In Op-Ed Attacking IG Report, John Yoo Never Mentions That He Refused To Cooperate With The Investigation
In Op-Ed Attacking IG Report, John Yoo Never Mentions That He Refused To Cooperate With The Investigation
Last week, the Inspectors General of five separate intelligence agencies released a congressionally-mandated report on the Bush administration’s post-9/11 surveillance programs. The report focuses much of its criticism on John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Counsel, who wrote “legal memos undergirding the policy.”
In the Wall Street Journal today, Yoo responded to the report, claiming that the inspectors general are ignoring history and are simply “responding to the media-stoked politics of recrimination.” But in his attack on the report, Yoo neither responded to the specific criticisms of his legal reasoning nor mentioned that he refused to cooperate with the investigation.
Instead, Yoo persisted in pushing the flaws in his legal argument, such as the claim that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act did not take war into consideration:
It is absurd to think that a law like FISA should restrict live military operations against potential attacks on the United States. Congress enacted FISA during the waning days of the Cold War. … In FISA, President Bush and his advisers faced an obsolete law not written with live war with an international terrorist organization in mind. It was to meet such emergency circumstances that the Founders designed the presidency.
But the IG report stated:
Yoo wrote that “unless Congress made a clear statement in FISA that it sought to restrict presidential authority to conduct warrantless searches in the national security area — which it has not — then the statute must be construed to avoid such a reading.”
Yoo’s analysis of this point would later raise serious concerns for other officials in OLC and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General (ODAG) in late 2003 and early 2004. Among other concerns, Yoo did not address the section of FISA that creates an explicit exemption from the requirement to obtain a judicial warrant for 15 days following a congressional declaration of war. See 50 U.S.C. § 1811. Yoo’s successors in OLC criticized this omission in Yoo’s memorandum because they believed that by including this provision in FISA Congress arguably had demonstrated an explicit intention to restrict the government’s authority to conduct electronic surveillance during wartime.
In his op-ed, Yoo also argued that “the 1952 Supreme Court case of Youngstown Sheet & Tube v. Sawyer is the IG’s lodestar,” but that it doesn’t apply in the case of Bush’s warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo never mentioned, however, that he neglected to make that argument in his legal memos supporting the program:
Yoo’s legal memoranda omitted any discussion of Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), a leading case on the distribution of government powers between the Executive and Legislative Branches. Justice Jackson’s analysis of President Truman’s Article II Commander-in-Chief authority during wartime in the Youngstown case was an important factor in OLC’s subsequent reevaluation of Yoo’s opinions on the legality of the PSP.
Finally, though he mentioned that IG report covers “‘other’ intelligence measures” that he signed off on, Yoo never addressed the charge that his “discussion of some of the Other Intelligence Activities did not accurately describe the scope of these activities,” which led former Attorney General John Ashcroft to conclude that he had “been certifying the Authorizations prior to March 2004 based on a misimpression of those activities.”
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i can’t wait for Jonathon Turley to dissect this garbage on Olbermann tonight
July 16th, 2009 at 11:01 amGee, I wonder why John Yoo would seek the neocon-friendly confines of the WSJ editorial page in order to mount his self-defense?
Perhaps it’s because he knows he doesn’t have the personal charisma to be effective on Faux News.
‘Cause that’s the only outlet more predisposed to give neocons a tongue-bath.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:04 amWHY isn’t Yoo in JAIL ??????
July 16th, 2009 at 11:07 amYoo must join Cheney, Addington & Rumsfeld in some cage time.
Maybe they could jail these ‘4 horseman of the apocalypsync’ with Bernie ‘Madoff with the Money’.
I remember when the Wall St Journal was a real newspaper.
Now, it’s the Wall St Urinal, & every Neocan’t pissant willing gets a forum.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:09 amVocabulary word of the day
“AMORAL”
July 16th, 2009 at 11:13 amhaving no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong: a completely amoral person.
and so it goes
I think, decades from now, history will look back at this time period and will declare that this was the age when who/what you know trumped the rule of law
July 16th, 2009 at 11:13 amI find it difficult to reconcile Boalt’s prestige and their decision to allow a criminal like Yoo to address students on the subject of law.
PEACE
July 16th, 2009 at 11:14 amALTERNATE REALITY:
In FISA, President Bush and his advisers faced an obsolete law not written with live war with an international terrorist organization in mind.
THE REAL WORLD:
July 16th, 2009 at 11:28 amFISA was specifically written with live war with an international terrorist organization in mind.
Yoo ought to be in prison, but the next best thing is having him out there attempting to defend the Bush policy of ignoring the Constitution. The national debate on Bush’s crimes is only just beginning, eight years after the fact.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:28 amWhatever legal defense he uses for himself should be derided as “obsolete” too, I guess…
July 16th, 2009 at 11:33 amYoo is going to be disbarred and will never be able to practice law again. And all of this is happening because he told people what they wanted to hear instead of what they needed to hear. I would love to be at his disbarment hearing to sell popcorn.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:37 amOnly those who would willingly trade liberty for a false sense of security (as long as a Republican is in the White House) care about Yoo’s efforts to justify his actions. Refusing to talk to the IG then launching a collateral attack from the safe confines of the Murdoch press exemplifies the cowardice and moral and intellectual bankruptcy of Yoo and his fellow Bushbot traitors.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:38 am.
Dear Mr. Yoo,
You, of course, are absurd.
And of course the Constitution was made before the events of 9/11 and well before the Cold War, just like FISA. But hell, you’re proposing to trow that baby out with the bath water.
So, Mr. Yoo, the absurdity that Laws don’t apply when you find them bothersome only proves that they are a bother for you is because all good laws are bothersome when one seeks to violate them.
Isn’t this why you had to strain to bend the law?
.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:42 am. .. …. ….
i’d be much happier if he were writing his
op-eds from a cell in leavenworth.
:)
it would be nice if he developed
a supernatural interest in birds too.
:\
July 16th, 2009 at 11:45 amZimzone #4, instead of giving yoo,bush,cheney, rumsfeld and the rest of these criminals cage time,how about six weeks of basic training a kevlar vest and an m-16 rifle. Then airdrop them into afghanistan.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:49 amYoo’s a classical authoritarian. If his bosses wanted a legal cover for nuking Australia, he’d find an excuse.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:51 amYoo’s “interpretations” of the law are about on a par with Rove’s readings of the future of the Republican Party, heckuva-job-brownie’s knowlege of disaster response, EVERY hire at the Dept of Justice and any other of the Bush era sicophant’s expertise of the position that they held. Bush had a cadre of “yes men” in place willing to back up his failed policies whole heartedly with either knowing mis-interpretations of the law, total disregard for the law, or a combination of both in which “Presidential immunity” could be enacted to protect either illegal action from oversight. Every “expert” in the Bush Administration was merely another enabler for the dry-drunk boyking or his neocon traitorous counterpart Dick Cheney. They kept a circle of lawyers on hand who were more than willing to stroke their egos and erroneously confirm to them that whatever the President does is legal. THIS is their sole justification for their disregard of the law, a premise that belies our Constitution and the very base of our Democracy as being a Nation of equals under the eye of the law. The Bush Administration’s lawyers advised their bosses as though they ran a monarchy, untouchable and unanswerable to anybody, changing the law to suit the policy. Each of the legal advisors as well as Cheney and Bush need to be made to understand that their are consequences to their actions, consequences that should include but not be limited to prison time and fines. A message needs to be sent to DC that if you break the law, PARTICULARLY IN THE NAME OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE, you will pay for it. Unfortunately even President Obama and AG Holder seem all to happy to sweep this dark moment in US history under the rug where it will surely fester and re manifest itself in the hands of another Administration rather than shine a harsh light on it and use existing law to guarantee that this doesn’t happen again.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:52 amYoo ought to find himself a COMPETENT attorney to remind him that sometimes the best defense is to keep the mouth shut.
What we all really want to know, Mr. Yoo, is WHO told you to go to such lengths to manufacture EXCUSES DEFENDING ILLEGAL ACTS?
You were “just following orders” Mr. Yoo?
July 16th, 2009 at 11:58 amsscncturn64 says:
Zimzone #4, instead of giving yoo,bush,cheney, rumsfeld and the rest of these criminals cage time,how about six weeks of basic training a kevlar vest and an m-16 rifle. Then airdrop them into afghanistan.
Good idea, but forget the vests…remember, Rummy wanted to do ‘war on the cheap’, which didn’t include kevlar vests for many of our young soldiers.
July 16th, 2009 at 11:58 amI say drop ‘em in the same area they murdered Pat Tillman…
Speaking of Pat Tillman…he was vocally opposing the Iraq invasion. Do any of you believe Cheney’s death squad was involved?
How about other ‘mysterious’ deaths during that time period? Someone mentioned the Diebold guy. Others have brought up Sen. Wellstone.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:08 pmPerhaps we should initiate a ‘death list’ of suspected Cheney / Addingont / Yoo targets.
pags2 says:
Yoo is going to be disbarred and will never be able to practice law again.
I wonder if that will affect his ability to teach. It blows my mind that a school as prestigious as Cal Berkeley hired this nit wit to teach law. I asked my daughter, who is an attorney, if she would ever take a class from Yoo and her answer was “hell no, I want to learn the law not how to obstruct the law”.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:10 pmZimzone says:
“Speaking of Pat Tillman…he was vocally opposing the Iraq invasion. Do any of you believe Cheney’s death squad was involved?”
Benazir Bhutto
July 16th, 2009 at 12:12 pmZimzone, I was thinking with the vests it might prolong the inevitable. Give these bastards a little more time to experience what our service men and women went thru because of their lies. Its sickening knowing they sent these kids to war without the proper body armor.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:13 pmsscncturn64 says:
——————————————————————————–
Zimzone #4, instead of giving yoo,bush,cheney, rumsfeld and the rest of these criminals cage time,how about six weeks of basic training a kevlar vest and an m-16 rifle. Then airdrop them into afghanistan.
Airdrop them without parachutes.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pmZimzone, in the week before the assasination of Bhutto, Dick Cheney held several “advisary” phone calls with Pervez Musharraf.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:15 pmBilbo Hussein Baggins says:
pags2 says:
Yoo is going to be disbarred and will never be able to practice law again.
I wonder if that will affect his ability to teach. It blows my mind that a school as prestigious as Cal Berkeley hired this nit wit to teach law.
His ability to find a teaching job will be very limited since the respectable schools would not allow him to teach because of his involvement. Of course, there are some schools who don’t care but these schools are what we consider prestigious.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:17 pmA Patriotic Anopheles Acting says:
Zimzone, in the week before the assasination of Bhutto, Dick Cheney held several “advisary” phone calls with Pervez Musharraf.
I remember it well. He was also dancing with Israelis shortly before the Gaza invasion.
Who was he setting up when he was kissing the Saudi’s Kings ass?
July 16th, 2009 at 12:19 pmAs I am not a lawyer, I cannot speak to the legalities of this Yoo memo. The most striking part that anyone who read the DOJ report was that his work was never reviewed by anyone at the DOJ.
Anytime you give someone a project and move it to a policy without review, it should be immediately suspect. That is like someone issuing research on a topic and disallowing anyone to review it…totally absurd in any field.
What this sounds like to the lay person is that BUSH, et al…wanted an analysis that would support whatever they wanted to do…and in that search, they found John Yoo. He demonstrated a willingness to write an opinion that would justify anything….as long as no one would challenge his premise. It has been shown repeatedly that each of his memos were questioned and they only reason they became the operational guidelines is because the WH group demanded that they were the “authority”.
The recent editorializing on Morning Joke was that a DOJ investigation into this would “viewed badly by other countries” and that President Obama wants the American People to focus on the economy and healthcare. NOTE: The American People are more that adept at focusing on more than one issue at a time…we are not like John McCain! So this is more BS by those who don’t want to assure that this history does not repeat itself!
July 16th, 2009 at 12:43 pmSo the WH found their first lackey and after seeing the other memo’s he wrote, even I found them twisting facts.
A Patriotic Anopheles Acting says:
Zimzone says:
“Speaking of Pat Tillman…he was vocally opposing the Iraq invasion. Do any of you believe Cheney’s death squad was involved?”
Benazir Bhutto
David Kelley (London)
July 16th, 2009 at 12:48 pmIt’s hard for me to tell which one of all the Bush enablers is the slimiest, but Yoo definitely ranks in the top 20.
July 16th, 2009 at 12:56 pmThere are a few things I would like see happen to Yoo. The first is disbarment and being fired from his teaching position. The second is being prosecuted as a traitor since the opinions he provided (on cue) were used to overthrow the U.S. Constitution. The third is prosecution for war crimes (refer to United States v. Altstötter, the Nuremberg case brought against German Justice Department lawyers for the death camps but whose “memoranda” crafted the basis for implementation of a program called the “Night and Fog Decree,” which is not an unsimilar blend of what is suspected about the assassination group controlled by Cheney and reported by Seymour Hersh and now the recent CIA program revealed, as well as the black site secret prisons.)
July 16th, 2009 at 1:03 pmI would like to see Yoo disbarred but it is murky if he directly violated any criminal statutes. The problem is that Yoo may end up being the only person in the higher levels of government to be prosecuted. That would be unacceptable.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:22 pm28 Blood 1 says, “The most striking part that anyone who read the DOJ report was that his work was never reviewed by anyone at the DOJ.”
Having been a government employee, I can tell you that if you spit on the sidewalk, it has to pass through multiple levels of review.
That is just the way things are done (or perhaps SOP except when the WH wanted to hide something.)
July 16th, 2009 at 1:37 pmYoo’s name is at the top of the list of those to be investigated. He will be lucky if he can avoid a prison term — likely, he will lose his license at least.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:38 pmThe WSJ has always been a conservative, business-aligned, tight-a$$ed kind of newspaper and readers would know that from the start.
July 16th, 2009 at 1:43 pmSince the entrance of Murdoch, however, the decline in the newspaper is obvious — it has become a vessel for the extreme right wing attacks; a haven for criminals like Yoo, and another outlet for Fox News, while masquerading as legitimate journalism for the unsuspecting.
I hope this means he’s starting to sweat. He should never have another peaceful night – since the death and destruction he justified for his corporate masters doesn’t bother him, maybe concern for his own scalp will.
July 16th, 2009 at 4:59 pmYou better hope that the Obama Admistration doesn’t start investigating and prosceuting the Bush Administration. This would start a precedent. Every time a new president is elected, the previous president could be investigated. Sounds like we are becoming a banana republic.
July 16th, 2009 at 7:09 pm