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TechnoratiBybee Defends Signing Interrogation Memos
WASHINGTON - Judge Jay S. Bybee broke his silence on Tuesday and defended the conclusions of legal memorandums he had signed as a Bush administration lawyer that allowed use of several coercive interrogation practices on suspected terrorists.
Judge Bybee, who issued the memorandums as the head of the Office of Legal Counsel and was later nominated to the federal appeals court by President George W. Bush, said in a statement in response to questions from The New York Times that he continued to believe that the memorandums represented "a good-faith analysis of the law" that properly defined the thin line between harsh treatment and torture.
As the head of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, Mr. Bybee signed two memorandums in August 2002 that discussed the legal limits on American interrogators seeking to apply pressure on captured operatives of Al Qaeda.
The two memorandums, which provided a basis for the use of techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation and isolation under certain restrictions, provoked a storm of controversy and a debate about whether Bush administration lawyers had provided legal cover for torture.
Until recently, Judge Bybee had been a largely unseen figure in the debate. In contrast, John Yoo, his deputy at the Office of Legal Counsel, who is generally believed to have been the memorandums' principal author, has defended them regularly. But Judge Bybee has come under renewed attention. Some people have called for his impeachment, he is being investigated by the Justice Department on his professional standards, and he has even become estranged from friends.
Judge Bybee said he was issuing a statement following reports that he had regrets over his role in the memorandums, including an article in The Washington Post on Saturday to that effect. Given the widespread criticism of the memorandums, he said he would have done some things differently, like clarifying and sharpening the analysis of some of his answers to help the public better understand the basis for his conclusions.
But he said: "The central question for lawyers was a narrow one; locate, under the statutory definition, the thin line between harsh treatment of a high-ranking Al Qaeda terrorist that is not torture and harsh treatment that is. I believed at the time, and continue to believe today, that the conclusions were legally correct."
Other administration lawyers agreed with those conclusions, Judge Bybee said.
"The legal question was and is difficult," he said. "And the stakes for the country were significant no matter what our opinion. In that context, we gave our best, honest advice, based on our good-faith analysis of the law."
Prof. Christopher L. Blakesley, a colleague on the law school faculty at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said that after the first memorandum was released, he was unable to restrain himself from expressing disagreement at a 2004 dinner at a restaurant that included their wives.
"I asked him how he could sign such an awful thing," Professor Blakesley recalled in an interview.
He said the judge replied that he could not talk about the matter. The dinner proceeded awkwardly, Professor Blakesley said, and they have not spoken since.
Professor Blakesley said that while he liked Judge Bybee, "he has some basic flaws including being very naïve about leaders."
"He has too much respect for authority and will avoid a confrontation no matter what," the professor continued.
In March 2004, before the first memorandum was disclosed, Judge Bybee spoke to about two dozen law clerks at the federal courthouse in Pasadena, Calif. It was part of a program in which judges discussed their earlier careers, and some of the clerks present said Judge Bybee talked about his time in the Bush Justice Department.
Two of the clerks recall his saying that much of the work was dull but that some concerned matters "so awful, so terrible, so radioactive" he doubted that the administration would ever disclose it. Tuan Samahon, a professor at the U.N.L.V. law school who was a clerk to Judge Bybee in his first year on the bench, said he was initially puzzled by those comments but understood a few weeks later when the first of the memorandums was made public.
Professor Samahon said he interpreted Judge Bybee's remark to "refer to the nature of the advice sought and not his office's work product."
Another clerk at the luncheon, Nina Rabin, who now runs an immigration clinic at the University of Arizona, said she found Judge Bybee's remarks troubling because he suggested that his role as a lawyer could be divorced from whatever policy was being pursued. "He definitely offered a view that was sanitized," she said, "and I thought that was disingenuous in that it removed any responsibility on the part of the lawyer for what was happening."
In a reunion of law clerks last May at a Las Vegas restaurant, first reported by The Recorder, a California legal newspaper, Judge Bybee also spoke about his work at the Office of Legal Counsel, first saying he was proud of the work he had done as a judge and the help given him by his clerks. He then said, according to several witnesses, "I wish I could say that of the prior job I had."
Judge Bybee, whose chambers are in Las Vegas, is generally well-regarded by his colleagues on the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which spans several Western states.
Judge Betty Fletcher, a member of the court for 30 years, said in a statement: "He is a moderate conservative, very bright and always attentive to the record and the applicable law. I have not talked to other judges about his memo on torture, but to me it seems completely out of character and inexplicable that he would have signed such a document."
31 Comments so far
Show All"estebandido April 29th, 2009 9:33 pm
I've been thinking through the possible messages which would best convey the stinking mess this country is finally awakening to regarding the torture scandals....i stand out in the street weekly since '03 protesting the insanity of attempting to exchange blood for oil.
I settled for UNPUNISHED TORTURERS MEANS U.S. IS A ROGUE NATION."
I HOPE it did not take this torture news stuff to lead you to realise that the U.S.A., because of its government, the federal one anyway, is a [rogue] country. I would not particularly refer to it as a nation, not with the long historical and cotinuing genocides against the indigenous American Indians and all of the extreme supreme international crimes committed by not the real nation of the USA, the indigenous American Indians, but by the descendants of the historical Euroepan invaders, genociders, pillagers, and so on, whose roots are back in Europe and who don't [respect] any indigenous peoples of any of all of the Americas, the great Turtle Island. I recognise the term national in terms of geographic scope, but don't think of Americans themselves as constituting a [nation].
People should have realised long ago that the U.S. government has long been rogue as hell and hasn't improved for betterment, the truly good kind, rather at all.
As for going in the streets to scream "no blood for oil", I think you can do better things than this. After all, either everyone already knows the GWoT wars and more is all about oil, geopolitics, economics, etcetera, or those people who don't evidently don't care to realise this in any good sense. Some realise it for profit, but that's clearly not in a good sense of realisation.
estebandido:
"How long will it take till we manage to REALLY begin to deal with the depths of what the torture admissions mean about our future and the future of the planet?"
WHAT the HELL do the "troture admissions mean" that's so important in terms of historical perspective? After all, the GWoT wars themselves are [the] supreme international crimes and anyone of sound mind knows that none of these wars was and none has become justifiable, knowing that they were criminally launched and maintained or continued. We of course won't get the U.S. White House administration(s), Congress and the Senate to admit this, but we don't need them to do so in order to [know] for ourselves that these wars are all wars of aggression and, therefore, supreme international crimes.
And that's what most of U.S. history consists of, when considering the U.S. and wars.
The "torture admissions" are sick jokes, diabolically sick, heinous, ..., and are clearly illustrative of hellbent fiends in high political positions of the U.S. government; but they're actually not particularly surprising when coming from the hellishly and extremely criminal superpower government of the USA.
Most sane people in this world, the sufficiently informed ones too, already knew the U.S. was hellishly rogue, so the "torture admissions" should not be particularly surprising. They may be shocking, they may anger us, but we should not treat these as more important than wars of aggression (and most of U.S. history)!
estebandido:
"Our ex-vice prez goes around bragging about his role in it, and why it was necessary. Judge Bybee on the 9th Circuit! Either we deal with this as a nation or we will be permanently branded and disgraced as a nation. Why is this difficult to understand?"
Bybee is an idiot and the "news" media's been making a real distraction of him, John Yoo, and the other sick fiends who did as directed by the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, ... administration.
The latter is what people should be fully focused on, instead of distracting everyone with Bybee, Yoo, etcetera.
Cheney admitted ... and explained why, in his opinion (one in which he knows to be lying, I'll add, for my opinion), the torture was necessary. And it's good that he does this, because no jury would be needed to convict the s.o.b. to imprisonment for the rest of his insane, psychopathic, and sick fiend life!
After all, Bush (maybe him anyway), Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, surely Rice, and surely also others of the White House administration team [knew] damn well that with the then existing international laws and conventions, and U.S. law(s), there was no way that anything Bybee, Yoo, etcetera wrote or said that could hold up in any real court of law for even a matter of seconds; what they wrote and said would be [immediately] punishable according to established laws and conventions. Nothing that the Bush, etcetera, administration could try to do could alter this fact!
I'll repeat a link I posted yesterday and again recommend reading the author's earlier related article, for which there's a link in the following piece.
"CIA Torture Began In Afghanistan Eight Months before Justice Department Approval",
by Andy Worthington, fff.org, Future of Freedom Foundation, Apr 27 2009
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m53769
There are also other good articles at Urukent from over the past week or so on the topic of Bybee, Yoo, etcetera being very secondary, that it's the Bush, ... administration that needs to be prosecuted and that we have so much proof against them that there would be absolutely no need for a jury trial or trial by jury. They're immediately convictable; only the should not escape prosecutions for the wars of aggression, either, I'll repeat!
I've been thinking through the possible messages which would best convey the stinking mess this country is finally awakening to regarding the torture scandals....i stand out in the street weekly since '03 protesting the insanity of attempting to exchange blood for oil.
I settled for UNPUNISHED TORTURERS MEANS U.S. IS A ROGUE NATION.
How long will it take till we manage to REALLY begin to deal with the depths of what the torture admissions mean about our future and the future of the planet? Our ex-vice prez goes around bragging about his role in it, and why it was necessary. Judge Bybee on the 9th Circuit! Either we deal with this as a nation or we will be permanently branded and disgraced as a nation. Why is this difficult to understand?
Folks, we can't have it two ways: both open enough to allow the truth to come out, and closed enough to allow the perpetrators to get off scot-free. Looks like crunch time for the republic. So what will it be, Amerika?
And remember as the MSM says rendering a British citizen to Morrocco to have his penis sliced is agressive interrogation. Where's the crime? We were frightened a son of Bush's business partner might hurt us.
If I do something in the past and am scared, there is no crime.
Empty the prisons !!!!
Just a short reminder: We HUNG Japanese officers for water boarding us after WWII!!!!!!! WE prosecuted our own soldiers for using and teaching water boarding during the Viet Nam War (another war with enemies who didn't wear uniforms and who sent children and women as suicide bombers, etc)!!!!!!!!!! What has changed that suddenly made it OK TO DO? THE ANSWER IS NOTHING!!!!!!!!!!
Right, woodhousemike50. Absolutely nothing changed.
All you had to do is staff the upper decision making echelons of the Justice Department, CIA, White House, and Pentagon with ideological stiffs who know nothing about history or international law, and who could care less. That's how the Bushies pulled this stunt off. The fish rotted at its head.
Bill from Saginaw
According to the NY Times, Judge Bybee told his law clerks assembled for reunion that as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel most of his legal reasearch work was dull, but some of it was "so awful, so terrible, so radioactive" that he doubted the Bush administration would ever disclose it. Just ponder for a minute the significance of that public admission.
Bybee knew full well that waterboarding, strappado, forced nudity, diet and sleep manipulation, sensory deprivation, and infliction of physical pain just short of causing death or loss of use of a bodily organ upon a helpless, hooded prisoner who was about to be interrogated was awful and terrible. Bybee knew, too, that the cluster of torture tactics being imposed upon GWOT detainees was "radioactive", an intriguing choice of adjective. I take it to mean Judge Bybee intuitively sensed that all Americans of normal moral sensibility would be repulsed and revolted by the thought of getting anywhere close to personal involvement in such a monstrous, debased, de-humanizing process.
Yet Jay S. Bybee chose to lend his professional skills to the assigned task of concocting a legal rationale that would make torture legal by rebranding it. He then signed off, and was generously rewarded with lifetime tenure as a federal Appeals Court Judge for services loyally rendered. Why? Why would a moderate conservative, very bright, and always attentive legal professional knowingly facilitate that which he knew to be awful and terrible to the point of becoming radioactive?
Because he thought his role in enabling torture would stay forever secret.
That's why.
The top intellectual architects of the Nazi Holocaust, and the lowest drones laboring at their assigned ghoulish tasks around the crematorium ovens did what they did courtesy of a shared common belief that the end justified the means. The Nuremburg defendants, Eichmann, and their underlings and ilk believed they would never get caught or exposed - because their side was going to win an epic wartime struggle and then assume control over the writing of history. Even genocide could be swept silently under the rug.
At this particular moment, Jay S. Bybee is uniquely positioned to make an enormous, immediate contribution to restoring public faith in the rule of law. Judge Bybee says he is proud of his work as a judge. He says he is not similarly proud of his prior role in the Justice Department involvement with the torture memos.
If that is so, with grace and deep regret Judge Jay S. Bybee should resign from the federal bench, and immediately offer his assistance, and his truthful testimony as a government witness, to Attorney General Eric Holder. That is what a man of honor in his position, with a true sense of professional responsibility, would do.
In my opinion, impeaching Judge Bybee is a complete red herring. Focusing well intentioned political energy in that direction is Dick Cheney's wet dream.
Also, don't count on any meaningful sort of bitch slap from the Justice Department's internal ethics' investigations. Sitting federal Judges have towering walls of immunity insulating them from ordinary outside constraints and pressure as part of their lifetime tenure. That's a big part of what keeps the judicial branch of government genuinely independent.
This nation does not want to make Judge Jay S. Bybee a scapegoat.
Far, far better that Judge Bybee should stand down, step forward, and offer to become an honest witness against those who prevailed upon a decent man to help facilitate those awful, terrible, and radioactive things that the Bush/Cheney regime conducted in our nation's name, and then worked feverishly to deny and keep hidden from public view forever.
Just because you were once a Good German doesn't mean you can't later become a good American.
Bill from Saginaw
Speaking strictly from THIS Native American's experience and observatoins----
He WAS being a good American when he complied with the orders he was given.
This Nation has never lived up to its 'creed', and a brief review of the history would lead oone to conclude that they never will.
The decent Americans that are 'out there' are so few in numbers as to qualify as endangered species----but then, they still may not have any protections when the "Good Americans" want to "go a hunting"..............
Good Luck America, you realy need it.
Bill good post I especially like last line. Good German --- American.
Judge Bybee was a bureaucrat who produced work to please those above him. That encapsulates such infamous figures as Adolf Eichmann & Roland Friesler. Eichmann met a deserved, though delayed fate. It would appear that the best that can be accomplished is to impeach Bybee and disbar him. Jail, though well deserved, would appear to be just a dream at this point.
Yes, U.S. jail time is fine for Bybee, Yoo, etc. Some of the same techniques that were used abroad are currently practiced right here in U.S. jails, such as sensory deprivation through isolation and temperature extremes.
Of course, Bybee, Yoo and the lot should have no objections as forced nudity, snarling dogs, stress positions, wall slamming, insects and waterboarding are added to the mix.
-TIA
This sadistic Bush Family sycohpant is trying to defend the indefensible.
This is just a short note to America and this "tribesman" is speaking only from his own observations, and does not claim to speak for anyone else.
But.
I just love this.
Mr. Bybee, Mr. Yoo and all of those who are directly connected and indirectly connected, i.e. "followers/order takers" to these many high crimes, every single one of them international in relevance and authority; are considered by their "peers" as to be the "elite". They all enjoyed higher than standard opportunities. Many graduated with "honors" in many cases from the "best" Universities and Institutions of "Highest" Education in the "highest accords". They were put into control of trillions of dollars, billions of lives, and the making of history, either by election or by appointment of those elected. And they are --all--- mediocre at best, as men, as professionals, as human beings; but they are "Good Americans". If the same crimes had been committed against them; they could be heard screaming and crying from far out into open space.
So America, if these international criminals represent your 'best'-----you all are in some serious trouble, and unless you make some serious changes very very soon; your days cannot be anything but numbered in the few.
Good Luck America, you really need it.
BYE, BYE, BYBEE!!!
Bybee is a torture lovin' rotten piece of crap.
The Nazis were convinced they made correct decisions at the time all in good faith and that they were "Honorable people".
Watch the old BW movie Judgement at Nuremberg. Judge Janning too is in denial about the consequences of his actions.He sounds very much like Bybee using the same excuses for his actions.
>>There was a fever over the land. A fever of disgrace, of indignity, of hunger. We had a democracy, yes, but it was torn by elements within. Above all, there was fear. Fear of today, fear of tomorrow, fear of our neighbors, and fear of ourselves. Only when you understand that - can you understand what Hitler meant to us. Because he said to us: 'Lift your heads! Be proud to be German! There are devils among us. Communists, Liberals, Jews, Gypsies! Once these devils will be destroyed, your misery will be destroyed.' It was the old, old story of the sacrifical lamb. What about those of us who knew better? We who knew the words were lies and worse than lies? Why did we sit silent? Why did we take part? Because we loved our country! What difference does it make if a few political extremists lose their rights? What difference does it make if a few racial minorities lose their rights? It is only a passing phase.
>>Judge Janning.
I also like the final exchange between Lancaster and Spencer Tracy, who played the American judge at the war crimes trial: (from memory)
Janning: (trying to elicit a remaining shred of respect from Tracy) I never imagined things would go so far. You must believe it. You must believe it!
Tracy: (not having it for one second) It went that far the first time you condemned a man you knew was innocent.
Bybee as the banality of evil… quoting Paul Krugman, ”someone who made a career as a movement conservative apparatchik. In his world, following orders and getting rewarded for his obedience was what it was all about…” Janning also as the banality of evil. Compare their moral failings to Helmuth von Moltke, the German jurist who opposed Hitler and the Nazis and the environment in which the law was constantly subverted to political expedience.
Read Scott Horton’s “When Lawyers Are War Criminals” marking the anniversary of the Nuremberg Tribunals:
“I come to the example of Moltke…namely that he very properly puts the emphasis not on the simple soldiers who invariably operate the weaponry of war, but on those who make the policies that drive their conduct. And in that process, his stern gaze falls first on the lawyers. In a proper society, the lawyers are the guardians of law, and in times of war, their role becomes solemn. Moltke challenges us to test the conduct of the lawyers. Do they show fidelity to the law? Do they recognize that the law of armed conflict, with its protections for disarmed combatants, for civilians and for detainees, reflects a particularly powerful type of law – as Jackson said “the basic building blocks of civilization”? Do they appreciate that in this area of law, above all others, the usual lawyerly tricks of dicing and splicing, of sophist subversion, cannot be tolerated? These are questions Moltke asked. They are questions that the US-led prosecution team in Nuremberg asked. They are questions that Americans should be asking today about the conduct of government lawyers who have seriously wounded, if not destroyed, the Geneva system.”
That Bybee today sits on the bench of one of America’s most powerful courts is a moral outrage.
Great Quote !!!!!!!!
The Burt Lancaster character in "Judgment at Nuremberg" is a good analogy for Bybee. But I suspect Bybee never even asked himself those types of questions. He was on the make and would do anything to advance his career. He was rather like the rest of the defendants Janning was on trial with.
The Nazi judge probably didn't reflect much on his crimes,...until he found himself in the dock, facing justice.
Some people have called for his impeachment, he is being investigated by the Justice Department on his professional standards, and he has even become estranged from friends.
Poor guy. Being the "Good German" and an ambulance chaser was more important to him. And back in the days when he was one of the shyster mouthpieces for the Torture Regime, the Republicans still believed they'd run things in this country forever. The best laid plans, Judge MoFo. You know what happens to them.
Professor Blakesley said that while he liked Judge Bybee, "he has some basic flaws including being very naïve about leaders."
That's not Bybee's "basic flaw". His basic flaw is that he's a criminal.
CYA time for Bybee.
Throw the man off the bench, disbar him, and incarcerate him! This is the last guy anyone needs in a courtroom!
"Professor Blakesley said that while he liked Judge Bybee, "he has some basic flaws including being very naïve about leaders."
"He has too much respect for authority and will avoid a confrontation no matter what," the professor continued...
"Judge Betty Fletcher, a member of the court for 30 years, said in a statement: "He is a moderate conservative, very bright and always attentive to the record and the applicable law. I have not talked to other judges about his memo on torture, but to me it seems completely out of character and inexplicable that he would have signed such a document."
*******************
This goes beyond progressive or neocon--this goes to the very character of someone who is suppossed to be a judge. The main reason that federal judges get life-time appointments is to gaurantee that once they are installed they won't be so vulnerable to manipulation by potential plaintiffs or defendants.
However, if this guy could be compelled to compromise his principles despite knowing better by somebody with enough "authority" (which his remarks as witnessed by the law clerks certainly suggest)then he is not suited for being a judge regardless of how knowledgable he might be about the law.
Poet
yes, bybee, your dishonorable honor, now i see the connection of "... the stakes for the country were significant..." and the rule of law. thanks for the clarification. keep opening that mouth to justify your criminal behavior.
oh, and sorry, judge betty, your opinion of this animal's character is meaningless.
"Bybee Defends Signing Interrogation Memos"
For a judge, he has terrible judgement.
"For a judge, he has terrible judgement."
As a judge of which side his bread is buttered on, I'm sure he's without peer.
Very Well Said!
Bring all the criminals to justice!! Start with Bush and Cheney!!
Scapegoat?
I might agree, except he is definitely among the guilty. If he falls alone, it would be scapegoating, but he needs to fall.
It is wrong to say this, though, out of context of a bigger plan for where we are going. Prosecuting this 'extremely bright' hack in black will not change the structure that bred him, and continues to breed more torturers and murderers, often with sharp suits on. It is imperialism that must be put on trial! A neutral jury of twelve would convict in moments, but that will never happen. If you want justice; if you want universal peace, sustainability, equality and affluence, the sole way forward is to build the Leninist party that will lead us to global proletarian socialism.