Obama Hires Another Lawyer Who Battled Bush’s Secrecy
To my mind, one of the more interesting storylines unfolding right now is President Obama’s ongoing appointment to the Office of Legal Counsel of lawyers who strongly opposed George W. Bush’s use of the war on terror to justify dramatic expansions of executive power.
Now the White House has just announced yet another such appointment to a key post: Mary De Rosa will be Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs and Legal Adviser to the National Security Council.
That will make human rights advocates very happy. De Rosa was most recently chief counsel for national security for Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy, who has spent years pushing for the release of secret Justice Department legal opinions justifying the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques.
That means De Rosa was in the center of efforts to force the Bush administration to legally justify his war on terror in the eyes of the public, and suggests that she may be a strong advocate from within for releasing such documents as the Obama administration decides how far it wants to go in this direction.
“The fact that she worked for Leahy is a promising sign,” one prominent human rights lawyer just told me. “At a time when the Bush administration was defending lawless policies at Guantanamo Bay and on torture, Senator Leahy was a reliable advocate for government transparency and a defender of the rule of law.”
Similarly, the White House has already announced the appointments to the Office of Legal Counsel of three leading opponents of Bush’s legal approach: Dawn Johnsen, Martin Lederman, and David Barron.
Meanwhile, things are heating up big time on this front in another way: The ACLU is calling on the Obama administration to release the Bush administration’s torture memos.
Update: Ben Smith points out that another key appointment announced by Obama today is Harvard law prof Daniel Meltzer, who argued in favor of inquiry into the legality of detaining people at Guantanamo.
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I’ve said it before, and I hope I’ll get to say it again . . .
Marty Lederman’s comin’ for you, Addington!
Bwa ha ha ha ha!
sgew, it’s pretty extraordinary, actually, how this is shaping up…
Indeed! Appointing Dawn Johnson to the OLC, the immediate Guantanamo orders, appointing Martin Lederman (Martin Lederman!) to John Yoo’s previous position . . . it’s almost as if Pres. Obama is taking that whole oath of office to protect the Constitution seriously!
After 8 years of criminal activity in the Executive office, this is almost more change than I can possibly believe in.
And me. I’m happy about it. No, I’m ecstatic.
appointing Martin Lederman (Martin Lederman!) to John Yoo’s previous position . .
Just seeing the last of John Yoo is good enough – no matter who replaced him. But yes, it’s all good.
All cases of Torture have to be investigated based on the United Nations Manfred Nowak- No one is allowed to torture- truth be told- Torture is an International Law- Just like those laws of Communications and Computers They as well have International Laws attached- The best thing Leon Panetta once of the Iraq Study group– Is fire ofrmer Agents and seeing the Nation is wrecked- people can be trained who can better serve the Nation- like any business people get fired and New and better improvements occur- break all areas of Bush connections The World needs this Not Just The USA-
Hold the WAR Crimes ACT and hold American standards higher- not staus quo
Gonzales guilt of Section 1030- in that DOJ handbook deals with wiretap laws- as well everything that idiot needs to be in prison and watch his three boys grow up disconnected behind thick glass no touch no feelings alinated and sedition just has him imposed on others with his F***D UP mind of Mens Rea
I agree with you, Jennifer. I want Abu Gonzales’ law license. I’m furious that he’s licensed in the same state I am and I seriously would like to start something to get the state bar to look at whether or not he should continue to be licensed to practice law.
Unless he is charged and prosecuted, there’s nothing to base a complaint to the state bar on. And I’m as serious as a heart attack about wanting him disbarred.
Tena, hasn’t there already been an unsuccessful complaint against Abu G’s license? Since there is a decent chance that he will be prosecuted for perjury before a Congressional Committee, I’m for waiting until he gets convicted of one or more felonies and then seeing the State Bar take his law license.
(How do you graduate from Harvard Law and manage to hold legal opinions as seemingly idiotic & dangerous as Gonzales does??? I’m not trained in the law so the question is one of curiosity.)
Rest assured oddjob: the question burns as brightly (if not moreso) for those of us who are trained in the law.
See, e.g., John “crushing a child’s testicles is legal if the president orders it” Yoo, or Antonin “torturing people for information is not ‘punishment’ and therefore does not violate the 8th Amendment” Scalia. Boggles the mind.
Does anyone have an opinion about the disposition of the low level soldiers who were convicted of Abu G. related crimes? I admit to only a layman’s understanding of the entire torture issue, but it seems there’s something very wrong when they serve time and nothing happens to the decision-makers. Sometimes I think they should be given a pardon.
Scalia is also known for telling Congress during his confirmation hearing that 14 year olds should be subject to the death penalty.
The current SCOTUS is, if not the court’s nadir, damn close to it.
While I agree (very much so!) that it’s a travesty of justice (not to mention Justice) that the decision-makers have been free of prosecution* while the uniformed troops have born the brunt of the law, I disagree that the low level soldiers should be pardoned for torture.
Every service member of the United States Armed Forces pledges an oath to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” and to “obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over [them], according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.” (emphasis mine)
The “only following orders” defense has been invalid since the Nuremberg trials. It was the affirmative duty of the soldiers to disobey the orders to torture their detainees, and to report the UCMJ violations up the chain of command, or, failing that, to the appropriate civilian oversight mechanisms (e.g., Congress). Their failure to do so is punishable as a matter of law.
I understand and empathize . . . in fact, I completely commiserate . . . with the untenably horrible situation many of these uniformed men and women were put into by their superior officers. In my opinion, there should have been far more leniency in the sentencing phase of trial for some of these soldiers – we cannot truly expect them to have had complete agency in their actions. However, mitigating circumstances are not justifications: if we do not punish every war criminal (no matter how “small fry” or how much of a “big fish”), we will continue to make a mockery of the very notion of the impartiality of the law.
And bear in mind this interview of Lynndie England:
The “words” she cannot think of are called the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Convention Against Torture.
*So far!
This is a catch 22 for the low level soldiers. They are supposed to refuse to obey unlawful orders, but will most likely be punished if they do. Furthermore, the Bush administration made a very public legal case that some prisoners were exempt from the Geneva Convention. Are our foot soldiers supposed to know the law better than the president’s legal council?
No one in the chain of command had the courage to provide the soldiers with a list of what treatment was acceptable and what wasn’t. When the scandal broke Bush immediately released a CYA memo that said that even though they didn’t have to follow the Geneva Convention we should follow it anyway. Yet these prisoners were being interrogated and soldiers were ordered to “soften them up”, all clearly violations of the Geneva Convention. It is outrageous that no one in the chain of command was prosecuted for the torture or for failing to follow Bush’s (alleged) order to follow the GC. Last I heard over 300 American soldiers had been court-martialed or otherwise disciplined for mistreating prisoners, but no senior officers were disciplined – in fact many of them were promoted.
Tired of my state being the Republican dumping ground. Ken Starr is the dean at Pepperdine Law in Malibu (w/ Kmiec), John Yoo is tarnishing the good name of Berkeley, and I can’t list the number of clowns the GOP has parked at Stanford’s Hoover Institute. If we’re not going to use it for Gitmo prisoners, couldn’t we send all these bozos to Alcatraz? Please?
Irregardless of orders I don’t believe the low level soldiers did not know what they were doing was wrong on so many levels. Photos show a sadistic side where torture was rendered just as punishment. They knew better and acted like scum anyway. They raped captives…DUH!
This is a catch 22 for the low level soldiers. They are supposed to refuse to obey unlawful orders, but will most likely be punished if they do.
SO TRUE! The environment in which all of the military operates is fundamentally dependent upon subordinates following orders without thinking about them. Basic training exists in no small part to retrain one’s mind not to ask questions when given an order, and then here come blatantly illegal orders! What to do?
For the military that’s not a question with an easy answer, and it never has been. Actually, it’s one of the most brutally difficult dilemmas there is! Periodically there are related scandals at the military academies when wrongdoing is exposed. The cadets & midshipmen are all rigorously taught and trained that a cadet (or midshipman) never lies, yet at the same time they are unofficially and equally rigorously taught that a cadet (or midshipman) is always loyal to his/her fellows.
What then of the fellow who cheats?
There is no good answer to that.
Oddjob asked, “How do you graduate from Harvard Law and manage to hold legal opinions as seemingly idiotic & dangerous as Gonzales does???”
Well, according to Jane Mayer’s “The Dark Side” (among other sources), Gonzales is essentially the weakest, most spineless person on the planet. He didn’t merely chose to serve the president rather than the people as AG, he let David Addington (Cheney’s lawyer) write memos for him, dictate meeting agendas, set policy on torture, the whole 9 yards.
Given that he’s a complete cipher, perhaps the real question is, “How did Gonzales manage to graduate at all, and how does he walk on this earth with the slightest bit of self-respect?”
sakitume: ok, I will. re: how does he walk on this earth with the slightest bit of self-respect?” step 1: examine slice of bread. step 2: determine which side has butter on it. Examination now complete, no further steps required. That’s how he does it. For immersion training, contact the Marie Antoinette School of Public Responsibility
To bjobotts: The soldiers were told that there was a class of prisioner to whom the Geneva Convention did not apply, and they were in no postion to question that. But you are right, some of the behaviour was outrageous and unreasonable. Nevertheless, it is an outrage that no one in the higher echelons were held accountable for what was going on on their watch.