi has claimed, she was lied to about waterboarding. Republicans, led by Minority Leader John Boehner, had savaged her for that charge.

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CIA

Intel Panel: CIA Misled Lawmakers On Torture, Other Issues

Zachary Roth | October 27, 2009, 5:14PM

Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)

The CIA misled Congress about its torture program and other issues, Democrats on the House Intelligence committee are asserting as the committee continues to probe the matter.

In a hearing of the House Intelligence committee this afternoon, Reps. Anna Eshoo and Jan Schakowsky, both Democrats, pointed to at least five instances going back to at least 2001 in which the C.I.A. withheld information from or lied to Congress.

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