The Political Chase

A Shock to Humanity

After years of Congress demanding the Bush administration release documents on torture, the Justice Department finally released a legal opinion John Yoo wrote March 14, 2003 as head of the Office of Legal Counsel. Just reading this memo shocks the conscience, and it is the declassified version. When I read it, I cringed and thought about my father and the horrific torture he endured as a POW in then-Yugoslavia during WW II. Were he alive today, reading this would pain his heart deeply; a response much more substantial than any cringed-reaction I might have. He knew intimately what torture was like and lived with its aftermath until the day he died. At best, I can only guess.

My father’s pain would be discovering that his country, at the highest level, not only sanctioned, but promoted inflicting the atrocities he endured.

The memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president’s inherent wartime powers.

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch’s constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

Interrogators who harmed a prisoner would be protected by a "national and international version of the right to self-defense," Yoo wrote. He also articulated a definition of illegal conduct in interrogations — that it must "shock the conscience" — that the Bush administration advocated for years.

"Whether conduct is conscience-shocking turns in part on whether it is without any justification," Yoo wrote, explaining, for example, that it would have to be inspired by malice or sadism before it could be prosecuted.