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Leahy calls for release of DOJ e-mails from 'torture memo' lawyers

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

[JURIST] US Senate Judiciary Committee committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said at a hearing Friday that he was prepared to subpoena the Department of Justice (DOJ) if it did not turn over missing e-mail records of former Bush administration lawyers John Yoo and Patrick Philbin dealing with the so-called "torture memos" justifying the use of harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects. Leahy urged that a "true accounting and a comprehensive review" be conducted to determine "how the United States government came to authorize torture." He said that a recently concluded DOJ investigation was limited to whether the lawyers violated "legal profession rules," and he was interested in the role that senior Bush administration officials had played in writing legal justifications for interrogation methods that critics have called torture. He observed:The role of the White House in the politicization of the OLC and in ensuring that these opinions delivered the legal immunity they were looking for has yet to be fully explored. My sense is that such a review would reveal the same untoward and corrupting influence we found when we investigated the purging of United States Attorneys for political purposes.Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, countered that it was important to put the memos in context. He said they were written in 2002 when the lawyers were acting under tremendous pressure to prevent a future terrorist attack on the United States. Last week, the DOJ overruled the findings of an internal ethics investigation by the DOJ Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), and said that Yoo and Jay Bybee, another former Bush administration lawyer, were not guilty of professional misconduct. Leahy previously called for a "truth commission" to investigate Bush administration officials for authorizing the interrogation techniques. The Obama administration has said that it opposes the formation of an independent investigatory commission.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on February 27, 2010 (boomark / email).