AFJ in the News

Earlier stories featuring Alliance for Justice in the news.

The dark saga of the Department of Justice “torture memos” took a disturbing turn for the worse last week. For five years, we’ve waited for the report from the Department of Justice’s internal ethics investigation of the government lawyers, John Yoo, Jay Bybee, and Steven Bradbury, who authored the infamous memos providing legal cover for abusive interrogation techniques that violated the absolute ban on torture under U.S. and international law. Just a few weeks ago, Attorney General Eric Holder said the report would be released by the end of November.

Amidst growing calls for a full investigation of torture of detainees in American custody, John Yoo, author of the most infamous of the Bush Department of Justice “torture memos,” cancelled his scheduled appearance at the Federalist Society Convention, which starts today in Washington, DC. Yoo – who is currently the subject of a DOJ ethics inquiry, the defendant in a civil lawsuit brought by Jose Padilla seeking damages for torture, and a likely future target of any full criminal investigation of torture – was slated to speak on a panel discussing professional ethics among government national security lawyers. Yoo’s withdrawal shows that pressure is building to hold accountable those who provided legal cover for torture.

This week, I participated in a panel discussion about the Bush administration’s “torture memos” with a former Bush administration official, Daniel Levin. And it turns out that he and I are in agreement about the need to investigate and hold accountable any government lawyers who violated their duties to uphold the Constitution by authorizing torture — which means, to my great surprise, that Mr. Levin and I share a very similar outlook on this issue.