The World Today - Wednesday, 9 June , 2004 12:30:00
Reporter: Eleanor Hall
ELEANOR HALL: While the Pentagon spokesman is playing down the significance of this legal advice, a senior partner in a US legal firm says it's shocking and that the lawyers involved could face professional sanctions.
Scott Horton is a partner at the New York based international law firm, Patterson Bellnap Webb and Tyler and in his capacity as a member of the US Bar Association, he was paid what he describes as an unusual visit by military lawyers last month in relation to the memoranda. Scott Horton spoke to me a short time ago from his office in New York and began by describing that visit from military lawyers.
SCOTT HORTON: It was a group of six very senior uniformed officers – lawyer officers, the JAG corps. And they said they were very concerned about policy decisions that had been taken at the top of the Pentagon, that were creating an environment or an atmosphere of legal ambiguity surrounding detainees and the global war on terror and interrogation of those detainees.
And indeed they said this was a disaster waiting to happen. I guess, with the disclosure of these two memoranda in the American media today and yesterday, it's now quite evident to me that it was these memoranda that sought to justify torture and abuse of prisoners that led them to come in and seek us out.
http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2004/s1128053.htmin addition to the transcript of the entire interview there is also an audio link.