Office of Legal Counsel and the Torture Memos
In an article in the current New York Review of Books, “The Torture Memos: The Case Against the Lawyers,” Georgetown law professor David Cole examines the role and culpability of the lawyers of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who, under the Bush administration, wrote memoranda approving of and authorizing torture by the CIA. Cole says,
. . . [more]The OLC lawyers had the opportunity, and the responsibility, to prevent illegal conduct before it occurred. The lawyers involved in drafting the “torture memos”—Jay Bybee, John Yoo, Daniel Levin, and Steven Bradbury—failed to live up to these obligations. In