U.S. Lawyers Agreed on Legality of Harsh Interrogations

[BlueJessamine]

Source: New York Times

WASHINGTON — When Justice Department lawyers engaged in a sharp internal debate in 2005 over brutal interrogation techniques, even some who believed that using tough tactics was a serious mistake agreed on a basic point: the methods themselves were legal.

Previously undisclosed Justice Department e-mail messages, interviews and newly declassified documents show that some of the lawyers, including James B. Comey, the deputy attorney general who argued repeatedly that the United States would regret using harsh methods, went along with a 2005 legal opinion asserting that the techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency were lawful.

That opinion, giving the green light for the C.I.A. to use all 13 methods in interrogating terrorism suspects, including waterboarding and up to 180 hours of sleep deprivation, “was ready to go out and I concurred,” Mr. Comey wrote to a colleague in an April 27, 2005, e-mail message obtained by The New York Times.

While signing off on the techniques, Mr. Comey in his e-mail provided a firsthand account of how he tried unsuccessfully to discourage use of the practices. He made a last-ditch effort to derail the interrogation program, urging Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to argue at a White House meeting in May 2005 that it was “wrong.”


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/us/politics/07lawyers.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

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Snip

The e-mail messages are now in the hands of investigators at the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which is preparing a report expected to be released this summer on the Bush administration lawyers who approved waterboarding and other harsh methods.

Attorney General Eric on investigation and potential prosecution:

ESSENCE EXCLUSIVE JUNE 4, 2009:
http://www.essence.com/news_entertainment/news/articles/attorney_general_holder_interview?Page=1

Excerpt:

ESSENCE.COM: Regarding interrogation techniques used under the Bush administration, such as waterboarding, what is the likelihood that the Justice Department will investigate officials who authorized these techniques?

HOLDER: The President has said, and I agree, that we don't want to investigate people who operated with the approval of the Justice Department and who acted consistent with the authorization that was given to them by the Justice Department. But beyond that it's a question of where the facts, where the law, takes us. No one is above the law, and it really is a question of what happens as time passes and as we become more familiar with the circumstances under which some of these decisions were made.

ESSENCE.COM: So in the event that the facts lead to the conclusion that the law was violated, then action would be taken?

HOLDER: If we were to find that there were in fact violations of the law, and that you've had cases that were worthy of investigation and potential prosecution, we would follow the law.