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Durbin and Whitehouse added that they are "concerned"- that the final OPR report "" when it is delivered to Attorney General Eric Holder and to Congress "" will have "undergone significant revisions at the behest of the subjects of the investigation without the benefit of reviewing OPR's initial draft report."- [For more on the Yoo-Bybee opinions, see Consortiumnews.com's "How Close the Bush Bullet.]
Investigating Legal Theories
The OPR probe was launched in mid-2004 after a meeting in which Jack Goldsmith, then head of the OLC, got into a tense debate with White House lawyers, including Vice President Dick Cheney's legal counsel David Addington. Goldsmith had withdrawn some of the Yoo-Bybee opinions because he felt they were "legally flawed"- and "sloppily written."-
After the meeting, Goldsmith resigned and was subsequently replaced on an acting basis by Bradbury, who restored some of the controversial Yoo-Bybee opinions in May 2005, again granting Bush broad powers to inflict painful interrogations on detainees.
Sources familiar with the OPR draft report said it reached "damning"- conclusions about numerous cases of "misconduct"- in the advice from Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury that was provided to the White House about interrogations and domestic surveillance.
OPR investigators determined that all three blurred the lines between an attorney charged with providing independent legal advice to the White House and a policy advocate who was working to advance the administration's goals, said the sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the contents of the report are still classified.
One part of the OPR report criticized Yoo's use of an obscure 2000 health benefits statute to narrow the definition of torture in a way that permitted waterboarding and other acts that have historically been regarded as torture under U.S. law, the sources said.
In public comments responding to the criticism of his legal opinions, Yoo said his government work gave him "very little time to make very important decisions. "- You don't have the luxury to research every single thing and that's accelerated in war time."-
Last weekend, it was disclosed that Spanish investigative judge Baltasar Garzon had taken initial steps for launching a criminal probe of torture that was allegedly made possible by the work of six former Bush administration officials, including Yoo, Bybee and Addington as well as former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.
Garzon, whose court is famous for dealing with high-profile terrorism and torture cases, asserts standing in the investigation because international anti-torture laws have provisions for universal jurisdiction, meaning that if the implicated country (in this case the United States) doesn't act against alleged torturers, other countries may.
Jason Leopold has launched his own Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org.
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