American attorney and former government official (born 1967)
This article is about the American legal scholar. For the Chinese Australian pediatrician, see
John Yu
.
John Choon Yoo
(
Korean
:
幽峻
; born July 10, 1967)
[2]
is a South Korean-born American legal scholar and former government official who serves as the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the
University of California, Berkeley
. Yoo became known for his legal opinions concerning
executive power
,
warrantless wiretapping
, and the
Geneva Conventions
while serving in the
George W. Bush administration
, during which he was the author of the controversial "
Torture Memos
" in the
War on Terror
.
As the deputy assistant attorney general in the
Office of Legal Counsel
(OLC) of the
Department of Justice
, Yoo wrote the Torture Memos to determine the legal limits for the
torture of detainees
following the
September 11 attacks
. The legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the OLC were rescinded by President
Barack Obama
in 2009.
[3]
[4]
[5]
Some individuals and groups called for the investigation and prosecution of Yoo under various anti-torture and anti-war crimes statutes.
[6]
[7]
[8]
[9]
A report by the Justice Department's
Office of Professional Responsibility
stated that Yoo's justification of
waterboarding
and other "
enhanced interrogation methods
" constituted "intentional professional misconduct" and recommended that Yoo be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings.
[10]
[11]
[12]
[13]
Senior Justice Department lawyer David Margolis overruled the report in 2010, saying that Yoo and
Assistant Attorney General
Jay Bybee
?who authorized the memos?had exercised "poor judgment" but that the department lacked a clear standard to conclude misconduct.
[14]
[12]
Early life and education
[
edit
]
Yoo was born on July 10, 1967, in
Seoul
, South Korea. His parents were anti-communist, having been refugees during the
Korean War
. He immigrated to the United States with his family when he was a young child and grew up in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
.
[15]
He attended high school at
Episcopal Academy
, graduating in 1985.
[16]
While a student there, Yoo studied Greek and Latin.
[17]
Yoo matriculated at
Harvard University
where he majored in American history and was a member of
The Harvard Crimson
.
[18]
He graduated in 1989 with a
Bachelor of Arts
,
summa cum laude
, with membership in
Phi Beta Kappa
. He then attended
Yale Law School
, where he was a member of the
Yale Law Journal
, graduating with a
J.D.
in 1992.
[19]
Career
[
edit
]
Early legal service
[
edit
]
After law school, Yoo was a
law clerk
for Judge
Laurence H. Silberman
of the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit
from 1992 to 1993 and for Justice
Clarence Thomas
of the
U.S. Supreme Court
from 1994 to 1995. He served as general counsel of the
Senate Judiciary Committee
from 1995 to 1996.
[20]
Academic career
[
edit
]
Yoo has been a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley, School of Law
since 1993, where he is the Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law. He has written multiple books on presidential power and the
war on terrorism
, and many articles in scholarly journals and newspapers.
[21]
[22]
He has held the Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Law at the
University of Trento
and has been a visiting law professor at the
Free University of Amsterdam
, the
University of Chicago
, and
Chapman University School of Law
. Since 2003, Yoo has also been a visiting scholar at the
American Enterprise Institute
, a conservative
think tank
in Washington. He wrote a monthly column, "Closing Arguments", for
The Philadelphia Inquirer
.
[23]
He has written academic books including
Crisis and Command
.
[23]
Bush administration (2001?2003)
[
edit
]
Yoo has been principally associated with his work from 2001 to 2003 in the Department of Justice's
Office of Legal Counsel
(OLC) under Attorney General
John Ashcroft
during the
George W. Bush Administration
.
[17]
[24]
[6]
Yoo's expansive view of presidential power led to a close relationship with Vice President
Dick Cheney
's office.
[24]
He played an important role in developing a legal justification for the Bush administration's policy in the
war on terrorism
, arguing that
prisoner of war
status under the
Geneva Conventions
does not apply to "
enemy combatants
" captured during the
war in Afghanistan
and held at the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp
.
[25]
Torture memos
[
edit
]
In what was originally known as the Bybee memo, Yoo asserted that executive authority during wartime allows
waterboarding
and other forms of torture, which were
euphemistically
referred to as "
enhanced interrogation techniques
"
[26]
were issued to the CIA. Yoo's memos narrowly defined torture and American
habeas corpus
obligations.
[27]
Yoo argued in his legal opinion that the president was not bound by the American
War Crimes Act of 1996
. Yoo's legal opinions were not shared by everyone within the Bush Administration. Secretary of State
Colin Powell
strongly opposed what he saw as an invalidation of the
Geneva Conventions
,
[28]
while U.S. Navy general counsel
Alberto Mora
campaigned internally against what he saw as the "catastrophically poor legal reasoning" and dangerous extremism of Yoo's opinions.
[29]
In December 2003, Yoo's memo on permissible interrogation techniques was repudiated as legally unsound by the OLC, then under the direction of
Jack Goldsmith
.
[29]
In June 2004, another of Yoo's memos on interrogation techniques was leaked to the press, after which it was repudiated by Goldsmith and the OLC.
[30]
On March 14, 2003, Yoo wrote a legal opinion memo in response to the General Counsel of the Department of Defense, in which he concluded that torture not allowed by federal law could be used by interrogators in overseas areas.
[31]
Yoo cited an 1873 Supreme Court ruling, on the
Modoc Indian Prisoners
, where the Supreme Court had ruled that Modoc Indians were not
lawful combatants
, so they could be shot, on sight, to justify his assertion that individuals apprehended in Afghanistan could be tortured.
[32]
[33]
Yoo's contribution to these memos has remained a source of controversy following his departure from the Justice Department;
[34]
he was called to testify before the
House Judiciary Committee
in 2008 in defense of his role.
[35]
The Justice Department's
Office of Professional Responsibility
(OPR) began investigating Yoo's work in 2004 and in July 2009 completed a report that was sharply critical of his legal justification for
waterboarding
and other interrogation techniques.
[36]
[37]
[38]
[39]
The OPR report cites testimony Yoo gave to Justice Department investigators in which he claims that the "president's war-making authority was so broad that he had the constitutional power to order a village to be 'massacred.'"
[12]
The OPR report concluded that Yoo had "committed 'intentional professional misconduct' when he advised the CIA it could proceed with waterboarding and other aggressive interrogation techniques against
Al Qaeda
suspects," although the recommendation that he be referred to his state bar association for possible disciplinary proceedings was overruled by David Margolis, another senior Justice department lawyer.
[12]
In 2009, President
Barack Obama
issued
Executive Order 13491
, rescinding the legal guidance on interrogation authored by Yoo and his successors in the Office of Legal Counsel.
[3]
[4]
[5]
In December 2005, Doug Cassel, a law professor from the
University of Notre Dame
, asked Yoo, "If the President deems that he's got to torture somebody, including by crushing the testicles of the person's child, there is no law that can stop him?", to which Yoo replied, "No treaty." Cassel followed up with "Also no law by Congress?that is what you wrote in the August 2002 memo," to which Yoo replied, "I think it depends on why the President thinks he needs to do that."
[40]
War crimes accusations
[
edit
]
Glenn Greenwald
has argued that Yoo could potentially be indicted for
crimes against the laws and customs of war
, the crime of torture, and/or
crimes against humanity
.
[9]
Criminal proceedings to this end have begun in Spain: in a move that could have led to an extradition request, Judge
Baltasar Garzon
in March 2009 referred a case against Yoo to the chief prosecutor.
[41]
[42]
The Spanish Attorney General recommended against pursuing the case.
On November 14, 2006, invoking the principle of
command responsibility
, the German attorney
Wolfgang Kaleck
filed a complaint with the
Attorney General of Germany
(
Generalbundesanwalt
) against Yoo, along with 13 others, for his alleged complicity in torture and other crimes against humanity at
Abu Ghraib
in Iraq and
Guantanamo Bay
. Kaleck acted on behalf of 11 alleged victims of torture and other human rights abuses, as well as about 30 human rights activists and organizations. The co-plaintiffs to the war crimes prosecution included
Adolfo Perez Esquivel
,
Martin Almada
,
Theo van Boven
,
Sister Dianna Ortiz
, and
Veterans for Peace
.
[43]
Responding to the so-called "torture memoranda,"
Scott Horton
noted
the possibility that the authors of these memoranda counseled the use of lethal and unlawful techniques, and therefore face criminal culpability themselves. That, after all, is the teaching of
United States v. Altstotter
, the Nuremberg case brought against German Justice Department lawyers whose memoranda crafted the basis for implementation of the infamous
'Night and Fog Decree'
.
[44]
Legal scholars speculated shortly thereafter that the case has little chance of successfully making it through the German court system.
[45]
Jordan Paust of the
University of Houston Law Center
concurred with supporters of prosecution and in early 2008 criticized the US Attorney General
Michael Mukasey
's refusal to investigate and/or prosecute anyone who relied on these legal opinions:
[I]t is legally and morally impossible for any member of the executive branch to be acting lawfully or within the scope of his or her authority while following OLC opinions that are manifestly inconsistent with or violative of the law. General Mukasey,
just following orders
is no defense!
[46]
In 2009, the Spanish Judge
Baltasar Garzon Real
launched an investigation of Yoo and five others (known as
the Bush Six
) for war crimes.
[47]
On April 13, 2013, the
Russian Federation
banned Yoo and several others from entering the country because of alleged
human rights violations
. The list was a direct response to the so-called
Magnitsky
list revealed by the United States the day before.
[48]
Russia stated that Yoo was among those responsible for "the legalization of torture" and "unlimited detention".
[49]
[50]
After the December 2014 release of the executive summary of the
Senate Intelligence Committee report on CIA torture
,
Erwin Chemerinsky
, then the dean of the
University of California, Irvine School of Law
, called for the prosecution of Yoo for his role in authoring the
Torture Memos
as "conspiracy to violate a federal statute".
[8]
On May 12, 2012, the
Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission
found Yoo, along with former President Bush, former Vice President Cheney, and several other senior members of the Bush administration, guilty of war crimes in absentia. The trial heard "harrowing witness accounts from victims of torture who suffered at the hands of US soldiers and contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan".
[51]
Warrantless wiretapping
[
edit
]
Yoo provided a legal opinion backing the Bush Administration's
warrantless wiretapping program
.
[24]
[6]
[52]
[28]
Yoo authored the
October 23, 2001 memo
asserting that the President had sufficient power to allow the NSA to monitor the communications of US citizens on US soil without a warrant (known as the
warrantless wiretap program
) because the Fourth Amendment does not apply. As another memo says in a footnote, "Our office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."
[53]
[54]
[55]
[56]
[57]
That interpretation is used to assert that the normal mandatory requirement of a warrant, under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
, could be ignored.
[54]
[56]
In a 2006 book and a 2007 law review article, Yoo defended President Bush's terrorist surveillance program, arguing that "the TSP represents a valid exercise of the President's Commander-in-Chief authority to gather intelligence during wartime".
[58]
He claimed that critics of the program misunderstand the separation of powers between the President and Congress in wartime because of a failure to understand the differences between war and crime, and a difficulty in understanding the new challenges presented by a networked, dynamic enemy such as
Al Qaeda
. "Because the United States is at war with Al Qaeda, the President possesses the constitutional authority as Commander-in-Chief to engage in warrantless surveillance of enemy activity."
[58]
In a
Wall Street Journal
opinion piece in July 2009, Yoo wrote it was "absurd to think that a law like
FISA
should restrict live military operations against potential attacks on the United States."
[59]
National Board for Education Sciences (2020?)
[
edit
]
In December 2020, President Donald Trump appointed Yoo to a four-year term on the
National Board for Education Sciences
, which advises the
Department of Education
on scientific research and investments.
[60]
[61]
Unitary executive theory
[
edit
]
Yoo suggested that since the primary task of the President during
a time of war
is protecting U.S. citizens, the President has inherent authority to subordinate independent government agencies, and plenary power to use force abroad.
[62]
[63]
[16]
Yoo contends that the Congressional check on Presidential war-making power comes from its
power of the purse
. He says that the President, and not the Congress or courts, has sole authority to interpret international treaties such as the
Geneva Conventions
, "because treaty interpretation is a key feature of the conduct of foreign affairs".
[64]
His positions on executive power are controversial because the theory can be interpreted as holding that the President's war powers afford him executive privileges which exceed the bounds which other scholars associate with the President's war powers.
[64]
[65]
[66]
[67]
His positions on the unitary executive are controversial as well because they are seen as an excuse to advance a conservative deregulatory agenda; the unitary executive theory says that every president is able to roll back any regulation passed by previous presidents, and it came to prominence in the Reagan administration as a "legal strategy that could enable the administration to gain control of the independent regulatory agencies that were seen as impeding the...agenda of deregulating business."
[68]
Following his tenure as an appointee of the
George W. Bush administration
, Yoo criticized certain views on the
separation of powers
doctrine as allegedly being historically inaccurate and problematic for the global war on terrorism. For instance, he wrote, "We are used to a peacetime system in which Congress enacts the laws, the president enforces them, and the courts interpret them. In wartime, the gravity shifts to the executive branch."
[69]
In 1998 Yoo criticized what he characterized as an imperial use of executive power by the Clinton administration.
[70]
In an opinion piece in the
WSJ
, he argued that the Clinton administration misused the privilege to protect the personal, rather than official, activities of the President, such as in the
Monica Lewinsky affair
.
[70]
At the time, Yoo also criticized President Clinton for contemplating defiance of a judicial order. He suggested that Presidents could act in conflict with the Supreme Court, but that such measures were justified only during emergencies.
[71]
In 2000 Yoo strongly criticized what he viewed as the
Clinton administration
's use of powers of what he termed the "
Imperial Presidency
". He said it undermined "democratic accountability and respect for the law".
[72]
Yet, Yoo has defended President Clinton, for his decision to use force abroad without congressional authorization. He wrote in
The Wall Street Journal
on March 15, 1999, that Clinton's decision to attack
Serbia
was constitutional. He then criticized Democrats in Congress for not suing Clinton as they had sued presidents Bush and Reagan to stop the use of force abroad.
[73]
Trump administration
[
edit
]
In 2019, on
Fox News
, Yoo made the comment "Some might call that espionage"
[74]
when discussing Lt. Col.
Alexander Vindman
, the top Ukraine expert on the
National Security Council
. Vindman was set to testify in front of Congress the next day about Trump requesting that the Ukrainian president start an investigation into his political rival
Joe Biden
. Yoo subsequently said "I really regret the choice of words" and that he had been referring to Ukrainian officials rather than Vindman.
[75]
In 2020, Yoo praised Trump as a "constitutional conservative".
[76]
He wrote a 2020 book about Trump titled
Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power.
[77]
[78]
During an interview on
C-SPAN
in August 2020, Yoo defended the use of enhanced
executive privilege
within the Trump administration.
[79]
He stated in a concurrent interview on
CBS
with
Ted Koppel
that his support for Trump may be guided by his possible reading of PEADs (
Presidential Emergency Action Documents
) as further supplementing his support for enhanced executive privilege during wartime and other national emergencies.
[80]
After Trump lost his bid for re-election in the
2020 United States presidential election
, Yoo stated in an opinion piece that the Supreme Court could decide the outcome of the election.
[81]
Weeks later, Yoo and
J. Michael Luttig
advised
Mike Pence
that the Vice President had no constitutional authority to interfere with
the certification of Electoral College votes on January 6, 2021
, as had been proposed to Pence by Trump attorney
John Eastman
.
[82]
[83]
Federal tort suit
[
edit
]
On January 4, 2008,
Jose Padilla
, a U.S. citizen convicted of terrorism, and his mother sued John Yoo in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Case Number 08-cv-00035-JSW), known as
Padilla v. Yoo
.
[84]
The complaint sought $1 in damages based on the alleged
torture
of Padilla, attributed to the authorization by Yoo's torture memoranda. Judge
Jeffrey White
allowed the suit to proceed, rejecting all but one of Yoo's immunity claims. Padilla's lawyer says White's ruling could have a broad effect for all detainees.
[85]
[86]
[87]
Soon after his appointment in October 2003 as chief of the Office of Legal Counsel, DOJ,
Jack Goldsmith
withdrew Yoo's torture memoranda. The Padilla complaint, on page 20, cited Goldsmith's 2007 book
The Terror Presidency
in support of its case. In it Goldsmith had claimed that the legal analysis in Yoo's torture memoranda was incorrect and that there was widespread opposition to the memoranda among some lawyers in the Justice Department. Padilla's attorney used this information in the lawsuit, saying that Yoo caused Padilla's damages by authorizing his alleged torture by his memoranda.
[88]
[89]
While the District Court ruled in favor of Padilla, the case was appealed by Yoo in June 2010. On May 2, 2012, the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals
held that Yoo had
qualified immunity
at the time of his memos (2001?2003), because certain issues had not then been settled legally by the U.S. Supreme Court. Based on the Supreme Court's decision in
Ashcroft v. al-Kidd
(2011), the Appeals Court unanimously ruled against Padilla, saying that, when he was held as a detainee, it had not been established that an
enemy combatant
had the "same constitutional protections" as a convicted prisoner or suspect, and that his treatment had not been legally established at the time as torture.
[90]
Retired
Colonel
Lawrence Wilkerson
,
chief of staff
to
General
Colin Powell in the
Persian Gulf War
and while Powell was Secretary of State in the
Bush Administration
, has said of Yoo and other administration figures responsible for these decisions:
Haynes, Feith, Yoo,
Bybee
, Gonzales and?at the apex?Addington, should never travel outside the US, except perhaps to Saudi Arabia and Israel. They broke the law; they violated their professional ethical code. In the future, some government may build the case necessary to prosecute them in a foreign court, or in an international court.
[91]
Office of Professional Responsibility report
[
edit
]
The Department of Justice's
Office of Professional Responsibility
concluded in a 261-page report in July 2009 that Yoo committed "intentional professional misconduct" when he "knowingly failed to provide a thorough, objective, and candid interpretation of the law", and it recommended a referral to the Pennsylvania Bar for disciplinary action.
[10]
[11]
But David Margolis, a career Justice attorney,
[92]
countermanded the recommended referral in a January 2010 memorandum.
[93]
While Margolis was careful to avoid "an endorsement of the legal work," which he said was "flawed" and "contained errors more than minor", concluding that Yoo had exercised "poor judgment", he did not find "professional misconduct" sufficient to authorize OPR "to refer its findings to the state bar disciplinary authorities".
[93]
Yoo contended that the OPR had shown "rank bias and sheer incompetence", intended to "smear my reputation", and that Margolis "completely rejected its recommendations".
[94]
Although stopping short of referral to the bar, Margolis had also written:
[Yoo's and Bybee's] memoranda represent an unfortunate chapter in the history of the Office of Legal Counsel. While I have declined to adopt OPR's findings of misconduct, I fear that John Yoo's loyalty to his own ideology and convictions clouded his view of his obligation to his client and led him to author opinions which reflected his own extreme, although sincerely held, views of executive power while speaking for an institutional client.
[93]
Margolis's decision not to refer Yoo to the bar for discipline was criticized by numerous commentators.
[95]
[96]
[97]
[98]
Publications
[
edit
]
Yoo's writings and areas of interest have fallen into three broad areas: American foreign relations; the Constitution's separation of powers and federalism; and international law. In foreign relations, Yoo has argued that the original understanding of the Constitution gives the President the authority to use armed force abroad without congressional authorization, subject to Congress's power of the purse; that treaties do not generally have domestic legal force without implementing legislation; and that courts are functionally ill-suited to intervene in foreign policy disputes between the President and Congress.
With the separation of powers, Yoo has argued that each branch of government has the authority to interpret the Constitution for itself.
[
citation needed
]
In international law, Yoo has written that the rules governing the use of force must be understood to allow nations to engage in armed intervention to end humanitarian disasters, rebuild
failed states
, and stop terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
[99]
[100]
[101]
[102]
[103]
Yoo's academic work includes his analysis of the history of
judicial review
in the
U.S. Constitution
.
[104]
Yoo's book,
The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11
, was praised in an Op-Ed in
The Washington Times
, written by Nicholas J. Xenakis, an assistant editor at
The National Interest
.
[105]
It was quoted by Senator
Joe Biden
during the Senate hearings for then-
U.S. Supreme Court
nominee
Samuel Alito
, as Biden "pressed Alito to denounce John Yoo's controversial defense of presidential initiative in taking the nation to war".
[106]
Yoo is known as an opponent of the
Chemical Weapons Convention
.
[107]
During 2012 and 2014, Yoo published two books with Oxford University Press.
Taming Globalization
was co-authored with Julian Ku in 2012, and
Point of Attack
was published under his single authorship in 2014. His 2017 book
Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War
is co-authored with by Jeremy Rabkin.
Yoo's latest book,
Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power
, was published in July 2020.
[108]
Bibliography
[
edit
]
- Yoo, John (2005).
The Powers of War and Peace: The Constitution and Foreign Affairs after 9/11
. University of Chicago Press.
ISBN
978-0-226-96033-3
.
- Yoo, John (2006).
War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror
. Atlantic Monthly Press.
ISBN
978-1-55584-763-0
.
- Yoo, John (2010).
Crisis and Command: A History of Executive Power from George Washington to George W. Bush
. Kaplan Publishing.
ISBN
978-1-60714-555-4
.
- Ku, Julian; Yoo, John (2012).
Taming Globalization: International Law, the U.S. Constitution, and the New World Order (co-author Julian Ku)
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-983742-7
. Archived from
the original
on January 31, 2021.
- Yoo, John (2014).
Point of Attack: Preventive War, International Law, and Global Welfare
. Oxford University Press.
ISBN
978-0-19-934776-6
. Archived from
the original
on January 31, 2021.
- Rabkin, Jeremy
; Yoo, John (2017).
Striking Power: How Cyber, Robots, and Space Weapons Change the Rules for War
. Encounter Books.
ISBN
978-1-59403-888-4
.
- Yoo, John (July 28, 2020).
Defender in Chief: Donald Trump's Fight for Presidential Power
.
St. Martin's Publishing Group
.
ISBN
978-1-250-26961-4
. Archived from
the original
on January 31, 2021.
He has also contributed chapters to other books, including:
In popular culture
[
edit
]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Yoo is married to Elsa Arnett, the daughter of journalist
Peter Arnett
.
[111]
See also
[
edit
]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"Past Bator Award Recipients"
.
fed-soc.org
. Archived from
the original
on May 19, 2010
. Retrieved
February 5,
2020
.
- ^
Contemporary Authors Online
, Thomson Gale, 2008.
- ^
a
b
White House Office of the Press Secretary
(January 22, 2009).
"Executive order: Interrogation"
.
USA Today
.
Archived
from the original on October 26, 2012
. Retrieved
March 28,
2013
.
- ^
a
b
Warrock, Joby;
DeYoung, Karen
(January 23, 2009).
"Obama Reverses Bush Policies On Detention and Interrogation"
.
The Washington Post
. Archived from
the original
on April 13, 2013
. Retrieved
March 28,
2013
.
- ^
a
b
Arsenault, Elizabeth Grimm (May 8, 2018).
"Analysis | With (or without) Gina Haspel at CIA, could Trump revive the torture program?"
.
Washington Post
.
ISSN
0190-8286
. Retrieved
November 8,
2022
.
- ^
a
b
c
Richardson, John (May 13, 2008).
"Is John Yoo a Monster?"
.
Esquire
.
Archived
from the original on May 2, 2009
. Retrieved
April 21,
2009
.
- ^
The New York Times Editorial Board (December 22, 2014).
"Opinion | Prosecute Torturers and Their Bosses"
.
The New York Times
.
Archived
from the original on March 21, 2020.
- ^
a
b
Wiener, Jon
(December 12, 2014).
"Prosecute John Yoo, Says Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky"
.
The Nation
.
Archived
from the original on December 19, 2014
. Retrieved
December 15,
2014
.
- ^
a
b
Greenwald, Glenn
(April 2, 2008).
"John Yoo's War Crimes"
. Archived from
the original
on May 7, 2008
. Retrieved
April 27,
2008
.
- ^
a
b
Justice Department OPR Report
.
U.S. House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary
(Report). July 29, 2009. Archived from
the original
on May 8, 2010.
- ^
a
b
Department of Justice Office of Professional Responsibility
(July 29, 2009).
Investigation into the Office of Legal Counsel's Memoranda Concerning Issues Relating to the Central Intelligence Agency's Use of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" on Suspected Terrorists
(PDF)
(Report).
United States Department of Justice
. Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on October 26, 2020
. Retrieved
May 29,
2017
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
Isikoff, Michael (February 19, 2010).
"Report: Bush Lawyer Said President Could Order Civilians to Be 'Massacred'
"
.
Newsweek
.
Archived
from the original on September 7, 2014.
- ^
Hunt, Kasie (February 19, 2010).
"Justice: No misconduct in Bush interrogation memos"
.
POLITICO
. Retrieved
November 9,
2022
.
- ^
Hunt, Kasie (February 19, 2010).
"Justice: No misconduct in Bush interrogation memos"
.
POLITICO
. Retrieved
November 8,
2022
.
- ^
Richardson, John H. (May 12, 2008).
"John Yoo: In His Own Words"
.
Esquire
. Retrieved
July 24,
2022
.
- ^
a
b
Slevin, Peter (December 26, 2005).
"Scholar Stands by Post-9/11 Writings On Torture, Domestic Eavesdropping"
.
The Washington Post
. Archived from
the original
on April 25, 2010.
- ^
a
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Consider former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo's 2003
'
torture memos
'
in support of torture in the War on Terror. As Chickasaw scholar Jodi Byrd notes, Yoo cited the 1873 Modoc Indian Prisoners Supreme Court opinion that justified the murder of Indians by U.S. soldiers.
'
All the laws and customs of civilized warfare,
'
the Court opined,
'
may not be applicable to an armed conflict to Indian tribes on our Western frontier.
'
'
Indians
'
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'
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'
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Last week, I (a former Bush administration official) was sued by Jose Padilla?a 37-year-old al Qaeda operative convicted last summer of setting up a terrorist cell in Miami. Padilla wants a declaration that his detention by the U.S. government was unconstitutional, $1 in damages, and all of the fees charged by his own attorneys.
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Arnett is the daughter of journalist
Peter Arnett
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