Cal law professor John Yoo is in the news again lately. Yoo is the author of an infamous August 2002 legal opinion, written while at the US Justice Department, justifying the use of torture in interrogations. Last week the Pentagon declassified another argument by Yoo on behalf of the use of torture, an 81-page memo from March 2003: eyebrows are being raised, to say the least, by the memo's content. Here are a few relevant articles worth reading:
"White House asked DOJ how Bush could sidestep Fourth Amendment" - describing the circumstances of the memo, by Jason Leopold for the Online Journal, dated April 7, 2008.
"There Were Orders to Follow" - a New York Times Editorial from April 4, 2008.
"The Supremes Let John Yoo Off the Hook" - an opinion piece by lawyer Jay Youngdahl in the East Bay Express from the April 2-8, 2008 edition, referring to the recent decision of Medellin v. Texas and its implications for protecting John Yoo from war crimes charges.
John Yoo has been a member of the Boalt School faculty since 1993.
Comments
Jason Leopold's series of articles on Mr. Yoo are a must read. I would like to thank Mr. Leopold for digging into this story by quoting Yoo's book which I believe pushed this story forward. And then there is the memo Yoo wrote ten days after 9/11 about circumventing the fourth amendment. Yet again, the MSM fails to highlight this
Thank you for writing about this! To anyone wondering whether any of this is important, I recommend you dig up the movie Brazil, 1985, an amazing depiction of what life could be like under surveillance done in the name of counter-terrorism.