Bush-Era Lawyers Won't Be Disciplined For Controversial Interrogation Memos

In a Friday document dump (jargon describing when an administration releases embarrassing--to them--information after all the "journalists" have left for the weekend), the Justice Department as expected cleared two Justice Department lawyers from any professional misconduct in connection with harsh terrorist-interrogation techniques:

Two Bush administration lawyers who authorized harsh interrogation techniques on terrorism suspects used poor judgment but will not face punishment, the U.S. Justice Department said on Friday in summarizing a lengthy ethics report.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility had originally found that the lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, had engaged in professional misconduct, according to a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee leaders.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility had originally found that the lawyers, John Yoo and Jay Bybee, had engaged in professional misconduct, according to a letter sent to the House Judiciary Committee leaders.

The harsh techniques they authorized included waterboarding of terrorism suspects as the Bush administration tried to elicit intelligence after the September 11, 2001, attacks for capturing or killing anti-American al Qaeda militants.

However, Associate Deputy Attorney General David Margolis reviewed the ethics report as well as responses by Yoo and Bybee and decided not to adopt that finding, according to the letter by Assistant Attorney General Ronald Weich.

 Source: NBC/Reuters

DOJ Lawyers Off The Hook For "Torture" Memos

If this report from Newsweek proves accurate, the already delusional pundits at MSNBC will become even more unhinged:

[A]n upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.