The group first filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request on December 4, 2009, when it became clear that the report was not going to be released in the time frame Holder promised that it would be. Abdo said the ACLU never received a response to its FOIA request. So, the organization filed another one last week. Earlier this month, a coalition of attorneys, journalists and activists also filed a FOIA request with the DOJ to obtain a copy of the report and other documents.
Abdo noted that when the report is finally released, "we will almost certainly see redactions [and the FOIA lawsuit will] serve as a placeholder to lodge challenges to excessive redactions in the report."
In response to the ACLU's complaint, Schmaler said that Holder has already stated "the department would make [the report] available as much as possible when it's done."
She added that there is "no delay" in releasing the report and, as she noted in a previous interview, she pointed to OPR "post investigation" guidelines, which details the process that takes place during the course of such internal investigations.
The OPR report was completed more than a year ago. It was revised after former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and his deputy, Mark Filip, insisted that Yoo, Bybee and Bradbury be given an opportunity to respond to its conclusions.
In his testimony last November, Holder said the report had not been released sooner due to "the amount of time we gave to the lawyers who represented the people who are the subject of the report an opportunity to respond. And then [OPR] had to react to those responses."
Last month, several legal sources knowledgeable about the review process said Yoo filed additional responses to the report's findings via his attorney, Miguel Estrada.
Estrada told Truthout he was bound by a confidentiality agreement he entered into with the DOJ and could not comment on the claims that he submitted another set of responses on behalf of Yoo.
Schmaler said she could not comment on the veracity of those claims.
According to the two DOJ officials, an original draft of the report had already concluded that when writing the August 2002 torture memo, Yoo failed to cite the key precedent relating to a president's war powers, Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a 1952 Supreme Court case that addressed President Harry Truman's order to seize steel mills that had been shut down in a labor dispute during the Korean War.
Truman said the strike threatened national defense and thus justified his actions under his Article II powers in the Constitution.
But the Supreme Court overturned Truman's order, saying, "the President's power, if any, to issue the order must stem either from an act of Congress or from the Constitution itself." Since Congress hadn't delegated such authority to Truman, the Supreme Court ruled that Truman's actions were unconstitutional, with an influential concurring opinion written by Justice Robert Jackson.
Yoo's memoranda concluded that the laws governing torture violated President Bush's commander-in-chief powers under the Constitution because it prevented him "from gaining the intelligence he believes necessary to prevent attacks upon the United States."
Yoo's lengthy response to the OPR expanded upon a defense he first cited in his 2006 book, "War by Other Means," in explaining why he didn't cite Youngstown.
Yoo wrote: "we didn't cite [Justice Robert] Jackson's individual views in Youngstown because earlier OLC opinions, reaching across several administrations, had concluded that it had no application to the president's conduct of foreign affairs and national security.
"Youngstown reached the outcome it did because the Constitution clearly gives Congress, not the President, the exclusive power to make law concerning labor disputes. It does not address the scope of Commander-in-Chief power involving military strategy or intelligence tactics in war ...
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