Former DOJ-ers Doubtful On Missing Yoo Emails Story

Former DOJ-ers Doubtful On Missing Yoo Emails Story
By Zachary Roth | TPM | Submitted by Michael Munk | www.MichaelMunk.com

An internal Justice Department report on the Torture Memos noted that investigators were told that key emails from John Yoo had been deleted and could not be retrieved. But several former DOJ staffers expressed intense skepticism that the emails could in fact have been rendered unrecoverable -- at least without a deliberate effort to destroy them.

"It's hard for me to believe that those emails weren't kept -- unless somebody didn't want them kept," one career Justice Department lawyer, who left in 2005, told TPMmuckraker.

Another former DOJ lawyer echoed that notion: "When I heard the emails were not recoverable from Yoo, I was surprised," he said.

The Justice Department's Office of Professional Responsibility wrote in a report, released last week: "We were told that most of Yoo's records had been deleted and were not recoverable," and said that their probe was "hampered" by not having access to the emails. That has sparked calls from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the National Archives, the New York Times, and CREW for an investigation into the missing emails. Read more.