Justice Department Clears Torture Memo Authors John Yoo, Jay Bybee of Misconduct

Justice Department Clears Torture Memo Authors John Yoo, Jay Bybee of Misconduct
By Jason Leopold | Truthout | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

That means neither Yoo nor Bybee will be referred to state bar associations where they could have faced disciplinary action since poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct, according to OPR's post-investigation procedures. For Bybee, such a referral could have also led to an impeachment inquiry before Congress.

A long-awaited Department of Justice watchdog report that probed whether John Yoo and his former boss Jay Bybee violated professional standards when they provided the Bush White House with legal advice on torture has cleared both men of misconduct, according to Newsweek, citing unnamed sources who have seen the document.

An earlier version of the report was prepared by H, Marshall Jarrett, head of the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), and completed in December 2008. It concluded that Yoo, a Berkeley law professor, and Bybee, now a federal appeals court judge on the 9th Circuit, violated professional standards when they drafted an August 2002 legal opinion that authorized CIA officers to use brutal methods when interrogating suspected terrorist detainees and recommeded a referral to their state bar associations for possible sanctions, which could have resulted in their law licenses being revoked.

But as I reported last April, Obama's Justice Department appointees began to water down those previous conclusions in early 2009 after OPR received responses on the report's conclusions from Yoo and Bybee, who both worked in the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Read more.