As I noted in this post, DOJ has released two of the memos used to authorize the illegal wiretap program. I made some brief comments on the November 2, 2001 John Yoo memo here. This will be a working thread on the May 6, 2004 Jack Goldsmith memo. P1: Note in the TOC (and in [...]

As Josh Gerstein and Jack Goldsmith note, DOJ just released two of the opinions underlying the warrantless wiretap programs. They both focus on the May 6, 2004 opinion Goldsmith wrote in the wake of the hospital confrontation; I’ll have far more to say about that opinion later today and/or tomorrow. But I wanted to look [...]

The High Court in Spain has decided that it can proceed with its investigation of the torture that Lahcen Ikassrien alleges he suffered at Gitmo. A Spanish court Friday agreed to investigate a complaint by a Moroccan who said he was tortured while in the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, judicial sources said. [...]

Josh Gerstein reports that the government has withdrawn from defending Donald Rumsfeld and others in the Jose Padilla suit Judge Richard Mark Gergel dismissed the other day. (h/t MD) The Justice Department under President Barack Obama has quietly dropped its legal representation of more than a dozen Bush-era Pentagon and administration officials – including former [...]

Josh Gerstein reports that a Federal Judge has rejected ACLU’s effort to get the government to remove more of the redactions in the OPR Report on the torture memos. Judge Rosemary Collyer basically argued that the President’s need to get candid advice on how to make torture legal trumps citizens’ right to know about such [...]

On Friday, Judge Alvin Hellerstein had a hearing to figure out how to end the contempt suit the ACLU brought against the CIA for destroying the torture tapes. The ACLU asked that he hold the CIA in contempt. Hellerstein said that wouldn’t serve much purpose. The ACLU suggested that he could hold individuals–presumably meaning Jose [...]

I’m back into moving hell this week, so I haven’t looked as closely at all the WikiLeak cables that have come out. But I wanted to add one point to David Corn’s story on a cable showing the discussions about a potential Spanish prosecution of our torture lawyers. As Corn describes, the cable chronicles a [...]

The WaPo reports that Bush, in his book, admits to approving waterboarding. In a memoir due out Tuesday, Bush makes clear that he personally approved the use of that coercive technique against alleged Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed, an admission the human rights experts say could one day have legal consequences for him. In [...]

At Rosalind’s request, I’m putting up this working thread on the emails that OLC just turned over to CREW. There’s nothing all that exciting there because this search did not include “paper or electronic documents of Mr. Yoo available elsewhere in the Department.” Like on the classified servers. I’m actually on strike until I get [...]

The AP’s DOJ and intelligence writers have a story out on the Durham investigation that purports to be “the most complete published account” of the destruction of the torture tapes. Only, it ignores key details that have already been published which paint a much more damning picture of the tapes and their destruction. First, the [...]