By Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman
Excerpt from the Aug. 1, 2002, ‘Torture Memo’:
For
weeks, the right has heckled Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. for his
plans to try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his
handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going
to be upset: an 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.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/archive/2010/01/29/holder-under-fire.aspx