From the ACLU:
RELEASED: The Bush Administration’s Secret Legal Memos
“On April 16, 2009, the Department of Justice released four secret memos used by the Bush administration to justify torture. ”
Here’s what you can read:
-A 18-page memo, dated August 1, 2002, from Jay Bybee, Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
-A 46-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
-A 20-page memo, dated May 10, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
-A 40-page memo, dated May 30, 2005, from Steven Bradbury, Acting Assistant Attorney General, OLC, to John A. Rizzo, General Counsel CIA.
Surely Obama, a Constitutional lawyer back in the day, will want to prosecute people involved in this right? Turns out, not so much:
From Salon:
Obama to release OLC torture memos; promises no prosecutions for CIA officials
“In a just-released statement, Barack Obama announced that — in response to an ACLU FOIA lawsuit — he has ordered four key Bush-era torture memos released, and the Associated Press, citing anonymous Obama sources, is reporting that “there is very little redaction, or blacking out, of detail in the memos.” Marc Ambinder reports that only the names of the CIA agents involved will be redacted; everything else will be disclosed. Simultaneously, and certainly with the intent to placate angry intelligence officials, Attorney General Eric Holder has “informed CIA officials [though not necessarily Bush officials] who used waterboarding and other harsh interrogation tactics on terror suspects that they will not be prosecuted,” and Obama announced the same thing in his statement.
(snip)
They explicitly recognized that the techniques they were authorizing were ones that we condemned other countries for using — including as “torture” — but nonetheless approved them, explicitly saying that the standards we impose on others do not bind us in any way
(snip)
Needless to say, I vehemently disagree with anyone — including Obama — who believes that prosecutions are unwarranted. These memos describe grotesque war crimes — legalized by classic banality-of-evil criminals and ordered by pure criminals — that must be prosecuted if the rule of law is to have any meaning. But the decision of whether to prosecute is not Obama’s to make; ultimately, it is Holder’s and/or a Special Prosecutor’s. More importantly, Obama can only do so much by himself. The Obama administration should, on its own, initiate criminal proceedings, but the citizenry also has responsibilities here. These acts were carried out by our Government, and if we are really as repulsed by them as we claim, then the burden is on us to demand that something be done.”
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The Salon article above is a good write up of the news and contains several updates. I want to add that the release of these memos is an excellent reason to become a member of the ACLU. You can do that here.
Posted by Vixen as News at 11:56 PM CDT