ACLU Demands Obama Release Torture Memos

ACLU demands Obama release torture memos | Raw Story

The American Civil Liberties Union has called on the Obama administration to end debate ahead of a approaching court deadline in their Freedom of Information Act case which seeks the release of three Office of Legal Counsel memos that are believed to have authorized torture of prisoners in CIA custody.

The memos were written by Stephen Bradbury in May 2005 when he was a lawyer at the Justice Department.

On Wednesday, The New York Times reported that Obama officials are hotly debating whether to release the memos. White House Counsel Gregory Craig and Attorney General Eric Holder are apparently in favor of releasing the memos "as quickly as possible to distance the new administration from the most controversial policies of the Bush years."

The holdup is apparently coming from former and current CIA officials who say, as The Times reports, "a rush to release classified material could expose intelligence methods and needlessly offend dedicated counterterrorism officers. Some administration and Congressional officials said John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who now serves as President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, has urged caution in disclosing interrogation documents."

According to a release from the ACLU, a federal judge has given the Justice Department until Thursday to disclose the memos or explain its refusal to do so.

“Using national security as a pretext, the Bush administration managed to suppress these memos for more than three years, denying the public crucial information about government policy and shielding government officials from accountability," said Jameel Jaffer, director of the ACLU's National Security Project said in a released statement. "The Obama administration should end this cover-up and release the memos."

Newsweek reported in March that former CIA director Michael Hayden was "furious" over the possible disclosure of the memos and had tried to persuade Obama officials not to release them.

Bradbury, along with former OLC lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee, was being investigated by the Justice Department's Office of Professional Reponsibility. An OPR report that was heavily criticial of the conduct of the three senior attorneys was expected to be completed last fall but former Attorney General Michael Mukasey objected to its release at that time to Capitol Hill.

After the release in early March of nine OLC memos, TPMmuckraker picked up on an interesting little tidbit: "In the January 15, 2009 memo written by then-acting OLC head Steven Bradbury -- in which he repudiated many of the previous OLC memos that articulated an expansive view of presidential power in the war on terror -- there's a footnote stressing that the memo is not 'intended to suggest in any way that the attorneys involved in the preparation of the opinions in question did not satisfy all applicable standards of professional responsibility.'"

TPMmuckraker speculates that this was an effort by Bradbury to protect himself, Yoo and Bybee from any repercussions in light of the anticipated findings of the OPR report.