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The Justice Department is closing the books on
its probe of the Bush administration lawyers whose legal
memorandums authorized the CIA to waterboard terrorism suspects,
but the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he remains
offended by the memos and will hold hearings.


      An internal review said the department lawyers showed "poor
judgment" but did not commit professional misconduct in giving CIA
interrogators the go-ahead at the height of the U.S. war on
terrorism to use harsh interrogation tactics.


      President Barack Obama campaigned on abolishing waterboarding, a
simulated drowning technique, and other tactics that he called
torture. He left open the question of whether anyone would be
punished for authorizing such methods.


      Liberal Democrats had pressed for action against the authors of
the so-called torture memos, and they indicated they aren't
finished discussing the matter.


      Judiciary Committee Chairman Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said he
was "deeply offended" by the legal memos and planned to hold a
hearing Feb. 26.


      "I have serious concerns about the role each of these
government lawyers played in the development of these policies,"
Leahy said in a statement posted on his Web site.


      An initial review by the Justice Department's internal affairs
unit found that former government lawyers Jay Bybee and John Yoo
had committed professional misconduct, a conclusion that could have
cost them their law licenses. But, underscoring just how
controversial and legally thorny the memos have become, the Justice
Department's top career lawyer reviewed the matter and disagreed.


      "This decision should not be viewed as an endorsement of the
legal work that underlies those memoranda," Assistant Deputy
Attorney General David Margolis wrote in a memo released Friday.


      Margolis, the top nonpolitical Justice Department lawyer and a
veteran of several administrations, called the legal memos
"flawed" and said that, at every opportunity, they gave
interrogators as much leeway as possible under U.S. torture laws.
But he said Yoo and Bybee were not reckless and did not knowingly
give incorrect advice, the standard for misconduct.
      The Office of Professional Responsibility, led by another
veteran career prosecutor, Mary Patrice Brown, disagreed.


      "Situations of great stress, danger and fear do not relieve
department attorneys of their duty to provide thorough, objective
and candid legal advice, even if that advice is not what the client
wants to hear," her team wrote in a report that criticized the
memos for a "lack of thoroughness, objectivity and candor."


      The internal report also faulted then-Attorney General John
Ashcroft and then-Criminal Division chief Michael Chertoff for not
scrutinizing the memos and recognizing their flaws, but the report
did not cite them for misconduct.


      Yoo is now a law professor at the University of California,
Berkeley, and Bybee is a federal judge on the 9th U.S. Circuit
Court of Appeals based in San Francisco. The decision spares them
any immediate sanctions, though state bar associations could
independently take up the matter.


      The memos authorized CIA interrogators to use waterboarding,
keep detainees naked, hold them in painful standing positions and
keep them in the cold for long periods of time. Other techniques
included depriving them of solid food and slapping them. Sleep
deprivation, prolonged shackling and threats to a detainee's family
were also used.


      The memos have been embroiled in national security politics for
years. The memos laid out a broad interpretation of executive
power, one the previous administration also used to authorize
warrantless wiretapping and secret prisons. Democrats say the Bush
administration used shoddy lawyering to legitimize such policies.


      Republicans said the memos, authored by two well-respected
attorneys, gave the CIA the authority it needed to keep America
safe in the panic-filled months after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks. The memos were hurriedly put together in days, and
supporters of Yoo and Bybee note that investigators have had years
to dissect them.


      Many have criticized the Obama administration for trying to
politicize legal advice.


      "We can only hope that the department's decision will establish
once and for all that dedicated public officials may have honest
disagreements on difficult matters of legal judgment without
violating ethical standards," Bybee's lawyer, Maureen Mahoney,
said Friday.


      Yoo's lawyer, Miguel Estrada, was more pointed. During the
lengthy investigation, Estrada accused internal investigators of
trying to be "Junior Varsity CIA" that second-guessed
intelligence decisions. Friday, he said the two lawyers never
deserved to be investigated in the first place.


      Obama has said CIA interrogators who relied on the memos will
not face charges for their behavior. A separate criminal inquiry is
under way into whether a handful of CIA operatives crossed the
line, leading to the death of detainees.

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The Justice Department is closing the books on
its probe of the Bush administration lawyers whose legal memorandums authorized the CIA to waterboard terrorism suspects,
but the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he remains
offended by the memos and will hold hearings.

DOJ review finds no misconduct by 'torture memo' authors

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