Posts

The Legal Principles Document and OLC’s Leaky SCIF

/40 Comments/in /by

Sorry to get so deep in the weeds on the missing OLC documents, but I wanted to show why this matters, using the example of the Legal Principles (AKA the Bullet Points) documents. As I’ll show below, one of the most sensitive documents involved in the controversy between CIA and OLC on the Legal Principles is one of the documents over which there are discrepancies between the  Vaughn Indices and the actual document.

I explained the Legal Principles document in detail in this post, but here’s the short version. When CIA started the Inspector General investigation, it had a meeting with DOJ people including Michael Chertoff and then a phone conversation with John Yoo. Both times, DOJ told CIA that it (DOJ) would hold off on any criminal investigations or prosecutions until CIA’s IG first collected information and then presented that along with the legal guidelines CIA had been working under. DOJ basically told CIA, “You tell us if you broke the law.” So CIA got together with John Yoo (though he denies being involved) and Jennifer Koester, who were both apparently free-lancing with no official OLC involvement, and developed a document–alternately called the Legal Principles or the Bullet Points document. The document interpreted the law and previously OLC opinions as the CIA would like them to be to make sure as much of the torture as possible was “legal.”

When Koester and Yoo moved on in May 2003, CIA tried to dump the document as a finished fait accompli back onto OLC. Even though Patrick Philbin, picking up Yoo’s duties, immediately refused to recognize the document as OLC work product, CIA kept insisting it counted as an OLC document. They did so in a high level meeting at the White House in June and then ultimately made it into a slide for a meeting with the NSC Principals on July 29, 2003, at which the Principals bought off on the torture as it had been applied. Then, CIA submitted the document with a late draft of the IG Report in March 2004, which (Jack Goldsmith claims, though the CIA claims differently) was the first time Goldsmith saw the Legal Principles. A bit of a spat broke out which not only prevented CIA and OLC from submitting joint comments on the IG Report (and, presumably, the legality of the acts described therein) as they had intended to do, but also in Goldsmith writing grumpy follow-up letters to CIA on it. And all of this was right before Goldsmith withdrew the Bybee One memo.

As you can see, the Legal Principles document were not only a source of tension between CIA and OLC. But its lies at the core of interpretations of just how illegal the CIA program was.

Which is why I find it relevant that the various iterations of the Legal Principles document are some of the documents that seem to have been affected by OLC’s leaky SCIF.

Read more →

Boxes and Burials in the CIA’s Torture Plans

/86 Comments/in /by

In this post, I’m going to test a hypothesis that OLC may not have included “cramped confinement” in its torture plans until it removed “mock burial.” If I’m right, it means after having been told OLC would not approve mock burial, OLC and CIA instead just renamed what they were doing as “cramped confinement” so as to get it past those in DOJ who were opposed to allowing the US to use mock burial in its torture program.

This is a weedy post even by my standards. But the key points are:

  • Many of the discussions about which techniques OLC was approving appear to have taken place orally, not in written form
  • The one written document we know exists–a JPRA Physical Pressures document–was an attempt made during the key three days of the Bybee Memo process to pretend that JPRA sanctioned waterboarding (at least) as it either already had been used or would be used on Abu Zubaydah, rather than as the Navy used it in training
  • The section on small box confinement also seems to have been created in response to this process, meaning it is possible that JPRA adjusted both the name and the description of the technique to provide JPRA sanction for mock burial as it had been done on AZ

The OPR Report’s list of torture techniques is neither the original nor the final list of planned torture techniques

The OPR Report includes a list of torture techniques Mitchell and Jessen proposed to use with Abu Zubaydah that includes both cramped confinement and mock burial, which seems to suggest that the CIA tried to get both approved at once. But the OPR Report provides absolutely no explanation for the source or the date of its list (on PDF 41) of the torture techniques. It says simply:

The CIA psychologists eventually proposed the following twelve EITs to be used in the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah:

In addition to the use of the word “eventually” in this description, there’s further evidence this list is not the first incarnation of the torture techniques requested. That’s because this description of sleep deprivation…

Sleep deprivation: The subject is prevented from sleeping, not to exceed 11 days at a time;

Includes this footnote:

As initially proposed, sleep deprivation was to be induced by shackling the subject in a standing position, with his feet chained to a ring in the floor and his arms attached to a bar at head level, with very little room for movement.

Compare that with the description of sleep deprivation as it appears in the Bybee Two memo.

Sleep deprivation may be used. You have indicated that your purpose in using this technique is to reduce the individual’s ability to think on his feet and, through the discomfort associated with lack of sleep, to motivate him to cooperate. The effect of sleep deprivation will generally remit after one or two nights of uninterrupted sleep. You have informed us that your research has revealed that, in rare instances, some individuals who are already predisposed to psychological problems may experience abnormal reactions to sleep deprivation. Even in those cases, however, reactions abate after the individual is permitted to sleep. Moreover, personnel with medical training are available to and will intervene in the unlikely event of an abnormal reaction. You have orally informed us that you would not deprive Zubaydah of sleep for more than eleven days at a time and that you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours, from which no mental or physical harm resulted. [my emphasis]

The description in the OPR Report for this torture technique, at least, matches what appears in the Bybee Two memo.

Also note the admission (which I had never noticed before) that CIA had already subjected AZ to sleep deprivation but don’t worry, AZ was A-Okay as a result.

you have previously kept him awake for 72 hours

Though their admission to 72 hour sessions of sleep deprivation doesn’t accord with AZ’s memory of his first several weeks in the black site, which describe being kept awake for weeks at a time (perhaps 11 days?), using the shackling technique that OLC would go on to eliminate from their description of sleep deprivation:

I was transferred to a chair where I was kept, shackled by hands and feet for what I think was the next 2 to 3 weeks.

[snip]

I could not sleep at all for the first two to three weeks. If I started to fall asleep one of the guards would come and spray water on my face.

From all this we can make several educated assumptions about the list included in the OPR Report. First, it includes the torture techniques as ultimately incorporated in the torture memos; this is not the list that CIA first brought to OLC. Moreover, we know that the description of sleep deprivation, at least, was watered down to hide the most appalling aspects of the technique that, even though they weren’t described, had already taken place.

Oh, and they were probably lying about the one detail they admitted to, how long they had subjected AZ to sleep deprivation.

But we already knew that.

That said, we know the OPR Report’s list isn’t the final list, either. The OPR Report list still shows, in unredacted form, diapering as a technique. We have no idea when or why that we eliminated from the list. And we know the redacted 12th technique is mock burial, which was eliminated some time after July 24, 2002, though we don’t know when, specifically, that happened. Note that the description of that 12th technique–mock burial–continues onto PDF page 43, so the description of it may include more detail on how it was eliminated from the list.

In other words, at best, this is an interim list. The list may simply reflect the final form that each torture technique request had before it was either incorporated into the Bybee Two memo or eliminated from the list.

Read more →

Ibn Sheikh al-Libi’s and Abu Zubaydah’s Coffins

/43 Comments/in /by

At Mary’s instigation, I went back to look at Ibn Sheikh al-Libi’s description of how he was shoved into a coffin-like box in Egypt. (Thanks to burnt for the searchable copy.)

According to al-Libi, the foreign government service [redacted] “stated that the next topic was al-Qa’ida’s connections with Iraq. … This was a subject about which he said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story.” Al-Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then “placed him in a small box approximately 50cm x 50cm.” He claimed he was held in the box for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, alLibi claims that he was given a last opportunity to “tell the truth.” When al-Libi did not satisfy the interrogator, al-Libi claimed that “he was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back.” Al-Libi told CIA debriefers that he then “was punched for 15 minutes.”216

(U) Al-Libi told debriefers that “after the beating,” he was again asked about the connection with Iraq and this time he came up with a story that three al-Qa’ida members went to Iraq to learn about nuclear weapons. Al-Libi said that he used the names of real individuals associated with al-Qa’ida so that he could remember the details of his fabricated story and make it more believable to the foreign intelligence service. Al-Libi noted that “this pleased his [foreign] interrogators, who directed that al-Libi be taken back to a big room, vice the 50 square centimeter box and given food.”217

That mock burial–and al-Libi’s subsequent lies about Iraqi ties with al Qaeda–happened sometime before February 22, 2002, when a DIA cable challenged the report.

This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh [al-Libi] in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qa’ida’s CBRN efforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraqi’s involvement, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, and the location where the training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest. Saddam’s regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control

Al-Libi was, you’ll recall, the onsite manager of the Khalden training camp, a camp that trained a range of Muslims, a policy that  put it at odds with Osama bin Laden, who wanted training to be limited to al Qaeda operatives.

Just over a month after al-Libi claimed, having been shoved in a coffin for almost a day, there were ties between al Qaeda and Iraq, the US captured al-Libi’s associate, Abu Zubaydah, who handled logistics for Khalden. Rather than send Abu Zubaydah off to the Egyptians, as the US had done with al-Libi, they instead sent Abu Zubaydah to a CIA run black site in Thailand.

And there, less than three months after the Egyptians shoved Ibn Sheikh al-Libi in a coffin overnight, James Mitchell threatened to do the same with Abu Zubaydah. Ali Soufan objected and told Mitchell doing so was torture. Soufan left the black site and alerted DOJ of what Mitchell had intended to do.

And then, some time later (Abu Zubaydah says it was about 3 months after his surgery, so perhaps mid-July) they did shove Abu Zubaydah in that coffin-like box. Read more →

A Momentous Day to Lose Your Documentation

/76 Comments/in /by

As I explained in this post, at least ten documents that OPR should have had to conduct its investigation into the writing of the torture memos disappeared sometime over the course of the investigation (significantly, CIA had an opportunity to come and take all the documents away for a while just after OPR first got access to them).

In this post, I showed how that prevents us–at least using just the unclassified report–from confirming whether or not John Yoo ever read the document making the following points:

  • The techniques the US was considering using on detainees amounted to torture
  • Torture produces unreliable information
  • America’s use of torture would increase the chances that Americans, if captured, would be tortured themselves

But there’s one more reason losing a large document, sent on July 25, 2002 from CIA and OLC (it probably originally came from DOD), is a problem: Because that document was exchanged on one of the most momentous days of the entire development of the torture memos.

Here’s a quick review of the most significant dates in the development of the torture memos:

April 11, 2002: John Yoo and Jennifer Koester officially begin working on the torture memo, though Yoo had already done research for it

July 13, 2002: Michael Chertoff tells CIA, Yoo, and others that DOJ will not issue an “advance declination” (a Get Out of Jail Free card) covering the torture program

July 16, 2002: David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, and Tim Flanigan order Yoo to reverse course and include the Commander-in-Chief and defenses section in the Bybee One memo to make up for not offering an advance declination

July 24, 2002: Yoo gives John Rizzo oral approval to use six torture techniques (attention grasp, walling, facial hold, facial slap, cramped confinement, and wall standing) but says DOJ needs more data before approving waterboarding and other more controversial techniques, possibly including mock burial

“Some point thereafter”: Yoo tells Rizzo it will “take longer” to approve remaining torture methods if mock burial is included

July 25, 2002: CIA sends 46 to 60 pages of documents–possibly DOD documents–to OLC; those documents have since been lost

July 26, 2002: CIA sends 3 (or 4?) more DOD documents to OLC, including a list of torture techniques used in SERE; though the OPR Report doesn’t say it in the unclassified section, OLC verbally approves remaining torture techniques (except mock burial); CIA requests, for the first time, written approval for specific techniques

August 1: Bybee One and Two memos signed, as well as letter to Gonzales on CAT

There are three main plot lines, from what we can see, in the development of the Bybee Memos: first, the refusal of an advance declination and the replacement with it of other ways to allow torturers to Get Out of Jail Free. Then, the decision not to approve mock burial in an effort to get the memo quickly. And, finally, CIA’s last minute request to get the torture techniques approved in a written document.

Two of those three events happened sometime between July 24 and July 26. I’d suggest they might even be related. And 60 pages of documentation (or maybe 46, we don’t know)–documents that might explain how mock burial got dropped and/or a written list got added–have disappeared.

My gut feel is that the disappearing documents–assuming their disappearance from a SCIF was not just a remarkable accident–have more to do with the JPRA document than with the change in approach that day. But there’s the distinct possibility that those documents also would have explained more about the dropped mock burials and the written list of torture techniques.

Did DOJ “Lose” the Smoking Gun Torture Document?

/52 Comments/in /by

You know what I find surprisingly absent from the OPR Report?

Any discussion of how–just days after potentially receiving a document making clear that SERE techniques were torture and that torture was not effective–John Yoo still authorized the use of torture in US interrogations.

Here are the last two paragraphs of that document:

(U) Another important aspect of the debate over the use of torture is the consideration of its potential impact on the safety of U.S. personnel captured by current and future adversaries. The unintended consequence of a U.S. policy that provides for the torture of prisoners is that it could be used by our adversaries as justification for the torture of captured U.S. personnel. While this would have little impact on those regimes or organizations that already employ torture as a standard means of operating, it could serve as the critical impetus for those that are currently weighing the potential gains and risks associated with the torture of U.S. persons to accept torture as an acceptable option.

(U) CONCLUSION: The application of extreme physical and/or psychological duress (torture) has some serious operational deficits, most notably, the potential to result in unreliable information. This is not to say that the manipulation of the subject’s environment in an effort to dislocate their expectations and induce emotional responses is not effective. On the contrary, systematic manipulation ofthe subject’s environment is likely to result in a subject that can be exploited for intelligence information and other national strategic concerns. [my emphasis]

This document was written by JPRA–the people that administer the SERE program from which our torture program was purportedly reverse-engineered. It provides clear evidence that, on July 25, 2002, JPRA was aware of an ongoing debate over whether or not to use torture with prisoners in US custody. The document clearly states that torture leads to unreliable information. And the document calls these techniques “torture.”

You’d think, if there were proof Yoo had read it, that OPR would include some discussion of how JPRA’s expert opinion that this was torture should have affected Yoo’s own definition of torture (heck–JPRA’s language here would be more on point than the “organ failure” language that Yoo and Jennifer Koester used to define torture). You’d think, given the experts’ opinion that torture produced unreliable information, OPR would have challenged Yoo’s acceptance of the CIA’s claims that torture was the only way to get Abu Zubaydah to reveal the intelligence they claimed he had. You’d think OPR would ask Yoo why–given his reliance on the same JPRA experts to claim that waterboarding didn’t cause psychological harm–he chose to ignore this document from JPRA.

This document, in other words, ought to be a cornerstone of OPR’s analysis of Yoo’s failure to provide independent analysis and include all relevant information about what constituted torture. It ought to be used as proof that Yoo knew he was authorizing what the experts deemed to be torture.

If OPR had proof Yoo read this document, it would be the “smoking gun” that when he wrote the torture memo he knew he was deliberately authorizing torture.

But it’s not clear whether Yoo did read it. And it’s not clear that if he did, proof to that fact would still have been in OLC’s collection of torture documents by the time OPR got around to reviewing those documents.

Read more →

Conyers Asks for the White House Side of Yoo and Philbin’s Emails

/21 Comments/in /by

The letter the National Archives wrote to DOJ last week inquiring about John Yoo’s missing emails focused on DOJ’s violation–as a Federal Agency–of the Federal Records Act.

Now, John Conyers is taking the reverse approach–asking for email exchanges to which the White House was a party–which would be preserved pursuant to the Presidential Records Act.

Any of the missing emails that included White House personnel should have been preserved as Presidential Records and be maintained in your archives. Therefore, I request that you search the relevant records (including both classified and unclassified materials) and provide the Committee with:

  • Any emails including John Yoo sent or received between March 1, 2002, and May 31, 2003.
  • Any emails including Patrick Philbin sent or received between July 1, 2002, and August 5, 2002.

Please make every effort to expedite this request. At a minimum, please provide at [sic] preliminary report on the results of your records search as soon as possibly, and in any event no later than March 15, 2010.

NARA is bound to find one of two things: that the abundant discussions between David Addington and John Yoo in this period (and more limited conversations with John Bellinger) have, like John Yoo’s DOJ emails, simply disappeared. Alternately, maybe they’ll find the White House’s side of emails with John Yoo, about this, and other things (such as the warrantless wiretapping program).

Any bets it’ll be the former?

At the very least, it’ll be a nice test to see how far along NARA’s project of restoring all the destroyed White House emails is coming along.

It’s Not Just the Emails DOJ Lost, It’s the Backup Documentation

/39 Comments/in /by

We’ve been talking quite a bit about John Yoo and Patrick Philbin’s emails on the torture memos that OLC deleted: with a rebuttal of John Yoo’s claims there were no email, a report on the National Archives’ attempts to learn what happened, and a catalog of damning facts we learned from the few emails left over.

But it’s not just the emails that are missing. It’s also some of the backup documentation. Some of the documents that went into the production of the torture memos–and should have been reviewed by OPR over the course of its investigation–disappeared some time in the last 5 years.

As I reported last September, after some delay in a FOIA response, Acting head of OLC, David Barron confessed that OLC could not find all of the documents that it had first listed on a 2006 FOIA response.

The problem, as Barron explained in his declaration, seems to stem from three things: CIA, not OLC, did the original FOIA search in 2005 and at that time did not make a copy of the documents responsive to FOIA; for long periods OPR had the documents, lumped in with a bunch of other torture documents, so it could work on is investigation; the documents got shuttled around for other purposes, as well, including other investigations and one trip to the CIA for a 2007 update to the FOIA Vaughn Index. [Here’s the 2007 Vaughn Index and here’s the Vaughn Index that accompanied Barron’s declaration last September.]

And, somewhere along the way, at least 10 documents originally identified in 2005 as responsive to the FOIA got lost.

Poof!

The 10 Missing Documents

Here’s a list of the short descriptions of what disappeared:

  • Document 6, 07/25/2002, 46 [or 60 or 59] page Top Secret [or Secret] memo providing legal advice
  • Document 20, 09/12/2003, 1 page Top Secret memo requesting legal advice
  • Document 47, 07/07/2004, 1 page Top Secret memo providing legal advice
  • Document 77, 08/16/2004, 2 page Top Secret memo providing legal advice
  • Document 142, undated 2 page Top Secret memo requesting legal advice
  • Document 155, undated 3 page Top Secret draft memo with attached handwritten notes requesting legal advice
  • Document 172, undated 5 page Top Secret memo requesting legal advice
  • Document 175, undated 6 page Top Secret draft memo providing legal advice
  • Document 177, undated 10 page Top Secret draft memo providing legal advice
  • Document 181, undated 127 page Top Secret draft memo providing legal advice

Why did CIA do the FOIA responses?

Now, before I get into why this is troubling in terms of the OPR Report, let me just challenge a claim Barron made in his declaration. He explained that CIA, rather than OLC, had done the first and second FOIA searches this way:

CIA attorneys were initially given access to the OLC Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (“SCIF”) in 2005 to search for documents responsive to the FOIA request at issue in this litigation. CIA attorneys conducted the search because no OLC attorneys assigned at the time to the processing of FOIA requests had the clearances needed to access and review the documents.

It’s not entirely clear when CIA would have been rifling through OLC’s SCIF drawers in 2005 (and Barron apparently doesn’t feel like telling us). But it would have come after Judge Alvin Hellerstein ordered the CIA to respond to the FOIA on February 2, 2005 (they had been refusing to respond to his order to do so from the previous fall). And they would have done it over the next year and a half. In any case, it would have happened after Daniel Levin wrote his unclassified torture memo, about which the OPR Report explains,

Virtually all of OLC’s attorneys and deputies were included in the review process,

And it would have happened during or after the drafting of the Bradbury memos, about which the OPR Report explains,

Bradbury circulated drafts of his memoranda widely within the Department.

Granted, the OPR Report doesn’t say the Bradbury Memos were circulated widely within OLC, but when they had an incentive to make the claim, DOJ later claimed that the torture memos, which would have been the same compartment as all the FOIA documents, were widely circulated. It seems unlikely that Levin’s memo was reviewed by “virtually all of OLC’s attorneys,” but that the following year they couldn’t find a single OLC lawyer to put together a FOIA response.

And what seems even more curious is that rather than invite CIA to OLC’s SCIF to do the updated FOIA response in 2007–at a time when the documents were under investigation–DOJ would instead send all the documents over to CIA for them to do it.

In 2007, the documents were recalled from OPR by OLC so that they could be sent to the CIA for processing and for purposes of updated the unclassified Vaughn Index submitted in this matter.

It’s sort of funny that DOJ took fewer cautions with these documents after they were actively under investigation than they did beforehand. Here, DOJ seems to have said to the CIA, see if you can’t make some of these documents accidentally blow into the Potomac on your way back to DOJ…

Three Troubling Documents

Now, it’s hard to tell what disappeared, since we don’t actually get to see either the documents that disappeared or those the DOJ thinks might be close matches. But three of the documents, in particular, trouble me.

Document 6, 07/25/2002, 46 [or 60 or 59] page Top Secret [or Secret] memo providing legal advice

Here’s the longer description of this document submitted in the 2007 FOIA response:

Document No. 6 is a 60-page document dated 25 July 2002 that consists of a 3-page memorandum and six attachments of 2 pages, 7 pages, 10 pages, 13 pages, 13 pages, and 12 pages, respectively. It is classified SECRET.

The memorandum and attachments contain confidential client communications from the CIA on a matter in which it requested legal advice from OLC.

Aside from the fact that DOJ has said, at different times, this packet of information was 46, 60, and 59-pages long (and that the same FOIA claims it is classified both Top Secret and Secret), the questions about this document alarm me because I’m fairly certain this is the packet of JPRA information sent OLC in the last days of drafting of the first torture documents. It’s going to take me a full post to explain the many reasons questions about this document’s provenance is problematic–tune in next post for the next installment of disappearing evidence!

Read more →

The Emails the Bush Lawyers Were So Worried About

/in /by

As I noted yesterday (though I got the details slightly wrong), the OPR report revealed that a number of John Yoo and Patrick Philbin’s emails had been deleted (and that Goldsmith’s had been deleted but were subsequently recovered).

OLC initially provided us with a relatively small number of emails, files, and draft documents. After it became apparent, during the course of our review, that relevant documents were missing, we requested and were given direct access to the email and computer records of Yoo, Philbin, Bybee, and Goldsmith. However, we were told that most of Yoo’s email records had been deleted and were not recoverable. Philbin’s email records from July 2002 through August 5, 2002 – the time period in which the. Bybee. Memo was completed and the Classified Bybee Memo (discussed below) was created – had also been deleted and were reportedly not recoverable. Although we were initially advised that Goldsmith’s records had been deleted, we were later told that they had been recovered and we were given access to them.

That’s particularly interesting, because several times in the year-long lead up to the release of the report, we’ve seen reports that Bush Administration members were squirmy about the number of emails OPR had gotten. Michael Isikoff first reported concern from Bush lawyers that OPR got emails from the memo contributors last February.

OPR investigators focused on whether the memo’s authors deliberately slanted their legal advice to provide the White House with the conclusions it wanted, according to three former Bush lawyers who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing probe. One of the lawyers said he was stunned to discover how much material the investigators had gathered, including internal e-mails and multiple drafts that allowed OPR to reconstruct how the memos were crafted.

I wondered whether reappearing emails was of particular concern to those trying to cover up Bush crimes here. Then there was the remarkably bad NYT story from June 6, 2009, that not only revealed the presence of the emails and included the damning Comey ones, but spun them just as Steven Bradbury would have liked them, as an attack on Comey rather than what they were, an indictment of the drafting process.

All of this anxiety about emails could just be an expression of Bradbury’s worries (retrospectively, it looks much more likely than it already did that he was the source of the emails and the spin to the NYT).

If so, though, that’s particularly interesting since we know that OPR originally got a very limited batch of emails from Steven Bradbury (this was in 2004, before he would write his own torture memos).

On August 31,2004, Bradbury gave OPR copies of unclassified documents relating to the Bybee Memo, including email and documents from the computer hard drives and files of the former OLC attorneys who worked on the project.

But reports of the anxiety about emails are all the more interesting given the emails that are included in the report. Perhaps the most damning example is the email in which Yoo refers to Abu Zubaydah as “Boo Boo” (which Spencer reported on Friday):

On July 30,2002, Yoo asked [Koester] by email, “[D]o we know if Boo boo is allergic to certain insects?” [Koester] responded,”No idea, but I’ll check with [redacted].

In addition, email evidence provided the basis for [Special thanks, again, to burnt for making searchable copies of these reports that made compiling this list much easier]:

  • The start date of the Bybee One drafting process, April 11, 2002
  • Timing or summaries of key meetings, including some with Alberto Gonzales
  • Yoo’s comments on drafts sent to Jennifer Koester, his side-kick in the writing process
  • Details of Bybee’s involvement in the drafting process
  • Proof that Yoo didn’t intend to write the Commander-in-Chief or possible defenses before his July 16, 2002 meeting with Gonzales (and probably David Addington and/or Tim Flanigan)
  • Evidence that Yoo consulted with a university law professor on common law defenses (the second draft, but not the first and final, shows that this was a university professor)
  • Indication that Yoo and Koester didn’t start the Bybee Two (Techniques) memo until July 25, 2002 or later
  • Details on the pressure the White House was putting on Yoo to get the memos done
  • Details of who received the opinions including–a fact that Yoo later denied–DOD
  • Complaints Koester received from DOD’s Working Group that the Yoo Memo was too extreme
  • Proof that both Michael Chertoff and John Yoo told CIA’s Inspector General they would wait to investigate alleged crimes until he was done with his investigation
  • Goldsmith’s opinions about the Bybee One Memo, including his judgment that it constituted a “blank check”
  • Comey’s emails documenting his concerns about the May 10, 2005 Combined Memo and his belief that Bradbury was responding to White House pressure because he wanted the AAG position

In other words, the emails provide a key piece of evidence that the White House was responsible for the way in which the Bybee One memo served as a blank check, as well as the pressure the White House put on the lawyers as they were drafting the memos.

The emails put the White House squarely in the drafting process.

But that’s all with most emails from John Yoo and Patrick Philbin still disappeared.

It sort of makes you all the more curious about what was in the Yoo and Philbin emails that got deleted, huh?

OPR Working Thread Two

/in /by

Happy Saturday.

OPR Report Second Draft

I will be starting with the Second Draft of the OPR memo. As before I will use the PDF page numbers, not the printed page numbers

PDF 6: OPR interviewed John Bellinger between the first draft (December 2008) and second draft (March 2009).

PDF 7: The first draft claimed that OPR didn’t get the Combined memo until 2007. The second draft says they saw it in 2005, along with the Techniques memo.

PDF8: Bradbury said he didn’t show OPR the CAT memo bc it didn’t replace either of the Bybee memos; he claimed that was the entire scope of the OPR investigation.

PDF 8-9: The Second draft (written after receiving Mukasey’s comments) notes that Mukasey had reviewed the Bradbury memos and found them legal. It is followed by a paragraph noting that Obama issued an order stating no one coudl rely on OLC guidelines from before his term.

PDF 10: Second draft notes that it did not rely on legal commentary or comments from other DOJ employees. Seems like Mukasey beat them up for letting Goldsmith or Comey’s opinions matter.

PDF 11: Second draft withdrew recommendation to review Bradbury memos, saying that the Obama EO withdrawing everything made further review unnecessary.

PDF 12: Second draft makes a point of saying that Bybee didn’t leave dept until March 28, 2003 (the first said he left right away). This may have relevance for the Yoo Memo.

PDF 12: Second draft notes that

PDF 16: Footnote 14 is changed to say that CIA had neither oral or written approval to use torture when it started; draft one had just said this was before the August 1 memo.

PDF 20: There is a longer redaction after the techniqes list in the second draft. Also note the explanation of Bellinger’s discussion with Yoo now has a redacted half-paragraph. This is significant since Bellinger was interviewed between the two drafts. Also note that part of footnote 18 is redacted in the later draft, though from the spacing it appears to be the unredacted passage from the first draft explaining that oo did not know why Bellinger told him to avoid telling State. Presumably in the contect of the other Bellinger discussion, it is now too sensitive?

PDF 21: THere’s a medium sized paragraph in the second draft that doesn’t appear in the first, which seems to come from Bellinger. Bellinger notes that Yoo was under a great deal of pressure on this memo, and also says that over time there was significant pressure to rule that the program was legal and could be continued (this seems to refer to Bradbury’s timing). In any case, it seems to relate to pressure from the WH.

PDF 23: there is a much longer redaction in the description of the meeting talking about starting the opinion. Again, this must come from Bellinger.

PDF 26: Second draft adds a paragraph stating that Yoo said he was not under time pressure, except maybe at the end after they decide to do Bybee Two.

Read more →

Spike the Yoo Findings, Get a Judgeship?

/in /by

Last week, I suggested that the role Mary Patrice Brown played in softening the conclusion of the OPR report on John Yoo deserved closer scrutiny. Less than a year ago, Eric Holder shifted the head of OPR into a different DOJ role. Almost immediately, OPR backed off its promise that the results of the OPR report would be public. And then, after Holder named Brown to head OPR, the report got stalled and, eventually, softened.

Now, less than a year after Brown took over the office, the Obama Administration reportedly plans to move her into a new position: a lifetime appointment as a DC District Court judge.

The White House and the Justice Department are vetting the head of the Office of Professional Responsibility, Mary Patrice Brown, for a federal judgeship, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Brown, a well-regarded career prosecutor, is expected to secure a nomination to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, assuming she clears her FBI background check and American Bar Association review, the people said.

Now, Main Justice reports that Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton recommended Brown.

Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton sent Brown’s name to the White House, along with eight others, for three vacancies on the court. (The names were generated by Norton’s nominating commission, the same group that interviewed candidates for U.S. Attorney in the District.) The White House appears to have pared the list down to three names, and the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Policy has been assisting with the vetting since December, the people said.

Nevertheless, Brown’s career trajectory over the last year makes me all the more curious about precisely how the OPR report has been delayed and softened under her management.