Some more details following yesterday’s story about the National Security Agency looking for a new top lawyer. As it turns out, the super-secret surveillance agency has been without a top-level legal adviser for about nine months.
According to an “NSA spokesperson” who insisted on anonymity — you would think More…
A key behind-the-scenes architect of the Bush administration’s first version of the military commissions for terrorism suspects — which the Supreme Court found to unconstitutionally restrict the legal rights of detainees — will take a central Pentagon position dealing with detainee policy for the Obama administration.
William Lietzau, a Marine More…
The Spanish newspaper Público reported Saturday that Judge Baltasar Garzón is pressing ahead with a case against six senior Bush administration lawyers for facilitating the torture of detainees at Guantánamo Bay, according to Andy Worthington.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), the former U.S. Attorney who’s been pointing out for more than a year that waterboarding is and always has been torture, made the key point yesterday (and the same one I made here) that the criminal investigation of “enhanced interrogation More…
Buried in a profile of the controversial former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo in today’s Washington Post is the casual mention that the Justice Department is no longer representing Yoo to fight a lawsuit filed against him by Jose Padilla. Instead, GOP-connected lawyer and former Bush appellate court nominee More…
Greg Sargent has obtained the request Dick Cheney filed for “CIA documents he claims will prove that torture worked.” They’re for two CIA reports:
One is dated July 13th, 2004, and numbers eight pages.
The other is dated June 1st, 2005, and numbers 13 pages.
Something that’s gone a bit unremarked upon during last week’s overview of President Obama’s executive orders rolling back the torture policies of the Bush administration is the role of the White House counsel.
Remember that in former President George W. Bush’s first term, his crony and one-time White House More…
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