February 20, 2010

Yoo Lawyer: OPR Acting Like “Junior Varsity CIA”

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If you want to get a sense of the tone of John Yoo’s response to the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility report finding he was guilty of “professional misconduct,” take a look at this excerpt from his lawyer’s letter to the OPR:

[The Office of Legal Counsel]’s job was to give legal advice based on the facts as presented by the Central Intelligence Agency, not to assume the role (as OPR now has) of Junior Varsity CIA. OPR appears to think that the proper role of OLC attorneys was to reweigh the operational facts adduced by the CIA and play roulette with the lives of thousands of Americans.

That’s right: any questioning of the CIA’s reliance on the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario amounts to risking the lives of thousands of Americans. Yoo’s lawyer, by the way, is Miguel Estrada. Yes, that one.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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