![]() Indeed, as I shall explain, it appears that in one respect the bin Laden memos are as bad as the infamous “torture memos” that lawyers in the Bush Administration wrote to justify what was euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation.” In both instances, the government lawyers seemed to conceive their role as finding legal excuses for policies that the president wanted to pursue, rather than giving balanced legal advice. The picture they paint is deeply troubling. The memos have not been made public, but it is possible to glean key features from the Times story and from public documents. As the ACLU wrote in a Januletter to the OLC, the release of the memos would allow the public to better understand the legal basis for the Bush administration's national security policies to better understand the role that the OLC played in developing, justifying, and advocating those policies and to participate more meaningfully in the ongoing debate about national security, civil liberties, and human rights.Last week, a New York Times special report revealed that prior to the 2011 Navy SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan, four high-ranking government lawyers conferred in secret to consider the legality of the mission and alternatives, producing memoranda that ultimately gave President Obama the green light. (.) The Obama administration should release the still-secret memos. We are hopeful that by releasing these memos, the Obama administration has begun to turn the page on an era in which the Justice Department became complicit in some of the most egregious crimes." Senior officials who authorized torture should not be shielded from investigation. It’s now the Justice Department’s responsibility to make sure that the architects of the torture program are held accountable. They authorized interrogators to use the most barbaric interrogation methods, including methods that the U.S. The torture memos should never have been written - the actions they justified violated domestic and international law and damaged America’s reputation in the world. ![]() It’s now imperative that the Justice Department investigate issues of criminal responsibility for the crimes that took place in the CIA’s secret prisons. (texts published here: )īut exposing the truth is only the first step. "In response to an ACLU lawsuit, the Justice Department just released four memos that provided the basis for the Bush administration's illegal torture program. ![]() Some of these memos have become public through leaks to the media and through the ACLU's litigation under the Freedom of Information Act. During the Bush administration, however, the OLC became a facilitator for illegal government conduct, issuing dozens of memos meant to permit gross violations of domestic and international law. The OLC, which is a component of the Justice Department, was created to provide objective legal advice to the Attorney General and to resolve legal disputes among federal agencies. For more than five years, the ACLU and other advocacy organizations have been seeking the release of Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) memos that supplied the basis for the Bush administration's interrogation, detention, rendition, and warrantless surveillance policies. ![]()
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