Bush’s Torture Lawyers Go Unpunished

They justified the CIA’s brutal interrogation methods, yet two of George W. Bush’s legal advisers need fear no punishment. The U.S. Justice Department has absolved them.

The United States government has exonerated two leading Bush administration lawyers who defended the use of torture during the interrogation of suspected terrorists. Authors of the so-called “torture memos” John Yoo and Jay Bybee had used “bad judgment,” the Washington Post said, quoting a Justice Department letter to Congressional representatives, but they will receive no punishment. An internal Justice Department ethics investigation had earlier recommended sanctions against the two.

Jay Bybee and John Yoo, both lawyers for the Justice Department, wrote a memo in August 2002 in which they condoned practices such as “waterboarding” prisoners. Waterboarding simulates drowning. They also endorsed sleep deprivation and the use of insects during the interrogation of suspected terrorists.

President Obama revealed the memos to the public in 2002 and asked Attorney General Eric Holder to determine whether the authors should face charges in connection with them. According to media reports, the suspected mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, was himself subjected to 183 separate waterboarding incidents. Another suspected terrorist, Abu Subaida, was waterboarded 83 separate times.

Assistant Deputy Attorney General David Margolis spoke of “serious deficiencies” in the Bybee-Yoo memos in his 69-page legal opinion. But just as everything that glitters is not gold, he found there was no evidence of “professional misconduct” in their actions. Margolis concluded that the authors had not deliberately given false legal advice and therefore should neither be disbarred nor punished.

John Yoo is now a member of the faculty of the University of California and Jay Bybee has accepted an appointment as a judge in the Nevada state appeals court system. It was already apparent shortly after the memos were made public that neither of them would face charges.